Havoc and Retribution

We Never Surrender

Jay/Sigyn surveys the battlefield and their heart swells.

There are the Avengers, their superhuman family winging across the stars on the crystalline branches of the Yggdrasil. The remains of the Vanir resistance and the clairvoyants of Clarrappidium tackle the ghouls of Niflheim with explosive Vanir magic. Frigga and Heimdall lead Asgard into the fray, a warrior goddess and a guardian brilliant gold in the light of distance suns. And mixed in, never in one place, Loki rewrites his story, claiming his role as the god of tales.

Seeing the battle across the cosmos, Jay/Sigyn realize how much they love and are loved. They both gave up on themselves at different points in their lives, but it didn't diminish them and the people they love are still here for them. They remember those they destroyed too. Their gentle advisor, Dorany, their sister goddess, Athronei, Jay's mother, Helen, Sigyn's brother and father on Vanaheim and Jay's father Mark Strong. Being closer than ever to their true form once more, they can feel those souls here with them, a presence barely touching their skin, like the flutter of a gossamer curtain. They have not loved and lost so much to stop now.

Jay sees Hel coming for them, her face a dark echo of their own. She mentally checks in with Sigyn, finds her ancestor full of heat and power and joy and smiles. Hel moves towards them slowly, long enough for Sigyn to grasp Jaycee's forearm in their mind, bringing their foreheads to meet. They stay like that for an expanse of time that should be impossible but isn't because they are a goddess once again. "Shall we live?" Sigyn whispers to Jay in encouragement.

Jay nods, tears in both of their eyes. "As brightly and as beautifully as we can manage," she says. A tear falls down each of their right cheeks but they are smiling, an emotion too powerful to be named moving through them, both bright and dark at once.

Then they open their eyes.

They raise their dragon fang and bar their teeth in a devious smile.

Jay/Sigyn lights their dragon blade with fire, rainbow light reflecting in their eyes.

"Grab ahold of your powers," Sigyn whispers to Jay as Hel launches herself at them. "I know how to wield a weapon and we both know how to dance."

Understanding her meaning, Jaycee gathers her telekinesis around her body in slithering coils of glittering light. She feels their eyes burning with magic, feel Sigyn tensing the threads of their power and feels the song that bursts to life inside their body. And she finds that she knows the steps.

When Hel's blade strikes theirs, the goddess of death rebounds, telekinesis and bodily strength halting Hel's momentum and then reversing it with magical force. Jay/Sigyn follows Hel into the gap, legs loping across space and spins a strike for Hel's ribs that the goddess of death barely avoids. They are already moving when Hel tries to counterattack. Sigyn uses Jay's telekinesis to jump their body up and over Hel, their legs fanning out and a burst of telekinetic energy throwing Hel down hard into the trunk of Yggdrasil.

Something primal has woken up inside of Jaycee. It rolls out from their heart, flooding their limbs and she feels her brain wake up from a fog she didn't know she was mired in. Gone is the control valve, gone is the stop sign, gone are any of the barriers she ever put up inside of herself.

Sigyn can feel Jaycee uncoil her power inside of them and smiles. Her great-granddaughter has always had royal blood, could have been the greatest queen Vanaheim ever had. But being human and Vanir and Norn all at once has forged her into something more fiery than all three. When Jay sank deep into her sub-conscious after Alfheim, she found who Jaycee Strong is.

And in finding herself, she found transcendence.

Instead of thinking about her attacks, Jay lets her body, her Vanir magic and the soul of her great-grandmother fuse together to guide them.