30: Runes

As the rays of the sun shone down on Hades, he disappeared from the window and appeared in front of Odin's dazzling castle. He went to the side of the bridge and sat, waiting for Odin to call him.

Unfortunately, he could not directly teleport into the castle because of the runes placed by Odin and his wife. This fact alone spoke about their power, for stopping Hades was not something so easy to do.

Hades estimated Odin to be at a level a bit below a first-generation primordial, which was the top strength in the universe, and those beyond that were plainly just monsters above scaling and the mere meaning of power.

After a few seconds of looking at the sky, Odin's voice boomed with authority out of the castle "Come in", and followed by his voice, the emerald, green door opened itself.

Hades walked toward the door at a slow pace, his back was straight, and his eyes showed no emotions. A kingly aura surrounded him as he passed through the doors and faced a dimensional wall.

As the god prepared himself to go in blindly, a golden trail of light appeared in front of him, fluttering like a newborn child. The trail of light showed him the quickest path toward Odin's personal library.

Hades nodded before his body vanished in a blur. The god was walking, but it was so fast that he wouldn't be seen by mortals while minor gods would only see an incomprehensible blur.

With his heightened, godly perception, it was as if he was walking while time itself had been stopped.

Arriving in front of an old-looking door made of dark wood, Hades stopped walking. He closely looked at the door, curious about how much defense Odin put on the door.

There were hundreds of runes all carved together as if they were part of an elegantly written poem.

Seeing this brought Hades a fresh wave of enthusiasm for learning runes.

If Odin could do something so beautiful, what could he possibly achieve with those runes?

"Hades," said Odin in a restrained greeting, his eye passed to the door that Hades was observing, and with frowning eyebrows, the door unlocked itself.

"What an interesting thing," said Hades with a smile, bringing small regret to Odin. 'A deal is a deal, I can't change anything now' thought the Asgardian king, a sigh escaping his mouth.

'I just hope the dwarves will be able to create something good with those strange metal ingots'

Hades' eyes gleamed as he looked at the library. It was not what he expected.

Hades thought he would again see a room filled with gold. But no, this looked like an old and abandoned storage.

The walls were just brown planks with many black marks of oldness. There was no light except for the glistening old dust.

The shelves were pure black, just like the many stairs permitting access to the book that stood a dozen of meters higher than the ground.

On the side, there were stacks of books not even placed on the many shelves, some even empty.

In the middle of the extremely big round, which was the library demarked by the shelves, was one single brown sofa.

"This was definitely unexpected," commented Hades, "but a great change from all of the lavishness."

Odin did not respond to that. He only pointed to some shelves and said, "Those are all the books about Runes."

He then disappeared from the room, His thoughts filled with possibilities of war and sides to take.

A small smile of intrigue came to Hades' face as he opened the fist book on one of the shelves.

The pages fluttered with the scent of vanilla, which would have undoubtedly brought Hades melancholy about his previous life if he had not grown so distant from his mortality.

Runes were just another language. A difficult one with many small details. There were more than a trillion combinations possible, each having its own effect on reality.

Because yes, the true power of runes was their effect in reality. They could easily make a lightning bolt, but this was nothing to their true meaning.

Runes were one of the languages of reality.

However, this, that would have been a fantastic discovery for many gods, was disappointing for Hades.

Because that would mean that, at a certain level, attainable by primordials, this was ineffective.

Primordials could easily affect reality and change it however they wanted, so, runes, something that took time and patience to write a single one, were a waste of time.

There were also some beings out of the boundaries of reality and were thus unaffected by those 'words'.

one of the few ways Hades saw to use those runes against those powerful beings was by constraining a more restricted reality in reality and that reality would affect those beings.

'Was that even possible?' asked himself Hades with doubt, would reality just break from holding something much greater?

With those thoughts about reality, he wondered if there was someone capable of creating a reality so great that it would hold the three O's beings of his Omniverse.

Hades shook his head, trying to escape those bothering thoughts. He did not need more problems, he already had enough.

With a purple gleam in his eyes, he focused on reading all the books about Runes, maybe he could create his own language, he thought a smile playing on his lips.

It however soon disappeared as he heard a voice behind him.

"Nice to meet you, Hades, the Greek singularity. I am Loki, I hope you've heard great things from me."