Skala Haugr Station
The old man wandered to his chair, patting the black foam arms with affection.
The faux leather veneer was old, and the casters sometimes stuck, but from its immutable vantage he could watch all his creation. Sitting in the tiny control room crammed with screens and a control desk, he had plenty to keep him busy, scooting between grainy video feed on the monitors. To the uninitiated, they all showed similar rooms, littered with rubbish and smashed up bits of equipment, but there were many different ways of seeing.
He’d had many shrines and temples in his day, but this was the best of them—a veritable Hliðskjálf, perched on the cliff, looking over the Southern Isles. The Skuld regarded it warily, like a slow death-warrant; the salty, corrosive sea air playing a lethal game of kǫttr and mús with the site’s aging infrastructure. He didn’t mind that. They left him alone here among its labyrinth of scruffy, dilapidated rooms.
Outside the window, there was a grassy scrap of land. Seagulls would gather there and chatter, screeching loudly to make themselves heard over the constant hum of machinery, hopping over the zig-zagging pipes when they whooshed steam. They grew restless when they wanted to play. They were covetous creatures, ravenous and greedy, no replacement at all for his ravens.
The little clock sounded constantly to warn him of any breach. A tick-tock noise emitted by loudspeakers dotted throughout the facility. He’d grown so used to its chimes, he sometimes forgot it was there at all, and only later realized it had stopped working. That’s when he had to go outside and check the perimeter. More often than not, it was some degenerate Imperial, more winged vermin flitting to and fro.
Tick-tock goes the clock, hanging on the wall.
Tick-tock goes the clock, telling doom for all.
He sighed and wheeled back his chair, noting that the armrest wobbled when he removed his weight. He must remember to tighten it, sooner rather than later, although he often forgot which was which.
The door opened at his word, and he shuffled outside, his walking stick leading the way, following the pipes that ran in every direction, a lattice of scaffolding that girded the sky. The countryside around was quiet, the roads deserted. Far off, unknown, scarcely remembered at all.
There were two ponds nearby, overflowing with fuel rods, riddled with cracks and rust. They consumed all things with their slow power, their green scales always glinting. The old man watched one of the gulls bobbing on the water, nodding in the direction of another innocuous-looking site on the vast complex. He decided he couldn’t turn a blind eye to so obvious a portent. He paused to gather his bearings between the looming stacks of concrete monoliths, squinting at a cluster of industrial buildings, then proceeded at his usual senescent pace. After what seemed an eternity, he came clear of the cramped jumble of facilities.
Train tracks crisscrossed the ground, past the remnants of cooling towers. They reminded him of his own past. Back and forth he’d ridden, back and forth. Dasis Ravana, Ruad Rofhessa, Gestumblindi, Draugadróttinn—he had worn so many masks as he prepared for the wolf, he couldn’t tell them apart.
The High Urðr had once sent sacrifices across the iron rails, to be hauled by a vast crane, its back bent with mute motion as it traced their passage into the cooling pools of water that would devour the essence. The building ahead was featureless, red and black. The last workers had called it Thorp, Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, but the witch-wives had added a stave to the last letter. He had laughed at that. The Vǫlur couldn’t help themselves. Since couldn’t find the gods they wanted, they simply manufactured them. The great Serkir alchemists, they had understood how to bring creation out of destruction, life out of death. Had he not sacrificed himself to himself, delivered his own resurrection time after time? He was tired of eating shadows, but it’d be a warm day in Hel before he gave up any more of his secrets.
The sun rested on the cave’s wide threshold, and the old man bent his grey hairs to the proud rays, sniffing the hungry wind. A moment later, he walked inside, the sound of his cane echoing, bouncing off the two-story adamantine door that blocked all further passage. Of its own accord, the gate swung open, revealing the huge interior, as bright as Glaðsheimr, all gussied up in fresh yellow paint. He tipped his hat in gratitude.
Inside, the towers of blocks were spaced so that he could walk between them. The only hint of what each box contained was a short serial number stamped on one side. A code, to be read once you nudged aside the morass of degrading plastic bottles. The ancient runes of the Ruler of Gods. Here in appointed places the Ages dwelt, with varying formulas marking their aspect.
Heljarblý. Hel-metal. The very stuff of death.
The little clock sat on the wall of the near-blinding warehouse, installed when the boxes were first moved there. It was as silent as the grave. He tapped at its shell, hoping to coax a heartbeat, to feel the sap coursing through its chambers. Time passed differently for dead men, underneath the earth, near the roots of proud Yggdrasil. He could almost taste the ruin, see the coral reefs flickering out beneath plastic-infested oceans, rainforests desiccating into desert. This was a glue-scabbed world, covered in concrete and carcinogens, swallowed up by wildfires and suffocated in petrochemicals. He should never have brought the seed here in the first place. That much was certain.
He carried on, between the sprawling collection of blocks, farther into the vast breast of the cavernous hangar. He peered through thick leaded glass which gleamed with yellow-tinged fluorescence. The structure looked close to collapse—but the dvergr bots stopped it from falling. An automated dismantling machine, remote-controlled manipulator arm and crane were busy reconvening it piece by piece, starting with the concrete shield and aluminium-clad shell. It was a perversion of their original purpose, but that was true of all his innovations. Niði Bohr would have been proud.
The demolition thralls watched him warily, through sensors in their steel claws. The air inside was like unquenched fire—no one ever went in. The one-tonne BROKK-90 demolition machine smashed up sections of the poisoned lab and loaded them into plastic buckets on a conveyer belt. The buckets would be fed through an enclosed hole in the wall to a waiting EITRI master-thrall appendage, encased in a box made of steel and reinforced glass, who would repurpose them. There were smaller bots, too, able to change shape and go through small apertures into the facility. Dvergr were cunning like that.
Their forging took an age. Tongs they wrought, and tools they fashioned. An ocean of water was pumped in, and only seeming centuries later did the dvergr dissect it, dissolving the waste in acid. There, they mixed the toxic sludge with glass, placed it into a container and welded it shut. Vitrification. Windows that dissolved the soul.
The dvergr worked quietly and efficiently amid the reams of metalwork. The old man didn’t bother them—he was no buzzing fly. Together, they put death in boxes in the ground, burying them in tunnels that stretched for miles. Geological disposal, the little gods had called it, before the Skuld swept them away. But even the hardest stone was just a vibration of quantum fields, a momentary interaction of forces, a process that briefly managed to keep its shape before disintegrating into dust. This was something altogether stronger: a wall of the dead, entombed beneath the roots of the worlds. One hundred and forty tonnes of destruction, the largest stockpile in the world.
If that didn’t stop the wolf in its tracks, nothing would.
He went back outside. He had set up the table in the middle of the grass, buffeted by the salt spray and the howl of the wind. The opposing King had been subdued—the threat he posed had diminished over the long years. Every move the enemy had made, the old man had checked. In Miklagarð, at the Michaelion; in golden-domed Kœnugarðr; at the wide-famed well of Mimir. He had to hand it to the Taxiarch, the Kristin world knew how to fight back and fight dirty, but it was the Queen he hadn’t seen coming. Plucked from the void, promoted out of nowhere, propelled through the ranks.
The old man hissed with the venting steam. Two could play at that game.
He placed his own new piece very carefully on the board, making sure it was intact, careful to avoid the gaze of the pilfering gulls. The only hope was amputation. Sever the head. Shatter the crown. Dispense with the Urðr once and for all. That had always been the intent, before the raven-thieves stole his mind.
“Your move”, he said.