The Land Descended from Ice
Scene 1
"Look forward, you thunder brute. This might be our last chance as Gaia's Champions to save the rest of us."
The voice of an old man rang in my ears the moment I stepped out of the portal and into snow.
Wisdom Laws radiated from the source immediately, though not the kind of Wisdom I associated with Prometheus or Athena. This was a deviated branch.
Courtly wisdom.
Survivor's wisdom.
The kind born from watching kings ignore counsel until empires became graves.
I stood upright, still maintaining the Titan technique that enlarged my body, and focused on the tribe of gods waiting ahead.
Most of them were smaller than me.
One was not.
The giant standing near the center matched both my height and frame, his body radiating Lightning and Earth Laws dense enough to bend the falling snow around him. A warhammer rested across his shoulders, large enough that it could have crushed several lesser gods simply by being dropped.
Yet he radiated no hostility.
Only caution.
And exhaustion.
"Giant of White Flames," the old man said, his voice coming from the head attached to the Lightning Giant's waist. "And a bird bearing White and Black Flames. You told the truth this time, Huginn. If Mimir were still around, you might be trusted more."
The Lightning Giant grunted but did not argue.
I glanced from the old head to him.
"Giants of Lightning and Wisdom," I said. "What illness has befallen this realm that you would bury it beneath ice?"
I was still relying on Artemis's story and Apollo's divination. Too many holes remained in the information surrounding this place, and the more I learned, the less comfortable I became.
The old head's grin thinned.
"A foolish king taking half measures," he said. "He is also the one who should bear responsibility for those decisions."
His eyes drifted toward the frozen horizon.
"Yet we are still here. Some take advice. Others do not."
I understood that pain immediately.
Wise men rarely wanted crowns. They offered paths forward and then watched kings turn warnings into disasters.
"A true plight," I said. "Disasters that could have been mitigated or diverted into miracles."
I looked directly at the head.
"I see a truly unwise decision you made, Giant of Wisdom."
The old head grinned wider, almost delighted.
"A boy who can see the paths of others is a blessing to any path."
His gaze sharpened.
"Although our realm is in the middle of resetting, none of us wish to submit to Fate so easily."
I looked down at the gathered gods.
They lacked the same strong individual Domains I was accustomed to seeing in my own pantheon. Their laws seemed less specialized, more woven into their bodies and souls directly. Their strength came from enhancement, endurance, and survival more than throne-style authority.
A different divine system.
A harsher one.
Then I turned my attention back to the Lightning Giant.
"And you, Giant of Lightning? What is your say in this wise man's words?"
He looked toward his people before answering me.
"I am no longer merely a prince who can ignore the needs of his people," he said. "That is the gift of sight my Frost Giant brother used his final moments to teach me."
I nodded.
That, I understood.
A fellow prince who had learned too late that strength without responsibility only preserved guilt.
"What the brute means," the old head cut in, "is that the Aesir Pantheon is suitable for migration, and we are willing to accept an offer."
The Lightning Giant closed his eyes in visible irritation.
The head continued anyway.
"Our All-Father allowed stagnation to grip our hearts through inner conflicts. Ragnarok was entirely his own fault, and therefore his problem to solve."
His voice hardened.
"His bloodline has been reduced to one, while the rest of us survived the harshest winter imaginable. A winter only that fool could endure as the one who slew Ymir."
The snow continued falling silently around us.
I let the information settle.
A dead realm.
A failed All-Father.
A surviving tribe of gods willing to migrate.
A Lightning God carrying a Wisdom Giant's head.
A pantheon born from ice, stagnation, and half-measures.
"Lead me to your All-Father," I said. "And to Gaia's core."
Extracting the raw essence of a Gaia from a World Tree that had finished developing was a rare treasure. Even dying, such a core could accelerate Abi's development beyond what most realms could dream of.
As for the Aesir divine force—
I would hand that problem to Juris.
He enjoyed turning impossible survivors into useful structures.
"We can iron out the details later."
I pushed the issue of my knowledge of this pantheon to the back of my mind.
The only suspect responsible for putting this path in front of me would never give an easy answer anyway.
Scene 2
"None of us have journeyed to her core since Odin hung himself over the wells of Mimir."
The old head's voice was quieter now as we stood before the dying World Tree.
Both the Lightning Giant and I had compressed ourselves back down to mortal size. Even then, his people overshadowed my smaller frame. I preferred it that way. After years among fairies and lesser attendants, being small had become more comfortable than standing as a giant every moment of the day.
The World Tree rose before us like the corpse of an idea too stubborn to fall.
Its bark was blackened from root to crown, veins of frozen silver running through it like old wounds. Its branches held dead worlds instead of fruit. Its roots sank into the realm below, still twitching faintly as if the Tree was trying to remember how to breathe.
"When Odin sealed the Domain after leaving it," the head continued, "he attempted to seal the Divine Beasts of the World Tree as well. Ratatoskr and Nidhogg were cut off from Chaos."
"Chaos?" I asked.
"The food of the Tree," the head said. "Or more precisely, what the Tree produces in excess. The beasts consumed what the Tree could not process. Without them, corruption built faster than Life could answer."
Another half-measure.
Another king sealing a wound without understanding what the wound needed to drain.
I looked toward the dying roots.
"I have Hel," I said. "So the Helheim beast should also fall under my control for now. Once I claim these two, then it is time for the Sun and Moon Devourers."
The Lightning Giant extended his hand toward the Kunlun.
The divine beast, still in bird form, landed lightly despite its power.
"For now," I continued, "everyone can wait inside my Grotto Heart until I return to my pantheon. Watch over this goddess as well."
His gaze shifted toward Hel, still sealed safely.
Then he nodded.
I began my descent.
The realm beneath the Tree reeked of Pseudo-Death Laws. They had been used to seal this place, but the seal was not clean. It was the kind of seal created by someone pretending borrowed authority was the same as inheritance.
I used the same method I had used in Helheim.
Each step became a fragment of formation.
This time, however, I interlaced Death and Life together, unsealing the God-King-level Death Laws piece by piece. The Laws had been placed through a false ascension plan.
Just as Eris still carried a minor affinity for the Sun after stealing it, Odin's false authority over Death would never compare to a god born and raised under it. A stolen Law could open a door. It could not become the house.
Odin's false authority required sealing Helheim.
Hel would have aided Gaia in defeating him if she had been free. Instead, Gaia used her final chance to try to seize Hel and usurp Earth Mother status as a mutated Fallen Mother.
Odin, meanwhile, almost completed his transformation into a SkyFather holding the Authority of Death.
A new conceptual being.
A being with a real chance of reaching his True Essence.
And that decision cost him everything.
Thor and Huginn left his side early.
Loki engineered one chance for survivors to walk away.
His daughter was stripped of her birthright.
Her brothers were cast into various realms and sealed away from the larger pantheon.
Enemies were created inside his court and outside it.
Alliances collapsed the moment war truly began.
And once Baldur—the people's chosen heir, younger brother to Thor and Loki—fell under mysterious circumstances, the empire fractured beyond repair.
Loki bore the blame.
Of course he did.
When an empire is already cracking, the flexible one becomes easiest to accuse.
By the time Ragnarok began, the Aesir had already been dying for ages.
The Sun died.
War started.
Gods made their decisions.
And mortals were dead before the Sun fully gave out.
I reached the deeper roots.
They were black from labor.
The Tree had been sustaining itself by converting excess Death Laws inside a Life Domain into Chaos, using that Chaos to keep itself alive by force. It had already begun trying to recreate the Primal Four elements inside its core.
A desperate reset.
A taboo one.
Two signs of life remained close to the core, though "life" was generous. They were chaos-fed, death-scarred, and barely stable.
My sense of time had already begun warping from standing inside another pantheon's cycle.
I could not remain long.
If I stayed too long, this universe might start treating me as a replacement Sun.
It would chain me to that role the first chance it found.
If my own universe's Fate wanted me as a True Vessel because of my Fateless status, then this universe would happily take even a God of Fire and elevate him into a Sun God.
Even if he could not defeat the ice.
World spirits rarely thought things through.
That was what made Chaos's decision in my own pantheon more impressive. Splitting Gaia from Earth created a world spirit that was not constantly at war with every god it could devour.
This one had not been so fortunate.
And I was more than willing to strip its diabolical Domain of its core essence.
Because this was only one version of a named pantheon.
Just as I was beginning to suspect the Greeks were only one version of ours.
Everyone was chasing True Essences.
Everyone was willing to use any method possible.
Even this universe would devour another Aesir pantheon if it believed doing so would create a stronger variant.
I stopped walking.
My descent was complete.
Behind me, the path burned white with Life, while black dots of Death littered the flames. The formation absorbed the remaining Death Laws and isolated the core region from the rest of the planet.
I weaponized Odin's old seal to hide this treasure from the universe's eyes.
Then I looked forward.
A glowing purple-blue Tree core pulsed before me.
Undiluted Chaos and Death churned inside it.
Exactly what I needed.
If my World Tree was going to become part of my Realm instead of merely an addition to it, then it required this kind of foundation.
Abi could become the Earth of the Dark Sun.
But the World Tree would always remain its own entity.
At present, mine was still a sapling.
A very large sapling.
It required Eli and her original clan of elves to serve as caretakers, the only pure wood elves within my faction. The clans that had lived under me had already become hybrids aligned with Darkness, Fire, and Death.
Normally, such elves would stand second to fairies, whose affinities could be seen directly through their wings.
Yet both races had still fallen behind Bale's tribe over the years, especially after I assimilated clans from Minor Worlds into his home world.
All hybrids of the Golden Cycle.
But not born on Earth.
That mattered.
They were not bound by the same limits imposed on every race born under Earth's Golden Cycle.
Even gods could be held back by the Cycle's limits.
And this Tree core proved that a stable universe would never condone its World Seed becoming such a taboo existence.
Ratatoskr clung near the core, clutching a bag filled with Death energies it was absorbing and converting into Chaos to mimic the Tree's function.
Nidhogg coiled around it, allowing the squirrel to feed from its own flesh when needed.
The only substitute capable of keeping a Chaos-byproduct eater alive when the Life-giving Tree had failed.
Even the serpent had begun showing corruption.
Their battle had reached its final stage.
They were attempting to turn the core into a Death Core just to survive.
I focused on my flames spreading through the roots.
They invaded every part of the Tree that could still be considered alive, refining the last remaining energy. Once enough Life and Death had gathered, the flames rushed toward the core.
I split off a fraction of that refined energy for the beasts to restart their development.
The rest covered the pulsing Tree core.
Odin's Laws reacted instinctively.
The core sealed itself.
That one moment of hesitation was enough.
I shoved Ratatoskr and Nidhogg into my Grotto Heart, placing them as close as possible to my portion of the Dark Sun. There, they would have energy to continue evolving beyond Death.
Then I folded the core into a seal of shadows, turning those shadows into black flame before locking it away near its future caretakers.
A portal opened above me.
Fake Death energy rippled one last time, revealing the universe's will had gone dormant.
Only one individual remained truly alive here.
Scene 3
I stepped through the portal.
Behind me, a voice whispered thanks.
Not for saving it.
For allowing its true death after so much torture.
The Earth Crystal I had received from Gaia shifted inside my authority. A World Tree emblem formed across its surface.
My crown forced itself into existence.
The Band of All Things Evil gained a vine-like portion around the crystal before returning to the metal of the Underworld.
I nodded once.
Then closed the portal.
My part in that story was finished.
Now came the troublemaker.
His kingdom of gold lay ahead, buried beneath layers of ice and snow.
My senses screamed before my eyes caught the first movement.
I unsheathed Pluto.
A paw radiating Ice and Moon Laws tried to carve my face open.
I caught it with the blade.
The beast dissolved into snow.
A wolf's head foaming with flame lunged from the side, jaws opening wide enough to swallow me whole.
I uppercut it before its teeth could close.
Pain cut across my chest.
A claw had slipped through the opening.
I kicked the Moon-aligned wolf away just as its brother clamped down onto my shoulder, restricting my sword arm.
Sun Laws burned against my flesh.
Basic.
Wild.
Still dangerous.
I grew.
My body expanded violently, forcing the beast's mouth open before it could tear deeper. When it tried to wound me with more Sun fire, I punched it hard enough to crack the ice beneath us.
My sword swung down toward its sister.
She dissolved into snow just before the blade landed.
Both wolves retreated into the open.
Now I saw them clearly.
The Sun and Moon Devourers.
The larger brother was black-furred, flames leaking from his mouth as Sun Laws radiated from his body in unstable pulses.
His sister was white-furred, her body blending with the snow and ice around us as Moon Laws flowed naturally through the frozen world.
This was her habitat.
Her battlefield.
Her advantage.
I set Pluto in front of me and formed a flame shield dense enough to look like forged metal.
Sun and Moon.
Devourers of the celestial order.
The corrupted pair born from a pantheon that had already failed to balance its sky.
I smiled faintly.
"Fine."
The wolves lowered themselves.
Ready to pounce.
I tightened my grip.
"Let's see which version of the Sun and Moon survives."