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  In the midst of it all the Mighty Thor returned bearing arms. Standing resplendent in the “armour of the son to be” the mighty Thor raised mjolnir high above his head and called upon the greatest cosmic storm that had ever been summoned or that ever will be summoned. Using his own god essence combined not only with the hammer supreme but also the armour supreme Thor fed the storm still further. It seemed to momentarily sweep away the other energies, cosmic, Celestial, Asgardian, Elder God, and other god pantheon and for the briefest of moments even the Odinforce itself seemed to defer to the mighty Thor’s godstorm.

  Almost every pantheon has its Thunder God, yet as every Skyfather and every great cosmic power knows there is only one true god of Thunder.

  If you had taken a thousand thunder gods from the many pantheons of the Multiverse they could never have come anywhere near creating a storm such as this. The madness the total insanity that had prevailed seemed to clear from the battlefield and for a moment from the minds of all.

  The son of Odin cried out "enow, I say enow, can you all not see the savage madness that doth abound here! Let the battle cease now, let reason prevail!" It was a cry to reason that could be heard throughout the length and breadth of the Multiverse.

  All warring factions, gods and cosmic powers alike, momentarily ceased their fighting and looked to the Mighty Thor for guidance. Thor had accomplished something that the Living Tribunal himself had been either unwilling or unable to do. The temporary cessation of hostilities.

  There are times, crucial watershed moments in the lives and histories of men, gods, and cosmic entities alike where the path taken may lead upwards to the light or downwards to ever spiralling decay. This was such a moment. The ultimate watershed moment in the whole history of the Multiverse. Save perhaps only, times beginning and its end.

  Yet even as he started to call out further to them, the warring factions, even All Father Odin, looked away from him, and recommenced battle.

  Thor saw the moment had past and been lost.

  He saw too that an overcrowded battle that had thus far been largely contained to the general vicinity of the Asgardian dimension would now likely spread unconstrained to all of the four corners of the Multiverse.

  For a moment the mighty Thor despaired. He saw the future more clearly than he ever had at Hlidskialf and it was cause for that despair. The dreams of his son Magni carrying Asgard on to even greater heights occupied no place in this future most grim.

  Then the son of Odin, the last sane great power of the Multiverse, was himself afflicted by the mad hatred and launched himself into battle.

  Elsewhere the Living Tribunal had already succumbed to the mad hate and had decided on which side to enter the conflict.

  His decision did not favour the gods.

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  Some years later

  The Exitar class Celestial, Leandarr, the last of his race, moved swiftly through the star systems in his path. It was the first time the Celestial behemoth had returned to this part of the Multiverse since the great Multiverse War that had almost destroyed all life.

  He missed his own kind and the group Over mind through which all Celestial minds could mingle and communicate. The anger that he had once felt towards the destroyers of that Over mind, the Asgardian gods Odin and Thor, was long gone. Just as the anger, the pure unadulterated hatred, which had infected all of the gods and cosmic powers and indeed all life, had long since run its course.

  Some of the star systems that Leandarr was now moving through had once held life. But no longer. Without exception their suns were drained husks and the shattered planets no more than asteroid belts of debris that had eventually found equilibrium of sorts orbiting the dead suns. Leandarr reflected that the Multiverse was a colder place now. In every sense of the word.

  The leviathan came across several star system size, jagged, diamond like structures, in the depths of interstellar space. Whole Universes seemed to be compressed into these fragmentary structures. These were the remnants of some of the realities that had not survived the conflict. A direct consequence of The Living Tribunal’s decision, at the height of his madness, to destroy the All Place.

  Leandarr recalled that even the Living Tribunal had been suffused with the mad hatred. The Tribunal had entered the conflict on the side of the cosmic powers and directed the battle against the gods. On occasion, greatly empowering some cosmic entities, such as the Silver Surfer, for specific tasks.

  Ultimately it had been the Living Tribunal that had ordered the unthinkable. The attack on the All Place where all of the realities converge. He had sent Thanos, Tyrant, Abraxas, and all of the former heralds of Galactus, except the destroyer construct, resurrecting some and including a vastly empowered Silver Surfer. The gods had been too slow to react and the All Place custodians, the super power empire of the Tolden, had not been up to the task.

  Were it not for an artefact that the mighty Thor had secured from the “Lost Weapons of Asgard” repository even our own reality, the Central reality, might have collapsed and gone the way of all others.

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  There had been no victors in a war that had inevitably drawn in the other mystical/magical powers of the Multiverse (mainly on the side of the gods) and also the more technologically advanced races.

  The privilege of survivorship was shared equally between but a handful of the warring factions.

  Leandarr knew though that among the lesser survivors, the mortals, human and otherwise, it was the cosmic powers that were blamed for the war. That at night, the mortals, thinly spread through the Galaxies, comforted themselves with tales of the strength, the power, the heroism, the nobility, and the courage of the gods. None more so than All Father Odin of Asgard and his blood son the mighty Thor.

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  Finally the hulking Exitar class Celestial reached his destination.

  A place that had been the Earth, Asgard, Olympus axis. It was here where the war had begun and ultimately here where it had ended. Though the battle had extended to all corners of the Multiverse the conflict was never fiercer than in this very place.

  It was quiet now in every sense of the word. The Earth’s sun had burned cold, the inconceivably powerful energies that had been unleashed here had finally largely dissipated and the telepathic death screams of souls in torment, of life forces extinguished, had ceased.

  The Celestial looked about. For all that had taken place here there was comparatively little evidence of the conflict in terms of weaponry debris. As if an unseen cosmic hand had largely swept the area clean. Briefly Leandarr thought of he who is above us all, if indeed that entity still existed.

  Leandarr noticed a fragment of the hilt of Twilight, the sword of Surtur, among the debris. In the end the great sword had proved even more durable than the Odinsword itself. After the destruction of the Odinsword, Surtur in his death throes had willingly thrown the sword Twilight into Odin’s grasp. Asgard’s Lord had made good use of it.

  Also among the debris, tiny shards of the great shield of Odin. The shield had first been used to protect Asgard and after Thor had returned from the “Lost Weapons of Asgard” repository with an even more enduring defence the shield had been used to help protect the Earth.

  This had puzzled the cosmic powers at the time. The Odin Shield they understood but when Odin transferred it to protect the Earth, the planetoid/continent that is Asgard itself should have been incinerated many times over as collateral damage. Only after the war did the full truth emerge.

  As the land mass of Asgard was being almost constantly disintegrated so the artefact taken by Thor from the repository was constantly renewing, n
ano second by nano second, the molecular, indeed the very atomic structure of the land of Asgard. In this it was greatly assisted by the many and various mystical artefacts that abound in greater Asgard. And all, ultimately, was underwritten by the power of Odin and Thor.

  Elsewhere Leandarr noticed little more than a few slivers of the great Odin Cannon. Leandarr shrugged. The rumours that the Cannon had the power to destroy Galaxies were more than rumours. Ably manned by those best equipped to do so, and protected by an in depth defence of pantheon war gods about it, the Cannon had taken its toll of the cosmic powers. Guided by the Odin reinforced senses of Heimdall the Canon had proved as accurate against a target the other side of the Galaxy as it was against a target at close range. Forcing the Living Tribunal to vastly empower the Silver Surfer into the ultimate stealth form.

  Evading all of the protections about the Cannon, the Surfer, travelling as fast as thought and with simultaneous enhanced bolts of the power cosmic, laid low Heimdall, Hermod, and Hogun the Grim. More, though not destroying it, the Surfer rendered the Odin Cannon non operational. It would not be used in the conflict again. For this deed the silver one paid with his life as he was struck down attempting to flee by a sickening blow from a mighty mjolnir that absorbed all of the excess empowerment provided by the Living Tribunal. Leaving the Silver Surfer vulnerable to the angry attentions of the war gods he had evaded. Perhaps somewhat after the fashion of a shot down Earth bomber pilot surrounded by angry civilians whom he has just bombed.

  Leandarr remembered great Eternity doing what the Living Tribunal had been reluctant to do and engaging Almighty Odin himself, one on one. The cosmic powers knew that an essential ingredient to victory was to divest the All Father of the much feared OdinAxe. Eternity succeeded in loosening Odin’s grip on the Axe such that the Axe flew free but at what a cost! Burning brighter than a million suns the Axe disappeared into the depths of Eternity. It never returned but the damage done became clear. Further as the very embodiment of our Universe, Eternity suffered and declined as the Universe suffered and declined.

  One direct consequence of this was that Eternity could no longer maintain the balance between Order and Chaos that Odin had earlier deliberately relinquished.

  Leandarr the Celestial remembered also how the cosmic powers lost two of their most potent entities through no action of the gods. Master Hate had sought to absorb the hatred that had suffused all living things. A task beyond him just as Mistress Love was overwhelmed by it. The two abstract entities ended up destroying each other.

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  Then the Celestial noticed another artefact among the debris. One that gave him pause as no other had. Impossibly, inconceivably, the hammer of Thor had survived the conflict. Blackened and pitted, cracked and scarred, it was nonetheless essentially whole. The Colossus was startled, an involuntarily reaction. Even now the great hammer evoked fear in him as it no doubt would for any and all of the very few surviving cosmic powers.

  Whatever hand had attempted to sweep this area clean, it could not sweep away the memories. This place was full of them, full of the ghosts of the past. They continued flooding back to Leandarr.

  The Celestial behemoth visualised again Odin’s monstrous Destroyer construct almost bloated with the life forces not only of Earth pantheons but of other distant pantheons. It was surrounded by a veritable host of Celestials and Watchers and other cosmic entities milling around it, seeking to lay it low. Which, eventually, they did. Though not before it took a heavy toll of the cosmics including the incineration of mighty Exitar under its lethal disintegration beam.

  Looking in another direction Leandarr recalled the awe inspiring memory of an astral gathering of the sorcerers supreme of many of the Multiverse’s dimensions and the spell that brought forth heroes of the past, gods, other mystical/magical entities, and yet other heroes and champions. A spell that somewhat backfired, as it also brought forth cosmic powers of the past. Thus serving, in the end, too only enlarge the conflict still further by introducing an intertemporal component. Just one of the entities brought forth by this spell was the Demi-Urge, according to some, the creator of life on Earth. Those same energies of creation were used by the Demi-Urge in mighty defence of the Earth/Asgard/Olympus axis.

  No memory though was more etched in Leandarr’s Celestial consciousness than the god blasts of the son of Odin.

  Towards the end the gods were on the defensive, yet sustained god blasts from Thor, Odin, Vishnu and all of the sky fathers present had held the unrelenting cosmics at bay. Until eventually the Living Tribunal himself had come to break the deadlock.

  None of the cosmic entities had understood how Thor, in particular, had been able to sustain god blast after god blast. All conventional wisdom was that the process of just one god blast should leave him totally exhausted. Unable to launch a further assault until considerable time had passed. Yet it patently was not so. Was it the residual power of the Brell in the “armour of the son to be” that had reinforced him, or were the depths of power, of strength, of determination, of the son of Odin, ultimately beyond anything the great cosmic powers had envisaged. Now the answer would never be known.

  After the death of Odin, the god blasts of Thor even seemed to increase still further in sheer destructive power. For as long as he might live Leandarr would never forget the last god blast of the son of Odin. A god full of pure anger and fury beyond all imagining – righteous wrath producing strength and power greater than any mere warrior’s madness ever could have done.

  After this the whole of the Earth/Asgard/Olympus axis was a seething raging mass of leashed Asgardian energy.

  The Living Tribunal pronounced that the life force of the mighty Thor had himself been consumed in the god blast. That the son of Odin had used the resources of his own body in this final act.

  Exhausted beyond all belief a shattered Living Tribunal and a very few surviving cosmic companions left the Earth/Asgard/Olympus axis. Of those few, it was only Leandarr that would return.

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  Leandarr looked over the battlefield again. This time more intently, more minutely. Determined to miss nothing of importance.

  Incredibly he had missed something on his first scan of the area, or had its presence been withheld from him?

  Somehow cocooned within a very small asteroid was the “armour of the son to be” and within that armours protective embrace lay the son of Odin himself. Not at all dead but merely asleep and now moving to wakeful consciousness.

  Then Leandarr sensed elsewhere on the Earth/Asgard/Olympus axis the elements of a great power reforming. At first he could not perceive its true nature. Yet as he continued to watch and wait, it became clear to him.

  There was intense activity amidst the debris in what had formerly been Earth’s orbit about the sun. Something swirling amidst the debris with more than merely random purpose.

  The Odinpower was reforming and coalescing with it and reforming with it were some of the energies of other pantheon and elder gods that had perished here. Most notably the power of the Demiurge.

  Leandarr, last surviving Celestial, came finally to realise that which any Asgardian school child of the past could have told him. That the OdinPower can never be truly destroyed. That it is and always was a force for good and for creation complementary to the original forces of creation.

  The mighty Thor now fully returned to consciousness took stock of events gathering in elements of that which was now something slightly more than the OdinPower.

  Leandarr continued to look on as the mighty Thor, utilising the more than OdinPower began to recreate the Earth/Asgard/Olympus axis including all of the Sol star system including the sun. Then just as the Demi-Urge had seeded life on Earth and created the elder gods long ago, so the mighty Thor seeded the Earth with life anew.

  Leander watched on
and did not interfere in this process. Though briefly he thought of doing so, he knew intuitively that he lacked the power. Rather if it were possible for a great Celestial to experience a sense of wonder then Leandarr experienced this as he witnessed the events of the Earth's recreation.

  Eventually the massive Celestial turned and moved away. He did not look back. Legend has it that at that moment a huge image of All father Odin appeared briefly near the Earth totally dwarfing the Celestial. That Odin and Thor watched the Celestial’s departure together.

  All of the few remaining great powers knew immediately of the act of recreation.

  The certain knowledge that the mighty Thor was not dead and that the OdinPower, indeed something even more than the OdinPower had survived.

  Here in this new greater OdinForce, this Odin/Demi-Urge power, the mighty Thor had an instrument for creation second only to the original creator at times aborning.

  The mighty Thor would move on utilising the Odin/Demi-Urge power for other acts of recreation. In turn the remaining cosmic, god pantheon and other mystic great powers, through Thor, had found the will that had been lacking. To make a small start in the reconstitution and recreation of other small areas of our Universe.

  At night in the recreated Asgard, the mighty Thor looked out among the stars. There were far fewer of them now than before. His mind turned to the dreams he had while he slept cocooned in the armour of the son to be. They were dreams of Magni. Magni that would one day wear that armour and would take Asgard onward and upwards to even greater heights.

  The mighty Thor, son of Odin, saw that this could still be. That there was still reason to dream.