The Sacrifice at Yggdrasyl

I put Ygg's head in the noose and forced him to stand upon Sleipnir. The noose hung from one of the low branched of the world ash. Sleipnir stood tense, uneasy about what was about to happen.

"Differences between the two. The old and the new. A cycle, recycling for the next time. Faith is going to get them killed. It will get me killed. If I wait around for the others we will all perish. I have seen it and I see it. I do not know it all, but I know enough. Hear me, sibyls and Norns! The only way to escape Ragnarok is to find out more, and even then it does not mean the doom will stop. I know I can only do so much, but waiting will destroy us all."

I pulled the noose tight.

"Only a fool would not fear (what I am about to do). Step forward friend."

The eight-legged good son of the treasure bringer took eight heavy steps forward. As the terrible one fell from the back of his horse, Gungnir shot back down from the (opposite side of the sky) south. The missile burned with flame and exploded through Ygg's chest. He fell the rest of the length of rope and part of the branch strummed against the taunt rope. The note it produced sent Sleipnir to gallop. Ygg was dead. I am Ygg.

At first I did not know how long I had been there. Sometimes what seems like and eternity to a person is but a moment to another. One thing was certain; I was no longer under the canopy of the world ash.

"My friends, where are they?"

Hunin and Munin. They will come.

"I can already start to hear them."

I waited and observed. The place, it must have been the gap. I looked golden to myself and the world was black and white. A sky or a ceiling so huge it became the very ground under my feet. the snow moved slowly and in all directions. Or stars. I could not tell what was what. In the realm of Audhumla things are very different.

But that was only the beginning of it! The air was colder than iceberg melt, but the snow was hot. Every flake, not only a drop of fire, but tiny and strong enough to pass through my fingers! Every one that I reached for only ignited more questions. Yes they were stars! Being a God felt so much smaller.

No one had even conceived this. A few had theories as to where Audhumla had gone to after the slaying of Ymir and from where she had come. The majority of giants believed she was the highest power in the gap. Even the giants now believe that Ymir was a being of evil; Audhumla could not tolerate such an enemy so she created the AEsir. Surt, the powerful fire giant from the south believes that Audhumla made a mistake when she did not recollect us. He believes we were not created by Audhumla, but merely set loose from our prison in the ice.

It was becoming more clear than less; the gap was everywhere and the proportions that a normal being living by the roots of Yggdrasil were not like the ones in the gap. There might not even be any relation between the snow and the stars, just as the dragon's feast is unlike the meal of the salmon. But these were in fact stars. The gap was large enough to contain all the stars and more. If Audhumla is anywhere, if she still exists, I will find her here.

The Vanir have the AEsir convinced that Audhumla spent the last of her power to create the AEsir from the ice, after which time she faded into oblivion. This would be unfortunate. I can know the stars and I can know the gap, but in oblivion I would not know the stars. So I assume that the gap cannot be elsewhere in oblivion.

I stopped waiting and marched for the brightest star; there was only one. I continued to ponder the origins and the fate of Mother Aurochs. I was dead and I had killed myself to get here, but this was not Hel. The stars I approached glowed blue and the ones beside and behind me dimmed red.

My own theory on Audhumla. If she was still alive she would be wandering the gap. And if I was wrong in my assumption, the Ragnarok would claim the gods anyway. I could not know if she created us or if she released us, beginning with my grandfather Buri.

In the distance, beyond the stars to the right of the brightest I saw a waving pattern. I could not see, but I already knew what they were. "My thoughts and mind have returned to me. Come my friends, sit upon my shoulders and tell me what you know and what you have heard. I have been stuck in this void of stars for time unknown and have only had the thoughts of past to keep me pointed in the correct direction. Inform me of what you have seen."

Audhumla has traveled away from here, they told me. "She will come back when the time she wishes. For now you must travel the world one last time. 'You are more than I ever needed you to be.' Those were her words, Odin."

"It is always good to start early my friends. Go wake Geri and Freki. Tell them to meet me by the gates of Vafthrudnir." But I would meet them there much later.

"These are stars. In some way I have risen to the gap in a scale unknown to anyone I have left behind." This I though to myself as I walked for time I could not tell. Until I finally found Audhumla.

Or she found me. Approaching her, I noticed that all of the stars formed a dense wall, like a hall. And once inside they were like any other, but with radiant walls. She even had a massive chandelier in the center, hanging from the ceiling. It swirled darkly purple and black in the air. And I looked to see my shadow from the light it seemedly cast and it was brighter than the floor around it. I can not explain as to how this came to be.

And for the rest of my existence after I returned from the gap I could sometimes see my shadow under the starlight. But it was not a shadow but a spotlight casting down. Each step closer to her I gook, the hall looked more and more solid. Then the walls became more detailed. Textures of wood grains and distant stratospheric clouds flowed through the moldings that protruded from the brighter, plainer wall surfaces. In one section the current flowed upwards to the ceiling. I stopped just before the chandelier and I looked past it at the mural above. It moved as a living picture. My father taking his last steps and falling to the ground before Ymir.

Audhumla turned her gaze directly at me. I could feel her looking so I tore my attention from the final failed attack on the father of the frost giants. The incredible pain that I met with that look. It was the dread and suffering of losing a father, a bride, and a daughter all in the same day.

I was caught up in the emotions of pain that she sent straight for me. But after too long I lost track of her. She had changed slowly from the form of a beast to a very mature, yet unaffected by the pains of aging, beautiful woman. Her skin was almost as dark as the skies of her realm, the gap, but every single feature–crease of skin, eyelash, lips–were as bright as the snow at midday. It was not until later when she began speaking that I saw her teeth as well.

Rarely do I feel so, I had almost never had the experience of being so unsure about what to do. It had worked, my sacrifice, and I knew what to ask her. But I had not expected to see the mighty ice-liberator in such spirits with the look of a normal being of the world. Suffering. I could feel it freezing me also from with my heart.

"So it is come that you know from the words of Heidi, of the doom that approaches. I can see it in your eye. It burns brighter than mine now. In the end all of the Gods will perish, and Baldr will be first. The valiant Einherjar will feast their last supper and die their final deaths."

I then interrupted, "Yes it is true that I know and I know more. But there is yet more still that I know not."

A tear slid down her newly formed human face. "When I freed your family from the ice I already knew that Ymir was only a delay for your fate and for the fate of all beings under the world ash. This is all there is, Ygg. I am master and servant. There is nothing that can be done."

(In the spirit of Ynyr convincing Lyssa in Krull that she must do all that she can to provide him with the information on the next location of the Black Fortress, Odin convinces Audhumla to aid him. To the outside world, Odin hangs from the world ash, but he is really in search of Vafthrudnir and his knowledge of how to stop the complete doom of the Gods.)