Eternity | T.J.

Huh... This Is A Nice Afterlife... Less Death.

Another A/N Before The Chapter: The picture above/Where ever on the page it is is what I imagine Willow's jacket looking like.

     Whichever World this was, I liked it. No fire, no ice, just a nice temperature with nice greenery in my surrounding area. I snapped out of staring at the beautiful surroundings at the sound of my brother's voice.

     " Blitz? Blitz, your hat!"

     I turned around to see our dwarven friend who very much shouldn't be in the sunlight without a hat, in the sunlight without a hat.

     " It's okay," he said." This isn't regular sunlight. We're not on Midgard anymore."

     Everything sounded weird, as if both Magnus and Blitz were on the other side of a very thick wall, the words of that evil giant squirrel still rang through my head.

     " Ratatosk..." Magnus only managed to say that one word.

     " Yeah," Blitz said, looking down." His bark is literally worse than his bite, he... he's the most destructive creature in the World Tree. He spends his time running up and down the trunk, carrying insults from the eagle who lives at the top to Nidhogg, the dragon who lives at the roots."

     " Why would a squirrel do that?"

     " To damage the tree," Blitzen answered." Ratatosk keeps the eagle and the dragon whipped into frenzy. He tells them lies, rumors, nasty gossip about each other. His words can... well, you know that his words can do. The dragon Nidhogg is always chewing on the roots of the world tree, trying to kill it. The eagle flaps his wings and created windstorms that rip the branches and cause devastation throughout the Nine Worlds. Ratatosk makes sure the two monsters stay angry and in competition with each other, to see which one can destroy their end of Yggdrasil faster."

     " But that's... crazy," Magnus pointed out." The squirrel lives in the tree."

     " We all do kid, people have destructive impulses. Some of us want to see the world in ruins just for the fun of it... even if we're ruined along with it."

     " How did you keep your wits? When the squirrel barked, what did you hear?"

     " Nothing I don't tell myself all the time, kid. We should get going."

     " Will?"

     I realized I hadn't said a thing during that entire conversation." I'm fine, you shouldn't worry about it."

     The more we walked, the more I wondered which of the Nine Worlds we were in. Everything looked perfect, as if we were in a Disney animated film. Unfortunately, after what Hearth had said about his homeworld, I was beginning to worry that we were in Alfheim and were about to get yelled at for having ever made contact with a spec of dirt.

     " I'm guessing this is not Nidavellir," Magnus spoke up.

     " No, much worse."

     I decided to ask what I'd been wondering." This isn't Alfheim, is it?"

     " Worse," Blitz took a deep breath." Come on, let's get this over with."

     When we reached the top of the hill we'd been climbing, Magnus stopped." Whoa."

     What we saw was exactly how I thought parks should look like. All around us were people, all hanging out with each other. Some were eating, others were talking with those around them, playing music, or playing with beach balls and kites. The weirdest part of it all was, like at Valhalla, people had weapons and armor, the difference here was I couldn't see a single battle or thrown spear.