Page 7 of Last Thrall of Asgard

I was dead. Or, if not yet, I would be soon.

“Don’t look so frightened!” Loki slapped my shoulder like a joshing friend, though I half expected to be transformedintoa horse—or something crueler. “After all, I am those things! Although, in my defense with the horse, I was also a horse at the time. However insane it may seem to you, is it really fair to judge?”

I wasn’t quite sure how to answerthat. I supposed he did have a point.

He’d been a female horse actually, all to seduce a male workhorse to prevent a builder from getting one over on the gods.

Insane wasn’t the half of it.

“I prefer a man’s cock!” Loki announced as if this weren’t the most baffling conversation I’d ever had, “but we work with what we have when the need arises.”

“Your… need to be fucked?”

“Not that! Come now, Oli.” Loki linked arms with me and began to lead meawayfrom Asgard’s gate. He was very warm. And handsome. And terrifying. His nails were long and pointed, like the start of claws. “Judging by your excellent cursing of me and my brethren, I assumed you knew our stories.Whywas I a horse?”

I recounted the tale as I knew it, that if the builder who owned the workhorse had finished a fortress for the gods by a certain time, he’d get the sun, the moon, and the goddess Freya’s hand in marriage. Loki’s ruse as a mare was a worthy effort to prevent having to keep up their end of the bargain when the builder was about to win. It had also ended with him birthing Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse that became Odin’s favorite, so I had to ask, “Is it really all true?”

“Which part? That I made such a fetching mare that I absolutely had to be bred?” He waggled an eyebrow at me with no shame at the admission. “Why, I love that galloping baby boy of mine like all my monstrous children. You know their stories too, I take it?”

“I… suppose. Most, I’d imagine. At least as well as anyone these days.”

“And with no fear of cursing us out!”

The dread in me blossomed again. “ShouldIfear?” Was Loki leading me to the other end of the bridge just to push me off it, sending me plummeting over its edge, falling endlessly toward Midgard?

“Oli, my dear boy,” he said, resting his head on my shoulder as he brought us to a stop just beneath the floating watchtower, “cursing each other is a daily activity among the gods! We can hardly be upset when a mortal curses us. We need someone unafraid, you see. Someone willing tofuckon our altars andsmearour good names.”

He had clearly seen and heard everything I’d done to defile that stone.

“But… we mainly need someone willing to fuck. Allow me to explain.”

Loki seized me by my other arm and spun me back toward Asgard. He waved a hand in front of us in a grand arch like wiping away the current view, and when he did, the view didindeed change. The city had been replaced by a version of itself on fire.

I tried to stumble away, but Loki held me fast. Even the sky had changed, blacked out like there was no sun, no moon, no stars. I could smell the smoldering of the ashes as war raged, see battles spilling into the streets between all manner of god and creature. It was pandemonium, utter chaos, like some nightmare depiction of the bloodiest of slaughters.

Loki waved his hand again, and the city returned to peaceful brilliance.

“That was about the time when your people first began turning their backs on their belief of us.” He held me close about the waist too tightly to feel like comfort. “It was Ragnarök, the end of days, end of everything, and suddenly, for many of you, gods seemed a silly thing to believe in whenoneGod was being touted as superior by other nations, one without our… complicated history of horse fucking and monster bearing. Soundsboringto me!”

Loki released me finally and patted my shoulder as if in apology for the tight hold.

“He has his own complicated history, believe me. But as we slaughtered each other, we brought about our own end to the age of Aesir, Vanir, Jotun, and the lot, and you lost any reason to care if we existed.”

“But you’re alive,” I stated the obvious. “If Ragnarök happened—” I stopped myself before finishing, for the stories were clear on that too.

“We were always meant to come back,” Loki confirmed. “We’regods. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an end for us.” His seemingly constant grin flickered as he pivoted in front of me, the one side of his face still shadowed by the flow of his hair. “We are not who we once were. We too must move on to our next stage of existence, apart from mortals, separated from Midgardforever, and lessened because of it without you. Belief makes gods stronger. Not evenyoubelieved, Oli, and at least you still know our stories.”

I glanced down the length of the bridge toward Midgard again. “But the bridge still goes there, doesn’t it? And you were able to snatch me.”

“For now. You think the bridge looks as though it fades away because it is too far for mortal eyes to perceive? That is somewhat true, but it fades for real and will eventually no longer reach Midgard at all. Soon, there will be no travel to or from there unless as a spirit, once the last of our altars is left unattended, and our stories told only as myth. It’s fuckingdepressing, is what it is!”

His somber tone had changed to lively again, like this was all some grand joke. Maybe it was, but in addition to the mischief in his expression, I swore I saw some other emotion cross his face too quickly for me to register.

“That’s where you come in. See, technically, Ragnarök was my fault.” Loki said it to the side of one hand like sharing a secret everyone knew. “I mean, sure, we’d all known the prophecies for ages and how I was intended to kick things off by killing Balder, but I didn’t actually mean for him to die. I just thought it’d be a bit of fun! It’s like when someone tells you explicitly not to do something, and all you can think about is doing it.”

I stared at him. “Somethingchildrendo.”

Loki laughed. “There’s that lack of fear we need! I might actually like you a little. Some of the others aren’t as pleasant of company as I am, so you’re going to need that courage. To sum up, the female gods? With this change, their loss of power, the intent for us to live out new lives in seeming peace or within the halls of Valhalla, blah, blah, blah—handling it absolutely flawlessly. Unshakeable, those women!

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