To do this he raised two dreadful creatures. Terrible monsters! Even the gods shuddered as they looked upon them.
“Loke! Loke!” thundered Odin, looking down upon him in wrath that he should dare such vengeance.
But Loke stood defiant. There was but one thing to be done, so the gods thought; and that was to take these terrible creatures from Loke’s power.
“The serpent we will cast into the sea,” said Thor. “But the wolf—what shall we do with the wolf? Certainly he cannot be left to wander up and down in Midgard. The sea would not hold him. Loke must not have him in Jotunheim. What shall be done with him?”
“Kill him,” said some.
“No,” answered Odin. “To him Loke has given the gift of everlasting life. He will not die as long as we the gods have life. There is but one way left open to us; and that is to bring the wolf into Asgard. Here we can watch him and keep him from much, if not all the evil he would do.”
And so the wolf—the Fenris-wolf he was called—was brought into the home of the gods.
He was a dreadful creature to look upon. His eyes were like balls of fire; and his fangs were white, and sharp, and cruel.
Every day he grew more terrible. Fiercer and fiercer he grew, and larger and stronger and more dreadful to look upon.
“What is to be done with him?” asked Odin one day, his face white with despair, as he looked upon the wolf, and realized what sorrow by and by he would bring among them.