Antarctica--Neuschwabenland, 1923

The hollowed hole was enormous, spreading out at the base of the stairs, much bigger than was necessary for what the chamber was home to currently. Herr-Doktor Werther von Kroen drew the ermine-lined seal-skin coat about him in a futile attempt to stave off the cold. The fur piping about his raised hood had not cut the frigid wind that howled across the ice above, allowing gusts to stab Kroen’s eyes. Sheltered now from the tundra outside, tears escaped from his blinded right eye. His green eye. Icicles clung to his eyelashes, freezing the lid to a squint.

His left eye did not tear; it never had. Its milky violet cornea swallowed most of his pupil, reducing it to a tiny red dot. This heterochromic condition gave Werther Von Kroen a seemingly deformed aspect that distanced most folks. Back in the World, he often wore an eye patch to cover this defect, claiming the patch was the unfortunate product of a duel.

Despite the subzero temperature, Werther was sweating profusely, soaking his clothing underneath. The hollow he stood in now seemed to compound his discomfort. Werther knew the moisture was robbing his body of heat and, if left unchecked, he would soon be shivering his way to hypothermia. He longed for retreat to the Mjöllnir, where the relative warmth onboard would revive him and dry out his apparel, but he found his frigid predicament to be of fleeting concern, once he cataloged his surroundings.

Von Kroen thought the hole was covered in ice, but once his eyes adjusted, he realized he stood in a cave of stone, carved from the rock bed of the continent. To call it a cave did it little justice. The walls were smooth and polished, inlaid with dark marble streaks and phosphorescent sediments that bathed the confines in warm yellow light. The chamber was domed. In its center stood three rough rocks over which hung something that looked like a shining metallic, green coil. It terminated in a fanged orifice resembling a snake or dragon. It was a serpent statute, its face posed in a howling growl like a gargoyle, dripping froth from its gaping maw that fell towards the face of the creature lashed to the rocks below.

At least, it would have, if his charter’s commander, Anseln Rothschild, had not perched a bucket on the statue’s head, collecting the sap-like flow momentarily. Rothschild had one bucket, full to the brim, at his feet. The other was still collecting the liquid and filled to overflowing. A drop spilled over the edge and fell. It came to rest with a smack against the face of a slender man, lethargic but alive, strapped to the rough stones underneath the gargoyle. The drip sent the captive on the stones into spasms of pain that brought forth cries of anguish that resonated in the chamber.

Rothschild stood to the prisoner’s side holding an urn, uncovered, bearing within the undead head of the giant Goliath. Rothchild was smiling, and he spread his arms widely, his bare arms revealing a variety of bite marks and bruises, like a timeline of torture captured in his white flesh. Now he raised his arms with a flourish, as if revealing some great prize to his companion. Another drip brought forth agony from the man bound to the rocks. Even before Rothschild spoke, Von Kroen knew what was before him.

“Come! Here. Look! Look, Werther, who we have discovered.”

Werther stepped forward, as if in a trance. His frozen eye pealed wide despite the pain. The immediate implication of this situation was not lost to him, but brought indescribable trepidation.

“Look, Werther,” Rothschild said as he set the urn down with a wide grin, “Look what we have found, what Goliath has delivered to us.”

Rothschild reached into the opened top of the metal cylinder and withdrew a large bronze ring. Straining against the ring, hanging taut from flowing tresses, swung a pallid-faced head, dripping of a sticky concoction of alien and aberrant qualities. The giant blinked drunkenly.

“The Eddas. They have become true. Here! Here is the still-living proof of it!”

Von Kroen circled the stones. It all seemed as a dream to him yet it was clearly, terrifyingly real. The naked man tied to the rock, despite the cold, was alive and hearty. His skin was gleaming bronze, his golden curls surprisingly well-kempt. He seemed unaffected by this environment, save for the occasional incapacitating splash of venomous liquid from above.

“Behold!” Rothschild bellowed with more drama than was necessary, “Loki!”

Werther von Kroen could not help himself, the knowing nod, borne of emulation more than jubilation towards Rothschild. Already his mind was spinning.

“Look, Werther! Do you know? Do you realize what Goliath has brought us to?” Rothschild was beckoning to his assistant, pleading with open hands for the right level of acknowledgement.

“The whole world is about to change. We are about to meet our destiny and welcome back to this generation the old gods renewed!”

Rothschild clapped his hands together.

“Wir betreten freuertrunken, himmlische, dein heligtum...” Kroen whispered faintly to himself, the Ode to Joy taking his mind racing back over the events that had led him to this chamber of ice that held a long lost god.

#

When Von Kroen volunteered to infiltrate the Ordo Templi Orientis, his thoughts had raced ahead to glory, to penetrating recondite enclaves of European occult erudition and fraternizing with the elite echelon that accounted for its covens, and, ultimately, to ally himself with the self-proclaimed antichrist, Aleister Crowley. Once so ensconced, he would draw back the veil covering the heart of the Astron Argon, all for the purpose of serving the ascendancy of the newly founded Thule Gesellschaft. He had decidedly not bargained for never meeting Crowley, who had fled to Detroit in search of the Gnostic portal-to-the-beyond in America. What was worse, he was now shackled to an insufferable cockscomb, Anseln Rothschild von Schwabia.

Rothschild was a plump, uncouth fop who was as inconceivably dim as he was grotesquely wealthy. Indeed, his failure to grasp the most rudimentary concepts of the esoteric gnosis bewildered Von Kroen no end. The man hated to read and when he could be so bothered, it was at a glacial pace consistent with his comprehension. It quickly became apparent to Von Kroen that Rothschild’s rank within the O.T.O. was more a matter of his monetary mastery rather than his theosophic proficiency.

Werther Von Kroen had long held the notion that Rothschild was an obtuse charlatan who viewed the pursuit of illumination as an escape from the staid and stodgy lineage of international banking or public service, as was his ancestral proclivity. It was clear to Kroen, Rothschild von Schwabia saw his enlightenment as an extension of privilege, a mere commodity to be purchased through association as a sort of world-wide social men’s club, rather bookish, but attracting all the right sort of attentions from all the correct corners of society. For Rothschild, in Werther’s estimation, he was on an extended holiday amongst a fraternity of scholarly frauds all seeking to avoid laborious and burdensome boredom of the noblesse oblige, entertaining themselves in spirited drawing room parties filled with parlor games, séances, card tricks, and ghost hunting distractions. It was, in fact, clear to Von Kroen that he had been led purposefully astray into the very darkest corner of fraternal pranks by his elders within the Thule group, by being conjoined with Rothschild von Schwabia.

The Germanenordnen, a secret society founded in 1912 by German occultists obsessed with Nordic mysticism, had fragmented a powerful offshoot with the Thule society in 1918. Abandoning the narrow focus of their parent, the Thule, established by Rudolf von Sebottendorf, almost immediately began to covertly insinuate its members into the manifold lodges of the theosophic colleges and societies around the world, in an effort to acquire and amass the One Truth of Creation. A member would be assigned to make a social connection with a prominent personage associated with a particular hermeneutic group, ultimately to seek membership within said secret society. Once inside the group’s confidence, any and all information would be collected and reported back to the Thule. Von Kroen had been paired with the aristocrat Rothschild and the O.T.O, in what Werther was certain was a cruel practical joke perpetrated by his alleged mentor in the Thule hierarchy, Dietrich Eckart.

It was no secret that Eckart had little but disdain for the landed gentry, outside of their deep coffers and well-secured manor houses. In that regard, Baron Werther von Kroen, the favored son of an influential family from Sǿr-Trǿndelag with ties that stretched to Bavarian aristocracy, was no better than the Oaf-Rothschild. To Eckart, the two were identical, more so, because they each held titles, albeit of purely social nobility. Though Eckart was openly contemptuous of Rothschild, he was only slightly more subtle with his opinions of his pupil, Von Kroen. After all, in many ways, Werther represented all the things Eckart wanted, but did not have. Von Kroen was the product of the gymnasium and university system. A doctor of medicine who had been graduated from the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität am München and a student of the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik where he was rising in the ranks of the burgeoning field of genetics.

Eckart, on the other hand, had failed as a medical student. He dropped out of university to pursue a life as a playwright and political writer and in this; too, he was finding himself a failure.

Eckart had watched his Germany fall from supremacy in Europe, where prior he had seen vast power mobilized to exert a particular will and ideology. He wanted that world back, and he wanted control of it.

Eckart’s political aspirations pulled him outside the lofty goals of occult hermeneutics. As a mentor, the man was at least distracted; at worst, combative. He was more interested in grooming syphilitic shell-shocked patients from Pasewalk for riotous action in beer halls than pursuing the emanatization of the eschaton.

Eckart was a bulldog and a bully, who was striving to impose his will upon his country and he would not tolerate the meddling of anyone who might threaten that end. This venture removed two such impediments to Eckhart’s endeavors, Von Kroen had finally realized.

Baron von Kroen was sure his plight was a source of constant amusement to the elders back in Munich, when they settled into their high-backed chairs, taking their tobacco in the warm glow of the fire, wondering how Werther was getting on with the Idiot Rothschild as they sailed towards the Antarctic. They must be wagering on how many days into the trip it would be before Werther’s predicament would turn him to murderous thoughts of mutiny. How long would it be, he could hear them wondering aloud in sniggering reverie; how long before the baron breaks?

The Mjöllnir, a three-masted schooner commissioned and paid for by Anseln Rothschild’s own hand, with a crew of seventeen, was bound for Antarctica in search of secrets buried in ice. It was two weeks, providing good weather, to sail from Argentina to the Antarctic. The anticipation of being in forced seclusion with Rothschild at the bottom of the world was, indeed, giving Von Kroen reservations tinted at times towards flights of fancy bordering on homicidal sadism. Of course, this castigated estimation of Rothschild quickly evolved, for scarcely had they left port, when it became clear to Von Kroen that Rothschild had fooled them all. The man had indeed managed to leverage his wealth sufficiently to acquire his enlightenment. It was not two days into their journey when Rothschild revealed to Von Kroen in the confines of his cabin, away from the crew, that he had procured none other than David’s biblical foe, Goliath, or rather his head. Sealed in a jar and sustained with a powerful mixture of herbs, spices, and balms as prescribed in very meticulous measures crafted by Enochian necromancers before recorded time, the giant’s head was preserved since that fateful day it went missing from his shoulders. And, as such, the severed head, when treated accordingly to the strict, eldritch necromancy that kept it incorporeal, also gave the still-living thing the uncanny ability of foresight. That ability, however, came at a grim price, paid for in blood.

Sensing Werther’s dubiety at the outrageous claim, Rothschild produced the severed head of the ancient giant, which he kept securely sealed in a large, metal urn that was rarely found outside of his grasp. Rothschild expressed with verbose elation how he had managed to appropriate the artifact from a priest in a little parish south of Carcassonne, who had unwittingly stumbled across it as the curator of some Templari catacombs.

It was at that moment that Werther von Kroen realized that Rothschild had, indeed, purchased his illumination, not through rigorous study, but through simple bribery. His money had purchased for him an infallible, if somewhat purposefully nebulous, fortune-teller at his constant beck-and-call. That moment solidified Von Kroen’s resolve, moving from frustrated annoyance to murderous rage.

It was not lost to Kroen that Nordic legend echoed the reality he was now immersed in. Mimir was the wisest giant of the Aesir, who guarded the Well of Truth under the Yggdrasil tree. As the myth is told, Mimir was beheaded by the Vanir and his head was sent back to his brethren, whereupon Odin, the All-Father, embalmed it with a mixture of herbs that also preserved Mimir’s soul within the term. Odin, it was said, often consulted with the head, for its abilities of prognostication and occult wisdom were said to be boundless.

Von Kroen, a good son of Norway, was well-acquainted with this fable and was well-versed in the Eddas of his homeland. His grandfather had often related these tales to him in the village of Kroen in the Trondheimfjord. The stories had thrilled and inspired him at an early age, and he devoured all the written materials on the subject as he could, his desire for knowledge sending him seeking truth in all mythologies and religions as he expanded his education. Even as he studied medicine at Ludwig-Maximilian, he spent his precious free hours in the school’s anthropology archives, pouring over the ancient tomes and scholarly works that attempted to decipher the deeper meanings hidden within Man’s mystic prehistory. The scholar in him was hereditary, his great grandfather having been chancellor at the Universität am Inglostadt in Bavaria. His father had been a doctor of medicine, a path that Werther was directed onto, as well, by his parents.

Though Baron Werther was nobility in title only, his social lineage granted him certain powers of privilege that made his extracurricular activities more accessible in the greater social circles of Europe. That led him to Kaiser-Wilhelm and to the Germanenordnen, and to Sebottendorf’s Thule society. There, Von Kroen’s understanding of the ancient mysticism of the world, particularly that of the Nordic Eddas, and the Thule society’s desire to unlock the esoteric secrets of their ancestry collided into a mutually beneficial circumstance, at least initially.

Of course, Von Kroen was dumbfounded when he realized Anseln was carrying around the severed godhead in an over-sized bucket. Prior to setting out on their voyage, the urn, when he had seen it, had always been kept under a drape of dark blue velvet. Von Kroen had assumed some long dead pet or perhaps a relative had been entombed there and that Rothschild simply could not bear to part with its company. Indeed, he wondered if finding some means to communicate with said-deceased companion was Anseln’s main motivation.

As they left port in Argentina, Rothschild had babbled on and on about discovering “Jotunheim at the end of the earth” and about claiming “Neuschwabenland” for Mother Germany in a “journey that would change the face of the world and the fate of Mankind for the ages.” Kroen had dismissed this as more of the drunken prattle that issued forth from Anseln Rothschild’s mouth whenever an unfortunate victim paid him so much as a civil nod, for he was always eager to ruminate on subjects on which he barely held the even the most cursory knowledge. This trip had been orchestrated by Rothschild as his graduation from Philosophus in the A:.A:., whereupon all his conceptions about his being, his conscious self would be put aside. Now he was on a path to obtain a truly enlightened perspective of Creation outside of his desires or inner morality. He would reach the grade of Dominus Liminus, “The Lord of the Threshold.” At the end of this journey Rothschild would become the “bridge” between the worlds.

The thought of straining under the weight of this cretinous personality, trapped in seclusion on a trip to the most desolate place on earth sent Von Kroen’s mind into fantasies of murderous rage. With the Rothschild’s revelation proving to be true, Werther von Kroen now had a salve to soothe the company he kept, though he immediately began to guard his thoughts, words, and actions, lest the soothsayer in the metal box reveal them to Rothschild.

For his part, Rothschild seemed generally pleased to have confided his secret to someone, and, though Rothschild was a boor, he did hold Werther Von Kroen in high regard. Rothschild let it be known, too, to Werther, that it was the artifact that truly led them on their trip to the South Pole. The expedition was heading towards the whereabouts of a secret well-kept for over thousands of years.

It wasn’t until they uncovered the capstone, intricately worked and precisely set within the rock underneath the ice that Von Kroen began to reassess Rothschild and Goliath and their visit to the Land of the Giants.

Kroen thought he was looking at a stone carving of the Gnostic Sephiroth. But he quickly realized the runic inscriptions about the capstone were based on the Nordic Futhark. The Norwegian’s face reddened when he realized what he was looking at, though its subtle differences had first confounded him.

The capstone was threaded into the rock like a giant worm-gear. Its outward face was carved in the likeness of the Yddrasil, but buried in the roots of this World Tree rested an all-seeing eye and at the end of each branch rested a smaller eye carving.

Despite the cold, the seal was easily broken when the threads were oiled using a concoction brewed over the course of several days at Rothschild’s hands. The crew of the Mjöllnir erected a tripod bearing a pulley system and the enormous stone seal was pulled away from its mating piece, revealing an antechamber in the rock bed. A set of finished steps led down into the darkness below.

For several days, Rothschild was the only one permitted to enter the chamber. The base camp was set within a few yards of the entry, several miles into the interior of the ice island; however, no one but Anseln and his urn were ever allowed below.

Antarctica spends half of every year in cold, black darkness, as the sun rests below the horizon from March to September. On the 23rd of September, three days after Rothschild disappeared into the hole below, he had only been heard through infrequent, short radio calls every hour to assure he was healthy.

During this time of waiting, Werther had spent his energy attempting to decipher the runes on the capstone. He had thus determined the piece, exquisitely crafted in polished basalt, bore the legend, Loki the Thief, Loki the Liar, Loki the Bringer of Fire. The portent that this inscription bore, set against the backdrop of the ancient Eddas, was tormenting to Kroen: a prophetic possibility he would not allow himself to ponder for fear of its unspeakable portent. The weight of it forced him to stoop as he drove it from his mind. If what the runes told him were true, their efforts on the ice were about to unleash Ragnorak. The thought physically held Werther fast for several seconds, when Rothschild’s voice over the radio requested his presence in the chamber.

As Werther trekked across the ice to the chamber entrance, fearing for what he might soon discover buried in a tomb at the bottom of the world, he was struck by the gleam in the sky. He had wrapped his hood so tightly against the frigid air that he almost missed it. The sun, after a six-month absence, was rising through nacreous clouds, spreading the horizon with a mother of pearl glitter of pink and green. On the ground, it was eighty degrees below zero; in the sky, it was colder still. Von Kroen marveled at the coming of the light to this darkened desolate world. After a moment, with his back to the sunrise, he turned toward the darkness looming from the opening in the ice and descended.

#

“Here is what we are to do,” Rothschild pulled a doeskin glove off his hand, dragging Kroen back to his present reality.

“Go. Outside. Have one of the crew fetch a barrel. An empty one. Empty one ...if needs be.”

Rothschild ran his hand over the captive’s forehead, wiping the poison away from the grimaced face. He continued.

“We will capture this...venom,” Rothschild wiped his hand clean. Whatever the substance was, it clearly had no affect on the man, even as a new drip tormented the blond curled, blue-eyed man on the rocks. He strained against the thin, silken threads that held him to the spot, even as every thew in his body pulled futilely to be freed.

“Collect a torch and a saw, as well,” Rothschild commanded, then smiled. “We’ll free this god from his constraints.”

Von Kroen cocked his head, incredulous. A weak “Excuse me?” finally fell from this lips.

“A barrel, Werther,” Rothschild snapped. He was irritated with Von Kroen, whether for the questioning tone or lack of enthusiasm, it was unclear, but his face began to grow red with frustration.

“A barrel--the largest you can find. And a saw and a torch, for cutting. Do you understand? We need to cut off the supply of venom in order to bring this god back to strength,” Rothschild’s tone changed abruptly, speaking mostly to himself, “The legend stated his wife was to collect this venom ... Wachtwyrm venom. She collected it in a bowl, like that one,” Rothschild pointed to a wooden vessel that stood full of liquid resting on the floor nearby.

“Where is she, I wonder?” Rothschild whispered under his breath. Then seeing Von Kroen still standing by, he huffed, exasperated.

“Werther! The barrel!” he barked.

“Yes!” Von Kroen’s temper flared, “I’m aware of the legend, you fool. Why on earth would you want to free him?”

Rothschild’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“Why? Why, Werther?” his tone, once again fell to softer tones, as that of a teacher drawing back a student lost to an only too-obvious wisdom.

“Why, you wonder? To win the favor of a god, natṻrlich!”

Von Kroen’s mind rushed to cold verity in that moment, the world all about him a rush of noise and chaos instantly drawn to quiet reckoning. An epiphany of wondrous magnitude.

“Free a god and win servitude,” Von Kroen eyes, mismatched in green and milky violet, narrowed with resolve, “Sacrifice a god and win his throne.”

Rothschild shook his head stupidly. To Baron Werther von Kroen it seemed that this greedy impostor posing as a Philosophus within the Astron Argon had, indeed, managed to suppress his own will to the point of a higher level of consciousness, so that the concept that was so clearly the only route to travel in Von Kroen’s eyes was truly alien in Rothschild’s. In fact, Rothschild was so trapped in perplexity that he didn’t seem to register the Luger 1917 Parabellum being withdrawn from Werther’s holster. That perplexed expression went unchanged, even as the bullet sank deep into Rothschild’s forehead, looking as confused in death as he had been in life.

“Congratulations, Dominus Liminis,” Von Kroen whispered in unison with Goliath. The giant head stared ahead, not considering anyone or anything in particular, striving to see the next moments clearly, as this most recent event had clearly caught him unawares.

Von Kroen then turned towards the man on the rocks.

“Pl-please...,” the struggling captive choked faintly, finding Von Kroen’s queer eyes through a haze of pain and delirium. Von Kroen knocked the bucket from the Wachtwyrm’s stone-set mouth and its venom flowed freely once again, pouring onto the man’s face. The old god cried out a shuddering wail.

Von Kroen holstered his weapon, the long barrel of the Artillery Parabellum still smoking from its shot and hollered up to the opening to calm the concerns of the crew, who had heard the gunshot. Kroen told the men, his men now, to remain as they were.

Kroen reached out and touched the skin of the bound man, feeling its warmth and seeing it respond in glowing vibrancy.

“Eckart has his puppet. Now I have mine,” he told the captive god, who did not appear to register the remark through his anguish.

Baron Werther von Kroen emerged into the bright sunlight, bathed in the dawn of the new world. He ordered a crew member to retrieve a barrel. And empty barrel. The good doctor could not stifle his smile.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 - Killing Time in Cumberland