Ragnarök
The plain of Vígríðr was a hundred leagues wide in every direction, and that day it was filled. From the north came Fenrir with fire in his jaws and smoke rising from his nostrils like a volcano. From the east Jörmungandr crawled over land with venom pouring from its mouth, and the ground died behind it, the grass blackened and the trees withered and the earth became ash. From the south rode Surtr with a sword that was older than the gods, older than Ymir, a sword that had been burning since before there was time to burn in. And facing them stood the gods, all who remained, with their weapons and their pride and the kind of calm that comes when you know the outcome is already decided.
Odin rode first. Of course Odin rode first. He had felt it coming his whole life, since he sacrificed his eye, since he hung on his tree, since he asked Vafþrúðnir the question that had no answer. All his wisdom, all his runes, all the secrets he had purchased with pain and cunning and an eye and nine nights of hanging, everything led to this meadow and this wolf.
Fenrir swallowed him. Gungnir and all. The spear that never missed its mark did not miss now either, but it made no difference. The wolf's jaws closed, and the Allfather, the one-eyed wanderer, he who had walked through nine worlds in a tattered cloak asking questions no one should ask, disappeared into Fenrir's jaws like a man walking into the dark who does not come back. A thousand years of wisdom. A moment of darkness.
Víðarr, Odin's silent son, the one almost never mentioned in the sagas, the one who had sat in his forest and not said much and not made a fuss, stepped forward. He set his thick shoe against Fenrir's lower jaw. The shoe was made from all the leather scraps cobblers discard, through all the ages, gathered and stitched piece by piece, and that is why you should always save such things for Víðarr, because that shoe was the last shoe that was needed. He set his foot on the lower jaw and gripped the upper and tore the wolf's mouth apart with his bare hands, and Fenrir fell, and Odin's son stood there with his father's blood on his hands and the wolf's jaws gaping at the sky.
Thor and Jörmungandr met. They had been waiting for it their whole existences: since that time in Hymir's boat, since that time in Útgarða-Loki's hall, since the first gaze through the water. It was the battle the whole world had been moving toward, and now it was here. Thor swung Mjolnir and the hammer sang through the air with a sound that was every thunderclap in a single blow, and it crushed the serpent's skull, and Jörmungandr died.
But the venom had already done its work. It burned in Thor's lungs and in his blood and in his bones, and he stood looking at the dead serpent and knew it was over. He took nine steps backward. Nine steps, like nine nights on a tree, like nine worlds on an ash. Then he fell. The thunder god, the strongest creature that ever lived, he who had lifted the Midgard Serpent and drunk from the sea and wrestled Old Age, lay dead beside his enemy, and neither of them had won, and neither of them had lost, and that was the point.
Freyr faced Surtr. Without a sword. He had given it away for love, for a glance, for a woman in a doorway in Jötunheimr, and now he stood with empty hands against a sword older than the sun. He fought well. He fought with the desperation and the grace that only someone who knows he is going to die can have, and every blow was beautiful and every parry was perfect and it was not enough. Surtr cut him down. Fire burns everything, and hands are not swords. And that was the price for Gerðr. That was the price for the single glance from Hliðskjálf, and perhaps the price was too high, but the sagas let them both be right.
Tyr and the hound Garmr killed each other at Hel's gate. They went at each other with the sort of intent that leaves no room for hesitation, and they struck and bit and tore and both fell, and Tyr's one hand still held his sword when he died. Heimdallr and Loki killed each other. It was the last in a long history between those two, the watchman and the deceiver, the one who sees all and the one who hides all, and they cancelled each other out like opposites, and when they both lay dead it was as if a balance had finally been achieved.
Each god's death was linked to a specific enemy, as though fate had paired them since creation, as though every story had been pointing toward exactly this moment and exactly this opponent. And all of them walked toward their destinies without flinching, and that was the only thing they had left: not to flinch.
Surtr threw fire. Not fire as in a hearth or a forest blaze or a volcano. The fire that was the universe before the universe grew cool enough to live in, the first fire, the one that had burned in Muspelheim since before there was anything else that burned. Everything burned. Asgard burned. Midgard burned. Álfheim burned. Vanaheim burned. Every hall and every chamber and every lawn and every forest and every memory. Bifröst was already gone. The sun that had already been eaten did not need to be extinguished. Everything burned.
The earth sank into the sea. Everything that Odin and his brothers had built from Ymir's body, all the mountains and forests and seas and skies, all the shores and valleys and rivers and meadows, everything sank back into the void from which it had once come. Ginnungagap opened its mouth again, and everything went silent, and dark, and empty, and there was nothing left to say, and no one left to say it to.
And then.
From the sea a new earth rose, green and fair, with mountains that no one had named yet and valleys that no one had walked in. Waterfalls cascaded down mountainsides clothed in new grass, and eagles flew above them hunting fish in streams that had never flowed before. On the plains grain grew by itself, unsown, and the air was clean and warm and smelled of everything that begins.
Baldr and Höðr came back from Hel. The killer and the killed, side by side, without guilt and without vengeance. That was done. That guilt had burned away with everything else, and what remained was two brothers looking at each other as if seeing each other for the first time. Víðarr and Váli lived. Thor's sons Magni and Móði carried Mjolnir between them, because the hammer was heavier than one man's strength but lighter than two brothers'.
They went to Iðavöllr, the place where the gods had once, in the morning of creation, sat and played board games in the grass, when the world was new and everything was possible. The grass was green. The air was still. And in the grass they found the golden game-pieces. The same pieces. Still there, after everything. After the fire and the sea and the darkness and the end of everything, the pieces had lain in the grass and waited.
Líf and Lífþrasir crept out of Hoddmímir's grove, the only humans who had survived. They had hidden in the shelter of the tree and lived on morning dew while the world burned around them, and from them the new race of humans would come, and the new humans would remember the old, and the old stories would live on by new fires.
A new sun shone in the sky, daughter of the old one, and she shone brighter than her mother. And the gods sat in the grass and looked at the game-pieces and looked at each other, and it was quiet, and it was bright, and it was beautiful, and that was all.