First, though, he had to feed the babies. Their squirming was already turning from curiosity to distress as they adjusted to the world. He took one look at the milk that was still oozing from their murdered mother and dismissed it; he liked it not and had his own suspicions on the spiritual effects of feeding it to his newest charges besides.
The tunic worn by the closest dead skaven was repurposed to wipe the worst of the fluids and other afterbirth from the babies as he considered his options. He doubted that any woman at Harad’s village would care to donate their milk, and he had no surety that there would be an appropriate goat or ewe on hand, to say nothing of the wait required. Much as their mother had, the babies were nosing about, mouthing at the air in search of food, their distress visibly increasing. The infant that he had saved from the skaven holding it was making sounds of distress, faint squeaks barely able to be heard, and its siblings started to follow, but the only food he had on hand was the ground meat and fat that had been fed to the mother.
But no, that was not quite right. With a ripple of light, his armour faded away, and he reached into his pocket. With a crinkle of plastic and foil, the lunchable that had appeared after his latest dream of Asgard, Old and New and all at once, was withdrawn.
For a long moment, he stared at it, even as the babies grew more upset. It was not actually a lunchable, he knew now, not truly a thing of plastic and mass produced food from Midgard. Lady Dove - Shallya - had told that it was an expression of his power. He knew not what effect it had had, would have, on those who had partaken of them, but Wolfric, Kirsa, and Gunnhilde had seemed to suffer no ill effects, and Lady Dove had seemed touched by his generosity.
The decision was made, and Thor opened the lunchable, building the snack and breaking it into equal portions, settling the four babies between one arm and his body. They quieted as he situated them, perhaps sensing that food was on its way, or perhaps just preferring the warmth of his skin to the cold of his armour, and he watched as the newborns consumed the snack. It was strange - solids were beyond them, but still they fed, licking and nosing at the food, and it almost seemed to melt down into their mouths. Their distress eased, something that was more than just hunger relieved.
When they were done, their fidgeting quickly faded, replaced by a contented drowsiness, and Thor let out a breath. Now, he had but to find his way out of the warren and return to the others…flying through the cold skies with four babies in his arms. He frowned. Babies had a way of complicating things, it seemed.
A quick search of the pit revealed a small room off to its side, but nothing appropriate for his needs, only poorly cured scraps of fur in a pile and a slowly smoking censer that seemed to be responsible for the lack of stench in the rooms. Even the clothing worn by the skaven carers was unsuitable, too thin and sparse to serve. It was as he was considering the possibility of keeping the babies under his shirt and walking back, wishing Kirsa were present, that an idea occurred.
Kirsa still wore his cape as a cloak, the one woven by his mother, and yet when he called his armour, his cape came with it. If it were another product of his power, not a physical creation, then perhaps…
Babies were set down in the furs, armour was summoned, and Thor tore four wide strips vertically from his cape. When he was done, the babies were swaddled comfortably, only their snouts peeking out, and Thor was satisfied. It was time for him to put the warren behind him.
Thor emerged back into the main cavern and took a moment to inspect it. There was still no movement to be seen, but the fire his actions had smothered was starting to rekindle. He wasted no time, taking the potential exit tunnel that was closest, Stormbreaker in one hand, four baby sk- four babies in the other.
Five minutes later, he emerged anew from the first tunnel, beard dripping with water and an enormous eel wrapped around his waist and dangling limply. Despite missing its head, it was clearly large enough to swallow a man whole, and unwilling to let go of its prey even in death. His nose wrinkled up in distaste, Thor took the second tunnel.
Well, he couldn’t pick right every time.
The escape tunnel was a long, zig zagging thing, rising towards the surface on an angle. He could see pawprints in the dirt, but how new they were he could not say. He was simply glad to be returning to the light of the sun and the stirring of the breeze, putting the dark and damp tunnels of the skaven behind him.
When he emerged, he found himself in a small gulley, choked with thin and ragged trees. There was also a greeting party waiting for him. A skaven lay dead, and on its back, pecking away at its eyes, was a familiar eagle.
“We meet again,” Thor said, stilling.
The eagle gave a cry of greeting, ending on a warble of curiosity.
“Oh, you know, pest control and the like,” Thor said, before perking up. “But I have something for you, if you would have it.” Leaving Stormbreaker to float, he used his free hand to unravel the enormous eel from around his waist. With a smile, he offered it forward.
The look the eagle gave him would have shrivelled even Fandral’s pride.
“If you don’t want it, I know others who would be more than thankful for it,” Thor told her, turning his nose up. It had been his first thought in any case, to offer it to Harad’s people. Given their loss of an entire granary, every little would count.
The eagle clacked her beak at him, before dipping down to tear another chunk of flesh out of her - victim? meal? - and swallowing it down. She gave a cry, smug and taunting, and flared her wings.
“Well, that’s just rude,” Thor said, unable to return the gesture with one arm full. Still, he was unable to help a twitch of his mouth. He liked her spirit, for all that she disdained his catches.
The bundles in the crook of his arm began to shift and twitch again, woken from their nap by the cry. Noses sniffed at the cold air, and the youngest male gave a plaintive squeak.
“Fret not, little, one,” Thor said, adjusting his hold on them. “Soon we will be-”
A cry of sheer fury rent the air, setting the trees to whipping and paining every creature to hear it. The babies immediately went silent, a primordial fear set in them, and in the distance, there was a great crack as an avalanche was set off.
Thor turned, putting his body between the babies and the eagle. Stormbreaker did not come to hand, but it vibrated audibly in place, humming as it waited for the command. “Lady Eagle,” Thor said, jaw set. He could feel the babies trembling. “What is the meaning of this?”
Again Eagle cried out, not as loud as before, but still enough to stir the air. Gone was any smug teasing, and she flared her wings again, not in a taunt, but in threat. Her amber eyes were fixed on the bundles he held protectively, but as he noted her gaze she turned it on him, fury and question clearly visible within them. Her talons clenched, tearing into the body of the skaven she had slain.
For a long moment, Thor only stared at her. “They are but babes, not yet an hour old,” he said to her. “Why should they be punished for the crimes of their forefathers?”
Eagle shook her head, rejecting him. She stabbed her meal with her beak, and then jabbed it towards the babies he held.
“What mortal creature is born evil?” he challenged. “I have seen beings that many would declare beyond redemption give their lives in defence of others. Why is a newborn beyond redemption?”
Disagreement coloured Eagle’s cry, and she folded her wings back down, hopping off the corpse and towards Thor. As she did, she grew in size, and when she stopped before him she was looking him in the eye.
“You nurse a hatred for their race,” Thor told her. He was keenly aware that the fragile lives in his care were well within the range of her cruelly curved beak, but he knew that she would not strike them - not before their conversation ended. “But these infants are not their race. They are innocents, not those that came before and committed terrible deeds.”
Eagle hissed at him, feathers fluttering.
“Even if something about their birth inclined them to ill, do they not deserve the chance to rise above?” Thor asked. He would not claim to lack concern over the state of their mother, and what her condition might mean for their development, but he would not let fear colour his actions and push him towards fell deeds. Not again. “Is mercy not the privilege of the gods?”
The lady reared back as if struck. Feathers near her neck shifted, like something was pressing against them, and she paused.
Thor saw his opportunity. “I have sworn an oath, Lady Eagle, that they will have the right of choice,” he said, and his words had the surety of Uru. “Until they make that choice, they have my protection.”
But Eagle was shaking her head. There was frustration in her amber eyes, and she shifted from claw to claw, tensing with each movement.
“Their mother did not even have language,” he said, voice soft. “Their siblings were slain to be eaten by those meant to care for them. What manner of man would I be to ignore that? What use my strength, if not to protect the weak?”
Wings flared, buffeting him, and a shriek of frustration was loosed. Between them, Thor was sent staggering back, for all that the cry caused no harm this time. When he recovered, Lady Eagle was winging her way into the sky, already shrinking back to her usual size, and then she was gone, vanishing into the clouds.
Thor let out a slow breath, and it was an effort to keep it steady. He looked down to his charges, still shivering in his arms. Each had shrunk down into their crimson swaddling cloths as much as they could, and he bounced them gently. Something told him that Lady Eagle’s reaction was not going to be the worst he encountered, and he found himself yearning for the counsel of his mother. She would have known what to do, he was sure, even in the face of a race that all knew and thought to be nothing but evil.
Small noses emerged again, and he managed a smile. Perhaps they were destined to be irredeemable monsters, capable only of spreading suffering and misery.
But perhaps they weren’t.
He could only go forward carrying with him all his beliefs, and give them the chance to choose. Double checking that the babies were secure, he raised his axe and took to the sky. The village beckoned.
X
Thor finished his tale, and waited.
“Skaven.”
The words were flat, spoken simultaneously by three of the four present. None of the speakers were remotely impressed. One was outright disbelieving.
“The children could be innocent…?” Kirsa tried, before trailing off as the others turned to stare at her.
Thor beamed at her all the same. They sat in the house of Harad and Helena, gathered around the table in their living room. He had visited once before, when the couple had warned him of the danger of Gunnhilde’s spear, but that visit had been much more welcoming. “Rare is the being that is born evil, daemons excepted,” he told her.
Bjorn was still staring blankly at the bundles in his god’s arms.
Kirsa nodded, but it was an absent thing, and her fingers were fiddling with her cloak as she stared at the babies, half entranced, half repulsed.
“Skaven,” Helena repeated, as if unsure he understood what he held, or what he had said.
“These aren’t skaven,” Thor said. “These are…storm mice. Stormice.”
“Really.”
Thor held back a pout. “Well, what would you call them?”
“Not that.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Skaven are skaven,” Bjorn said. He looked up from them finally, meeting Thor’s gaze. “Why have you brought them here?”
Thor let his moment of levity fall away. “What do I stand for, Bjorn?”
Bjorn ground his teeth. “The protection of mankind.”
“What else, Bjorn.”
The blond man’s mouth twisted, and his eyes darted back to the babies. “They are skaven,” he stressed.
“What else, Bjorn.”
Still he would not answer, and his hands became fists.
“He stands for storms,” Kirsa said. Like Bjorn, she stared at the infants. “For groves held free of betrayals.” She looked up, and placed a hand on the baresark’s shoulder. “He stands for those who cannot stand for themselves.”
A noise of almost anguish escaped the man, but he tore his gaze away. “If you knew what they had done,” he started, almost pleading.
“I do know,” Thor said. “I was there as they were birthed.”
Bjorn jerked his head to the side, a single harsh denial, but Thor was not done.
“I was there as those meant to care for them broke the necks of their littermates and started to eat them,” Thor said. “I was there as their mother was murdered, having never known anything but life as a dumb broodmother. I may not have the experience that any of you do,” he said, looking between the three elder humans in the room, “but I know evil when I see it, and I will not have the choice made for them.”
Again, Bjorn shook his head, but he subsided, slumping in his chair.
“This will not be like the difference between the Asur and the Druchii,” Harad said, words almost grinding against each other.
“High Elves and Dark Elves,” Helena said to Kirsa, noting her look of confusion.
“You cannot simply raise them right,” Harad continued. He was frowning, searching for the words. “They are…imagine a god that-” he paused, looking to Thor and beginning again, more surely. “Imagine a being like you, but instead of thinking to win the allegiance of those whose worship you would have, they instead decide to twist and warp and create a race, built only to serve them and them alone. Every aspect of their race is meant to enforce that devotion, to prevent any chance that they might falter in their worship. They are twisted in the womb, and they are born with a hunger that would see them eat each other the moment they lack for food.”
But Thor only smiled, for all that it was a jagged, humourless thing. “If that is so, then I have hope. No god that feared losing its people would hold so tightly to them. Only a god that thought their creations might find a better path would seek so mightily to keep it from them.”
Harad let out a breath. “That is not-!” He cut himself off. The old warrior leaned in, looking Thor in the eye. “I have seen the horrors of the Hell Pit with my own eyes. There is no saving the skaven.”
“I hear you Harad, but listen to me,” Thor said. “If a skaven appears, I shall slay it. If even these skaven think to do ill, I will stop them.” Here he leaned in, the barest hint of his power glowing behind his eye. “But I will never allow myself to fall into evil through fear of what might be.” He pointed at the babies, still held in one arm. “And slaying babies? Murdering children? That is evil.”
Harad closed his eyes, regathering himself, but Helena put her hand on his, and he stopped. They shared a look. “I see I will not change your mind,” the big man said. “There is much to do. Your deeds have earned you a place by my hearth, but while you are here with those - creatures - they will not leave your sight.”
Thor inclined his head. It was the least he could do to ease their worries, and his mother had not raised him to be an ingracious guest.
Harad and Helana rose to leave as one, leaving Thor and his believers alone in their home. He made to speak, but he was distracted by one of the babies shifting finally, after being still for much of the discussion. When the babe settled, Bjorn was already on his feet, heading for the door. He slowed, turning back and meeting Thor’s eye. He gave a stilted nod, but then he was gone, leaving Thor and Kirsa alone.
Thor let out a long sigh. He had not enjoyed that, and he knew that it was only the beginning.
“Will you name them?” Kirsa asked.
A blink answered her. “I suppose I must,” Thor said. Somehow, that had slipped his mind. “Not just for themselves, though,” he murmured, looking back down at them. “They cannot be skaven when there is such hatred for their race.”
“I liked stormice,” Kirsa said loyally.
“That is an option, aye,” Thor said, granting her a smile. But there were others, too. References to knowledge, to people, to myth. And Names had power.
Kirsa opened her mouth to suggest something, only to immediately close it, shaking her head at herself. She fell back to watching the babies, still playing with the hem of her cloak.
“Norskav, Cluni, Rauda,” Thor said, musing to himself, but none felt quite right, or had the connection he was looking for. He wanted something that was more than a description, more than a word that was just something other than ‘skaven’.
A memory surfaced, of he and his brother playing in the palace gardens when they were young, of chasing squirrels and of the enormous rodent that so cheekily stole their lunch the moment they would look away. They had called it-
“Ratoskyr,” Thor said. He nodded. A reference to a sly childhood foe that had entertained them with its taunting of other animals in the gardens. “Those raised beyond the grasp of the skaven god will be the ratoskyr.”
“I like it,” Kirsa said. “When will you give them their names?”
“Should I not name them now?” Thor asked. There were still many local customs he did not know.
“Some say naming a babe before you know they will survive is bad luck,” Kirsa said, tilting her head. “But Aderyn has not lost a child yet, nor a mother.”
“These ones will survive,” Thor said. He brushed their swaddling out of the way of their faces. They were still pink, eyes still sealed shut, but they were perhaps slightly less pink than they had been scarcely an hour ago, after they were born. “I can feel it.”
“What can you feel?” Kirsa asked. She scooted forward slightly in her chair.
What could he feel, Thor wondered. It was difficult to put a name to it. He knew that what he felt was not the same connection he had with his worshippers, but there was something there all the same, for all that it was all vague sensation, not a sure thing.
He beheld the ratoskyr closest to his hand, the one that he had very nearly been too late to save, already held in the hands of the one that had murdered his littermates. For a moment, he looked with his sight beyond sight, right and left, but little was revealed save the background currents of the world, the ones he knew how to see, at least, and he dismissed the sight. There was something like a strength, but nothing so simple or basic. The best he could name it was solid, a- “Surety,” he said. “I shall name you…Martin.” A good, dependable name for a good, dependable ratoskyr, or so he hoped.
“And the others?” Kirsa asked, leaning further forward now, almost over his lap as she sought to peer at them.
Thor trailed his fingers over the bundles. They were small, smaller than an Asgardian or a human baby, but not by much. From the second he felt something that spoke of dreams, something fluid and bright, from the third there was more surety, but this one was different, almost slippery. It was on the last, the girl, that his hand slowed, as he sensed something very, very different. It was almost as if as he reached out to her, she reached for him in turn, but a moment later the sensation was gone, and he was left unsure.
“Remy,” Thor said, tickling the nose of the second male. Something about him made him consider bestowing the name of his brother, but it was not quite right, and too soon besides. The ratoskyr gave a tiny sneeze at his tickling. “You shall be Splinter,” he said of the youngest male, the memory of a week spent with Steve and Clint gelling well with what he sensed of the child. “And you,” he said, finally looking to the youngest of them all, the female, “you shall be Blika.” It was an old Midgardian word for the cirrostratus clouds that would herald a storm.
Distantly, there was the sound of thunder, and Thor’s head snapped towards it. He had not caused that.
“Are those names from Asgard?” Kirsa asked, nothing about the thunder drawing her attention - if it was possible to hear with mortal ears at all.
Thor took a moment to reply. “No,” he said. “Some are from the realm of Midgard, names that remind me of happy times and match what I can divine of the children's natures. The last only seems fitting.” He could not say why - not for sure - but he could guess, and hope that his inklings of foresight would prove to be true.
Kirsa ceased her fiddling with her cloak. She swallowed, clearing her throat. “Might I hold one?”
Carefully, Thor handed Martin over to the woman many saw as his priestess. She took him, automatically arranging him as she might a human babe. “So small,” she murmured. “I’ve never seen a - one of their kind, before.”
“For the best,” Thor said. “Until now, it seems they were naught but malice and cruelty.”
“Do you really think you can change them?” Kirsa asked, looking up. Her brown eyes were searching, holding his own gaze. “There was a mutant born in Vinteerholm when I was young, and he was…wrong. He killed a man when he was nine, and was slain in turn.”
“If there is any changing to do, it is only to undo what has been done to them,” Thor said. “I will not claim they are untouched by what was done to their mother, but all I glimpsed of their people speaks of an engine made only to produce what the world knows as skaven.” Using underlings in unknowing suicidal traps, their consumption of sentient beings, the horror of the mother, all of it spoke of a society that would be improved by the visitation of great violence. “Removed from that, I have hope.” He looked back down at the babies he held. “I will give them their choice back.”
Kirsa listened to his words, and when he was done she nodded, resolve plain on her face. “I will aid you, Lord Thor. I know the others will too. Once they understand.”
“I could not do it without you,” Thor said, favouring her with a smile. It pleased him well to see how she continued to stand proud, a far cry from the terrified young woman he had first met.
“I saw a goat with a heavy belly in the longhall,” Kirsa said. “The babies will be hungry soon; I will milk her.” Gently, she handed Martin back to her god.
She left, and Thor did not linger overlong after. He would find the dwelling put aside for himself, and hope that the babies would sleep long enough for he himself to do the same.
For some reason, he felt like his mother would be laughing at him.
X x X
Thor dreamed.
He dreamed of Asgard, Old and New and all at once, and of the horn blast that was lingering on the air. Stormbreaker was in his hand, and Asgard stood before him wearing Heimdall’s face, an implacable barrier before the city gates.
“My king,” Asgard said. “You continue to collect foes, I see.”
Thor turned to face the fields and behold what enemy approached, but there was nothing. The fields were empty, even of the faceless figures that usually danced merrily within them, though here and there he glimpsed shadows lurking, as if laying in wait, and all were turned to face the horizon.
“What do you see, Asgard?” he asked.
“One comes to reclaim what was stolen from it. A rat.”
The clouds overhead grew dark, and the sunshine fled from the fields, though it still shone down over the city and its golden walls.
“A rat,” Thor growled, and the thunder followed.
“I told you the day would come when you must do more than avert their gaze,” Asgard said. “Are you prepared?”
“It will not have them,” Thor said, and the truth rang against the city walls. He called his armour, and lightning struck his crown. When the light faded, he wore the heavy suit that he had worn to fight Thanos, scaled arms gleaming with the light put off by the crackling discs on his chestpiece.
“Where will you face it?” Asgard asked.
“How long until it arrives?” Thor asked in turn.
“Longer than feared, sooner than hoped,” Asgard said. “It still forces its way into your realm, and though it will not arrive with as much of its strength as it would like, it will still arrive all the same.”
“Then I might meet it in the borderlands, or wait for it here,” Thor said. Both had strengths. Both had weaknesses.
“Aye, my king,” Asgard said, and with a blink she was wearing Brunnhilde’s face. “You stand near the heart of your power here, though to wait is to let it glimpse the city and all that might be gleaned from it. Should you meet it in the borderlands, it will learn nothing, though it will be fresh from its own place of power. I shall stand with you regardless of your choice.”
“Then the borderlands it shall be,” Thor said. “I will not grant it one single scrap of knowledge it might find useful.”
“So shall it be,” Asgard said. “You will meet me there.”
Thor understood her meaning even without explanation, knowing it the same way he could almost hear the frantic and furious scratch of claws on stone, seeking to gain entry. He raised his axe and erupted into the dark sky, soaring away from the gates and towards the borderlands. Empty fields passed by rapidly beneath him, and forks of lightning reached down from the clouds above as if to caress him.
The edge of his realm - for now - approached, and he landed in the dirt with a thud, bleeding off his speed with quick steps and a spray of dirt. Asgard was already there waiting for him, still wearing Brunnhilde’s face. She shifted, spear in hand and clearly aware of his arrival, but her gaze was fixed on the ephemeral border of the realm, where the dirt ended and twisting mists began. Thor joined her in watching, and it was only heartbeats later that something in the mist started to change.
Where once there was only an ever shifting formlessness, a path began to appear. It was a foetid thing of cracked cobblestones and discarded trash, an unfelt wind pulling them this way and that. Thor spun his axe haft in hand, and his eyes began to glow.
From the mists it emerged, striding along the path. Taller than a man even without the horns, it walked with an unhurried pace that still made it seem like it might burst into movement at any moment. Four horns it had, two rising up and out, two curling down to frame its face. Its visage was more akin to a skull than something living, and there was a faint, faded scar across its snout, almost too faint to be seen, even if one could look past the yellow fangs that threatened to overcrowd its jaws. It wore an armoured skirt, and at its centre was the inverted triangle Thor had glimpsed in the warren.
It reached the end of the path, and took its first true step into Asgard proper. It brought with it a stench of decay and the sound of digging rats, but then Asgard rapped her spear against the earth, drowning it out with the knell of some great brassy bell, and when it faded the sound did not return. The rat stopped, just out of axe reach.
For a long moment, Thor and the rat stared at each other. Its eyes were a poisonous green, and they darted about, caressing Asgard for a moment before taking in the empty fields behind them. Its tongue flicked out, tasting the air. Thor waited, feeling the storm clouds continuing to build overhead.
The rat’s patience ended first. “Tiny thunder god, small tempest in a pot, you have wronged me,” the rat hissed, its voice echoing and repeating, as if from afar. “Stolen my children, sei-”
“Rat god,” Thor said, short and unimpressed. “I deny you.”
The enormous rat drew itself up, offended. “Horned Rat I am, lord and master of all Skaven forever more. It is not for you to deny me.” Its tail flicked behind it, a barbed thing longer than its body. It may have stopped beyond the reach of his axe, but it could strike at him if it desired.
“And yet I have,” Thor said, keeping his eyes away from the tail, as if unknowing. “Why have you come here, Horny?”
The Horned Rat gave a great screech, pointing a clawed finger at him in accusation. “You! Precious children taken, plundered, kidnapped! You would deny them their father’s love?”
“I saw nothing of love in that warren,” Thor said, condemnation thick in his voice, “only cruelty and hate.”
“Show them to me, now!” it hissed, shifting its weight from foot to foot. “I know your kind well, how little you know of my chosen children. You have slain them already,” it accused.
“No,” Thor said. Perhaps it thought him a fool, a rube taken in by its false regard for its children.
“You will return my children to me!” the Horned Rat demanded.
Thor laughed. It had not had to deal with anything approaching a peer in a long, long time, if ever, it was clear. He had feared it would be something like the worst twistings and changings of his brother taken to their ultimate end, but it was clear that for all its hatred and scheming, this was not a situation it had faced before.
“If you want them,” he told it, readying his axe, “come and claim them.”
For a moment, it seemed that it would try, tail flicking back and forth, but then it subsided, stilling. A terrible smile stretched across its face. “You desire a contest, a challenge?” it asked. “Then this I would grant you: a duel, and to the victor, the stolen. No claim would you have to skaven.”
“No,” Thor told it once more.
The Horned Rat blinked at him, befuddled, as if he had gone off script.
“They are not things to be fought over,” the thunder god continued. “I cannot give to you what I do not claim, for I fight only to give them the choice that you stole from their mother and their father and every other poor soul that you have trapped in your grasp.” The blue-white of his eyes grew brighter, and there was a corona of goldsilver to them. “I do not claim the skaven, but I do offer my protection to the ratoskyr.”
The Horned Rat’s pupils narrowed to pinpricks, before expanding, red and furious. Its tail lashed, almost too quick to see, and then Thor was blocking the strike that would have torn out his throat. He let the tail wrap around his arm, barbs scratching at his armour and leaving faint gouges, but then it went taut, pulling him forward into range of the sickly green scythes that had appeared in the Rat’s hands. His boots ground into the dirt as he braced himself, but still he skidded forward, and the Rat was lunging for him besides. Stormbreaker met one strike, but the other was coming for his face, and-
Asgard was there, a familiar shield blocking the strike. In the same instant, the shield was thrown into the Rat’s chest, bouncing back and pushing it away, even as Thor made to shorten its tail for the insult. The tail loosed and slipped away, jerking to safety as the Rat skittered back.
“Fool,” the Rat hissed, muscles starting to grow and bulge as its body stretched and lengthened. Thor’s neck craned to follow as it began to rise above him, looming and threatening. “You should have taken what pity I deigned to offer.” Sizzling saliva dripped down, the dirt bubbling and spitting where it landed. Behind it, its tail stretched back down the twisted path it had arrived on, snaking into the mist and out of sight.
One drop landed on Thor’s chest, and it left a spot of discolouration as it boiled away. Despite the looming and the threatening and the apparent disadvantage he was at, Thor smirked. He said nothing, but he did nod his head, gesturing towards the sky. The Horned Rat kept one eye on him, even as it tilted its head to look up - but then it froze.
In the black sky above, there was a giant. Writ in lightning, its beard blew in the cyclone that was forming, and its glowing eyes were without mercy.
“You should not have come here,” Thor told the Rat, “for I have no mercy to offer you.”
The Horned Rat gave an almighty screech, even as the giant reached down for it. The heavens opened a heartbeat later, and the struggle began.