Magnus lowered his sword to his opponents' neck. Sometimes sword fighting was just the best activity in Hotel Valhalla. You knew exactly what was going to happen, which could not be said from drawing class (where it was once so that every other pencil was secretly a deadly snake) or senior yoga (Which was deadly in more ways than I can possibly name).

Magnus heard that someone was trying to sneak up on him. He twirled around and parried the sword of the new opponent. Jack sung a cheery tune as they fought. The talking sword seemed to agree with Magnus preferences.

Just as the sword fight was reaching its high point, a beam of light appeared from the ceiling. Everyone yelled and tried to stab it, until a shining figure stepped out, clearly a god. Most people took a moment to think about the implications of fighting a god for a few seconds, before going right back to attacking him.

Yet, the god was not having it. He held out his hand, so that a barrier rose up around him. 'Warriors of Odin! I came here to offer a challenge!'

Magnus shoulders dropped when he notice who it was: his father, Freyr. He wondered what the god was doing here. Usually, a god of peace like him did not feel much at ease in a place like hotel Valhalla.

'A challenge that might just be a little alien to all of you...' he let the words linger in the air.

'Spill! We have faced challenges worse than you could ever imagine, Vanir!'

'A challenge of peace. I want you all to go without fighting for as long as possible!' The entire room went quiet.

'You want us... to be peaceful? For who knows how long?' Someone asked, sounding like they did not believe it. Freyr nodded excitedly. 'Yes. Unless, of course, you think it is something you cannot do...'

Those simple, cliché words were exactly what the warriors needed to hear in order to accept the challenge. Everywhere, sword were dropped to the floor. 'There will be peace! Spread the word!' Someone declared. A chorus of voices repeated the words after him.

'There will be peace!'

Magnus rolled his eyes and walked up to his father. 'Why are you doing this?' he asked.

'I think everyone deserves some peace now and then,' Freyr answered, with a sparkle in his eyes. Magnus gave him a deadpan look. 'This is hotel Valhalla, though...'

'Yeah, you need to learn how to fight for Ragnarok. But you need to learn about peace as well.' Freyr gave Magnus a pat on the head, before stepping back into his beam of light and taking his leave.

Magnus assumed the peace would last for five minutes at the most. When the sixth minute began, he started to feel weird. People seemed serious about this. Some people were still carrying around their weapons, but there were clearly less people walking around with sharp objects than before.

The residents of the hotel began to leak out into the hallway. Magnus decided to follow them. In the hallway, he came across Alex. He had a strange look on his face. 'Hey, Magnus. So, how do you feel about it?'

Magnus shrugged. 'You mean peace? I mean, on one hand, it seems like heaven. Not Valhalla, but like, I mean, it seems kinda good. Maybe I can finally go to... sewing class or something without inevitably being stabbed with a sewing needle or getting run over by a sewing machine. On the other hand, it is not very Valhalla, don't you think?' Alex nodded slowly, like he only heard half of what Magnus had said.

'Yeah, yeah, exactly. Weird.'

Mallory came running up to them out of the blue bloody nowhere. 'Guys! Have you seen what the 'weekly activity' is?'

'Weekly activity?'

'It is peace to the death! How are... what?' Mallory looked just as confused as Magnus felt.

'They think they can keep it up for at least a week?' Alex asked. Mallory threw her hands in the air.

'Apparently! It's awful!' Magnus looked down the hallway. Everyone around him was either confused, angry or happy, but he started to disassociate. Oh, man, this was going to be one heck of a week.

Well, week... not really. More like few days. In that time, it got... pretty, actually. Because people had nothing else to do, a lot of them decided to watch beauty guru videos on youtube and a few of them decided to try out different looks for themselves. It was all fine and dandy until someone decided to smear the make-up onto someone elses face. One thing lead to another and what started of as a harmless make-up prank quickly turned into thé new way of attacking people.

Alex peeked around the corner of the hallway. He wanted to go to the knitting class (not to the death) that day, but he did not feel like showing up with a face full of clown makeup. He did not know how, but some people had gotten a proficiency in applying prank makeup and you never know where an attacker was hiding. It was almost like everything was normal. Someone might be standing right around the corner with a nicely named 'hawaii summer' pallet.

He took a deep breath and ran to the next door. Behind him, he heard footsteps. He wasted no time in running even quicker. 'Get out! I do not need bright red lipstick today!'

'That is why I got pink!' Oh, so there really was one of them after him. He slammed the door behind him, which bought him barely any time at all. It was like they all ran through the doors instead of stopping to open them. Alex looked around. Where was the knitting class again? Common room #422? #420? It was something with a four and a two, he remembered that.

'Don't you have anything better to do?' he yelled over his shoulder.

'Do what? I usually go to combat class at this hour!'

'Maybe you could get a new hobby? Or you all could train on dummy's instead of training on each other!'

'Now that's crazy!' Dummy's do not move! It would be totally unrealistic!' Alex rolled his eyes. There was no arguing with that logic, though.

Eventually, he could smell the well-known scent of incense that old lady Marks, who gave the knitting class, was always burning. She said it was for the gods, but most people assumed she used it to fuel her own soul. Not that it mattered, everyone did stuff like that sometimes.

Alex ran into the room and unclenched her shoulders, only to remember that there was absolutely no certainty that nobody would make-up bomb her just because she was in a classroom now. She looked over her shoulder and noticed a girl from floor seventy-two. She shrugged and turned around. 'You'll never catch me in a knitting class!' she yelled over her shoulder, while swaying away.

Alex dropped to the floor with a sigh. 'I am here to knit,' he muttered calmly. He heard another sigh. He opened his eyes. Someone was standing over them with knitting needles and a ball of yarn. Their face was covered in a thick layer of foundation and rouge. 'I would say you are lucky, but you annoy me to much for that,' they told Alex.

Yet, every period of piece inevitably knows an end, sometimes because people cannot stand each other anymore, and sometimes because people buy makeup that is just too cheap and toxic for your skin. After a few days, the first victims fell to wearing toxic makeup for too long. After that, the einhirjar collectively decided that the challenge was over. Somebody had died, so what did no killing policy matter? Their fallen comrades had to be defended!

Freyr took a deep breath and a sip of coffee. It had been fun for the three days the peace lasted. Maybe he should ask Odin to allow him to give peace classes, he thought. The warriors should know not to fight each other during Ragnarok.