Mjolnir Read online

  Mjolnir

  B.C. James

  Copyright © 2021 by B.C. James

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  SEED OF DESTRUCTION

  The Nine Worlds

  The Ragnarok Prophecy

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  SEED OF DESTRUCTION

  Yggdrasil

  The President died today. Several Hollywood personalities, hundreds of union activists, assorted protestors, and a number of tinfoil hat-wearing counter protestors also perished in the same bewildering incident.

  The day started simply enough. The USA’s current President, along with dozens of other personalities from both the political and entertainment industries, had put aside their differences to participate in a bipartisan charity fund raising picnic in New York’s Central Park. The agenda included food, fun, speeches, and a sack race…the details of which needed to be clarified for former Congressman Anthony Wiener in order to avoid any embarrassing misunderstandings.

  The President was in the midst of kicking off the festivities with a rousing speech about truth being more important than facts when the sky went dark and the air turned literally electric. The current that ran through the crowd was not strong enough to hurt anyone, but it did wreak havoc with every electronic device in the area, including the teleprompter.

  Without the teleprompter to guide him, the most powerful man in the world resorted to making his points with a Barbie doll he had snatched from a girl in the audience. He used Barbie as a prop to show the onlookers what he believed was the proper place to grab a subordinate.

  As the POTUS was going dangerously off script, the Speaker of the House was shaking her phone and swearing, trying to send a panicked text to the director of OSHA about the “employee relations” lesson the leader of the free world was teaching a captive audience that included children. Unfortunately, the pulse had rendered her iPhone inoperable and no amount of profanity would undo the effects.

  As quickly as it came, the darkness was gone. After some brief moments of light, it was dark again. This maddening pattern repeated itself over and over again, and at an increasingly accelerated pace. To those in attendance, it was like sitting under a city-sized ceiling fan.

  When the assembly looked up to see what was casting such an annoyingly inconsistent shadow, they saw a large object spinning down from the heavens. It looked like a propeller blade, only it was roughly the size of the Queen Elizabeth II. Wonder and awe at this strange happening turned to terror when it became clear that the object was picking up speed as it spun its way down toward the people.

  Panic swept through the crowd as they did their best to run from the rotating object. Most couldn’t escape. It was simply too large and moving way too fast. The thing went through the crowd in much the same way that a Cuisinart goes through low-grade meat, leaving Central Park looking like a slaughterhouse floor.

  Within minutes, Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the disaster while NBC News did their best to blame the whole thing on the previous Presidential administration. As it turned out, the truth had nothing to do with terrorists or American politics. The origins of this disaster came from a place that only comic book fans and those with advanced degrees in quantum physics were ready to accept.

  Scientists examined the ocean liner-sized propeller and determined that it was a Samara from an ash tree. During a Nightline interview, a prominent dendrologist savored this rare moment in the sun and explained that a “Samara” one of those helicopter seeds that most people have played with at some point in time during their childhoods. His best guess was that the seed was related to the “Fraxinus Excelsior” tree, which is a variety of ash tree that is mostly found in Norway.

  Despite the protests of MSNBC anchors that kept insisting that somebody should hire a special prosecutor to find out how the whole event was the former President’s fault, the facts were out. A mysterious deciduous tree had managed to kill a bunch of politicians along with most of the former cast members of Desperate Housewives by dropping a seed on them. The Vice President assumed control of the government and hoped that her Botox would kick in before the first of her televised Oval Office “fireside chats” with the public.

  The seed was subsequently moved to a secure facility in Nevada. When asked where they had moved it, one source close to the military, and speaking on conditions of anonymity, stated that they certainly had NOT moved it to the Air Force base known as Area 51. He then panicked and backtracked on the statement, flatly and emphatically denying the existence of any base in the Mojave Desert called Area 51.

  Eventually, he was given a paper bag and instructions to breathe deeply into it before he backpedaled to the point where he disavowed the existence of Nevada altogether. The end result, of course, was that everyone who considered an alien probe an appropriate gesture of greeting knew where the government was hiding the seed.

  While scientists wracked their brains over the question of how a giant seed could fall from a cloudless sky and kill the leader of the free world, they fell into the same intellectual trap that has snared the scientific elite for generations. In short, they completely disregarded ancient texts and myth as a source of legitimate information.

  In the writings of Snorri Sturluson, they not only found an answer to the question of the seed’s origin but also discovered a name to attach to it…Yggdrasil. It wasn’t long before information about the mythological world tree, Yggdrasil, was popping up all over blogs and podcasts.

  This was a hard sell to most of the intellectual elite. Reasonable scholars stopped taking the thoughts of the Norse on nature and creation seriously when those early Vikings decided that man was licked into being from a giant block of salt by a celestial cow. After that, all their existential ideas were lumped into the “mushroom fueled hokum” column and dismissed. Of course, myth and reality violently collided when a seed took out an entire park full of politicians and their supporters. Myth now had to be part of the discussion about history and science. Those who wished to understand this would have to start where the Norse started, with a tree.

  The Nine Worlds

  Yggdrasil, the giant ash tree was literally and figuratively the root of existence to the ancient Norse people. It supported nine different worlds that were present in eight different dimensions. Earth, or Midgard as it was known to the Vikings of old and their gods, was generally considered the low-rent district of the nine worlds. It had often served as the playground or battlefie
ld for the gods. When they needed some recreation, worship, or to hash out their issues with other gods and didn’t want to mess up their own corner of reality, Earth was generally where the mythical gods went.

  Most would think that a tree so large that entire worlds hung from it like Granny Smith apples would be hard to miss. The reason that nobody seemed to notice a pan-dimensional tree that was nearly big enough to be considered its own galaxy was because of the aforementioned pan-dimensional aspect of its nature. The bulk of Yggdrasil existed in its own 9th dimension, with some of its branches and roots bridging the dimensional gaps to other worlds. Considering the fact that the dimensions vary wildly from one another, a branch reaching out from Yggdrasil into dimension A may be perceived differently than a similar branch reaching out into dimension B.

  A good example of this was Asgard. That was the world that the Viking Gods call home. In their dimension, the ash tree branch that bound their corner of reality to Yggdrasil’s trunk was perceived as the Rainbow Bridge. There could be any number of reasons for this. One explanation for this was that the Norse Gods tended to think quite a lot of themselves. Anything coming into their world would have to be bright, shiny, and beautiful. The fact that the Rainbow Bridge was unsurpassed in beauty would seem to bear that theory out.

  In contrast to Asgard’s dimension, there is a root that reaches down into Hel, the place of the dead. The mistress of this realm was the daughter of the god, Loki. Her name was Hela. While having the sort of beauty from the waist up that would cause Raquel Welch to shed tears of bitter envy, from the waist down she was a putrid, rotting corpse. Maybe it was body issues on her part or perhaps it was because of bad parenting, but she tended to be pragmatic, bitter, cold, and cruel. She put on no airs, and it was her influence that overwhelmed the entire dimension. Because of this, Hela and her legions of dearly departed souls perceived the root of Yggdrasil that invaded their realm as nothing more than what it really was: a big, black, twisted root.

  Niflheim, possibly the least of the nine worlds, existed in an odd relation to Hel. It had a root of its own but does not occupy its own dimension. In fact, it shared dimensional space with Hela’s realm. Niflheim, like Hel, was a place of the dead and was also ruled by Hela. While it was often referred to as its own realm, the truth was that Niflheim could be more accurately described as a suburb of Hel. The main inhabitant of this domain was Nidhogg the Dragon. Most of his time was spent gnawing on the root that invaded his territory and occasionally downing a lost soul or two for dessert.

  There were a number of other dimensional worlds attached to the ash tree besides Asgard, Hel, Niflheim, and Midgard. There was Alfheim, the home to the fairy-like and carefree light elves, as well its polar opposite realm, Svartalfheim. That was where evil elves did whatever it was that made dark elves feel content. Fate had decided it was best to keep them separated in their own world. The aftermath of putting them together would look something like a civil war at the Keebler cookie factory.

  Then there was Vanaheim. Like Asgard, the world of Vanaheim was home to its own breed of gods. Most of them had neither comic books nor movies named after them. For the most part, they were thought of as second and third-string deities. The Asgardian Gods looked upon the inhabitants of Vanaheim in much the same way that the people of Beverly Hills or Manhattan see the cast of Hee-Haw. Most of the inhabitants of Vanaheim kept to their own corner of Yggdrasil and pursued whatever sort of immortal lives kept underachieving gods happy and fulfilled. The exceptions to the rule that Vanaheim was a realm of slackers would be Freya, the Goddess of Beauty, Love, Battle, and Really Good Sex, along with her less attractive and clever brother, Frey. They were traded to the Asgardians as part of a deity swap that ended a war between the two realms.

  Yggdrasil also branched off into a land called Jotunheim. That was the dimension that the races of giants call home. However, these giants were not the types that were commonly found in professional wrestling. The giants of Jotunheim were more of the “fee-fi-fo-fum” variety. With the exception of a troublesome prankster named Jack, who once mistook the root that bound Jotunheim to Yggdrasil for a beanstalk, most just avoided the land of the giants.

  Not everyone lived by the “Beware of Jotunheim” guidelines. The Asgardian god, Thor, had spent some of his life’s happiest moments making these fearsome, loathsome, and lethal creatures his bitch. The fact that they kept eagerly rushing into frays against him did nothing to discourage the “big and dumb” stereotype.

  As a rule, the citizens of Jotunheim weren’t very bright, but there was one very clever giant who had managed to crack the inner circle of the Asgardian Gods: Loki. Not only was he a blood brother to Odin, leader of the Asgardian Gods, he was also the father of Hela, ruler of Hel and Niflheim. In truth, Loki was actually a half giant whose mother’s origins and race were a closely guarded secret. He managed to “pass” among the Asgardians, thanks to the ability to change his form into just about anything that comes to his mind. Loki no longer dwelled in Asgard or Jotunheim. The gods punished him for crimes against the immortals by chaining him to a rock far from Asgard and letting a serpent drip acid on him for all eternity…or so they thought.

  The final dimension that hung off of Yggdrasil’s branches was the world of Múspellsheimr. Those who have read the Christian accounts of Hell have an idea of what this world looked like. The proprietor of this land was a fire giant named Surt. He was the type that inspired even gods like Thor to lose control of their bowel functions and consider a battle strategy that included running and screaming. Surt ruled his land with an iron fist and is attended to by hundreds of thousands of demons. Among the dimensions and worlds that were supported by Yggdrasil, that was the one that should have the “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” sign placed above its entrance.

  The Ragnarok Prophecy

  Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld, the ancient prophetesses to the Norse deities, known as the Norns, didn’t give much thought to hope or whether or not they should abandon it. These three elderly women have long felt it was hope that walked out on them years ago. If hope in all its fickleness was going to leave them high and dry, then good riddance to bad rubbish. Hope was something they would bitterly and stubbornly do without.

  The reason for their bitterness and sour opinion of hope was that some time ago they made the mistake of peeking into the future of Odin, King of the Gods, and watched him get killed during an apocalyptic battle called Ragnarok. Actually, seeing his death wasn’t the mistake. They didn’t much care for Odin. The thought of Odin being lowered into the ground while they pointed and laughed made the three of them feel all warm inside. The mistake was not keeping their mouths shut about this particular prophecy. Had they privately savored his impending downfall, the three sisters would have been just fine. The problem with working in the prophecy business was that the major job requirement seemed to be a genetic predisposition towards being a world-class busybody. Keeping gossip this juicy between the three of them was like trying to keep Chris Christie away from an all-you-can-eat buffet. They not only told everyone about this prophecy, but they did so during one of Odin’s birthday parties. They announced the news with a song in their heart, broad smiles on their faces, and a host of Valkyrie belting out the lyrics to “It’s a Dead Man’s Party,” a song they sold to the new wave band Oingo Boingo several centuries later.

  Once Odin found out about this particular divination, Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld suddenly found themselves the unwilling victims of his bottomless well of pettiness. Odin couldn’t directly blame them for the fact that he was the subject of a really bad foretelling; the Norns don’t write the future, they just read it. And while he wasn’t exactly taking a hard line, “kill the messenger” stance, he certainly did his best to make the messengers wish they were dead. Odin forbade the sisters from doing anything that resembled serious prophesying. Instead, he set them up as the official fortune-tellers to the dwarves. Dwarves were hardwired for crabbiness and nothing good ever happened to
them. There were a few who scored with Freya in exchange for a piece of really pretty jewelry, but that’s another story. The only thing that really made them happy was when other people were miserable.

  As if that wasn’t punishment enough, Odin decided that the once beautiful Norns should be cut off from the supply of Asgardian apples that keep the gods young and vibrant. After cheating the aging process for so long, it didn’t take long for Father Time to get even with them. Within a decade, the gorgeous, perky-breasted sisters were transformed into old crones. Skuld was further cursed by developing a touch of senility. Whether this was genuine or a psychosomatic response to her current reality was not clear, but as soon as Odin noticed they had just become a trio of grumpy, elderly, biddies, he stuck them in a nursing home in Iowa and forgot about them.

  Eventually the Norns were not the only ones to feel Odin’s wrath over the prophecy. His paranoia and anger over the thought of anything putting an end to his eternal life drove him to make some rather dramatic moves. He eventually sent all the Asgardian Gods on a quest to reestablish their centers of worship on Earth. He talked them into this during a fiery speech about how the Ragnarok prediction foretold the death of most of the gods on an earthly battlefield in a struggle against an axis of evil that included Loki, his evil children, and the demon Surt. He argued that perhaps their only hope for survival was to once again tap into the boundless creative ferocity of the human race. To do this, they must again become the dominant gods of the Earth’s inhabitants. This, however, was a ruse.