"No."
That was the first word that left my lips, and judging by the surprised and yet outraged stare the old one-eyed bald man replied to me with, they would be my last.
I didn't know why I said them. I was not even sure they were the right words, yet the response had been instinctive. Like a can of Coke that had been shaken and was finally opened. There was only one choice, an eruption of something long held back.
And just like the change in me, I could see the same overtake the one-eyed man as well. His single green eye widened in confusion, then surprise, and finally anger. It was a whole storm of emotions and hardly something you'd see in a god, let alone the All-Father.
It was a storm of emotions that had a very predictable end. The one-eyed fucker lashed out with the sharp end of his spear and aimed to impale me with it. However, I was wearing the meat-suit of a being who had fought for as long as he could walk. A god who had mead for blood and lightning for a nervous system.
In another life, it would've struck me dead. A well-placed strike that would've pierced my heart because I would've hesitated, torn apart by disbelief that my own father would try to kill me. A roller coaster of emotions would've held me ransom, shock, surprise, betrayal. But I was not the same man that I was a few minutes ago.
They say betrayal hurts so much because it comes from the person you least expect it to come from. Well, I was not feeling the slightest bit surprised nor slowed by any emotion other than annoyance. This was a betrayal I knew was coming from the moment those words left my lips.
A betrayal I had already seen once before with a front row seat to it.
My right hand snapped up and caught the spear inches away from my heart while my left hand instinctively made a snap with my fingers. Mjolnir was all too happy to answer. The haft of the weighty weapon slammed into my open palm, which was already in mid-swing.
Betrayal was a two way thing. As I had noted previously, it only hurt because it was least expected, and a reaction was the last thing Odin had expected from his son. A child he had beaten down emotionally and psychologically for all his life.
A child he had crafted to be a simple, dumb brute to unleash at his enemies without a single thought in his head other than to crush them. A child that would do anything to please his father. Centuries of manipulation and indoctrination had led to the perfectly willing and subjugated Thor.
I was not that Thor. Not that Odin realized it. So when Mjolnir slammed into the side of his head, it was a scenario he had not expected in the slightest, yet one that filled me with something too raw to put into emotion.
Mjolnir struck like a meteor. Runes flared along the weapon's head as it crashed into Odin's skull, crushing it instantly. The meaty twack of the rune-etched, dwarf-forged, giant-killing weapon slamming into the aged god's head created a sonic boom. A boom that sent his body flying backward, lifeless, and into a wall. Seior sparked and sizzled where his enchantments failed him in death.
Everything around us was thrown into chaos by the shockwave. Everything except me and the pale god who stood across from me.
Kratos.
The pale white and red-marked god of war stared at me with surprise written upon his features.
I was nearly certain he had not been this surprised in a long time. The previous me, the one from before I became an enormous, almost eight-foot behemoth of muscle hidden by fat, despair, and self-hate, would've laughed at the look of surprise on Kratos.
Me, the current me that was doing all I could to hold back the insurmountable tide that was Thor's despair, self-hate, and recrimination, could not do more than give a grunt as my blue eyes drifted back to the dead body of the All-Father. His body missing a head, while the rest of his form was buried in the wall.
"Should've done that sooner," I finally broke the silence in a grumble. My eyes refused to leave the broken form of the man that had caused so much pain and agony to the Nine Realms. A man that had made the Aesir an enemy of all the realms just to soothe his ego and to halt a doom that even now was still trying to make its way past Hrimthur's walls.
"Father!" Thrud called out. His daughter. My daughter. Our daughter. A girl he had failed so much that failing her once again was no longer a surprise but an expectation, just like the sun would always rise at dawn. Thor Odinson was always going to disappoint her.
And yet she came running to him, tears in her eyes. Her blonde hair streaked with a vibrant shade of his red. Her mother and Loki behind her, with the former moving at a more sedate pace.
Sif's cold and clinical pale gray eyes moved from the injuries that marred my form to the blood-stained hammer that I still held in my meaty fist, and finally to the broken form of the All-Father imprinted into the wall.
I saw something that the old Thor had not seen in ages. A flicker of emotion that the old Thor had been unable to elicit in the woman for centuries. I saw happiness. Yet not even that happiness was able to break her out of her ice-cold visage. Instead, she looked back at me and gave me a slight smile as well as a nod.
Not a smirk. Not a sneer. A real smile.
I found myself wondering when last did Thor, did we, did I see that smile on her face. The answer sent a pang of an unfamiliar emotion through me. Too long.
Thrud slammed into me, her strength still not enough to move me from the spot, yet noticeable enough for me to feel it. She was still growing into her own. Her quarter-giant blood bleeding through. Which meant that sooner or later, she would be close enough to me in height, if not weight.
"We saw everything. Grandfather was going to kill you." She pushed herself back to better look at my face, and only then did her hand dig into the gashes that Laufey's axe as well as that short weird blade that Kratos carried had dug into my side. I barely felt it. Drunk and bloodied as I was, pain felt distant. A dull echo.
That, coupled with the ridiculous stubbornness I seemed to possess, meant the injury was less life-threatening than it should be. After all, the previous me had been nearly split in the middle, and yet I still found it in myself to rise to fight once more against the foreign God of War.
"Loki!" She spun to where the young Jotun had made his way to stand beside his own father with a look of worry and surprise on his face.
"You promised me. You and your father did."
The young Jotun raised his hand up in surrender, and he moved to speak, to explain, but his father beat him to it. "We did. Your father breathes still. Odin is dead, and we are done."
Amber eyes etched in an aged pale face turned from Thrud to him. "You asked me once if I was a calm and reasonable man. What do you think now?"
There was a brief silence outside the halls of Gladsheim. Beyond this glade, the war continued.
Einherjar, Vanir and Valkyries still clashed. Jörmungandr still lay unconscious in the water that surrounded Asgard. Ragnarok still struggled to get past the wall. Yet all that did not seem to get through. It was like we were in a bubble. A menagerie of interesting animals on stage, and the star beast was me.
It felt like a spotlight was focused solely on me. Kratos, Loki, Thrud, Mimir, Sif, even Freya had found her way to the clearing. The sole person that didn't seem to be looking at me. Instead, she had her eyes focused on one person, or at least his dead form.
I let out a weary sigh as I looked up and replied. "Aye, you are." And that was the truth. A truth that even Thor knew right before a death that had never happened. He knew it right as he looked at his father and saw him for what he truly was.
He had understood then. Understood the depth of Odin's manipulation. Seen the truth in Sif's words. Odin had sent his sons on a collision course with death to buy time, then sent him, grieving and raging with anger, to end it.
A feat that was not impossible. He had won once. Hit the foreign God of War so hard the pale-skinned god had passed out. Then he had forced him awake with a shock to the heart. In sheer physical strength, he had proved superior. He also had the experience to match.
He had nearly single-handedly wiped out the Giants. He had slaughtered the Vanir so much he was certain he left a taint in their memory. Even the dwarves had not escaped him. No, the true reason he had lost this fight was because he lacked conviction. Well, that and Kratos had a variety of god-killing weapons in his arsenal.
I ended the derailing tangent as I looked back at the heavily bearded and pale-skinned god, then at the sky, then at Odin's body, his corpse still missing a head, his magic still sputtering. Then back to Kratos. One general to another. "This war is over." The words were spoken in a low tone and barely above a mumble, yet their effect could not be understated.
Everything halted. The Einherjar, the elves, the Valkyries, the giant animals, even Ragnarok froze for a split second. His day, a day that was named after him, a moment written into the multiversal fabric of space and time, had been ended, and he had not fulfilled his purpose. The amalgamation of two primordial forces gave out a roar as he refocused on trying to break the walls.
Kratos stared back at me and gave a solemn nod of understanding. "Agreed."
"The All-Father is dead," Freya stepped forward, her eyes still on the broken form of her husband.
"Long live the All-Father," Sif continued, as she walked up to me and placed a hand on my elbow. I felt a weight press down against my shoulder at that title. It was hardly physical, as proven by when i tried to ease it off my shoulder by shrugging them to no avail. So I did my best to ignore it . Then I raised my eyes back up to where Ragnarok still tried to breach the wall and thought back to my life and found myself wondering how the fuck I got here.
First day of my rule and it was already the end of the world.