The peak of Delphi was bathed in golden light. It was perfection.
Apollo stood by the sacred tripod, his silver bow in hand, looking every bit the golden youth of legend. He did not look worried. He never did. He had already seen the end of this battle before it began.
"You step on my mountain, Wanderer," Apollo said, his voice melodious, like a harp string plucked. "I have foreseen your defeat in the entrails of the earth."
Odin leaned on his spear, Gungnir. He looked tired, dusty, and old. His cloak was tattered, and his single eye was fixed on the young god with a look of heavy patience.
"You see the end," Odin rasped. "But do you see the path?"
The Arrow of Light
Apollo smiled. "I see everything."
He raised his bow. He didn't aim; he didn't need to. He simply released the string. The arrow was a beam of pure sunlight, travelling at the speed of thought, destined to pierce Odin's heart. It was written.
Odin did not dodge. He threw Gungnir.
The spear that never misses clashed with the arrow that never misses in mid-air.
There was no explosion. Just a ringing silence as the two absolutes cancelled each other out. The arrow shattered; the spear deflected, spinning away into the olive groves.
Apollo frowned. That... was not in the vision. "You altered the weave," he accused, nocking another arrow.
"I read the runes," Odin corrected. "Prophecy is a song, boy. Songs can be rearranged."
The Trap of Wisdom
Apollo began to fire in earnest now, a barrage of light-shafts turning the mountainside into a grid of burning lasers. Odin moved with surprising agility for an old man, but he was losing ground. He took a graze to the thigh, then the arm.
"Give up!" Apollo shouted, glowing with solar power. "I know your every move! I see you stepping left before you decide! I see you striking high before you lift your hand!"
"You see what I want you to see," Odin whispered.
Odin whispered to the wind. Huginn. Muninn.
His ravens dropped from the sun's glare, not attacking Apollo, but diving behind him. They didn't strike; they cawed. A harsh, grating sound that disrupted the perfect harmony of Delphi.
For a split second, Apollo flinched. The sound was discordant, ugly. It broke his concentration, his perfect connection to the flow of time.
In that second of blindness, Odin was there.
The cost of knowing
Odin didn't have his spear. He had his hands. He grabbed Apollo’s wrist, the one holding the bow, and twisted.
Apollo cried out, burning with solar fire to drive the old god back. Odin’s skin blistered, his cloak catching fire, but he held on. He looked into Apollo’s eyes—eyes that saw the future—with his single eye that saw the truth.
"You see the pain of burning me," Odin grunted. "I feel it. That is the difference."
Odin tripped the sun god, driving him into the dirt. He pinned the silver bow to the ground with his knee.
"You rely on the outcome," Odin said, breathing smoke. "You forgot to fight the battle."
Apollo struggled, his light flickering. He saw a hundred futures where he escaped, where he won, where he burned Odin to ash. But in the present, he was pinned by a god who had hung himself from a tree for nine days just to learn a word.
The sheer weight of Odin's will—the weight of sacrifice—crushed the hope out of the young god.
Apollo stopped struggling. The light on the mountain dimmed to a regular sunset.
"Refraction," Apollo muttered, impressed despite himself. "You bent the light."
Odin stood up, patting the flames out on his shoulder. "I simply cast a shadow."