Unsacred Responsibility Chapter 7 - Fate Wills It So

“Words are not to be wasted upon your enemy, Hela.”

Once, and only once, during her father’s conquest across the Nine Realms, had she been chastised. She had a habit of mocking her foes, a penchant for dramatics, a flair for sass, and cutting remarks with a sharp tongue. She dressed down her enemies verbally as she caved in their skulls and relished in those little moments of oratory evisceration. 

Against one foe, one with a tongue sharper than hers, and that habit of hers had ne’er proved fatal. The Frost Giant, Útgarða, with a vulgar mouth and unspeakable cunning, unleashed disgusting comment after comment regarding her, regarding her body, defamatory, salacious, inappropriate, vile, and deplorable. She was no blushing maiden, but her ears were still those of royalty, a Princess born and bred, noble and true, and those words she could not endure. The Frost Giant had incensed her, and she had, in her fury, indulged in firing off barbs, lost her temper, and soon found herself ensnared, falling prey to his scheme. 

She was young, then. Such a cunning trick could only be used to fool a yet burgeoning, pre-nubile, Asgardian Princess. An Asgardian Princess who knew not the depths of deception that lay in the hearts of the creatures across the Nine Realms. Her hammer, Mjölnir, had been tricked away from her. Fenrir had been ensnared, still but a wolf pup, and she had no recourse as the enemy’s swords came for her throat. 

Her father had intervened, lifting Gungnir, and tossing it, piercing it through the Giant’s head, and those of his men. Freeing Fenrir, freeing her, she had trembled under his gaze, as he uttered wisdom which would ever linger, and never be forgotten. 

“Words are not to be wasted upon your enemy, Hela. Spare them for when your foes no longer draw breath.”

After the battle was won, she apologized, ashamed, humiliated. It was the first and only time she had brought such shame to her father. Her father had gently and warmly patted her shoulder and spoken with soft care.

“My beloved daughter, you are under no obligation to retort to every jibe, to reply to every jape, nor to provide your foes with commentary or elucidation. If you are to be Queen, you must understand the value of silence. You need not explain yourself to anyone, for any reason. Leave the prattling for fools and jesters. Let your actions be louder than your voice.”

From that day on, Hela paid little heed to words. She paid no heed to words of contempt, words of mockery, pleas for mercy, appeals for forgiveness, insults and challenges, attacks on her honor, defamations against her purity, or accusations against her bloodline. Words were but mere words. In her task as Odin’s Executioner, she was deaf to words. She spared no words on her enemies and hunted with a grace and quietude that befit a Goddess of Death.

Death was not loud. Death needed no announcement. Death needed no introduction. Death heeded no pleas. Death heeded no insults. Death merely came, without warning, with less warning than storms, than thunder, than lightning and fire, and afterwards, only after, once it had come, did those who were gifted with its presence feel its effects, recoil in awe, in worship, and in horror. 

She embodied that, onwards, even as her Father began to grow distant, even as his desire for war began to wane, even as the days were he called her, my beloved daughter became all the rarer. She embodied it, even right up until that moment, where the fire that once burned hot in his belly and kindled in his eye became a sputter, a lukewarm coal whimpering from blazing red to inert black. She embodied that, even on the days when he no longer spoke of vast conquest, the days where he ceased to ride tall and proud atop Sleipnir, his thunderous voice sending shivers racing down her spine, his cry of ‘FOR ASGARD!’ forcing her blood to flow faster, her swings to come harder, her wounds to bleed slower, her body to recover quicker. 

She embodied that, even on those days where she no looked up to him, at him, with stars in her eyes, and felt, perhaps, she was the most fortunate Princess in the cosmos, for Odin, the, Odin, the greatest Conqueror of All, was the man she called Father.

Certainly, Hela embodied that. She embodied it, even as the days came, where her father started to murmur of the weariness of combat, started to keep aside his spear longer and longer, started to chastise her, question her, berate her, condemn her.

She embodied it, for she believed it was up to her to continue that dream of Asgardian Conquest. That dream, where she would look upon the stars in the sky, and count them all, and tell her daughter, or perhaps, her son, that every light that twinkled in the galaxy, was his domain, just as her father once told her, promised her, that some day, every star that shone in the sky would belong to Asgard, and would be hers to name and rename as she wished.

Yet, once, and only once, did she not embody that silence. Perhaps because it pained her to do what needed to be done. A part of her spoke that such an act was treachery, but who was it, truly, that betrayed whom? Yet, she wished for him to reconsider. She wished for him to put down the ale he drank heartily and thoughtlessly, put an end to the fattening feasts, to be the father she had known, the only one she had known, the one who told her of a warrior’s purpose, a warrior’s goal, whose ambitions could not be contained and whose dreams could not be curbed.

Thus, she had spoken, in grief and in mourning, of who her father once was, and in loathing of who she saw him becoming.

“Father! We can conquer the galaxy! Together! I will be your sword! You needn’t stop at but a mere Nine Realms, father! We can do this together!”

There, and then, Hela saw her fatal mistake.

She had wasted words upon her enemy.

Perhaps had she not done so, her father would not have cast her into Niflheim. Perhaps, had she not done so, she would not have been banished, awaiting his eventual death. For years, she had embodied that silence, and once she failed to heed those words, her punishment was the most dreadful of all.

Loneliness.

Isolation.

Alone, in Niflheim, in Hel, with nothing, with no one. Counting down the minutes. The hours. The days. The months. The weeks. The years. The decades. The centuries. 

The millennia.

Alone.

Bereft of all but time, she did naught but train. She swung and swung. Swinging her blade without rest, without stop, without breaks. She grew stronger. Stronger, thus that when her Father sent the Valkyrie to her, she’d seen it as nothing more than a task of wetting her blades against the softness of their flesh, honing herself with battle, and granting them all an early express towards Valhalla. She spared no words on them as she massacred them. All but one, who fled as a coward. 

After the first hundred or so years, she forgot the sound of her own voice. She swung her arms until they grew numb, and until the sound of a blade slicing through the air was her sole companion, her sole partner of conversation. 

Asgardians were Gods, but Godhood was no elixir that could abate the misery of solitude. Divinity was no panacea that inured one against the hungering of companionship and affection.

A hundred years in, she had roared with indignation.

“Father! You cannot do this to me! I am still your daughter! Your beloved daughter!”

Two hundred years in, she had roared with anger.

“Father! You will rue this mistake you have made!”

Five hundred years in, she had roared with desperation.

“I was wrong, Father! Please! Enough! Father, I beg you!”

One thousand years in, she had roared with despair.

“Father… have you forsaken me? Does this punishment truly befit the crime?”

When the Convergence came, when the worlds were aligned for the first time in five thousand years, her answer had come. She could not leave, because her father’s power binded her to Niflheim, but she saw. She saw the Dark Elves, their little ploys, she saw Midgard, she saw Asgard, she saw him, blond, dashing, wielding her hammer, Mjölnir. Her brother. Her father had borne a son. She had a brother.

Her father had felt her gaze and glanced at her, for but a brief moment, for the first time in thousands years. He glanced at her, and then… 

He looked away.

Looked away, as though she were not his flesh and not his blood, as though she was not the fruit of his seed, as though she was not the same girl whom he would place upon his lap and tell stories of Ymir, Idunn, and the Kvasir, as though she were not the same child who would tug on his beard, the same one whom he would lift upon his shoulders and say before others, ‘This is my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased.’

His silence was the verification.

Words are not to be wasted upon your enemy, Hela.

She had been forsaken.

Her father had moved on, with a new family, a new son, a new life. 

She was a bitter reminder of a past he had no desire to partake in, and of mistakes he had no wish to amend.

Thus, Hela bided her time. 

When she sensed his death, her father’s death, the shackles that held her were released. When she attained her freedom, that lesson, from thousands of years ago, lingered within her.

She spared no pleasantries as she arrived on Midgard. Attacking fast, and attacking suddenly, channelling thousands of years of frustration into her blade, into her strikes, it was only after her Nightsword slashed at his throat, only after his head rolled on the grass, then, and only then, did she make her formal introduction.

“Hello, little brother,” she said to his headless torso. “I am Hela.”

The other one had tried to flee, but he was no Asgardian. She could tell. A Frost Giant was no match for her. Taking what was rightfully hers, grabbing Mjölnir into her hands, she dismissed the enchantment her father had put upon it, a mocking, laughing excuse of an enchantment. Worthiness? Who was he to decide what made one worthy and unworthy? Such a meaningless enchantment held no sway upon the weapon’s true owner. Shattering the enchantment, she sent the weapon after the Frost Giant, knocked him down, and commanded it to retrieve him. With him, she commanded the opening of the Bifröst, and with him, she returned, there, to her home.

All her companions were dead. No one remembered her. Not a single soul recalled her. It was as she feared. As she expected. All traces of her existence expunged, all legacies removed, and all proof that she had ever once conquered realms as Odin’s Executioner, as her father’s daughter, erased and buried.

Disavowed. Forgotten. Excised as if she were a canderous growth to whom he held no love. As though she were a shameful secret, a child of a sordid affair better left buried. The tapestry was hidden, the truth was masked; only false tales filled the storybooks of children, and only false histories were sung upon the lips of bards.

The final, the greatest, and the truest of insults was that her father could not even deem her the courtesy of letting her be recalled by her people.

The battles she fought in his name, the blood she shed, the warriors and elite troops sacrificed in his conquest, the mountain of loyal corpses and troops who fought by her side in pursuit of his dreams—

He granted them not even the right to be footnotes in the pages of history. 

Never before had love metamorphosed so rapidly into hatred. She grieved and mourned for his death, mourned that he was already dead, so she could not kill him herself.

However, Odin was dead, and her brother was dead, and the throne of Asgard needed one to sit upon it. The Frost Giant would not do; he valued his life more than he did the throne, swearing fealty as soon as she’d taken her brother’s head. Hela spared him, only because she had need of the services of someone like him. Someone who could put on plays and festivals, and teach the Asgardians their true history.

The Frost Giant had a talent with words, one she had long forgotten, and had his little tricks of seiðr magic taught to him by his mother. With him at her side, obeying, out of fear, with his words legitimising her rule, the people of Asgard would gradually come to know their ruler once more, and their true heritage. They would come to accept their proper Queen and swear their true fealty, once again. Once they did, she would then begin anew, the great conquest.

However, she had not anticipated the sudden arrival of a Titan wielding an Infinity Stone.

Hela could not die for as long as Asgard stood. Her power came from Asgard itself, but the power of an Infinity Stone was enough for that Titan and his armies to fight on even footing with her.

Even he, the Mad Titan, had a strange obsession with speaking. Talking. With explicating and illuminating himself, as if it was important that he explain his plans, his goals, his dreams of wiping half of all life, as if such words would make her reconsider and join forces with him. Hela understood not where that desire came from, but she was grateful for her father’s advice.

She never would have gotten that opportunity for her sword to bury itself in his mouth, had it not been for that need for elucidation.

Taking the Power Stone in hand herself, shivering from the power that she felt within it, she adorned it upon her crown as a newfound symbol of her power.

The very Asgardians who had once been reluctant to accept her rule had bent the knee in loyalty upon witnessing her in battle. Upon defending Asgard from that Mad Titan, all doubts as to her legitimacy were removed. All swore to their new Queen, and Hela saw it then, a new age for Asgard, an age where Asgard conquered the entire galaxy, stopping not at a meager Nine Realms, but expanding to the farthest reaches of the cosmos.

Her father’s empty promises would be made into reality by the daughter whose ambitions he could not contain.

With an Infinity Stone as a complement to her invincibility and the unwavering loyalty of her people, there was nothing to stand in her way of galactic conquest, in her way of ensuring Asgardian Supremacy. Hela believed this was what she had finally deserved, after enduring thousands of years of imprisonment in the darkness; it was truly her time, now, to bathe in the light.

Nothing would stop her.

Nothing.

Except a Celestial Emergence.

Midgard, the center of the Yggdrasil, faced the threat of destruction due to a Celestial awakening from within it. All of this, less than a meager year after she had slain the Mad Titan. She had sent her armies, arrived in person, fought alongside some foolish Midgardians in Suits of Armor, time wizards, and red witches, but it was to no avail.

Not even their combined power could make a difference. Not even the Power Stone and Space Stone could do a single thing to prevent the Celestial from Emerging. She sacrificed both in a desperate final gambit to teleport the Celestial away from Midgard— 

Yet, she only managed to sever and send away its right arm.

Losing her own left arm as a consequence, and wounded from the toll of the atomization of two Infinity Stones, she had no choice but to order a hasty retreat. She watched from Asgard as Midgard was destroyed in totality once the Celestial fully emerged sans its arm, and billions of people in her Empire were lost.

Had it been any other realm, any but Midgard, she would have never have gone to such lengths, such desperation. However, she, more than any, was aware of the importance of Midgard and knew that no matter what, Midgard was never to be allowed to be destroyed. Midgard was the “Middle Enclosure,” and it was the center, the trunk, the anchor of the Nine Realms.

The Yggdrasil connected the Nine Realms, and the Nine Realms orbited Midgard.

Without Midgard, there was a cosmic imbalance, and with Midgard’s destruction, the Yggdrasil rapidly collapsed.

Asgard, the realm at the top of the Yggdrasil, was the first to feel its effects and crumble. She had no choice but to flee and retreat to Vanaheim, where, from there, she watched the seat of her power and her authority vanish into nothingness.

Her ambitions, her dreams of a grand Asgardian Empire—

All of it was meaningless, as there was no longer an Asgard to reign from.

She became a Queen without a Queendom.

No, even worse.

She became a refugee.

Without Asgard to draw power from, though still possessing Asgardian Physiology, she was but a weak, laughable, pitiable shell of her once nigh-omnipotent self. Her left arm was permanently disfigured, and thus, she did away with it. Her body could not regenerate as swiftly as it once could, and that imperfection remained.

One-armed, weakened, and lacking any sense of power or prestige—

She was no longer in any sense of the word, immortal or divine.

That was when the Frost Giant took his opportunity to seek vengeance for his fallen brother. As did the Warriors Three, as did the one called Sif, and as did the one known as Heimdall. None of them had forgotten that she had killed her half-brother, Thor. They had only been biding their time, waiting patiently, for a day they could seek vengeance. 

She barely escaped the ambush with her life. Chased and hunted across all of Vanaheim for days, it took blinding Heimdall, seizing the man’s eyes for herself, to finally escape, fleeing into a wormhole and awakening upon Sakaar.

There, she met the Last Valkyrie, Brunnhilde, the coward, the sole survivor of the lot she had massacred, who had happily sold her like chattel.

As she waited, in chains, in a cell, with one arm, broken legs, a bruised body, as a slave to be given to a master, a group of Midgardians arrived out of a portal, wearing black. 

Hela laughed as she saw them, all armed, all trembling, as if she were a rabid animal they were there to put down. 

She felt, perhaps, she was. Her final mercy, the greatest irony: slain by Midgardians, the very people to whom her father had once seen as the weakest, and most primitive of all the denizens of the Nine Realms. So weak and primitive, they were not even worth conquering. So weak and unworthy, he’d often likened them to goats and sheep. 

Perhaps, this was fate.

“You… are not going to resist?”

She had not bothered with words.

She would not spare them her words.

Words are not to be wasted upon your enemy, Hela.

She did not fight back as they inched forward with their odd weapons. She only closed her eyes.

If it is as I suspect, I shall be seeing Father again. If it is not as I suspect… 

Hela sat in silence, watching as the baton struck her.

What more have I to lose?

Her body dissipated into flecks of light.

=====)+(=====

The sprawling, undulating terrain was all of Niflheim.

A ship came to a gradual descent, slowly, down upon the frigid cold wasteland, filled with jagged, sharp obsidian peaks of great and profane heights, dizzying mountains that stretched into acrid clouds, and twisted, misshapen sierras that spattered across the landscape like snowflakes blooming from wretched earth.

This portion of space, this portion of the void, contained varying versions of Niflheim, along with vast swathes of tundra worlds and desolate, frozen planets. The temperature was as low as negative fifty degrees, and it was a place where all who arrived, all who were unfortunate enough to have been sent here upon being ‘pruned’ would last mere hours, if not minutes.

Thus it was that on the jagged, frozen surface, there were bodies, frozen, in place, frozen, as though in time, frozen while standing, frozen on their knees, frozen while lying flat, frozen while reaching out to the sky, frozen while fleeing, and frozen while embracing. The land was a Where’s Waldo painting of Pompeii Lovers and Wives of Lot, of embalmed cavemen and preserved histories, waiting to be uncovered, and begging to be discovered.

Within this place, one mountain stood higher than any other, hollowed out within, carved as though it were a skull, with spiked antlers dusted white with ice and snow. There, at the peak of that mountain, stood a person, a being, the sole denizen of a frozen wasteland.

A denizen, who, for the first time in years, saw the arrival of a ship.

Here, in this place where all things died, and everything froze…

Fate had sent visitors.