It was time.
From the high windows of the mead hall, Odin could see the Einherjar marching toward the Bifrost in ordered ranks, shields in hand and weapons held ready as the first light of morning caught upon their armor. Thousands gathered for the campaign that, if the Norns showed even the slightest mercy, would finally bring the war to an end.
Valthurn had done it.
With the aid of the tracking device, the old sorcerer had finally pierced whatever enchantment Malekith had wrapped around Svartalfheim.
Today, Asgard would take the war to Malekith.
Odin looked down at Mjolnir resting in his right hand. The hammer felt reassuringly familiar, every rune along its head catching the firelight. Across his back rested the Will Spear, secured beneath his cloak, where its renewed emerald glow remained visible whenever he moved. He could have taken Stormbreaker as well, but in the end, he had left the weapon behind.
Sigryn stood to his left, tightening the strap around one gauntlet while Vigmund, Haldor, and Yrsa finished their own preparations nearby.
Yrsa looked through the open doors toward the gathering armies and grinned. "This will be a glorious battle."
Vigmund laughed as he lifted his axe onto one shoulder. "Aye. Perhaps one worthy of the Battle of Jotunheim." He looked toward Odin. "Shame you missed that campaign."
Odin scoffed. "I was having far better bouts in Midgard."
"So you keep telling us," Haldor said with a snort.
"Far more dangerous too," Odin added.
Vigmund nodded solemnly. "Every tavern keeper in Midgard must have been a giant in disguise."
Yrsa laughed.
Odin shook his head as they left the mead hall together. "Mock all you wish. I have fought things on Midgard that would make the lot of you beg for a comfortable war with Frost Giants."
"Did the mortals clap afterward?" Haldor asked.
That earned another round of laughter.
Odin allowed himself to enjoy it.
He had missed this more than he cared to admit. He had been away too much during this war.
They had nearly reached the outer courtyard when Odin noticed three familiar figures standing near one of the great pillars.
Vili and Ve.
His younger brothers stood speaking with Thrain, commander of the Einherjar. Thrain had one hand resting on the hilt of his sword and was speaking with stiff formality.
The moment Thrain saw Odin approaching, his expression hardened.
He exchanged a few final words with Vili and Ve before turning away and leaving without so much as acknowledging Odin.
Yrsa watched him go.
"Eh. What's his problem?"
Odin sighed. "You know Thrain. Always had a soft spot for Cul."
Sigryn frowned. "Cul is dead. You are the Crown Prince now. The commander of the Einherjar should remember that."
Cul.
His elder brother existed more in stories than memories now.
Odin remembered him as larger than life, even when Odin himself had been too young to understand what that meant. Cul had been the warrior everyone praised, the son Bor seemed certain would one day inherit everything. Soldiers adored him. Skalds had already sung of him while he was still young.
Then one day, Cul left.
He never returned.
Years passed before Bor finally allowed anyone to speak of him as dead.
A part of Odin had spent much of his youth convinced that his father's coldness afterward had been because he was not Cul. He had wondered whether Bor looked at his second son and saw only the one who remained rather than the one he had wanted.
That relationship had changed since Odin's return from exile.
Not completely.
Bor would never become an affectionate man, but he listened more now. He trusted Odin with decisions that once would have been taken from his hands, and sometimes they even spoke like father and son rather than king and heir.
It was enough.
"Leave it, Sigryn," Odin said.
Then he raised his voice.
"Vili! Ve!"
Both brothers turned.
Their faces immediately brightened.
Odin could not pretend their closeness had always existed. Before his exile, he had barely known them. They were much younger, born late enough that Odin had spent most of their childhood ignoring them. Worse, some small and ugly part of him had blamed them for their mother's death. She had died giving birth to them, and although Odin knew they were innocent, he had resented them for years anyway.
Max had been the first to call him an idiot for it. Azzuri had been considerably kinder in his words on the subject.
Both men had told him the same thing when Odin finally returned to Asgard: They are your brothers. Act like it. So he had, not perfectly, but enough.
Odin reached them and pulled Vili into an embrace before doing the same with Ve. Vili grinned as they separated. "Today will be remembered for ages. The skalds will sing of this battle for ten thousand generations."
Ve gave him a long look. "Let it happen first, Vili."
Odin burst out laughing, and Sigryn and the others joined him.
Vili rolled his eyes. "Someone must have faith."
"Faith is one thing," Ve said. "Commissioning the song before the first sword is drawn is another."
"Then I shall simply be proven right sooner."
"Spoken like a true prince," Odin said.
The brothers fell into step with them as they made their way toward the Bifrost, and the closer they came, the louder the gathering host became.
Thousands upon thousands of warriors filled the terraces and bridges surrounding the Bifrost. Spears struck shields in a steady rhythm. Horns sounded across the city. Far below, Asgard itself seemed to pulse with expectation.
King Bor waited near the entrance to the Bifrost, and he looked across the assembled army before he spoke.
"For two years," he began, "Malekith has hidden behind shadows."
The warriors listened in silence.
"He has burned our villages, murdered our allies, struck our people from paths he believed we could never follow, and proclaimed himself the rightful ruler of all the Nine Realms."
A murmur of anger moved through the army, and Bor's expression hardened. "He believes this war has weakened us." His voice rose. "He believes Vanaheim will kneel. He believes Alfheim will burn. He believes Asgard will bow."
The answer came from thousands of throats. "NO!"
Bor drew his sword. "He is wrong."
The army roared.
"As long as the Aesir draw breath, Asgard will never kneel to the likes of Malekith. As long as the Vanir stand beside us, Vanaheim will never be his. As long as the warriors of Alfheim raise their blades, their realm will remain free." Bor lifted the sword overhead. "Today we follow him into the darkness he has hidden behind."
The roar grew louder.
"Today we take the war to Svartalfheim."
Weapons struck shields.
"Today we drown his kingdom in Dark Elf blood."
The answering cheer shook the Bifrost, and Odin raised Mjolnir and roared with everyone else.
Bor turned away and began speaking with Heimdall, as the preparations were almost complete. Odin glanced toward Sigryn.
Her expression had changed. She was looking over the armies when she muttered, barely loud enough for anyone else to hear, "Hilde would have loved this."
The words struck Odin, and his grip tightened around Mjolnir.
Brunnhilde.
That failure had never stopped following him.
Max had asked him to return Gram to Asgard. He had stolen it and confessed to doing so, and Odin was supposed to return it. Max himself had promised Brunnhilde, after she caught him within Asgard's vault, that Odin would bring it home.
Odin had intended to.
At first.
Then he had imagined Aurora growing older and thought of giving the sword to her one day. A foolish, sentimental thought, perhaps, but one he had allowed himself to keep.
Then all three of them died, and afterward Odin could not even look at Gram without remembering them.
So he had left the sword in Azzuri's care on Midgard.
When Brunnhilde learned the truth, she took it as a stain upon her honor. She had been charged with protecting Asgard's treasures, and in her mind, the loss of Gram had become her failure regardless of every explanation Odin offered.
She swore she would recover it herself. Odin told her he would return to Midgard and retrieve the sword, but she did not wait. Brunnhilde left Asgard, and no one had seen her since.
Sigryn looked toward him, and her shoulders sagged. "I know what you are thinking."
Odin said nothing.
"For the thousandth time, my friend, it was not your fault."
"I should have brought the sword back."
"My sister was a stubborn, hotheaded fool," Sigryn said, though there was more affection than anger behind the words. "And I know she is safe. She did take one of your Stormbreakers with her, did she not?"
That drew a reluctant smile from Odin. "Aye. She did."
"Then I pity whatever fool tries to stop her," Sigryn said. Her smile lingered for a moment before weakening, and when she looked away, Odin saw the worry she rarely showed.
For several seconds neither of them spoke, until Odin finally said, "After this war, perhaps we could search again."
Sigryn immediately shook her head. "No."
Odin frowned.
"I know she lives."
The certainty in Sigryn's voice surprised him. "Sigryn..."
"I know it." Sigryn faced him. "Brunnhilde will return when she is ready. She always believed the world would bend before her stubbornness, and somehow it usually did." A faint smile appeared. "She will come back."
"She will come back," Odin agreed. He did not argue further and instead looked toward the Bifrost.
It was still young by Asgardian standards, barely three centuries old, yet it was already considered one of the greatest achievements their people had ever created. The Space Stone had been of great help in its construction, allowing Asgard's greatest minds and sorcerers to accomplish what might otherwise have taken generations.
Heimdall stepped into position.
Valthurn stood near him with the tracking device connected to a network of Asgardian instruments. His hands moved across runes and controls while several sorcerers maintained the path they had finally forced open.
The Bifrost activated.
Rainbow light surged through the chamber.
For several tense seconds, the energy twisted unpredictably, searching beyond its ordinary paths for a realm that had spent years hiding from it. Then Heimdall's eyes widened. "I see it."
Bor turned. "Svartalfheim?"
Heimdall tightened his grip on Hofund. "Yes."
Valthurn laughed and struck both hands against the controls. "I told you!"
The rainbow bridge ahead stabilized, and Heimdall looked toward Bor. "The bridge is stable."
Bor stepped forward and raised his sword, and Odin felt the entire army tense behind them. The King of Asgard stared into the path leading toward the enemy realm, then roared, "Kill them all!"
The army answered, and Odin lifted Mjolnir. "For Asgard!" His own war cry disappeared beneath thousands of others.
Bor charged first. Odin followed with Sigryn, Vigmund, Haldor, Yrsa, Vili, and Ve beside him, while the Einherjar surged behind them.
======
Odin burst from the Bifrost.
The first thing Odin saw was a sea of black armor stretching across the broken plain ahead, rank after rank of Dark Elves waiting beneath a sky twisted by the Convergence.
"Asgard!"
Mjolnir left his hand.
The hammer tore through the first rank with enough force to send armored bodies spinning through the air before curving back toward him. Odin caught it without slowing, raised the weapon overhead, and called down the storm.
Lightning crashed across the battlefield.
The first bolt struck hard enough to turn the ground white beneath it, then split into dozens of smaller arcs that raced through the Dark Elf formation. Warriors fell in smoking heaps as the charge jumped from elf to elf, while the Einherjar poured from the Bifrost behind Odin and crashed into the survivors.
Sigryn reached him first.
Her sword opened the throat of one Dark Elf before she drove her shoulder into another and sent him stumbling into Vigmund's axe. Haldor fought beside them with a spear in each hand, while Yrsa laughed like a woman at a feast as she hacked her way into the enemy line.
Vili and Ve emerged moments later at the head of another wave of Einherjar.
The battlefield became chaos.
Odin drew the Will Spear from his back.
Emerald light immediately brightened along its length as he thrust the spear forward.
A beam of emerald energy erupted from its tip.
It punched through three Dark Elves before exploding against the ranks behind them.
Several more emerald bolts ripped across the battlefield, blasting Dark Elves from their feet while Odin used Mjolnir in his other hand to call lightning into every opening the spear created. He fought with both weapons together, hammer and spear moving in opposite rhythms as he tore through the enemy host.
For a time, the battle went exactly as Odin had imagined.
The Dark Elves died as the Asgardians advanced.
The Vanir followed through the Bifrost shortly afterward, their warriors reinforcing the left flank, while Alfheim's armies arrived through secondary paths Valthurn had stabilized behind them. What had begun as a desperate breakthrough became a steadily widening front as the combined armies of three realms pushed deeper into Svartalfheim.
Odin remained near the center.
Bor fought ahead of him.
Even among the Einherjar, the King of Asgard was impossible to miss. Gungnir moved in his hands like an extension of his body, each strike breaking armor or throwing Dark Elves aside as he drove relentlessly toward the distant heights.
Odin knew why. Malekith was there, and he could feel him. Worse, he could feel the Infinity Stone, and reality itself trembled around the Dark Elf king. Odin looked upward again. The Convergence had reached its height, and all Nine Realms were aligned.
"Father!"
Bor glanced back, and Odin pointed toward the distant ridge. Bor saw him too. Malekith stood upon a raised platform surrounded by Dark Elf sorcerers and soldiers, and red energy pulsed around him.
Bor's expression hardened. "With me!"
They flew. Odin called Mjolnir and hurled himself from the battlefield while Bor followed, and the two crossed the distance in moments, breaking through a screen of Dark Elf flyers before descending upon Malekith together.
Malekith raised one hand, and reality changed. The air between them became solid. Odin struck what felt like a wall and was thrown sideways, while Bor smashed through it with Gungnir, only for the platform beneath him to transform into grasping black hands that seized his legs.
"The age of the Aesir is over," Malekith said.
Bor tore himself free. "It ends when I say it does."
Gungnir and Malekith's blade met, and the impact distorted everything around them. Odin came in from the side with Mjolnir, but the Reality Stone answered before the hammer could connect. The world flashed red, and Odin suddenly found himself falling upward toward a sky that had become the ground. He snarled and drove the Will Spear into the altered space, and emerald energy burst outward as the distortion shattered.
Malekith barely turned before Mjolnir struck him across the face and sent the Dark Elf king flying through one of his own towers.
Bor laughed. "Again!"
Odin did not need encouragement.
They attacked together. For several minutes, Malekith was forced backward under their combined assault, but then the Infinity Stone began changing the battle around them.
Dark Elf soldiers started glowing red. Their armor thickened, their wounds closed, and their bodies stretched taller and stronger as reality itself was rewritten to make them more dangerous.
Across the battlefield, the advance of Asgard slowed. Odin looked down from the ridge and saw the Einherjar being pushed back, and the Vanir with them. Alfheim's reinforcements reached the battlefield and crashed into the Dark Elves from another direction, but even they failed to break through the transformed soldiers.
Malekith laughed. "You bring three realms against me, and still you cannot..."
Bor attacked, but Malekith raised both hands, and a red wave struck the King of Asgard and hurled him through the air.
"Father!"
Malekith appeared in front of Odin and struck him with enough force to send him crashing through the platform and down into the battlefield below.
Odin forced himself upright. Around him, Asgard was losing ground. Sigryn and the others fought desperately near what remained of the central formation. Vigmund had blood covering one side of his face and Yrsa was limping, while Vili and Ve stood back to back, surrounded by Dark Elves.
Above them, Malekith descended slowly through the red glow of the Reality Stone. When Bor tried to rise, Malekith blasted him again, and the King of Asgard collapsed.
Malekith spread his arms. "The age of the Dark Elves begins now!"
The roar of his army answered him. Odin looked around, and that was when he saw the surroundings begin to glow green.
He looked up. At first he thought it was another effect of the Convergence, but then he saw a sphere of emerald light descending through the clouds, followed by another, then ten, then dozens. They came from every direction, and bright green streaks filled the sky over Svartalfheim until the entire battlefield was illuminated by emerald fire.
"No..."
One of the lights struck the ground, and the explosion threw Dark Elves in every direction. Another descended behind the enemy line and unfolded into a construct weapon that immediately began firing into Malekith's empowered soldiers. A third passed overhead and released a net of green energy that wrapped around an entire formation before crushing it together.
Odin stared. "It cannot be."
More emerald spheres descended, and as they drew closer, Odin realized that something was coming from inside them. It took him a moment to understand what he was hearing, because it made no sense at all on a battlefield. They were singing.
"What the...?"
"GO GO PUFF LANTERNS!
GO GO PUFF LANTERNS!
GO GO PUFF LANTERNS!
WE ARE MIGHTY LITTLE LANTERNS!"
Malekith looked upward.For the first time, confusion replaced arrogance.
"What trickery is this?"
He looked to Odin "Explain Borson"
Odin's shock became a grin.
He knew what this was. He knew it better than almost anything else in the cosmos.
Odin attacked.
Mjolnir flew back into his hand as he charged, and Malekith barely raised his weapon before Odin struck. The Reality Stone flared, strengthening him again, but Odin did not stop. He hammered Malekith backward with Mjolnir, drove the Will Spear into his defenses, and followed every opening before the Dark Elf could reshape reality around him.
Malekith answered with a wave of red energy.
Odin forced his way through it.
Another wave transformed the ground beneath his feet into burning liquid.
He flew.
Malekith raised his sword but Odin struck first, hitting him with Mjolnir with everything he had left.
The Dark Elf king vanished into the distance. His body tore through several structures before disappearing somewhere beyond the battlefield.
Odin breathed heavily, but something near the ridge caught his attention.
Ten emerald lights surrounded the Reality Stone.
The Dark Elves guarding it were gone.
Odin stared.
The lights tightened around the Stone as green energy formed a containment structure around it. Then, to Odin's complete astonishment, they took it.
Across the battlefield, the empowered Dark Elves began returning to normal. The Asgardians noticed, and so did the Vanir and the Light Elves, and the tide turned almost instantly.
Odin watched as one of the emerald spheres separated from the others and flew toward him. It stopped several feet away, but no figure appeared within it, only green light. Then a voice came through it.
"Eight-nine-two."
"Max? Is that you?"
The emerald sphere pulsed once, and Odin's mouth slowly spread into a smile. Then the light vanished, and he stood there for several seconds, barely aware of the battle continuing around him.
The Will Spear burned brighter in his hand. He turned toward the battlefield. The Einherjar surged forward. The Vanir broke through the left flank. Alfheim's warriors drove into the rear formations. The emerald lights remained above them, striking wherever resistance threatened to reform before disappearing one after another as quickly as they had arrived.
Odin looked for Bor.
He found his father pulling himself upright from the broken ground.
Odin flew toward him and landed nearby. "Father."
Bor accepted his hand, and Odin pulled him to his feet. Bor looked around, clearly trying to understand what had changed. "Malekith?"
"Gone."
Bor grunted. "And the Infinity Stone?"
"Gone," Odin lied.
Bor looked sharply at him.
"I saw it vanish into the darkness when Malekith fell." It was close enough to the truth that the lie came easily.
Bor looked across the battlefield. "That is troubling."
Odin nodded solemnly.
"And those green things. Lanterns." Bor looked toward him. "You said he was dead."
Odin opened his mouth to speak, but Bor continued. "Of course, he is an Elder of the Universe, after all. Their kind does not die so easily. Perhaps he took it. If so, it is beyond our reach now."
Odin remained silent while Bor continued gazing toward the ruined ridge, until the king slowly shook his head. "Yes. It is better this way." He rested one hand on Odin's shoulder. "Come, my son." His expression finally changed as victory settled into it. "We have nights of celebration ahead of us."
Odin smiled. Bor walked forward, retrieved Gungnir, and raised it overhead. "VICTORY IS OURS!"
The answer shook Svartalfheim as thousands of Aesir, Vanir, and warriors of Alfheim raised their weapons and roared. Odin joined them, yet while those around him celebrated the end of the war, his thoughts remained fixed upon the voice he had never thought he would hear again.
Max was alive.
For the first time in centuries, Odin found himself impatient for the celebrations to end.
==========
Odin slipped away from the celebrations before anyone noticed.
That alone would have been difficult on any other night. After two years of war, Svartalfheim had finally fallen, Malekith's armies were broken, and warriors from Asgard, Vanaheim, and Alfheim had filled every available hall with drink, song, and increasingly exaggerated stories of what they had personally accomplished during the battle.
Odin wanted none of it, and he could barely sit still.
The message had been only a number. Anyone else would have heard nothing but a meaningless string of digits, but Odin knew exactly what "eight-nine-two" meant. Eight hundred and ninety-two was the number of times Odin had won the spars between him and Max, their countless battles over one particular place in Midgard.
Heimdall stood at his post when Odin arrived at the Bifrost, and he looked toward him with the faintest hint of amusement. "You are leaving your own victory feast."
"I will return." Odin looked toward the bridge. "Open the Bifrost to Midgard."
The gatekeeper smiled and turned toward the mechanism. Rainbow light began gathering around them before it swallowed Odin whole, and for a few moments there was only light, followed by the familiar sensation of worlds passing around him until his boots touched solid ground again.
Odin stepped forward as the light withdrew behind him. He was standing on a beach, exactly where he remembered it.
The sand stretched untouched in either direction, golden beneath the dying sunlight. Gentle waves rolled toward the shore and broke in long white lines before sliding back into the sea. Far above, the first stars were beginning to appear, while the horizon burned orange and crimson around the setting sun.
Odin stood there for several seconds and listened before he began looking around. There was nothing to his left, and nothing along the rocks farther inland. Then he looked farther down the beach and saw someone standing near the water.
A man faced the sea with his hands resting loosely at his sides, watching the horizon as the waves moved around his boots. The distance was too great to make out every detail, but Odin did not need to. Even after four hundred years, he knew who it was.
Odin grinned when the man near the water turned. Max recognized him immediately and grinned back.
Odin started walking, and so did Max. Neither hurried at first. They crossed the sand toward one another while the sun sank lower behind the sea, both still smiling as the distance between them slowly disappeared.
No words came, and none were needed. As the final distance vanished, Odin threw both arms around him, and Max held him just as tightly.
His friend was alive. That was enough.
.
.
The entities.
Eternal Rivals.
Near Death of Love.
You can read up to chapter 118 here.
p.a.t.r.eon.com/Illusiveone (check the chapter summary i have it there as well)