Chapter 137: The Covenant Between Gods and Men
Not through the World Tree.
Not through the rules of the Norse mythological framework established by Odin.
What Rowe intended to follow now was the rule of the planet itself.
Not the so called physics that did not truly exist in this age, but the layered laws distributed from the bottom upward, spanning dimensions like unseen strata.
In the end, whether Mesopotamian myth, Greek myth, or Norse myth, their foundations were all raised within the same world, the world enclosed beneath the planet's atmosphere. Even when a mythology declared its own special rules, it was merely like laying a sheet of paper atop the planet's greater plane.
The statement that the Nine Realms grew upon the World Tree, and could only be traversed through the World Tree, was a rule of Norse mythology.
It was never a limitation of the planet.
From a stricter perspective, the World Tree simply divided the world into nine layers from top to bottom, and stitched those layers together into a consistent whole. It was a system, a map, a methodology.
Rowe now meant to tear through that paper of the Norse worldview, bypassing the limitations of the divine era's rules.
He wanted the giants to reach Midgard, the dimension where Midgard existed, not through the World Tree, but through the planet itself.
Then, with his power, he would erode that realm.
"Now the timing is almost perfect." Rowe smiled within the dim, withered land of Jötunheimr, the eternally sunken realm of giants.
Skaði looked at him in confusion.
The giants prostrated on the ground also raised their heads in unison, staring at their ruler. These giants were muddled creatures, driven by instinct without self awareness. They did not understand either.
"What are you planning to do?" Skaði asked despite herself. The Snow Mountain Goddess felt more and more lost the longer she stayed beside this Giant King who had effectively abducted her.
"Just watch." Rowe did not look at her. His gaze remained lifted.
"But I don't understand."
"You will, soon enough."
It felt like speaking with someone who treated every answer as a riddle.
Skaði's frustration rose, sharp and quiet. Why could he pry open her thoughts so easily, while she could never see through him? And every time she faltered, that other self in her mind would surface to mock her with a casual, heroic tone.
What Skaði did not know was that Rowe was not lying.
Because she understood very soon.
Rowe raised his hand. The furred greatcloak around his shoulders whirled in Jötunheimr's biting currents. In his grasp, a silver white knight's long spear reappeared.
Its shape spiraled outward like an expanding storm.
If Gilgamesh were present, he would recognize it at a glance. This was the transformed state of the Sword of Rupture. It was a manifestation of storm, the storm born from the primordial rotational force of the stars.
A storm was a storm, even at the beginning of the cosmos.
Rowe tightened his grip.
Then he hurled it into the sky.
"Follow me."
No elaborate speech. No persuasion. Only forward.
The King's shadow led the way.
The long spear shot upward.
And the sky tilted.
All sound seemed to die.
Skaði's dark purple eyes widened as she stared at the vortex slowly forming overhead.
A hole, deep and absolute.
A passage.
A passage into a higher layer of reality.
Rowe had pierced the sky with a single throw. One strike that tore through space and dimension.
"Come." Rowe spoke again.
His voice rolled through Jötunheimr, and then farther still, into the two other realms adjacent to the land of giants, likewise rooted beneath the World Tree's lowest reaches.
In Asgard, where the Norns dwelled, Urd's Well that symbolized fate rippled.
Deep within Niflheim, the Land of Mist, Nidhogg, the black dragon that gnawed the World Tree's roots year round, opened its golden eyes.
In Midgard, the realm of the living, the earth shuddered. Tsunami like avalanches spilled down the undulating snowy mountains.
A dark storm brewed in the sky, and within it, terrifyingly colossal phantoms began to coalesce.
The giants staggered.
Step by step, they moved toward the present world.
An immense pressure fell on every heart. As the storm of death approached, birds and beasts trembled, not daring to cry out.
"The King of the Giants foretold by Odin has finally arrived."
Near the avalanche, in a village at the foot of the snowy mountains, an old man with white hair and beard looked up at the terrifying scene. His years were heavy, yet he still stood tall.
"Village Chief, hide in the cave!"
Someone shouted behind him as the ground continued to shake.
The old man only laughed. "This little commotion won't scare me. Come, Beowulf, boy. Bring me some wine."
The young man named Beowulf froze for a moment, then reflexively turned back to fetch wine from the house. Only after it was in his hands did irritation catch up with him. He had been trying to persuade the old man to flee. Instead he was running errands.
But it was too late to pretend he had not heard.
He delivered the wine.
The old man took it with a grin. "I've lived long enough, boy."
"I'm old, but I still want one last adventure at the end of my life."
The people of the North were bold, and their ambition was as sharp as the wind. Beowulf knew this old man had once been a fearsome warrior, a man who in his youth had been only one step away from becoming a war god chosen by Odin.
He had lived through countless adventures.
Now, in old age, he remained in a small village, telling stories to children who listened with bright eyes, even when they no longer truly believed.
Even so, Beowulf could not deny it.
He himself had been shaped by those stories. Otherwise he would never have stayed here.
An old warrior should not die in bed.
"This village, I leave to you." The old man's laughter rose with the gale.
"Adventure." He strode into the raging wind and snow, avalanches boiling in the distance like a white sea, the earth trembling harder with every breath.
Beowulf clenched his fists, said nothing more, and turned to evacuate the villagers.
The old man climbed the mountain alone.
Facing wind and snow.
Facing a sky that felt ready to collapse.
Carrying nothing but a jar of wine.
"Are you not afraid?"
Two golden lights shone within the blizzard.
The old man did not know what it was, but his answer remained the same.
"Not afraid."
"Not afraid of life, or not afraid of death?"
"Neither." The old man drank. The wine gurgled down his throat. "I'm only afraid of not dying a swift, satisfying death."
"I am a warrior."
"I have fought giants and driven off evil dragons. Even if all I can do now is tell stories by the fire to children who doubt them, as long as I know I am a warrior, that's enough."
He laughed again, loud enough to challenge the storm.
"Are you a god, or a ghost?" The old man grinned, his beard trembling with mirth.
The presence answered, calm and certain.
"Both."
Both god and ghost. Master of the undead. King of the storm.
This was Rowe's shadow projected here.
He had pierced through dimensions, but before the storm could truly descend, he had cast his consciousness and the spear to this place first.
Paving the way.
"Since you fear nothing," Rowe said, leaning closer, "are you afraid to make a covenant with me?"
The old man laughed. "You want my soul? Take it if you want."
His words broke off.
The wind and snow vanished.
The ground beneath his feet became hard steel.
Before him rose a massive iron face. Eyes burned like fire, like the brilliance of sun and moon.
A giant cast from steel.
Heavy armor. A cold iron visage. Wings woven from steel spread from its back, each feather gleaming with a merciless sheen.
The old man realized he was held in the steel giant's palm with one hand.
"I am the master of the undead, the embodiment of the storm, the ruler of giants," the giant said, its magnificent voice striking the old man's bones.
"People call me the Wild Hunt."
"Human, I wish to make a covenant with you."
"I will sweep across the land with the storm, and all who witness me shall become my followers, warriors under my command."
"But I promise that from you onward, those who witness me shall be the unjust. I also promise that I will clear the land for you, leveling the obstacles of sky and earth."
"I do not need you to believe me. I have already merged with this world."
"To witness me is to make a covenant with me."
The storm of the dead raged and swept.
In that instant, the old man seemed to see the King of the Wild Hunt standing in the high heavens, leading countless storm giants into war.
Not only him.
At the foot of the mountain, Beowulf halted and looked sideways, as if hearing a voice in the marrow of the world. A fleeing hunter raised his head, his hounds whimpering at his side. A merchant hiding inside a carriage opened his eyes, excitement flickering across his face like madness.
Humans making covenants with gods.
Rowe was not doing this for the first time.
Before, he had done it as a human.
Now he did it as a god.
The master of death, the manifestation of storm, the King of the Wild Hunt would connect the living and the dead through this covenant, dragging the dead into the world of the living.
He would clear the obstacles to survival for the humans of this land.
Even the Greek gods did not truly care about such things. As Rowe had learned from Skaði, the Norse gods were rough and explosive, like the wind and snow, like mountains and sea. Toward mortals they were laissez faire, letting them live or die as they pleased.
They had neither the Mesopotamian gods' hunger for control, nor the Greek gods' inclination toward humanity, granting thorough protection and blessings in exchange for faith.
The people of the North were free.
So were their gods.
But that freedom was also unsafe.
A city could be ruled by monsters. A king could be bullied by magical beasts. Heroes wandered far, hunting beasts and earning fame.
But heroes were few.
Most often, it was ordinary people who suffered. They could not wait for a hero who might never come. They died in pain.
They had longed for the gods' protection.
So now, a majestic voice echoed inside their hearts.
The storm of death swept across the land, and what the gods did not care about, what they ignored and left to rot, was answered.
"I will take over."
In Jötunheimr, more vortex like holes opened in the dome, and Rowe smiled.
Through the covenant, a connection between life and death had been forged.
"Go, my people."
"People of the storm." Rowe's voice rang out.
The giants trembled.
"Roar."
Skaði stood frozen, staring at Rowe.
He was undead. He was the ruler of giants. A symbol of chaos.
And yet, for some reason, the purest Snow Mountain Goddess of Asgard felt the figure wrapped in death looked more like a god than the gods she knew.
A god who protected all directions, and swept through the world.
"Are you coming?" Rowe turned his gaze toward her.
An iron mask rested in his hand. His eyes, cold and interwoven with gold and fire, fixed upon Skaði. He extended his hand, and his voice dropped, low as a whisper that belonged in a nightmare.
The Snow Mountain Goddess stood beneath Jötunheimr's dim yellow light, graceful in her purple dress. Her features were delicate, her long purple hair blown wild by the wind. Her chest rose and fell, the edges of pale skin visible where her hands pressed lightly at her sides. Her slender waist drew the eye, and below it her crossed legs and the sway of her skirt hinted at the firm curves of her hips, a blush of warmth suggested at her most private line.
She felt nervous.
And something else she did not want to name.
"If I don't go, do you want me to stay here?" In the end, Skaði chose compromise.
Oh dear, have you surrendered?
That other self spoke at once.
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Skaði snapped back in her mind, mortified.
They are all leaving. I'm not staying alone in this terrifying Jötunheimr.
An insincere child. You just hate loneliness, don't you?
None of your business.
Pure and unblemished, like the distant snow peaks she embodied, Skaði hated loneliness.
Even so, she did not take Rowe's hand.
Her heart still longed for Asgard, for Odin's protection, that father like figure she had relied on for so long.
Skaði still did not believe Rowe.
"Still unwilling to compromise?" Rowe smiled.
He placed the mask onto his face.
"Then as you wish."
The wind howled.
The giants marched.
The dark vortex churned.
In the present world, the storm grew more and more like the Wild Hunt, and the shadows of giants hid within its depths.
Across endless mountains and drifting snow, countless magical beasts felt an intense tremor and screamed in fear, scattering in every direction.
The storm had come.
Death was imminent.
"Is that a god, or a demon?" Beowulf frowned, his bare muscles tightening beneath the impact of wind and snow.
"Whether it's a god or a demon doesn't matter," someone answered.
"What matters is this."
"Beneath storm and death, all things are equal." At the peak of the snowy mountain, the old man laughed, bold and fearless.
The figure of the Wild Hunt appeared within the raging wind, and the marching storm giants roared until the earth itself answered. Evil dragons in the mountains and fields hid their shadows. Rampaging monsters scattered in panic. Even Fafnir, king of dragons, the ultimate dragon, trembled and withdrew.
He brought disaster, and he brought protection.
All things were equal in his eyes, and all things would meet death in the end.
Storm God Clan [Strapden].
Later generations also referred to them by this name.
History of Norse Mythology
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