Chapter Text
Asgard’s might is not one to be slighted. The Nine Realms cower before its shadow and their rulers immediately seek the Allfather’s rule for his judgement. Now the council surrounds you in dead silence within the walls of a bleak hall that is barely lit with torches. Metal-clad feet collide with the back of your legs, urging you to kneel. The chains rattle as you land. Your muscles are still sore from the throes of battle, but you dare not make a sound, refusing to grant them the pleasure.
Had you been taken here blindfolded, you wouldn’t be able to guess this place was in the Golden City. It was more run-down than its dungeons, much like it was reserved specifically to condemn the worst of criminals.
You train your eyes on Odin before you. He is dressed in his armour with his fingers wrapped around Gungnir. On one side is his wife who fails to stifle her emotions; the sorrow seeps through her eyes and her lips quiver slightly. Sentiment was one, cruelly stupid thing. She was not your friend, perhaps she was even less of an acquaintance than anyone else in the room.
On the other side are his sons. Thor’s gaze is downcast. He’d known you by name and title, but seeing the face of the crimes proved heavier than he’d anticipated, much more when it was the face of a woman about his age. This is why he could never be king, his younger brother next to him seethes.
Unlike the golden prince, he stares sharply. His face is inclined so he looks down at you as he stands on the platform with his family. He condemns you to scrutiny. He’d heard of your crimes and thought you no more than a fool, the magic in your veins was misplaced and could have gone to someone far more capable like himself. In his eyes you were a brutish warrior without foresight; how you were assigned to command a legion of enchanters was beyond him. Sending you to your death would be like rooting out weed plaguing Yggdrasil.
Even so, he swallows a swell in his throat when his father rejects the axe in favour of sentencing you to a lifetime of imprisonment.
“I believe The Swan will be best kept with us, Your Majesty,” a voice interjects. The voice you recognise comes from Rognvir, Fjaerheim’s spokesman speaking on behalf of its king. Glaring up at him, you see the flame in his silver eyes, burning of sorrow and anger. His greying hair threatens to catch fire, the crevices of his skin bury any semblance of empathy he has left. In his eyes, you were a traitor, a rogue warrior drunk on power that led to his son's untimely death on the battlefield. He tells himself it isn’t selfishness and he speaks purely out of concern for his country; that the power you wielded was deadly and could only bring forth more catastrophe.
“Do you suggest that Asgard falters in the task of keeping her bound?” The Allfather challenges.
“I dare not claim such a thing, my lord. But King Anundr reckons there is no greater punishment for treason than to be bound by one’s own people.”
When the One-Eyed King remains silent, the spokesman prods, “With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Rognvir bows his head, a fist to his chest. “The capital of Vanaheim will be keeping the Aether in its vaults, Asgard has also collected its trophies. Consider this act a consolidation of our loyalty to your throne.”
“We are to trust that she remains tethered to the lands of Fjaerheim? Under the rule of her own people?”
“It is under our rule that she abused her power, something we do not take kindly. I myself, shall ensure the full extent of her punishment,” says the Fjaervakt bitterly.
The prince counts four heartbeats before his father nods.
Irony was lost on everyone else. Every man and every woman in the hall had blood on their hands, insurmountable lives taken by wielded blades, yet you… you were guilty.
The voice he had only once heard spoken soft and tenderly now screams and hollers, pleading for death. The thrashing of chains overcomes the sound of Gungnir striking the ground twice, signifying Odin’s ratification of his decision. Your wings spread out in distress, a last-ditch effort your body makes to shield you, it makes the guards behind you stumble.
The raven prince does not hear his father’s second command, so when a blade is brandished he thinks you’d been sentenced to death after all. But when it lands, it elicits a blood-curdling scream as the winged flesh falls on the floor. The action earns an echo of gasps, but the sound of blood rushing in your ears drowns them out.
Freedom was torn from you twice. No, it slips like liquid from your fingers, blood cascading down your skin to paint a grim picture. It clings to the dirt on your body, to your hair. The stench invades your nose; it’s taunting you. You’ve lost, you’ve lost.
Your forehead touches the ground as you suppress your sobs, but you do not have the luxury of time as you are dragged back to your feet. Darkness surrounds your sight until you can only focus on one man. Your prosecutor is the last man you see before the doors close. You curse him, you curse everyone who stood by and watched.
Gone are the days you’d led them to glory and countless victories. Forsaken by your own people; where once they’d bow in greeting, now they seemed satisfied to see you on your knees before them. It leaves a bitter taste on your tongue. These rats, how they’d scour to appease.
Fjaerheim was a disparaged state. For millennia on end, the Fjaervakt would throw themselves upon the Allfather’s feet, offering their greatest accomplishments to the god. With all of Asgard’s pretentiousness and grandeur, they’ve had to fight tooth and nail to prove themselves worthy of alliances and recognition. Such is true for the warriors of Fjaerheim for the most part. The enchanters, like you, were at least a little more reserved. Enchanters, witches, magic users alike had always been criticised for being arrogant in nature, but is it truly so arrogant to refrain from toiling every fleeting shred of praise?
It burns. You can’t quite tell what, but it does. Perhaps it’s everywhere on your body. All that’s left of your identity are the stubs on your shoulder blades that were once wings. With a hoarse throat and dehydration, no voice comes out as you’re dragged.
Loki looks down at himself and checks for blood. He wants to scrub off all the grime he had accumulated from this room alone, more so when he catches a glimpse of his mother whose eyes are filled with pity that should make him scowl. But her eyes only remind him of an afternoon from decades ago, years before war threatened to set loose.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” the raven prince scolds. His demeanour is as juvenile as any young man, a hand on his hip, his hair disordered in the wind. “This is a private sanctuary for my serpents.” His words are punctuated by the hissed agreements of the snakes. Some crawl on the ground, the others are wrapped around tree branches, but one of them seems content to be coiled around your arm.
“What, are these your chambers as well then?” You snap.
He clenches his fists to your amusement. “Leave before I call the guards.”
“I somehow doubt you’ll need them to cast me out, Odinson,” you address the snake on your arm more so than him as you lift it close to your face to look in its eyes, stroking the scales gently. “Besides, I could ask them to bring me to Frigga and she’ll tell them she had let me drop by.”
“These little things… all bark and no bite.” You dare a glance at him. He looks at you contemplatively. Why in the Nine Realms would his mother let a bird into a snake enclosure? Let alone his very own!
He takes a few steps in your direction, making sure to crush leaves in its wake. “You are its prey, had you been smaller they all would have clambered for a taste.”
“Had I been a bird , I wouldn’t even be here to have this conversation,” you say dryly. “I would have better things to do apart from all the politics and these pretentious… royal engagements.”
Køllsdottir. Daughter of Køll, he remembered. Though he’d never cared for your given name until now. Perhaps his mother would be inclined to tell him
They called you a swan. But it makes him wonder. You held no grace of one… did you even have wings? Though he knew the Fjaervakt could hide their wings, you still seemed to be awfully… ordinary.
You crouch closer to the ground, softly cooing at the wicked little thing. He watches as it loosens from you, making a line towards him. He almost laughs at how obedient such a creature known for its stubbornness was.
The snake nuzzles his boots, akin to a feline’s gesture of affection. He picks it up as delicately as how you settled it down. His mouth opens to question you, but he looks up to see the sanctuary empty, no hint of a presence apart from the hissing of snakes.
The next time he’d seen you, he was an ambassador visiting your kingdom. You knelt before the throne, a blade being graced softly on your shoulders. You were being anointed as the next Cardinal Enchanter.
“Brother,”
Silence.
“They wait for us at the victory banquet.”
Serpents plague your dreams. Though a mere fragment of your imagination, the hissing seems too thrum in your eardrums. The ruthless predator strikes a bird, and in another moment that bird is you. It’s coiling around your frail form, stealing the breath from your lungs.
You hear a call, pleading, calling out your name.
You search for it. There is no longer a snake as you soar over the battlefield. Wings stumble, but something else keeps you steady. You can feel it wrapping around your throat, warring with your mind, heart, and soul. The skies above are obscured, perhaps it was of your doing. But with the dark magic crawling into your eyes, clawing at your vision, it’s hard to see.
The magic drenches your fingertips, tainted black, the veins on your forearms, closing into your pulse points, darkening and threatening to consume you whole
You hear it again, it’s closer, but fainter.
“Father?”
When you wake on the cold stone, you take a breath as though you had just drowned. All you see are the same ecru bricked walls, the same dark, eerie marble floors and the torches that keep the temperature bearable at most. The cell was spacious and high, as though to mock your freedom to walk, but not to fly. There were runes inlaid on the ground, carved in a circular motion. They are the ones holding you tethered here. You had no chains, but you could feel the weight of the wards casted on your shoulders. They fatigue you and stifle your magic all the same.
There is no telling of the time, you were underground with no windows or gaps to peek through. They had granted you the luxury of books, half of the cell was a large bookshelf but to compare the quantity with the lifetime you would live here… No, you had finished the books before a decade had passed.
Once, you had laughed to yourself remembering Rognvir’s words about ensuring your full punishment. You had assumed it would be a lifetime of physical torture. But no. This. This was your punishment. An inescapable feeling of languor, the incessant boredom as life moves on without you, depriving you of meals. You felt the hunger, the starvation, but it did not kill you as you wish it would have.
But even this feat did not last long as one night Rognvir entered your cage. He’d grown frail and older. The greys of his hair spread into his skin, his eyes are dull and he holds a cane. With him was an enchanter, whose face was obscured from your view.
The old man moves closer to your shelves, examining the titles available as though to distract himself while the enchanter positions themself. You deserved this, yes. No one could come to rescue you, but he needed to be sure. His son died a quick, albeit painful death. Many of the souls sent to Valhalla were also on your hands. It was in his hands to make sure you died slowly.
And if you dared to break free, you would know it was a greater mistake.
When the enchanter speaks, their voice is distorted, but the words are clear and clawing at your heart.
O, sacred fates heed me
Carry these words to the tree
By the laws that bind the ancient realms
By the wrath of the gods be sound
For no hand to lift you from the ground
May your touch bring forth flames
For fire shall be your bane
Bound by the wrath of Hel
Till the flames seethe and yearn
You could have sworn you’d seen the face of your hexer. At least, the teary eyes and the apology on their tongue.
A fire that shifts, should the heart discern
The curse shall linger to who you hold dear
When hearts entwine shall it disappear
You would pass the centuries in a cycle of slumber and wake. You’d grown tired of reading the same titles, of pacing the same grounds. Sleep merely felt like the blink of an eye as you lay unmoving on the ground. Numb. Your eyes would open, then close again. But without a clock, you were oblivious to how much time would have passed. You could only feel it by how sore your body has grown, perhaps how your hair had grown to reach your feet.
Slumber takes you in full. You do not dream, nor hear the faint crackling of torches.
You do not hear the seal groaning above.
But you feel the rain cascading down your skin.
The Raven was not in high spirits.
Even less as he had just returned from subduing an illegal operation in the north, only to return home with his presence being requested immediately before the Allfather. No hero’s welcome, perhaps a sliver of it in the form of a salute from awaiting soldiers. He gives them a nod as he dismounts his horse, his party of enchanters follow suit. Only to be followed by the Allmother’s servant, Mendel, hastily making his way to the prince to blabber all the way into the palace.
“...There are a myriad of preparations to be made in the upcoming months, my lord, plenty of which the Queen has requested your assistance with. The Annual Arcane Tournament, too, is within the fortnight–”
“First, I am welcomed with a request from the King. Now you nag me all the way to him with matters that are of no concern at the moment. Do you mean to tell me the King wishes to talk of these fatuous preparations on the throne? By fate, I hope it won’t be a waste of time as you are making it sound like.” The prince halts in his tracks to give the servant a pointed glare as he speaks. Mendel feels the frostbite nip his skin, the prince’s icy glare freezing him into place before quickly melting as the forest’s winter peeled his gaze away to will his feet further into the corridors.
“First things first, Mendel. I shall attend to my mother later. What urgency requires my presence upon the throne room this early noon?” Though weary, he has returned to his princely demeanour. The events of the earlier morning slowly fade into the depths of his mind. But they linger nonetheless, in his mind and in the droplets of blood on his leathers.
The prince and all his wonders, thinks. Kingly duties were primarily only of Thor’s concern as the heir, it seems this concern exceeds beyond.
The pair stops before the grand doors as the prince awaits his answer.
“A messenger from Vanaheim, my lord.”
Before Loki could voice his contempt, the grand doors swing open, and a herald announces his arrival. The lingering echo rings in his ears. It makes him wince.
He scurries into the room, leaving Mendel behind. He does not see the servant bowing as the doors close.
Upon reaching the foot of the stairs to the platform the thrones lay upon, Loki heaps a small show of reverence himself, bowing to his hips, a fist to his heart before making his way to his mother’s side. Mother and son exchange fond gazes before awaiting their special guest.
They do not wait for long.
“The messenger Bernhard of Vanaheim!” Bellows the herald.
Bernhard was of lesser stature, as most of the Vanir were compared to the Aesir. He scampers into the throne room, unfashionably urgent. His hair was unkempt, ginger splayed all over his face, eyebrows furrowed into an expression of distress. His skin was darker, too, evidence of Vanaheim’s closest star warming its lands. He had barely made it to the foot of the platform before he fell to his knees. Both of them. As opposed to the tradition being only one. The momentum from when he ran inside makes him glide half an inch onto the carpet.
“What concerns of Vanaheim requires Asgard’s counsel, Bernhard? Speak,” commands Odin, ever the king he is.
“Fjaerheim is in a state of unrest. Their magic has dwindled, though we know not why.” Bernhard’s voice trembles. He’d heard of the king’s wrath in tales and did not wish to witness it for himself. What he’d just stated was merely the tip of the iceberg.
The king has moved in his seat. If intrigue was a scent, he’d reek of it. “Continue.”
“The capital of Vanaheim has lost the Aether.”
The brothers look at each other, the atmosphere hardens and a bead of sweat drops on the ground. But the messenger continues.
“The former Cardinal Enchanter of Fjaerheim–” he clears his throat. “The last who wielded the Aether has been set free.”
The Wraith.
The Lady of the Swans.
Odin grasps Gungnir tightly, the messenger prepares himself for a strike that does not come. Perhaps the Allfather wasn’t as merciless as he’d been told.
“Fjaerheim has granted her freedom?” The irritability leaks from Odin’s voice. They’d sworn full sentence five hundred years ago, surely they would have known better than to rescind loyalty now.
“N-no, sire. At least not from what we have been told. The weakening of Fjaerheim’s magic is to blame. The spells that kept her tethered faltered with its people. But the council suspects that the Fjaervakt are keeping something from us, perhaps they seek to reap more of their sovereignty from the capital of Vanaheim, they say.”
“Does the council surmise a connection between these events?”
“As we presume the prisoner has no means of escaping or retrieving the Aether without wings, nor magic, it’s quite hard to tell, sire. Unless she has someone from the outside, which too isn’t completely out of the question.”
The Wraith , yes. A handful remained loyal to you despite your sentence, and some still lived at present. Even Loki could remember their faces, how they were somehow frozen into contortion expressing indefinite derisiveness whenever they stepped foot into the Golden Palace. They scorned the King, but never enough to raise an impression.
The idea was on the tip of his tongue, but Thor beat him to it– “Then we shall find her. Before she makes allies, we’ll be sure to have her,” He turns to his brother, “you and I, and our men. We’d make a formidable search party.”
Loki rolls his eyes, his hands tighten behind him as he clears his throat. “With your permission, father?”
The hopeful look in Bernhard’s eyes does not escape the sights of the king and his youngest son. In hindsight the idea seemed rash, but would there be anyone else so willing to take the quest?
Was The Wraith as vulnerable as they say? Or are they merely imploring for action to be taken. Either way, his sons were capable, he knew that far. Should they find her, you, you’d be returned to Asgard to where you rightfully belonged. Fjaerheim took you as a prize, a cruel symbol of loyalty to the Golden Kingdom. But they’d failed.
The thought lingers, but he keeps it at bay. Your power, the Aether. No one else had wielded it for so long before losing their minds or deteriorating physically. With that kind of power how, had you stood for so long? And with that kind of power within an arm’s reach from him…
“Very well. The princes of Asgard shall lead a search party to seek out the prisoner. Thor shall take five of his best men, and Loki shall take five of his best enchanters–”
“I’ll fare perfectly fine with just two.”
“...Two of his best enchanters, and Vanaheim and Fjaerheim can provide as much as they deem fit for this venture.” The Allfather moves in his seat, leaning forward. “However, I duly suggest to simmer down any animosity between the two nations for the time this shall take place. Asgard and Vanaheim are powerful, but only the Fjaervakt can be certain of their own lands.”
“Of course, sire.”
“Then it is settled.” Two thuds of a spear resound.
Bernhard rises from his knees and graces the family with one last bow.