The Makers and the Made

He wandered across Midgard for thirteen days without sleep or rest, driven onward by a growing dread. Fleeing the Æsir by a path he would rather never tread again unless absolutely forced, he now headed for a place he wished to reach even less than Asgard itself. There were many roads into Hel — including the direct one Odin favored — but his delicate daughter, ever jealous of her borders, would hardly welcome such a visit. At last, the ruins of an old, long-forgotten sanctuary came into view — the very place he both longed to reach and wished to avoid. Midgard was full of sacred circles for nearly every god, Æsir and Vanir alike; each wanted their own slice of devotion, their own worshippers whose ceaseless prayers would feed strength into their idols. Few of them — Odin among them, and Lóki himself — could live without sacrifice entirely. Odin, of course, never refused a good offering. Lóki, on the other hand, had never cared; cunning and trickery needed no worship, and no mortals prayed more fervently than thieves and swindlers convinced of their lucky star. But there were also forbidden cults, frowned upon even by the gods, feared for the strange and dangerous powers mortals tried to court. It was into one such shrine — ruined though it was — that Lóki now stepped. Dropping his travel-bag from his shoulder, he pulled out the ingredients he had brought for the brew. Waiting until night thickened, and scattering aside the half-rotted human bones that had witnessed this place’s violent past, he built a small fire on what had once been the hörgr, and set a cauldron of water upon it, throwing in handfuls of herbs. When the mixture began to boil, Lóki took a thin, crescent-shaped blade in his left hand and slashed first one wrist, then the other, letting the blood stream down into the bubbling pot. Once all was ready, he let his arms fall weakly to his sides, bent sharply over the cauldron, and inhaled the steam rising from its foaming surface. His head swam at once — the brew had taken perfectly. Lost in the trance of the ritual, half-delirious from blood loss, he did not notice how the darkness behind him deepened, turning utterly opaque, shaping itself into a woman’s form that spoke the moment the last flicker of the fire died. “Why have you summoned me, Father?” The stranger’s voice shifted from the pleasant murmur of a spring brook to the grinding hiss of a landslide burying a traveler alive. Lóki — yet again lamenting that everyone seemed intent on frightening him with a childish “Boo!” from behind — pushed himself away from the cauldron and turned. “Hello, little one. I thought this the perfect hour for a family reunion.” The shadow laughed — a cold, unearthly sound that chilled Lóki far more than her sudden appearance. “So, you performed a sacrifice merely for this? Or do you wish to join me in my halls?” “I think I’ll abstain.” He winced at the pain in his numbing arms, trying to make out the outline of the Underworld’s mistress woven from darkness — but the more he focused, the more his eyes burned, as though something inside the swirling gloom resisted being perceived. “But if we’re to gather the whole family… best to start with your grandfather. I would very much like a word with him.” “Is it worth the price, Áss?” Hel’s voice crackled with anger. The willful goddess was not in the habit of granting the living secrets kept by the dead. “You know the cost of such a request. Or do you hope, as always, to wriggle free?” “Who can say how it will go?” Lóki smirked, striving not to reveal the weakness spreading through his limbs. “So, lady of shadows — do you accept the payment?” “I accept… Áss.” For an instant, where her face ought to be, two white lights flared — bright as newborn stars, stripped of pupil or iris. “But your sacrifice is wasted, Father…” The goddess laughed again, dissolving into the night. “Fárbauti of the Hrímþursar has yet to come to the realm of the dead.” In his fading consciousness, Lóki had just enough time to think that this time, he had indeed been outfoxed. And by whom? His own daughter. He should have been proud. Instead, he felt only dread.

***

Dying was nothing new to him. Not every prank of the Father of Lies ended without consequences for the trickster himself, and not everything that looked like fine mead from afar turned out to be such at closer inspection. More than once he had crossed the icy waters of Gjöll and found himself in the dreary realm of the Lady of the Dead. So, when he set about that seemingly mad ritual, the Æsir considered it a perfectly acceptable risk. After all, he had made it out before; surely, he would again. And so, Lóki was genuinely taken aback when, upon opening his eyes, he saw none of the colorless, bleached plains of Helheim, none of the pale twilight stripped of every familiar shade, none of the cold wind whose eternal keening echoed with the voices of the dead. There was nothing. Nothing but darkness — and a cold so profound it had already begun to gnaw through flesh and bone alike. Feeling blindly over his own body and confirming that not all sensation had yet left him, the trickster staggered forward, forcing his breath back under control and fighting the panic clawing its way into his mind. He might not know where he was, but if he had found his way in, he would find his way out. Convinced of this, Lóki stepped into the void — a void so thick and tangible he practically had to push through it with his hands like a swimmer parting deep water. He walked for a long time. For what may have been days or might as well have been centuries he saw no sky overhead and no ground beneath his feet. Groping forward blindly into nowhere, losing hope with each step, he did not sleep, did not feel hunger or weariness, and, it seemed, no longer had a need to breathe. He had clearly stumbled into a place where neither he nor, perhaps, anyone in the Nine Worlds had ever set foot. His only companion remained the cold — sharp, consuming, omnipresent — so absolute that even fear itself shrank before it. At some point — a moment indistinguishable from eternity — he spotted something ahead: a faint glimmer, the first thing he had been able to perceive in this ink-dark emptiness. Hardly daring to believe it, Lóki rubbed his frostbitten eyes, though his vision, ruined by the unending darkness, wavered with drifting colored circles and illusionary shapes that dissolved whenever he tried to focus on them. But the dim spark did not disappear. More lights joined it, and the closer he drew, the more of them flickered into being: bright ones, pale ones, distant, near… Until they surrounded him entirely — above, below, all around — like a fallen night sky scattered at his feet. Heart hammering, Lóki stared in wonder at the sight, so beautiful it rivaled the heavens themselves. One light in particular caught his eye — larger than the rest, shimmering blue and green, strangely familiar. Compelled by an instinct he did not understand, he moved toward it… and nearly recoiled when he glimpsed pale shapes on its surface, shapes unmistakably resembling the continents he knew. Where in all the realms…? By the dwarves’ beards — what was this place? He had visited the lands of the dead more than once — not all his mischief ended as cleanly as he wished — but this… This was unlike anything he had ever seen. “Is it not beautiful to see it as I do?” The voice that rose from nowhere sounded like the low rumble of the cosmos itself. Lóki turned, trying to make out who had spoken, but saw nothing save for the same drifting lights as before — now so many of them that it seemed they would soon merge into a single wellspring of radiance. “You?” Understanding struck him like lightning. “I.” The universe itself rustled in reply. One of the star-lights winked out, then flared back to life — as if winking at the Æsir. A small nebula shifted slightly, traversing in an instant what might have been an uncountable host of parsecs — clearly someone’s hand was reaching out in greeting. The realization of what — or rather who — stood before him came to Lóki slowly and with great reluctance. An ice-giant, a Hrímþurs… was not someone who walked among the stars. He was the stars. He was the planets, and the nebulae, and the meteoric rivers, and the turning of whole galaxies — just as they were part of him. And he was “ice” not by flesh, but because there is nothing in existence colder than the void between worlds. The immensity of the being before him defied comprehension, and for perhaps the first time in his very long life, Lóki found himself speechless. “Hail, my son.” The voice of an entire universe came to his aid, breaking the silence first. “So long you've wandered and so far you've come. You carried questions; I shall grant you some.” “I…” A million things Lóki had meant to say evaporated, leaving him stammering like a youth reddening before his betrothed’s father. “How did I come here?” Not the sharpest question — or the most urgent — but one had to start somewhere. “By will of mine, of course,” his interlocutor replied with something like a smile, brushing Lóki’s face with what felt like a gentle gust of starlight. “It wasn't much to me to bring you to a place where we might have a talk. It seemed…” A pause, as if the colossus groped for long-forgotten words. “…only fair.” “My thanks,” Lóki managed, still reeling from what he beheld. It was no simple matter to accept that one’s ancestor comprised half the night sky. “Ragnarök — that is what I need to know about. In our worlds, a seeress foretold a coming war and the destruction of all life across the Nine Realms. I…” He faltered, not entirely sure what he hoped for. “I need to know if it can be avoided.” The silence that followed did not bode well. And when Fárbauti finally spoke, his voice brimmed with sorrow. “Children… You know so little, live so bright, and cling so fiercely to the moment given you. Perhaps you'll find of interest the tale of your birth, my son. Such time has passed since first we brought your worlds to life — they were but toys for us, a moment brief upon our path to greater things. Your lives were never planned. The Æsir, the Vanir, and other lesser beings — all echoes of our might, grown into lives their own. So wondrous to see, so joyful to behold, that some of us chose to set foot upon the world — to live among your kind for a handful of mortal lives. It was... delight.” “Just toys?” Hearing that was — strangely — unpleasant. “Oh, but of course,” the hrímþurs laughed. “We shaped entire worlds for nothing but delight. And you, our children still — our made ones as it were — took after us much more than you dare to admit. Have you not fashioned creatures for your own amusement?” Lóki hesitated, memory unpleasantly prodding him with the story of Jörmungandr, and of how incandescent with fury the All-Father had been, trying to contain a willful, nearly indestructible thing wrought by Lóki’s own curious hands. At the time, it had felt like pure research… though, admittedly, he was still a little ashamed of that particular experiment. “I see you do remember,” the colossus noted, clearly satisfied. “But you taught us in turn. To treasure every fleeting breath, perhaps. And so, we left all things to be — allowing life its stay and you your choice. A gift we never mastered for ourselves” “Explain,” Lóki said, frowning up at the star-bright eyes. “We lost our unity, my son — our shared path. For countless millions of years, we moved as one: one mind, one will, one purpose through and through. Creating world on world upon the void and never looking back. Yet disagreements grew. Where once each strove to shape perfection, in time we fell to ruin — tearing down each other's works and finding fault where once was wonder.” “So Ragnarök is your doing?” Lóki’s voice grew sharp with dawning horror. “You decided to wipe us out as well? That hardly sounds like granting freedom of choice!” “No,” the hrímþurs replied, calm and void of feeling. “We erred, and erred again — but your destruction is not ours to choose. The force that birthed us, that fueled our fire through the eons, has deemed that we must pass — we and all we've made — so something new may rise from our ruins.” “A force?” Lóki asked hollowly. “What force?” “This lies beyond your ken,” the giant said gently, yet with finality. “Still… your humans hold that all things have their gods. What we possess… imagine it as Making's self — the drive within all things, forever seeking its design.” “And that’s all? I don’t understand… You’re simply surrendering?” Lóki could not believe this measured apathy. It was as though the titan truly did not care that he — and all his works — would cease tomorrow. “You cannot understand,” the hrímþurs repeated, sorrow deepening in his voice. A spiral of silver comets whirled around Lóki — mockery or comfort, he could not tell. “You are too human still, too tied to what once was. Our coming end is not of war or bloodshed. We are but threads within a cycle old — and when it turns, new makers rise, new worlds unfold. All things end, son. Now it’s our turn. And yours.” “But something can be done!” Lóki’s voice cracked with desperation. “Why do you not fight?! Why refuse to continue the work you began? The cycle doesn’t have to end now! Let this force of yours delay it — by a hundred years, a thousand! Surely it matters not to you!” “You’re right — it matters not to us,” the giant admitted. “And so, there is no reason to delay what’s coming. Forgive me, son. All shall pass as it must.” “And no one is to blame?” Hopelessness pressed down on Lóki like an anchor, dragging him into a bottomless void. For the first time in his long life, he saw no trick, no joke, no cunning solution that could halt what was coming. “No one,” the hrímþurs echoed. “But for you, I hold a choice to give. Stay here. Stay with me among the stars, if such is your desire. Your company... it pleases me. Or…” He fell silent. “Or?” Lóki forced himself to look up at the stellar face. “Or you may yet return. Spend your last breath with those you knew and grew beside — if not by their side.” “And what would that change?” Lóki snorted bitterly. What sense was there in returning only to watch death fall on all he knew? “Nothing,” the colossus said. “Their struggle is but a ripple right before the tide. You cannot feel it, for you gave too much of our spark to children of your own. But Odin and your kin alike… they move as fate commands. They're meant to clash before your world is touched by its rebirth.” “Odin? He too…?” “No. Your All-Father, like all the Æsir, was made by us. He held no shard of our might at birth — yet reached for its source, and seized it for himself. A bold, admirable gesture… but futile. Whether he wins or loses matters not.” “And you’d simply let me go? After telling me all this?” Lóki’s sudden fury burned white-hot. Rage at his impotence flared into the desire to wound — at least with words — the being before him. “Do you imagine that once I return, I’ll keep silent and do nothing?” “It will change nothing,” the giant replied patiently. “But you are not mine to hold. Go, then — and I shan't help or hinder.” “And the prophecy? My betrayal? The battle with giants? Is any of it true?” “Who can say this? The future shifts; we cannot see it clearly. And prophecies are only ripples on water — each action, each falling stone can alter their pattern, turning what is to come into mist, and old predictions into pretty tales.” A star in the giant’s face blinked out — then flared again. Lóki forgot to breathe, though breathing was meaningless here. Was that… a hint? Unless… “Send me back,” Lóki said suddenly, driven only by a fragile thread of intuition. It was all he had left. A few nearby stars brightened, and something coalesced beside him — something like a ship, though no word he knew could describe it. It put every drakkar of his people to shame, a vessel of shimmering metal scales and impossible beauty. “What will you do?” For the first time, his stellar father sounded almost… curious. “Throw stones,” Lóki replied, slipping into the polished cabin as the door sealed shut with a soft hiss. As the craft shot forward, turning the surrounding stars into streaks of white fire, Lóki thought — perhaps imagined — that he heard one final word spoken after him. Luck. Well. He would need it.