by Adam Ingle
“About that deal, boys? Let’s talk,” said Loki.
Everyone was shouting over the sound of Heimdall blowing his damned horn. Marcus and Leviticus were yelling at Tyr, who was in turn yelling back at them. Meanwhile Mestoph was yelling at Heimdall, trying to get him to shut up. Sir Regi started shouting but ended up wailing in tune to the horn, and he looked pissed because he couldn’t stop. Stephanie was silently watching it all around her. She looked at Magnus’s lifeless body lying in a pool of his own blood, the expression of disbelief still on his face. She looked at the storm above as it darkened, shooting down arcs of lightning into the mist. One arc split a large boulder a couple hundred yards away, the near instant clap of thunder momentarily drowning out the yelling and the horn. She didn’t know if it was the stress or the noise, but she was getting a horrible headache. Her head was pounding, and there was a high-pitched whine in her ears.
It wasn’t tinnitus, she realized, but an oddly familiar scream. By the time she understood what it was, the Nephilim and Seraphim were swooping down at her. The odd thing was that they didn’t really seem to be trying to hurt her, just annoy her. The taunting Nephilim and Seraphim wailed louder and louder in her head, causing her to scream out painfully, “Asylum!” was the only word she could get out before the cacophony in her head became unbearable and then passed out. She collapsed to the ground in a disheveled pile before anyone could catch her.
As soon as Stephanie’s body hit the ground, flocks of both Nephilim and Seraphim came down from the clouds and began circling just over head. The Seraphim, circling clockwise above them, spun around a wide arch directly above her, leaving a trail of soft white feathers that dissolved before they reached the ground. The Nephilim spun the opposite direction in a tighter circle, leaving a trail of oily blackness in their wake. Marcus ran over to Stephanie and tried to wake her, but she didn’t respond. At least the sound of the horn had stopped, he thought.
“If it’s asylum you seek, come now or best your chances out here with your God’s buzzards,” shouted Heimdall as he hopped on the bridge.
Tyr followed, and the bridge began to slowly retract. Marcus grabbed Stephanie under her arms and carried her like a sack. Mestoph grabbed Sir Regi and stepped onto the bridge, still only inches from the precipice, while Leviticus motioned Marcus to hurry. Marcus began to walk as fast as he could without hurting Stephanie as the buzzards, both black and white, swooped down in two uniform streams. They scraped at Marcus and Stephanie as he ran with her over his shoulder, their claws tearing across Stephanie’s back and the back of Marcus’s head. Marcus had to endure two waves of strafing runs by the creatures before he got to the bridge. He didn’t even think about the gap, now several feet wide, but jumped with all the power that adrenaline and fear could muster. He made a one-footed landing at the edge of the bridge, where Mestoph and Leviticus were waiting to help steady him.
Once Marcus was on the bridge, the swarm of Seraphim and Nephilim bore down on them all. Heimdall tapped a section of rock on the railing and a panel opened, revealing a sort of service hatch. He reached into the opening and began twisting something that made a ratcheting sound, and the bridge began to speed up its return trip. The bridge had been used very little in the last few hundred years, and it groaned in protest. Heimdall closed the service hatch and then stood with arms crossed, seemingly unfazed by the attack.
Tyr conjured another spear from the ether, making a watery sucking sound as he pulled it from nowhere, and then chucked it confidently at a Nephilim. The spear sailed through the air, just as sure as when it had struck Magnus, and the Nephilim flipped backwards in midair as its forward momentum met with the spear’s. It plummeted in a spiral into the chasm. Mestoph and Leviticus drew their guns and tried to make well aimed shots, but the creatures moved too erratically and they were too inexperienced at marksmanship to do much damage. After three shots Leviticus was out, having only winged a Seraphim. Mestoph emptied the full clip of his gun and took down another.
Tyr had summoned five more spears and taken down as many creatures in the time it took Mestoph and Leviticus to empty their guns. Although none of them made much of a dent in the creatures numbers, it did seem to serve as a deterrent against their strafing runs. No longer interested in attacking, they returned to spiraling up above in their opposing, concentric circles as the bridge finally entered the mists, making attacks by either party pointless. They couldn’t see the flocks above them, but they could still hear the incessant flapping of wings. The sound bounced around in wild and random directions in the misty fog making it sound like they were being surrounded on all sides. The thought of being surrounded finally made Heimdall nervous enough to draw his sword and leer nervously into the emptiness, ready to attack anything that came at him.
The sound of the creatures dulled and the fog began to dissipate, revealing the opposite side of the chasm. The party turned and saw a narrow stretch of grass before them and then a sheer cliff of glassy obsidian rising thousands of feet into the sky. At the top of the cliff, chiseled out of the mountain itself, was a massive fortress. It was carved into a large, main cylinder with smaller towers flying out from it at random intervals on all sides. Each tower, including the central one, was topped with a sharp spire made of highly polished silver. It looked decidedly sinister, like something from an old Saturday morning cartoon. The spinning pentagram of clouds above it and the eerie gleam of the column of blackish light shining down on it didn’t help.
“What is that?” asked Marcus.
“That is Valaskjalf, also known as the Shelf of the Slain. That is the hall where Odin sits on the great throne Hliðskjálf and watches over everything in all the known worlds,” answered Heimdall without even bothering to see what Marcus was pointing at.
The bridge drew within a few yards of the Asgard side of the chasm, and Marcus felt a tapping on his back.
“I think I’m OK now. You can put me down,” said Stephanie.
Marcus bent over and gently let Stephanie slide to her feet and then caught her as she wobbled a bit once she was upright. She was paler than usual and something in her eyes told him that OK was not really what she was right now.
“What happened back there?” asked Leviticus when he noticed Stephanie back on her feet.
“She’s been doing that Vulcan mind deal with the sky demons and they bite hard,” said Mestoph.
“It wasn’t by choice, trust me. It was like being brain raped,” said Stephanie.
Mestoph started to laugh, but the look of fragile vulnerability on Stephanie’s face made him stop. He had never witnessed the Nephilim attack anything in the real world and had only heard of it happening in people’s dreams. Their presence meant something big was going to happen that affected both Heaven and Hell, which leant a lot of credence to Heimdall’s claim of Ragnarok being upon them. Never having witnessed the end of the world before, he wasn’t sure just how serious that was. He wondered if this was The End Leviticus and he had spent their whole lives waiting around for. Leviticus was staring at everything like a kid in a toy factory, buzzing with excitement. If it really was The End of the World, this was going to get very interesting—and maybe a bit bloody.
Finally the bridge reached a stationary platform of jutting bedrock and stopped moving. The grassy strip where the bridge ended was a stark contrast to the gloomy looming obsidian cliff. Although it was a narrow piece of land, scarcely the width of a football field, it stretched on endlessly in either direction and was covered in a carpet of surprisingly thick, lush, and brilliantly green grass dotted with colorful flowers. There were even stands of hearty trees, mostly birch with a few stray aspen, which surrounded a large, two-story cabin nearby. The cabin was made of logs far bigger around than anything that grew there or anywhere else in Iceland. Behind the cabin were several rows of dome-shaped beehives made of coiled grass with colonies of bees swarming back and forth from the fields of flowers to the hives. A well worn path ran from the bridge, made a stop
at the cabin, and then ran straight toward the cliff, ending at a cave entrance.
“Where is everyone?” asked Leviticus.
Tyr looked down at the Angel with disdain, snorted, and then walked off down the path that led to the cave. Heimdall looked toward Tyr and then back at the group. He took a deep breath and then sighed.
“Most of the remaining gods have moved up to Valaskjalf with Odin. The others, well, they’ve moved on. Some went to other religions, some are off being tortured of course, and some just…died. Anyone with an outstanding prophecy is still around, waiting for Ragnarok. We’re operating with a skeleton crew these days,” said Heimdall.
“So what does happen when a god dies?” asked Sir Regi.
Heimdall looked down at the dog curiously. “We die, obviously,” he said, a glimmer of whimsy in the slight smile that cracked his otherwise grim face. The smile stuck around as he gestured at the cabin. “Care to come in and rest a bit? I’ve got some fine honeyed mead that I’ve just finished.”
“I think we should probably go see Odin. You know, that whole asylum thing,” said Mestoph. He almost added something about finding Persephone, but didn’t want to tip their hand if it wasn’t necessary. They had gotten into Asgard without having to wheel and deal; why screw it up now?
Heimdall’s faint smile disappeared at the reminder of business at hand. “Ah, yes. Of course. We don’t get many visitors, and with Ragnarok nigh, I thought one last horn of mead for old time’s sake. But no, you’re right. I’m sure Odin is wondering what’s taking so long as it is,” he said as he took one last longing glance at the cabin. Heimdall led them down the path that Tyr had taken. They made their way to the opening in the cliffside, which revealed a spiral staircase. Mestoph looked up at the thousands of feet of sheer cliff and then at the steps.
“No elevator, I take it?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” said Heimdall.
Mestoph shrugged and followed the bulky god as he stooped slightly to avoid hitting his head on the doorway and make his way up the stairs. No one else had to worry about hitting their heads; the tallest of them still had several feet of clearance. They walked up a couple turns and found a window that looked out over the narrow span of land they had just left; it already seemed to be hundreds of feet below them. A few turns later, there was another window that showed them to be about halfway up the cliff. Heimdall’s cabin was surprisingly small next to the bridge.
After a few more turns, they exited the spiraling stairway and found themselves in a long curved hall that was open to the air. It ran the entire circumference of the tower they had seen at the top of the cliff. Everything was chiseled from out of the obsidian of the cliff and then polished smooth. A low railing and the occasional support column were the only things that separated the hall from a drop of thousands of feet. Leviticus leaned out over the railing to look down and saw a tiny dot and a tiny line that were the cabin and bridge.
Despite the fact that the cliff couldn’t be seen from the human, or Midgard, side of Bifrost, he could see clear to the Icelandic coast. The mists rose high from the chasm that separated the two worlds but didn’t come nearly as high up as the cliff did. On the other side he could see the concentric circles of swirling Nephilim and Seraphim, their numbers having grown to thousands of each creature. Stephanie saw the growing swarm and her hands went to the railing for support as she lost the little color she had regained.
“Don’t worry. They can’t cross with the bridge retracted, and we alone control the bridge,” said Heimdall with a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Whether it was the power of a god or security of such a strong hand, Stephanie visibly calmed down and took a deep breath. Heimdall paid no more attention to the swarm and continued to lead the group through the great hall. They made a complete circle, and then Heimdall opened the same door that they had just come out. Marcus was about to say something when he saw that there weren’t any steps inside but a completely new room. The room wasn’t very, large considering it was the home of a god, but it was so tall that they couldn’t see the ceiling. There were four statues carved out of obsidian spaced evenly around the perimeter of the room; they stood thirty feet tall and looked down at the group as in the center of the room. Each showed Odin in one of his well-known forms.
There was Odin the Traveler, wearing a traveling cloak and a wide-brimmed hat, leaning on a spear as a walking stick. The statue had a patch over one eye. There were two large ravens, one on each of his shoulders, which looked at Odin with great intelligence in their carved eyes.
Another statue showed a muscular and angry looking Odin wearing simple leather armor and riding on the back of an eight-legged horse reared in mid-charge. Both the mane of the horse and Odin’s hair were blown back as if frozen in action. Odin’s one good eye was large and full of anger as he held a large spear ready to pierce an unseen enemy.
The largest of the statues depicted a nude Odin impaled by a spear stuck into an obsidian ash tree. The carved figure appeared to be pulling the spear deeper into himself, signifying that the sacrifice was self-inflicted. Each of the tree’s myriad branches was full of intricately detailed ravens.
The final statue showed a robed Odin sitting in a simple wooden throne, leaning forward with his elbow on his knee in a traditional thinking pose. He looked down on a floor that was a miniature world of hundreds of trees, dozens of rivers, and several little towns. The model world spilled over from the pedestal of the statue and on the floor of the room itself. Stephanie walked over to the last statue and leaned in close; she could even see tiny people, carved in the minutest detail, doing chores around the villages.
In the center of the room was a circular slab of rippled obsidian. A dozen god-sized Vikings held four chains anchored to the slab; the chains ran up into the dizzying heights of the tower. Each link in the chain was as big as a watermelon and made of a dull iron several inches thick. Heimdall stepped onto the slab and motioned the others to hurry. Once everyone was aboard, the chains went taut as the clanking of a large mechanism rumbled and echoed in the tower. The obsidian slab lifted off the ground in a surprisingly smooth motion and rose swiftly up the tower. It took longer to reach the top of the tower by elevator than it had to walk the stairs up the cliff, but only marginally so. Just as smoothly as it had started, the ancient elevator stopped at the top of Odin’s great hall.
The penthouse of Valaskjalf was not shaped like a hall at all, but like the top of an enormous, gloomy lighthouse made of obsidian. There were three hundred and sixty degrees of windows and a domed roof that had a large round window in the center of it. Shining directly through the center of the dome was the blackish light of the storm, the spinning pentagram clearly visible. The ring of floor that surrounded the elevator platform was covered in thick furs of a hundred different animals, most of which weren’t native to Iceland. There were leopard, zebra, grizzly bear, polar bear, something that was remarkably similar to depictions of wooly mammoths, and a few that the companions couldn’t identify.
At one end of the room was a wooden throne exactly like that of the statue in the tower below, and in it sat the very same figure in the flesh. On an obsidian pedestal next to his throne was a severed head that turned and whispered something to Odin. On a plush fur rug near the foot of Odin’s throne was a beautiful, dark-haired woman with purple eyes and skin nearly as pale as Heimdall’s. She wore a simple flowing robe-like dress of soft white fabric. She was petting one of two large wolves that lay curled around her. Standing behind her was a man in a thick, undyed wool sweater and cargo pants. He was facing away, looking out the window at something or nothing. He didn’t turn to acknowledge their appearance. Tyr was pacing back and forth on the other side of the room; he too ignored the group beyond looking at them when they first arrived.
“All-Father,” announced Heimdall with ritualistic stiffness, “I bring you visitors from the land of—”
“Now’s not the time for theatrics,
Heimdall,” said Odin in a ragged but warm voice.
The disembodied head began to speak. “The two humans are Marcus and Stephanie. The Angel is Leviticus. The Demon is Mestopholes. And the dog is Prom—”
“Shut up, Mim. I know who they are,” said Odin.
Marcus was staring at Mestoph. He hadn’t missed the fact that the floating head had called Mestoph a Demon. In fact, now that he heard it, he was fairly certain that Father Mike had been about to say the same thing before Stephanie shot him. He looked to Stephanie and she looked away. She had known too? How? Why would she keep that a secret? They had been following an angel and a demon? What did that mean? Did it mean anything? Of course it did, why else would everyone keep it a secret. Marcus’s mind was about to enter a terminal spiral of conspiracy theories, doubts, and betrayals when Odin spoke again and got his attention.
“I find you all guilty and deny the request for asylum,” said Odin with casual finality. Heimdall drew his sword and turned to the group. Their eyes went wide in unison as they suddenly understood what a guilty verdict actually meant. Heimdall looked reluctant, but his obedience to Odin was stronger than his own sense of morality and he stepped up to Marcus and raised the sword.
“No need for that Heimdall,” said Odin.
Heimdall breathed a sigh of relief and then flashed a “just following orders” smile at Marcus and sheathed the sword.
“Considering the context of the charges, I fear a death sentence is rather pointless. Our end is upon us regardless,” said Odin. “Instead, I sentence you all to watch what you have wrought. You will have a front row seat to Ragnarok.”
The All Father made a gesture toward a clump of fluffy pelts near the dark-haired beauty, and a pile of plush pillows appeared, one for each of them.
