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In another world, perhaps Odin would have given me a choice. But that world was not this one, and I knew it all too well.
‘’I thought about allowing you to return to the mortal world,’’ Odin told me once. ‘’Or sending you to your aunt's court, if that would have been more to your liking. But those rewards, while grand indeed, did not measure up to the tremendous valor you showed in the face of Ragnarok.
I noticed an ongoing trend during your journey. You always sought a merciful way out of your troubles. Even when you had the power to maim or even kill Surt, the one who took your own life, you simply forced him to leave the battlefield.
And as you stood before me, I realized I could give you no less than the greatest honor. And as such, I named you Mercy.’’
Now you might be thinking something along the lines of: ‘’Geez, Magnus! Giving you a girly name was the greatest honor Odin could think of? That sucks!’’
But no. Honestly, I wish it was something as silly as that.
You know how people always yell: ‘’Rise and shine!’’ in your ear when you just want to sleep a few minutes more?
Well, when I woke up, I did exactly that. I shone. Literally.
Odin had turned me into the god of Mercy.
I wasn’t happy with being turned into a god, but then again, what could I do about it?
Exactly. Nothing.
So I put my big boy pants on and sucked it up.
A god was welcome in Valhalla, but living there? It wasn’t something gods did. They lived in Asgard, or in their own realms and courts.
My father gave me a standing invitation to join him in his realm. While I did enjoy visiting him, I didn’t take up on the offer permanently. Living with your parents for eternity was a tad too last century for me.
So I went to live in Asgard, the grand city of the gods. It was just as golden and divine as it was when Gunilla had shown it to me all those years ago. For those wondering- yes, including the toilet pot and the toilet brush. Somehow even the toilet paper was made of gold!
It was interesting. I liked sightseeing in the realm of the gods, but it did not take long before I realized sightseeing was exactly what I was doing. I did not feel as though Asgard was my home. I acted like a visitor in my own house.
I was a street kid through and through- I had lost the ability to stay.
I had been a demi-god when I was alive, but the human side always mattered more to me than the divine one. Life had value because it did not last forever. At some point, all living things would cease to be. But the idea of immortality? An infinite life? Once you had it, it was worth nothing. I cared not for it.
The only place where I truly had been at home was outside. Home meant camping outdoors with my mother, being lulled to sleep by her voice.
I did not belong in places of gold.
I wandered through the Nine Realms. Sometimes I helped others. Occasionally I answered the prayers of desperate mortals. I even tried my hand at stopping wars for a while. Every time Ragnarok came near, the gods scrambled desperately for a solution, a way to stop it. A way to prevent their own death from coming for them.
It was selfish. So selfish. They didn’t care about the people. They only cared about their own lives. The noble ones who did give a damn about the lives of innocents were few and far in between.
Something inside my heart turned sour in those days.
I began to listen instead of asking. To be honest, what I heard wasn’t all that different from the nasty stuff I’d heard on the street- those guys could smack talk, let me tell you. The future of the gods and the fate of the worlds? Didn’t sound that different. Only, well, on a slightly larger scale.
It was kind of like having that one friend who gave all the spoilers about that show you wanted to watch so badly. Why watch the show if you already knew what happened in it?
The terrible foretelling of Ragnarok was pretty commonplace. Doom, death, etcetera, etcetera. We’ve all heard it before. It was what came after what fascinated me.
After the Nine Worlds would be engulfed in water, and Yggdrasil’s destruction was finished, a new world will be born from its roots. Gimle, the New Asgard, would rise. It would be a paradise, a peaceful place with no wars or violence, led by the resurrected god Balder. The new human population will live in peace, happiness, and prosperity.
It sounded a tad too perfect to me. And it was. Because the price for paradise was the lives of billions of people. Nearly all of humankind would cease to be. Only two would escape and hide in the World Tree’s roots. Gods, giants, dwarves, elves, countless would die. Few would survive the battle of Ragnarok.
It would be a blood bath.
But there would be peace afterward. Mercy could be letting a man die because the torture he would receive if he were left alive would be worse than death.
It was no mercy to prevent Ragnarok. It only meant letting more people suffer the pain of war and violence.
I had one last mercy to give- Gimle, the world of peace.
I put Jack in the hands of Surt and smiled one last time before Surt drove the blade through my stomach once again.
And as the world turned dark, my smile did not fade.
I was Magnus Chase, god of Mercy, wielder of the Sword of Summer, Sumarbrander, which prefers to be called Jack.
My father once said I would be the Indian Summer before Ragnarok. The last chance for warmth, light, and growth before the long winter.
And I had been. The only mercy in the world.
It would no longer need me now.
In the new world, a boy was born. They named him Grace.
''Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.'
-Matthew 5:7
''Grace is getting something you do not deserve,
Mercy is not getting what you do deserve.''
-Anonymous