–See Orion’s belt. What colour is the central star?
–It seems . . . red. Does that mean something?
He had remembered the constellation’s name, and she recognised it. Full memory was about to come flooding back, but he answered her question nonetheless.
–It means a million years have passed.
She squeezed his fingers, crystal upon crystal.
–So much time.
Emanating from behind but sounding in their heads, a feminine, commanding voice manifested:
–You remember what we’ve always known to do. Observe what the enemy does, deduce what the enemy intends, and then prevent it.
Without turning, the man sensed Gavi asking:
–And now we fight the darkness?
–Now we fight.
He raised his spear in salute to the banded Earth, as everything came back to him.
And laughed, though the vacuum was hard.
For Ragnarökkr was imminent.
Rathulfr joined them in the Council conference hall, straight from the star-shaped chamber in which he had lain. Sharp was waiting, their watcher who could see the darkness more clearly than the rest, with pinpoints of reflected light sliding along his living-crystal antlers; along with Harij the Seeker, around whom sapphire light billowed and blazed, for Harij embodied the talent of mind-talk and hyperdimensional severance, their defence against absorption.
Kenna, Roger and Gavriela stood near the great table.
Magni teleported into existence, smiling.
–This may turn out to be exhilarating.
Of them all, only he had not known death and crystalline resurrection. He represented humanity of the past half-million years, and those of his kind who had not fled the galaxy were preparing to fight.
They could entangle their minds, the Council, the linkage mediated by Harij. When the crystalline fortress blazed at full energy, slamming orthophotons backwards through time (to use a primitive metaphor) to recruit their masses of warriors, such conjunction was necessary to maintain control; but when the need was over, they were individuals once more.
But the coming fight was not just theirs.
–We need to inspect our Valhöll that is Earth, suggested Rathulfr.
Awoken from the conjunction-trance, for the ninth and final time, they were not just recovered – they were energised, and Rathulfr’s thoughts gleamed with power.
–Roger and I will go first. That was Gavriela. To check they have absorbed what they need. If that sits well with you all.
The others smiled at her.
A feminine reply hummed through the hall, vibrating with gentle humour:
–Time for young lovers to be alone?
Another Council member.
Freya her name, a slender crystalline woman who looked a lot like Roger, her brother. In her pre-resurrection existence, she had not required a name: she had been a ship, uniquely Roger Blackstone’s. Now, in their present forms, it would be truer to label both Freya and Roger as superpositions: she partly her Pilot, he partly his ship.
–Not so young, sister. Roger was smiling. For the rest, we plead guilty.
Rathulfr was scanning the hall.
–We are eight, war-queen. Perhaps the Trickster will not come.
Kenna shook her crystalline head.
–It’s unlikely he . . .
Shimmering sapphire light brightened then attenuated, revealing the kneeling figure of a living-crystal man, the last of their number.
–Trust him to turn up like that.
That was Roger, primarily to Gavriela. Long-range teleportation in this manner – Dmitri reeked of ancient, distant stars – was natural to Magni and his modern ilk, something of an affectation to those of the old kind.
Dmitri the Trickster rose without effort to his feet, and his smile was sly.
–Waiting for me, brothers and sisters?
His presence altered the Council’s dynamic in a manner that kept them on their toes. He was insightful regarding the ways of the darkness, his cunning wisdom occasionally disturbing. Roger believed that Kenna recruited him in part because the inherent risk kept everyone else alert – don’t step in any causal loops, she liked to remind them – and remembered a conversation from half a million or a million years ago, depending on viewpoint:
—This is not the first Ragnarok Council, Kenna had told him.
—If we’re the second, what happened to the others?
—They perished in paradox.
Roger’s former naivety made him smile.
At some point, half a million years ago, Kenna had pushed through a transcendent reworking of her physical and mental self – again – to become exquisitely conscious of causal history and the sheaves of possible paths not taken; and if she had some awareness of those other destinies, then why just one other?
To be aware of an infinite number of disasters, and yet face this reality with confidence and courage: the more he understood of Kenna’s nature, the more awed he became.
Now, he took Gavriela’s hand, glanced at Dmitri, and turned to Kenna.
—Perhaps we should all fly together.
—To Valhöll?
—Exactly.
Dmitri smiled his Trickster smile.
They walked through the shining halls, all nine war leaders with Kenna in the lead, each taking a shield and some other weapon en route, until they came to a great gleaming ramp that led outside to the stark lunar landscape beneath ink-black sky.
As they placed the shields horizontally two centimetres above the ground and released them – the shields vibrated and hung in place – Magni seemed embarrassed.
—Must we travel this way?
Kenna touched his arm.
—For show before our armies, it is best.
In vacuum, soundlessly, Magni sighed.
—I’d rather be fighting.
—Soon enough, you will be.
Magni was not the only one to nod, accepting Kenna’s words. Resurrection and a million years of preparation were about to boil down to that most ancient phenomenon, an army of one species throwing itself against another, all the wonders of civilisation reduced to the need to fight, and do it well.
It was a bitterness that Magni, of all of them, had found hardest to swallow, while Rathulfr – and perhaps Dmitri, in a less wholesome way – experienced a kind of fulfilling joy, even vindication, in preparing for war, leaving the others to commit themselves out of duty and necessity.
Each of the nine stepped upon a floating, quivering shield. Then, as one, they looked up to Earth’s disc, banded with silver and crimson, serene in the night.
Kenna gave the command.
—We fly.
They rose amid invisibly roiling vacuum; and then they soared, heading for Valhöll.
To a battle-ready Earth.
They flew the skies, made speeches that were beamed across all nine armies within this, the ninth wave of Einherjar, of resurrected warriors. Battalions stood to attention as the exhortations rang in their minds, and the strategic pictures unfurled: the visual representations of that which could not be seen, the darkness, and its journey comprising hundreds of millions of lightyears across a cosmic void and onwards to this galaxy.
It had a bridgehead established at the core, weaker than it had intended but existing nonetheless, and it had continued its advance, for it was almost here, almost at the galaxy’s edge.
In the inevitable aeons to come, when two trillion years have passed, baryonic matter will cease to dominate the universe, and each galaxy will be alone, the others receded far beyond an impenetrable black horizon. That will be the epoch of darkness.