"You said this place was built here to imprison something, what is it?"
"Me."
The girl looks bewildered, a beautiful sight. To see someone so flustered cures my boredom completely here in my cell. This might be a terrible thought, but this is what I have been taught from my kind since the beginning of time. I am bad, I am new, I am reborn. I am a demon.
"What are you?!" she asks, her voice stricken with a fearful throat. Her words are more like a demand than a question, she, a mere human, is demanding my species.
"I am of no concern to you, little girl." My words sent a harsh message through her small brain. "You come here, trampling through those doors, saying you were sent here for imprisonment and demand to know what I am?" Watching her squirm in my presence empowers me, keeps my head held high.
"I...You are forgetting that you are the one locked in a cage, for a reason I don't know yet." The girl seems to have found her bearings. Her posture from her hands and arms close together keeping me from seeing inside her soul, and her spine curves inward cowering from my intimidation, moved. By her figure, I see her limbs outstretched to a more comfortable position standing in front of my "cage", as she so cleverly puts it. Suddenly lost in her, I ask for her name to which she responds:
"My name is Hela." She must not be serious. Hela, is she trying to scare me because her name resembles the land of the dead? Does she know who I am? No, I guess not. It is time to make myself known.
"I am Irin..." I pause to be dramatic, trying to scare her as much as my sadistic self can. "A fallen angel, a demon."
She stops from her pacing for a second and turns to face me. She bursts into laughter.
This brainless idiot of a human... What in the world?
Hela, now giddy from laughing, asks me if I am kidding.
Did it look like I was kidding?! "No!" My voice booms off of the cave walls of my cell.
"A small demon... I've never been so close to one. I didn't imagine you to be so..." She pauses looking for the right words to describe me. "...Normal. So horrifyingly normal that you seem mundane," she says, spitting the word out with disgust. "I thought demons were supposed to be ugly and rotted with a terrible smell to top it off, but you are just... Not. You look human. Why is that, Irin? I'm not sure why, but hearing her say my true name with such casualty makes me shiver, not of cold but a chill creeping down my spine.
I'm not sure why I'm not seething, either. She seems too fragile to yell at though. I will use a calm voice, but my words will be harsh.. "You insolent child, I am a powerful demon, not one of the nine princes of Hell but one step under it (what do you mean here?). I am not a common demon. You mock me and laugh at me, but you will get what is coming to you soon enough, child. I can guarantee this; you will feel my wrath and so much more." I smirk ever so slightly, my last sentence took me by surprise. I just spoke and didn't think about it, but I liked what I said.
Hela didn't seem so impressed though, her expression like I imposed on her alone time, a glare so deep I could get lost in her emerald green eyes.
Beautiful, I think. Her stare finally settles on something. I look at her closely to see what she is looking at, the thing around my neck.
A brown string and around the end is around a generous piece of Jade settling at my throat, all of this encoded with the leather string. The stone that symbolizes preservation after death. Death that I will never come to know, as demons don't die but only get harmed. The jade is green, a colour that could make anyone nervous how can you be nervous with envy?with envy. Green, the colour of Hela's hollow eyes.
"Who are you, Hela? What are you?" I ask, my voice filled not with a hatred toward the girl but withmere curiosity.
"I am... not in my true form," Hela says looking a her shoes, grey to black sneakers with sparkly white laces threaded through the rings of the shoes.
"What about me? I am not in my true, rotted form either but you know what I am. Please, enlighten me. I wish to know."
"I think not, if I told you it would intimidate you, and I like the conversation we are having, don't you think?" A smile creeps onto Hela's young face.
Intimidate me into cowardice? This only makes me yearn to know more, does she not know this? I'm not going to lie to myself that I'm not enjoying this interaction as well, but I don't know why she is here and what she is.
"Tell me," Here goes nothing, now I will know. I'm not sure why I'm excited to hear her melodious voice speak but I am.
"I am a goddess," she says, her weight shifting from one leg to the other. "I am the goddess of death." A full smile replaces the expressionless one she had a few seconds ago. A goddess of death, a beautiful goddess of glorious death. The world could not have made death quite so lovely. But why? Why is she here? She must be more powerful than me to get out of here, so why have a conversation with me before leaving this lair?
So I say: "Tell me your story."
And she does, her story never faltering as it leaves those perfect lips. Her story is so full of heartache and death and hardship. The goddess of death is a deep soul, and I crack open the cavern and unleash her mind onto my pages, my disgusting pages. This goddess is talking to me, a lowly demon compared to her. To know what and why she's in here is power, power for me and it takes a small piece of power from this mighty goddess, which makes me feel good as well.
After she finishes, she lets out a deep sigh. A sigh of the fact everything was out in the air, seeking shelter in the deepest cracks or the smallest corner. The sigh that held her back.
I let her breathe before my questions dance around her tired self. Her tale is one of great woe and tragedy, and I love it. I love the way her expressions told me so much of what she's gone through. I love how she will share this with me but hold it in at other moments to other people. I love h-
A boom shakes the entire building, snapping me out of my reverie. While the ground and the walls shake for what seems like forever, there are alarming cracks on the walls growing in size. In the middle of the room, Hela stands with her arms cocked outward, an uncomfortable position for my taste but she's the one that seems to be doing it the second part of this sentence doesn't make sense. The walls of the compound made for us are at least 20 inches thick, but Hela could break through it easily, I know it.
"Let me come with you!" I shout, loud enough so she can hear me. She lets out a profusely forced laugh.
"No! You imbecile... You think I would let you live after I told you my story?!" She shakes her head at me. "A demon and a Goddess differ from each other too much. Let us hope you make it to Valhalla, Irin." And she takes off through a big enough hole in the cracks, her careless way out makes the roof drop onto the floor of the cell in small pieces.
Knowing I will die unless I fight my way out of this cell, I started banging on the indestructible glass walls the Dwarves of Svartalfheim made, the same Dwarves who made the rope that bound Fenrir, Hela's brother and partner in death and killing. A piece of rock falls right in front of the glass, shattering parts of it.
I'll escape that way, I think to myself. I start kicking the glass hard, little pieces of it breaking, but it's not enough for my lean body to get through.
When a bigger piece of ceiling almost crushes me, that I know I cannot make it out. Hela has left me to die here and I will be reborn, as demons cannot die.
Another piece of ceiling falls from above and as I try to run out of the way another hits my legs. A sharp pain arches up my thighs as the rock I was running from is coming closer, my eyes become wider. I realize I will die by the hand of which I love in the small amount of time we had together.
Here it comes, I think to myself. I hope to make it to Helheim, to see the goddess of my nightmares once more.
Now I lay on the ground, two jagged rocks trapping me, one on my legs and the other on my back. As the rest of the room crumbles under the crashing ceiling all of my last thoughts are about her.
I can see us together, her pale skin and my deep skin, pressed together in an embrace and in battle, backs facing each other; fighting off the world trying to break us apart. I can see her admiring my demon form, my blood red skin, horns and claws and the electricity coursing through me. I would admire her as well, when she takes lives with the snap of her fingers. I would have loved her.
I remember when she told me why she was here, her mouth curving around the words as I listened to her melodiously dead voice. She was here because her father, Lord Loki put her here for disobeying him. A very different reason for my being here but nevertheless she was here, and I am glad. I was placed here because I had been causing havoc down in Alfheim, where I am guessing this place was built. Alfheim, the realm of bright elves. I'm not sure I believe her excuse for being here, she's the daughter of the god of mischief after all, but I cannot deny my feelings for her. All her words make sense to me.
I am coming close, the world disappearing before my eyes, darkness around the edges. I can't help but remember every detail of Hela. Her empty green eyes, Her true form: half dead face, a human torso and the legs of a corpse. I have never seen someone so beautifully dead and alive at the same time, I wish I was one of the nine princes of hell, I wish I could equal her power, at least in a small way, because I know I will never equal her in beauty or knowledge or skill. Hela, the goddess of my dreams and I, the being of what makes me Irin.
A demon.