Last Thrall of Asgard
Contents & Kinks Overview
The entirety of this book contains: Master/Slave Dynamic (dubious consent due to power imbalance), Orgasm Denial, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, Roleplay, Role Reversal, Submissive Play (pretend Master/Slave), Rough Play, Spanking, Anal Douching, Anal Training, Size Kink, Unintentional Poisoning, Bondage, Breath Play, Edging, Praise Kink, Food Play, Rimming, Cross-Dressing, Threesome, Acrotomophilia (sexual interest/practice with an amputee), Dendrophilia (sexual interest/practice with a tree), Blindfold Play, Suspension, Domination Play, Sounding, Swinging, Shifted/Werewolf-like Sex, Knotting, Switching, Edging, Intersex Rep, Mirror Use, Docking, and minor Tail Play.
Enjoy!
Prologue: Ragnarök
LOKI
Odin stood within the archway to the gates of Asgard, barring my entrance, in the old man guise he wore too often, like I wasn’t even worthy of his true self.
“You won’t let me cross the threshold? But it’s all over! It’s all new again! We’re all new again!”
“By all means,” Odin sneered, “dare to walk these streets that you sullied and see if you are welcomed by any of its citizens.”
I could see some of the lesser gods beyond, pausing in their strolls and whispering to one another as they watched us, even if most were too far away to hear anything.
“Do you think we were all made new again when you are not whole?” Odin reached for my cheek, but I turned to avoid his touch. “Coward,” he snarled. “I fought, researched for ages, gave up part of myself to prevent Ragnarök, and all you needed to do was resist your nature for a single moment. You could not even do that for your brethren, and punishment taught you nothing. Seeing the slaughter it all led to taught you nothing. Be gone from my gates.” He spun, walking back through the archway into Asgard with nary a look back.
“You’ll forgive me eventually!” I called after him. “You always do! You all always do!”
Odin paused, but he didn’t turn or look over his shoulder as he said, “How amusing. That didn’t sound like an apology to earn forgiveness or even admit culpability for what you did.”
Any words in answer went stale on my tongue as he continued away from me. An apology, any admittance of my guilt, sat dormant, rotting, and had since the moment Balder’s throat closed, and he mouthed those awful words to me.
I forgive you.
Despite what I had yelled at Odin, I’d known then that none of the others ever would. Why bother asking for something one can never have? Only Balder could ever be so sentimental. That’s why all the other gods loved him. But as for me…
I had no desire for lesser gods to watch me walk away down Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, to wherever I intended to go next. I didn’t know where I should go, not until I turned my back on the gates and transported myself to the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree.
I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. I couldn’t wait and let myself become a bad memory all the other gods longed to forget. I needed to know. I needed to know, and so I stormed into the hollow of the tree where the Norns, my Jotun sisters, weaved the tapestry of life and knew where all threads of fate led.
Urd, the wizened, with white hair in a stump of a braid over one shoulder, dressed in violet with bronze stitching.
Verdandi, the mother, with hair like the reddest parts of mine in three braids down her back, wearing blue stitched in silver.
And Skuld, the maid, with the most and longest of braids, all black, in a bright red dress stitched in gold.
“Tell me,” I demanded without so much as a greeting or forced smile. “Tell me what comes next. Tell me what the future holds for the god of mischief.”
Then the three sisters each looked at me and answered.
(yes there is more! because this prologue is so short, you get chapter 1 too)
Chapter 1: The Master
OLI
You will want him desperately, but there is nothing you can do to ever make him want you the same way back.
I might loathe that the most I could ever amount to in life was being a thrall to an unfairly luckier noble-born family, but at least I could feel like I had power while making their first-born son moan for a taste of me.
“Fuck, Oli. I need to be inside you.”
“Then take me,” I demanded.
Well, as much as any slave could demand and expect to be given what they wanted.
You are too beautiful to be a thrall, I’d been told. By others but often by Thorsten. Following the old beliefs, a slave was expected to be ugly, brutish, proven by some deformity cursed upon them by the gods that they deserved their predetermined class.
Horseshit. There were plenty of ugly nobles, and plentier still attractive free people and thralls. But nobles could take what they wanted, the beautiful among the lower classes included, ensuring attractive progeny through the people they claimed. They made the misconception true through brute force and luck of their own births.
Surely, the gods had nothing to do with it, if they ever even existed.
Thorsten thrust his hands up under my tunic. He had me hoisted on top of the altar. He’d already tossed aside my boots and torn away my belt, madly grinding our bulges together through the wool of our trousers. “Odin’s beard, you feel good,” he grunted.
We weren’t here for prayers or offerings, but the names of the old gods still had a chance to spill from our lips.
Thorsten crowded in closer, bringing our mouths near enough to share breath. I just wanted to fuck already, but he liked to take his time, despite lamenting not yet being inside me.
I was lucky for a thrall. Being handsome and fit was the reason Thorsten chose me again and again over others, the reason I wasn’t worked too hard but allowed gentler tasks to maintain my beauty for my masters to look upon.
And to indulge in.
I had been an indulgence for others over the years, but keeping Thorsten interested had cultivated a possessiveness in him that eventually made me his alone. It was better that way. Predictable. Safe.
Because if I hadn't been handsome and fit enough to secure that, my plight would have been worse.
I kept my stomach muscles taut as Thorsten divested me of my tunic. Leaning back meant my head rested against the tree. My tailbone was already sore from the altar’s stone surface, but a little discomfort was worth the coming burn of being filled. Of being wanted. Of having some—any—meaning to my life.
“Take me!” I bucked against him, as he loomed over me, pinning me to slab and tree. Defiling the altar as often as I tended to it was its own comfort, because if the gods existed and chose to give me this life…
Fuck them.
Fuck them all.
Hardly anyone worshiped the old gods anymore. Thorsten’s family went to a Christian church, yet they ordered their beautiful thrall Oli to tend to the altar in the wood, a stone slab beneath the eldest tree, with a trench around it, save the central path. Runes decorated the stone from generations of the same family line carving the names of the gods they worshiped. It was easy to see which were most venerated among the Aesir, the warlike and order driven gods like Thor and Odin; the Vanir, who communed more with nature, like Freyr and Freya; and the Jotun, who represented chaos, like Loki. But even those names hadn’t been re-carved by Thorsten’s ancestors in generations. I doubted he and his family even knew the stories.
I did. I didn’t believe, mind you, but besides a good fuck in the wood, stories were a thrall’s only comfort, and those about the gods were some of the most intriguing.
And disturbing.
“I will take you when I wish to,” Thorsten growled.
To Thorsten’s credit, he was one of the handsomer nobles. My same age of twenty-one, he was tall, strongly built, blue-eyed, and sported a short but well-groomed beard and blond top fringe with a shorn back and sides.
My ginger hair was similar but longer on top, enough to reach my shoulders if left free, though more often braided and tied back. Maintaining a beard was too much hassle for a slave, so I had but a dusting of reddish scruff amid a smattering of faint freckles. My eyes were like the brightest of blue-green dyes, like teal seawater on a sunny day—or so Thorsten had spouted the first time he’d bedded me. Now the best I got was, “I need your hole, Oli. Come,” and I obeyed.
How much more romantic he’d been when he didn’t know the divide between us. Age fixed that. Now Thorsten knew I was but property to be used, and use me he did. He could have had me unwilling, but I did want it. I wanted to be wanted, and because I wanted it, it felt more like my choice and less like something I had to endure.
Thorsten’s tunic strained with a heave of his breath, and he dove down to suck on my nipples. He kissed and licked a path to my navel while deft fingers untied my trousers in tandem to free my cock. Perhaps I did have some luck other than beauty. I was lucky Thorsten liked the taste of cock almost as much as he enjoyed spearing me with his.
He took me into his mouth, and I groaned, gripping the back of his head for an anchor. I wanted to be speared. I wanted more than his mouth. I felt empty every day; I needed something to fill me.
But before I could ask, order, beg, Thorsten shoved down his trousers and pulled off me. I coiled my arms around his neck as soon as he stepped back between my legs. Reclining on the altar, I wrapped my ankles around his waist. This was why he had wanted to wet me, for the slick slide as our cocks collided.
“Faster! Please—”
“No,” Thorsten spat in his noble voice, the voice of my master owning me.
I was pinned, locked in position with his arms around my back. Squeezing Thorsten’s neck, I struggled in vain to buck upward and entice him to go faster. “Please. I need it. Let me come, and you can fuck me—”
“I am going to fuck you. But I decide when, how fast, how deep, and if you get to come at all.”
Fuck. So much for his earlier urgency. We were friends once, grew up together like brothers, but sometimes I hated him for learning what slave and master meant. For becoming the lesser of so many evils instead of something good.
“Hush now,” Thorsten said, a low rumble as antagonizing as the grind of our cocks. “I want you shaking before I breach you. You like it that way, don’t you, Oli? Coming undone, begging to release while I drive you toward madness?”
Yes, I liked that, and I hated that he knew it.
“Tell me, Oli.”
I kept my lips sealed, so Thorsten reached between us to squeeze our cocks. He squeezed them together, but didn’t grind, didn’t move.
“Tell me, thrall,” he spat like a master again.
“Y-yes.” I shuddered. I liked it because being driven to madness meant less time and faculties to consider my fate. “I like it. Take me as you want, however you want, but please, please let me come.”
Slowly, Thorsten shifted so his tip teased my entrance. I didn’t need to be prepared. The constant use of my hole made it compliant on a whim, and Thorsten was wet from our grinding, the saliva he’d left on me having mixed with our prereleases. He dragged his tip along my puckered skin, but only ever barely pushed.
“Please. Please, Thorsten—”
“No,” he said again, tormenting me with that slide of skin. “Soon, but only when I deem it time.”
He grazed his fingers down my jawline to my chin. Then up to my lips. I didn’t need to be told. I opened my mouth and sucked his fingers in with fervor. Once he removed them, making way for his mouth, he kissed me with a claiming plunge of his tongue. I was his to be used, and as much as I resented it, I needed it. What else did I have in this life?
When he pulled his tongue from our tangle, cock tip still rubbing against my hole, I tried to push down and bring him inside me.
“Not yet.” He moved his cock away and reached down with the hand I’d wetted.
“Please—”
“Hush,” he silenced me again.
I could do nothing but spread my legs wider to accommodate and take his fingers as deeply as he’d allow. First was the tease of one, circling my hole. A second traced my rim when the first slipped inside. Then Thorsten’s thumb followed suit when the second joined the first. That was where he kept them, a slow, slow thrust of two fingers, while his thumb rubbed along my rim.
I moaned.
Thorsten held me with one arm, nearly suspended above the altar, enjoying every whimper and whine, while his other hand played with me, knowing I could do nothing, would do nothing to stop the measured twists of his fingers that were never quite deep enough to satisfy.
He licked up my throat.
“P-please,” I tried again, rocking against his hand. “Now, right now, please...”
“That needy for me, are you?” Slowing his fingers, Thorsten dragged their tips along the intimate curves inside of me.
I squirmed, bucking helplessly in response, but it wasn’t the right angle, rocked back on the altar as I was. Only Thorsten could speed things along the way I wanted, the way I needed.
“Say it.”
“Y-yes… I need you. I need your cock. Please.”
Thorsten chuckled, low and menacing. With him only using his fingers, it felt like the edge was always out of reach. Relief was a mirage, right within my grasp if only I believed a little harder, was patient a little longer, but then it was gone, vanishing like smoke, and leaving me desperate for reprieve.
“P-p-plea—”
On my thousandth appeal, Thorsten retracted his fingers. He had me shaking just like he’d wanted.
I whimpered, but I didn’t beg. I would not beg. Not again.
I waited.
“Good boy, Oli,” Thorsten said. “So good for your master.”
He aligned his cock and drove it inside me with a slam.
The heavens opened—or might as well have—but it was only the sun breaking through a sky full of clouds.
Finally.
Thorsten thrusted inside me hard and deep, lifting me from the altar completely with the force of his pumps, so that only my back against the tree offered leverage. The depth and friction made my insides feel full. Hot. Whole. In that moment, I almost, almost felt free.
I wasn't. And I never would be. The best I could hope for in life was exactly what I had and only that. The mindlessness of having Thorsten take me was as close to free as I'd ever know.
Thorsten’s shadow loomed, blocking the newly unleashed sun. He might be my master, but I had him just as captive as he fucked me, looking down at my writhing like nothing else in all of Midgard could sate him. That made me feel freer too, because it was power, however feeble and fleeting. This was the only power I had over my life, the only time I commanded another in a way they couldn't resist.
Until he pulled out.
Thorsten withdrew his cock just before he came, spun me on the altar so I laid sideways upon it, and released his seed on my lips. I lapped it up, licking and swallowing every drop. He would feed it to me if I didn’t, but I loved that taste. I loved knowing I made it happen. I made him come. I had some power here… didn’t I? One small modicum of control that allowed me to affect something in my life.
But making him want me, making him come, was where my power stopped.
Thorsten brought me his hand to have me lick what had caught on his fingers. I did, lying like a lamb for slaughter, an offering to the gods, naked and still hard. Thorsten made no move to aid me, and if I touched myself without permission, he’d tie my hands behind my back with my belt and leave me here until sundown. He had done so twice before, and only the second time had I managed to rub out my stolen orgasm by humping the altar.
I’d told myself I loved that too, the denial, the ache, because when Thorsten came back for me, he’d sucked my cock and let me spill down his throat. That was something. That was mine. The hours of solitude had been nice too.
But today, I had no desire to be left waiting, so I remained patient, hoping that Thorsten would show mercy.
“Go on,” he said. “Touch yourself. Make yourself come for me. Slowly.”
Slowly made my legs quiver as they dangled off the altar. My stomach clenched with the effort to keep from coming at the first touch. The curl of my fingers around my shaft. The temptation to run my thumb over my slit. But no. No. If I did that, I would come for certain, and if Thorsten wanted it slow, I had to keep drawing this out until he told me I could finish.
“Slower.”
I moaned, dropping my head back to dangle from the altar like my legs, and did as I was told.
“Look at me, Oli.”
I tilted my upside-down perspective to face him. He was stroking his spent cock too, stirring it back to life, while watching me stroke mine.
I had some control. I did. Because I had his attention. Because he wanted me. Because he liked watching me. I slowed my strokes further without being prompted and let more whimpers and whines spill from my lips—as if pleading, as if in agony. It was half true. I wanted to come so badly. Let Thorsten be so entranced by me that he allows me to, I almost prayed.
I dared to pass my thumb over my slit, and the instant need to come made me bite my lip like I might pierce through the skin. Thorsten was fully hard again, stroking faster, lightning fast compared to me. I parted my thighs enough to reach with my other hand down to my entrance. I knew what he needed to hear to grant me what I wanted.
“I wish it was stuffed with your come,” I said.
Thorsten seized me, spinning me back the way I’d been, propped against the tree, and slammed back inside me. I took that for the permission I needed and stroked as fast as his hips rammed into me.
Let me come. Let me come.
Thorsten slapped my hand away, and I practically screamed.
“Not until I do,” he warned.
In an instant, my power was gone again. The heat inside me was pulsing tenfold in my cock, begging for that last tumble over the edge with how red and swollen and ready to release it was, yet I was denied. Again.
I sniveled pathetically with every thrust, but all that heat burned in my chest too, ignited with something close to hatred when Thorsten whispered:
“You did ask for this.”
I seethed inside, because I had asked for it, but I only ever got what my masters decided to give. I hated him for that.
Having come already, it took several more minutes before Thorsten came again, this time filling my hole. He stayed inside me, pumping slowly into his mess, as he said, “Come. Come while I have you full to bursting like you asked.”
My hand had never found my cock faster. I pumped with abandon, and it took but a few mad strokes before I finally, finally—
“Ah-ahh!” My cry as I came was loud enough that birds flew from the treetops.
I hated as much as I loved how good that was.
Thorsten turned me again, an offering on the altar. I could barely move, let alone resist. He presented me with his cock to lick it clean. I didn’t resist that either. When he was satisfied, he did up his trousers. I waited to be told I could do the same, leaking out his second release onto the cool stone.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better farewell.”
“Farewell?” I blinked at him, my mind a haze.
“Not a forever farewell, but I’m afraid our trysts won’t be as frequent.” Thorsten smoothed a hand over his blond fringe. “You’ve been sold.”
“What?” Dread burst in my chest as I swung upright, hatred replaced with white-hot fear. No. No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. My life was only tolerable because I had this. Without it… “Thorsten—”
“You have been sold to our neighbor, Erik, son of Gunvald. Why do you think I was so generous?” He grinned, like he had done me some great favor fucking me one last time, only to throw me to the wolves. “The family of Gunvald are our close friends. I will still see you.”
“Still see me?” The fear did not replace my hatred, I realized, but matched it. “Like a prize stallion you visit after it’s been put out to pasture!”
“Oli,” Thorsten chided like I was some young pup throwing an unnecessary tantrum instead of equal to him in age. What did he know of fear, of panic, of being so low in station, that being treated as a cock-sleeve was a blessing, even if you could never say no. “You are hardly out to pasture at twenty-one. You’re just… broken. Well-ridden. Best leave you to your chores now, eh? It’s your last time tending to this altar. And it definitely needs to be cleaned. I am going to miss having daily access to that hole.”
He tilted me backward enough to slide two fingers inside me, twirling them and thrusting into his come. I whimpered. I fucking whimpered, because it felt good where I was tender and contented to have been filled, even if the fire in my chest told me to bite this pot-licker’s nose off his smirking face!
He kissed me, and I clenched my teeth to prevent any entrance of his tongue.
“Oli, don’t be like that. You know you’ll miss me too.” Thorsten thrust his fingers inside me once, twice more, and then scooped out some of his come to feed to me.
If I was already sold, I would risk punishment and kept my mouth shut.
Thorsten’s smirk fell, but he didn’t look angry. He might have even looked sad. Likely he was just disappointed at not having me to himself anymore. For him, it was an inconvenience. For me, I might as well have been cast into Hel.
“It wasn’t my decision to sell you, I swear. I will miss you, Oli.”
Asshole, I thought, because he could still stir me to affection for him, my once friend, oft lover, and harsh yet somehow tender master. But that was why I hated him, because he was content to condemn me to a life unknown, when at least this one had been one I could bear.
Thorsten dropped his hand, wiping his fingers on his trousers, and lifted my chin with the other to kiss me again. I allowed the tangle of our tongues this time, because it was farewell. Even if I was still so angry. And terrified. Thorsten’s family I knew. I knew of the neighbors, but not how they treated their thralls. I had no idea if I would be used by one of them, or many of them, like I was used by Thorsten, or if I would be worked to exhaustion in other ways until I was old, my beauty gone, with no fight left in me at all.
I never really fought now. I hadn’t the luxury. And all my luck had run out.
“Take your time,” Thorsten said. “They aren’t coming for you until the evening meal.”
“Why? Why am I being sold?” I demanded.
“An exchange. Mother wanted another woman in the kitchen. Erik asked for…” His pause filled me with dread again, knowing what he’d say before he finished, “for our prettiest man.”
Then I would be used, and maybe not as kindly as when it was Thorsten.
“Take your time,” he said again, and walked down the path away from the altar.
I almost considered fleeing. But where was a runaway thrall to go? I couldn’t survive on my own in the elements, and no free family would take in an escaped slave.
There was a cloth among my clothes, one I brought with me to wipe away the dirt and leaves and other messes left on the altar. It worked well for cleaning myself too, which I did so numbly before donning my trousers and tunic.
With my and Thorsten’s releases now on the cloth, and some already on the altar, I smeared more of it across the slab’s surface. How much had the porous stone absorbed of me over the years?
“Was this enough of an offering?” I growled at the absent gods.
How could Thorsten not have fought to keep me? Had he tried? We were friends once, practically brothers, but friendship across classes was a young boy’s luxury. As soon as Thorsten was taught he was above me, he started acting like it. I was just a thrall, a slave, property.
“Fucking nobles.” I kicked the altar so hard, I immediately bit back a cry. Real smart, Oli. Start off your new servitude by having a broken toe and being seen as useless. The tears springing to my eyes made me even angrier. “Fucking gods.” I smeared more of our come across their names.
Fuck the gods. Fuck the nobility. Fuck free men too. They all had it better than my lot in life, and why? Because of luck? Fucking luck? Better to be obliterated during Ragnarök than live as less than nothing.
I tossed the cloth to the ground and traced through the smear of come over the names carved there as I cursed them.
“Fuck Heimdall, so impotent he can only watch.
“Fuck Frier, whose own wife didn’t want him.
“Fuck Balder for being no more than a pretty face, dumb enough to die from mistletoe.
“Fuck Thor for having no brains at all.
“Fuck Tyr, who probably fucks with his stump instead of a limp dick.
“Fuck Mimir, who doesn’t have a dick to even fuck someone with.
“And fuck fucking Odin for not being able to stop a future he saw coming. No better than a fucking… mortal… a fucking thrall.”
I dropped to my knees at my final utterance because cursing gods that didn’t exist wasn’t going to save me or change my fate, and I felt so… helpless.
“What good are you to me?” I pushed at the rock like it was an enemy to shove, like the names of the gods were real beings who might actually answer. “False deities,” I snarled. “Figments of a lesser people who needed to make up stories to feel like they mattered.” But they didn’t. I didn’t. I was just unlucky with how I’d been born, and I could never change that.
The come was all dried now, but I traced my finger over one more name.
“Fuck Loki too, for only tricking the easily duped. He probably resorted to cheap tricks because his dick didn’t work anymore either after fathering so many monsters and fucking horses,” I finished.
“Ouch. I don’t think I could have blasphemed against me and my brethren any better myself.”
I whirled around with a leap to my feet at the unknown voice and—
I wasn’t in the wood.
I whirled back to the altar, but it was gone, as was the tree, the wood itself, and any semblance of being on the land I’d grown up on. I was somewhere else. Somewhere so foreign to me that I stared in mute shock.
I was at the gates of some impossible city. Impossible because it was… floating, or at least suspended on what at first seemed to be clouds, but through that misty whiteness I could see the winding of tree branches beneath the cityscape, holding it aloft.
Holding me aloft, for beneath the bridge I stood upon, I could see those same winding branches. I could see through the bridge because it was practically translucent. It shimmered with shifting colors like when a rainbow is seen as sunshine pierces through the last drops of a downpour.
I was standing on Bifrost, the rainbow bridge that connected the mortal realm to the realms of gods.
But I couldn’t be. I couldn’t be. Bifrost wasn’t real!
Was it?
“This is all very real, Oli,” the same voice whispered in my ear, and I stumbled away from it, spinning around again to face…
But my eyes focused beyond my abductor because I could see the other end of the bridge in the distance, arching downward toward what I could only assume was Midgard below us. I could make out its mountains, valleys, terrain I was unfamiliar with as well, but any people were too tiny from this distance to make out, and the bridge itself eventually faded as if to nothing, reaching a point where mortal eyes could no longer perceive it.
Nearer to me, suspended on clouds above where I stood without the assistance of branches, was a building like a watchtower, poised here at the top of the universe to look down on everything, on every realm beneath it, connected by Yggdrasil.
I was at the gates to Asgard.
Was I dead?
“You get used to it.” My abductor gestured behind me toward the gate. “It’s just a city.” He gestured beneath us. “Just a bridge.” Gestured behind him. “Just the mortal realm.” And finally, he raised thin, willowy arms to encompass what connected it all. “Just a tree.”
“Loki?” I gasped, for there was no doubt now as my scattered thoughts reconfigured and my racing heart could no longer deny that I was in the home of the gods I had been certain a moment ago didn’t exist.
But this had to be Loki, for even without his glibness giving him away, he was exactly how the stories described him.
No taller than me, but long and lanky, fair in face like a woman—and who it was said oft transformed into a woman, among other things—with long red hair like it was made of fire. One side had multiple braids tight to his scalp, almost like the effect of it being shaved. The rest hung wavy and loose, casting that side of his face in shadow. The roots were black like burnt-out embers on a bonfire, his long locks almost blood-red in their depth, and continuing to transition to fire-red, then sunset orange, all the way to their tips that were as blond as Thorsten’s fringe.
Loki’s blue eyes were so pale, they transfixed me, reflecting everything in their bright color, like flickering flames. His garments were green, with accents in the same fire-like colors as his hair. He wore elegant, laced shoes that looked as though he could beat anyone in a footrace. The stitching of his garments was also green but shimmered as if somehow golden too. It wasn’t simple stitching either but formed runes and figures of snakes, wolves, and grinning faces.
“Does my prominence precede me?” Loki bowed dramatically. “How marvelous. And I certainly hope so, considering how splendidly you cursed my name.”
Fuck.
Fuck. I’d cursed Loki. I’d cursed all the gods.
“I—”
“You might be just what the healer ordered.”
“The… what?”
Loki leapt over me as if he weighed no more than a bird or could fly with an eruption of wings. At this point, I’d believe it.
He landed behind me atop one of the pillars of the gate. It had two pillars with an arch connecting them, but no real door.
“Go on.” Loki crouched low and waved a hand toward the home of the gods. “Peer within. Tell me what you see.”
As if drawn by an invisible tether, I neared the gate but didn’t dare cross its arch. I had never been off Thorsten’s family land. The land itself was beautiful, expansive with hills and farmland and the wood, but nothing like this ethereal city, something only ever imagined in my mind from stories. What any city would look like was a mystery to me, but this was like some fever dream in alabaster and gold.
There were people, distant from me but definitely people, down the long stretch of the rainbow bridge continuing into the city like a main street. Minor gods? Aesir. Maybe Vanir. Maybe others too. The abodes and buildings they walked between were massive and majestic.
Then I realized, the greatest of the old gods, those with the most stories and supposed power, had monuments to themselves at the entrances to their halls, which made it easy to guess who lived where.
One statue held a great hammer. The Hall of Bilskírnir, home of Thor. It spanned large enough to be its own village.
Another statue, near the center of the city, had an eye covered as if missing and was the most richly adorned and kingly looking. The Hall of Gladsheim, Odin’s private sanctuary.
Next to that was the statue of a winged warrior woman. A Valkyrie, clearly symbolizing the entrance to Valhalla.
While not all the halls were marked with statues, and not all statues had immediately discernible identities to me, there was no rejecting the truth of where I was. Or who I was with.
Loki leapt down beside me, making me flinch. He leaned in close to my face, so close that I trembled, wondering what he might do to me. “Well?”
“A-Asgard?” I shrugged in answer.
“Obviously. What else?”
“Um… minor gods? Homes and halls for the greater ones, but only minor gods in the streets. Not that you’re minor, of course—”
“No need to flatter me now.” Loki waved a hand. “You know, me, fucker of horses and father of monsters.” He grinned.
I was dead. Or, if not yet, I would be soon.
“Don’t look so frightened!” Loki slapped my shoulder like a joshing friend, though I half expected to be transformed into a horse—or something crueler. “After all, I am those things! Although, in my defense with the horse, I was also a horse at the time. However insane it may seem to you, is it really fair to judge?”
I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. I supposed he did have a point.
He’d been a female horse actually, all to seduce a male workhorse to prevent a builder from getting one over on the gods.
Insane wasn’t the half of it.
“I prefer a man’s cock!” Loki announced as if this weren’t the most baffling conversation I’d ever had, “but we work with what we have when the need arises.”
“Your… need to be fucked?”
“Not that! Come now, Oli.” Loki linked arms with me and began to lead me away from Asgard’s gate. He was very warm. And handsome. And terrifying. His nails were long and pointed, like the start of claws. “Judging by your excellent cursing of me and my brethren, I assumed you knew our stories. Why was I a horse?”
I recounted the tale as I knew it, that if the builder who owned the workhorse had finished a fortress for the gods by a certain time, he’d get the sun, the moon, and the goddess Freya’s hand in marriage. Loki’s ruse as a mare was a worthy effort to prevent having to keep up their end of the bargain when the builder was about to win. It had also ended with him birthing Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse that became Odin’s favorite, so I had to ask, “Is it really all true?”
“Which part? That I made such a fetching mare that I absolutely had to be bred?” He waggled an eyebrow at me with no shame at the admission. “Why, I love that galloping baby boy of mine like all my monstrous children. You know their stories too, I take it?”
“I… suppose. Most, I’d imagine. At least as well as anyone these days.”
“And with no fear of cursing us out!”
The dread in me blossomed again. “Should I fear?” Was Loki leading me to the other end of the bridge just to push me off it, sending me plummeting over its edge, falling endlessly toward Midgard?
“Oli, my dear boy,” he said, resting his head on my shoulder as he brought us to a stop just beneath the floating watchtower, “cursing each other is a daily activity among the gods! We can hardly be upset when a mortal curses us. We need someone unafraid, you see. Someone willing to fuck on our altars and smear our good names.”
He had clearly seen and heard everything I’d done to defile that stone.
“But… we mainly need someone willing to fuck. Allow me to explain.”
Loki seized me by my other arm and spun me back toward Asgard. He waved a hand in front of us in a grand arch like wiping away the current view, and when he did, the view did indeed change. The city had been replaced by a version of itself on fire.
I tried to stumble away, but Loki held me fast. Even the sky had changed, blacked out like there was no sun, no moon, no stars. I could smell the smoldering of the ashes as war raged, see battles spilling into the streets between all manner of god and creature. It was pandemonium, utter chaos, like some nightmare depiction of the bloodiest of slaughters.
Loki waved his hand again, and the city returned to peaceful brilliance.
“That was about the time when your people first began turning their backs on their belief of us.” He held me close about the waist too tightly to feel like comfort. “It was Ragnarök, the end of days, end of everything, and suddenly, for many of you, gods seemed a silly thing to believe in when one God was being touted as superior by other nations, one without our… complicated history of horse fucking and monster bearing. Sounds boring to me!”
Loki released me finally and patted my shoulder as if in apology for the tight hold.
“He has his own complicated history, believe me. But as we slaughtered each other, we brought about our own end to the age of Aesir, Vanir, Jotun, and the lot, and you lost any reason to care if we existed.”
“But you’re alive,” I stated the obvious. “If Ragnarök happened—” I stopped myself before finishing, for the stories were clear on that too.
“We were always meant to come back,” Loki confirmed. “We’re gods. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an end for us.” His seemingly constant grin flickered as he pivoted in front of me, the one side of his face still shadowed by the flow of his hair. “We are not who we once were. We too must move on to our next stage of existence, apart from mortals, separated from Midgard forever, and lessened because of it without you. Belief makes gods stronger. Not even you believed, Oli, and at least you still know our stories.”
I glanced down the length of the bridge toward Midgard again. “But the bridge still goes there, doesn’t it? And you were able to snatch me.”
“For now. You think the bridge looks as though it fades away because it is too far for mortal eyes to perceive? That is somewhat true, but it fades for real and will eventually no longer reach Midgard at all. Soon, there will be no travel to or from there unless as a spirit, once the last of our altars is left unattended, and our stories told only as myth. It’s fucking depressing, is what it is!”
His somber tone had changed to lively again, like this was all some grand joke. Maybe it was, but in addition to the mischief in his expression, I swore I saw some other emotion cross his face too quickly for me to register.
“That’s where you come in. See, technically, Ragnarök was my fault.” Loki said it to the side of one hand like sharing a secret everyone knew. “I mean, sure, we’d all known the prophecies for ages and how I was intended to kick things off by killing Balder, but I didn’t actually mean for him to die. I just thought it’d be a bit of fun! It’s like when someone tells you explicitly not to do something, and all you can think about is doing it.”
I stared at him. “Something children do.”
Loki laughed. “There’s that lack of fear we need! I might actually like you a little. Some of the others aren’t as pleasant of company as I am, so you’re going to need that courage. To sum up, the female gods? With this change, their loss of power, the intent for us to live out new lives in seeming peace or within the halls of Valhalla, blah, blah, blah—handling it absolutely flawlessly. Unshakeable, those women!
“The men? Taking it a bit harder. Stubborn lot. Odin won’t even let me cross back into the city. Which, honestly, is taking the grudge too far. They’ve forgiven me for worse! Well, maybe not worse, but enough individual times to count for one especially bad time. Don’t you agree?”
“Hold on.” I raised a hand to stop Loki because I still didn’t understand. “Where do I come in? You want my… help? With what? Cheering up the male gods so they go into retirement happy?”
“Precisely!” Loki smacked my shoulder again. “You’ve got it. And having seen you in action, I know you’re up for it.”
“Wait, you…” It was then I remembered what else Loki had said.
We mainly need someone willing to fuck.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snarled. I didn’t even care anymore if he turned me into some terrible creature or chucked me off the rainbow bridge. It was all the same! It was always the same. I was something to be used, and nothing more. But no. No. I would not lie down and take this anymore, just to be tossed aside when I was no longer wanted or needed or worth a damn to anyone.
Sure, whatever the gods might do to me might be worse than punishment from the family that owned me, but… would it really be? Could anything be worse than being treated like property? If the gods were finally intervening in my life, and this was the make of it, then…
“Fuck you,” I spat. “No. Find someone else and send me back home to my miserable, and apparently gods-given existence.”
Loki teetered backward on his heels from my bellow.
Then he laughed again.
“Well done! I get why it has to be you. See, the gods don’t need some wanton worshiper licking their boots. They need a good swift kick in the rear! And, in some cases, maybe something else in the rear. Or to fill up yours? Who’s to say?”
“I refuse—”
“But! I am not asking of a humble thrall as a powerful and, admittedly, beloved Jotun. You already balk at what a thrall is supposed to be, given your beauty. Your wit. Your nerve. Come now, wouldn’t you like to prove the gods wrong about mortals deserving the class they’re born into? Wouldn’t you like to be more than a slave? Be a savior, a sage, a courtesan like no other, who is so wanted, you bring even the gods to their knees?”
He waved a hand at me, and I felt the change before I looked down and saw it. My clothing had transformed. It was similar to before—trousers, tunic, belt—even in the same colors, with the tunic blue and its trim a pale tan, only now, the quality of the fabrics and leather, the workmanship of it all, the embellishments and stitching, was far finer than a thrall would wear.
“Do that, Oli, succeed in pleasing all whom I send you to, and you will not leave here a thrall any longer. You will be the last thrall of Asgard to ever walk its halls—and beyond. Because I will make you free.”
I looked at Loki with a start. “One might call it foolish to accept any offer from the trickster god.”
“Trickster? Is that my reputation on Midgard? How simplistic! I prefer mischief maker, thank you. Because I assure you, Oli, I am a delight.”
“You literally admitted to starting Ragnarök for the fun of it.”
“That was destiny! I figured I should at least enjoy myself if we were all doomed anyway. Is it really fair to blame someone for what’s fated?” Something wavered across his face as he said that, but it was gone just as quickly.
“Can I get any guarantee you will keep up your end of the bargain? You did just admit to the story where you tricked your way out of a bargain with a builder.”
“Fucked my way out of it,” Loki said, as if it rude to not include that part. “And absolutely. I’m glad you asked. A god’s oath.” He extended a hand to me.
“Your word isn’t good enough.”
“Mystically binding. Go on.”
There were nerves in my belly, anxious and bubbling, but I couldn’t say if it was fear or dread anymore. If there was any chance at changing my fate, I had to take it.
I clasped Loki’s forearm, and he curled his long fingers around mine.
One of the snakes embroidered on his sleeve came to life, still as stitching, but as if alive, moving across the fabric from his sleeve to mine.
“If I be lying,” he said, while the stitching glowed and then went dormant again as part of my new clothes, “that snake will come back tenfold upon me, and the Midgard Serpent will swallow me whole.”
“Truly? The serpent lives too?” Jörmungandr, a giant serpent, large enough to encircle the world, and another of Loki’s monstrous children.
“We all do, born anew.”
“Even Odin, you said? I thought he was never meant to come back.”
“Says who? Maybe not as he was. But then none of us are only what we were or what you see.” Loki released me, and I stared at the unmoving snake. This would have to be enough to trust that the trickster god would make good on his word.
A free man. Could I really be that? And all from bedding… the All Father himself?
“I’m not sending you to Odin first,” Loki said, as if plucking the thought from my mind. “No, we wouldn’t want to start with him. First! You are going there.”
He pointed up.
I looked, remembering we stood beneath the floating watchtower, with no discernable way to reach it.
“Um, how?”
“Oh! Forgive me.” Loki snapped his fingers, and a new part of the rainbow bridge branched off the main road as an arched pathway to the floating hall. “To our watchman! He sees all, so he is expecting you, though not all will be. I owe it to him to be the first since, well, we did kill each other during that mess.” He waved his hand back toward Asgard.
In the stories, Loki’s battle during Ragnarök was with…
The floating watchtower was Himinbjörg.
“The Hall of Heimdall,” I said.
“More like a tall cottage.” Loki shrugged. It was smaller than most of the halls I’d seen in the city. “Before Ragnarök, though, it was filled with celebration.”
“Not anymore?”
“No. Now, Heimdall is no longer needed to be on the lookout for our end of days. Those days are here. He seeks something else.” Loki’s eyes traveled down my body, so quickly, just a flick of his lids and flutter of his lashes, that I almost missed it.
It made me wonder—what did he seek? Would he indulge in my body too, like the others?
And why did that appeal to me so much?
He was handsome. Pretty even. Lithe. Alluring. Terrifying, yes, but enchanting all the same. The stories of the gods spoke of them as being the best of us. Better in appearance. Ability. Virility.
I supposed lying with gods didn’t have to be all bad. Might even be fun.
“What will be expected of me?” I asked, gazing up the rainbow trail.
“He’ll let you know.”
When I turned my head to look at Loki again, he was gone.
Of course he was.
But if this was to be my fate, best to get to it. I had to believe, had to hope, had to… pray that Loki followed through with my reward.
Returning my attention to the hall in the sky floating upon clouds, I began my ascent.
Heimdall awaited.