In the silence and confusion that followed the end of the war, Ragnarok's fury and determination to breach Hrimthur's wall aside, Sif's words still hung in the air.
"Long live the All-Father."
I didn't correct her. Couldn't, really. My throat was dry, and my mind was still trying to catch up to everything. It felt wrong, like putting on old armor that didn't quite fit anymore. Or more accurately, like putting on your father's favorite shirt - even if you were fully grown, it would never fit quite right.
The weight of expectation. It was something I'd battled with in both lives. Yet this particular burden was infinitely worse. What was college and a nine-to-five compared to being the All-Father?
The title was heavy. Too heavy. Thor had spent centuries trying to be the hammer. He had been taught little of diplomacy that didn't end with a crushing blow from Mjölnir. Less of ruling that didn't consist of growling and staring down a subject with storm-filled eyes to make them yield.
A lifetime of being the hammer, and now I was expected to be the scalpel. I gave a grunt of frustration, both at the way my thoughts twisted and melded. Thor. Me. I disliked how blurry the line was between the two of us. Pushing aside my existential struggles, I focused, because there was an even bigger problem.
The roar came again, louder this time. A tremor shook the earth beneath us, rippling through shattered stone and blood-slick grass. Ragnarok, that amalgamation of two primordial forces to create a creature of inevitability, was still ramming the wall. The last barrier. I knew from the memories of the game that Freyr must still be trying to hold him back, yet the fact that Freya was here meant the lesser Vanir could hardly slow him down.
Another roar. I refocused. Blue eyes stared back at it. It had no true face, no real voice, no intellect behind those empty blue gaping holes. There was just a hunger for destruction. Ragnarok's purpose was singular and had been crafted before thought took root in the cosmos: to end Asgard. That was all it knew.
Mimir broke the silence from his spot on Kratos' hip.
"We can't kill it."
His words were quiet. He had given voice to something we all knew but refused to say. To acknowledge it was to confront the truth of what led to Ragnarok's creation. Odin's foolishness. My father, the gift that kept on giving.
"Aye," Kratos murmured. "It is not a beast of flesh. It is not a god. It is... fate."
I clenched my jaw. My fingers tightened around the haft of the hammer. There was no lightning this time. Just blood. So much blood. My own, my father's, and countless others. I was tired. I could feel it deep in Thor's bones. A weariness that transcended words. I needed to rest. To think. To grieve a monster of a father I didn't care for. To wonder how I found myself in this mess.
I needed time.
Time I wouldn't get if Ragnarok had its way.
"Then what?" I asked with a tired grumble. "We run?"
It tasted like ash. Despite how little pride I had left, the parts of me that remained Thor, God of Thunder, son of Odin, now named All-Father by their declaration, recoiled at the idea of running. But the silence that followed said everything.
"Yes," Loki answered. The boy stood taller now. Not physically, he was still lean, still too young, younger than my daughter Thrúd even, but there was something in his eyes. The weight of prophecy, maybe. Or just the edge Kratos had forged into him.
"We run," he repeated.
"I won't leave Asgard to be destroyed by Ragnarok." The words left my lips more easily than the thought of running. Somehow I knew, if worst came to worst, I would stand here and die before I let Ragnarok breach the wall and lay waste to Asgard and what little remained of the Aesir.
Strangely, that thought didn't fill me with dread. The thought of dying in glorious battle against inevitability. The lines between me and Thor blurred even further.
Lightning crackled along the head of Mjölnir. My electric-blue eyes narrowed as I focused on the gaping hole in Ragnarok's chest - the wound that pulsed with the energy of creation. Perhaps if I hit it hard enough...
"Asgard does not have to fall today. Fate can still be averted," Loki continued, turning to his father. Only then did I remember that I wasn't the only one trying to twist fate today.
He held up a mask.
The mask.
That cursed thing. Forged by hands that predate even Yggdrasil. A key to the crack in reality. A door carved into the fabric of everything, leading to the place from which all things were born, and possibly, all things could die. I already knew what the boy was planning. Judging by the glint in Mimir's golden eye, so did he.
"Odin believed that with the mask, we could look into the sea of creation and gain knowledge of all things. Perhaps with it we could learn how to defeat Ragnarok, or at least escape it."
There was a pause. Everyone looked at me. It took me a long second to realize why.
They were waiting for direction.
I was no longer a simple warrior prince. Not a brute with a hammer. I was the one now named All-Father. Leader of the Aesir. Ruler of Asgard. The one who had to decide.
I looked to Freya, who returned my gaze with suspicion. She wasn't my friend, but I was never the true target of her hatred. That position belonged to Odin. I wondered if that changed with his death. I looked to Sif and Thrúd. My daughter's face was clouded with confusion, same as Sif's, though Sif hid it better. She gave a simple smile of encouragement. Twice in a day. A record-breaking feat in Thor's memories.
I turned to Kratos. The old god's face was devoid of judgment. Of hate. Of anger. He simply stared at me with calm amber eyes. If anyone here had the power to gainsay me, it was him. Yet I doubted he would.
So I turned to Loki.
"Do it," I said.
And so, the work began.
__
The air around us thickened with urgency. No one said it aloud, but we all knew. We didn't have much time. Ragnarok was still hammering away at the walls, and when it broke, there would be no wall, no army, no god strong enough to stand in its way. And I would very much prefer those magnificent walls didn't fall in the first place.
That it stood so long against Inevitability already spoke to its prowess and strength.
Kratos stood guard beside me, Laufey's Axe in hand, and mine on Mjolnir. Our eyes were on the horizon, where the sky was a torrent of swirling colors under the weight of Ragnarok's presence. Sif and Freya began gathering what remained of the Vanir, Jotun, Valkyries, Einherjar, and Aesir present. Thrúd wouldn't leave my side, not until I gave her a nod, and even then she walked backward, as if afraid I'd vanish the second she turned her head.
Loki stood over the mask, fingers twitching with nerves or maybe power. I couldn't tell. It pulsed in response to the growing energy in the air, alive in a way that spoke of power beyond strength as I knew it.
"It has to be done here," he muttered, "where Odin laid down Ymir's bones. Where the Well of Creation bleeds into the roots of Yggdrasil."
I knew the place. Every one of the Aesir did. We called it the Scar. A rift in the stone hidden beneath the Allfather's study, a crack in the world, jagged and glowing, bleeding raw potential. It could hardly be called the birthplace of everything, that title was taken, but it tapped into the power. Deeper into the Well of Creation than what Surtur had used to reforge his body into the primordial being known as Ragnarok.
We descended into the dark beneath the ruined lodge house, the scent of ink and smoke thick in the air. Odin's study was a place that held dark memories for Thor, so I forced myself to ignore it until we were cast deep into the earth. Ahead of us was the Scar, pulsing like a heartbeat made of green. When we reached it, I almost dropped Mjolnir.
"Bugger me."
It was wider than Thor remembered, yet I had expected it. This wound in reality feared what was coming but even more, it must've felt the mask's presence.
Loki knelt at the edge and held the mask tight in his hand.
"What's the plan?" I asked, not even trying to hide my doubt. In the games, Aterus had broken the mask. We were so far off script, my knowledge was useless. The only thing now I could trust was the strength of my arms and the lightning in my veins.
"I wear it. And I look into the heart of creation."
"Aye, but not for too long, brother. Be very specific with your search," Mimir added. "If that old one-eyed goat was right and it gives infinite knowledge, then you won't survive having that much knowledge branded into your brain. Odin might have, considering how old and powerful he was, but you..."
"He understands not to risk himself more than necessary... Aterus is no longer a child, but a man," Kratos said without lifting his Mirmir's head. The latter part of the sentence sounded like it nearly killed him to say, yet he said it all the same.
I understood how difficult that had been. Yet, like I had expected, that trust bolstered Loki more than anything else. His spine straightened as he gave his father a single look, before slipping the mask on. Then he pushed his head into the gaping crack in space.
It was a tense three seconds, but it ended faster than I expected. Loki jerked his head back with so much force I expected the whiplash to kill him. Yet Kratos moved. Faster than I had ever seen him move. Faster than his fight with Thor. The desperation of a father sent him rocketing forward to catch the boy, and he forcibly ripped the mask off Loki's face and flung it to the side. My hand snapped up in an instant and caught it.
"Atreus, are you alright?"
It took the boy long seconds to shake off the fog, or whatever it was that had clouded his thoughts, but when he eventually did and opened his eyes, I frowned. His eyes were older.
"I'm fine, Dad. My head hurts a bit," The boy brightened up quickly, "But more importantly, I know what we have to do. I know how to escape Ragnarok." Loki said with a rush.
Like he had heard his name called, it was almost like he could feel our effort at trying to deny him his due, the primordial inevitability roared once more, and I knew the walls would not survive for long. So I turned to the boy and knelt just as his father did and asked the question.
"What do we have to do?"
Green blue eyes stared into my electric blue.
"We must move Asgard."
"What?" The confused question came from two mouths, Mimir and a newly returned Freya.
"That would be impossible," the Vanir goddess said with a shake of her head, and Mimir continued from where she stopped.
"The realms are all interconnected and resting above each other in a geometric anomaly of parallel dimensions held up and connected only by the presence of the world tree. It would take me a lifetime to explain fully but simply put. They cannot simply be moved."
"At least not without moving the World Tree itself," Freya spoke again, her focus shifting as a new roar forced her to worry for Freyr. Then the weight of her own words struck her, and she spun back on us. "That's your plan. You mean to move the realms?" Freya asked, her voice sharp. "All of them?"
"It's the only way," Loki replied. His voice was changed. There was a conviction in it that hadn't been there before, a surety that made it clear how deeply he believed in the plan.
"Ragnarok's overarching goal is the destruction of Asgard. If we simply leave, it would accomplish that feat, and the rest of the realms would suffer for it in some way. It would be a scar on the World Tree, and it would be my fault."
It suddenly made sense. Guilt. That was what drove the boy. Loki had sought this war. Had pushed for it with the ignorance of a child despite the insistence of his father to disregard such thoughts. Yet now he had seen the war he had sought. Fought in it and had learned a lesson his father had tried to hide him from.
There was nothing fun, heroic, or glamorous about it. The death of the Midgardians Odin had placed outside the walls of Asgard had only solidified it. The boy had no stomach for such wanton cruelty.
Not like me.
"If we somehow manage to move only Asgard, Ragnarok's rage would spill over to the rest of the realms as it has been denied its purpose. But if we take the whole eight realms…"
"…It would be trapped, as Ginnungagap returns. It would be impossible to follow," I finished for him. "Fate, averted. This time, permanently."
Loki turned to me and nodded in agreement.
"This is risky." Freya began. She took a step back as she shook her head furiously. "Too risky. I cannot—"
"Your revenge is had, Freya," I began with a grumble that shut the Old Vanir goddess up. I looked down at her, knowing just what the weight of my presence meant. Thor might not have been a great public speaker or an orator able to twist words like Odin had, but he was a general, and had given enough orders to radiate authority.
"Odin is dead. Would you sit back and allow the instrument you unleashed to claim more lives than needed?"
I could see the Vanir goddess take a mental step back at my words. She was nearly convinced, yet I knew that as long as the words solely came from my lips, she would find a way to reject them. I needed the final nudge.
I looked to Kratos.
"I've ended a pantheon once and brought ruin to a realm that hosted it. My own homeland." The Old War God spoke up. "That's why I tried to avoid this part. Yet I found myself doing the same thing, only this time it is not Titans I have unleashed but a primordial inevitability."
Kratos looked at Freya. Looked deep into her eyes with those cool amber eyes of his.
"Ragnarok was an unnecessary mistake. Just like letting loose the Titans and destroying all of Greece. I didn't have a chance to put Pandora back in her box before, but we do now."
"And it cannot be done without you," Loki finished, standing tall to meet the Vanir goddess's gaze. "We need you for this to work. With Odin dead, you're the greatest seidr user. If you don't join us, we fail. Asgard would be destroyed. The Aesir line ended. All of it, all the death and bloodshed - needless, for Odin has already been struck down. Is that what you truly want?"
This time, all eyes turned to the Vanir goddess. There was still a spark of rage in her eyes. Hate for Odin. Anger at me, at the rest of the Aesir, for what we had done. Yet despite how much she tried, Freya was no Odin. She was not callous, malicious, or cruel. Her true hate had been quenched with Odin's death. She would not damn the rest of the Aesir and Asgard, nor risk the ruin that might spill into the Nine Realms with Asgard's destruction.
"Fine," she said with a defeated and weary sigh. "Where do we start?"
I smiled in response. Suddenly, everything didn't seem so bleak and hopeless again.