As for the rest of them, they thought I’d forgotten. I never did. ‘A stitch in time saves nine’, or so goes the saying among the Folk. Well, I could have saved the Nine Worlds. I could have halted Ragnarók. But the gods, in their arrogance and greed, had clarified my position. I would never be one of them. I knew that now. I was alone. I would always be alone. I’d learnt my lesson for good, this time.

Basically, never trust anyone.

‘Every dog has his day’, as the old Middle-Worlds saying goes. Every dog and every god, and now I began to long for the day when our roles would be reversed, and I would be the one looking down on all of them as they pleaded and cried. That day would come, we all knew that. Change is the wheel on which the Worlds turn, and the time would come when gods would be dogs, howling as everything they had built came down in ruins around them. Power always comes at a price, and the higher they climb, the further they fall. I meant to engineer that fall, and to laugh as they came tumbling down.

Till then, I bided my time, and smiled as sweetly as my scarred lips would allow, until the day I would take my revenge and bring the gods down, one by one.

Book 2 Shadow

Lesson 1 Gold

LESSON 1

Gold

All men are one-eyed when a woman’s involved.

Lokabrenna

AND SO I BECAME THE TRICKSTER, despised and yet invaluable, hiding my contempt for them all behind my scarred and twisted smile. I found my appeal undiminished among the ladies, who seemed to find that scarred smile quite attractive – but that wasn’t the point, of course. Chaos is unforgiving. And in spite of my defection, I was still a child of Chaos.

Isn’t it funny, how quickly things change? Nine little stitches, that’s all it took for me to suddenly realize the truth: that whatever I did, whatever I risked, however much I tried to fit in, I would never be one of them. I would never have a hall, or earn the respect I so clearly deserved. I would never be a god; only ever a dog on a chain. Oh, I might be of use to them now and then, but as soon as the current crisis was done, it would be back to the kennel for Your Humble Narrator, and without as much as a biscuit.