I am aloft in the currents of space, and such is what I love.
Thy loving cradle, o' cosmos, brings my thoughts to brief but happy memories of my beloved birth-mother Gaia, and thy stars and spinning planets bear lands of adventures passed and yet to come. I know that such 'ventures pale set next to mine, the life of the hero, the wills of gods above. But this is well, for not all can live the life of a god.
I am content. A battle of great challenge and skill has occurred, and at its bittersweet ending, I emerged victorious with hammer raised high. This is often the way of things, and this is as it should be. Alas, as content as I may be, I shan't remain so. I still hunger for battle, for the oft' felt savoring of yon fields of salty, draining sweat and crimson blood. I am in need of a quenching.
I am proud. I am insatiable, my will stretched indomitable. I am both God of the Norn, of noble Asgard, and descended guardian of mother Gaia and her beloved sphere of Midgard. I am the Odinson. I am the dark clouds above, the blown waves below, and the uncontrollable, undeniable bite behind the thunder and lightning. I am ever searching. I am of both solid soil and weightless space. I am an Avenger. I am an open vein spouting both Might and Right. I am worthy.
I am power.
I am...
Thor
#535
August, Year 3
"Briefly, I Am"
By Will Short
The vastness of this area of the universe, still uncharted by most of Earth's scientists, is a pure, smooth black, interrupted only by the countless stars, the occasional planets and debris, and him.
Thor flies, propelled by his treasured hammer Mjolnir, through the thinned layers of a galaxy, all muscles and defined handsome features against the dark canvas behind him. His alert blue eyes survey his surroundings, prepared at all times for assault. But out here, he has to reason to expect or look for battle. At the moment, Thor holds company with no one.
Among the sights Thor spies, few do much to arouse his attention. A vividly colored star, possibly a black hole or a nebula here and there...nothing out of the ordinary for one you travels both the planets and their keeping places easily and often.
And without warning, it comes, coming to Thor and all around him quite suddenly. There is a new darkness. Stars fade, sight betrays, and Thor feels his thick body pushed in upon itself.
"Unghh..." A grunt of discomfort is all the god can manage in reaction to his body tensing and pulling together. Of all pains he has felt, this is among the greatest, as though his own body meant to crush itself with it's own weight. The few seconds that it lasts are painful, enough to drive a normal man mad, or even to kill him. But he is Thor the Thunderer, and he withstands it, teeth bared, until it has passed.
"Ngh..." he recovers his speech, "...What magic could make the heavens themselves appear to blink out of one's eyesight?" he says in the frost vacuum, still reeling slightly from his quick encounter. "Be it you, half-brother Loki? Or Amora?" Show thyself to me! Do not hide behind the curtain of this barren place."
Thor's cries go unanswered, and any hidden foes that could surround him do not appear. He is left completely alone with the strange feeling centered in his gut and caught throughout his being. A sight soon joins them.
"By the Gods..." he exclaims, heavy breathed. Before him, an unnamed planet with red and brown-yellow hues blacks out of sight, then returns, to the god's amazement. It does this again, and again, and continues the cycle until the orb is held still in space, and slowly fades to cold oblivion. This time, it does not return.
"This...There is something strange beyond what I have seen. I could...feel..." Thor could feel the planet's disappearance like a part of him wrenched from his body. It was similar to the feeling he learned when the stars and space ceased for a short moment, only this pain remains.
The Norse god knows that he will not find answers to his many questions here, and with the swinging of his mallet, rends a rift in space and time. Stepping through the portal, he is drawn back to his native Asgard as quickly as the Western Winds, with a stabbing, stick pain within him.
The Palace of Asgard:
Odin One-Eye, whose cyclopean demeanor is the price of his wisdom and whose place over the gods has been challenged before, sits and fills his wonderful throne of sturdy Asgardian lumber and metals and jewels forged and mined by the most skilled dwarves. There he rests, and waits. His son will be arriving soon, and there is little time to be wasted.
The High Ruler of Asgard can feel and hear the footsteps coming upon him and his throne room now. They echo through the great halls and rumble the foundation, each like small tremors. He is here. Odin can feel it. The doors, tall and heavy, are flung easily aside by Thor as he bursts into the spacious area.
"Father...o' father Odin!" the younger god cries, filling even the walls' cracks with echoes, "Asgard...'tis not as....."
"So thou hast seen, my son." Odin answers. "The once honored Asgard now rots." Perhaps that is an understatement.
As Thor had descended upon his beloved Asgard, he found it quite changed. Where there were once towers and pillars standing proudly tall, there appeared sorrowful and degraded marble, cracked with little left for support. Citizens lay in the streets and houses, deathly sick, if not already expired, with few to run among them and give aid. Rivers ran dry, fields browned and became brittle under the dimmed sun, and the Palace of Asgard and Odin, where Thor now stands before his sickly father, appeared as though it had never seen maintenance for all of its long history.
Thor studies his king and parent, and quickly becomes more concerned with his appearance and health.
"Father, thy lips and face have been drained of color, and the throne does not become thy slouching. Are you unwell?" He approaches the ruler, who shies him away passively.
"I am, as is all of Asgard, which most certainly thou plainly can see." Says Odin, some robustness and power missing from his voice, but still with unyielding nobility. He coughs, and it sounds like something, living or dead, is lodged halfway between his mouth and his lungs.
"But when did such a thing occur? And how so? I was here, in Asgard, mere hours ago."
"The Golden Realm felt it soon after you fled, Thunderson, though I...*ahem*...I am without knowledge as to why."
One who deals with injustice and scheming so often can usually tell when it is abound. So as heroic ability and energy flows in Thor's veins, watching his home and father waste away as he does nothing, it comes as no surprise.
"Then I shall find a cure for these mysterious ailments and return all to former wellness." Odin reaches out as he responds, straining his ancient, strong arm.
"It is not only Asgard that is threatened, by blood...*cough*..."
"Aye. I saw the stars themselves flicker as disturbed candlelight, and an entire planet erased from its place in the sky."
Odin had not meant that. "...Thor, the same fate looms over Midgard."
The blonde god almost responds right away, but when he takes the time to look at them, the words him like a bucketful of icy cold water. Midgard. Earth. Another home.
"Midgard? And Gaia as well, then?" he asks with urgency. The Overgod nods slowly.
"All of the Nine Worlds, and beyond, are threatened, Thunderer, and all that claims residence on them...for Yggdrasil is dying with them."
Yggdrasil, the rooted base holding all of nine shared worlds' existence together. Thor feels chilled.
"Dost though not feel it, son? Your Asgardian and Earthly halves tearing away?"
"I feel ill, Odin, yet not so much as thou...I wonder why."
"...*cough*...Who can say? Perhaps it is because Earth is...*ahem*...not fully taken by this yet. Or perhaps it is not. I am without an answer." Spirit rouses more so with the Viking God of the Storm, tensing his muscles and making his sick pain ache worse.
"And I am not in possession of a still heart, my father. As long as this remains so, I shall search for answers, and fight if need be, for a cure." He states this clearly and with justification, and steps closer to his father's throne, close enough to smell harking disease emanate from his royal body.
"Thou knowest this for sooth, father Odin."
"I do."
"Then I bid you farewell with my love and respect." A single kiss is planet upon Odin's lightly perspiring brow, the treasured kiss of a god, and even more treasured, of a father's son.
Quickly, Thor is gone through a hammer-made portal once again. Odin is left by himself in the creaking, crippled room of his throne. His sickness is throbbing ever stronger and he decides only to sit, and to rest, and to wonder...
Is this the Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, that the Elders planned for my people? I cannot imagine a destiny more degrading. Yet even I cannot battle fate.
An Asgardian Tavern ("The Scaly Flagon"):
Groaning, aching bodies are strewn about the unkempt confines of this seemly place of drinking and talking. Standing out, though not standing, among them are three larger bodies, ones with more strength and experience tested upon them than all the others surrounding combined. They, too, lay on the soiled ground, murmuring deeply to one another.
"Fandral.....Fandral, art thou waking?" asks the roundest of the three.
"Aye, Volstagg. I've been so...*cough*...for quite some time. And thou, Hogun?"
"The same is said for myself, fellow warriors."
"Then I may ask thee with ease," says a straining Volstagg, "...*ahem*...be this Asgard's final hour?"
"'Tis verily likely." Hogun says weakly, less than sorrowing.
"And so, is this how we, the Warriors Three, wish to spend it, helpless and cold on a mead-soaked ground?"
Fandral's words grow stronger above the others. "Nay, I say...*cough*...Nay!"
"Then it only seems fitting that we end our long adventurous lives with a battle, a final, friendly dual...!"
"It would be fitting, aye, but I can hardly stand to fight, as seems the same with both of thee, Volstagg." Hogun reasons.
"Dost thou refuseth my challenge, Hugon...*cough*...?"
"...He does not. He accepts it, as do I!" claims Fandral proudly for them both.
"Aye! Then have at thee, my friends, and let us...*cough*...see who is the mightiest warrior among us!"
And with this unsuppressed cry of friendship and battle, each of the Warriors Three begin inching nearer along the ground to the center of this climactic contest of power and skill.
Midgard (New York City):
"Glen, I'm home!" Her shrill words ring throughout the medium-sized apartment. They easily reverberate in the fair living room, bedroom, kitchenette, and bathroom. They are only meant for Glen Moray.
"Are you awake hon?" She calls to her lover again, this time hearing a short, low moan from the further part of the house. Her athletic young arms set the brown bags full of groceries down on the counter, and smiles to herself. "Feeling groggy? Well we can give you some more meds after dinner...I bought green beans and real potatoes for mashed potatoes, since I know you hate the instant..."
"Reb...Rebecca.....I...help....." Glen's own voice comes surprisingly loud back at Rebecca, and she cocks her blonde head slightly.
"...stuff." Her sentence finished, she notices the urgency he displayed. His voice was always like a sound wave bent and strained around a shoehorn. Rebecca Nordan has heard her lover Glen's voice many times in many forms and influenced by an innumerable amount of emotions. But this sounds more serious and dejected than ever before. She walks cautiously to the bedroom and opens the door slowly to peek her head inside.
"Glen? Is something wrong, swee..."
For the first time in longer than Rebecca can remember, Glen's eyes show life in shock, and his arm is suspended by his own power, reaching towards her helplessly with trembling effort. Her eyes' expression matches his.
"Becca...what's happening..."
Rebecca gasps, then clasps a long-nailed hand to her mouth, and squeals lightly in surprise. "Oh my God...no, Glen. No...I don't know....." Her voice quivers like his arm, the same arm that is blinking slowly in and out of existence without specific rhythm. This arm is linked to the rest of Glen's body, and there Rebecca sees the same phenomenon taking place. One second she can see him, sick and lame and a half-vegetable body in bed, then the next the mattress is empty. Back again, gone again. And his expression never changes.
"Re...becca...what's happening...to me.....?" Rebecca only begins her sobbing and shakes, and drops one of the all-natural potatoes she purchased with sick Glen in mind. She honestly does not know. She cannot fathom...
That evening, New York Central Hospital received an astounding amount of calls in reference to the unstable disappearing act many of its most sickly patients were going through. They did not know what to do either. But they tried anyway.
I am Thor Cloud-Lord, and though I do not know my home's situation or the solution to it, I try in hope of persevering.
In the sea of stars, where this all began only a short time ago, I am searching once more, with battle being the last thought on my mind, for once. I am looking for a cure for my people and my home. I am also without a grasp of where to find this knowledge.
Reed Richards, possibly one of the most intelligent humans of Midgard's surface, was of little use despite his great effort. Even his advance machinery was unable to track the source of this all-engulfing sickness. His business with the Fantastic Four did not aid the situation. The Watcher, Uatu, dispelled me from his shining Blue Area on Midgard's pairing moon, and claimed that his knowledge is for his own use. His actions were disheartening, though I let it pass. I know that those of the cosmic creed must be an answer to the grave dilemma I face with all others things that live and breathe. But who shall deliver my solution?
The silver-clad knight of the spaceways. The defending former herald. The prodigal son of Zenn-La. It is the Silver Surfer I must seek, Mjolnir bringing me closer and closer to his location. He has knowledge of the spans of all things like a spacious atlas. He is possibly wiser in travel and those entities powerful than Odin himself. The Silver Surfer shall be a totem in Asgard's saving. And if he is not, then perhaps there is no hope.
Mjolnir carries me unchallenged, which takes no display of action on my part. And yet my insides still ache like a child's, and my head pounds with pain, and I am irritable even alone.
I am Thor the Thunder God, and I am ill.
NEXT: "Lined with Silver"
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Will Short can be reached at WeekapaugB@aol.com