Interlude
The Ossium's skies are heavy with magic. The seiðr occupies this space as readily as water occupies the seas. The lights touch down to the earth and dive back up towards the sky, growing bolder now, wanting to get a taste of this life unlike life.
A grand palace of ice crystal sits in the center of the plain, a copy of the one the mortals built in Ymir, or perhaps the artisans of that human world copied the gods'. It's difficult to tell when the gods began and mortal dreams and thoughts existed. The two feed each other and give each other life just as easily as they are forgotten.
Alarica exits the palace, their axe and broadsword at their hip. The lights glisten in their eyes, reflecting off their skin, muscles tensed and scars, freckles, and blemishes running across their face to shoulders.
Mother Metis steps out behind them, wearing just a shawl over her shoulders, hair tied loosely over her shoulder. They stand, at ease in their bodies. At ease in the world unseen by men. Father Ardo is out managing some trouble on the seas. Ships burning. Mortal men, like monsters, screaming to the depths.
Metis draws her arms around Alarica's shoulders, pressing her chin into the crevice where, once long ago, a wolf had bitten deep into the warrior's shoulder and tore out a chunk in their skin. The warrior flinches, the muscle and sinew healed, but not the memory of the pain.
Do you see them, Alarica? Metis's words echo in Sámi and the common tongue of Idriola. Alarica kisses her outstretched hand, urging the Northern lights to descend from the sky. A tendril of light twines around her neck, a caress, before returning to the world above.
"They are in Ardo's territory now, love." Alarica replies, sighing as the familiar scent of blood and fear floods their senses. "They want to press onto the other cities along the Borealis."
And the giant?
"Still playing our game, despite the curse. Still helping Cassia attempt to be queen."
Why? She asks. Why give them this impossible task?
Alarica snorts. "Love, don't play coy. We did this together. All of us." Alarica turns to the axe at their hip, the memory of when they cleaved heads from shoulders for kings who sat on thrones and feasted while their men were buried in the earth. "The mortals forgot us. They grew comfortable in their cities, behind their walls with their silverwork. They forgot that we existed at all. That, before their science and before their rationality, there were the gods. The stories they made up when they feared the shadows beyond their fire's edge. We protected them before they had that dangerous, dangerous concept..."
What concept?
"They thought themselves gods, but bad ones. Terrible ones that threw out the keepers of the seiðr, the jötunnand the myrkálfar. They salted their own fields, stupidly, with blood and gore. They made themselves impotent and tried building more and more to replace what they didn't have the power to do. They thought that they were so clever they could do it."
Mother Metis exhales, her breath leaving with scents of the spring flowers. The season of warmth and sun and life. They thought they could reverse death all on their own.
"Or cause more of it." Alarica stares off into the distance, their gaze reflecting endless sand dunes and a city constructed of brick that shines golden in the sun. "They have their eyes set on Rahasia. A war is coming."
The Three Siblings won't like that. Alarica replies. Cato. Aziz. Mother Metis's lips quirk in some private joke. Kane, the Blind God.
"So, we set a jötunn, the monster of their fairy stories, upon their greatest city. We curse the giant, so he does not forget his place. Cassia... the princess believes she can save them all. And she will try, valiantly, to do what the mortals in her city could not do in decades."
What will she do?
"She will make the mortals fear her as they once did us. She will unite them instead of letting them kill each other." Alarica turns back to Metis, pressing their forehead to hers. "Or she will die trying to save them from themselves."
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If you had the chance, would you want to meet Metis, Ardo, or Alarica?