The Hel Experience

-the day before Ragnarok- Jotunheim-

Snow fell from the sky. White dots contrasting on the black sky, like falling stars coming to set our worlds on fire. I watched, laying face-up in the snow, with my arms laying beside me, pulling in the cold of the winter until my veins felt like ice and I felt my heartbeat slow. Perhaps, I thought, if I lay there long enough, Ragnarok would pass me by.

I really wanted to avenge everything. To destroy Asgard and show it who I was, but that would be giving in to the monster in my head. There would be nothing left of Hel and the little girl at the palace, crying herself to sleep because she knew she would be alone for the rest of her life.

Heimdall was expecting me the next day. Only 42000 heartbeats left to go.

Digging my hands into the snow, I curled my fingers towards my hand palm and felt the cold numb my skin. It was black in front of my eyes, but I knew I wasn't going to die. It wasn't that easy.

Nothing was. Especially not waiting for problems to solve themselves. I still had two of those, Loki and Surt, and they weren't going to pass by with time. I'd already planned it out; Loki had Fenrir to protect him, but even the large, terrifying beast couldn't kill the dead. And Surt? He would burn in his own fire.

I had waited long enough and I knew that perfectly well. So I closed my eyes, felt the Endalok heat up against my skin, and sat up to watch the black mist running over the perfectly white snow.

"Say goodbye to my father, and release the wolf," I whispered to the night sky.

That night, death came to Loki in the form of a bad dream. Sounds unknown, the whispers of the dead, had hushed him into a never ending sleep, in which his heart was torn out of his body by his own guard dog and torn to threads.

Fenrir watched Loki's heartbeat die in horror. The gears in his small, mechanical brain spun like crazy. Codes rattled in his mind, translating to commands, but- due to his malfunction- everything kept leading back to Odin. Odin had killed his master. He had to eliminate the threat...

So when he was freed of the fetters keeping him inside, the monster- drooling puss and oil- disappeared, leaving nothing more behind than the picture of brown fur and silver plates moving through the winter and a dead body in the forest.