The door opened, and the big man stood at the threshold for just a moment before he stepped forward.

  Only for the threshold to reject him.

  “You must leave all thoughts of violence at the door,” the ancient one’s voice called from the bar.

  “I thought all were welcome here,” the big man said.

  “They are. If they leave all thoughts of violence at the door.”

  Closing his eyes, the big man unbuckled his belt. The hammer that hung from it was a part of him and he a part of it. He did not part with it lightly, but he set it aside. For now.

  When he tried the door again, he found that this time the threshold admitted him. He entered the Inn and looked around. It hadn’t changed in two thousand years. It smelled of cedar, it smelled of good pork, and it smelled of the best ale.

  “I ask a boon of ye, ancient one,” he said. “My brother has escaped. I—we need a place to parlay. He said, if you would host, then he would come. Will ye host?”

  “If he can find the door, and he can pass the threshold, and he can pay the tab. Pass these three trials, and he is as welcome as all of my guests,” the ancient one answered. “Anyway, he is already here.”

  The shadows in the corner unfurled, and a tall man who was too skinny for his height was there.

  “Brother dear, so nice of you to come,” said the tall man. “I’ve been waiting to speak with you for so very, very long, but you never came to visit until I changed my address. Why do you search for me now, but not when you knew exactly where I was and ?”

  The shadows flickered around the tall man, not cast by the gentle firelight but by something of their own.

  “Leave your parlor tricks out of it, Loki,” said the big man. “I’ve come to ask you to call them off. Call of your children. Call off Hel. Call off Ragnarok. The world has changed, and we have no place in it anymore. Call them off.”

  “

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  “Not for me, brother—“

  “Do not call me that, you have lost the right!”

  “Not for me. For the mortals. They have forgotten the old ways, but they have learned new ones. Ragnarok will not go the way that the Norns predicted, all those years ago. The mortals will slay the Einherjar and your sons and daughters alike with their tools of war and engines of destruction. Call them off, and let the children of men and the children of monsters retreat to live another day.”

  “They, who call me a sinner, a liar, a thief and a rogue? Why would I care about their fates? Let them try to stop Fenrir. Let them try to slay Jormungandr. Let them be devoured by Midgarsomr. I care not for the little people whose names do not echo in eternity, Thor.”

  The big man sighed. “Well, I tried.”

  He stood to leave, but the door slammed shut.

  “You have not paid your tab,” the ancient one said.

  Thor sighed and sat down at the bar, the wood of the stool creaking beneath his weight. “Once there was a warrior, a mighty man beyond the reckoning of normal ken. He was aesir, and his story is long, but you have heard all of that before, when last I visited with the man who forbids me from calling him brother, but who was my brother in those days. Those were better days, when the world was not young but younger, and the lands were harsher and the people meaner because they had to be.

  “But they were kind, too, and tolerant of men like this mighty warrior who protected them. They tolerated his excesses because when the shadows of night came and threatened their children, it was his hammer and his fists and his echoing thunder which kept them safe.

  “But children do not stay children. They grow, and they learn, and they learn and they learn and they learn. They learned secrets of the world not imagined by old ones like the old warrior, who in his excess grew fat and complacent. They turned to another god, forgot the names and rituals of the older ones. The old gods grew weak, the warrior grew weak, and the people grew strong.

  “Today they fight not with axe and blade and hammer. They dress not in steel and chainmail when they don their battle vestments.

  “The days of the warrior are over, and the days of warrior-gods are over.

  “Today, I work in an abattoir, pretending that the beasts brought before me are sacrifices as I deliver grace to the terrified animals. I am not alone, many of the old ones have found new ways to exist in the new world. Others have simply dwindled away.

  “Loki, have you gone searching for your sons and daughters yet? I ask you to call them off not for their mercy. But for yours.

  “They are all dead.”

  Thor drank deeply from the mug that was on the bartop, then he turned to the Innkeeper. “I have paid my tab?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goodbye, Brother.”

  Thor walked out of the Inn, leaving a crying man wreathed in shadow behind.

  For he was the god of tricksters, not his brother, and he knew when a man was telling the truth.