With undone hair falling against her broad shoulders, the thinning strands hung just an inch or so from the clothes she wore. The once-proud leader of Valkvann sat at the end of her bed, fingers curling over the leather wrap her mother had once worn. She was to pick it up but despite how light the material truly was, it felt too heavy to lift.
Her hand drifted instead to close the trunk beside her, the same one she had pulled it from, but she suddenly stopped. The faint gleam of armor beneath cloth had caught her attention. The sight left her breath caught in her throat, shadows she thought she had outrun stretching long again, crawling back over her.
"Mother. . ." Asvoria murmured softly into the trunk, longing for a woman who would never hold again.
Even in her own mind.
Sometimes, she wasn't sure if she remembered the first time her mother ever held her. Or the last. Back then, those moments had seemed insignificant, easy to overlook when the promised tomorrow always came. Now, she missed them. Now. . . she wondered if they had ever happened at all.
Had her mother ever held her?
It was hard to be in her home, under the spell of the past where the land had been controlled by her mother, which made her feel joy once more - remembering how she had held the power in the land that now belonged only to the small stake of property Asvoria was responsible for. In truth, she wouldn't deny that Svea had been a proper successor for Valkvann, even if it had only taken place because Agathe had failed the role miserably when she chose to become a recluse. For a long time, Asvoria had been the one to care for them.
More than that, she had been one of them.
Before tilling the earth had become as difficult as cracking Ymir's bones, before Fenrir's thirst for blood and war had left her parched with limited raids, she had been with them since the early days. Since the day of her own birth.
So why?
Why had she never been admired in the same way? What would it take?
Still, the most daunting question lingered in the trunk she had slammed shut with little care for its age: did she ever have what it took in the first place?
Eventually, she rose from the bed. Taking to the outdoors to work on her farm felt like the only thing left she still understood, even if it had been neglected to the point of needing to be tended from the ground up. She didn't know much else anymore, yet she knew this: she needed to make her space livable, comfortable, her own, and she needed it soon. Her farm was a reflection of her, after all. Her standing in the village. Overrun weeds on dry, cracking soil would not do.
Noticing one of the villagers passing by, she snapped her fingers for their attention, not even sparing them a proper glance.
"You there. Fetch me a bucket of water."
Flabbergasted by the order, the young couple exchanged an awkward laugh, shrinking away from the farm but even more so from Asvoria herself. They too had heard the rumors of Valkvann's old Chieftain: how she had tried to enlist neighbors to repair her home instead of asking for their help like any decent neighbor, how she expected dinners cooked for her rather than foraging or growing her own food. One family had even told the others that Asvoria had wandered into their home, uninvited, after her return, sitting at their table during supper without so much as a greeting.
Asvoria had been a Jarl in a village far too small for such delusion.
"You there. Fetch me a bucket of water," Asvoria repeated, slower this time, frustration scraping through her teeth as the boy continued walking toward the beach.
He looked over, brows furrowing then shook his head.
"No. You have a bucket. Grab it yourself."
"What?" Asvoria demanded, stepping off of her farm, right up to him, disbelief rising. She seized his wrist with unnecessary force, dragging his attention back to her. "Is that how -"
"Asvoria. Release him." Svea ordered.
She refused to shrink even as Asvoria's cold blue eyes glowered at her. When had things changed so much in the village?
"Did you hear him?" Asvoria insisted.
Svea pried Asvoria's hand off, surprised that this had been her defense.
She checked the boy's wrist before allowing him to continue his trip to the beach for the day, wishing the lovers well.
Asvoria bit down on her tongue, distracting herself with the nails digging into her own wrist, denying the urge to rub the impressions.
Svea stood in place, shaking her head again.
"It's his job!"
To this, Svea growled. She failed to understand the arrogance Asvoria had returned with. "It is not," she answered, keeping her voice calm.
Enough of a scene had already been caused; she would not allow another to brew in its wake. While she had theorized that Asvoria must have acclimated to. . . an easier life while living with the Jarl, Svea had not understood the depth of how entitled - how uncaring - Asvoria had become.
In truth, the lone heir had always carried a streak within her, a belief carved deep that she deserved more than anyone else simply because she believed herself to be more - destined for greater things, descended from the best of them. Once those thoughts began circling in her mind, they could not be dislodged; they spun and spun, impossible to humble.
"You," she said, referring to both the great warrior and the simple farmer boy, "are equals. The lonely farmer boy does not serve, nor do you serve him."
"Of course I don't serve him!"
"Nor does he serve you," Svea reminded her sharply. "You may ask for assistance from your village folk, but you do not command it. In Valkvann, we are all freemen."
She crossed her arms, jaw set, refusing to back down or allow Asvoria to cling to the same claim that had served her for years. Svea felt a prickle of guilt for the times she had once stood by silently, allowing Asvoria to take a higher approach, to treat herself as someone with the right to order freemen about according to whims. Whims that were as fickle as the wind itself. But now that Svea held more power, she would not allow it to continue.
After all, a habit could be broken. . . but only someone had to stop it the first time for that breaking to begin.
Asvoria pointed her chin at the woman in front of her. One she no longer recognized. She stretched to her full height, as if to remind Svea how easily she towered over her, the annoyance bubbling up and tightening her top lip until it carved itself into an unaccepting sneer.
Instead of responding, she centered herself as best she could. She held the large breath in her risen chest like a hostage of war with no hope of escape, keeping it suspended until she was certain it would not betray her.
The blonde wanted to agree, gods, at times she truly did, but she couldn't hide how little she approved of the way Svea chose to lead their people. In her mind, Agathe would have been the better option. If only Agathe had kept the title she had once promised Asvoria. . . at leas then, Asvoria knew she could have reclaimed it.
hings would be as they were always meant to be.
Right.
"Látum það vera." So be it, Asvoria snapped. Let the gods themselves sort it out, then.
She turned her back to Svea and hopped over her own fence to return to her work, striking the stubborn ground with her tools - furious with the soil that refused to yield, furious with all of it.
Nearby, Ulfinna had seen the commotion but chose silence, unwilling to make the moment worse. Watching Asvoria pulverize the earth that failed to meet her expectations, she sighed and took Svea's arm gently.
"She's going to give you trouble. She cannot change, no more than fire can stop itself from consuming all that lies in its path," she warned, seeing that Svea still struggled to accept what she already knew. "She is a blessed warrior, Svea, but she is not a good person."
Svea licked her lips. "Fire can be redirected to create warmth, or even to protect." She countered.
"Only if it's been caged."
And they both knew the fear: something caged could escape at any moment.
And that it would be much more ravenous than before.
"I can't cast her from her first home," Svea tried to explain, guilt in the background of each word she spoke as she glanced toward Asvoria's withered farm. Even as Ulfinna pulled her along to continue the tour of all the changes that had taken place in her absence. "I will speak to her privately. I am sure it will help."
Acclimating to the village's new dynamic, however, was proving harder than Asvoria could understand, especially with the new expectations Svea had placed on her. Asvoria felt targeted - or at the very least, that these rules were unfair for the daughter of a Chieftain, a title she had even once carried herself.
Had Svea forgotten the days she lived under her rule? Forgotten the one who had helped repair every villager's home? Ensured the Jarl's fairness? The same Chieftain who had fought to include every able soul in raids, whose name the seers had once spoken with promise? Had Svea lost those memories? Had she so easily moved on from the time when the people of Valkvann would proclaim, right in front of Svea, that Asvoria would one day inherit the village with all its rights and power?
She couldn't.
She sat on her fence, turning the handle of the hoe in her hands, the wood softened from seasons of neglect. Passing it back and forth between her palms, letting it smack lightly against her skin like a strange little game. She lifted her eyes to the sky.
The sun was setting. It was a sight she had seen a thousand times before, but never from the place of a simple village.
She had been so many things: a warrior, a chieftain, even an enemy in a promised land.
But now she was just another villager.
When leaders watched sunsets, there was always a quiet relief that their people had survived another day, followed by the bone-deep fear of what the next dawn might bring.
As a village, it was supposed to bring peace. She had been sure of that.
But peace evaded her.
The golden light painted the field like copper and rust on old tools, setting fire to the weeds claimed even this small patch of land from her. The horizon was bleeding, the sky behind it pulsing like a glowing forge under pressure. It was this "beauty", as others always praised it, that she could now see the sun, bloated and low, peeking at her from beyond the trees.
But Asvoria knew the sun. It had risen every day of her life as promised.
This was not the sun.
For a moment, one quick moment, a line of cloud slid across the orange disc like a heavy lid. The light dimmed, then flared again, and through it all. . . . it watched her.
It blinked.
An eye.
No. The Eye.
Somehow she knew who was watching her. She had always been meant for more. Even if her own people failed to see, she knew the primordials and the divine alike had not.
Loose dirt stirred around her feet, as if coaxed by something older than the land itself which invited her to speak the name, to acknowledge the devourer, the end-bringer, the fire that outlives the flame.
Surtr was watching.
He watched as she accepted the life that did not fit her. He watched as she weakened while he continued to rise like the burning sun. He even watched when she saw the young man who had gone unpunished earlier, ignoring her orders, walking back with his love. He was heading toward Svea, who had been visiting his family's home. They mocked her in front of Surtr, showing him how even this she could not tame.
"I'll grab it!" the young man shouted, ducking past Svea's outstretched hand as she tried to stop him from racing toward the mead hall.
Asvoria tilted her head, leaning sideways on the fence for a better view of what he had gone to grab. Her nails chipped the fence-post's wood at the sight of him bringing water for the mead hall. Water. Just as she had earlier asked. She hopped off the fencing, letting the hoe fall as she stormed into her house. She felt the urge to break things, to shout. But she could never let anyone else know how she was seething within.
Why?
Simple questions she had asked all her life hurried back to her, never willing to stay away long.
What is that Svea has been blessed with that I wasn't?
What does she have that I never did? What do the villagers see in her? What did my mother?
How am I meant to reconquer my home when she feeds them from her palm?
She breathed out heavily.
Mother, guide me. Tell me how to fix this.
This is my home. . . guide me so I may protect it, run it. The way you once did.
You swore to train me for my destiny. So help me.
Calling upon her mother's spirit gave her the courage she needed. Taking the abandoned leather wrap she had been so hesitant to pick up before, she wrapped it onto her braid.
Mother, open Svea's heart to see how things truly are. I need our home back. I need to eliminate Aeneas.
Mother. . . even Surtr has chosen me.