In the void of space, overlooking a beautiful world of gold, green, and blue, a tear suddenly appeared. It was shaped like a crooked scar of a black void outlined in shimmering white energy. Out of that darkness, a cloaked and armored man emerged with a single step.

His black armored boots landed on a fractal pattern that condensed from nothing. The cloak he wore blended perfectly with the space around him. It looked like it was made out of a starry night sky. He removed the hood and revealed his short white hair and beard.

He only had one remaining eye on the left side of his slightly lined but handsome face. The look in that piercing blue eye could have made a hardened warrior weep in fear.

When he glanced down to the beautiful world, Odin's face broke into a smile. His vision was so potent, he could make out the individual citizens living on the surface of the world. His world.

Asgard was as beautiful as ever. He could see every golden building, every field of crops. Odin looked at the giant fractal runes that he had designed and built himself. Some of the runes were designed to protect the world. Others had different functions. One complex pattern used the ambient qi to levitate his enormous floating city of gold.

Odin took all of this in with a single glance. Nothing escaped his perception. After making sure that everything was as it should be, he turned away and summoned dozens of shining silver runes that manifested in the space around him, orbiting and merging with each other in an organized chaos.

He put his hands out and conducted the shining patterns swirling around him. As the light shining from the fractals touched his eye, Odin's perception was carried to specific locations in the Universe.

He saw the outer edges of his territory, and the battles that were taking place even now. Direction in the Universe was relative, but generally speaking, the angel's domain was considered to be on the ceiling. Underneath their sector was the demon's, and Odin's faction controlled a large section of the Cosmos near the center.

His territory was bordered on the top by the demon's and the golem's. Battles were fought constantly along the borders. The most powerful members of Odin's faction stood sentry along the edges to keep the others from claiming their domain.

Even now, Odin's greatest warriors such as Heimdall and Njord were clashing with the most advanced members of the demonic faction. They met in the void rather than on the nearby planets, as the techniques and workings that they fought with would destroy entire solar systems.

Odin would not join in the battles personally. If he did, they would certainly win and gain much territory, but then Lucifer himself would come. The resulting battle between Lucifer and Odin would not only devastate an entire sector of the Universe, but it would leave both of their factions vulnerable to the other great powers. This was why the most advanced warriors almost never truly fought.

After taking stock of the current state of his territory, Odin reached out with True Willpower and created another tear in space that he stepped through without hesitation.

When he arrived in the outer edge of the Cosmos, he looked down on a world of brown and green which orbited a bigger world of blue and green.

Odin stood on a silver fractal and removed his cloak. It disappeared as he placed it in his pocket dimension next to his spear. He would not need either for what came next. As soon as he shed the cloak, the brown and green world began to shake.

Odin watched as the citizens of the world began to run around and panic. Before his eyes, the people disappeared as they were expertly moved through space.

On the surface of the larger world, people began appearing in droves. Hundreds of millions of new occupants appeared out of nowhere and they were greeted by the citizens of the blue and green world. For such a chaotic event, the peoples of both worlds met with surprising equanimity.

Soon, the whole of the smaller brown and green world was completely empty of citizens. The leafy green areas of the planet shrank and disappeared into the brown bark. The surface of the planet, which looked like a tangled spherical knot of enormous roots shook and twisted, untangling themselves. The skyscraper buildings which made up the planet’s many cities were drawn back into the wooden ground.

Odin waited patiently while the brown and green world rearranged itself. The gigantic roots and branches straightened themselves out and then seemed to retract into the center of the planet sized tree.

The single tree that made up the entire planet shrank in on itself until it was the size of one large humanoid being.

Now, standing on a green fractal platform in the exact center of where the planet had just floated, there was a ten foot tall humanoid figure made of wood. Odin smiled genially at the ancient being.

Its body was covered in a dark brown bark that was almost black. It looked like an extraordinarily well muscled human. The tree person was clearly male, and had a very thick head of thin black vines for hair that fell all the way down his back. His square wooden face was smooth and kindly, and his eyes were glowing green.

Finished transforming, the tree man looked in Odin's direction and created his own tear in space that he stepped through, appearing just behind where the god of war was standing. He had safely moved every one of the billions of beings that had occupied his body and condensed into his humanoid form in well under a minute. It was a show of supreme skill.

"Hello my old enemy" the tree man's voice was smooth and calming. He radiated a profound sense of peaceful wisdom.

"Yggdrasil" Odin responded brightly in his rich, deep voice.

The world tree looked down on the white haired warrior crossing his sculpted arms across his thick wooden chest. He jerked his head to the left once.

"Let us take this somewhere more private" Yggdrasil proposed. He created a new tear in the void directly in front of Odin, who stared at the ancient tree without flinching before stepping through.

On the other side of the portal, was darkness. Yggdrasil had brought them to an area of the Cosmos where they could interact without accidentally taking the lives of billions of beings. There wasn't so much as a meteor around for countless lightyears. The divine tree stepped through the tear behind Odin and made another fractal to stand on with his bare feet.

"You have become reckless in your old age human" Yggdrasil said calmly. "To approach me without the benefit of your spear or cloak."

Odin smiled casually. Even with the spear and cloak, he was not entirely confident in his ability to emerge triumphant. Of the septillions of beings in the Universe, there were less than ten that Odin would hesitate to fight, but Yggdrasil was certainly one of them.

Instead of answering him, Odin controlled his platform to fly backward and prepared himself for the exchange. His one blue eye became serious, and he fixed the wooden giant with a stare that would freeze the blood of a dragon. Yggdrasil only seemed to gain even more calm. The look in his glowing green eyes became even more placid.

The god of war manifested his Absolute Domain and the world tree responded in kind. A transparent silver energy erupted from Odin's body while a similarly transparent green exploded from Yggdrasil's. For hundreds of thousands of miles in every direction, they gained absolute control over their environments.

However, the domains could not overlap with each other. Hostile Absolute Domains could not occupy the same space. Their spheres of influence smashed into the other one's and warred for dominance. It looked like two giant playground balls being pushed together.

The malformed green sphere around Yggdrasil was slightly larger than the one around Odin. The one eyed warrior still refused to back down. He manifested thousands of different colored fractal runes within the space occupied by his domain.

There were complex patterns of every color floating in the space around Odin, and each one was the size of a skyscraper. They glowed with energy and illuminated his face which showed absolutely no strain from the massive and intricate working.

Odin put his right hand out. Each of the glowing patterns turned to focus on Yggdrasil, and then erupted with thousands of world-ending techniques.

One swirling red fractal spawned a flaming sword the size of a mountain that was filled with more energy than a large star. A yellow one created a giant dagger of venom that could eat through a gas giant. A light blue pattern projected a lance of ice that would freeze a black hole. Every imaginable element was represented and they all converged on the wooden warrior in a brilliant display of power.

Yggdrasil smiled calmly and clapped his hands together like he was about to say a prayer. The vines that hung from his head lifted above him like snakes rearing up to strike. More dark ropes of wood sprouted from every inch of his large back and curled around towards Odin.

The thousands of vines extending from him grew with incredible speed. They twisted around the world tree and struck back at the armored human man.

The thin wooden ropes sprouted with thousands of techniques that met Odin's in the space between them. Not only did they extend, they also expanded until they were a match in size to the massive workings of Odin. Some of the vines sprouted with deadly thorns. Others took the form of wooden palm strikes or snarling dragons.

Yggdrasil's techniques favored forms that could be found in nature while Odin's were shaped like weapons of war. One of the tree’s vines sprouted into a sunflower with petals of fire that met the lance of ice, the beautiful techniques canceling each other out. The giant flaming sword crashed into a lily made of churning water. A thorny vine of rock stopped a spear of lightning.

Odin often used elements that were designed to corrupt the world tree's body. A dagger made of poison or an arrow of venom would crash into a vine and try to work its way down to his main body. Every time one of these attacks hit his vines, Yggdrasil would immediately detach it from his body and regrow a healthy one.

The space between the two heavenly warriors was filled with countless massively destructive techniques bursting into each other and exploding, filling the void with flashes of multicolored light like fireworks. In the several minutes that this flashy display of world-ending power continued, hundreds of thousands of techniques clashed in the void.

When the smoke cleared and the dust finally settled, the two warriors stood calmly staring at each other without so much as a scratch on their bodies. They had matched each other's attack perfectly. They dropped their Absolute Domains at the same time and their fractal platforms flew over to meet in the middle.

Despite the staggering power displayed, this had not been a battle. It could hardly even be considered a scuffle, much less a kerfuffle.

It was a simple exchange of techniques.

Tradition dictated that when two martial arts masters met, they would each perform a single technique to display their style. Odin and Yggdrasil were simply observing this ancient custom. By no means was this a comprehensive display of their ability. Rather, it was merely a shallow glance at their most basic techniques. Warriors always kept their true powers and trump cards hidden until they were absolutely necessary.

"Now" Yggdrasil said calmly with his fingertips steepled under his chin. "What can I do for you today Odin?"

Odin nodded considering what came next. This meeting would have indelible ramifications in the Universe. There would be no going back if he continued.

"I am here to discuss an alliance."