Amber Waves of Angst

Chapter 21

Gallows watched the threads of his hopes and dreams unravel as the sun disappeared below the horizon. The Avatars were visible even from here, as were the swarm of wolves that made up the Great Pack. There were explosions and crashes from the town proper as buildings fell one after the other. Thorbardin and his zombie army had failed. Gallows had failed.

Fenrir had won.

All that was needed was for the Avatars to breach the dimension between this world and that of the prison-plane to let him through...a simple enough task with the point-source semi-divine Power the three possessed. Their very presence at the fragile nexus between this world and the next would rip it wide. They would free the wolf, who would scent Gallows in a moment. Fenrir would waste no time in devouring him, and Gallows' immortal life would at long last come to an end. None of his old power had been his to command for an age of ages.

Unless..., but no. He shook his head in denial.

"Kate, you have to undo the barrier."

Kate shook her head at him. "Sorry, sweetie. That thing stays up until the lunar eclipse in six days. Think you can avoid Clifford the pissed off Wolf-God for that long?"

The answer to that, of course, was no.

Gallows placed his head in his hands...he had not gotten to live this long without learning to keep an ace or two up his sleeve...but he had hoped that this particular trump card would never be necessary.

He fingered the golden ring that adorned his left ring finger. It was an ancient looking band engraved with almost invisible runes. It was less than worthless to him for millennia...until now. He took it off and held it up, looking at Kate through it like a telescope. Undetectable to her, it grew warm and vibrated in his hand.

"More magic?" Kate asked. "You're a regular bag of tricks. Hel's memory tells me that this must be Draupnir, a ring that creates eight copies of itself every night. Not quite sure how that's going to help you with Fenrir though."

Gallows shook his head, smiling wistfully. "No, I traded every treasure I owned to a Svartalheim dwarf, one Alberich, in exchange for the rope Gleipnir to bind the Wolf. Alberich was blind, but he could sense the power in the treasures I traded. Alberich came to me with a magic ring in his pocket... and left with a magic ring in his pocket...just not the same one. I switched Draupnir with the one thing in all the Nine Worlds Alberich would never part with."

Kate's eyes widened. "You don't mean..."

"Yes. The Rheingold. Lost treasure of the Rhine maidens...a Ring that would let its wearer attain the power of a god, if only he first renounces love forever. Useless to me at first, since one must have love before one can renounce it. But I held on to it...what can I say, I was always an optimist."

"Creighton! Don't!" Kate backed slowly away.

"Kate...I'm sorry. You are the only woman I have ever loved. But to see the Wolf dead...there is no price I would not pay." Gallows once more donned the ring.

Gallows lunged forward and grabbed Kate's wrist. "Kate...my Valkyrie...I renounce you forever and consign you to oblivion. Thank you for giving me back my Godhead. Believe me when I say that Eternity will be very lonely...without you."

Kate's mouth opened wide and she screamed, since now it was her flesh that was decaying at his touch. The essence of Kate that lived within the Goddess Hel was purged from her and expunged from existence altogether. Hel's body completely decayed to her natural form as the living embodiment of Death, and in her rage she would have destroyed Gallows in a moment...had she not sensed that he was now a waxing Power in the world once more...the All-Father stripped of his mortality burned before her, and she fled from the sight of it, traveling to Helheim...the realm of the dead where she was absolute Queen.