Howard's ship approached the icy planet of Falligar, wings wobbling, engine rattling, dashboard spewing alarms. They hit the snow with some speed, but they had survived, if only barely. The engine coughed, sputtered, then caught fire.
"Uh," Howard stated, "I might need to check the engine. Toss me that parka, would ya?"
Windswept. Frigid. Chilling to the bone. Falligar was a wretched place, and Kratos' armor grew frosty in the breeze. Snow blinded them, obscuring Falligar, the behemoth god, his carcass slowly evaporating its divine spark, leaving bones as the only evidence that he had ever been.
"How long before we can fly again?" Kratos asked the pilot.
"Give me 'till morning," Howard announced, "And I'll have her purring like a mistake on a friday night."
"Eugh." Muttered Mimir. "From a duck, that is particularly vivid."
"It gives us time." Kratos said, changing the subject.
Asgardians. Ahau. Daevas. Gods from pantheons Kratos had no name for. All were here, all were dead. Their carcasses had lost their magic long ago, and had now become skeletal husks, the last clue to their divine status being the elaborate armor that clung to their bones.
"Oh no, Lady Sif." Mimir lamented. "I knew these Asgardians…some I knew from my youth. This is terrible."
"Perhaps they deserved their fate." Kratos snarled. "Those who followed Odin-"
"Not all who follow evil are evil," Mimir replied, "And not all who were evil in the past remain so. You should know that better than anyone. These were mothers and fathers, just like you."
Kratos said no more, choosing instead to inspect the damage. The colourful armors were cut clean through, incisions blackened by some form of primordial dark magic. The bones beneath were in the same condition, as if the weapon that had killed them had corrupted their divinity from the inside out.
"Can you explain this?" Kratos asked.
Mimir took time to answer. "Yes. But I thought it was over."
"What was over?"
"Thor said it was over!"
"What?!"
Mimir hesitated. "Gorr. The God Butcher. I- I should've put two and two together, but I just- couldn't have imagined he had been in hiding this whole time. How could Thor not tell us?"
"Head." Kratos had gotten fed up with Mimir's panic. Taking the head from his belt, Kratos looked into his confidante's eyes, and asked, "Tell me what happened."
Mimir cleared his throat as best as he could, having very little throat to clear. "I don't know the whole story. Thor confronted a god-killer in the ninth century, on Earth. He called himself Gorr. He captured Thor, tortured him for Asgard's location, but Thor escaped with the help of his mortal followers before he surrendered the information. Thor told us that Gorr was slain. I guess his pride overruled his honesty. That rash, stupid boy…"
As Mimir muttered his curses to the wind, Kratos noticed a shape, obscured by the blizzard. It was a figure with a winged crown and a cape, standing statuesque in the distance. "There."
Returning Mimir to his belt, Kratos pushed through the wind, but as he approached the figure, it soon became apparent that they were not standing, but hanging from a tree, dancing in the wind like chimes, arms limp, head tilted to one side.
The sober reality hit Mimir. "No…"
There, dressed in his signature helmet, hung the skeleton of Thor. The same wounds that slew the others marked his armor well, more gruesomely and more thoroughly than any of the others across the battlefield. Stormbreaker sat half-buried in the snow at its feet, shattered, reduced to tinder and pebbles. Words seemed to wriggle and writhe across the metal of his helmet, written in ink as black as the deepest void. To Kratos' confusion, the words were written in ancient Greek:
"Unworthy."
"No, no, no…" Mimir lamented. "I don't- I can't- ah…I-"
"What is this?" Kratos demanded, eyeing the Greek writings. Was this message intended for my eyes?
At the sight of Thor's corpse, Kratos wondered about Loki, and what he might be doing out there in the cosmos. He wondered where his son's journey might have brought him. He thought about Faye, and while he loved Lysandra and Calliope dearly, there was still room in his heart for his second wife- the woman who pulled him from hopelessness. He pondered his alternate self, who was given a fresh chance to make things right with Atreus, and hoped for their good fortune. Learning that an indiscriminate god-slayer had been wandering the cosmos for centuries, had brought its own concerns. Had he been dodging bullets, not even knowing they were ever there? Had Loki encountered this creature, and if so, had he survived?
Too many paths, too many possibilities. Fate was no longer the enemy, but had been replaced by aimless uncertainty. He could only hope each of them- Loki, Atreus, his own past self- had avoided this God Butcher in their own way. Otherwise, everything he had done for his son had been in vain. Out of respect, they took Thor down from the tree, buried him in the snow with what remained of Stormbreaker, and placed an SOS beacon nearby, so that the Asgardians might find him.
The night had come, and brought with it an even deeper, more aggressive cold. A nearby cave offered some shelter, and was large enough to provide garage space for Howard's machine. Kratos lit a fire with wood from weapon hilts, and pieces of splintered shield from the battlefield.
"Unworthy."
The words could have been written in any language from any of a billion-billion worlds, but it was written in ancient Greek. That was no coincidence. The question most pressing in Kratos' mind was, "What now?"
"Sorry." Mimir, his face basked in fiery glow, turned his glowing eyes towards Kratos. "I was miles away. What did you say?"
"Our only lead is dead." Kratos argued. "The trail is cold. What do you suggest?"
"I think," Mimir said, finding the words difficult. "I think I need to sleep on it, just to come to terms."
Kratos sat forward, closer to the fire. "I had forgotten."
"Ah, my time in Asgard was long ago." Mimir muttered. "I have good and bad memories of the lad."
"Tell me."
Mimir sighed. "What can I say you haven't heard? Odin hired me as Thor's teacher, among other things. Thor seemed to have been born with a good heart. He was noble. Glad to offer help. Though, he never learned to stop and think, and he never valued his education. I guess you could say being the teacher to an Asgardian prince wasn't easy. When you put your heart into something and your students think they always know better, when they never give back, you start to wonder why you bother. What could I do? He was the prince, and if he thought he wanted to skip class, well, bloody hell, he did. You just…start to get tired."
"You gave up on your lessons with Thor."
"I taught Thor well enough to keep Odin happy, but beyond that…maybe if I hadn't gotten complacent, maybe he would've learned not to let pride get the better of him. Maybe he would still be alive."
"And if you did all of these things, and if he still died on this planet, then what?"
Mimir pondered. "Then, likely as not, I'd still wonder what I could have done better."
"Is Thor not primarily responsible?" Kratos asked. "As you say, he was rash. Proud. Now he is dead. You alone could not have changed who he was."
"I suppose." Mimir reluctantly admitted, then, he grew angry. "This ends with Thor! We find this God Butcher, and stop them."
This was never about saving the gods, but if it impassioned Mimir, then so be it. Kratos poked at the fire, stoking the flames to conjure just a bit more heat, then tucked Mimir's head into a sleeping bag. Kratos tried to sleep, but there would be little rest on this frozen deathworld. While Kratos did not reciprocate Mimir's feelings for Thor, he considered that perhaps a gesture of respect for Mimir's grief was in order. Kratos dug through his belongings, hoping to find a trinket to offer Thor on his journey to Valhalla.
A shard of Greek pottery.
No.
A gorgon's eye, long expired of its magic.
No.
The Amulet of the Fates. Useless now.
No,
A wing, torn from the Boots of Hermes. Kratos took the golden wing, cradled it in his hands, and felt the weight of what was done.
No.
Then, he considered the Leviathan Axe- a symbol of war, of resistance against Asgard, built as a counterpart and rival to Mjolnir itself. Would it be a symbol of peace, or of betrayal, to offer it up as Thor's parting gift? Kratos thought about Faye, the axe's original owner, the wife he had lost to the Asgardian conquests so long ago. Perhaps, just as he had let go of the hope to guide Loki through his youth, to a better future, perhaps it was time to let Faye go as well. No. Not let go. That wasn't the word.
His mind turned to the Temple of Fate, and the chance he had given his past self to protect Atreus from Odin's conquests, to set himself on a better path. Somewhere out in the multiverse, there was another Kratos, with another Atreus, with another Leviathan axe, hiding away in the norse countryside, hunting, learning, who knew Faye as mother, and not as a thousand-year-old memory. This axe belonged to that man, that Kratos, not the one who had chosen Lysandra. Who had chosen Calliope. Let go? No. He wasn't letting go of Faye. He was finally, for the first time in two-thousand, years, ready to move on from grief. This axe was just another cut in a wound that had spent a thousand years trying to heal, and if he kept holding on, blood would flow from that memory, forever.
Minir's words had struck a chord. These Asgardians, who had died on this field, they were brothers. Sisters. Fathers. Mothers. Daughters. Sons. Perhaps it was also time to let go of his hatred for all Asgardians, and to accept Thor not just as an Avenger, not just as an Asgardian, but as a son to a father, taken from the world by another god slayer. At the thought, Kratos grew furious. This God Butcher had restarted a cycle what Kratos had tried so hard to end. Somewhere, at some point, the violence, the rending of families, had to end. It was up to Kratos to stop it.
Kratos stood before Thor's grave, SOS beacon blinking in the mounting snow, Leviathan Axe in hand. There were Kratos' last words to the Asgardian:
"Thor Odinson. Hear me. Your death brings me no joy. Nor does it grieve me. You are my son's brother, and you are Odin's son. Family. Enemy. By your father's hands have I known grief. By your hands have I known a brother in arms. I do not know what you are to me, but I know that you are a warrior, and you have died as a warrior. This weapon was never meant for your hands. But things have changed. You are not your father. May you wield it with strength. May it be a weapon when needed, a tool when required, and a friend when everyone- when everyone else is gone."
Kratos removed some of the snow and placed the axe carefully beside Thor's hands. Kratos remained by Thor's grave until the morning, and by the rise of the twilight sun, Howard had completed his ship's repairs. With a whack of his wrench against the fuselage, the engine sputtered to life.
"She's ready to fly!" Howard announced, his beak the only thing jutting from his parka. "Probably good for another couple jumps, anyway. Where are we headed next?"
Kratos plucked Mimir from his sleeping bag, but even that did not wake him. "Mimir."
Mimir's eyes shot open, "Oh! I, uh- sorry. Terrible dreams."
Kratos was no stranger to those kinds of nights, and he nodded knowingly. "Have you insight as to our next steps?
"Oh. I've given it some thought. The writings on Thor's helmet. They were written in Greek, yeah?"
"What of it?"
"Well, it's either meant as a personal message to you, OR…"
"Or…"
"You aren't going to like this next bit."
"I already do not like it."
Mimir's eyes squinted. "Maybe that message was meant for all Olympians. Which means Gorr's next stop is-"
"Olympus." Kratos grumbled.
"I think that ship has sailed, brother." Mimir replied. "I was going to say Omnipotence CIty."
Kratos frowned. "What?"
"You- you don't know about Omnipotence City?" Mimir seemed earnestly shocked. "Jeepers, the Olympians really did have trust issues if they didn't even tell their own God of War about Omnipotence City."
More lies, even after all these millennia.
"They must have kept it secret from you, in case you went rogue." Mimir reasoned. "It seemed they were wise to do so. If any Olympians survived, they would have sought sanctuary there. I'm sorry, I thought you knew about it."
Why would I feel remorse, or surprise, by just another Olympian betrayal? "How do we get there?"
"The city is hidden from the mortal world, but there are only a few ways to get there." Mimir eplained. "One way is to be invited by a god, but I doubt that's an option for us."
Kratos ignored the slight and asked, "Is there a way?"
Mimir sighed. "Maybe, but it's not a certainty."
Kratos turned his attention to their pilot. "Duck! We have our destination."
"Great!" Howard replied. "Is it warmer there?"
"Much warmer." Mimir replied.
It would only be a few hours after their departure that the Silver Surfer would arrive over Falligar. The Surfer's connection to the cosmos granted him the ability to feel the balance of all things. So much death. So much tarnished divinity. With so many gods dead, the balance had become skewed towards chaos. It was bad enough when Athena died. Now, countless children of the primordial energies had been reduced to wisps of aimless consciousness, spread across the cosmos, without a guide to help them understand. It was chaos.
Kratos was here. I can sense him.
Soaring over the battlefield, over corpses and scattered weapons, the Surfer noticed the blinking light of an SOS beacon, barely visible beneath the snow, and could sense Thor's Asgardian echoes there; not white god, not quite mortal. Asgardians were a strange species that way. Even Odin admitted they were not divine, yet they still struggled in the same battles, took up the same causes as the divine beings. They might not have held the primordial spark as the Olympians, but as far as the Surfer was concerned, the death of an Asgardian was a loss as great as the death of any divine being, and deserved just as much grief.
I am sorry I did not make it sooner, the Surfer thought, I will avenge you, Odinson. You have my word.
Then the Surfer noticed another energy source…Jotunn magic, hidden just beneath the white. Removing the snowy layer from Thor's body, the Surfer discovered the last piece of evidence to cement speculation into truth: The Leviathan Axe lay where Thor was slain.
"Kratos."
A creature like you doesn't deserve mercy. I will find you.
And I will kill you.
Leaving the planet, the Surfer muttered under his breath, "Monster."