The following was a fictional nightmare had by a tormented character during a sleep study, written while listening to this music track.

The sound of ambient thunder tolled in the background as he rose from his black throne of carven onyx. His coat of dragon scales hung to his knees. His feet were sheathed in polar bear fur boots. His shoulders were cloaked in Grendel fur had from the Weather-Geats he had slain in their surging masses. His sword—which had lain across his thighs—was forged of Hel’s own slag and quenched in the blood of a hundred virgins.

He looked northward to the only realm he had not conquered in the Land of The Nords. There he saw the three stone Fates with their faces to the sea, and knew he had fulfilled the quest road. It remained only for him to defeat their champion and question them. In this way he would learn of the Secret of Life—the very lore of the gods was within his grasp!

He stalked across the barren rocks that rolled slab upon slab across the roof of the world, toward the stone-faced Fates, chanting their hollow windy dirge out to sea. Their song oppressed him with melancholy and he began to doubt his deeds; to reflect on some weakness of the heart that lurked inside of him, as if it were a residual curse from some past life, where he had been the slave rather than the master.

Then, he came.

Of an awkward gate an armored warrior of the Nords lumbered across the barren lava, lonely as the moon and cold as ice. At length they came face-to-face within steel-ringing distance of the stone Fates, towering like upended dragon ships into the gray sky.

The man was old, worn, haggard and lame, missing his right leg from the knee and his left arm from the shoulder. He was armed with an axe, to Justin’s sword. A twinge of honor struck him, and Justin cast aside his shield, standing weapon to weapon against the Nord champion, who said, “Is there any last request King of Geats?”

Then, as if some other answered, his mother’s fondness for birds struck him, and he returned, “Birdsong, I would hear birdsong at the Final Battle.”

“Then you will!” bawled the old champion, and he pointed with his axe spike to a wide-headed man with a thick thatch beard and a round-faced devil painted on his neck. That man—having appeared from nowhere it would seem—dragged, by way of massive ropes strapped across his chest, a great steel box painted green, scraping and sparking across the cold baked stone. Finally, when the man stood within a spear-cast of the King of Geats and the Nord champion, he heaved open the black wood top of the box and countless overfed black ravens surged into the sky and began to circle the two of them as they each began to circle and measure the other.

The Nord champion heaved his axe high and cleaved with a yell like the caw of a thousand death birds—and the Final Battle was joined.