~ Epilogue ~

It was believed by the Aesir that all life was created through fire and ice. They believed fire, which they imagined to come from a merciless world they named Muspelheim, and ice, from the ruthless frozen wastelands of Nifleim, to be two opposing forces separated by a magical chasm the name of Ginnungagap, bounded to their side of Creation by the chasm's seemingly never-ending deepness. They too believed that the forces had become stronger and stronger and had eventually spilled into the abyss, where the fire had bit into the ice with a feisty hiss. The droplets of ice melted by the fire became water and the water, it was told created the first two beings of the new universe: The giant Ymir and the cow Auðhumla, who sustained itself by licking the salty ice blocks and then nourished Ymir with her milk. From her licking, the tales of the Aesir propose, emerged Búri, father of Bor, grandfather of Odin, who would become the mightiest and most powerful being in all the known worlds; and great-grandfather of Thor, the Thunderer. Just as Auðhumla spawned the grandfather of the Aesir, it was said, Ymir spawned the Frost Giants, that race of deviant, horrid beings that now dwell in the realm of Jotunheim, by sweating a male and a female from under his left arm, who, as one might expect, procreated blissfully.

It has, however, never been known where Buri's companion to father Bor had emerged from and it has, also, never been questioned by the Aesir at all. What they did believe, however, was that Odin Borson killed Ymir one day and then created Midgard, the realm most treasured by all the Aesir, from the giant's carcass. Is was told that Ymir's blood became the sea, his flesh the soil, his skull the sky, his bones the mountains and his hair the trees of that new, all too precious world. What the Aesir also believed was that Yggdrasil, the World Ash, grew from Ymir's body and that its trunk grew tall very swiftly, creating six other worlds besides Muspelheim, Niflheim and Midgard, which sprouted into existence from the Ash's wooden roots—Vanaheim, Alfheim, Swartalfheim, Nidavellir, Jotunheim and Asgard; the Realm Eternal. This the Aesir declared their residence because it perched atop of Yggdrasil—the World Tree, as it would be later known across the universe—like a beacon of hope that shone across the stars. The tree was, so went the tales, supplied with water by three magical springs that sustained it through unfathomable eons, even though the origins of those springs, too, remained unknown. What was not unknown was that the Norns of past, present and future, the goddesses of fate, rested in a cave by the spring that nourished the Asgardian root of Yggdrasil and that, from there, they have woven the threads of fate for gods, men, giants and all other creatures ever since the worlds came into existence. What was also not unknown was that Odin Borson, High King of Asgard, Allfather of Creation, once sought out the wisdom of the World Tree and hung himself from it, refraining from food and drink for nine consecutive days. After that, the Aesir believed, he knew and understood life's mysteries as no one else, except for the Norns, and then built their Empire with the help of that newly gained wisdom.

Yet, all these tales are nothing more than that. Tales.

Before the dawn of Creation, there was nothing but darkness and there was an entity called Nemesis, the first of all beings to ever exist. She was born from that darkness and in it, she remained, alone. She wished for companionship, yearned for it fiercely, and waited patiently, even though none could say for how long she waited. While she floated in that darkness, she dreamed of stars and life filling up the blackness; dreamed of worlds so beautiful that they would take away her very breath; dreamed of creatures fair and delicate that would populate these worlds and help them grow into something of astonishing value. The dreams sustained her for a long time but, eventually, when nothing and no one else was spawned by either the darkness or her restless imagination, she grew tired of her loneliness and her tiredness soon turned into despair.

One day, even if the concepts of day and night did not yet exist at that time, Nemesis could no longer bear it, and she willed her essence to shatter. Her body exploded into atoms and brought forth what she had most desired in her lonely subsistence and that was, above all else, something that would structure the infinite darkness, in which she had been forced to dwell, providing it with dimensions of some sort—in short, something that would be later thought of as Space. She had also wished for something that would set apart the darkness from the opposite that she believed it must possess—something like Time—and for something that would provide matter where there was nothingness and the force to act upon that matter, something like Power. Apart from that, she had dreamed of stars so bright that they would blind anyone who dared to lay eyes upon them and of worlds so prospering that they would instill the wish to live upon them in any being. Beings so fair and proud and so full of life and hunger and curiosity that they would take these worlds and transform them into something of unspeakable beauty. Beings that, like her, possessed a sentient core capable of thought and imagination and emotion—a Mind—and an essence that defined them even after they would cease to exist—like a Soul—and that lived in a structural arrangement of different particles that provided them with what they could believe in as their Reality.

Everything that the imagination of Nemesis had not been able to bring into being when she still lived exploded into existence with the shockwaves rippling through the darkness after her violent demise, materializing into seven powerful singularities, six of which have become known throughout the universe as the Infinity Stones. Six incredibly mighty gems, glimmering in the brightest shades of blue, green, purple, yellow, orange and red, that granted its future wielders control of the very aspects Nemesis herself had longed to control in her state of helplessness. The seventh singularity, however, which remained where Nemesis had willingly ended her agonizing existence, took the form of a black gem, hardly visible in the surrounding darkness, and into this poured her conscience and her power. From her conscience grew a tree so powerful and so resilient that nothing could ever hope to cut its branches; a tree so beautiful that it would be gazed upon with admiration and humility for eons henceforth; a tree so infested with magic that it would continuously pulse between the corporeal and the transient, never allowing anyone but the most omnipotent of beings to comprehend its immensity; the tree whose existence the Aesir became aware of and named Yggdrasil—the World Tree.

Within its trunk grew a cave and within that a well that gave birth to the Norns; creatures that knew the fate of the universe and decided what was to happen and for what reason, which was another thing Nemesis had yearned for so desperately. From the tree's branches grew the worlds she had dreamed of during her lonely days. The first of all these worlds was Asgard, the home of those fair and remarkable beings that Nemesis had envisioned in her grueling existence and that would later call themselves Gods. The first of their rulers was, indeed, Buri, grandfather of Odin, father of Bor and great-grandfather of Thor, even if he had not come into existence by a cow licking ice but simply by her imagination. Then came all those other worlds populated by giants, elves, dwarves, snakes, monsters or trolls, or by tiny little beings that resembled the residents of Asgard in appearance but were far less graceful, far less knowledgeable, far less long-living and far less powerful, and that the Aesir would refer to as mortals or humans.

And what a delightful sight these little creatures were with their desires and impulses and hopes and fears! Shortly after Nemesis had ended her life, seeing from afar that all of her dreams had come true indeed, she longed to be reborn to experience the marvels of a blackness filled with life and light in the flesh. Her conscience along with the powers of her imagination and her dark impulses endured, clinging to the foolish hope that one day she would be reborn among them. This thought was pulsating through the World Tree when the newly created worlds were still young, sending pleas for help across the worlds to be reunited with the rest of her. Even if Nemesis could not tell how she had come by this knowledge, she sensed in the core of her being that only a reunion with the scattered splinters of her being with her conscience would allow her rebirth. At the same time, however, she began to suspect deep within her that a reunion would destroy all of which she had created and so she remained torn between the urge to be part of the life she had brought into existence with her dreams and the fear that she would destroy it should the reunion ever came to pass.

Her torment, however, was for naught. In truth, Nemesis did not need to worry about the occurrence of this reunion for unfathomable eons since Búri never responded to the magical powers emanating from Yggdrasil. After defending Asgard against the Frost Giants, the Dark Elves and the Fire Demons and thereby ensuring its hegemony across the worlds, he lived a life of bliss on Asgard until the time had come to pass his duties along to his son. Bor was a little more susceptible to the silent pleas her conscience passed on to the Aesir through the dreams instilled by Yggdrasil's magical branches but he did not manage to decipher them all. He did, however, collect three of the remaining six fragments of her essence with his sons, Odin, Vili and Vé, ensuring that Reality, Time and Space were, after eons of being lost in the vastness of the universe, within her reach again. Shortly after, however, the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim attacked Asgard for the fragment—a fluid, ever-changing mass of red mist—and fled with it to their homelands of ragged mountains to use it for the purpose of plunging the entire universe back into the darkness Nemesis had come from. Bor and his sons had been unprepared for this assault but charged after them nonetheless, thwarting their plans with great losses on their side. Having lost a great number of loyal Asgardian soldiers, Bor chose to bury the Reality Stone where none would ever find it again; but not without extracting some of its powers to keep it for the Aesir.

Before he could do any more to ensure Asgard's safety, Bor fell victim to a terrible illness and Odin was entrusted with the task of ruling Asgard in his stead, which alarmed Nemesis. Where Bor had been humble and gracious, Odin was hungry for knowledge, bloodthirsty and restless. He took a wife and fathered Hela, who was all of these things as well, and more. Her mind was filled with a terrible darkness that would drive her to do inexplicable things once she had come of age. One day, when Hela was still young, Odin came to Yggdrasil, seeking the wisdom of the Norns in his quest to conquer the entire universe. What he found instead of advice was the black gem, which he seized for himself. Susceptible to her greatest fear that her reunion with the remaining stones might cause the entire universe to collapse in upon itself, he sealed it deep below the vaults of Asgard, ensuring that none would ever dare to retrieve it. He invented a prophecy of the end of the worlds—Ragnarök, the so-called Twilight of the Gods—that would come to pass if anyone were to move the Odinsword beneath which he had sealed her. He too foretold that one of them, a person he referred to simply as 'The Tangler', was going to cause this to happen and thereby ensured that none of them would ever dare to move the sword, lest they bring the disappointment of the Allfather upon them. The Aesir believed he had seen this future when he had hung himself from Yggdrasil itself and thus started to believe that Ragnarök was upon them, doing everything in their might to prevent their inevitable destiny to claim them.

As time wore on, Odin, his brothers and his daughter Hela conquered the eight remaining worlds and subjected them to their will with the armies of Asgard behind them, causing unspeakable bloodshed. In the process, they gathered the remaining three fragments of her essence; if not without cost. Hela's mother succumbed to grief and horror. Retrieving what the Asgardians and others had come to refer to as the Mind Stone by then cost the life of Vili, who was slain on the battlefield of a cold planet. Retrieving the Soul Stone, who had grown sentient and malicious far quicker than any of the others, demanded the sacrifice of a loved one, which drove Odin to throw Vé, his own flesh and blood, off a cliff onto a floor of stone where his neck shattered like glass. The last of them, Power, was, by contrast, rather easy to obtain and, suddenly, Nemesis found herself overwhelmed with a curiosity what they would do with the might that was given to them. She watched in awe as Odin created a sustaining energy source from the stones he had collected by fusing them with the magic of Yggdrasil; a power that would go down in history as the Odinforce and that would have no equal for as long as the universe remained. She watched in awe as he infused a loyal soldier of his with the power to see into the universe and all souls residing within it. She watched him create a magical bridge that shone in the brightest of colors and allowed the Aesir to travel between worlds whenever they pleased without as much as scratch; and that they named Bifröst while the primitive earthlings simply named it 'rainbow' after they had caught a glimpse of its shine on their skies during the travels of the Gods. She watched him transfer the red magic of the Reality Stone into a few selected beings whom he thought capable of wielding such force. She watched him instruct the dwarves, who operated the magical forges of Nidavellir, to create a weapon that would be able to harness the energy of the Power Stone and that would later become Gungnir, a formidable spear feared across all words. She watched in awe as Odin created many more miracles that she would never have been able to dream with her powers.

Odin was cruel, yes, Nemesis sensed it, but he was also fiercely intelligent and incredibly resourceful and, suddenly, the thought of what he could do with the universe she had only imagined set every single one of her no longer existent nerves on fire. Sealed away in her prison with a spell that no being could ever hope to break as long as the Allfather still lived, Nemesis began to draw immense pleasure from this universe and from all the love and passion, all the joy and malice, all the chaos and destruction that the Aesir infested upon it; feasting on the fruits of her dreams like maggots on a rotten apple in a state of morbid bliss.

Until the warnings started. Enthralled by the spectacle of Odin's reign, Nemesis hardly noticed the desperate magical pleas of the stones that wafted through the universe at first, until their cries became unbearably shrill and impossible to overhear. Odin had grown too malicious, too deceiving, too cruel, and the stones, which had been birthed, after all, by her innocent wish for companionship, began to suffer with each new transgression against the beings the Allfather thought beneath him. Jolted from her stupor, Nemesis realized that her children would not survive if they were to be subjected to Odin's fierce cravings for omnipotence much longer. And she feared for them, mourned for them. Her conscience reached out to Odin's twisted mind, whispering to him that what he had prophesied to his people as Ragnarök would truly be upon him if he continued down his path of bloodshed and destruction. "You have gained much from my essence, Allfather," she told him. "Too much. Stop your conquest, set the stones free and no harm shall come to your people. If you choose to ignore me, all that you value shall perish."

Even if Odin did not appreciate her premonition at all, he eventually heeded her advice, for he had feared for some time now that some powerful being, whose existence he was of yet oblivious to, might come forth and try to emulate his deeds. His daughter Hela, who had grown into one of the fiercest warriors and one of the most ferocious beings in all the worlds, opposed his decision to put an end to Asgard's aspiration for dominance. With all the power they held at their fingertips, she cried out, it would be foolish to stop now. Before she could dare to fight him for the throne of Asgard, Odin unceremoniously decided to banish her for her murderous intentions with the help of the Odinforce, only half-aware that it had been him and his dark desires of conquest and mastery that had spawned the evil inside of her.

With Hela gone, Odin took a new wife, Frigga, and fathered Thor, the Thundergod, and, after eons of bloodshed, tried to establish peace across the Realms in order to impede Ragnarök; the threat he had so foolishly devised before Nemesis had made him believe that it was real. The Allfather watched Thor grow from an infant into a toddler and fought the last Great War against the Frost Giants of Jotunheim after the giants had threatened to subjugate Midgard by plunging it into a world of ice devoid of any life, any hope. The Allfather and his army drove the giants out of Midgard and followed them into the cold waste of Jotunheim with great cost. Many Asgardians were slain and Odin's right eye was cut from its socket by a jagged, icy blade wielded by Laufey, King of the Jotuns. Eventually, the Asgardians defeated the giants and, after wresting the promise of an armed truce from them, Odin took not only the source of their power, a powerful magical artifact known as The Casket of Ancient Winters, but also Laufey's son Loki back to Asgard.

Back on the Realm Eternal, Odin used the remaining power of the Reality Stone, which his father had kept safe, to transform the giant's offspring into one of them. There was a shadow in his heart when he did so; a shadow that Nemesis herself was not aware of and that only the Reality Stone itself perceived, faint though it was. Odin assured himself that raising the giant's boy as his son would serve as an insurance that the truce with the Jotuns would never be broken, that there would be ever-lasting peace across the Realms, but, deep inside of him, he hoped, wished even, that Loki would grow up alongside his son Thor as the scorned second prince. That he would eventually grow into a man angry enough to help sustain the belief among the Aesir that he was 'The Tangler' that was going to cause Ragnarök and that their wariness would help him to sustain the illusion that he had drank from the well of wisdom inside of Yggdrasil. Turning a blind eye to the dark urges that still pulsed beneath his chest, no pun intended here, the Allfather mistreated the giant's son from a very young age, all the while ensuring not only Loki and Thor but also himself that the two dissimilar brothers were equals.

After defeating the Frost Giants, Odin saw to the second part of Nemesis' warning and dispersed the stones that had helped to ensure Asgard's position of hegemony for centuries across the stars lest they draw unwanted attention to his new, peaceful kingdom. Two of the stones, he brought to Midgard. One, the Time Stone, he sealed within a necklace that he gave to a young Midgardian scholar called Agamotto, whom he taught in magic to ensure Midgard's survival against any attack from the rest of the Realms and who would later establish the order of the Masters of the Mystic Arts with the help of its magic. The other, the Space Stone, he sealed within a glowing cube that would come to be known as the Tesseract, which he buried it deep below the plains of Tønsberg after he had fought off the relentless armies of the Frost Giants and the mortals there ensured him their ever-lasting gratitude. The Power Stone, he sealed within an artifact that would be later simply referred to as 'The Orb', which he brought to a forsaken, stony planet that he thought would never be set foot upon by anyone. The Soul Stone he returned to the place where he had sacrificed his brother, demanding Vé's life back in exchange for the gem to the ghostly entity that had claimed it, but was informed that a sacrifice made to the Soul Stone could not be reclaimed. So be it, thought Odin, for at least this stone will never be recovered by anyone else once they learn of the price that must be paid for its possession and thus the quest to collect them all will never be fulfilled. The Mind Stone, which Odin sensed to be one of the most treacherous, he sealed within a scepter he had forged by the same fires that had brought forth Gungnir and Mjølnir, the powerful hammer he had once bestowed upon Hela and would later bestow upon his first-born son. For reasons unknown, he buried this scepter on an asteroid belt in the vicinity of Asgard.

As soon as Odin had abandoned his murderous fantasies of omnipotence, Asgard prospered and turned into that beautiful, peaceful world Nemesis had imagined in the dreams that had sustained her before her death. The stones' cries for help faded away. The worlds were at peace. Soothed by the promise of peace and beauty, Nemesis fell into a deep, satisfied, eon-lasting slumber in her prison and the existence of a being that had birthed the Infinity Stones, if it had ever been known at all, passed into history and from there into legend and then into myth. To this day, her existence is a mystery to all but a few beings and those who do know, or suspect, have simply called her conscience 'The Seventh Stone' for an ineffably long time.

Nemesis slept as Thor and Loki grew from boys into men and ended the Vikings wars on Midgard with their father. She slept as new worlds sprang into existence from the dreams of the Aesir beyond the branches of Yggdrasil and new life stirred awake in the vastness beyond the Nine Realms protected by Odin Allfather. She slept as those beings grew conscious and their minds filled with dark thoughts and malevolent intents. She slept as those beings, who were as dangerous and deranged as they were smart and susceptible, began to hear whispers of the stones. She slept as countless of them set out to retrieve the stones from their hiding places. She slept as the stones wreaked havoc across the universe, growing ever more sentient with each wielder.

She sleeps, even now.

She sleeps as a ruthless being bearing the name of Thanos sets out on his merciless quest to destroy half of the universe with their help. She sleeps as this creature travels to Nidavellir and asks Eitri of the dwarves, one of the greatest magic wielders in the Nine Realms, to forge a Gauntlet that will be able to withstand the repercussions of using all six stones. She sleeps as Eitri ensures that the stones' magic will shrivel and die if they are ever again used for such atrocities as they have during the long and bloody reign of Odin. She sleeps as Odin watches the terror across the universe unfold with the one eye that he still possesses after the battle against the Frost Giants, anxious but still confident that his son Thor—who, the Norns had assured him, was to grow into the greatest of all the Aesir—will fend off the threats looming beyond their borders. However, with the universe spinning out of control as a hunger for war and darkness grew in many hearts of its inhabitants, the threats build faster than even the Allfather could have imagined. His long reign, Odin suddenly senses with unmistakable clarity, is unexpectedly coming to a swift end and that realization plunges him into insanity and despair. And so it will come to pass that Odin decides to proclaim his son Thor king of Asgard before he is anywhere near ready for this task and before his adopted son Loki—offspring of his archenemy Laufey, King of the Frost Giants—can fully grow into 'The Tangler'.

Sensing the chaos erupting on and threatening the supremacy of Asgard in the aftermath of Odin's decision, Nemesis will stir again for the first time in eons, trying to warn the Allfather once more, but Odin's mind will remain closed to her and there will be no one else to hear her pleas. Still confined by the Allfather's spell, Nemesis will not be able to do anything but watch before, at last, almost all the remaining splinters of her being will be brought within her reach again. The Space Stone will find its way back to Asgard and will be stored a mere wall away from where she dwells. The Power Stone, while still sealed in the Orb, will not be far either. The Time Stone and the Mind Stone will remain on Midgard, only a Bifröst's journey away. The Reality Stone will come back to Asgard as well but will soon be carried away again, even if not far enough for her to stop sensing its presence, faint though it might have been. The only one whose energies she will not be able to detect are that of the Soul Stone.

With the stones so close to each other once more, Nemesis will feel them stirring awake as the universe is slowly succumbing to malice, destruction and grief. She will reach out for the Allfather but Odin's mind will continue to remain out of her reach, every trace of his once so far-reaching conscience gone for good. She will tap into the magic of Yggdrasil ever so desperately—trying to send out a warning to any magical being who might be willing to listen, trying to tell them what would happen if the Infinity Stones were to be abused once more—but all her pleas will remain unheard.

Nemesis will try to free herself, in vain at first, but eventually, the spell that has sealed her will be broken and Nemesis will feel that she is no longer confined. The Allfather will have perished and the universe, she knows, will soon bear the damage of his passing. Still, she will no longer be a goddess, no longer a being. She will not be able to move. Her conscience will remain locked in a black gem the size of thumbnail and she will not be able to break out of it. Not at once. Listening to her children's desperate warnings, agonizing over her inability to save them or any of which she has dreamed, the walls confining her will suddenly burst as the fires of Muspelheim consume Asgard and burn it to the ground. Millennia after she has ended her own existence, Nemesis will finally be free again.

Well, almost. Before she will begin to surmise what has transpired, the Goddess of Death—Hela, Odin's cast-out first-born daughter—will grab her and carry her deep into the frozen wastelands of Niflheim. Unfortunately, Hela's mind too will remained closed to her and while Nemesis broods, trying to concoct a plan of how she could bring the stones within her reach again, Loki, son of Asgard and Jotunheim, will reach out, trying to bind his spirit to the Space Stone in his final moments.

The sons of Odin, she will decide then, must bring the stones back to her. They must bring her children home.

She will grant Hela access to Loki's memories and, with his voice and his magic, she will send a call to Thor, knowing that only Odin's heirs would be able to hide her children in such a way that the universe might not be lost again.

And then she will wait, until Thor and Loki fulfill their destiny.