The  builder picked up  a  rock  one-handed and  smashed it  againstanother, breaking the granite block into two. He turned to the gods, half ofthe rock in each hand, and now he was twenty, thirty, fifty feet tall. His facetwisted; he no longer looked like the stranger who had arrived in Asgard aseason before, placid and  even-tempered. Now  his  face  looked like  thegranite face of a cliff, twisted and sculpted by anger and hatred.“I am a mountain giant,” he said. “And you gods are nothing but cheatsand vile oath-breakers. If I still had my horse, I would be finishing yourwall now. I would be taking the lovely Freya and the sun and the moon formy wages. And I would be leaving you here in the darkness and the cold,without even beauty to cheer you.”“No oath was broken,” said Odin. “But no oath can protect you from usnow.”The mountain giant roared with anger and ran toward the gods, a hugelump of granite in each hand as a club.The gods stood aside, and only now the giant saw who was standingbehind them. A huge god, red-bearded and muscular, wearing iron gauntletsand  holding  an  iron  hammer,  which he  swung, once.  He  let  go  of  thehammer when it was pointing at the giant.There was a flash of lightning from the clear skies, followed by the dullboom of thunder as the hammer left Thor’s hand.The mountain giant saw the hammer getting rapidly bigger as it camehurtling toward him, and then he saw nothing else, not ever again.

The Master Builder