The Tree of ancients is aflame.
It has been the dying place of a God.
Every leaf burns,
Recalling the memory of His passing.
It is etched on the body of that Tree,
His appeasement of its ancient hunger.
Not even the wisest of etins can tell
where every drop of blood has fallen.
The Nornir alone watched those crimson pearls
Staining well the web of wisdom as they etched their path
across his aching flesh.
Only when the steed of corpses had drunk its fill,
when the One who hung was willingly reduced to a broken shell,
grey and gaunt with the passing of death, devoid of life,
a thing of pain,
only then did the Tree offer up its secrets.
He screamed in ecstasy and pain, writhing
as the terror of that knowledge seared through Him
marking him ever after as a thing of death,
devastating all that He was, shaping all He might ever become.
He shrieked in His death-throws
and beneath the Tree the Well of sacrifice rippled
spitting forth the runes.
They plundered Him
and through pain, He became their master.
The Tree could not hold Him then
and a single death was a small enough price to pay
for its secrets.
Still, it was a long time before His shrieking ceased.