I let my mouth hang open as involuntary tears streaked over my cheeks. "Gods…G-gods…"

Gorr's sinister laughter beckoned darker clouds above us. He barely flinched when Regin hit the side of his neck with another arrow, this time piercing his skin enough to release black blood that had the same eerie shine of the spikes he used to hurt us. Whatever flowed in his veins was the real enemy.

"A final word?" he asked, tipping his head to the side in curiosity at my stammering.

I didn't break eye contact with him. "Gods c-come from anywhere."

He scoffed. "No. Not from anywhere. Not from my people. Not from the forgotten edges of the universe."

I trembled like shivers crawled up and down my spine.

"You know something about that, don't you?" Gorr pulled on the weapon through my chest, choking me further. "Still think the Jotun are gods?"

"N-no." I wilted. My volume faded with the last of my air, but I kept my mouth agape to know I wasn't finished.

He came a little closer to hear my whispers.

"Just one." With that, I thrust my dagger into the side of his neck, in the same spot Regin pierced with the arrow.

Gorr hissed and lurched backward to see me, but before he could challenge me with more words, I faded away. A blinding cast of light surrounded him, enough that he covered his eyes with his clawed hand.

"The line," Regin yelled, running across the field to gather the men and women anew. "Be steady!"

Halfway between our standoff and the gates of The Don City, a third of the soldiers which appeared before Gorr marched toward us. They'd kept their distance to cast the grand illusion of their own ghastly deaths, and those of people they could replicate well enough to fool him. In fighting them, Gorr wasted his strength and showed his greatest weaknesses. In fighting me, he let himself be injured.

"What is this?" he screamed, staring at the end of his many black spikes, which were pristine except for his own leaking fluids from the wound in his neck that he didn't address. "I don't understand. What is this?"

"You underestimate us," Hriedmar answered, standing as still as ever in the same place he was when he challenged Gorr at the start.

The monster's rage was palpable. His panting breath was sour. His clever retorts ended. Gorr flared his barely-there nostrils and heaved toward Hriedmar like no one else existed on the battlefield.

Regin's eyes—so youthful, hopeful, and unstained with grief—followed the beast with terror. "Father, retreat!"

But the old man didn't bother moving. He held his position like it was his destiny. Perhaps it was. Hriedmar let Gorr come, true form and all, without a single plea for mercy before the butcher clawed through his chest, killing him in an instant.

"No!" Regin dropped his bow and ran for his father, ignoring our mission and starting the other soldiers.

I rushed to meet him from my hidden position on the left flank, where I remained close to the action despite my projection. I caught he young man by the short cape of his armor. "Regin, stop."

"No. No, it's not happening. Father!"

"Regin, look at me," I screamed to pull his focus from the stomach-churning snaps of Hriedmar's ribcage as Gorr twisted to pull his heart straight out. "He's gone. He's lived. He's accepted his fate."

The boy shook like he'd been dipped in ice water as he muttered through his panic. "Father…F-Father…"

Only one distraction could bring him back down. A power I knew all too well. "Regin, think of your bride. Of Idunn. Where is she now?"

At the sound of her name, he blinked a few times. "Idunn?"

"Don't let grief be your end on the battlefield; let your beloved pull you out of it instead. Think of your future and run. Go find Freyr. It's time. Run." I shoved him toward the city to force his feet.

He kept his bright eyes on mine for a few eternal seconds before nodding. He couldn't save his father; Hriedmar was already gone. Regin's duty as a man had truly begun. And now, thanks to my redirection, his own children might someday thank him for retreating at that moment.

I exhaled as a wash of relief flowed through me. If I could save him, my own sons stood a chance.

Now that our position had been unveiled, the soldiers with the strongest weapons rushed for Gorr and sliced through as many of his sprouting tendrils as possible. The wound in his neck slowed him just enough to be vulnerable. I directed them as well as I could to avoid his sword, which he swiped erratically to contact anything. It would be a miracle if fewer than half of us perished in the end.

Every time the beast cried out with exhaustion for another missed blow, I felt ignited. He was wearing himself out by priming his body for crashes of armor that never arrived. It was too much of a distraction to keep up the Jotun façade, so I reverted to my normal appearance and dressed in my former armor, sans the cape. Gorr fixated on me with pinched brows.

Part of me wanted to challenge and defeat him alone. But this wasn't solely my fight. The Vanir deserved to defend their own lands. Who was I to claim stewardship over a place I barely had a voice in?

"You," Gorr hissed while pointing at me.

I stood in place, far enough away that his growing spines couldn't take me by surprise.

"You are no god. You're Jotun. I can feel it." He spat as he talked like the black still oozing down his chest.

"Can both not be true?" I opened my chest and stood proudly, raising my voice over the crashing swords and odd yells of people closing in. "Jotun I am, and I am God of Mischief. I am God of Lies, of Illusion, of Fire. And you, God of Hypocrisy as I've so named you, only seek to destroy the part of yourself that you can't stand to look at."

His grayish skin rippled as he breathed heavily, almost like he was clenching his jaw—but I saw no teeth, so was that even possible?

I evaded his weak strikes with smooth choreography. The power of the river in my veins made me faster, sharper, and more alert. No one could catch or surprise me; it was the unctuous taste of immortality.

Gorr exhausted himself further with every strike of his sword that failed to land. "I will end you!"

"Keep trying. You think the gods were to blame for your misfortune when that is not our purpose or our intent. The only pain you've lived through was brought on by yourself."

He became slightly more man-like the more I taunted him. "I watched my wife die. Watched her fade to nothing. Buried her and my daughter—the gods did nothing. I pleaded for nothing. Worshiped for nothing. All my life, I devoted each second to their glory, yet how do they answer for my status now?" He threw his right arm forward to bring his sword down strongly while yelling, "How do you answer for it?"

"What would I have done for you? Cure her? Feed your family? Slay your enemies?" I shook my head like a perfect, slow metronome, keeping his focus on me. "That isn't our purpose. The fact you would come here to slay all in this world and the next only proves your unworthiness to receive the help you craved. Even if what you ask was in my power, I would've denied you!"

In his rage, Gorr raised his right arm high to strike the ground, not too unlike my former brother and his hammer. One chance. One moment.

I rolled under his shadow and knelt with my hands above my head to catch his falling forearm, using all my strength to keep from being crushed. The instant my skin touched his, I poured every last ounce of disappointment, fear, and doubt into him, burning him with ice that spread quickly up his shoulder.

Gorr screeched with pain and his eyes nearly bulged from his face. He tried to pull his arm away from me, but I'd frozen myself to the ground as much as I attached myself to him. We were a statue of frost.

The Vanir seized the opportunity and attacked in a wave, including the last battalion of fighters that stayed back in the fortress with Freyr. Regin made quick work of calling them forth. Every one of them assaulted Gorr with snapping spells and shattered the spines that still exploded from his back in a mess of black. With every strike, the sentient creature in Gorr's veins squealed and writhed until it, too, was subdued by my ice.

"I might've denied you then, Gorr," I said, meeting his eyes squarely while he gulped every inhale, "but I won't deny you now. I know your pain. I know what it feels like to hope for a god's help and be ignored. Of feeling alone, of being lied to. But vengeance solves nothing. Pain begets more pain. You…you need peace." With a jerk, I snapped his right arm at the elbow and removed his sword.

He released a final wheeze. His still-exposed skin immediately dried. The last gasps of black hatred reached from the stump of his arm, but it couldn't reach the fallen sword.

"Be at peace. Find your wife and child." I felt my body slacken when I forced another blast of cold through my hands. The fuel the Vidar granted me from the fruit had been spent. His eyes froze over, though they continued to shine behind the thin sheet wrapping over his face.

I struggled to stand on my own, but I didn't accept any help when a few soldiers offered their arms to me. We couldn't leave his death to chance. I lifted the remnants of his sword high above him, letting the weight alone bring it down, slicing his head clean from the rest of him.

The sky cleared to the rich purple we were used to. The three moons watched over us; thanked us for living. Our future ahead, we'd proven our worth.

The Vanir applauded me, but I didn't remain on the field with them. I was anxious to return to the life with my Ginny. All I'd done was already a legend—what good would it do to leave her worrying?

I was Loki, son of Frigga, the Vanir's Jotun savior—and I'd proven that one need not be Aesir or Vanir to become a god.