On his 99th year, he was at a lack of mercy and the losing end of a battle with a 10-year-old mage prodigy sent by the druids to save their people from banishment into the sea. In an action of desperation he had made a deal with the tall reaper, the one who always remained cloaked and carrying sickle, the harbinger of sorrow, to purchase the sand from the hour glass of an almost century old tyrant of the viking folk.
On Asgard, he had been the skilled presenter of parlor tricks and for his time and tiding, he had learned a few magics to lengthen his years and his hair, but father time had caught up with him. For his many malicious acts of haste and ill repute by gambling his life away in a constant act of desolation only a true warlord could afford, and for his poor judgment, Athena who has noticed the unbalance Odin has caused to her planet sends him to hell.
He is confused but is quick to notice the population of vile inhabitants. He begins to war, slashing, breaking, bewildering hell spawn of manic strength, causing terror with the strength of his will to those that would cloud his mind with mystic ability. bashing, cutting, and no amount of moonlight healing would save him as he slices and crushes one beast form after the next, each eager to feast on his lively hood as they crawl over head and underfoot of each other, some not so closely resembling men, to reach him and defeat the axe fighter.
He fights until he can see the edges of the hell fold in, one corpse at a time. He fights until the number diminishes in his favor, never flushing, never feigning. He notices the center of the herd of hellions holds a dark region; he drudges towards swinging and lancing one dark demon after another, until only the final guardians remain surrounding the black pillar of radiant smoke, rising from the mounting pile of lifeless bodies at the center of this war field of masterpiece death. They stand low in the shoulder and straddling the ground, if not crawling on three or four of their limbs. They seemed dried like leather in the summer sun, weak and powerless, and overly feeble in appearance. They prove to be formidable as their appearance reveals to be deceiving and their attacks combined and often embraced doubling and tripling the effects of their attacks. His armor begins to show heavy damage, his hide battle scorn but his skill is unparalleled on this day and he wins and fells the last of the beasts.
The darkness rises upward; it echoes a silence that consumes the sound of the air. He kneels in the blood and bone and semi-human bodies that blanket the coil. Pride and energy rush through his veins and he assesses the havoc he has caused. Fear rushes him as he looks to the sky which has been stricken black above a ground glowing almost white, dimly so through the endless chasm of blood. Without the breaking of the fire from the hell of life's foretelling tales of yore, toiling at him like ravens or crows attacking the sparrow hawk; he kneels in the wrath of his war of hell. He rests his axe down leaning the handle to his leg, prepared for a sudden attack. His thirst has overcome him and he drinks from the red passion blood and anger that painted the basin.
Awestruck he wanders through the fields of euthanasia, finding empathy for those we cannot find, mourning those we cannot sake. That which remains is only the ample supply for bonfires and a lack of camps that lined an endless field of bodies that seemed to float on a sea of blood. The man of wounds walks across them and through the red, deep red, deepest red to a dying fire. The dwindling fire that gives smoke is also, where a spy of the dark lord dances above the flame in the smoke though he cannot see or hear it, unaffected by the heated currents of air, singing a happy song and playing a harp, staring directly at him.
He looked to where the radiant tower of dark light had shown, it had neither a vacuous nature nor an absence of form, and had become an obsidian throne. He thought of a happier place with whimsical muses, as he surveyed the elegant seat perched on a hill of fallen soldier of the afterlife. Solemn to the tale, the hall of violent disaster began to rumble with a heartbeat. Staring at a passing heaven of blue sky and white water clouds that reflected on the sky of hell, hoping for the mind to return from blindness, confused and stiff he rises to his feet and walks uphill to the throne of benevolence only paces away.
Every fire smoldering and each conflict spent, the field is empty but with the meter of the heartbeat, it glows red and flashes with the sound, synchronized with each sound the heartbeat made. Through a field of ravaged chaos and appropriate anarchy, mending mental wounds and breaking bones of every sort underfoot. As the wounds ended their bleeding, only the pain can remind of existence. Righteously he takes ascension to the throne, its power of sage time and divinity turns the hell into a searing white brightness.
Valhalla now holds only heroes, not observers.