Havoc and Retribution

Mirror, Mirror, How She Falls

Hel brings them into the stars, raging, dragging their body towards Yggdrasil's roots.

She is humming, body vibrating like it isn't completely under her control. She thought she had the Sigyndottir firmly on her side, but Jaycee is swimming through their collective unconsciousness, her soul ablaze with knowledge from Athronei. Hel can feel her control on her slipping and in her own frustration, she can't steer them well through the stars.

Hel always knew what she and Sigyn used to be. She remembers being the dragon, powerful and dreadful. She sailed the cosmos with Athronei at her side, the lady of death a swirling black hole of power. Unlike their bright sisters, she and Athronei had been the darkness upon which the stars are spilled. There was a kind of delight they took in their duty to the end of all things.

But Hel is not Athronei's sister. When she ceased to be the dragon and became herself and Sigyn, she regretted her choice almost immediately. All of that raw, cosmic power was wasted on some Vanir peasants who forgot the dragon's sacrifice in a century. Her memory of being the dragon grew faint as Sigyn became part of the royal line of Vanaheim, her own memories dimming over time as well. No longer one of the Norns, they both became lesser goddesses. As they both forgot who they had been, the universe had settled into a different kind of order.

Hel left Vanaheim, enraged and sickened by its people's fawning over her twin. She remembered the darkness of her sister Athronei, the power she once had as an echo in her mind. So, she chose Niflheim, built a kingdom of the dead, found some kind of hollow satisfaction for reasons she was forgetting day by day.

She spent centuries losing her memories of what she had been. The ghosts of her darkness were all she could cling to, the faint memories that she was somehow associated with death. She even forgot the dragon for a time, although the blades at her hips were a constant reminder when he mind dulled. But she never forgot her twin, the auburn-haired goddess on Vanaheim, now a princess, soon to be queen. How she hated how fiercely her sister could still fight, even with her memories of their past gone. She'd found a place in the light while Hel had rotted slowly in her kingdom.

Then, Tyr came.

Enraged about the loss of Sigyn to the stars, he has done research, torturing historians on Vanaheim, traveling Yggdrasil until he found the story of the dragon, the Ice Peaks and Sigyn's shadowy twin. He reminded her of her past, reawakened her memories until she was a bonfire of hatred.

Then, they planned.

Tyr would find Sigyn while Hel amassed enough power and troops to take down the weak vassal state Vanaheim had become. She dreamed nightmares bigger than his, of burning her sister out of the roots of the Yggdrasil, removing her thread from existence entirely. He only wanted Sigyn to pay for humiliating him. She wanted the Yggdrasil to wither and die from its core.

Then, they found her.

Sigyn first, then the surprise of her half-Midgardian spawn.

The daughter, Lokasenna, with her mother's spitfire spirit but no Vanir powers, just vaguely attuned to the Bifrost magic in her blood.

But the granddaughter, oh the granddaughter. Hel had been surprised and amazed, then covetous and disgusted by the power the toddler had thrown off. Lokasenna had no powers, but even as a child, Helen Strong was able to glance into the future, to bend time and space around her.

Tyr, being the bull-headed man he was, infiltrated and took over Warren Biochemical from the inside, intent on twisting Sigyn's company into something monstrous. Hel remembers Sigyn fighting Tyr, injuring him so badly that he'd had to retreat. She'd been a lion in defense of granddaughter, would never let him get close enough to run the evil experiments roiling in his mind. She sent him limping back to Hel.