Thorneval, 12th of Porri, 1119 A.C.
Odin's hand stilled over the small girl.
He'd meant to touch her and roll her over herself so he could see her face, but the second his eyes met the slight movement of her shoulders, he froze, completely overtaken by the sight, as unbelievable as it was magnificent.
How —
She was no older than five winters or so. Her hair was as red as a fire flame, long enough for its tender curls to only shyly appear at the ends. The beautiful strands shone under the moonlight, shaking slowly with the gentle breeze. A particular strand stuck to her shoulder, curling and uncurling itself at the wafting breeze and it looked oddly more silver than red under the moonlight — probably just a trick of the light, nothing more.
A most delicate beauty, no doubt.
She was lying on her side, curled around herself as if she'd fallen on the ground exactly like this and had stayed so. One look down at her small body showed him feral wounds on her legs and one cutting across her middle from the side of her stomach to above her belly button. He could also see there was a gnarly wound somewhere on her face, given how the blood had pooled underneath her temple. Blood covered her tanned skin naturally a shade of honey he knew came not from the time she'd spent under the sun, though much paler under all the blood she'd lost. There was a distinctive smell to her body he'd never felt before. Aside from lacking the natural human fragrance that came from their essence — which he felt in the air from the spilled blood —, there was something else he'd never smelled before.
How is this possible?
As he dragged in a deep breath, the first thing he smelled was a sharp, bitter unpleasant odor, like rotten food, strangely similar to unripened tomatoes that made him wrinkle his nose and feel the childish yearn to pinch his nose. But as the scent rushed down his windpipe, it transformed into the sweetest symphony of spring, with notes of the brightest, most delicate flowers and the barest hints of sandalwood and vanilla.
Odin didn't know how she was alive, but maybe whatever the explanation was could also explain why she smelled like this.
The first scent he caught he could very well imagine where it came from, but not the second.
What was going on here?
Breaking out of his motionless shock, Odin lowered his hand to the girl's forearm —
A shadowy black ink emerged on her skin, covering her all over in a matter of seconds almost like it was creating a wall between him and her skin, gradually becoming less charged until it resembled a soft, hazy glow. It was as if it was protecting her, and under the moonlight, it made her skin shimmer as if a thousand prisms reflected the light in a rainbow of swirling colors. As Odin watched, it started in her skin and elongated itself upwards into the air a few inches above the surface of her body, creating a halo of swirling, glowing shadows with diamond glitters dancing across her skin.
"What in the hell?" He whispered, bewildered.
He'd never seen anything like it.
And if Odin already didn't know what to make of this girl, when he saw the amber glow suddenly flashing brightly at the center of her chest, he indeed realized there was definitely something very different about her. The glow emerged at the center of her heart, but spread all over her body in amber veins, making her body glow a faint topaz under the grayish halo of the glow of her skin.
He pulled himself back like he'd been burned.
His eyes lifted from the girl's body and, with the glow emitted from her body, he could finally see what lay around her, the breeze carrying the scent of sulfur he'd failed to detect until now.
Beasts.
He counted at least seven Hundar. Most of them looked mauled, their bodies and entrails sprayed all over the floor like some other beast had mangled them around until it severed meat from bones. They were the ones closest to the girl, lying in a circle around her as if they'd been killed right at the moment when they had her surrounded for prey. The single Själlös he could see was about twenty-five feet in front of him. It had one of its wings torn from the spine, while the other lay at an unnatural angle under its body. Its long neck was splayed over the floor and Odin noticed drag marks on the floor signaling it'd probably fallen down midair — shot down, maybe, or struck down —, snapping its jaws and neck on the ground with brute force. His nose wrinkled at the stench that came from its broken mandible, the lower half disjointed from its nozzle. Its tail had broken as well, probably on impact as it had tried to smooth its fall with it and failed, its scythe tail lying a couple of feet back, intact aside from the fact that it was torn apart from the rest of the beast's body. The several Kött he could see were a few feet back to his right, and though he couldn't see any injuries on them, they weren't moving and blood covered the ground around their still forms.
What happened here?
As the girl's glow burned even brighter, Odin saw the shapes of all the beasts highlighted, the fact that they were all dead so effortlessly in the middle of a massacred settlement with merely a defenseless human girl still living being hard to believe.
He looked down at her once more.
Her veins pulsed three times before the amber lines started to disappear. As it did, the black glow of her skin started to slowly die down as well, becoming only a veil of gray around her until it faded completely.
Holy word.
He looked around.
The entire settlement had been destroyed like a tornado had struck. The houses had all been burned to the ground and bodies lay around, fallen like raindrops almost everywhere he looked. Ash still burned in the air, carried by the breeze and falling down in amber sparks to the ground. The girl was merely a few feet from the town hall — the only building still standing in good condition —, its large doors open with tracks of blood disappearing on the inside. Clearly, the humans had tried to shelter there, as probably tried this girl, though she'd never made it.
"Seems you felt it, too."
Calamnai was a classic beauty.
Odin had seen her many times since she'd assumed her responsibilities as Keeper. As such, the two had seen a lot of each other throughout time, whenever the worlds they both protected needed their aid. He'd also met the Keepers before her, who had never failed him in their duty, but none had watched over the Nine Worlds as reverently, or as fondly, as Calamnai. Time had made her wise beyond all the ones before her, and her heart had grown strong and valiant from the young woman she'd once been, fiercer than anyone he'd ever met whenever its courage was needed. Despite her outward beauty — with dark mahogany hair and vibrant hazelnut eyes — and the exquisite long, satin-made beige dress she wore with a golden chest armor piece that doubled as a corset, it was her spirit that enticed Odin the most, for he'd found a companion in all the past winters of ensuring a future for Nine Worlds.
Odin sat on his heels, not looking over his shoulder at the Keeper. Instead, he nodded grimly. "I don't know what I felt, but I felt it. Whatever it was."
"And you got here faster than even I did."
"I may have arrived first." He lifted his head and the look he gave Calamnai, now, could have frozen the fiery pits of Hel in a second. "But what I came here to learn, you already knew, Calamnai. Isn't that so?"
"I wouldn't confuse knowing the wyrd with knowing the future I will meet, God of Gods." She lifted her chin, jaw clenching. "I know not such a thing. The written wyrd never foretells the way it will come to be. I simply pretend to understand better the certain outcome of the uncertain path ahead of us all."
"And what path is that?"
"Chaos."
Odin got to his feet, giving her a stern stare as her eyes traced his movement. "What does this girl have to do with it?"
Calamnai's lips curved in a sad, small smile. "She has plenty to do with it, Odin. I would even risk as much as to say she has everything to do with what's to come."
Well, how's that for beating around the bush?
"How could you be so sure of that?"
"What do you think happened here?" Calamnai questioned instead of answering.
"I wouldn't dare to guess after what I've seen, but I suppose you're going to tell me."
Her head tipped to the side. "What do you mean? After what you've seen?"
Odin smirked. "Look."
He leaned forward, placing one knee on the ground as he moved his hand towards the unconscious girl once more. The second his hand came within inches of the girl's shoulder, the same intense amber blaze pulsed from her chest, flowing through her veins, just as the silvery prisms reflected off her skin until it seemed to swirl like a cloud around her.
As he remained perfectly immobile, so did both the light and the shadows, waiting to see what his next move would be, if he'd be a threat or a harmless presence.
His smirk didn't ease as he saw the surprise flicker across Calamnai's face in a quick widening of her eyes and parting of her lips — clearly, for too knowledgeable she was, she hadn't been prepared for this. "I mean this."
Calamnai couldn't believe her eyes.
She hadn't seen this. No one had shown her this. How could she have ever guessed this was possible? The Yggdrasill had never told her this could happen. For all intents and purposes, she'd never known this could be possible, and even after seeing what had happened to the Shard, despite some part of her having wondered if the possibility existed, she'd discarded it because she'd never seen any evidence that this could be a path moving forward. So, she hadn't given herself the time to entertain the idea, because it seemed preposterous enough without her actually believing such a strike of mischance could happen, but here was the proof. Right before her. Already done. The most unlikely of outcomes to the start of this war.
What was to become of this girl? Of her future? Of her life?
Of her wyrd?
After this night… nothing would ever be the same. And for too much Calamnai trusted the wyrd and the path it'd written, she wondered how this could ever be of leverage. What was the point of making such an innocent, beautiful, young human being hurt so much only to have the most tragic of wyrds before her?
Calamnai's heart bled.
She could only guess how badly it had hurt. What this girl had been through… Calamnai could never fathom what it had felt like, and the only way to describe it would be to say it was excruciating pain. And after knowing what the Yggdrasill had told her about guarding the Shard for too long, she shivered at thinking what it would do to this child.
"You didn't know about this, did you?"
Calamnai shook her head slowly. "This was never written."
"But I have never felt anything like this, Calamnai, and that scares me. I felt it all the way in Asgard, unlike anything I've ever felt, even when the war ended and his soul scattered."
"None of us have ever felt anything like this." She swallowed, voice somber. "I think what we felt was a rip… a tear being made into the fabric of the Nine Worlds, because the rules were broken." Calamnai shook her head, feeling her heart beating faster in her chest as she suddenly realized the truth. "It's the balance being restored."
Calamnai shivered in the warm air.
"Balance of what, though?"
"All existence lives in balance," she explained, voice curt. "She is the balance. The birth of whatever it is she's become tonight is the balance."
Odin's brows furrowed and he came to his feet again, facing the Keeper. "Calamnai, I will need to ask you to stop speaking in riddles. I need to understand what's happened here if I have any hope to prevent the fall of the Nine Worlds."
"It's my fault, Odin," her voice shook, as did her hands as she placed them against her mouth. The Ancients had warned her, as had the Yggdrasill, but she hadn't listened, and this had been the outcome. "I upset the balance when I interfered."
He took a step forward, reaching out to the woman who looked ready to rip hair from her own scalp. She retreated, pulling her arms around herself as if to protect herself from the touch and the havoc it could create. "How did you interfere, Calamnai?"
"The Shard!" She yelled, her voice echoing around the yard. "I found the Shard and I —," she stuttered. "I hid it."
Odin still couldn't understand. "You hid it?"
Calamnai's lashes lowered, wet with unshed tears. "The Seid's designs really are wicked, aren't they?" She laughed but it sounded off, somehow, like a lunatic laughing at a joke no one had spoken. "That's why they all warned me. But if I'd known this would happen…" She shook her head vehemently, torn apart. "It wasn't enough to make her his doom, was it?" She spoke the words as if to Odin, but how she looked at the sky implied she was speaking to someone other than him. A gust of wind picked up, blowing her hair across her shoulders. "It had to find a way to make him her ruin, too, so that neither one can live without destroying the other."
"All choices have consequences, Calamnai, and you've known this for long enough to have foreseen this," the ancient voices answered her but instead of feeling the usual warmth from them, she felt a knife gliding down her spine, instead. "She was never meant to become this, but because you interfered, it's what the wyrd saw fit to turn her into, to use her and end the war."
"Him? Calamnai, what are you talking about?" Rage bloomed in Odin's voice, now, as he grew impatient, not understanding whatever epiphany the Keeper was having.
"What she's become tonight, it shouldn't be possible. It isn't possible. The rules of the universe itself forbid her to exist. But by some twisted joke of chance itself, nature gave birth to her tonight, and so, the Seid —," she hesitated, laughing bitterly. "— turned her into a weapon, to end the war definitively."
"Excuse me?"
Lightning broke in the horizon, shattering the sky in light.
"He's coming."
Calamnai nodded. "He must have felt it, as well."
Both let a moment pass in silence —
The tension thickened with the growing storm that seemed to have come out of nowhere.
"He doesn't know yet," Calamnai said finally, her voice low.
"I'm assuming there is a reason why he doesn't," Odin replied fiercely, eyeing the child still at his feet, her chest rising and falling slowly. "Isn't there?"
Another flash of lightning illuminated the sky, casting sharp shadows across their faces. There was a sound, like distant thunder, growing louder by the second.
"He's here," Calamnai said, her eyes focused on the horizon, choosing not to answer because it meant admitting to a truth she wasn't ready to assume.
For a moment, there was silence.
The storm raged around them, lightning illuminating their faces in flashes of blinding light. And then, with a roar that shook the earth, lightning struck the ground not a hundred yards from them, and Calamnai wondered why he was creating a storm. This was a part of his power he'd never struggled much with. Whenever he created lightning storms, they were usually a sign that he was either fighting or angry at something, and to the best of her knowledge, he had no reason for either, for the moment. Surely, he'd felt the rip in the Nine Worlds, but that wasn't reason enough for this reaction.
Was it?
But then Calamnai realized that despite being unaware of it, Thor was creating this storm for a reason, and it wasn't just the rip in the Nine Worlds. It was because this — what had happened here today — would change their lives forever.
His, most of all.
"Calamnai," Odin said firmly, looking straight into her eyes. "What does this mean? What are we going to do?"
She looked at him skeptically. "Why do you assume I know?"
"You don't wish to tell me," he realized with a flash of surprise.
Calamnai ran her fingers through her hair, feeling the strangely humane desire to pull it out. "Is there any particular reason why I should?"
"Aside from the fact that I'm trying to help? None. You can not tell me, Calamnai, but if this is about Thor, then he needs to know. You need to tell him."
"Are you offering me to do it yourself?"
Odin paused for a moment as another bolt of lightning lit up the sky and he shook his head slowly. "I can't explain any of this to him. Other than what my eyes are seeing here, I know nothing of the Seid's designs."
"You are the God of the Gods and his father."
"Being who I am has never meant I was privy to any information the Seid didn't mean to offer me of its own free will. Or yours," he reminded quietly. A flash of pain zapped across the God's blue eyes. "And even though I am his father, he does not recognize me as such, so that doesn't have much relevance."
Indeed, he didn't, but Odin was mistaken if he thought it would always be so.
Calamnai's lashes fluttered closed as a corner of her lips tipped up in as much of a genuine reaction as she was capable of. "Yet."
Odin's head swiveled up in shock.
Calamnai's reaction to the situation was unmistakable. With a subtle but confident nod, she indicated her assurance to Odin. It was all it took to encourage Odin to believe such a day might yet come to pass, for even without words, the shine of compassion and certainty in her eyes was confirmation enough.
She was sure of this.
And it was her silent confidence that mattered the most.
Still, he remembered all too well the words the boy had once spoken harshly at him in his dire anger winters ago, and even though many winters had passed since then, he hadn't become any more accommodated to the cold bitterness Thor still treated him with.
Odin looked away, uncomfortable with Calamnai's stare on his face, forcing himself to change his weight and run a hand down his face, massaging the beard he'd let grow almost to his chest. "You haven't been on the other end of his contempt, or you'd know how good he is at it," Odin admitted, voice gruff. "He once told me I wasn't worthy of his hate, but I've found that his indifference is even worse."
"He is still your son, Odin. He'll see that when the time comes," Calamnai assured, though she could see that the rejection weighted heavily on the Higher God's mind and heart. "It won't always be this way."
But Odin wasn't so sure.
Thor's anger had been simmering for too long, and he feared that it might never dissipate. That's why he needed Calamnai's help. So she could aid Thor to accept the wyrd he'd been dealt.
Before it destroyed him.
"You need to make him see reason," Odin began, his voice low but urgent. "It must be you who tells him what lies ahead. He'll never accept it if I do it myself."
The Keeper nodded solemnly in response. "I will do my best, Odin," she said firmly. "But I must warn you of something I'm sure you're quite aware of by now. Persuading someone as stubborn as Thor is no easy task."
Odin knew this all too well, but he also knew that Calamnai was more than up to the challenge. "You have his trust and care," he told her pointedly. "Use both wisely."
She knew what needed to be done. She'd always known this responsibility would fall on her shoulders. She'd argued with the God of Gods, but she'd known, even before he'd spoken, that it would be her, when the right moment came, to tell the child she'd watched grow into the most powerful and beautiful man, what fate awaited him at the tail-end of his road.
Even if it meant facing Thor's wrath.
Or his hate, anger, and indifference.
Calamnai took a deep breath, feeling the weight of Odin's words. "I'll do it," she said firmly. "When the time comes, I will do it. I will tell him. Until then…"
Odin nodded in approval before turning his attention back to the storm brewing outside. "You mean to shelter him."
It wasn't a question.
Calamnai felt her resolve strengthen as she pulled the dry, warm air into her lungs. "It's the only way."
Odin's eyes searched hers. "I do not doubt that. I know your love for him. How you see him as a son of sorts. The son you never had," he chuckled, the sound deep and beautiful despite the cold remorse hidden beneath it. "You've grown fond of him, Calamnai… and that is more than understandable. Thor is…" Odin heaved out a long sigh. "He carries more pain than a thousand armies could ever bear. He was betrayed, deceived, hurt, and tortured. That boy has crossed through hell already and the thought of putting him through any more weights you heavily."
Calamnai felt a pang in her chest at Odin's words.
Because he was absolutely right.
How could anyone stay indifferent to a story such as his?
"And yet, he's grown strong and brave, pure to the last beat of his heart," he completed. "He's been through more than anyone could have survived, but he thrived despite all the reasons why he shouldn't have, not because he was given powers and immortality, but because he forced himself to be worthy of both."
For a moment, there was silence.
The storm died down, and the sky began to clear.
Calamnai wondered where Thor was.
Had he left already?
Walking silently, Thor dashed through the town hall, his direction set for the door. His skin was still prickling from the surge of power he'd felt moments ago. He hadn't done that. He doubted he could ever do something like that. It had felt like a ripple of true, untainted, unrestrained power, zapping across the very fabric of the world around him, shaking everything to its core. Something else had done that. But he knew that a ripple of power that strong would bring the Gods and the Keeper seeking what had done it and he intended to be as far away as possible when they arrived —
Voices out in the courtyard stopped him.
Surprised, he planted his back against the wall, letting his hearing extend further than his own being to reach the people outside and hear what they were saying.
"How will I ever explain it to him? I know his end. It is set in stone." It was Calamnai's voice that Thor heard, to his surprise, low and remorseful as she spoke words that sounded weighty. There was an edge of desperation that sounded much like the last cry of a dying animal and his heart squeezed at it. "How will I ever tell him the truth? That the only woman he'll ever love will be doomed to offer him a love that will weaken him until a simple blade can draw ichor from his skin, and that, by the Seid's wish, her blood upon the edge of his sword will be the only thing that will save the Nine Worlds? How do you tell a boy who's suffered so much that he's going to have his heart ripped out from his chest for the mere act of loving the way he was always meant to? Tell me, Odin, how do you tell a boy that the closer he gets to the woman he loves, the more dangerous her life will become?"
Thor's heart ricocheted around his chest.
They were talking about him. But Calamnai's words didn't make sense. He'd seen her moments earlier, on the battlefield. She'd spoken of his wyrd ending in blood and daisies, but she'd said nothing about love. Or about a woman.
Who was this 'she'?
Odin didn't doubt for one second that she was speaking of something in the future he had no understanding of, but he saw in the haunted lines of her eyes that it troubled her, this knowledge she had that she couldn't share with the one person she knew to be able to save the world.
"You've warned him, have you not?"
She changed her weight. "Not of this."
"Why not, Calamnai?"
She leaned her gaze on his face. "I would never know how to begin," she replied sadly.
Thor had guessed as much.
"But you've warned him of his wyrd?"
She nodded sullenly. "I warned him of everything that I could, at the time. Saying anything more would endanger the balance."
And his heart.
Thor spied over the edge of the door, seeing that Calamnai and Odin both stood in the courtyard, gloomy expressions on their faces, facing each other with the body of a human child beside them, which he couldn't see clearly because it was facing the other way, though the hair, long and red as fire, was perfectly hard to miss, marking her as a girl.
Who was the girl?
Was this the girl?
Beasts' bodies littered the ground in a circle around them and Thor wondered how they'd been killed. He hadn't done that, either. He'd been dealing with the Mörk that'd started the massacre of the village. He'd just left the battlefield where he'd met Calamnai and when he'd felt the beasts here, he'd deviated his path to come here, right before he felt the ripple of power tear through the Cosmos.
Thor's heart raced.
Odin ran a hand through his hair, changing his weight and half-turning his body to the side, forcing Thor to retreat so he wouldn't be spotted. "You're sure, Calamnai?"
The whispers of the Ancients rose in Calamnai's ears. "Yes, I am," she replied morosely. "And I have never been more crushed to be right about something."
"By the Gods…" Odin whispered, head lolling from side to side as if he was dazed. "Then, what of her parents? Her family? We must deliver her to them."
Calamnai squared her shoulders. "All died, tonight." Her eyes tracked the beasts' bodies around them. "She's orphaned. Her entire family died here tonight."
Thor stopped breathing.
His heart nearly flew out of his chest.
Why did she deserve this fate?
Thor wanted to knock himself out, so he wouldn't have to hear anything else, but he needed to know, it seemed. He wouldn't know any of this any other way. Calamnai and Odin seemed not to have any intention of telling him any of this and, if his wyrd was to rest on his future with this girl, then he needed to know.
Odin's eyes went to the girl still lying on the ground. "What does this mean, then?"
Calamnai's eyes didn't stray from the still-sleeping child. "That though neither of them knows it yet, they will be the bane of each other's existence until the blood of one of them is shed upon a land of daisies."
Thor's hands closed in fists.
Calamnai had told him, moments ago, that his wyrd would end in blood and daisies, and she hadn't lied. Even then, she'd already known the truth. She'd already known that this girl would be born and be Thor's doom. That she'd be his weakness.
Odin inhaled. "Does that mean —"
"For one to survive, the other must die."
Thor's stomach seemed to fall all the way to the floor and splatter in front of him.
"So, there's nothing to prevent this?"
Calamnai shook her head. "Nothing."
"Then, let me take her somewhere she will be protected until the day comes when she'll have to assume the role the wyrd birthed her for." As he said the words, the god turned and knelt by the girl, gently picking her up even as the shadows glided across her skin and her glow emerged, both innocuous as he meant her no harm. With the small child in his arm, he faced the Keeper, face solemn. "As for you, Calamnai, I suggest you find a way to explain all of this to Thor. The day will come when keeping it from him will no longer be possible."
Calamnai knew that.
Thor saw the girl's face for the first time.
And he was entranced from the very first glance.
She was yet young, and probably small for her age, as well, but neither her youth nor her petiteness masked her beauty. Under the moonlight, her fire flowed like flames of the richest fire, falling across her chest and down her back as she lay asleep in Odin's arms. Her chest moved slowly up and down, almost as if she were asleep. Her skin, ashen in the moonlight, was beautifully immaculate, with no signs of the atrocity that'd happened here today. Her limbs were small and fragile, cocooned against Odin's imposing figure. But her face…
Thor would never be able to forget that face.
Her eyes were closed, so he couldn't know what color they were, but they were round and slanted enough that they reminded him of the shape of an almond. Her cheeks were high, feathered by the long, fallen lashes that created patterns of shadows across her skin. Her eyebrows were majestically arched, relaxed in her sleep, but so full of expression even so that he found himself mesmerized by the shape. And her lips, plump and rich, with the top lip just a little more full, were closed in a near-perfect arrow shape, disarming him even with the distance separating them.
He'd never seen any more perfect being.
"Well." Calamnai lifted her face to the sky. "The day that happens, I hope he has mercy on us all."
Thor fought hard against the betrayal floundering in his chest. He knew he wasn't entitled to that emotion. They weren't betraying him. But keeping secrets felt awfully like betraying, particularly when such secrets regarded him uniquely.
But who was he to speak?
He carried secrets like most people grew hair on their scalp.
And then, as if in response to the God and Keeper's unspoken agreement, the world around them began to change. The rules of the universe shifted, bending and warping in ways that should not have been possible. But the two otherworldly beings simply stood there, watching as the world was remade around them.
As a wyrd set in front of them.
Thor heard both the Keeper and Odin teleport out and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in his lungs. Then, he let himself lean against the wall. As tears threatened to fall from his eyes for the first time in centuries, he pulled his hands away from his hair, only to see them glint a silvery gray under the soft moonlight filtering through the longhouse's roof.
Thor's mind raced with conflicting thoughts and emotions as he stood there in silence.
He couldn't believe it.
He felt like a monster, a killer, a thief.
How was he supposed to live with himself now that he knew the truth? How was he supposed to face this girl — this woman —, knowing that he was responsible for being the bane of her existence before she even had a chance to properly live it?
His heart ached with the weight of it all. He wished he could turn back time, go back to before he had ever set foot in that village. But he couldn't. He was stuck with this burden for the rest of his life.
This secret.
Yet another, it seemed.
After centuries of being a soldier in a battle, he'd learned he would one day find the woman he loved, only to realize that before he'd even met her, he'd never be able to be with her.
If that wasn't a beautiful start to the most condemned relationship in the history of the Nine Worlds, he was at a loss as to what could be.