The root tasted the way it always tasted. Bitter. Tough. Old.
Níðhöggr chewed. His jaws had been working for thousands of years and his teeth were yellow with age and ground down to stumps, and the jaw joint cracked with every bite like a door that should have been oiled long ago.
Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw.
Every day. Same root. Same taste. Same darkness, same mud, same stench of sulphur and rotting water from Hvergelmir bubbling somewhere nearby like an old man talking to himself.
Níðhöggr liked the stench. It was the only honest thing in all of Yggdrasil. Everything else pretended. The tree pretended it held up the worlds out of goodness. The gods pretended they deserved their places in the crown. The eagle pretended he was wise. The stench just stank. It had no agenda.
He was alone. That was not tragic. It was a relief. The serpents came sometimes. Góinn, Móinn, Grábakr, Grafvölluðr. They chewed on the thinner roots and said nothing, and Níðhöggr said nothing back, and that was the only kind of company worth having.
Sometimes he heard the squirrel. Click click click in the bark. Ratatoskr with yet another insult from the eagle, inflated and sharpened the way only that fucking squirrel could manage. "The eagle says you are a worm. The eagle says you crawl. The eagle says you will never be more than vermin."
"Tell that feathered bastard I chew," said Níðhöggr. "Tell him I have been chewing since before his grandfather hatched, and that I intend to chew until his fucking stick falls, and that the day it falls he falls with it, and that he knows it, and that is why he talks shit instead of doing something about it."
Ratatoskr ran. Níðhöggr chewed. Nothing changed. That was exactly as it should be.
People ask why. Why does Níðhöggr chew? And the question is wrong. The one who asks "why" has never hated properly. Hatred needs no why. Hatred is its own fuel, its own fire, its own oxygen. The one who hates long enough forgets what he hated first and instead hates the habit of hating, and that is more than enough.
Níðhöggr hated the tree. Not because it was evil. Not because it had done him harm. He hated it because it stood there. Enormous. Self-satisfied. Green. With gods in its branches who fucked giantesses and judged giants and played at justice while they were exactly as filthy as everything else, and with a fucking eagle at the top staring down at him as if he were the problem.
Green. Níðhöggr hated green. Green was the colour of life, and life was what happened above, where the sun reached, where it was dry and warm and everyone had opinions about things they did not understand. Níðhöggr lived below. In the mud. In the dark. He had never asked for it. He was fucking well not going to move.
Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw.
The teeth scraped against the root. Bark came away in pieces. Every day an ounce. Every year an inch. Every century a cubit deep, barely visible, barely measurable, but it was enough. Time was the only thing he had besides hatred, and that was all he needed.
One day the root would give way. Níðhöggr could feel it. The fibres loosened more slowly than ice melts, but they loosened. That day the tree would lean. The gods would clutch their thrones. Odin would cast his gaze in every direction with his one fucking eye and see nothing. And Níðhöggr would feel the root give way under his jaws, and it would be the best taste he had ever known.
But not today. Today he chewed. The root tasted bitter. That was fine. Bitter was a taste he had learned to prefer.