Chapter 22: Days of End

Merlin was in a dark place, perhaps a cave or tunnel of some sort. He heard a faint dripping sound, presumably from stalactites above. Far of down the passage was a faint flickering light, similar to fire light.

Merlin, being the curious boy he was, went to investigate the light source. He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he heard a bellow of pain. Merlin, thinking it was just his imagination, continued walking after an initial shock. Then the sound came again, and again, a man's voice breaking from pain, pain that Merlin nor any mortal man could know.

Merlin eventually came to the end of the passage, where it met the chamber from where the light was coming. Peeking around the corner, Merlin saw a man and a woman. The man was bound to the cave floor in the middle of the cavern by five chains: one for his head, two for his arms, and two for his legs, each chain leading to one of three small rocks. He was slightly hunched over, head down, his mildly long dark hair hanging over his head. The man was without a shirt, and had pants that had ripped just above the knees, leaving the man with long tatters flying around his legs.

The woman was almost the exact opposite of the man, Merlin noticed. She was well dressed in silk clothing with well kept hair. She held a cup just above the man's head. In the cup was a green-yellow liquid. Quickly, the woman leaned forward, and caught another drop of the same color liquid. Merlin, looking for the source of the drop, saw a snake suspended above the man's head, a dark green one with two long fangs. It was from those fangs that the drop had come from, and Merlin could see the trails of the venom down the fangs.

Out of nowhere, Merlin heard a deep boom. It sounded as if someone were pounding on the cave wall. The woman, startled by the sound, was unable to move fast enough to catch the drop of venom that fell on the man's head. Once more, the man howled and thrashed against the chains.

The booming noise came again, combining itself with the man's howling to create an unearthly sound. Merlin closed his eyes and covered his ears, wincing from the pain. When he opened his eyes, he looked over at the man, and saw a giant crack in the wall behind the man. There was another howl, yet, the man's mouth didn't open. He just stood there, hunched over and breathing hard. Th howl came again, followed by the booming noise again, then suddenly, the wall wasn't there anymore.

Standing where the wall once was a giant red wolf. The wolf was unlike any Merlin had ever seen. It had red fur, the same shade as blood, and four fangs, two on the bottom and two on the top. The fangs on the bottom lip curled up over the top lip and the ones on the top curled over the bottom lip. Where its eyes should've been were two black round balls that stared at anything and everything. Not only that, it was as big as two full-grown horses.

Merlin watched as the wolf bounded over to the man, grabbed the chains binding the man's head in its fangs, and snapped them into a hundred pieces. The wolf repeated the process with the other four chains, and soon the man was free. For what seemed to be an eternity, the man stayed hunched over, muttering words Merlin could hardly make out.

"So long ... Baldr... Odin ... ten-thousand years ... Asgard ... burn ... pay," were some of the things Merlin heard the man mutter in his deep, hateful voice.

The wolf howled, breaking the trance that had set. The woman ran to the man and was about to catch the drop of venom that would fall on his head any second. She was to slow, but the man wasn't. Just as the drop was about to fall, the man gripped the neck of the snake in an iron grasp, and forced the snake to drink it's own venom. In less than a second, the snake stopped trying to escape the man's grasp. The man dropped the life-less snake on the ground and slowly rose, revealing his facial features to Merlin.

The man's face was much different than Merlin had been expecting. The man had a clean-shaven face covered in many scars, the most prominent among them being the one cutting through his right eye. His eyes, Merlin noticed, were blue with a small ring of red around the pupil. This man, Merlin wisely decided, was not one to get into an argument with.

The man, standing full, was much taller than Merlin had previously thought, standing as tall as two men. He strode slowly toward the hole in the wall, the wolf and the woman following. Merlin also followed after a few moments, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Outside, it was howling. The wind was hitting whoever was foolish enough to stand its way, the rain whipping them. Merlin surveyed his surroundings and saw he was standing at the very peak of a mountain in the middle of the sea. Looking over the edge of the small ledge he was standing on, Merlin saw a sheer cliff, mile-high waves smashing against the side. The man stood just at the edge, his hair and tattered pants swirling around him.

"Free!" the man yelled, victory in his voice "free at long last! Now all shall pay! No one will live!"

"Thus it was in the end that the fate of the beginning was sealed," said the booming voice that seemed to emit from everywhere, followed by a flash of light.

The place Merlin was looking at was completely different from the cave where the man had been imprisoned. He was now looking at a vast plain. On one side of the plain was an army of giants. On the opposite side was a city with giant walls. Merlin guessed that the walls were at least a thousand meters high. In side the city was an army that seemed to glow. They filled every empty spot Merlin could see, yet, they were outnumbered, one to ten-thousand. Leading the army of giants were two. One was a giant himself, and seemed to burn. The other was the man that had been imprisoned in the mountain, now wearing full armor and carrying an odd weapon. A bow, that looked normal for the most part, but the arrows were what Merlin found odd. They weren't the wooden steel tipped arrows Merlin saw everyone use. Rather, it was made of a bushy plant, one that Blaise had called mistletoe.

Merlin watched the scene with great interest as the armies stood their ground, neither firing. A slight breeze was present, causing the hair of those without helmets to sway gently. The man said one word under his breath, which carried to all of his army due to the direction of the wind. Less than a minute later, the army began to march to the walls of the city. The defenders of the city took up their bows and began to pick off the attackers in vain, for it seemed that for every one killed, two sprouted up in place. The man who was leading, meanwhile, avoided the arrows by shape-shifting to become a lion, a bear, a mouse, whatever suited his fancy. The army of giants was unstoppable.

"Brothers will fight and kill each other," said the booming voice, whisking Merlin off to see what it had foretold.

Men were now fighting on the side of the attackers, along with many others of many species. Two men, who looked exactly like one another, were fighting each other with swords, the one that fought with the giants eventually ending the fight with a thrust through the heart.

"Sisters' will defile kinship," said the booming voice, followed by a flash of light. The scene Merlin saw was a young lady that was fighting with the defenders stabbing her mother in the back and opening the gate to the army outside.

The voice continued to show Merlin the happenings of the battle, taking him from place and narrating what was to happen there.

"No man will have mercy on another," was the last thing the voice said before showing him a rapid scene of events. The wolf killed one of the defenders in an epic battle in the center of the city. A young man who had an undeniable resemblance to the one that had just died came up on the wolf, rolled under it and stabbed his knife through to the heart. A flash of light and Merlin saw the giant that had seemed to burn. First the giant set a rainbow bridge on fire, causing the land the bridge lead to to also catch fire. Then the giant, surrounded by defenders of the city, did the only thing he could do. Set the world itself afire.

Before long, the fire spread, engulfing everyone and everything, leaving in its path nothing but ashes. There was another flash of light and Merlin was looking at the same place he had first seen, the place where Gaea had created the world. Except there was a tree floating there instead of land. Merlin heard a frightened scream and saw two people in the tree, a male and a female, looking down below them. Before Merlin could see what the two people were looking at, there was a flash of light and he was in a different place once more.