Eventually, the feast came to an end, by around the third day, when most had finally drunk themselves under the table or eaten so much they couldn't move from where they had collapsed.
I understood why the human legend said that the feasts within the halls of Valhalla were never-ending — because to a human, a feast like this was indeed beyond anything they could imagine.
Just the amount of mead and wine consumed here would be more than any ancient kingdom could produce in a year, not to mention the amount of food. I honestly worried that some poor world had been stripped bare of all its animals.
Yet the amount of food and booze I had consumed was enough to make even my eyes feel heavy toward the end. I was amazed that someone like Frigga and Loki could attend this long, but then again, they had both lived here for a long time.
They no doubt had learned how to deal with it.
I had nothing but my divine constitution and my A+ Endurance to rely on. And while this was more than enough against any mortal drink, this one was meant to affect the divine, and even my Magic Resistance A couldn't fully block it.
So by the time I made my way back to the bed I was given, it didn't take long before I fell asleep — for a night, all worries of the possible invasion of Earth forgotten.
-----
While Asgard's greatest warriors had spent three days drinking, singing, and boasting within the golden hall, there was one — perhaps its greatest — who had not joined them.
Heimdall, the Watcher, the ever-seeing, stood alone at his post.
He had watched the feast from afar — the laughter, the lights, the songs that drifted faintly through the Bifröst winds — but he had not set foot within those halls for an age, not since he took upon himself the burden of guarding Asgard's gate.
It was a lonely duty, but one he bore with quiet pride. Few understood the cost of vigilance or how many disasters had been averted simply because Heimdall had seen.
Storms quelled before they broke, betrayals silenced before they began — the peace of the realms had been purchased not with blood, but with his sleepless eyes.
He had long accepted that he could only watch the joy of others — that he would never again sit among them, never again raise a cup or join a song. His oath was his life, and his life was Asgard's watchfire.
These days, however, his gaze often lingered on Midgard.
It had rarely interested him before. The mortal realm was ever noisy, ever fleeting — a place of birth and death, passion and ruin. But that had changed when she appeared.
Arthuria Pendragon.
A goddess cloaked in flesh. A kingdom risen from nothing, surrounded by light that even Heimdall's gaze could not fully pierce. That alone was enough to trouble him. There were few things in the Nine Realms that could obscure his sight.
Even the Sorcerer Supreme had left her undisturbed, and that too was strange. Mortal magi rarely agreed to anything — especially silence. Yet none had moved against her.
Then came Odin's decree — Thor's exile — and Heimdall had watched that, too. He had not understood it at first. To send the crown prince to a mortal realm seemed madness. But as time passed, and as his gaze followed Thor's days within Camelot's walls, he began to see the wisdom in it.
Thor had grown — not only stronger but steadier — as if the very weight of Arthuria's kingdom had tempered him.
Still, Heimdall's watch never faltered. His gaze drifted from Thor to the kingdom that sheltered him — to Albion and the divine radiance that pulsed from beneath Camelot's towers. Something there disturbed even him: a shadow beneath the light, faint but unmistakable.
And now, that shadow reached for something ancient.
The Tesseract.
Heimdall had felt its energy stir long before any mortal machine could detect it. The cube had slumbered on Midgard for centuries, a fragment of the All-Father's conquest — hidden, sealed, forgotten. But now… something was moving toward it.
Arthuria's warnings only confirmed what he already suspected: a dark hand sought to claim it.
The Tesseract was no mere relic. To mortals, it was an infinite well they could never hope to drain. But to one who knew its nature — one who could wield it — it was a key.
A key to all realms.
If such a being could act unseen, it would mean only one thing — that they could cloud even his eyes. That realization troubled Heimdall deeply. His sight was not infallible — Loki had proved that much — but the idea that others could blind him so completely… that was new.
And dangerous.
If they could mask the Tesseract, they could hide armies — move unseen across the Bifröst, slip into Asgard itself before any horn could sound.
That thought alone tightened his grip on Hofund, the sword that anchored the Bifröst bridge.
No — this could not be allowed.
Whoever sought the Tesseract could not be permitted to claim it. He would find them, even if he had to scour every star and shadow.
Yet even as he searched, he found more questions than answers — fragments of minds twisted by alien will, soldiers moving without memory, creatures that should not exist speaking of masters unseen.
Piece by piece, the pattern began to form.
Someone was moving against Midgard — someone powerful enough to manipulate mortals, to move armies in secret, to blind even the eyes of the Watcher himself.
If the rumors were true — if it was indeed the Mad Titan — then Midgard's doom could come long before Asgard could intervene. Millions could die before the first horn was blown.
Arthuria might protect part of the realm, but even she could not be everywhere at once.
Heimdall knew what he had to do.
If war was coming — if the hand that reached for the Tesseract belonged to him — then Asgard would have to act swiftly and with certainty.
He briefly turned his eye back to the palace, where the feast had ended, and everyone slept and rested. Among them was Arthuria — a goddess he still couldn't understand, but he was seeing why both the Queen and the All-Father seemed to trust her so much.
Indeed, she was almost more like one of them than she was a mortal. She was honest, strong, and didn't like secrets. And she was as dense as any of the king's sons.
With a slight smile, he turned his eyes back to Midgard. He was sure that he had everything he needed — or at least anything he could get from watching. The enemy was clearly too smart to allow themselves to be spotted.
So they would have to act on what they had, but it should still allow them a small head start — not much, but with the Bifröst, that should be enough.
He focused again on Camelot — that brilliant white city that shone like a star in the mortal world. There, he watched as the knights of the Round Table, warriors of such strength that they could match even Asgard's finest, got ready for war.
Those mortals… no, they weren't mortals. They were clearly something else, though he couldn't quite point out what it was either.
These warriors were impressive; their skills were beyond anything he had seen in mortals before. Even if these were something more, he knew they hadn't lived that long — hadn't trained the centuries the warriors of Asgard had — yet some of them could match them on skill alone.
Others, such as their king's heir, Mordred, had far less skill but more strength. In many ways, she reminded him of Thor — brash, quick to anger and blows, and always seeking to solve all their problems with violence.
Yet beneath that storm of temper burned a light that few could claim — a fierce, defiant will that refused to break. Mordred was chaos given form, but it was a noble chaos, born not from malice but from a desperate need to be seen — to be acknowledged.
Something Heimdall could see in Loki. Clearly, Arthuria's heirs were like a mix of Odin's — whether that would prove a good thing remained to be seen.
Although it appeared that it had already been seen, he didn't fully understand it, as he had never witnessed it, but apparently, once upon a time, Mordred rose in rebellion and overthrew her father. It was a great puzzle, but many such surrounded Arthuria.
Indeed, these knights were strong, and now they were ready for war. And he believed they might be able to make a great difference. While they were few in numbers, they all seemed to possess one special move or weapon — something that would put them beyond any of Asgard's warriors.
He had seen Mordred unleash a strike of unmatched force, releasing strength reaching the divine. Even he didn't dare carelessly take on that strike.
He had also seen Arthuria herself unleash her might — strength that only the All-Father himself could match when going all out.
With all the knights having something like this, there was no doubt they could play a large role even in a grand war of realms.
The question, however, was how to bring them along — something he would have to discuss with Arthuria in the morning.
(End of chapter)
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