The Last of the Mythos

Freyja sat atop Hliðskjálf, decked out in Valhallan finery, a tankard of ale in one hand. The ripples in the ale would be a cause for panic had she not already accepted her fate. From her throne, she could see the emptiness where Midgard once stood. She knew what this meant – Midgard was what held Yggdrasil together. Without it, everything would crumble. She was only waiting for the inevitable.

She was too busy contemplating what oblivion meant for a goddess of her stature that she didn’t register the booming entrance of another until the hand tightened at her throat.

“Freyja, you bitch, how could you let this happen?” Hera’s nails dug into her ephemeral skin, releasing a steady trickle of golden blood.

She had been called many things in the aeons she had governed Valhalla beside her oaf of a husband. But being called a bitch by her halfwit Olympian sister was the last thing Freyja needed today. She kicked Hera in the stomach and jumped on her as she landed on the ground in front of the throne, pinning her to the spot.

“Now, dear sister, is that any way to talk to someone who’s dying?”

Hera threw her to the side and stood, trying to regain her composure. Freyja, too, got to her feet. They stood facing each other, identical sisters separated by theological identity but bound to each other through their elements; love, fertility, motherhood, beauty. But Hera was right to be pissed. Freyja had something that she didn’t, something that could’ve delayed the inevitable for a few more millennia, something that could’ve saved them all.

“You knew this would happen, didn’t you?”

Freyja made no answer. She stood gazing, mesmerized, at the smear of her own golden blood on her hand as she touched it to her throat.

“For fuck’s sake! You’re the only one who could’ve stopped this – and you didn’t! What good is seiðr if you don’t use it!”

Freyja remained quiet even now, looking everywhere but into Hera’s eyes. And this silence did nothing to calm Hera’s temper.

“For the love of Kronos! Will you say nothing, you pretentious -”

“Bitch? I wouldn’t call me that again if I were you.”

“Well, I AM you. And I will call you whatever I want.”

“What do you want from me, Hera? Shouldn’t you be spending these last precious moments in Olympus?”

“Olympus is gone!” Hera looked as if she was about to explode. Is that how it’ll happen, Freyja thought, gone in a cloud of ethereal dust. 

“I tried to talk to him. The All-father. But there was a goose. And he was… pre-occupied.”

“Fucking Zeus! You should’ve killed the goose, that would’ve gotten his attention!”

“And sent him into a rage over being literally left hanging?”

“You’re afraid of him?”

That made Freyja chuckle. If only she could explain it so easily.

“I’ve never been afraid of that buffoon. He jumped from branch to branch on Yggdrasil, always favouring Midgard, showing off his thunderous rage, and satisfying his carnal pleasures in every which way. And even as his favourite Midgard, the source of all his power, was dying, what was he doing? Fucking a golden goose! I tried, Hera, I really did. I didn’t just tell him, I showed him what would happen. I showed him the dried, crumpling roots of Yggdrasil. But he was too busy having a good time.”

“Then you should have come to me,” Hera’s anger evaporated, leaving the deflated goddess with a steady throb of panic at her temple.

Another boom and Juno stood before them, completing their triptych.

“Where is Jupiter, Freyja? We need to talk to him.”

“Do I look like Odin’s keeper, sister?”

“Nice of you to join us, Juno,” Hera felt a headache coming on – but goddesses weren’t supposed to have those. “Freyja was just telling me why she couldn’t convince Zeus to intervene before Earth went poof.”

“That’s a story I would also like to hear.” Juno’s calm was infuriating. Hera was barely holding it together, Freyja was sombre as one who has made peace with death, but Juno was truly serene. 

“I don’t have the energy to bring you up to speed. Hera can summarize it for you if she wants,” Freyja returned to Hliðskjálf and waved her hand. Nothing happened. She took a deep breath, mustered the dregs of her power and waved her hand again. This time a tankard of ale appeared in her hand.

Juno came to sit beside her. Hera stood her ground only a moment longer. These two deserved no ounce of her wrath. It was only one – the All-Father, that cunt, who deserved all hell to rain down upon him. She dropped her shoulders, sighed, and sat down at the foot of Freyja’s gaudy throne, between her sisters. Freyja passed her the tankard, and they sat in silence sharing the ale.

“I was in the market with Minerva when it happened,” Juno said while gazing at the void in their universe, “the ground beneath our feet began to shake.”

“Persephone appeared in Olympus a few moments before…,” Hera couldn’t bring herself to say it again, “She told me the River Styx had run dry. Not a single soul to be found. And the moment she told me, Olympus vanished from under my feet.”

“Well, you’re safe here,” Freyja tried to act consolatory, “at least until these halls crumble.” As if waiting for this reminder, the ground beneath them shuddered. Freyja closed her eyes, clutching her hands hard enough to drive her nails into her palms.

“We could’ve stopped him, the three of us together,” Juno said once the ground had calmed down to a steady rumble.

It was only Juno, naïve Juno, the youngest of the triptych, who could’ve thought that possible.

“The Vanir tried, I’m the only one left,” Freyja reminded her.

“And he found out one of the Gorgons tried to help them,” added Hera. “We all know how that ended.”

Juno still went on in a deceptively calm tone, “But there’s three of us. If our triptych combined our –”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Freyja was tired of this conversation, but Juno needed to understand. “He created all this, us and all the others. We are merely figments of his imagination. Playthings to appease him in his boredom. You think he gave me the gift of seiðr without making sure it didn’t have a blind spot when it came to him? You think he gave us any gifts without being certain they couldn’t be used against him?”

Hera turned her head to look at Juno and it struck her that the Roman’s feathers could not be ruffled. All this talk of oblivion, Rome being ripped from her bodice, and still not even an ounce of panic. “You know where he is, don’t you?” The fight had been knocked out of her, and this last realization felt like a spear had been driven into her back.

Juno turned her gaze from the cosmos to her sister’s face, and Freyja whipped her head to stare at Juno – coming to the same realization as Hera.

“Why would I come to you if I did?” Juno’s voice betrayed nothing of her treachery.

Hera laughed, a laugh that sent goosebumps up Freyja’s arm. “You orchestrated this catastrophe. The Mother who killed her own children. And all for what? To spend a few millennia in these empty halls, with His Godliness all to yourself?”

“You come to my home, sit on my throne, share my ale, and all so you can watch me die?” It was Freyja’s voice, slowly climbing until it reached an octave that threatened to bring Valhalla down before its time. “And all this talk of standing against him, bringing him down – all of it a ruse!”

“You’re worse than Dolus,” Hera felt spent. The last of her power was ebbing away from her, she could feel her bones becoming hollow. “Be happy for her, Freyja, she might finally get what we never got.”

“And what’s that?!” Freyja’s anger was beginning to sound just as hollow as Hera’s bones.

“A monogamous Zeus.” Freyja looked confused. Hera continued, “there’s nothing else left to fuck.”

And they laughed. A final laugh that crawled its way into Juno’s heart. A sound that would haunt her for these final millennia of her existence. And right in front of her eyes, laughing their hearts away, the final vestiges of the Æsir and the Olympians, her sisters, vanished. What was left of them, a golden ethereal dust, was driven away by the flurry of his arrival.

Juno, the laughter of her sisters still fresh in her brain, managed to smile and prostrate on the ground in welcome of her beloved. No longer Zeus or Odin. No longer shared. He was now only Jupiter. Only hers.