The Norse God

The Norse God

Chapter One

            I blinked rapidly as the bright summer sunlight hit me, the change from the darkness of my entrance hallway too much for my eyes for a brief moment. The warmth of the day enveloped me as I left the shade of the porch and stepped onto the pavement, the soft breeze that gently cooled my skin was a welcome one.

            The city streets were unusually - calmingly - quiet. I liked it, more than when the busy business people walked impatiently down the road, when you’d have to push through the mass of people who always seemed to be in the way just to get to wherever you needed to be. This was London at it’s most pleasant.

            It just happened to be after a day that shocked the world.

            That’s where everyone had disappeared to; they were glued to their television screens, watching the news. Hearing about the near destruction of the capitals of the world, the worst destruction being New York City. Yesterday had been terrifying for everyone who lived in the capital, I had retreated to the underground along with everyone else as the creatures had attacked the city, all the people around me had the same terrified look on their face. I sat against that cold tiled wall, wedged between two others, for around three hours. All I had to look at was the advertisements plastered to the curved wall of the tunnel and tried not to listen to the cries of scared children asking for reassurance from their parents. It was over much quicker than anyone expected, one minute the crash of the demolition outside the next, nothing. We then emerged into a London none of us had seen before.

            Naturally everybody went home as fast as they could, without motor transport, and tuned into the news. It explained that creatures from an unknown source, most likely off planet due to the hole in the sky that was hard to miss in the footage, had attacked all the major cities of the world. No one knew why, but it didn’t matter, as a group known as The Avengers had saved us all. Super-heroes.

            The world had become used to relying on them, at least for large problems anyway. I recognised a few of the team that had saved the world, but others I hadn’t seen before. Captain America, everyone knew who he was, I remember being taught about him in history lessons in secondary school, but as he was supposed to have been lost at the end of the war, no one had a clue how he’d managed to save us this time. The Hulk, he was kind of hard to miss, a giant green ball of muscle, though this was the first time I’d heard of him saving anyone. Ironman of course wouldn’t miss out on the action, Tony Stark couldn’t seem to keep himself out of the news for long.

            I didn’t know who the other three were; the one with the hammer was a demi-god, according to the news team, called Thor. I suppose that creatures from space meant that demi-gods weren’t too far fetched. A man with bow and arrows and lastly a woman with firearms rounded off the strange group.

              Then there was this man that no one knew of, that The Avengers had been seen fighting, who looked human, yet… not.

              We had no hope of our curiosity as to who was trying to destroy the world being satisfied by the government, of course. They always seemed to ignore that people wanted answers, so people would just have to be satisfied with the news and gossip.

              The empty park looked blissful, despite the branches that had been torn off trees and the slightly damaged buildings around it, as the sun shone through the trees and reflected off of the water in the fountain in the centre. Encased in my thoughts I settled with my back against an oak tree and pulled a book out of my bohemian patterned bag. Feeling contented, despite all the panic of the past day, I began to get lost in my book.

              At ease with the sun warming my legs and the well-picked words that covered the crisp page, I felt happy in my solitude, peace was what I needed. But my eyes flickered up to scan the park as I sensed I was no longer alone. My eyes rested on the figure of a tall man with broad shoulders and black hair that reached the base of his neck, his back was to me as he was admiring a memorial the other side of the fountain that sat in the centre of the park. I looked back down again, irritated that my quiet place had been infiltrated. I was sure no one would be out here after yesterday.