Once more, it's one of these moments where I questioned what the fuck my life was.
Not only were my expectations at the Mythological Creature Ratatoskr completely dashed, but now this obese squirrel was asking me for an Autograph.
"…..sure." I forced a smile, taking the paper and pen from him before signing my name.
I never thought someone would ask me for my autograph. And I certainly never thought the first person to ask for my autograph would be an obese squirrel.
Regardless, I wanted to keep on the good side of this thing since we were here seeking its help. Being able to literally travel anywhere within the Norse Realms by its hand would be…..indispensable.
The Squirrel held up the paper happily in its hands before shoving it back into its…..pouch.
Why did a squirrel have a Kangaroo pouch?
And how was it not bulging from whatever it was keeping inside? Because it pulled out a bunch of random things and tossed them to the side while looking through it.
There was a toaster laying on the branch of the World Tree now.
Of which, the Squirrel quickly grabbed all its shit and promptly shoved them back inside his…..pouch.
[I have a thought.]
Regarding the squirrel?
[Yeah, about his pouch. Just wanted you to consider something.]
What's that?
[Do you think it's moist inside the pouch?]
…..Fuck you for putting that thought in my head.
[Have fun with that]
Dick.
"So, Odin and I had a request for you." I clapped my hands, forcing myself to move on to the pressing topic.
"You need….my help?" Ratatoskr looked excited for some reason.
"….quick question, how do you know me, exactly?" I really needed an answer for this.
"How could I not!? I loved how you shit on Indra! And then with everything else, you're amazing!" He squealed excitedly. "It's one thing to shit talk someone online, but you just run your mouth in person to anyone and you give no shits."
Oh…..well then. "Wait, Online? You're online?"
The Squirrel snorted disdainfully. "What, do you think just because I'm a squirrel I don't have a phone and internet!?"
"No, I mean…" I paused, looking at Odin. "Odin, what the fuck?"
"What?" The Old God grunted.
"How did that Valkyrie not know who we were, nor the literal army of Einherjar and various people?"
"Do you think everyone wastes their time on that crap like the obese Squirrel?" Odin scoffed. "Besides, only a small portion of people in Asgard ever pays attention to stuff outside of the Nine Realms."
Actually, that lines up with what I learned over in the Heavenly Realm when visiting Nuwa.
"Fuck you, Odin."
"Fuck you, fat squirrel!"
"Don't call me fat, you cyclops!"
"I only have one eye and It's not enough to see how fat you are!"
"Stop it!" I kicked Odin off the Branch, letting him hit the one below.
"Hah!" The Squirrel laughed. "Eat shit, Odin."
"Right, ignore him. He's a bit ornery because a friend of his passed."
"Huh, that talking Head, right?" Ratatoskr muttered.
"How'd you know?" Odin was quick to rejoin us, and his expression turned serious.
Ratatoskr trembled as Odin's singular eye narrowed onto him. "Do you think there's anything that happens around here that I don't know about?" He snorted. "Yggdrasil is my home, All-Father. Just as Asgard is your home." He grumbled. "You all seem to forget that."
"Sorry for intruding on your home then." I politely apologized.
The Obese Squirrel gave me an odd look. "You're nicer than I thought you'd be."
"Thank you?"
"What do you want?" He finally asked.
"Ragnarök is here." I stated.
The squirrel rolled its eyes. "It's been here for a long time. Everyone else finally caught up to that fact. What's your point?"
"We're trying to stop it, we need your help. Loki already took the initiative and we're far behind him. With your help, we can move around without him noticing. Will you join our side?"
"You want me to ally with you?" He made some Squirrely sounds, almost like a chittering. He then looked at Odin. "Obviously it's your idea, because that old bastard would never suggest it."
"You're damn right! I already told him, you're a damn coward, you'll just hide away as everything burns down around you!"
"I'm not a coward, I just have a healthy fear of dying and bodily harm!" He shot back. "And you're still just mad that I snuck into Frigga's wardrobe and stole her panties!"
"I should have skewered you to the damn tree, you perverted Rat!"
"Look who's talking, you old pervert!" He roared in return. "Besides, you did throw your spear at me, you just missed. Unavoidable spear my furry fat ass!"
"You want to try it again!?"
I wanted to question many things here, but first and foremost. "Wait, you escaped his spear? Like he actually tried to kill you and missed with it?"
"Yup." Ratatoskr looked smug.
"He can sink into the Branches of Yggdrasil!" Odin tried to defend himself.
That's...actually very impressive.
"Anyways, Are you in? We could really use your help."
"Why bother, it's not like –"
"Alright." Ratatoskr agreed.
"….he's going to agree." Odin scowled. "He's doing it just to spite me."
"No, that's just a side benefit." The Squirrel admitted. "Frankly, if it was just you, One-Eye, and Asgard trying to fight it, I wouldn't have bothered. And that's not even considering the friends that Loki brought with him. Heh, even if you brought outside help, I'd probably just watch from the side still."
"And you trust me that much?" I felt honestly flattered now.
"I trust you to fuck up whatever plans Loki has."
…..less flattered now. "That's what you're hedging your bets on?"
"I followed you a lot when you popped up, and every time you make the news, it's because you're fucking up someone's day. Doesn't take a genius to see a pattern there. And it's not like I want Loki to burn everything down. Sure, I'd laugh as Asgard went up in flames, but it'd still suck for everything to go away."
"You are a strange creature." I muttered.
"I get that a lot." He didn't seem to care one bit. "But I want payment." His little claws tapped together.
"I'll give you a pair of Freyja's Panties." Odin offered.
"Deal."
I let out a sigh, palming my face. I should be happy that it was this easy, but at the same time, I'm just embarrassed by proxy.
"Also, I'm not actually fighting anyone." He stated. "I'm not a fighter. I don't like getting hurt." He said without a hint of shame. "I'm just your guide, or whatever. If that's fine, then we got a deal. Otherwise, I'm gonna go Hibernate until everything is over."
"That's fine, I didn't expect you to start brawling." It would be a fun sight. "But….not to be offensive, can you still move around well enough…?"
Ratatoskr looked down at himself and pondered for a moment. "Give me a second." He dragged his jiggling body back into his nest, disappearing from sight.
Without prompt, the most gut-wrenching sounds emanated out. It sounded like a cat was throwing up another cat while a third cat screamed.
After about ten minutes of this, Ratatoskr reemerged from his nest, only, there was something off about him.
Primarily, it was the fact that he looked normal now.
Well, normal for a Squirrel that was bigger than a person. But normal in the sense that he wasn't a jiggling mass of fat any longer.
"What.the.fuck." I looked at Odin, and he had the exact same look as me.
"I thought I knew a lot. But it's times like this that I realize my knowledge is lacking in many areas." Odin whispered.
"What are you staring at me like that for?" The Squirrel in question seemed confused.
"Were you hiding a Giant in your stomach, and you decided to throw him up?" I blinked.
The Squirrel scoffed. "Did you think I was fat because I wanted to be?"
"Yes." Odin said without a second thought.
"Fuck you, I said I was getting ready to Hibernate, the fuck you think that meant?"
"Normal Squirrels hide nuts for the winter." I pointed out.
"Do I look like a normal fucking Squirrel?" He huffed. "No, I was getting ready to Hibernate until the next Epoch, you dunce. That means I needed to store all my stuff otherwise it'd be destroyed when everything burned down! Where do you think I would do that when I would have to wait for the next World Tree to grow!?"
Eww….
"That makes sense, but at the same time, that's absurd." I said. "Are you saying that you would survive Yggdrasil dying and being reborn with the next iteration of the Nine Realms?"
The thing about Norse Cosmology is that it works in a cycle. Everything would end here, the Gods would die, the Tree would burn down, and then the next Yggdrasil would be born with a new host of Gods.
"The Tree is my mother, do you think she would leave me hanging?" He scoffed. "I'm her favorite son, Y'know?"
"So you normally go inside your mom?"
"Really, the person fucking their Grandmother is going to make a joke about that?' He deadpanned.
"Touche." I accepted. "Shall we get going?"
"Wait, I need one more thing!" He held a little claw of his up to stop me, he then reached into his…pouch and rummaged again, pulling out black color tie of all things. As in, the article of clothing. He fumbled with it before getting it loosely around his head. "Now I'm good to go!" He threw a thumbs up my way.
"…..wonderful." I squeezed out.
Odin had a shit-eating grin on his face as he looked my way. "If you're done fan-boying, we got work to do. I need you to take us to the lowest roots, below even Hel."
"Where Níðhöggr is?" Ratatoskr asked. "I feel bad. Since I was getting ready to Hibernate, I sort of neglected my duties."
"Duties? You have duties?" This was the first I heard of this.
He nodded. "I usually go down there to insult and piss off Níðhöggr at least once a week."
"..."
Why did I expect anything else?
"Let's go, we wasted enough time." Odin turned serious. "We don't know what Loki's planning, but we need to be quick to counter it."
"If you're talking about the Roots, he definitely did something there. I was too scared to get close, but I can feel it through the branches, there's something bad going on down there. It was one of the reasons I was about to bail." Ratatoskr informed us. "I'll take you down, but no way I'm actually going down into the roots themselves."
"Fine, you coward. Just take us there." Odin grumbled.
"I'm not a coward!"
"Ignore him, let's head out."
"Whatever, follow me. And keep up!" He bolted down the side of the Tree. And he was surprisingly fast, or not so surprisingly. He was literally a giant Squirrel, so I suppose he had the same characteristics.
I actually had to use a Burst of Shunpo to get back on his heels as he started moving.
Odin wasn't far behind, catching up rather quickly.
"Jump forward on my mark." He said, not giving room for an argument. "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, Jump!"
I barely had time to register it before I took a leap forward, matching his pace, we should have merely landed upon the trunk of the Tree, but instead, we sunk into it, almost similar to what he does.
It felt sort of similar to taking the Bifrost from before, it was as if we were pulled to another section of the World Tree, nearly instantaneously.
It was certainly a trippy experience.
And it popped us right out on another end only a moment or two later. Ratatoskr hit the ground running so to speak, but Odin and Myself stumbled to get back up.
I looked up and the Sun was now gone.
As a matter of fact, I wondered what the Sun even was within the Norse Cosmology. It was as if we were in a whole other Universe, was it a reflection of our Sun, or was it simply the concept of the Norse's sun superimposed onto their Cosmology and hung in the sky?
"Over here!" Ratatoskr shouted, after sniffing around. "Quick."
Once more, we followed up along a large branch, and as it should have ended, instead, another branch seemed to swing down just in time for us to run across, and it kept moving as we held onto it, afraid to fall off.
"Get ready to let go….now."
We fell down what felt like hundreds of feet, hitting a soft cushion of leaves, rolling off onto another Branch that swayed gently in an invisible breeze. The Sun had returned at this point, making me realize we had crossed over several thresholds and perhaps different realms entirely.
"Whew, we almost didn't make it! Saved us probably an hour or so." Ratatoskr chirped happily. "That branch won't swing around again for a while."
"That was…certainly something."
"Vanaheim, through Niflheim, and now we should be near Jotunheim." Odin muttered. "It annoys me that he's actually so skilled. If we took the paths I knew, it would have taken at least half a day to get this far."
"That's right, I'm good." The Squirrel threw up his hands, praising himself smugly.
"Why all the….." I swept my hands around. "Is this normally how you travel? I thought you just go anywhere you want."
"Do you think you can copy what I do?" Ratatoskr snorted. "I'm just helping you both get through passages that won't kill you."
I suppose that made sense.
His head suddenly jerked and he started sniffing again. "Alright, got another one about to open, get ready."
Well, let's go.
[***]
The three of us practically slid out of a hole in the World Tree, nearly falling off the edge. A massive tentacle reached through after us, but the passage we went through suddenly snapped shut, and the appendage fell to the ground and started wiggling as the thing's blood spat everywhere.
We both looked at Ratatoskr.
"What? Even I don't know everything about these pathways, I had no idea it would open up in the ocean." He defended himself.
"I was wondering why you were giggling right before we went in that last one." Odin took his hat off, squeezing the water out of it.
I cast a few spells, drying myself off.
"Yeah, yeah anyways, we're here. And this is where I leave cause there's no way I'm getting involved with what's happening down there."
"We're here?" I looked around. It was definitely dark and murky, the Sun was not shining one bit, only the faintest ambient light coming from high above, but otherwise, a thick shroud of gloom hung over everything.
"Yeah, just keep going that way." He pointed with one of his hands. "But Ratatoskr out." He threw up his claw. "And it was fun, come visit if you wanna hang out or something. I don't really have any friends coming to visit."
"Thanks for your help, Ratatoskr." I offered my sincere thanks.
"Haha, that's right, the great Ratatoskr helped you. I hope you remember this, Odin. I'm going to hold this over your head forever." The squirrel cackled as it disappeared back into the World Tree.
"Glad that's over." Odin grunted.
"Nice work."
"Thanks, I was worried I played it up too much." Odin grinned.
"I think that sold it pretty well." I offered my compliments. "How much of it was bullshit and how much of it was actually hating Ratatoskr?"
"Eh, 50/50. How'd you realize I was leaning into it?"
"I don't think you'd go that hard if there were important stakes. Any other time, sure. But when your home is in danger and Ratatoskr can help, I think you'd be the kind of person to swallow your pride in a heartbeat. So, if you intentionally riled him up and argued with him, it's obvious you were doing it on purpose to skew his decision in my favor." Sort of like a play on good cop, bad cop.
Get Ratatoskr to spite Odin and help me.
Odin just hummed, looking down. The Tree Trunk now splintered off into various thick roots and plunged into the abyss.
"So, I didn't ask before, but didn't we kill Níðhöggr? You mentioned him several times like he's still alive. And you also mentioned that he comes back every now and then, so I just wanted to understand."
"Right, you probably don't know. Thing is, I thought we managed to kill him for good last time, but obviously that wasn't true. Níðhöggr was born amongst these roots, and then it turned around and parasitized itself to the World Tree itself. To make it short, the Níðhöggr you fought, while being Níðhöggr, wasn't the entirety of the thing. The trade off for its sort of 'immortality' is that it's….connected to the Tree, literally. It splits off a good portion of itself to escape and do what it wants, but it has to leave the majority of itself behind to continue to rebirth."
"How strong is it normally?"
"Mmm, less than the Heavenly Dragons, around the same as Tiamat I would guess." Odin stroked his beard. "But it can't bring that kind of strength to bear unless it wants to give up its immortality. So you don't need to worry there."
"That's still strong."
"It is." Odin nodded. "There's a reason the Dragon is so feared."
A Dragon King, and among the strongest of their numbers, that was a level that most Gods didn't even reach.
We began to descend further downwards into the roots, and very quickly a subtle miasma began to set amidst the surroundings.
It felt wrong, out of place.
"Odin…"
"Yeah, I feel it too brat. This…..this isn't something that belongs." His voice was soft, but his expression hardened. The grip on his stick tightened as we continued to venture forth.
Ten, maybe twenty minutes as we walked, faintly we could hear the roars and cries of a Dragon vibrate throughout the gloomy mists.
"What is this…" Odin put a hand on one of the roots. There were black spots, permeating various spots. "This…..is this what you spoke of, Old Friend?" He whispered. "Something is poisoning the World Tree."
"Could it be Níðhöggr? He's a Poison Dragon…"
"No." Odin shook his head. "Besides being utterly idiotic to destroy his own means of revival, he is a part of the World Tree, it would go against his instincts to harm it, even in his most crazed and destructive state. Something malicious is at work here."
The roars were more frequent as we got closer, and their intensity was increasing at certain intervals.
The miasmic mists pushed away as we got just a bit further in, a bit of a clearing opening up.
Immediately, we could see what the commotion was.
Odin wasn't lying when he said that Níðhöggr was rebirthed from the World Tree. I just didn't think he meant it literally. The Dragon was half pushed out of one of the ends of a Root….it was like the Root was giving birth to it.
Part of it was still sort of….attached and looked like an extension of the root itself. I don't think the Dragon was fully aware thus yet, but that was probably for the best, as the others present were doing….something.
It was not just Níðhöggr down here.
As soon as we saw, so too did the people down here notice our intrusion.
The two massive figures, one of which was pushing a strange object into the forehead of the half-birthed Níðhöggr.
They froze at our sudden arrival, as we also did upon seeing them.
I recognized the first. Large and imposing, a particularly dangerous Scythe sitting nearby. The faint waft of Divinity that pulsated with is every action.
Kronos, the Titan King, was doing something to the semi-birthed Níðhöggr.
There was another gigantic figure at his side, perhaps a tad shorter than him, but still befitting the title of titan.
He wore simmering armor that was seemingly made of sunlight, bright enough that I could barely make out his physical features. And at his side was an equally bright sword that also appeared to be condensed from the sun's rays.
And based on what Hades said about who escaped Tartarus, I could guess who it was as well.
Hyperion, the Titan of Light. Father of Helios, the Sun Titan.
Kronos stopped what he was doing, allowing me to get a better look at the object he was trying to force into Níðhöggr. It was a box of some design, and it gave off an extremely eerie feeling. It was already half-merged with the beast.
And I was reminded of the words that Mimir spoke referring to a Box long forgotten.
{You must destroy that Box or stop what they're doing.} My Zanpakutō spoke within my soul. {It is of utmost importance.} Even as he spoke, I felt something I hadn't for a long time as the Spear within my ring vibrated in place as if to agree with him.
…..why did it suddenly give me an ominous feeling.
"That Trickster God is going to be upset. He thought you would have been to Asgard by now." Kronos spoke with a laugh.
"Well, I just missed you so much, I couldn't help but come and visit." I forced a smile.
"Haha, Hyperion, see? This is the Mortal I spoke about." Kronos chuckled. "Bold and courageous even in front of us!"
"I see." Hyperion eyed me warily. "I suggest we remove him as quickly as possible."
"What a time to be alive! Even my trusted General recognizes a mere Mortal as a threat!" Kronos continued to laugh, slapping his knee. "And you as well, Odin. I hope our previous encounter did not sour you to our presence."
"Cheap shotting bitch, let's see how you handle me without jumping me with your jailbait cellmate." Odin slammed his walking stick onto the ground, and it transformed into the Divine and Golden Spear. "Two on Two, I'm going to teach you a lesson your Daddy should have gone with his belt a long time ago."
Kronos frowned, looking at us both. "I'm sorry, All-Father, but I'll have to reject your offer. For you see, it is not two on two."
As he spoke, the ground shook with a looming presence approaching.
The Miasmic Mists began to part as two glowing eyes emerged from behind them.
"You shouldn't have come here, All-Father. You may have lived a little bit longer." The Titan spoke again.
Out from the mists it appeared in all its terrible glory.
Odin tensed up, and his one eye widened in realization. Perhaps the strange miasma that filled this place obscured its presence until now. And there was no longer the question of where it was hiding since we learned of its escape.
The Monstrous Wolf Fenrir finally made its appearance.
[***]
A/N
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