The prison under the great hall felt like it was timeless. Seconds were tough, minutes felt like hours and hours seemed to last longer than a whole day.

The only light that illuminated the stuffy room came from a candlestick hanging on the wall directly above Erik.

You stared at his body with clouded eyes.

There was so much blood. The light from the candle caught the red and made it look like liquid metal.

He had betrayed you.

After all the years of friendship, he had turned against you and gone to the All-Father, the one God he had never worshipped but even mocked.

And it had brought him nothing but death.

Heimdall had been right.

Odin was truly a cruel man. And so without hesitation.

Now you could understand where the biting behaviour of the God of Foresight came from. It was like an armour he wore to protect himself from the cruelties of his own father.

And in return, he had absorbed some of his cruelty.

Of course, after all, as a son he also had to prove his origins.

Was this the reason why Thor had become such a pitiful wretch?

The legends and songs seemed to portray him better than he ultimately was.

Baldur, too, must have been different from what people had told him.

Only Heimdall was exactly as the rumours said.

Probably because he was ultimately the son who had served Odin the most.

That fact alone should have prepared you for what had happened.

Of course he had betrayed you. After all, he was a son of the All-Father. A terrible product of a cruel man, blessed with divine power and a life that would never end.

Something in your chest tightened.

A heavy sigh left your lips.

Despite all that had happened and all that was yet to happen, you could not help but feel sadness.

You regretted not having seen through him sooner.

You regretted getting so close to him.

Your mind began to loathe him.

But your heart refused.

Your body remembered.

He had been sincere that night and although no word of affection had crossed his lips, his reactions had told everything.

He had had no intention of telling on you. He had not feared that your thoughts were not within his reach.

So why?

Why did he decide to toss you aside all of a sudden?

If only it had been that. But instead of throwing you away like a used toy, he had driven you into the arms of the All-Father.

As if he had helped a wolf hunt its prey.

What did he get out of it?

Why did he suddenly hate you again like on the first day?

Your gaze returned to Erik.

Eyes wide and lips open to take a breath that would never fill his lungs, he lay on the floor, bathing in his own blood.

It was strange, even though Erik was one of the few dead people you'd laid eyes on in your entire life, the sight wasn't as disturbing as you might have thought it would be.

It didn't even move you.

There was still so much emotion in his eyes, petrified and immortalised in death for all time.

And yet, it felt like you were looking at a doll.

The smell of iron was in the air. It brought nausea to your nose and goose bumps down your spine.

Your grip on the bars tightened. Your hands closed more and more around the metal until your knuckles stood out and began to burn from the effort.

A frustrated cry caught in your throat.

Desperation burned in the corners of your eyes.

You refused to feel anything but anger.

Both for Odin and for Heimdall.

"Damned gods.", you growled through clenched teeth. "Your immortality... do you think it makes you better? Do you think I'm just a worthless object? Do you believe that, Heimdall?"

With every word you addressed to the void, the flame of the candle flickered. Every single word, every single thought made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Despair faded and instead burning hot anger spread inside you.

How much you hated the gods, that they were gods.

But all at once everything was blown away. Emptiness spread through you.

Your eyes locked with Erik's.

He had allowed himself to be seduced, whether it was because of greed, fear or even the hope of one day belonging to them.

Gods brought nothing but ill will.

You didn't want to end up like him, slain as soon as he had fulfilled his purpose, with his own blood on his face.

It was as if he was actually worth nothing.

Yet you believed your life had weight. Maybe not to the gods, maybe not that much. And yet. Your existence was valuable, threatening enough to make the Allfather take you captive.

At that moment you frowned in bewilderment.

If you were really such a threat, why didn't the Allfather just get rid of you?

He had managed to throw Erik away within the breath of a second and he had been but a mere human with no notable skills nor magic.

Heimdall must have handed you over to him, which meant he had confessed his inability to see through you.

That made you not only a barrier to fulfil his tasks but also a danger to Odin himself. He was known to hate anything he could neither control nor use.

That meant you had to have another use for him. But you could think of no scenario in which you could have served him like a tool.

You weren't a human blessed with the ability of magic, had no qualities that went further than knowledge about how to care for mythical creatures.

Your body was mortal through and through. It bled when cut, ached when hurt and one day would return to ashes.

Unless he planned to use you against Heimdall.

You swallowed hard.

Afather wouldn't mistreat his own son like that.

Or was Odin capable of far more cruel things?