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"So where is the real Odin?"
Frigga sighed softly, her voice dropping.
"Odin... his time is running out."
Even the All-Father must face the end.
Hermione understood. With Odin's power fading, everything would shift.
"The Odinforce is draining from him rapidly," Frigga continued. "This isn't simply age catching up with him. It means he can barely keep Hela suppressed any longer."
Hela. The Goddess of Death. Odin's firstborn. Spoken aloud at last. Hermione knew exactly what that name meant for Asgard.
Frigga's tone grew heavier. "Rather than watch him burn through his last strength maintaining a facade that's already crumbling..."
She turned, her gaze steady and direct. "I didn't follow your suggestion about having Loki use magic to deceive him. I went to Odin myself. I told him to put down the burden of Asgard and spend whatever time he has left in peace." A pause. "He agreed."
Hermione was surprised. It seemed Frigga understood Odin far better than she ever had.
This queen was the most resilient, most far-sighted person in all of Asgard.
With her husband's life ebbing away and her eldest daughter about to break free, she had chosen to back the adopted son — the one who looked least reliable, but who might be the only real option.
"Loki has... many flaws," Frigga said, something complicated moving through her eyes. "But he does have the ambition to rule. And he's willing to learn how to be a king. With me to guide him, that's better than burdening Thor, a child with no interest in the throne whatsoever, with all of this."
Hermione agreed.
Thor had courage in abundance. What he lacked was subtlety, and any interest in power at all. Asking him to govern the Nine Realms was frankly a stretch.
Loki, for all his schemes and burning ambition, at least had the hunger for it. He would actually sit down and think about how to be a king. Under Frigga's guidance, he might turn into something workable.
"So that performance earlier..." Hermione thought back to "Odin's" excessively warm welcome.
Frigga smiled, a touch of exasperation in it. "He hasn't quite gotten used to playing Odin's gravitas. Especially in front of you. He knows what you're capable of. He was probably a little... nervous."
"And," Frigga added, shifting tone, "I can tell he genuinely sees you as someone he can actually talk to. A real friend."
Hermione considered that.
Fair enough. They'd been on opposite sides once, but out of everyone she'd met across two worlds, Tom Riddle and Loki were the ones she could be completely herself around. No pretense necessary.
Even Luna fell slightly short of that.
She left the royal chambers. Thor was waiting outside, just as expected, a faint look of puzzlement still on his face.
"What did Mother say to you?"
"Some things about your father's condition," Hermione said, brushing past the question.
Thor could tell something wasn't quite adding up, but he didn't push it. His attention shifted back to the task. "Then we leave for Muspelheim now?"
"Obviously."
Hermione nodded. A flick of her wand, and golden sparks scattered through the air.
Thor gripped Mjolnir and stepped through the portal first. Hermione followed.
Muspelheim. The realm of the Fire Giants.
It was nothing like she had pictured. No boundless ocean of flame, instead, a desolate wasteland of volcanic rock and slow rivers of lava. The sky burned a permanent dark red. The air reeked of sulfur.
"Surtur should be near his throne," Thor said, scanning the landscape to get his bearings.
They didn't bother with stealth. They flew straight toward the largest of the black peaks.
It didn't take long before the structure came into view, a crude, massive thing built from scorched boulders. Calling it a palace was generous. It was more of an enormous cave.
At its entrance, on a great black throne carved from solidified lava, sat an enormous figure.
Surtur.
Hermione raised an eyebrow.
He was undeniably massive, his body wrapped in roaring flame, a pair of jagged horns rising from his head, a colossal fire sword resting in his grip.
But his size was, at most, roughly comparable to the Hulk.
This was the prophesied destroyer, the being whose sword swing could level a realm and trigger Ragnarok?
The gap between legend and reality was notable.
"I have come to stop the prophecy!" Thor raised Mjolnir and aimed it directly at Surtur. "Ragnarok — you would be the one to start it. I will not let Asgard fall by your hand!"
"Ragnarok is Asgard's fate. You cannot change it!" Surtur lifted his great fire sword and leveled it at Thor. "And your fate is to die here!"
Before the last word left his mouth, he swung. A torrent of blazing fire, like a roaring dragon, came surging toward them both.
Hermione vanished from where she stood. She reappeared dozens of meters away the next instant, the attack rolling harmlessly past her.
"RAAARGH!"
Thor didn't dodge. He charged straight in, Mjolnir swinging, lightning cracking and blazing around his body. He plowed through part of the flames with sheer force and drove himself directly at Surtur.
Mjolnir and the fire sword crashed together, CLANG CLANG BOOM, with deafening force. Sparks and lightning scattered across the scorched ground. Lava was hurled up by the shockwaves and came slamming back down.
Back and forth they went, neither gaining the edge.
Hermione watched from a distance, calm.
She knew Surtur wasn't at full power. In his current state, the current Thor could hold his own. But in his true form? Not a chance.
His real source of power, the Eternal Flame, locked away in Asgard's vault, had to merge with his skull crown before he could become what he was meant to be.
That version of him probably outclassed Odin entirely.
But without the Eternal Flame, he was just a scaled-up Killian. Nowhere close to an apocalypse-level threat.
She raised her wand, pointed it at Surtur, and murmured quietly.
"Glacius."
A wave of extreme cold radiated outward from her in an instant. The air itself seemed to seize. The scorching heat of Muspelheim plunged.
Surtur lurched mid-swing, his movement stuttering to a stop.
The flames wreathing his body flickered. Dimmed. Died, as though doused with a bucket of cold water. Then frost began crawling upward from the ground beneath his feet.
CRACK. CRACK. The ice thickened fast, spreading visibly, sealing over him layer by layer until Surtur stood completely encased, a colossal, ferocious ice sculpture.
Inside the ice, his lava body turned brittle. Blackened.
CRASH!
One sharp sound, and the sculpture shattered. Surtur came apart with it, scattering across the ground in chunks of charred black debris.
Only his skull, horns and all, rolled free and came to rest on its own.
Start to finish — a few seconds.
➤ Next: The Triwizard Tournament
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