Drbleep S Tale Sandbox 3

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Past

The corridors deep beneath the palace were drenched in darkness, backlit by the dim glimmer of Rustics¹ pulsing along the lustrous corundum blocks.

The dim halls stretch endlessly in every direction. They were a maze of sterile architecture and interchanges oft forgotten and seldom used. Cold. Desolate. Hostile and without the glamour of moving art and decoration. These factors declared the true nature of the maintenance corridor underneath the palace complex, a lifeless, hard place where the light of the Mither is not supposed to shine.

Thin films of icey water ran in the opposite direction of Hege Aquailian's splashing steps. The chill sank deeper into her bones with every step. It made her teeth chatter.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the stench of rotting wood, stagnant water and ancient mold made breathing a labor all its own.

Her auric brow wrinkled, disrupting drops of cold sweat beginning to run down her forehead. A fire of determined focus burned just beneath her diaphragm.

Or maybe that was the lactic acid from sprinting.

Voices sang all around her. They’d been so careful, but a slipup had to happen eventually. Three guards, slightly behind their schedules just outside the larders. Wrong place, wrong time on the most important day of her life yet. The day she was finally going to confront Skreyja.

At no time did Hege regret no longer being small enough to fit through the ductwork of the palace than now.

There came copious splashes now, heavy steps of guards behind her. More appearing in front of her. They slid into view like a wrathful parade of brimming multi-colored transcendence.

Webbed fingers pointed.

Tridents rose.

Hege came to a trotting stop in the middle of the corridor, breaths hard and heavy. It took half her focus to stop her teeth from chattering and stand up straight without vomiting from the assault of odors, now added to by the sweat of traitors.

Magisters behind the guards billowed in flowing arcane robes. Arcs of covetous light burnt against the suffocating dark, casting deep, hostile shadows. That familiar hungry dark that had been chasing her for nearly a century.

“Give it up Princess, our world has changed. Your bloodline’s time is done. Haven’t you suffered enough? Come, let us ease your burdens,” one of them spoke in silvery tones.

The hypnotic incantation immediately stood out to her. The magistry was distinct against the blazing threads of offensive and defensive incantations his compatriots were weaving.

Hege absorbed the words, letting the magic flow over her scales, crawl up her spine. She wobbled in place, a deliberate ploy to lure them into false security. Then she smashed his charm into pieces with a stroke of knife-edged willpower.

“If you were wise, you would turn aside this path. Your deaths will only add to the festering wound growing in all of us.”

He took a step back as she cut his words aside. She knew what she must look like to him in that moment, unfurling her Astral presence like a reef viper spreads its eightfold false eye hoods.

She turned in a slow arc to take in the totality of those with intent to hurt their own in their hearts. There were so many, the weight of how far they’d fallen pressing heavily into her shoulders. And yet despite their numbers, they took protective steps backwards, overwhelmed by the Magister she’d become.

She almost smiled.

Amateurs at best. So many, so young and forsaking her guiding light.

The soothsayer finally recovered from his awestruck stupor.

“How did you— please Princess, lay down. There needs be no more suffering. A distant, quiet rest in a field far from here. A workshop where you’ll never need worry about all this ever again. Isn’t that what you always wished?”

His words cut to her core desires. For a fraction of a moment, his magic wormed its way into her heart and skull, flushing a thousand memories of better days through her conscious mind.

She found her fists balling up, absorbing his false gospel. The magic shattered by the acheing reminder of who brought her here.

There, she found it. There was a tremor in his voice. A momentary lapse that told her everything.

He was afraid.

She let her breaths steady, analyzing the Rustics starting to pollute the air.

Truly a coward. He sends adepts and mid-level Magisters to do his bidding, fully aware that they will perish at my hands.

She should feel fury in this moment. Should feel something more at what Skreyja has done, maybe even once she did.

But after everything, all the turning of names that have passed, all she felt was the frigid ache of cold seeping into her bones and a quiet sadness at what had been lost.

Where once the lights would have lustrously shined off her scales and hair, they only shimmered. The auric locks and flesh have been dulled by malnutrition and fighting to survive.

And she was about to do it again.

Footsteps shuffled closer. Incantations were chaining together. It was now or never.

“What will it be Princess Aquailian? Will you lay down the weight on your shoulders and go quietly to the world beyond? Or will you die here, alone and forgotten?”

Hege laughed. A dry, pained laugh that made her assailants take collective steps back.

“I prefer to stay.” Hege spread her arms looking up at the ceiling. She let the total weight of her exhaustion sink into her bones. The path was set.

“I prefer to stay. I’d have preferred to build for all of you, lead us to a brighter and better future.” She looked down at him again letting the pity wash across her fluttering gills. “For some, there is hope I still can.”

“So no, I will not go quietly. I will not let that madman drive us into oblivion. There is still time for you to turn and run, or redeem yourselves at my side.” She shook her head.
“But I can see in your eyes that you’ve lost sight of the path we should be treading. My impassioned fire will not guide you back to the light. There’s no going back now for you. No more honeyed words, show me the strength of corruption in your spirits.”

Gone were the royal crest, the elaborate flowing perfunctory robes. They’d been replaced with salvaged scraps of handwoven cloth that burst to life now with her own flowing Rustic marks.

“Kill her-“ his words died in his larynx; throat abruptly wrapped in a chain made of light.

Hege swung it with all her weight. She smashed the Finnman’s skull into the closest wall with a sickening crunch.

No turning back. May your spirits find cleansing in the Undersky.

All hell broke loose.

Incantations burst through the oppressive air in flashes of incandescent rainbows.

In that moment, Hege unleashed what she had trained a century for. A spear of offensive magistry that would one day tear the universal concept of gravity from the Astral sky.

Hege stutter stepped to the right. She fluttered like a hummingbird. It caught her assailants completely off guard, flares of magic arcing hairwidths from her scaley flesh.

The twisting Rustic mark for Eldr leapt in a burning trail from her twirling fingers and torso. Far faster than should have been possible. Bolts of fire screamed past her face, drying out her scales.

Something slammed into her shoulder, flowing off the protective runic marks that flared in her rags. It screamed back at its caster moments later, tossing them backwards.

Hege leapt, feeling heat slobber hungrily in her flesh. Flame swirled back as she twisted over another bolt. She channeled the cold anger creeping up her spine into the somatic motions, flaring like a spinning firecracker.

Legs twirled in the air. Flames rippled outwards in scything spirals from her toes. She landed, clouds of voluminous steam bursting up and then out in a superheated mist. Half a dozen thuds and falling shadows. Then bodies splashing in the canals.

Moments later tendrils and discs of flame sliced through the fog, whipping through the nearest targets. Hege burst from the cloud, arms crossed over her chest in a dead sprint.

Guards and magisters stumbled back from their burning companions in horror. They swung and cast wildly, attempting to strike Hege as she spun between them like an unstoppable juggernaut. Burning flesh flushed her nostrils.

Their looks of terror and surprise brought a wellspring of satisfaction rising up Hege’s spine.

Later, she’d sink into disgust and hatred over that feeling.

But for now she leaned in.

Cold detachment sliced the air through flicking fingers. The angled blue light and icy chill of Svell embedded itself in her palms.

"Svell!" Frost poured from her lips.

Her shout whipped down the passageway, snuffing out striating torches and dissipating the mist. She brang her body low, the air crackling with magic.

Someone was begging her to stop already. But there was no putting this fire back in the bottle.

Moisture gathered and froze around her feet in rising stalagmites of chill. She leapt with it. Ice sheets streaked up to meet her feet in the air.

She surfed on the slickness of frost up and down like one might skate across the surface of Icey waves.

Hege’s fingers dipped into the water as the ice Rustic rippled outwards in a solid sheet that caught guards and magisters alike in a frozen vice of doom. The guards flailed about, shouted, screamed while the Magisters desperately spat incantations at her face.

We never should be violent towards our own. How far we've fallen. Look at what he's done to us.

The ice reflected the tired, but fierce determination burning behind her eyes. The cracked flesh of her pursed lips and rapid oscillation of her gills painting the picture of a very different Finnwoman from what she’d once been.

She ducked beneath a bolt of lightning that almost ran her clean through. There were so many now, she’d need to pull out all the stops.

She tilted her body horizontally, feet touching the wall as another Rustic leapt to mind and flowed off her moving fingertips and limbs. Tints of anchoring purple rooted themselves in her feet.

She skid along the horizontal ice trek, altering balance and momentum for the coming change.

Hege leapt forward, breaking into a dead sprint along the wall. Rock and mortar fragmented with every additional step.

Shock writhed across many gills and wrinkled faces. She had them hemmed into a tight box like fish in a barrel.

She drew arms inwards towards her center, pressed to her chest. Pressed her fingers tilted up towards her chin. Static crackled through flesh and bone. It growled in her ears. Made her muscles twitch.

She felt its hunger and let it fill her with ravenous fury. A primal roar ripped from her throat.

She shoved the arm out from her chest, fingers extended.

Byleiptr screamed in the air as cold lightning seared across the gap in a chain bolt, bouncing back and forth between guards and magisters. Bodies sparked with brilliant lilac, cerulean, crimson, and vermillion. A fantastical lightshow that swallowed the darkness with her power.

They think I am weak. Starved, thin, and powerless. But I am of house Aquaillian. Her gaze hardened, shutting out their screams.

Every step she took grew heavier. The might of the gravity Rustic burned through Hege. Entire bricks, segments of wall burst forth from the pressure, fragmenting into the passageway like a shotgun.

Debris smashed into guards and magisters alike, tearing them from the icy viceholds. They were flung like ragdolls, smashing into each other and the walls in a horrible game of hockey.

Screams of distracted magisters fractured in her ears. Their incantations turned inwards and consumed them to their core in an all-too-familiar process.

The worst part of it all, as she ran, as they evaporated before her, the thing that was going to sit heavy in her gut later was the sudden silence. The abrupt cessation of the weave’s fluctuations with their deaths. There one moment and then gone the next.

She had to shut it out or she would drown.

Faen him for this.

She ducked past a stinging bolt of fire hefted at her in retaliation.

Her muscles and joints were screaming now, all this acrobatic motion taking its toll on her body.

“Enough!”

Another symbol, Gröf, rose into her palm. Crackling light and force burst into a bubble that arced over her silhouette, catching a trident and ice Rustic all the same.

I am of the house that produced the greatest Magisters to ever walk the plane.

Reaching the apex of the moment; Hege flew upwards in a twirling, horizontal, aerial kick. Purple auroras streaked from her feet, pulsing out with fervent energy.

Her targets realized too late what was coming.

Dropping tridents to try to run, they instead lined up in a perfect vector. Like falling dominos Hege's swinging leg slammed into three guards. The impacts rippled through her flesh, more present than the cold detachment of slinging spells downrange.

Force rippled outwards as they dropped. Metal squealed, flesh and bone cracked and splurt like tin cans full of meat being crushed in deep water.

Craters of gravitational force swallowed what was left and pinned those outside the epicenter to the floor.

Milliseconds later, ripples of earth sprang up and outward in seismic aftershocks as the laws of physics reasserted themselves. Guards and magisters were tossed like ragdolls, smashing into the ceiling with profound force.

Shattering bones and tearing flesh filled her ears.

Still rippling against Hege’s palms, Svell's weaving ice sheets followed her through the twirl; freezing the gravitationally pinned guards solid behind her.

Freefall instantly became a downward, expert and elegant skid that enabled Iss to fly to her fingertips. Electrostatic frost crackled against golden scales. Ice split and wove, legs crisscrossing to maintain balance and momentum.

With sudden intensity, her whole-body leaned forwards, palm thrust outwards. She shouted, something wordless and powerful.

Schliiiick.

Icicles tore through guards and magisters, flinging and twirling through the air. Metal, flesh, and stone burst ahead in sickening arcs of splattering crimson. A macabre curtain of paint stained the walls and canals with fleeing life essence. More bodies poured in from side hallways, magic splattering against her shield.

Her heart sank in her chest. Will they never end?

How many will I have to end? Show yourself Skreyja! End this senseless slaughter of our people!

Her head snapped in the direction of a new discharge. More powerful than the others.

She was forced to vault as a lance of chaotic darkness tore through the air. She flipped and twisted her body through the air like a trapeze artist. Right over the heads of guards and magisters alike.

ENOUGH I SEE YOU.

Summoned forth in her mind came that blasted demon that nearly consumed her so long ago. Heat seared and snarled deep within her flesh. Whispers of consumption curled through her limbs. It’s anger thrashed inside her, stoking the fury squirming in her belly.

"Let me eat,” it snarled in her mind.

Obey me.

It roared, flexing against the bounds of her conceptual cage, but her willpower and somatic motion brought the monster to heel.

The ontokinetic embodiment of dragon fire whirred as orange rivulets of fire. It burned into the rags and flesh of her chest, dripping down her skin. She glew brilliantly, still spinning through the air.

Aldrnari, the pure concept of draconic heat sizzled the air, the water, the walls.

Take it, but not me, Hege snarled back in the only way the True Dragon Rustic understood.

She landed. A curtain of steam and mist flared outwards in a shockwave. Hege Aquailian, princess of the Sea Singers shackled the monster that once terrified her. She breathed outwards, hand cupped to her mouth.

Then, she unleashed the beast.

A river of dragon's breath poured from her throat. It swirled back along the tunnel in a cacophany of reds, yellows, and oranges.

Her hair billowed from the whipping winds that screamed past and for a moment she and the dragon became one in concept and ontokinetic fury.

Air was consumed by merciless flame.

Darkness, flesh, metal, and coral-derived polymer swallowed in the howling winds of a True Dragon's might.

Pathetic.

Her ocean of writhing inferno parted, cleaved by some unseen dark prophet. Pillars of shadow burst through the gap, hitting her with the force of a Kraken’s beam. The air from her lungs was gone in the blink of an eye with a profoundly painful crack, silencing the dragon's fury.

Pain. She tried to gasp, but there was no air left.

Her feet left the canals, limbs flailing in the sudden wind streaming all around her. The impact flared against her spine, slammed into fragmenting brick and crystal with a thunderous noise. All air left her lungs again and again as the slams repeated, vision sparking with white.

She tried to cry out, gasp for air but all that came out was silent rasping.

Fragments of rock and metal sliced through scales and flesh, smearing blood against the wall. Searing agony streaked into her shoulder, her arm gave way with a sickening crunch.

Unworthy of that title.

Voices. Voices whispering, talking, screaming in the distance. It hurt. Everything hurt.

Someone screamed.

Darkly swirling fingers gripped around her neck, strangling, attempting to snuff her out. Her unbroken arm desperately scrabbled against the dark, trying to tear them away. Deep gouges of shadow dragged along the wall, pulling her with them.

Chunks of stone ripped and flew, smashing into tearing scales and flesh along her whole body.

Faster. Faster. Towards sickening yellow light. A brick smashed against her cheek. Then another. Another. More intense by the second.

Screams. She was screaming. Into the yellow light, as the hallways twisted and spinned. His swirling hateful eyes burned beneath her skin threatening to consume all that she—

Wake up. Wake up Hege.

---

Past

Lucidity returned to Hege with the throbbing anger of an infected sore, her mouth a dry desert of cotton texture.

Confusion swarmed behind her eyelids, the sight’s reticent release of its hold over her creeping back like a closing curtain.

Touch and temperature came back first. Her body was a mishmash of sensations, some of which were still resolving. She was lying on her back, something furiously cold. Then there was the warm sickly feeling dribbling down her sides.

There was a metallic tang in the air mixing with the earthy scent of moss, rotting wood, the rancid ripples of stagnant water and sweat. A lot of sweat.

Then she tasted the meaty, metallic tang of blood on her tongue. Then came the pain, sharp and arcing out through her abdomen.

Full awareness deigned to make an appearance seconds later when something hard slammed into her side. The ferocity of the blow provoked a weak and harsh cry from her lips.

"I don't see a stab wound Griss," a cruel voice droned in her ear, echoing off the high ceiling of a place she was struggling to remember.

"Well, if you don't win the obvious statement award from Skreyja we'll all be ashamed. Yes, Ledrhals, I can see with two perfectly functional eyes that there isn’t a stab wound. But did your special eyes tell you that she's alive too? Cause that's the larger problem."

Displaced air signaled the arrival of another approaching blow.

She tried to roll away from it only to run headlong into the fact that something heavy was pinning her to the floor. Instant regret shot through her flesh as the effort sparked hot agony in her sides.

It got worse as the thick, blunt object smashed into her chest.

Something, a rib most likely, gave way in a blazing storm of sharp pain. It cut through her flesh like the rapidly returning and far too fresh memory of the knife plunging through her belly.

She screamed. Her voice was a raspy high-pitched gargling. They laughed, laughed at her screams, whoever they were.

She wanted to curl up, get up, run, and sprint far away from this moment. But the weight atop her was too much. To make matters worse the writhing pain flaring in her flesh rendered her muscles into oscillations between jelly and rigid stiffness.

Hege's eyes snapped open, her breath coming in pinprick bursts of agony in this horrifying moment. She coughed in fits that flew from her lips in liquid bursts, small spatters of crimson flecking onto the floor. Maroon stained the gills of her right side, burst capillaries pooling beneath the membranes.

Shadows pranced everywhere, the utter darkness of the cell pressed back into the corners by torches and crude Rustic light implements.

Her vision swam with the pain, the staggered breaths, the terror burning in her belly.

She reached out for the hungry dark desperately hoping for it to swallow her and plunge her into the undersky. Anything to end this torturous nightmare.

Please, take me! End this! No more. The tears were already pouring from her eyes further blurring her vision.

"I think you broke something."

Her reaching hand was smashed aside, sparking another burst of agony as it smacked into the cold, heartless stone.

"A rib sounds like, punctured a lung. Maybe her gill membranes too, look at that lovely scarlet. Oh look, she's awake." A double and blurred face leaned down into view.

Hege was greeted seconds later by the image of a wicked vermillion scaled Finnfolk with nasty yellow eyes and a scar stretching from one dimple up to the ear as her vision deigned to resolve. The phantom nightmare’s lips were curled up but there was only grimness in the compassionless depths of those eyes. A sneer.

Where did we go wrong? Violence against our own kind, the greatest sin so out in the open? Or no, not in the open. The dungeons. Away from anyone who would know, anyone who would bring them to justice. I'm going to die. They're going to kill me, and no one will ever know of the atrocity.

"Welcome back Princess. I'm afraid that I have bad news. This stint of being alive is going to be quite short." Griss, as the other voice had called her, stabbed Hege's chest with a long, protruding finger.

She pressed right into the spot where the rib had broken, digging the nail into the scales.

Lightning lanced through Hege’s chest provoking a convulsive spasm.

The rasping scream tore itself from her throat. She desperately tried to roll away from this callous cruelty. She screamed as another burst of lightning tore through her with the motion. She was pinned to the floor by Griss’s weight.

A monster had her in its grasp, playing with its weak and battered prey. Her vision went white, and she very nearly passed out.

Another voice, a third she thought, rolled across her mind from the corner.

"What games are we going to play with her today, Griss?" Whoever spoke was out of focus, standing near the door. Their back was to Hege.

She had enough presence of mind to count four figures in total. Maybe more, but she couldn’t see straight.

This is it. I survived the fire and knife just to fall here. Skreyja had her, two steps ahead at every turn it seemed.

"Hmmm let’s see… We could break every bone one by one, see what she squeals about." Griss turned her head to look at the speaker.

A foot pressed into Hege’s chest, right atop the cracked rib, grinding in the heel with menacing efficiency. The lancing fire drew the shadows in her vision into waiting monsters and abominations, servants of whatever drove this evil, waiting for her to die.

Why? What did I do to earn this cruelty? Just end me and make it stop!

Hege gasped for air desperately, coughing up blood. She frantically tried to grasp at the ankle of her assailant, meekly pulling when she found purchase.

Laughter, their idle cruelty sinking deeper and deeper.

Everything was pain. Every motion, grinding of that heel moving that broken rib, piercing it through sensitive, important flesh.

How did we end up here? Taking joy in the suffering of one another?

"Sounds like a really good time," the third party intoned deadpan. "I'll keep watch."

"What's wrong Stella, don't you want to join in?" Griss looked at Hege, smiling cruelly at her, then back to the third Finnfolk.

They didn’t even bother to try to move her hand. She was such a non-threat to them. All she could do was thrash flutily. Even that was quickly falling to the side.

Hege’s fingers grasped at the dirt and the ground, looking for some sort of miracle in this torturous moment, and finding nothing but hard ground and sticky blood. Her blood. She was starting to feel cold and sleepy.

"If one of those loyalists gets any smart ideas, better for one of us to neutralize them, no?" The door creaked open, further diminishing the shades waiting in the dark. "Don't want any of this to get out. You know how some of those fanatics are."

Not just against me. But anyone loyal to me.

“Oh please, all the loyalists are in the temple or their chambers, weeping. Skreyja decapitated them by taking care of Grinwald.”

Grinwald?! Oh no.

“Yeah well, better safe than sorry.”

Horror swirled together with agony, snowballing into black terror and despair reflected in the hungry dark crawling towards her. Shadows guffawed at her.

Every inch of flesh ached and throbbed with echoes of bruises and breaking bone.

Another slam of the baton cracked into her side, and another rib broke.

Oh Mither, Brynhild, someone, anyone help!

She wheezed, spitting blood and fighting for breath. Her lungs were filling with fluid; she was going to drown in her own blood.

No one was coming, no one knew she was down here.

"Always logic and reason with you Stella," Griss shouted after Stella. Through her deteriorating vision Hege saw her step into the hallway. Then Griss was looking at her again. Terrible yellow eyes stared down at their quarry.

Hege met Griss’s gaze, the desperation plastered across her own features reflected in the towering Finnwoman’s eyes. Delighted fluttering of gills and bared teeth greeted the princess in turn.

Then Griss’s eyes flicked down.

"Oh well that is a surprise and interesting, isn't it? Ledrhals, did you know about this?" The face of the second voice came into view, light blue scales with apathetic pink eyes. They hovered over the other Finnfolk's shoulder.

Hege tried to scream, barren in the dark and exposed to all. It came out as gargling.

"No, I did not," the Finnman said, surprise etching across upturned lips. His face swam in and out of view.

"I always thought you were a little short to be a Princess," Griss hissed with glee, then disgust. Her gills laid flat. Then, she frowned with narrowed eyes. "You just drew all kinds of short sea-stalks in life, didn't you?"

Another involuntary cry of agony wailed in rasps from Hege’s throat, dragged out by Griss grinding her heel in.

Hege wanted to weep, but she couldn't fill her lungs with enough air. Blood dribbled and flecked onto her chest instead, painting her scales with a macabre illustration of her coming death. She was so cold.

"So, what last words do you have for the world, Prince Hege Aquailian?"

Tongues of rage surged in her aching torso.

No, I won’t go quiet. I won’t be disrespected in my final moments!

Hatred burned to the front of her mind overpowering everything else as the dark seemed to recoil at the second wind of her fury.

"Hrafnasueltir and kamphundr." She spat at Griss, blood flecks splattering on the Finnwoman's face. "May the Mither Faen i helvete."

Recoiling, Griss wiped her face. Then she laughed.

"Oh! Look at this, Ledrhals, he has some fight in him yet." Griss's lips pulled back and up with narrowed eyes, twisting into a sneer. "Let's play with him a bit more before we finish him off."

She went to raise her baton again.

This is it.

Hege braced, preparing for the ruthless assault that would almost certainly be her end. She slammed her eyes closed in one last desperate attempt to shut out the hungry dark creeping down the walls. She let her muscles go limp, prepared to give herself to the shades.

"Mrow."

Then, nothing happened.

Seconds dragged by.

Hege reopened her eyes slowly, afraid that she’d find herself already in the sea of stars.

But she wasn’t taken yet.

Griss had paused, baton held up in midair. Her head moved slowly in an arc to look upon the corner.

Hege tracked the motion as best she could, every breath, every motion another twisting, hot knife in her gut.

Four golden eyes peered judgmentally from the shadows. Then a Fishercat padded out.

“What in Finnfolkaheem…” Griss lowered the baton very slowly, eyes on the cat.

Hege was forgotten. She bitterly though about how little good that did her.

Then she stared, gills open in realization then terror, at the creature that had parked itself in the middle of the chamber.

No, run. Run! Please run.

She wanted the animal to flee, willed it to move, run, sprint! But it sat on four of its six legs, perched just like any other feline.

It met Griss's stare with a tilt of its head.

Was this a sudden beacon of hope in this dark moment? Or would it be shattered and broken like Hege’s battered body. A coughing fit racked her body as she tumbled back and forth between.

The fishercat stared Griss down, not breaking eye contact for even a moment.

Anyone even remotely familiar with feline behavior, even the strange and forgotten descendants of the family tree, would know this was a challenge.

Hege knew it, tracing her eyes back to Griss. The guard was not so intelligent.

"What is this?" She gestured with the Baton carelessly, still watching the animal. "One of your sorcerous tricks?"

"Faen i helvete," Hege spat again, blood trickling down from her lips.

The awkward standoff gave her a chance to think. She didn’t have long in her current state to come up with a plan.

A Rustic, just one. That’s all I need.

Griss drug her foot off Hege's chest, sparking another burst of lightning through her abdomen. Just enough to disrupt her train of thoughts.

She watched Griss slowly approach the animal. She tread through the gnashing teeth of shadows cast by the Rustic lights. Ignorant of the sudden menace that now filled the air.

"Of all the things, I'm sorely disappointed, little Prince. A saiðaz of Triemedes' line and all you can summon is a runty little vermin catcher? Truly how far the mighty have fallen."

Hege struggled in the dirt, trying to pull herself away, but Lerdhals stepped forward and pinned one of her legs with a foot.

Bemused, the cruel Finnwoman knelt down, face only a few centimeters away from the wet snout and fuzzy face of the felid.

"We're going to make this slow. First I'm going to make you watch us peel apart your construct piece by piece, and then we'll do the same to you."

"Griss, we shouldn't linger. Skreyja will expect a report," Ledrhals spoke from where they knelt atop Hege’s leg.

There was perhaps a little bit of sympathy in the Finnman's aptathetic eyes as their gazes met. It was gone as quickly as she saw it, banished as he pulled an ornate ritual knife from its holster. He held it over Hege, ready to plunge it into her chest.

She stopped trying to wriggle, and shrunk into the dirt, shivering from the cold of blood loss.

"Skreyja can wait, he'll be happy with good news." Griss didn’t break eye contact with the cat. "I've been needing some fun. Who's a good, soon to be dead, little kitty?" she cooed.

"Not me," the fisher cat’s voice echoed off the moss-covered stones, filled with a strange and reassuring power.

In the blink of an eye the dark and shadows in the room shifted, moving to dance and crawl around the cruel servants of Skreyja. It was as if they knew where the strings of fate were about to fall.

Griss stared at the animal, frozen in place in dumb disbelief. All thoughts left Hege’s mind as her jaw popped open, pain trickling away from the echoing voice.

Ledrhals and the other unnamed Finnfolk in the room froze, a look of absolute bewilderment etching itself into their faces and gills.

"Did yo-" Griss started to say.

"Let's not do the cliche," the cat cut her off.

Everything moved in slow motion.

The cat raised a paw, a sharp claw popping out of the sheathe, glimmering in the Rustic light sources.

It swiped.

There was a moment where nothing seemed to happen.

Then, Griss's hand fell off.

---

Present

Hege Aquailian stirs from the web of memory under the soft fabric of downy sheets. The lights in the room set low, and buzzing, not in the thaumic way she is used to.

Her nose filled with an alien odor, something chemical and bland. There was a sugary taste lingering on her tongue, like she’d had some far too sweet seaweed wrapped pastry and nothing to wash it down.

Sterile white walls haphazardly decorated with square frames of still painted images attempt to give the space warmth.

Unfortunately said artificial warms is immediately counteracted by mechanical beeping of human machines, simple geometric tables with no ornate characteristics, what she assumes are chairs, though completely lacking in the careful comfortable craftsmanship a place to sit should have. Then there’s the total lack of windows, lots of cold metal and odd shaped instruments of a purpose she cannot currently fathom.

Cold, clinical, and unlived in. The opposite of what a house of healing should be.

She shifts in the bed to gain purchase to sit up. That’s when she notices the oddness in one arm, something cold embedded into the scaled skin of her arm. She traced it up to a bag full of translucent liquid.

That constant dull beeping noise pierces the air, fragmenting her focus again and again as she tries to piece together where she is.

What happened?

She tries her best to fit together the jumbled pieces of memory.

Right. Human site, on the way to Skreyja and— She winces, the recall of the door slamming into her skull pinging through her mind.

Her forehead throbs. She traces the contours with one of her webbed hands, gliding over the scales and shaved patches of hair.

Not my hair… She slouches against the pillow, somehow managing to make the motion dramatic and pathetic at the same time.

It would be easy enough to fix with a chain of growth Rustics, but the principle of the loss upset her still.

Only a little mark is left on her skull where the collision happened. The arm falls back down. She focuses on the strange material of the ceiling as her swimming vision rights itself slowly.

After a moment of gathering herself, she dares to turn her head. A glass of water is meticulously placed on a little tray table next to the bed. Both items are as plain and sterile as the rest.

Where is the love? Do humans not want their spaces to be warm and lived in?

She reaches for the glass, stretching and closing fingers. It takes a moment for her depth perception to correct, and then she abruptly realizes it's just out of her grasp.

Frustration burbles out of her lips as a sigh; flopping back against the pillows again.

Useless, again. Helpless, again.

Wrong. You know what to do.

Hege closes her eyes, breathes in and focuses. Gröf flutters into the palm of her hand. It sits there for a moment, dancing for her in the dark just above the skin. She gives the mark a gentle shove outward towards the glass.

It lazily floats through the air before lovingly wrapping the glass with its purple luminescence.

She curls a finger playfully, as if beckoning a lover to join her in bed. It’s an entertaining thought to her, she’s never experienced such a thing or even desired to, but she has it all the same.

The glass floats over into her outstretched palm. Warmth ripples into her chest, pride and satisfaction settling. She actually lets the smile slip through to her lips and fluttering gills.

Perhaps not so useless.

The moment fades, her attention drifting to the sudden pronouncement of footsteps. Someone comes into view in the dim light. It takes her a moment to clock the quizzical, squinting gaze of Brynhild falling over her.

Hege’s chest twists in a complicated flux of feeling. Fluttering emotions intertwined and complicated beyond her full understanding.

Brynhild stops no more than a foot away.

"Brynhild,” the relief flows into Hege’s voice, suppressing the more complicated emotions.

Someone who has more answers.

Is that the only thing she has?

“How long have I been out?" she asks in the song-like bundle of syllables and enunciation that embodies their native tongue.

Brynhild jumps, having clearly not yet resolved Hege's shape in the dark.

"Majesty! You're awake." Brynhild steps closer. Her arms start to move as if to reach for her. Then she stops abruptly, and steps back into a more rigid position.

Hege flinches at the formal title and sags in the bed, slammed with all the weight and distance between them. She longs to once again be uncomplicated spawnlings up to mischief in the palace.

Can we ever go back. Must…

"Yes. Thank you, Brynhild, for the obvious. Please, how long?" Hege demands, and then winces seconds later at the harsh impatience of her own voice.

Brynhild visibly stiffens, though Hege can only guess at what she’s thinking, the twitch of gills and glaze of her eyes betrays the momentary hurt in the other woman’s eyes.

She doesn’t deserve your bite, what are you doing Hege?

"Just three days, my lady. You've healed quickly."

Just, use my name. Please.

Brynhild had become so formal, distant, committed to her role. Her way of giving Hege the space she needed after that night in the tower. She’d be lying if she said it didn’t help, because it did. It gave her time and space to process.

She knew how Brynhild had felt before that night. It was hard to not see the looks, even if she didn’t really understand it. Adolescence had changed their dynamics.

But she had processed now, she didn’t want just a royal guard anymore, she wanted what they had before.

She wanted Brynhild back.

That soft laugh, the quiet moments, the thrill of running away from getting caught after mischief or an experiment gone awry. She wanted the Finnwoman she sat on the roof of the library with, snacking on caramelized astral whale milk every summer evening.

But she didn’t know how to get back there, if that was even possible, or if there was some new equilibrium based on her own churning emotions she barely understood.

What she did know was these titles hurt. They reminded her of her many failures. This weight that sat heavy on her shoulders beneath the expectations of all those around her.

I don’t know what to do or say to reach you again.

Brynhild moves to turn the lights up, finger pressing up on the slide.

Hege winces for a third time, this one unrelated, as the throb intensifies behind her eyes with the brightening of the lights.

"No, please it's fine. Leave them low, my skull is pounding like a ram-fish is slamming against it. Light is making it worse."

Brynhild's gills pulse once, a hint of instant regret in the shine of her eyes.

"Majesty —?" Brynhild starts to ask uncertainly, dropping the slider back down.

"Dispense with the titles please, Brynhild. Sit with me awhile, I need your confidence like…" Hege trails off and sighs, letting ‘when we were young’ die on her tongue.

Brynhild hesitates, fins half flush and extended with blood. There’s uncertainty in the tensing of muscles behind her facial scales.

They sit in that awkward space for a few moments.

Then Brynhild sits in the chair next to the bed, and Hege’s shoulders droop with relief.

"How may I be of service to you?" The question is stiff and distant.

"No, not—" Hege sighs, frustration bubbling in her chest. She clenches the glass tighter, before she presses it to her lips.

I hate this. We can't even talk to each other like normal people.

"Please just— you're not a servant right now. Or my guard." Hege's gills pulse twice, eyes closing.

The dark swirls behind her eyelids. She opens them again, shivering and afraid of what lies there.

"Are we doing the right thing?"

Hege watches the lines and muscles shift on Brynhild's face. Her gills sit half open.

"You wanted to see how he's fared Maj- Hege.” A bit of emotion leaked into Brynhild’s voice, her shoulders shifting as if a weight was abruptly lifted. “After everything, I think you deserve that."

Brynhild please. I want your opinion. Not your politeness or what you think I want to hear.

"But is it right? Will I just be harming myself again? What will this do for m- our people." Hege felt the distress seep into her voice. How the pitch lowered, the shakiness in her tone and hands.

The professional and arm’s length composure of her guard splinters, and the woman she grew up with emerges, eyes softening in the quiet between them. Hege almost starts crying from the look alone.

"Our people need to heal. For them to heal, you have to heal," she says gently. "The first step is confronting the past. Confronting the culmination of our wayward journey."

Hege absorbs this for a long moment, fighting back the tears trying to congeal in her eyes. Finally, a breakthrough. Finally, they could start to talk again.

She extends her free hand, finding Brynhild's in the dark. Brynhild’s muscles tense at the contact, and for a fraction of a moment a storm of fear and uncertainty blazed in her eyes.

Hege met the gaze with as much reassurance as she could manage.

Then, Brynhild relaxed.

"Thank you, Brynhild,” Hege says at nearly a whisper. “Once again, I could not be here, could not do any of this without you."

But there was still so much space between them to work through.

---

Brynhild, The Past

Brynhild crouched in the deep dark of the dungeon corridors, peering around a corner.

The depths below the palace were a maze of ancient, unused corridors, a place that she and Hege had avoided as kids. Their people weren’t punitive, crime was treated as a condition of one’s circumstances, not inherently a flaw in the person themselves. Rehabilitation and restitution was the way such things were handled.

But occasionally, someone did something heinous and unforgivable. Raising hands against their fellows or worse, murder. So unthinkable was this possibility, so far removed from their base nature were such crimes that rehabilitation was impossible.

Brynhild wasn’t sure if that would be draconian to outsiders, but she did know that this is where those who committed such atrocities against the Mither came to be kept.

She was trying not to catastrophize, because she’d gotten lost. In the cramped and often tightly winding corridors it wasn’t that hard for it to happen, but this had to be possibly the worst possible moment for it.

“Faen it,” she whispered to herself, tracking the footprints in the muddy canals that almost certainly hadn’t been cleaned in a millennium.

It was cold, poorly lit, and reeked of rotting wood and stagnant, muddy water.

She rounded the corner, trident raised as she crouched in the shadows, following the webbed footprints through the bleak and artless hallways. The thick organo-metallic alloy doors were imposing and plain, and most were empty from what she could tell.

All she could think about was how she might have just gotten Hege killed again by getting lost. It was a miracle she’d found the tracks in the gloom. She was moving as quickly as she could without making a racket, tracking instincts she didn’t even know she had guiding her on the path.

Then she heard a scream cut through the dark, close. It sent a sharp chill up her spine.

“Hege.” She flattened herself against the wall and peeked around the next corner just in time to see Stella to step out into the hallway.

The traitorous guard, once one of Brynhild’s classmates pulled out a pipe from her sash, shifting her trident to one hand. She was talking to herself, just loud enough for Brynhild to hear.

“Idiots. He told us to kill her right away. If this goes south, I’m going to let Griss take the fall.”

A traitor and a raven starved coward.

I don’t have time to go around and try to ambush her from the other side.

As if for emphasis another scream cut through the gloomy, dust-filled corridor.

Every second I wait Hege gets closer to death.

“Where did I go wrong along the path.” Stella sighed as she lit the pipe.

Brynhild made her move, shifting around the corner in the shadow.

“Stella!” She roared bursting from the shadows, startling the Finnwoman who dropped her pipe into the canal.

“Drit! Brynhild where the fukka did you come from!” She fumbled with her trident barely getting it up in time.

Their weapons clashed in sparks of steel and electrostatic discharge.

“The Mither sent me. You have a date with the endless dry sands of a traitor’s end!”

---

Hege, the Past

Griss leapt back, screaming; her hand severed cleanly at the wrist. Blood splattered on the wall from the sudden release of arterial pressure. She stumbled and flailed, painting a grim crimson scene with those initial bursts from pressure release.

The fourth member of her cruelty cabal charged in to help, club swinging and missing the fishercat entirely. It seemed to side-step a meter to his right without actually moving a muscle.

Adrenaline burned in Hege’s veins now, sharpening her senses, and dulling the pain.

"Tsk. Did no one teach you how to swing one of those things? Is this truly the best Terran's corruption can yield?"

The door to the cell burst open with a cacophonic slam, stuck fast. Stella backpedaled into the room, skidding as she blocked some unseen opponents’ blow. The noise drew Hege’s attention away from the screaming Griss.

Stella hissed air out through clenched teeth straining to hold back the strength of the figure cloaked, for the moment in the sharp shadows of the hallway lights. Stella half glanced at the room, then at Griss's severed hand.

"We've got a problem!" She roared, shoving her opponent back.

"Muscle guts, of course we do! My hand is off!" Hege’s attention flicked back to Griss. Then to Ledrhal still looming.

“Mither above stop screwing around!” Ledrhal turned to look at the unfolding chaos, knife still raised in the air. He flinched, as if the name of their goddess burned against his tongue.

Stella’s assailant stepped through the doorway now, trident menacing the hapless Finnwoman.

Crimson scales and vivid green hair were only barely visible in the low light. Hege’s heart soared in her chest.

“Brynhild!” she managed to gasp out.

“Hold on a little longer Hege!” Brynhild roared.

“Kill the Agrusa child!” Griss screeched shrilly, trying to take another swing at the cat, which dodged her.

Fighting to stay conscious Hege remembered the dream, the vision from which she just woke. Gasping down breath and fighting through the lances of electrostatic agony; she pulled together a chain of Rustics in her mind, remembering how she had done them there.

If this doesn’t work, I’m dead.

She sat up with all her willpower, suppressing piercing burnstrokes raging through her flesh.

Ledrhal whipped in slow motion back toward her, knife plunging towards her eye.

“Iss!” Hege rasped, thrusting her hand out as if to block the plunging knife.

It was a quiet discharge of the word, almost too quiet, but it was more than enough. The knife embedded itself in the film of ice that crackled between them. Frost rolled from Hege’s breath, surging up the blade, burning Ledrhal’s scaled digits with its chill.

He yelped, snatched his hand back on reflex, and released the knife. The ice cracked and shattered as Hege redirected the mark. The knife plunged towards her leg.

Hege snatched it out of the air triumphantly.

Fury snaked through her whole being as she plunged the blade into the man’s belly in one smooth motion.

The shock of the violence slapped her across the face, staring in horror at what she’d just done not daring to let go. No, her grip tightened, and she plunged as deep as she could manage.

Ledrhal wailed in sudden pain. He tried to turn and wrestle the blade back from Hege’s deathgrip. Her back thumped against the hard floor, sending fire spinning in pirohettes through her gut. He managed to pin her, but she wasn’t letting go.

They thrashed and struggled against one another. He tried to punch her, but she had enough room now to move out of the way in time.

“Brat, let it go!” He screamed in her face. His crimson ichor mingled with the maroon of her own blood smearing across their struggling flesh.

Out of the corner of her eye, Stella backed away from Brynhild, and Hege saw an opportunity arise.

Still holding the Rustics in her mind, Hege rasped out sound, two fingers flicking up to her lips from the knife. Pulsing marks surged up her arm, blood pouring from her mouth.

A thick, fat column of ice smashed out from her chest, slamming into Ledrhal. He screamed as something cracked in his chest.

His nails ripped and scrabbled at the scales along her arms, leaving bloody gouges behind.

For a moment, she thought it had failed. He seemed to hold on like a demon, nails shredding her arm flesh adding further to her injuries. Then the knife tore from his belly in a blur of scarlet and grey.

He was airborne, flying across the room. A trail of blood and viscera meandered behind him in a curtain arcing up from his knife wound.

Spite and fire churned deep in Hege’s belly. She mustered all her strength to pull the somatic motions out of the dream.

Hege pointed at him with outstretched fingers as another dancing symbol formed in the air.

“Byleiptr.” The words roared from her lips in an impossible sound, magic filling her with a thunderclap.

Cold, hateful lightning ripped from two pointed fingers, singing the atmosphere with the scent of ozone. The rippling tongues and teeth of electrostatic fury tore through Ledrhal, bounced to Griss, and then writhed in the flesh of the fourth Finnfolk.

Their shouts cleaved the air before being drowned beneath the sudden whistling of flying metal.

A smear of crimson streaked through the air, impacting Ledrhal and dragging him across space and time like some sort of spawnling’s moving art. He collided, with a sickening crunch, against the immovable far wall.

It was a trident.

Not just any trident, the trident she had so meticulously embedded with deep enchantments.

Now it had fulfilled its vicious purpose.

It lit up with Rustics, ripped back out of the shadowed stone, and returned to its owner in the doorway.

Then came the wet slaps of a crumbling body. The corpse of what had once been Ledrhal flopped against the ground in the hungry dark, the shadows writhing and gnawing at it, sated with its first offering of flesh.

Hege dragged herself backwards as the chaos churned on in the ravenous shades. Back and back until she found herself grasping at the frame of the bed. The whole room stood still for a moment, the shock of one of them having actually killed another sinking in.

Hege pulled herself up against the bed, eyes wide and body shaking.

I killed him. I killed him. I killed a fellow Seasinger. I killed one of us.

She had taken a life.

Snuffed it out with cold hate in her heart. A storm of grief roiled inside her belly.

Then the pain and her dying body caught up to her. She braced against the cold metallic frame trying to hold on to consciousness with her fingernails. She was so cold, so tired. She just wanted to close her eyes and drift away.

“Kill her, if she goes, this stops!” Griss roared. She ignored the Fishercat, charging towards Hege with the unnamed. Hege’s vision blurred from blood loss.

Her heart sank. Even though Brynhild was now here, she was still going to die.

This is it. My last act on this plane was killing another. She faced down her impending doom with the knife propped on her leg, pointed up, barely able to hold it upright.

Then, there was a blur of movement. Sharp ringing metal filled Hege’s. She stared at the towering shape of Brynhild standing between her, Griss, and the unnamed. She had locked the trident and baton with a one-handed grasp of her own weapon, blocking their assault.

“I will not let you touch her,” Brynhild roared and Hege’s heart soared.

Death had come, but not for her.

She just had to hold on a little longer.

---

Brynhild saw the opportunity, Ledrhal’s flailing form arcing through the air as the lightning arced through the room in its cackling dance.

First rule when you’re outnumbered, even the odds.

She reared back, muscles flexing. Then it was free as a bird. The metal flew, far faster than anticipated, whistling all the way. A sonic shockwave ripped through the chamber, forcing her opponent to stumble backwards.

It was ugly, a shock to her whole system as the sickening crunch of shattering bones and thumping flesh filled the air.

She had just killed one of their own.

But Grinwald’s training kicked in milliseconds later, even as the rest of the room was frozen in disbelief. The trident returned to her glove-covered palm with a satisfying cathunk. Just in time for her to spin and knock Stella’s recovering swing to the side, the unexpected force of the counter causing her opponent to windmill.

Brynhild stepped inside Stella’s guard, faster than she could recover. She kneed the traitor in the groin, punched her in the throat with a freehand, and then kicked her in the chest. It sent Stella skidding backwards further into the chamber.

“Kill her, if she goes this stops!” Griss roared.

Brynhild’s head snapped to Griss, the finger pointing straight at Hege. Her legs were already starting to move.

No.

Time seemed to slow.

Griss and the unnamed charged down Hege.

Stella was still recovering.

Byrnhild flicked her eyes back and forth. She wouldn’t be able to sprint fast enough to save Hege. Her eyes flicked to the other uknown in the room. The Fishercat wasn’t moving. A problem she could figure out later.

The shadows danced with famished grins on razor sharp teeth, waiting for the next meal. She would have to give it to them.

Only one thing to do.

Brynhild rippled forward, arced the Trident downwards into the ground. It caught in the dirt at the perfect angle. Stella was shifting as if to guard against her next thrust, and her face twisted with confusion as Brynhild leapt.

She vaulted into the air, gloves flaring with Rustic marks. A burst of Astral wind flared down the trident concentrating in the spiked prongs. The natural effect was she and the trident took off into the air, almost like the Northern White Wyverns her ancestors used to hunt.

She must have truly been something to behold as she ripped through the air, frame twisting like a spinning top.

The landing was less impressive, rougher than she would have liked as she hit the ground, grunting. There was no time for complaining though. Instinct and reflex took over.

She used the last of her momentum to twist around and lock the baton and trident of Hege’s assailants against the prongs of her still glowing trident. She managed this with a staggeringly impressive single arm. The room filled with the squeal of steel.

“I will not let you touch her,” Brynhild roared.

She shoved, with all her might, knocking them both back. She made a show of it, twirling the trident into a 360-degree flared spin of whistling metal. Then she swung the trident in an extended overhand loop.

Astral wind burst out, flaring the Trident with light and knocking her opponents further back, buying her and Hege breathing room.

Then Brynhild flowed easily into the stance of the pistol shrimp, trident held close, top half of the polearm balanced horizontally on one arm, ready to flow into thrusts and blocks.

Stella had recovered by now, walking, with trident balanced on her arm, into position on her left. Griss on the right. The unnamed in the middle.

The Fishercat continued to watch from the shadows. It made Brynhild nervous that she still didn’t know where its allegiance lay.

Brynhild broke stance for a moment, reached down and pulled off her belt a thread of fabric. Her glove flared with Magistry, and it burst outwards into a weighted and electrically charged net.

“You’re going to die Agrusa child!” Griss said in a menacing low tone.

“It’s not my mother who will be weeping tonight.” Brynhild hissed between her teeth, keenly aware that every moment delayed was another that Hege was edging closer to death with her injuries. She’d only gotten a glance, but she could tell it was bad.

I need to end this fast.

Stella was the real threat, she was good with the trident and had been a worthy sparring partner on more than one occasion.

Griss was a backstabber, and the Unnamed was somewhere in the middle. Hardly worth her time. She just needed to disable them long enough to deal with Stella.

They came at her then. Fast and hard in the eyes of the waiting shadows.

The net caught Griss when she barreled in, she was reckless with her charge and tracking her vector was trivial. Brynhild bagged her up with the net’s tangled threads. The traitor screamed as the electric discharges writhed through muscle and nerve making her thrash.

Brynhild slammed her hard into the ground and kicked her hard, sending her sprawling across the room into the far wall. Off the momentum of the kick, she spun and blocked Stella’s first aggressive thrust.

"Royalist scum," Stella hissed at her over the sparks of metal.

Brynhild kicked her in the shins, knocking Stella back. She felt the unnamed’s eyes boring into the back of her neck.

Opportunistic vulture.

She pivoted, slamming the butt of the trident into the Unnamed’s belly as they tried to thrust in from the side. A follow-up high kick to the chin sent them sprawling, unconscious.

Now it was just her and Stella.

Stella came in, thrusting through the unstable electric eel form, Trident low and electrified.

Brynhild batted away the trident like it was a toy. She wasn’t impressed with the sloppiness of the thrust. Then she thrust in on the spinning follow through only to be blocked by a desperate last motion from the haft of Stella’s trident.

The expression on the other Finnwoman’s face said it all.

“You will be remembered as a monster,” Brynhild growled in a low and dangerous tone. She scanned for an opening, keenly aware of Hege’s choking coughs in her ear.

Stella released the block, hoping Brynhild would overextend and react too slowly, then she thrust forward. Brynhild didn’t fall for the trap, trident locking together again in an exchange of bulging muscles and screeching metal.

Stella tried to shove Brynhild back, attempting to buy space. But it was just one of many miscalculations. Stella was deep in a deadly dance, and her increasing wide swings, overexerted thrusts, and desperate motions signaled the end.

She was already dead; she just didn’t know it.

A grim smile spread across Brynhild’s lips.

A trident batted aside, metal clanging against metal, swirls of sparks. Brynhild stepped back to get room. Stella pressed in, attempting to deny her. It was a trap, beautifully sprung.

Brynhild stepped to the side of the thrusting trident, watching Stella’s eyes widen in horror. Brynhild’s leg whipped out and slamming into the other Finnwoman’s kneecap.

Something shattered, and Stella screamed. Then came the sickening slurp of parting flesh. Brynhild's trident ran the Finnwoman straight through. Stella trembled, looking down at the trident prongs running her through.

Brynhild pulled her close, snarling. “You should have paid more attention to Grinwald’s lessons and spent less time planning to betray the oaths you took.”

Then she stepped back and roared. She pushed the flailing traitor further back into the chamber to build momentum for what was coming next. Hefting Stella into the air with horrible screams, Brynhild flung her, straight into the waiting maw of the fishercat that was beginning to grow.

Brynhild breathed hard standing up straight, turning to the Unnamed who was standing back up, shaking in fear. Griss had managed to get free and both were backing away, right into the creeping dark.

Brynhild stared at the monstrous Finncat for a moment. She didn’t know what to make of it. So instead she turned to make sure the traitors would die here, and now.

---

Hege, the Past

Thank the Mither it’s her.

Hege coughed and looked on at the dancing steel and light of Brynhild’s three-way fight. She’d watched Brynhild train for fifty years; the outcome was already certain in her mind.

The death of Stella was fast and brutal. Just as shocking as the first. It shook her fraying mind and body to its core as her mouth filled with the unending taste of blood’s metallic tang.

Then she watched the laughing shadows, watched the Fishercat start to grow. It took steps towards the two Seasingers.

They turned, and ran for the door, the light in the dim hallways beyond a beacon of hope and escape.

But Brynhild filled the gap of the doorway seconds later, having vaulted over their heads to block their escape. She menaced them with her trident, forcing them scrambling backwards towards the far wall.

They pressed themselves up against the harsh rocks, trembling violently. Hemmed in by Brynhild at the door, and the fishercat moving towards them in the shadows.

A malicious glint grew in those four golden feline eyes: stepping one paw at a time. It swelled in flesh and moving matter, soaking up the terror on the faces of its prey. They started screaming when a snarling smile spread across its feline features.

"So easily you seem to have forsaken my Master and her Charge," the fishercat growled. "Well, this rot cannot be tolerated."

"Please, have mercy my Prince!" Griss begged Hege.

Rage bubbled through her increasingly difficult efforts to simply breathe.

"No," Hege managed weakly, only held upright by the integrity of the bed at this point. Her muscles were long rendered into shivering jelly.

A strength of will burned beneath the skin, raw and powerful in her abdomen. She turned her head as the lion-sized Fisher-cat crept in.

Claws lashed out. A mouth, too large, too many teeth, yawed in the dark. Brynhild stood frozen in the doorway, a paralyzed sentinel preventing their escape.

Light wavered and flickered as shadows danced and guffawed on the walls. Tentacles, claws, mouths, pinchers, danced in the abyss.

It started with Griss, piece by piece, cleaved flesh and bone, severed chunks of leg and arms splattering onto the ground as the Finnwoman screeched in agony. She was silenced only when her head was ripped from her shoulders, rolling across the room to sit in front of the chamber doors at Brynhild’s feet.

The unnamed was next, Hege never looked back, the memory of Griss's dismemberment already etched in flames in her mind. Perhaps the fishercat sensed her distress, for she didn't play with the unnamed in the same way. Quick and visceral.

Hege’s vision blurred and swirled, unable to outrun the vivid reality of death settling both upon her assailants, and curling in to take her to the undersky. She had held on just long enough to see her torturers undone.

Now it was time to rest.

The rapid hard thumps and visceral symphony of an animal feasting on flesh swirled in lines of paint. Hege dissociated, following into the swirling sea of stars. Tumbling out of out of reality for what felt like days. She drifted through a field of spinning stars and dust.

Then you were simply warm, soft grass beneath your toes.

You opened tired eyes, soft light drawing across you like a warm blanket beneath a brushstroked, starry sky.

Fire blazed on crackling logs in the dark, drawn by a fine tipped brush and stencils. Another sat across from you on the log. A mirror of your mother, yet not the same.

For a moment your eyes met. She was ethereal, radiant and wise beyond description. For a moment, surprise filled you. This could only be true paradise, but there was no custodial guide through the sea of stars. No sign of your mother or father.

Just, her.

The deep wells of blue emanating from her skull emblazoned your flesh. They burned with understanding. Tortured depths of cerulean backlit by an eon of bearing the Sight.

You already knew her. She’d haunted so many of your dreams.

Freydis?

The name burned in the black of the sky above and all around her.

The woman smiled at you with such gentleness and said five omniscient words that pierced right through your fading soul as she raised a hand.

“It is not your time.”

Symbols burned along her flesh, Rustics so complex and interwoven they nearly blinded you with their strength. Like an out of body experience where the spirit has been displaced from the flesh, you were yanked back to reality.

Somewhere a door slammed shut. Hege’s vision resolved repainting the scene in gruesome detail. Brynhild's exhausted form whipped back around, trident drawn and pointed at the creature.

She stopped dead in her tracks, eyes tracing over the catastrophe of the full scene.

Hege stared in turn, coughing for air. A smear of blood and viscera coated half the chamber. No bodies were left. The fishercat sat in the middle of the grisly scene, its four golden eyes staring at Brynhild. Miraculously back to its normal size.

Hege choked, coughing, more flecks of blood splattering against the webbing between her fingers. She didn’t understand how she was still here. With the amount of blood she had lost, she should be dead.

So she sat there and watched her childhood friend. She had strength for nothing else.

Is she still… loyal, or was she sent to clean up the witnesses? Then memory hit. No, of course, she called them traitors.

"What… what did you do to them?" Brynhild asked Hege slowly, hands visibly trembling. A thousand emotions played across her gills, arm fins, and eyes.

She thought I was dead. No I was dead.

"Nothing actually. This was entirely my doing." Brynhild's head pivoted gradually back to the Fishercat, now licking its paw.

She stared at it. Her gill fronds fluttered. Then her lips curled down, eyes wide. "Did-"

"I did indeed. Is it so hard to believe that a cat can talk?” Hege didn’t know that a cat could roll its eyes, but it did now. “I met one or two cat people in my time. One of them was extremely unpleasant," the fishercat looked back up towards Brynhild as it talked.

Hege had never seen a cat look so absolutely perturbed by a situation before.

Brynhild dropped the trident and backed up to the wall, a storm of fear, surprise, exasperation, and then fear again swirling across her face and gills.

The metal prongs pinged against the stone echoing.

"Relax, you’re not on the menu. This was a hell of their own personal making. That is the price of defying my master, as you and yours well should know."

No further responses came; a deep silence settling over the cell. It was broken only by Hege’s desperate fight for air.

---

Present

Hege is wildly displeased, livid even, and she lets it show in a full body expression.

"I'm sorry your majesty, but we need to keep you bed-bound for another few days, just to make sure," the sheepish looking human doctor says, apologetically, not that it makes much difference, to the bed-bound Queen.

Hege listens to Brynhild's translation and bristles.

"I have passed every single one of your cognitive tests. I've even passed your motor function assays! What cause do you have to continue to hold me?"

If there is one thing Hege appreciated about Brynhild, beyond literally everything she had ever done, it is her instinct for filtering out the Queen's rare bouts of whimsical insults and curses when furious. A skill picked up in childhood to smooth over social situations.

And fortunately this is quite handy at the moment, as Hege feels herself slipping into a flying parade of increasingly more creative insults and swears that even she didn’t know she was capable of.

She supposed she had Grinwald to thank for that from years of lurking around Brynhild’s training.

Agitated, exhausted, and at the end of her patience for this nonsense, Hege lets her body fall back against the bed, and puffs air out of her nostrils. For emphasis her gills pulse once.

I'm being childish, but this wait is killing me. If I do not do this soon, if I do not confront it, I will falter.

She tracks the hapless doctor as he shuffles off at the clear indication that she was done trying to argue. He might have lingered a little longer, but Brynhild’s 7 and 1/6th hands tall mass was a deterrent for further harassment by humans.

She is quite glad for it to be frank.

Her eyes trace back to Brynhild as she turns back to face her queen, exasperation on her lips.

"Your M-"

"If you call me your Majesty Brynhild, I will make sure you're inoborna." It dug into her side, this frustration with having made a breakthrough and then Brynhild immediately reverting to formality.

Now you're just being unfair.

Hege puts a hand over her face, and breathes in and out deeply, letting her arm fins extend and collapse in time with the trickled wavering of her gill fronds.

"Sorry, I did not mean that. I'm—ugh, frustrated."

"I know you didn't. They are just concerned is all… they were the ones who slammed your head into a door." Brynhild gently clasps Hege's hand as she sits down in the chair. "You will get there, in time, and when you are well. The last thing I want, or any of our people want, is for this to further harm you."

Hege closes her eyes and opens them again, letting the frustration wither and fall into the depths of her belly. She turns her head to meet Brynhild's gaze.

The depth and texture of Brynhild's eyes were always so easy to trace. The little curves and striations in the green. Little blobs of intrusion from green into the darkness of her pupils.

Her hair is an unusual pallor of jade, almost teal in coloration, which stands out against the crimson of her scales. She really was quite beautiful to look at.

The thought sent a confusing bundle of twitching bubbles rolling in her belly. She didn’t understand them.

Grinwald wasn't far off. The older Finnwoman wouldn't approve of this. Whatever this is supposed to be. Or maybe she would. Hege doesn’t know, she can’t read the old guard much less her own emotions in this moment.

Some bonds are forged in fire. Some bonds transcend the boundaries of political expectations.

I know what she wants. I know what I think I might want. But it’s so complicated. What’s wrong with me? she closed her eyes. No. Now is not the time. I'm not worthy of that, nor am I ready. I’m not sure I ever will be.//

When will be the time?

Hege breaks eye contact. "I lead by laying in a hospital bed. Continuously."

Brynhild's grip tightens on her hand, a sudden intensity in her gaze.

"No, you have been through hel. No one could have done better, and most would have fared worse. You are an inspiration to all of us."

"Why? How? What have I done Brynhild?" Hege asks, gills flaring with the sudden harshness of her voice, the self-loathing seeping in and constricting her ribcage. The walls suddenly seemed to be constricting, shrinking inwards.

She sucks in a breath and lets it drain back out, gills laying softly flat as she fights off the panic episode. The beeps of the machines dig into her mind, grinding against her ears as she bites back tears.

"What have I accomplished? What have I done beyond being a weak and shallow ruler who could not free herself. I had to be carried in a bundle to the outer vestibules to wait for human saviors. Bolfar, I am of the line of Aquailian, royal blood bearing the strongest magisters to ever grace our people, and what have I done? Spent half my life trapped in a dark cell, while a traitor sent our people marching to their doom again and again. What about me could possibly inspire them, our people?"

"You live," she says softly, squeezing their fingers together. "You live and you freed them. That is enough. That is enough for me. That is enough for them."

Hege lets the little lines on her face soften, as her gills flutter. She closes her eyes again. I do not deserve her.

Of course you do. You're much too harsh on yourself. And much too cautious.

I cannot fully give her what she wants.

Maybe not, but you can give her something. Stop being such a coward. I raised you better than that.

Hege lets the breath slide between her lips. She mentally debates how to begin, how to approach the topics that still set heavy between them, and does this for several silent minutes.

She is about to turn to Brynhild again, when the doors to her room open and all hope of anything vanishes.

Her attention flies to the door, sitting up straight at the sudden ontokinetic tide washing into the room.

A figure walks, no practically glides in, dark hooded robes fluttering with her movement. The stench of rich and old magic floods Hege’s nostrils, a rugged and meticulously cultivated wealth of sensations wafting through every sense of Magic she’s capable of.

This is not just any magic. Blood magic, pure magic, a student of scholarly pursuit and Magistry to be admired. Someone very old, perhaps even…

An agitated looking doctor follows this radiant stranger in, berating her with words that Hege can’t catch over the sudden inundation of magical presence rippling from this artifact of a forgotten age.

The irritation at being interrupted yet again vanishes beneath the sudden scholarly intrigue that grips her. She tils her head in fascination; extending her own abstract fingers along the blossoming web of conceptualization forming between them. Brynhild, for her part, has placed herself between the newcomer and Hege.

This… sorceress, yes; Hege decides she's a sorceress, reaches up and pulls down the hood of her robes. It clicks then that the garments are in fact an artifact onto themselves, gleaming with arcane sigils, symbols, glyphs, and text that she instantly knows from a childhood filled with thick history and magical tomes.

“Daevae,” Hege hisses between her teeth, hackles flaring. Curiosity swiftly tilts to alarm.

Danger.

The hood falls around the woman’s neck and shoulders, revealing the signature elven ears of a Daevic woman gently emerging from brown hair, both which frame a youthful, sculpted face.

Their eyes meet, the lilac of the sorceress's swirling hypnotically, forcing Hege to look away. She doesn't know much about Human expressions, but she knows a look of disbelief, of shocked impossibility when she sees it.

Time slows between them, the cluster headache that always accompanies the Sight threatening to edge into Hege's vision, only to fade when the figure finally speaks.

"Greetings,” She gives a deeply respectful bow, acknowledging Hege in a way that tightens her chest with how unworthy she is of such an address from this being of all people.

“Your Majesty, you don’t know me, but I know you. I am Medea."

The world tears around them, castigation and fire sparking in a thousand waves across infinite threads into matte paintings.

History plays out.

Deeply betrayed and sorrow filled screams along sprawling docks. Wails of sorrow at reality revealed.

A burning palace raging in the distance, streams of molten gold falling from high rafters in an ornate hall of myth.

The haunted dreams of millenia, torture and pain lashing like a whip across Hege's mind.

Then the softness of silken sheets, the touch of a love found at the end of an agonizing road, depths of a bond burning across time and space so intensely that it outshines the stars themselves.

Her mind snags on an image, beneath a thundering sky, blood on the horizon, the roar of ancient thaumaturgy burning in her ears.

A Finnwoman, standing in the sand, khopesh held high over her head, coated in mud and dried blood.

Triemedes. the name burns in crimson fire, searing across her mind.

Hege is slung through the tapestry of this creature before her, before rubberbanding back into her body like a slinky stretched too far. A shiver seizes her, worming head to toe as she snatches the mental fingers back.

She gasps down air, shaking hand suddenly grasped between what she assumes are Brynhild’s fingers, still drowning in the flare of another’s memories.

Such violence, such love.

The woman before her, this Medea, blinks slowly and steadies herself against the doors. Her face is almost ashenly pale as they stare at one another. Her name burns with lavendar fire in Hege's skull, almost as much as it burns in the sigils, glyphs, and text squirming over her skin.

"A beast… they did not tell me you would be a Beast," Medea says slowly, carefully. “One with the Sight.”

Hege's eyes widen as she speaks in stilted English. The words catching in her mind. Beast? No, I'm no Beast of Nature.

Medea recovers and purses her lips in annoyance, reaches out and places two fingers on the Doctor's lips, silencing the tirade that had continued through their mental exchange. He freezes, visibly shocked at the sheer audacity of the Daevic woman.

"You will be quiet, or I will sew your lips shut." The threat is sharp and full of venom.

Seconds later she removes the fingers as the doctor withers.

Medea turns back to meet Hege's gaze, composing herself.

"You’ll forgive me, you caught me quite off guard.” She considers for a long moment as if trying to find a script that she already had mapped out in her mind.

“Right, yes. The Andrews send their utmost apologies for being unable to attend to you at the moment of your waking. They were called away on business, and left me to represent their interests in the meantime."

Medea!? Hege’s shock fades as she focuses on the name fully. It burns through her skull with familiar intensity again, her eyes widening as the fronds of her membranes stand erect as she finally processes it fully.

"You! You were there! You were there at the end!"

---

Brynhild pressed her back against the far wall of the cell, as far away as possible from — well she didn't know what it was. A holy beast? A servant of their goddess. Perhaps the guide, the eternal ferrier of souls to the undersky.

The old stories often depicted it as a feline. Her eyes flicked to Hege again, propped against the bed, gasping coughs as blood flecked between her webbed fingers.

Brynhild’s chest was tight and then slowly released like a torniquet. She was alive.

Hege Aquailian was fukkaing alive. Brynhild almost broke down into tears right then and there. The past 24 hours had been a nightmare, but here was hope in the dark, the wick of life barely lit, but still burning. There was so much she wanted to say. So much she wanted to do in this moment.

The crushing realization hit her once again, all the signs they’d missed of a coming grab for power. Skreyja is a monster, a conspiratorial murderer. The greatest sin possible against Finnfolk kind.

She blamed herself now, regardless of whether she was at fault or not.

I just stood by and let this happen. All of us did. Not a single royal guard stepped out of line to stop Skreyja. How many of us ignored the sighns? How many of us believed it couldn’t be, that this wouldn’t happen? Now we’re here. The Mither has put her finger on the scale. Truly I have sinned, truly I failed to protect her and our people. It is my inattention, my inaction, my not saying something that has brought us here, as have all my brothers and sisters in arms. It has come to violence against each other. Unforgivable.

She closed her eyes. The creature tilted its head, for some reasons he could feel the intensity of its magic. She wasn’t sure how given her total lack of magistry sense. But she saw it nonetheless. It was waiting to see what Brynhild would do.

Her hands trembled.

How do I begin to atone. How do I fix this? The loyalists are being rounded up and shipped to the outer cylinders, and from there who knows where. Skreyja will purge every last one of his opponents, and then where will we be? But can we stop it? Can I stop it?

Brynhild fell to one knee, head bowing in a pose of penitence. "Oh holy beast of the Goddess, please forgive me my sins. I have failed in the duties I have sworn before your temple, to defend the lin—"

"Alright, that's enough." The cat rolls all of its four eyes, before licking its paw. "Can't stand groveling, I hear enough of it from the dead. Rise."

Brynhild rose unsteadily to full height, nervousness fluttering through her gills and armfins pushing air across her scales.

This is… not what I pictured.

"It's never what any of you pictured and I grow tired of trying to pay the mystic part that you so often do picture. Now, clearly, I have been too neglectful in the application of my hand upon your course. This is a fault of my own and it has led you and yours into this peril. My child, your transgressions are conditionally forgiven as I would forgive myself, but I would charge you with a most critical of duties."

"Anything," Brynhild said with more enthusiasm than she knew she had in her.

A chance. A chance to fix all of the messes I have made. If I had never come into Hege’s tower that night, none of this would have happened. If I hadn’t let her send me away while she wandered the shelves, she wouldn’t be down here. I would have gotten her out of the library, out of Skreyja’s clutches.

"She, is the key." The cat nodded to Hege, who coughed again, eyes heavily lidded with pain, fighting to stay conscious. There was something incomprehensible in her expression, something Brynhild had never seen from Hege before.

"The key to all that will come, the key to shattering all bonds which bind me. You will protect her, with your life. She will call upon you, and you shall answer." The cat began moving towards her slowly.

All the shadows in the room abruptly reared back and vanished into the depths of radiant golden light pouring off the beast.

"There will come an hour with demons at the door, where your courage may falter, but you must. Not. Fail. You are the link, the trident which she shall wield, and a hand upon which my sword will grow. You will help her survive. In time there will be much between you, but for now your task is but this."

Brynhild stood straight, invigoration sweeping through her muscles in a well of thaumic power she’d never had the grace of feeling before. She saluted, the salute that had been drilled into her by Grinwald, and her father, and all the guards that came before her.

"I will give my all to this duty," she roared.

"Good but settle down. We have work to do. Neither of you can stay here forever. You will go find food, and water, and you will report Hege's death.”

Brynhild hesitated. “No, I can’t. I’m a loyalist in their eyes.”

“Then we will have to fix that.”

Brynhild stared at the cat for a moment. “I have an idea, but they won’t buy it forever. And I’m not good at acting.”

“Nevermind the acting. I shall handle whatever you can’t manage or when you’re about to falter, worry about it not. Tell me your plan.”

“You’re full of Magistry aren’t you?”

“Nooo I’m just a small harmless fishercat.” The cat fluttered it’s eyelids sarcastically.

Brynhild squinted, but ignored the sarcasm.

“Can you generate a simulacrum?”

The cat tilted its head. “I could… but why?”

“We give them a body that’s anatomically correct and set things up so that Skreyja throws Stella, Griss, Ledhrals and… well I didn’t get the fourth’s name, but that’s not important. Spin the story that those four admitted to burning the library and killed Hege and I found them immediately after the act and avenged the royal family. Do this publicly so he can’t deal with me quietly. He uses them as flounders, casts blame for his actions on them. Labels them traitors, keeps me alive to legitimize his regime. Then he can’t remove me without revealing himself.”

The Fishercat stared at Brynhild. “You… came up with all that? Just now?”

“Well, yeah, kind of. We could just get Hege out and go public?”

The Fishercat shook its head. “Skreyja has already secured power. To do so would start a brutal civil war. Until Hege can properly challenge him in private, then I’m afraid we’re in the shadows until then.”

Brynhild’s heart dropped, thinking about how many loyalists would likely meet similar fates to what Hege was going to. “Right, well, what do you think then?”

“I think you’re far more than I initially thought you were. We’ll need to sell your fight though.”

"What? Did you see what I did to them?" Brynhild looked down, almost offended. The cat unsheathed a claw again and made three strokes.

Fukka!

“Nobody’s going to believe you came out unscathed, better to sell it.

Three cuts, one along the belly, one along the arm, and one across the cheek. One of them burned with fire, sharp burns spreading out across the soft scales of the stomach. The other tinged and numbed with ice and frostbite. The third across her cheek, a simple cut.

Brynhild staggered back, reeling from the sudden pain.

"What about her in the meantime?" Brynhild asked, her membranes flaring with concern at Hege's continued struggle for air.

"Worry not, I will take care of her. She is my ward as much as yours. Now go. Before your superiors grow suspicious." The cat waved a paw at her, shooing her off with the flare of simmering reality pouring off it’s appendages.

Brynhild lingered, conflicted as she took in the shape of Hege Aquailian, her friend, her ward. There was a quiet desperation in the depths of her blue pearls, begging her to stay.

I should say something. Anything.

Their eyes met, Hege's sharp, clear, crystalline blue that resonated with a deep and spiritual sadness. They burned into Brynhild’s mind, a permanent reminder of what happened when she failed.

Scarlet fronds of flame rose in her chest.

Determination.

Love.

Of one thing she was certain.

She was never going to fail Hege again.

But in that moment, she failed to find the right words to tell Hege this truth, as she would in so many other moments to come.

---

Brynhild, bewildered by the sudden intensity of Hege's assertion, startles, letting Hege's fingers slip away from her own.

"You were there! You were there at the end!" Hege’s heart hammered in her chest, a panging ache of dismay at the sudden loss of grounding contact.

"You’ll have to be more specific." Medea pursed her lips in a slight frown with a curious expression in the eyes. Something akin to 'You aren't supposed to be here, you left our world behind.' “I have seen quite a few ends in my time.”

"When the seals were forged beneath the Weeping Tears of the Orcadian Night!" Hege exclaims in her native tongue as the air seemed to vibrate with the weight of their conceptual and physical exchanges.

Brynhild looked back and forth between them with pure confusion rippling through her gills.

"I…Was. Are you a ghost? An artifice? You are shorter than I recall, and I do recall you leaving this world to defend all of us from him," Medea responds in Finfelk, stunning Hege, the doctors, and Brynhild, all of whom stare at the sorceress with something approaching disbelief.

Somewhere a timepiece’s gears click, the beeps of the machines a complimentary disruption of the surprised silence that sits heavy on the ontokinetic webs.

"Your Finfelk is rusty." The chuckle bubbles out of Hege's mouth, delight trickling in her chest.

Finally, someone on behalf of the mudmen that speaks in terms she can clearly understand. Her membranes flutter once, lips pursing in puzzlement, before it dawns upon her.

"You think I'm Triemedes, don't you?"

"If we want to be precise that was Elder Finnfelk. I am less up to date in the current dialects." Medea blinks, eyes glazing over. She drifts a moment, lost in memory.

This goes on for a few moments before she visibly snaps back to reality. It almost seems like she ages far beyond her years in the blink of an eye.

"I am old, and for a moment I lapsed into memory. I knew your… grandmother?"

"Many great, but yes."

"I knew her." A soft nostalgic smile spreads over her lips. "She is the reason I met the love of my life, funnily enough." Bubbles of warmth worm through the conceptual webs. They sit with it, invigorating that strange emotion that Hege had been wrestling with. Cracking realization flows through her omnifasceted mind.

She tries not to look at Brynhild, feeling the heat crawl up the back of her neck.

Finally, Medea appears to shake it off, straightening into a more imperious posture.

"Memories of the past aside, Leep and Sherry Andrews offer their apologies for the incident which saw you hospitalized.” She clasps both hands behind her back. “They promise to reconvene with you on their return, or in Libya should you recover before then."

Hege slowly straightens her spine, trying to claw back some of her composure that was shed in the excitement of unexpected greetings and new discoveries.

"Well met then, Lady Medea." Hege pauses, considering. "I admit, I wish the circumstances were different," she says in the clearest English she can manage.

“A wish we can all aspire and pine for,” Medea says with a gentle smile.

“Yes… yes we can.” Hege looks down at her webbed hands.

"How are your wounds healing? Again, apologies on behalf of the Andrews." The doctor opens their mouth to interject. Medea’s eyes snap to the man, whole demeanor swooping. Her aura towers into a venomous cobra on the edge of striking. The expression would make even the mightiest tree wither.

"It was only a flesh wound, so don't concern yourself with further apologies,” Hege offered diplomatically trying to defuse the situation before the viper plunged its fangs into the doctor.

Much as she disliked the man for keeping her here, the last thing she wanted was violence occurring on her behalf. Though she would be lying to herself that she wasn’t tempted to see what happened. Not because she was fed up with the human medical staff, but out of an academic curiosity of what a 5000-year-old Sorceress would actually do. Which I think everyone would agree is a perfectly normal curiosity.

The tension in the room deflates like the popped bladder of a moon fish.

"Thank the heavens," Medea says with a sigh, turning away from the doctor. "Some of us,” she says glaring at the doctors. “Were afraid this would explode when you woke."

Brynhild translates the words. The corners of Hege's lips turn up slightly, allowing the calm and ease of her current disposition to swell into the conceptual threads.

"You don't know me very well then," Hege says, letting formality fade away. "I would advise, in the future, she watch where she is going."

She let the little dig at human carelessness lie for several seconds.

Medea smirks with a knowing look that even Hege could read. "I will make sure to pass that on. How comes your recovery?"

The disdain flows freely into the pulse of Hege's fronds and fins and the lights of the room flicker in response.

"These doctors have relegated me to a bed for the next few days, even though I have passed every neurological and cognitive test they have given to me. Which, I should mention, are designed for humans and not Singers of the Sea. I do not see the point in it, but who am I to disagree." She let her fins flare out fully, a gesture of passive aggressive frustration.

The sorceress blinks. Then she does something no one in the room is expecting. She reaches down, yoinks the clipboard with the chart out of its holder, eyes moving rapidly down the page, flipping to the next, rinse and repeat.

“Hey you can’t do that! That’s a Hi—”

“Silence!” Medea rounds on the doctor, glaring him down. “Now.” She taps the clipboard.

"I was something of a healer once myself. It has been some time, but I know that Sherry was concerned regarding some irregula—" Medea pauses and rounds on the doctor again after surveying the charts another time. "Are you an imbecile? Are the lot of you imbeciles? Why are you comparing a Finned one’s vitals to human baseline."

"Well, you see—" The doctor stammers out, only to be cut off.

"Fool, charlatan, you call yourself a Doctor? Aseclepius is rolling in his grave.” Medea throws her hands up in livid animation. “Ridiculous! You have multiple Finned ones here before you and you didn't think to take a single one of their vitals to compare to? Asinine." Medea switches into ancient Greek, slinging curses and insults in a tirade of irritation so foul that they should not be repeated.

"Your maje-"

"Hege." Hege interjects as Medea turns on heel back to face her.

"Pardon?" Medea blinks, demeanor thrown off by the correction. For a moment Hege realizes at least some of the bluster is an act and she sees the real woman underneath. It’s gone a millisecond later, but she saw it.

"Please, call me Hege."

Medea raises an eyebrow.

Brynhild shields her mouth and whispers to Medea in English. "She doesn't like your majesty, just do as she asks; it'll endear her to you."

Hege turns her head to give Brynhild a suspicious flutter of the gills before gazing back at Medea.

Medea tilts her head quizzically at Brynhild, before responding.

"Of course. Hege, I presume you have a doctor as part of your entourage?"

Brynhild translates, Hege tilts her head, gills pulsing once. "Doctor… I don't know that word."

"A healer, maybe a magister?" Medea offers instead. Of course, she would know the term.

Recognition blossoms through Hege’s facial features. "Oh, yes."

"The doctors wouldn't let her near Hege," Brynhild adds, eyes narrowing at the human doctors in the room.

Medea’s aura swells again with indignant irritation, giving each doctor in the room a death glare. They, wisely, flatten themselves against the wall out of what they perceive to be her reach.

"I shall guide you to her." Grinwald materializes from the shadows near the doors. Medea’s hand flashes into her robe, startled by the sudden voice.

"Seven hells." Medea rounds on Grinwald, the concept of another artifact capable of crushing men with it’s heft flashing through the threads. Two fingers were already extended/pointed at Grinwald, and now they lower. "I did not feel you at all when I came in."

Grinwald simply shrugs, but a grin flickers in those eyes, a rare thing indeed from the old guard. It’s just enough to make Hege raise a brow. Not that Grinwald notices.

Getting one over on the legendary Medea is something to be proud of. "Old Royal technique, Master Mage."

Medea lingers, holding the older Finnwoman’s gaze in a moment of tension. Then she relaxes, amusement fluttering across her features.

"Carissa would be quite interested in that, I’m sure. I’ll have to consult you for instruction." Their gazes remain steadily locked for several moments more before Medea turns abruptly to the door, and claps twice.

"Come, let us not waste another second lest the Doctors decide to inflict yet more inanities upon Hege." She marches through the door with a flourish, followed by a greatly amused Grinwald.

Hege sits there in the silent reprieve, quietly wondering what Medea was like when she wasn’t being the imperious face of Human overseers.

---

"Shhh, relax my child." The holy beast, fisher cat, whatever it was, placed its paw on Hege's bloodied and bruised chest. The movement provoked a gasping cry of pain immediately broken by extensive coughing.

Dark and light swirled in a luscious yet burdened lightshow on the ceiling of the oppressive and suffocating cell. Hege wished she could be back in her room, away from all of this.

Some oxygen deprived section of her brain imagined this was simply a nightmare.

If only she could be so lucky.

Warmth flowed into the flesh, seeping deep within it as the tissue and broken bones began to shudder beneath the wave of soothing magistry.

Hege coughed, blood flecking into the fur of the beast, and watched in quiet, but agonized fascination as the bruising began to fade. The bones mended and knit back together beneath the skin. It was not unlike the healing magic she’d once used on Brynhild’s bruises, but far far more potent.

"Your strength is what will carry you forward through this. Never forget that," the creatures whispers to her. "Rest, heal, and prepare your whole being to fight like hel. Your lessons begin when you wake."

“Lessons?” Hege croaked, shuddering as her lungs fixed themselves. She struggled to stay awake, consciousness fading at the edges into black.

“Everything you’ve been taught about how to cast magic is wrong. It’s time to learn to do it as I once taught the greatest among you.”

Hege said nothing, her eyes fluttering close.

---

Hege, The Present

Ten minutes after they departed, a green-scaled Seasinger is lead through the double doors, accompanied by Medea, two Seasinger guards, and one very upset looking doctor.

"You cannot just bring a shaman into my medical ward and have them poke at one of our patients!"

Medea rounds on the man, lavender swirling across her flesh. The room darkens, the lights flickering. Hege can feel her power sinking into the webs dancing across every surface, including her scales. Purple shadows coiling and writhing into the grasping fronds of many vipers preparing to strike flare in the dark. She is a tower, a pillar of power and energy that brings all around it into focus.

"You presume to tell me what I can and cannot do?" Her pitch drops. Her robes arc in flurries, emulating great and terrible wings. “Keep up your protestations, and they shall never find where I send you."

The doctor withers beneath her storm. "Y-y-you can't talk to me like that. I have rights. The ethics committee will hear about this."

"And what will they say when they learn you have been treating a Finned one, another being of differing anatomy, as if they were a human."

"I—"

"They will have your head on a platter if it threatens the treaty. Get out of my sight, before I lose my patience,” she barks.

The man stands, frozen, unable to look away.

"I SAID GO," Medea snarls. The doctor turns away and doesn't quite sprint, but fastwalks out of the room.

The rest are not so easily dissuaded and descend upon Medea, arguing with her. Hege watches for a moment, quite worried about a melee breaking out between the sorceress and the humans.

She’s fairly sure it would be a bloodbath.

Ignoring the commotion, Stellja moves over to the bedside, drawing Hege’s attention. Hege watches the older Seasinger, her gentle disposition rising to the surface with the quiet of her voice.

"My lady, how do we feel today?" Orange eyes, framed by red hair, scan Hege as Brynhild gets up and steps away.

The old healer grabs Brynhild’s hand, and gives her a look, something approximate to “stay right here.” Wrinkles arc underneath her green scales.

Brynhild acquiesces, staying next to Hege, which has the effect of making Hege’s stomach bubble.

"Fine Stellja. A little fatigued, but otherwise fine."

The woman nods and begins tracing her fingers through the air, pleasant warm light congealing against them as she draws. She smells strong of herbs and floral compounds, which was a welcome warmth in opposition to the chemical sterility that otherwise polluted the room.

The discussion nears the doors halts, as everyone's attention snaps towards the magister and her patient.

Completing the symbol, Stellja presses her palm into the glowing marks, and then pushes them down. She pulls away the blanket. Then Hege rips open the middle of the hospital gown to give the healer purchase.

There are several bizarre proclamations of indecency that Hege ignores readily. Humans were always so stingy about showing a little skin.

Light and magic contact scales. Hege closes her eyes, letting breath leak from her lips. Lines of light streak underneath the gown, across every inch of her body.

"Hmmm…" Stellja says, shifting her fingers around.

Her other hand rises up and draws forth another set of symbols. She pulls back the first hand and replaces it with the second.

Light again trickles across Hege's body, this time roving in tiny symbols as it moves across the scales. The mark on her forehead from the door fades and then vanishes completely. She shivers, tensed muscles finally relaxing as the throbb in her skull vanishes.

A minute passes.

Then two.

Finally, Stellja withdraws her webbed digits and clasps them behind her watching Hege with measured eyes.

Hege opens her eyes vision refocusing as the symbols fade, and she looks at the other Finnwife. "Stellja?"

"You are fine Hege. In better shape than most would be, everything in consideration. A simple bótjan remedied the residual damage. A nights rest I prescribe, and then on your quest may you continue."

Hege reaches out and takes the healer's hand, only for a moment, and squeezes her ancient, webbed digits. "My thanks, as always Stellja."

"Think nothing of it." The healer turns to Medea and the Doctors. She abruptly towers, ancient spine straightening as it hasn’t in 500 years. At a startling 7 and 2/3rd hands tall, she is taller than either Brynhild or Grinwald.

"You will all leave immediately so her Majesty may rest. In the morning, she will be ready to depart." Her tone brooked no argument, but the doctors were about to try anyways.

The start to protest but Grinwald taps her trident on the ground, looking at Medea expectantly.

"We'll do as the Magister instructs, for the patient’s health," Medea says pointedly to the doctors, hand moving into her robe.

The doctors wisely elect not to press the issue, and promptly retreat from the room with resentful looks backwards.

"I and my wife shall accompany you to the transport in the morning, Hege." Medea bows, turns and departs.

A second voice reaches Hege from the hallway. "Fucking carrion birds these foundation doctors. Swear on Artemis’s bow."

Brynhild and Grinwald start to make for the doors.

"No," Stellja says, causing them to stop. "You, you stay." She points at Brynhild. "You go." She points at Grinwald.

Heat crawls up the back of Hege’s neck.

Grinwald glances at Brynhild with biting suspicion. Tension bristles between the two of them. It shatters when Grinwald smacks Brynhild on the back and laughs.

Brynhild, for her part, monetarily looks bewildered.

“Was only a matter of time,” Grinwald mumbles, and then departs, pulsing her gills the whole way out.

"Lady, I shall be close by, simply cast a message Rustic to summon me, and I shall come." Stellja hides the smile on her lips by not facing Hege.

"Thank you Stellja," Hege manages awkwardly, trying to hide her bewilderment at the Healer's abrupt intervention. "Mither be with you, as always."

The green-scaled Finnfolk bows long and languorously as if she’s facilitated some great service. The truth was she had, but well, the ancient healer was almost smug.

Then she departs. Hege lets herself fall back against the propped-up pillows and bedding.

Several minutes tick by where she looks anywhere but Brynhild. Then she swallows the pill and looks up, meeting Brynhild’s gaze. A strange warmth slips into her breast.

Their gaze crescendoes and echoes through the whole room until it seems like it’s just the two of them beneath the arcing lights of the star sea. Together, floating in one another’s eyes for what feels like hours, maybe even days.

Together. Alone. For the first time in nearly 130 years.

"I'm sorry, for driving you away." Hege shattered the silence with a sledgehammer. Finally dragging to the surface what heavy weights had sat between them for so long.

"No, I'm sorry that I walked in without calling for you," Brynhild replies softly.

Hege’s eyes close, barely holding back the storm of emotion roaring inside her.

"I was so afraid of anyone learning the truth. Of how I was born."

Brynhild's fingers gently caress her cheek in a quiet gesture of warm strength. Hege freezes, shocked by the physicality of the gesture after so very very long without any sort of intimate touch. Her hands tremble against the blanket. Then she gives in and unconsciously leans into webbed fingers.

She opens her eyes and peers into the endless depths of jade.

"Hege, I do not give a faen about what is down there. I care about what is in here." The pointer finger of her free hand rests in the center of Hege's chest.

She feels the tears start to come, populating her eyes and blurring her vision. They threaten to burst from the corners.

"Even after everything I have done, the pain of making you watch our home burn, all the evil I have brought into our world? I have held you at arm’s length ever since that night. You still feel this way through all of that?"

"None of this has been your fault," Brynhild says softly. "I never should have entered your chambers that night. I was young and stupid. I still am. I am touching you, right now, in a way that would get me ejected from the guard in the past. It is my fault that things went the way they did." She brushes away a falling tear on Hege’s cheek with her enormous fingers. "I already knew well before of your truth, and I never cared."

It was a lie.

Brynhild didn’t know until that night; Hege saw it in her eyes when she had burst through that door.

But it was a comforting heartfelt lie. One that sits in the heart. One that was wished to be conveyed at the moment it would have most cushioned a fall that they’d both been tumbling through ever since.

"But I was horrible to you. Shoved you away. Ignored you. Nearly brought our people to their knees with my selfishness. My idealism."

"No, never, it was Skreyja who brought us low." Brynhild leans forward, pressing her skull to Hege’s, forehead resting against forehead. "As you once said, our people lost their way. But you are their guiding light. You've always been their guiding light. My guiding light."

Tears come freely now. Hege shudders from sucked in breath, weight on her shoulders and in her chest collapsing and vanishing in finally being able to be vulnerable.

"I missed you. So much Brynhild."

"I am here now," Brynhild coos softly. “I will never leave again.”

"Please, just hold me. I've been alone for too long." Hege shivers, burying her face in Brynhild’s neck. Brynhild gently obliges, wrapping her in strong arms.

The instruments beep in the background, a soundtrack to kindled love blooming in the dark.

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Footnotes

1. Runic linguistic marks and symbols embodying concepts for the purpose of channeling magic.