God of War (2018) - Entry 20: Confronting Baldur
We drift closer. The maw of the World Serpent yawns open, not in aggression, but in invitation. Its breath is fetid, laced with the scent of rot and the remnants of long-forgotten things. The very world seems to tremble with each breath he takes. He trusts us. That is rare. And dangerous.
Inside, the light fades. Silence deepens. Flesh and stone become indistinguishable in the amber-tinted shadows. We are inside a creature older than much of this realm. The walls pulse slightly, alive. I do not speak unless necessary. Every sound feels amplified, disrespectful.
The belly of the beast is quiet, there is no battle to win. Only a task to complete and then see our way out. After a rowing a short distance that felt like an eternity, we find the statue and climb up to the hammer.
We recover the eye.
As we rowed back toward the serpent’s maw, a tremor shook the water. At first subtle, then sharper and violent. Something was wrong.
I gripped the oars harder and rowed with greater force. “Hold on,” I warned.
Another jolt, this one sudden and immense, nearly capsized the boat. Atreus cried out, clutching the side. The World Serpent groaned a low, tortured sound echoing through its great body. Then we felt it: movement. Fast. Too fast.
He was no longer still. The World Serpent was forcing us out.
We braced ourselves.
And then light. A roar. We were ejected from his maw like a splinter from a storm, the lake sky above us spinning, air screaming past. We crashed hard against the earth near the frozen corpse of Thamur. Wood splintered, water scattered.
I rose quickly and searched the wreckage and found Atreus, coughing but alive. Mimir was rattled but whole.
Then I saw it.
The World Serpent in the distance. His massive form slumped into the lake, unmoving. His head drifted, half-submerged. Unconscious.
Something attacked him. Something powerful.
Before we could speak further, movement caught my eye.
Freya.
She approached quietly, no longer the hidden witch of the woods, but a mother with purpose. Atreus stepped forward, confused.
“Can we still trust her?” he asked.
I kept my voice low. “Not yet. Until we know more, keep your distance.”
She came closer, her cloak brushing the grass. I stepped forward.
“You are far from home.”
She stopped, regarding us with wary eyes. “I’m searching. My son is in Midgard... the grasses whisper his name. The trees echo it.”
Her voice was calm, but her presence was not. There was a current of desperation beneath her words. She was not here by chance. She was hunting.
I tightened my grip on the axe.
We were close to the end. But we were not free of danger, not yet.
Then, from the icy water, Baldur emerged burning with fury.
His eyes locked on Freya. Their first meeting in countless years. She gasped softly, her hand trembling as she stepped toward him. A mother reaching for her son. But he… he was not a son anymore. Not in that moment.
Freya tried to speak, her voice laced with regret and longing. She pleaded with him, apologized for the protections she placed upon him. Her words were raw, desperate. But Baldur was deaf to them.
"You don’t understand what you took from me!" he roared, voice cracking with years of buried torment.
His immortality, his inability to feel... it had become a cage. One she had forged. And now, the fury of that long suffering had reached its breaking point. He moved toward her, but not to embrace, to destroy.
I stepped between them.
“You seek vengeance,” I said, firm. “But it will not bring you peace. I know this. I have lived it.”
He sneered. “You don’t get to tell me what I need.”
He tried to push past me, eyes fixed on Freya.
I blocked him again, this time pushing him back with force.
“You will not touch her.”
His fists clenched. “Then stay out of it.”
But I would not move.
And so, we began to fight.
Freya shouted from behind us, her voice thick with desperation. She summoned roots from the earth, her Vanir magic lashing out to bind us, to stop the fight before it tore what remained of her family apart. But we were beyond restraint. The roots wrapped around our limbs, but we broke free each time. Baldur's fury was unrelenting, and I met it blow for blow.
The ground trembled beneath us as our strength clashed. At one moment, roots ensnared my arms, holding me fast. Atreus rushed to my side, sawing at them with his knife, trying to free me. But in his moment of distraction, Baldur struck.
The punch landed square in the boy’s chest, brutal and deliberate.
Atreus flew back, crumpling into the snow.
My heart froze.
I broke free, ran to him, kneeling. “Atreus. Breathe. Are you hurt?”
He gasped for air, clutching his chest. Blood stained his tunic. I feared the worst.
But then he shook his head and whispered through the pain, “It’s… it’s not mine.”
Confused, I turned.
Baldur stood still, staring at his hand. Pierced through it, clean and undeniable, was the tip of a mistletoe arrow. The same one we had used to repair the strap on Atreus's quiver, forgotten until now.
Baldur's expression twisted not in pain, but in awe.
He flexed his fingers slowly. Breathing fast. His eyes welled with something almost childlike.
“I can feel it…” he whispered.
The spell was broken. The curse of invulnerability Freya had cast to protect him had been shattered by the smallest thing.
Mistletoe.
He looked at me. And smiled. Not in thanks. Not in peace.
In madness.
Because now, he could feel everything again.
And he wanted more.
More desperate than ever, Freya called upon powers she had long kept buried. Her eyes glowed with Vanir might as she extended her arms and the corpse of Thamur stirred. The giant’s hand, massive and lifeless, moved with grim purpose. It reached out and snatched us from the battlefield like toys.
“Enough!” she cried, her voice breaking beneath the strain.
She set us down far apart from Baldur. She believed she could still reach him… that a mother’s words would mend what time and torment had shattered.
I warned her. “He won’t listen. He means to kill you.”
But she didn’t hear me. She wouldn’t.
Then, Baldur returned.
His face was twisted in furious joy. Vulnerability had not tempered him, it had freed him. He welcomed the pain, reveled in it. He moved like a storm, zigzagging with unnatural speed, trying to catch me off balance. But I did not fall. Atreus stood beside me, loosing arrows with precision, his voice calm, steady. Together, we met Baldur’s fury with fire and frost.
And it wasn’t only Baldur we had to contend with.
Freya, desperate to protect her son, used Thamur’s corpse to manipulate the battlefield. The giant’s hammer came crashing down, carving craters in the earth. The chisel, still embedded in his skull, sent shockwaves that split the ground and threw us across the ruined plain. She wasn’t trying to kill us but she was trying to stop us.
But Baldur didn’t care. His rage burned brighter than her magic.
He laughed as he fought with blood on his face, teeth bared in a savage grin. Each strike we landed seemed to feed his hunger. He welcomed the pain.
Freya pleaded with him, over and over. Her voice cracked, heavy with guilt. “Please, Baldur… stop. Listen to me!”
But he would not. His hatred for what she had done, what she had taken, was blinding him.
And now, more than ever, we knew…
We had to stop him. Or he would destroy her.
We did not relent.
But neither did Freya.
With a final, desperate cry, she called upon the frost breath of Thamur. The corpse of the giant heaved, lungs long dead somehow drawn into motion by her magic, a storm of cold that swallowed the battlefield.
The frost was relentless. It bit through my skin and into my bones. Atreus and I were pinned, the air stolen from our lungs, our strength waning beneath the weight of the cold. We would not survive long.
But then, Atreus did something unexpected.
In the tongue of the World Serpent, he shouted a command, a plea. The sound echoed in the frozen air like thunder cracking across ice.
And the Serpent answered.
With impossible speed, the World Serpent lunged from the water. His massive jaws found Thamur’s head, crashing down with titanic force. The ground split. The mountain groaned. Chaos reigned.
In the upheaval, we were flung, Atreus, Freya, Baldur, and I were cast like leaves in a storm. We landed hard in a clearing not far from the battle’s heart. I rose first.
Baldur stumbled to his feet.
This was the moment.
I surged forward and overpowered him, forcing him down, my hands closing around his throat. His eyes widened, not with fear, but with grim understanding. His rage had brought us here, and now he would pay its price.
But then I heard her voice.
“Please… stop.”
Freya’s words trembled, not with command, but with sorrow. With hope.
And then Atreus stepped forward.“
He’s beaten,” he said. His voice calm, certain. “He’s not a threat.”
I looked into Baldur’s eyes. I saw pain. Not just from my grip, but the deeper kind, the kind that never heals. I had seen it before. I had lived it.
I loosened my hold.
And I let him go.
Because I am not the same godslayer I once was.I have changed.
For my son.
Baldur rose slowly, his breath ragged, hands trembling, not from fear, but fury still unspent. Freya stood before him, open and vulnerable, trying once more to reach the son she had lost long ago.
“Please,” she said softly. “We can begin again. There is still time.”
But Baldur’s eyes burned with old wounds, and his voice came through clenched teeth. “You took everything from me. A lifetime without touch. Without feeling. You don't get to ask for forgiveness.”
Freya’s shoulders fell. Her voice cracked as she spoke the words no mother should ever have to say.
“If taking my life is the only way for you to feel whole... then so be it.” She lowered her arms, exposed her heart. “I won’t stop you.”
Baldur stepped toward her. Slowly. Purposefully. His hands wrapped around her throat. And he began to squeeze.
Her eyes filled with tears of acceptance. Love, even in the face of death.
But I would not let it happen.
I surged forward and grabbed Baldur from behind, tearing him away from her. My voice came from a place deeper than rage, deeper than duty.
“This cycle ends here.”
And I broke his neck.
The sound was final.
His body dropped, lifeless. Freya stumbled forward, collapsing beside him, cradling the son she had tried to save. Her sobs filled the cold air, sharp and sorrowful.
“He chose this.” I told her.
But grief has many faces and hers twisted into wrath.
She turned on me, eyes burning like coals.
“I will make you pay,” she spat. “You will know pain like no god has ever known. I swear it.”
I did not defend myself. I did not argue.
I understood.
A mother had lost her son. And I had taken him.
But I would not take it back. The cycle of vengeance had to end somewhere.
Freya turned to me, face etched with heartbreak and fury. “You truly are a monster,” she said bitterly. “You will never change.”
I met her gaze. Calm. Steady. “Then you do not know me.”
She spoke bitterly, tears in her voice. “I know enough…” She looked past me, toward Atreus. “Does he?”
Silence fell.
I turned to my son. It was time.
“I made a deal with a god,” I said quietly, “and it cost me my soul. I have killed many… some who deserved it. Many who did not. I have… I killed my own father.”
Atreus’ face was still, processing. “In Hel... I saw the visions. That was your father? Is that how it always ends for gods? Sons killing their parents?”
I stepped closer, kneeling to meet his eyes.
“No. We are the gods we choose to be. Not those our blood has made us. We must be better than this.”
And I meant it.
The battle with Baldur wasn’t just a conflict, it was a turning point. A reckoning for what I had been, and a chance for what I could become.
And perhaps… a step toward redemption.
Freya lifted Baldur’s body, her back to us. She said nothing more. She walked away, her grief carried like a storm cloud.
It was time to return to Tyr's Temple.
