Odin had changed, there could be no doubt. Or it was more apt to say he was still changing.

Ever since Borr's death, he'd wondered if he could do it, attain the godhood his father had. No, that wasn't right. He knew he would be a god. The sight had shown him as much as whispered the promise of power into his ears.

It showed him facing the Vanir, clashing weapons with gods who ruled the world before his people, the Aesir, were anything more than savages. That had been not even a day ago, each part of the vision playing out after years of knowing it would come to war.

Odin had hefted Gungnir, clanging his spear against Freyr's flaming sword. The force of the collision exploded out, punching a hole into the ground and sending Aus men and Vanir alike flying. The ground quaked and magic grew thick in the air sparking with unseen dangers for lesser men. But the Vanir god of strength and fertility held and so did Odin with power to enough match the god.

The golden apple had given Odin such strength, made him more than a man like his father before him. The fruit of the world tree, Yggdrasil, made him immortal with the speed of a galloping horse and the strength of a troll, but to face Freyr, a god his own people had once worshiped, seemed all too impossible until he'd done it.

With Borr dead, all looked to Odin as the new God-King of Asgard. He suspected the veneration itself made him stronger, bolstering his magin, his inner strength, that as the son of a god, being seen as one made him so.

What fel power would he gain with time? Borr could kill a dragon with naught but his fist. Would Odin be the same in the coming centuries? He had his ravens, could even become one himself and see through their eyes, but he'd been born with the magic as a god's son. Still, more power would come, generations of men awed but his might. And by Borr's name, he'd be there seeing each of those generations pass.

Vili, his brother, was a vargr wolf, possessed by the spirit of a wolf allowing him to shift into the beast with the absence of the sun, but shifters were common enough and sometimes even made. Ve, Odin's youngest brother, had no talents to speak of, fancying himself a skald, more concerned with poems and history than battle, not that he didn't do his part.

Were they to be gods too? If not, then they would in time as both had taken an apple, so had a handful of Aesir, but they needed more. More apples, more weapons, more gods, not for the war that raged now but in the future his sight showed him in fractured pieces as to mock him.

The world would grow cold and thick with mist bringing undead, Jotnar bearing swords half the size of a house, and a foreigner, one with skin the color of bark and green flames burning in his eyes. He'd be riding a wolf fit to devour a mammoth with jaws capable of rending god flesh.

This war didn't matter. Yes, Odin needed the apples guarded by the Vanir and the branch of the world tree supplying them, but it was all for another battle, the last one where his sight ended and the world itself ceased to be.

An army of immortals was just the beginning. The end might take hundreds of years to come and he'd use every precious moment to gather strength and martial the forces of men against the coming destruction, against Ragnarök.

“Ragnarök?” Odin said not knowing where the word had come from. Was that the name of the end-war? The sight could have given him a clue but looking into the future was chaotic as it always changed as oracles such as himself exuded their will over events.

Odin cured, bringing the room's attention back to him. His Jarls all surrounded a table with maps strewn about while he'd been ignoring them, trusting his visions more than any battle plan they could perceive with their limited perception of the present.

He'd been sitting for what could have been hours staring at nothing like some half-witted old man. His gray hair and long beard certainly made him seem so until he stood; back straight and Gungner in hand, the spirits forged into the runeblade begging for more victims.

Odin strode past his Jarls, tapping the butt of his spear on the map. “Freyr's forces will mount an attack from that valley. Surround it, and the battle will be ours.”

The God-King left, not waiting for a response, the deaths he's seen changing in his mind. The battle would be won, so would this war because he'd seen glimpses of what came next. Now, he needed to find his wife.

“I need the sight,” Odin said when he found Frigg warming their bed.

She possessed a beauty worthy of her crown but that was not why Odin had married the girl. Frigg had been a Völva, a witch that every Aus clan needed and tolerated. Most called Odin mad for wedding her, but at a mere 17 winters, she'd known he'd come for her while never having seen him and the next year she was his.

Völva could control a man's mind through her trench, men said, but Odin's blood brother had assured him she'd try no such thing and if she did, he could fend off her machinations. And Loki was always right.

The man knew things a man ought not to know like he was a Völva himself as unmanly as that might be. But Odin peered into other worlds and magic no man of ax and spear should dwell so maybe he was the unmanly one now.

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Frigg began removing her blouse. “You only come to me for the sight. Do I not please you?” she said, her voice small, pleading even and certainly not becoming of a queen. But time would free her of such weakness as Frigg had also tasted an apple.

“You please me just fine,” Odin said. “But every moment I'm plowing you, more Aus die.”

He unbuckled his armor and tore through his tunic growing hard with excitement. In moments Odin was kissing Frigg and thrusting into her, but to his alarm, he was watching himself from across the room. It was a new aspect of the sight he hadn't experienced before and a clear sign Frigg's magic was melding with his own, offering him more of her power while he pushed his own into her.

With a shudder, Odin spent himself, spilling power into Frigg as she joined him in climax, her own magic filling the parts of him now missing. His eyes glowed, the sight stronger in this moment before it weakened with time.

Suddenly Odin was falling, passing into the spirit realm, like a sea of shadows opened to swallow him.

He glimpsed ghosts and spirits, fel creatures holding only hatred for the living. Wraths, Banshee's, spectors of all sorts met his eyes. Countless empty sockets with naught but rage and perverse appetites spread out beyond what men could see as to not be broken by the horrors just out of reach.

Odin shifted again, this time rushing in and past the other worlds, frosting his face on the cold winds of Niflheim then choking on the scorched air of Muspelheim. A moment later and he finally felt himself pierce the veil of time but not the future. This time he'd search the past for his last foe as it didn't change but still held answers.

Odin came upon a mountain whose peak had the trappings of a fortress. How far into the past he ventured was unclear, but the world felt wrong, somehow small like a world made in the spirit realm like his own home of Asgard.

Odin didn't understand how such places were made. His father had forged Asgard while he only ruled over it, but the beings standing armed and ready in the mountain fortress radiated power all too similar to Bor's.

All at once, men and women clad with weapons and armor the like Odin had never seen shot not just arrows and spears but also bolts of lighting and flames that echoed with explosions in the mist circling the mountain's roots.

The assault continued and soon Odin saw why. Out of the mist gathered beneath the mountain came draugr, first dozens then in seconds thousands of the undead abominations spilled from the darkness.

Odin had faced draugr before, or he would the sight showed him. They were corpses with green flame burning in empty eye sockets and all with a hatred of the living. All bodies were burned as even one could bring upon a plague turning each man that fell to its fury into another of its number.

But these weren't the draugr in Midgard. These dead were soldiers armed in gleaming black armor without rust and made with perfection. They carried weapons better than even the Aesir and marched up the mountain holding shields glowing with runes against the lightning and fire.

The undead still broke under the attack turning to ash by the hundreds but more kept coming. And Odin saw the sunrise and fall for several winters but they still came as an unending wave of death.

The vision changed without warning and Odin found himself in what could have been a throne room of some kind, but its purpose was lost with the dead and blood drenching every surface. At the center of the massacre was a man, old and gray like Odin with lighting in his eyes and crackling between his fingers.

“Face me!” the old man roared. No, the god. Somehow, with knowledge gleamed with the sight Odin knew this man and half the cooling bodies around him were gods.

“I think I'll stay over here,” came a voice from across the room, his accent stranger than even the old man who sounded completely foreign.

Odin turned to meet the speaker and saw him, his adversary, leaning on a wall more clearly than in visions of the future.

His skin was dark like a tree's bark. His hair curled, pulled back and bundled together. His eyes were aflame with green shining the outline of his skull through his face. A necromancer for sure, saturated in the magic of the dead.

The old man's hand shot forward and a bolt of lightning leaped from it. The green-eyed man didn't move as dozens of draugr burst through the wall just before the attack, one taking the bolt on a shield.

The abomination didn't fall and on a closer look wasn't decayed like those trudging up the mountain. These draugr had been among the living days ago and by the shock and pain on the old man's face, they had been family.

A hammer slammed into the old god's head then a blade opened his back adding his own blood to that already pooled around him. More lightning went flying and more blood was shed, all of it the god's. Hours passed then days and the old man fell to his kneen. The room was now filled with draugr, each taking turns to beat on the old man.

The necromancer watched the entire time not moving a muscle like he was dead himself.

Finally, he moved. The draugr parted until he stood above the old man holding his face to his by a handful of his beard.

“Now, Zeus,” the necromancer said. “Are you finally going to tell me where Prometheus is?”

“He's nowhere,” Zeus said, gargling blood. “His prison is in the spirit realm, lost among more worlds than stars in the sky.”

The necromancer grimaced then shook his head. “I thought so.”

Zeus rose to his knees with a look all too resigned to his death. “Just tell me.” He coughed, blood drenching his robe and the necromancer boots, not that he seemed to care. “Who are you?”

“Nergal,” the necromancer said. “The Destroyer.”

Nergal's fist came down slamming into Zeus with a power darker than ought Odin knew could exist. Zeus hit the ground shattering tiles then more as Nergal's struck out again and again. Nergal screamed with rage savaging the god faster with power Odin could feel in his soul.

Odin recoiled when he heard bones shattering then he was back, still inside his wife who shuddered with pleasure.

Frigg kissed him, panting. “What did you see?”

Odin shuddered but it was from his blood running cold. “Nergal The Destroyer.”