We climbed out of the pit and made our way back to Odin's Study, and I fell into the well-carved throne with a huff.
"This is a working greater than any that has been done in multiple generations. We can't do it alone," Freya started, her feet taking her as she paced the study, deep in thought.
"Tell me what you need, and it shall be granted," I replied as I leaned into the seat.
"Everyone." Mimir was the one to reply. "Every single person, God, Giant, Elf, Spirits. As long as they have a vague idea on how to work Seior. We'll need them to help in the working. It will be fast, it'll be dirty..."
"But hopefully, it'll work," Freya continued, then she spun to face me. "Lastly, we'll need time. Himutur walls have held Ragnarok for longer than I anticipated, but I fear it would not hold it back for long enough for us to finish the workings, mad as it is."
"I have little skill in manipulating Seior, Sif shall help to gather those that can," I started with a grunt as I forced my way off the carved throne, its frame groaning with the movement. "As for time, I can buy you that."
"We can," Kratos added, then he looked me in the eye and stretched his hand, and I grasped it without much thought, hauling my way to my feet.
Kratos detached Mimir's head from his belt and dropped it on the table with a final word to the wisest man in the world. "Take care of my boy."
Sif had already made her way out to gather who she could, Freya snagged Mimir's head from the table and the two of them began to speak magical babbles that would've given me a migraine if I stayed longer to listen in on. Loki and Thrud followed after them with glances at Kratos and me.
Our final plans resolved, we went our separate ways.
Freya, Mimir, Loki, and the rest of the seidr, Vanir, and Aesir capable of weaving magic would be working around the Scar. As we walked away, I could see both scattered Vanir and Aesir making their way to the cavern underneath Odin's study. Whatever they were doing there had their voices echo and overlap in strange cadences that made the air heavy. The stone floor trembled in Asgard as green light bled outward from the longhouse, crawling across the ground like veins, pulsing in time with some vast heartbeat buried deep beneath the world. I turned away from it. That was not a battle I could fight in.
Kratos and I stood atop Hrimthur's wall.
The storm of unreality broke itself against the wall, spraying stone and frost into the air. And beyond it, Ragnarok roared. The horizon shook with every impact. Ragnarok's fists, each the size of mountains, hammered against the wall, stone holding firm yet bleeding light from the strain. Every blow sounded like the cracking of Yggdrasil's branches. Its roar was a sound that did not belong to flesh or beast but to inevitability itself. What madness had led them to unleashing Ragnarok, I asked myself. A brief glimpse at the surroundings answered my question.
War. A fight for survival, desperation in the face of extinction. Even dead, the results of Odin's sins haunted us still.
"You are quiet," I muttered, eyes still fixed on the endless mass of muscle, fur, and fire that rammed the wall again and again.
Kratos shifted slightly, shoulders tense, his axe resting on his shoulder, and the ruined blade gleaming faintly in the stormlight. "I am thinking."
"About what?"
"About you."
I turned my head, one heavy brow raised. "Me?"
"You are not the Thor I fought." His voice was steady, almost flat. "The Thor I fought was a drunk, a brute, a man drowning in hate. You…" He paused, as though weighing his words. "…You do not speak any differently, but you think differently. You would not have stood here before. You would have thrown yourself at it, caring nothing for the cost." His jaw tightened. "Now you wait. You weigh the lives behind this wall against your own urge to fight. That is change."
I grunted. "I am still a brute. Still a drunk. Still Odin's son." My fingers curled around Mjolnir's haft. "But maybe I have learned to be more than that."
Kratos gave a small grunt of his own, almost approval. "That is good. Because this fight will demand more than the hammer."
There was a long silence before I spoke up again. "I forgive you."
"What for?"
"For unleashing Ragnarok." I replied, my right hand twitching to my hips in search of a flagon of ale that was not there.
"What makes you think I regret it?" Kratos questioned, his voice just as steady. I let out a dismissive grunt in reply.
"The last time you did something equally as stupid, you turned hermit and hated yourself. You fought against this path to avoid making the same mistakes, yet here we are. Your reasons were fair, I would've done worse to protect Thrud, so do not let the burden of the choices my father pushed you to, weigh heavy on you. I forgive you, Kratos, so forgive yourself."
This time the silence lasted longer, but I was slowly growing familiar with it. The wind ruffled once more, blowing my red mess of hair and beard in a scattered wave.
"Thank you," Kratos said, voice low as a tension left his shoulders.
Before I could answer, the wall shook violently once more. Stone split beneath our feet as Ragnarok slammed against it again, harder than before. The sky itself seemed to shudder with the force of the blow and I saw the beginning of cracks upon the indestructible wall. For the past few hours it had been a battle of the immovable object versus the unstoppable force, and unlike myth, this unstoppable force was winning.
Ragnarok would have his due.
I spat, rolling my shoulders. "Enough words, then. Time to work."
Kratos nodded once, and together we leapt from the wall.
The impact of our descent split the earth, sending cracks racing outward. Ragnarok turned its faceless gaze upon us, its hollow blue eyes wide and hungry. It roared, and the storm roared with it.
Then the fight began.
I ripped Mjolnir out of its holster on my hips, then spun on the spot, putting as much strength as I could immediately summon into the throw. Then I let the rune-covered hammer fly. It shot forward, a comet of crackling lightning, that smashed into Ragnarok's chest wound, the hollow where creation pulsed like a heart. The blast tore sparks of raw matter into the air, each fragment burning holes in reality before winking out.
Ragnarok staggered back.
While all this was going on, Kratos had gone ahead. Moving faster than would be expected, he got to Ragnarok's feet, and with an explosive jump that completely obliterated the ground beneath him, Kratos slammed his axe into the monster's knee, frost detonating outward, locking molten muscle in brittle plates of ice.
Then he fell back to the earth, cracking it. Two blows that would've laid any monster, god, or giant down, and Ragnarok simply shrugged them off. I gave a grunt of annoyance as I snapped my meaty fingers and Mjolnir answered, the hammer slamming into my palm with a meaty thwack.
I knew we could not kill it, yet knowing and experiencing it were two different things.
Ragnarok let out another one of its organ-rattling and bone-shaking roars, then it swung. I felt it before I saw it, the world tilting under its sheer weight. We moved. Kratos ducked beneath a limb half the size of the cursed snake Jormungandr, while I soared upward, lightning wreathing my arms and gravity letting go of me.
Like a switch, I flicked off my flight and I crashed down on its shoulder, hammer first and smashing flesh and bone apart, while riding the recoil as it screamed and tried to swat me off.
Hours passed like minutes and I lost myself to it, to the near misses against blows I was certain had the capability of killing me. Lightning cracked the sky as Mjolnir tore into Ragnarok's hide, each strike shaking the ground, yet Ragnarok stood. Kratos carved into its flesh with Leviathan, frost clashing against fire, his movements a blur of raw power and versatility as he switched from axe to spear to twin-bladed swords.
We struck in tandem, two monstrous gods forged in war, one old and tempered, the other brutal and relentless.
And still, Ragnarok fought on and we endured.
It did not fight with skill but with inevitability. Like a lumberman fells a tree, knowing one blow would not be enough, it struck over and over with the certainty that when that one final strike landed, we would fall.
Its every strike was heavy enough to topple mountains. Its claws raked across stone, its body slammed against the wall again if we faltered for even a second, each blow threatening to tear down the last defense of Asgard. We fought until our arms ached, until the taste of blood filled our mouths, until the static in the air grew so thick it felt like breathing through fire.
That was when I heard her voice.
"Father!"
I turned. Thrud stood on the wall, Loki beside her. Her face pale, eyes wide. She waved frantically, calling to me. "It's ready! You have to come back, now!"
For just a heartbeat, I hesitated. My injuries had caught up. I was tired, confused, and that heartbeat where I hesitated was enough.
Ragnarok's fist came down, faster than I thought possible. I turned too slow, and it slammed into me. The pain was unimaginable. I had been hit multiple times, yet nothing could compare to the near feeling of implosion as Ragnarok's fist struck me, and like a falling star, the blow sent me careening into the earth, my figure carving a divot in the ground that stopped shy of the wall.
I blanked out for a second, my body unresponsive, and Ragnarok swung down once more, to finish what it had started. But before its fist could slam into me, Kratos appeared above me and he caught the blow on his shield. The force of the strike destroyed the ground he stood on, and once more I could feel my body move.
A twitch of my fingers.
Ragnarok sent down another blow, and another and another and Kratos stood strong, his shield cracked and half sundered. His arms broken and fractured, as I saw pale white bone stick out, yet he stood, like the foreign entity known as Atlas. I forced myself to my feet, my body aching like I had been hit by an inevitability... which I had.
I snapped my fingers just as a final blow came down from Ragnarok, a blow I knew Kratos would not survive. Before Mjolnir arrived in my hand, I swung up, and the rune-etched hammer followed my will and slammed into Ragnarok's fist, hard enough to halt the blow above us, and finally Kratos allowed his arms to slacken and fall to the side.
"Do not… waste this," he said as a blood-flecked cough escaped him. I ignored his words and staggered my way toward him. Even with my body aching as fiercely as it was, I remained whole. My bones groaned, my limbs ached, my ribs cracked, and one eye closed from blood blinding it, yet I was a better sight than a Kratos whose arms hung limp.
I rested one meaty hand on his shoulders and let out a chuckle filled with pain.
"Right back at you... my friend."
Then before he could reply, a growl escaped from deep in my chest. Lightning crackled across my body as my hand tightened upon his shoulder and I hurled his surprised form upward. He soared over the wall, crashing onto the stone ramparts beside Loki and Thrud.
Her scream carried across the battlefield.
"Father!"
"Go!" I bellowed, my voice shaking the storm itself as I called it forth in a way I never had before. The ground all around me superheated at the presence of so much lightning. "Someone must stay!"
Someone had to stay long enough to make sure Ragnarok did not hang on to the wall and follow after the Nine Realms. We had all known that, even if nobody said it. Kratos and I most especially.
Ragnarok roared, as finally Mjolnir was blown back, but a snap of my fingers brought the hammer to my side, as Ragnarok's fist finally completed its journey. Diverted as it was, it slammed down beside me, my hair thrown up as the force of the blow forced the wall, nay, all of Asgard and the Nine Realms to tremble.
Positioned as it was, I looked into its cold eyes. Mjolnir heavy in my hand, my body aching and broken but still standing.
"Come then," I muttered, spitting blood into the dirt. "Let's finish this."
I jumped, Mjolnir first, striking its face and throwing it back.
The last thing I saw was Kratos somehow dragging Thrud and Loki away, even with his arms broken, his face set in grim resolve. Behind them, the air itself split apart as the spell reached its peak. The Nine Realms shimmered, cracked, and vanished into light.
And then there was nothing.
Only me, Ragnarok, and the Ginnungagap. The yawning void that existed before creation.
Space.
We floated in the silence of unmade reality, broken stones and shattered stars drifting around us. Ragnarok's hollow gaze burned with fury and hate at being denied its price, its purpose. I gave it one bloodstained grin as it roared and swung, its massive fist slamming into me.
The blow shattered what little strength I had left. My body was hurled through the void, blood spraying into the nothingness. I didn't resist. I was ready. Ready to die here, in the void, holding inevitability at bay long enough for the realms to survive.
Then the void cracked open.
Three lines like a claw strike.
They widened into a single thin green fissure that opened behind me, jagged and pulsing, the same light that bled from the Scar. I felt it tug at me, dragging me in. Ragnarok roared in protest, its claws tearing at the empty air, but it was too late.
The crack widened, swallowing me whole. And I fell unconscious, carried through the green light into whatever lay beyond.