fanfic100 - Enemies - 499 words
Chaos and Order are not enemies, only opposites.
-Richard Garriott
The game was an old one. So old that the rules no longer had to be verbalized. Certainly, if you'd asked them, they would have only smiled and asked, "what rules?". They both knew, intimately, how to play the game. They had played it since the beginning of things. Would play until the end. It was a way, perhaps, to pass time. Something to do.
At any rate, it was what they did.
One might think of it like chess, though it would be infinitely more complex and infinitely less structured. But if one were to imagine it, it might be easiest to visualize the world as a global chessboard with positions marked upon it in black and white. The fact that a sphere has no sides as a chessboard does ought be one's first clue how this is more complicated than mere chess. At any rate, as one visualizes the world as a massive, spherical chessboard, one might then begin to see its pieces. Pawns, rooks, bishops, knights, kings and queens all moving about, some in black and others in white. For simplicity's sake, say that black stands for Chaos and white for Order even if it is a bit cliche and not the whole truth. Another way to think of it would be the side of the Aesir as the white and the side of the Jotnar is the black. Deep within and among the pieces is where the players would be found at once apart from and a part of the game itself.
One must also remember that all of the pieces and players are connected, that the whole shifts through even the smallest of actions. Where entropy occurs, Chaos surges. Where order is restored, Order abounds. Sometimes one has the advantage, sometimes the other but neither ever for very long. It is, perhaps, rather like balancing on a see-saw.
One might think of it all that way but if one were to watch them one might instead see a handsome man with flame-red hair lying on his stomach in front of a pile of cards. Across from him would be a distinguished older gentleman with one milky, scarred eye.
The redhead might be saying, "go fish."
And then the older gentleman would scowl, pick up a card from the deck between them and wait for Loki's question.
"Do you have any...queens?"
Once more Odin would scowl as he passes over a card which Loki would pause to inspect and admire the image of a beautiful young woman carrying a basket of golden apples while standing in an idyllic orchard. Odin would then snap, "just put it in your hand and stop gawking at it." Loki would grin cheekily and tuck the card away with his other queens and the game would continue.
And as one watched, one might find the thought coming, unbidden, to one's mind: Ragnarok is not on its way. It is here and now and has always been and will be...until the end.