Year 5516, Day 40, Ymir World Calender…

North-Eastern Ocean, Wall of Storm Region…

 

The waves rocked, the ocean roared, out of the window lay a thunderous wall of wind.

The emerald coloured sickly sea parted as five titanic vessels, each one pulled along by a quartet of serpentine beasts, navigated the monstrous waves.

Chains clanked around their bodies.

Within his cabin sat The Emperor of Nidhogg, hailing from the lands of Alheim.

His name was Sigurd.

He was a tall and blond haired man, draped in gold trimmed black garments.

His sole company was a woman clad in what was best described as the least amount of clothing she could get away with.

Her bracelets, anklets, belt bosom and tiara were crafted from fine gold, in addition to which she wore a veil, cloak, skirt and sleeves.

Otherwise, she was just one step away from being naked.

Many jewels dangled from her garb on golden pearly threads.

Her earrings as well were so adorned, but she was not a wealthy woman.

One look into her eyes told the truth of it for those windows to the soul were vacant and hollow, devoid of any will at all. 

Such was the sight beheld by his general on entering. With a knock and a permissive “Come in” the door gave way to a ghostly white man in Sapphire armor.

He was the strongest of Sigurd’s Generals, Ahzi, Head of the House of Dahaka.

He was known to many as the slayer of Avance, and by that merit the mightiest warrior in this part of the world. “You should not come over in this dreary weather,” Said the Emperor, who glanced out into the wall of stormy wind, “Even you may die to that.”

The old General did not dismiss his warning.

Were it any other man, they would indeed have perished.

This wall of wind, which barred passage between the lands of Alfheim and Muspelheim, was just that dangerous.

Only their Skithblathnirs, vessels so large as to near enough count for their own small cities, could punch a way through it unscathed.

Their plans so far had gone off without a hitch, thanks to Cain’s machinations their foes were divided, Venus had fallen and, though neither of the men present knew this, Jupiter had also succumbed to the machinations of their nominal allies.

“The expected chain reaction,” Said the General, “Olympus of Midgard will invade Muspelheim from the West, Abel of Asgard will not ignore that, and the Immortals of Svartalfheim have also started to move.” The Emperor nodded.

Every war in this world was a swift undertaking.

Every major power kept their neighbor in check, therefore not even they could afford to delay the outcome by even a day.

“When the time comes, I leave the vanguard to you,” Said the Emperor.

“Acknowledged,” Replied the General.

The cabin gave way to a morbid silence then.

Yes, morbid, strange as that must sound, because for some strange reason that the General himself could not understand his gut continued to churn with unease.

This was growing more and more unbearable as they got closer to the continent they were to invade.

Why? What was there to fear? His gut feelings were rarely mistaken, so he knew better than to ignore them, but then what was he missing?

The Emperor raised his head to find that Ahzi was staring off into space.

The man began to ponder Rusalka, her home, Venus City, and the plight of both.

After all this had all started with that very city being burned to the ground.

He had been there, he had watched from the shadows as fifty men of Cain decimated a city on that day.

Avance, Lord of Mercury, came to their rescue, only to die at his hand.

Everything went exactly as planned.

What was the reason then?

Why did he feel such an inexplicable unease?

What had he seen that day, yet failed to fully grasp?

“Are you worried?” The Emperor asked, and then the General snapped back to reality.

“It’s nothing, Milord.” Sigurd did not believe it.

There was nothing wrong with having apprehension prior to a war.

He turned his eye upon the female slave from before as she walked back into the room to take their empty glasses.

He couldn’t help but notice how Ahzi’s gaze fell upon her from the moment she appeared.

His eye remained on her for the longest time, but there was not to be any lust in him, only, oddly, melancholy.

The Emperor shook his head and sighed knowingly.

He pointed at the woman with his thumb and said with a cold smile,

“Shall I have her accompany you tonight?” The General turned to face him.

For a brief moment he forgot himself and allowed himself to slip out a half-troubled and half-disgusted gaze.

Sigurd did not mind.

The Emperor’s focus instead fell upon the necklace of his companion.

Fist sized, free of dirt but clearly not cleanly cut, it was a pure rock of clear fire red color.

The Beacon of a God, a Beacon of Grimnir.

The Emperor’s own order saw that the thing had returned to its rightful owner.

He thought it very funny how something so mundane had the power to call down a God into this mortal plain.

“How’s that stab wound Her Majesty gave you when you took Lady Gudrun for a mistress?” Asked the General.

“All better,” Said the Emperor without shame.

The words came somewhat forced, however.

After all, he loved his bride, Brynhilda, but because of politics he had to accept Gudrun, who had the bloodline of the old royal dynasty flowing through her veins.

Frankly, Brynhilda’s reaction was more extreme than anyone had expected but the Emperor still hoped, as any sonaive man might hope, that the two women might learn to co-exist one day.

Yet, they never would, they never could, because when he dies and there begets competition for whose child would sit the throne…

Well, he knew that Brynhilda at least was worried about what would happen then.

“What about you, are you still thinking about Rosa?” Asked the Emperor, whose eye once more turned to the Beacon around his general’s neck.

Ahzi froze in thought, then grasped the stone quite gently.

“Ahzi...she isn’t your daughter,” Sigurd told him, and Ahzi nodded in turn.

He understood, but his gaze still turned towards that slave girl who was hard at work in the adjacent kitchen.

Once, he had fallen in love with a simple slave like her.

He’d done the unthinkable and given her that Beacon.

The stone’s light then restored her free will, but she never deigned to speak with him again.

Then, at last, the stone was passed on to her daughter, to Rosa.

Now it had returned to him, its rightful owner, all because of a command from his Emperor.

Rosa, despite being the daughter of a slave, had a whole host of risens to become the Lady of House Tiamat and the other of Sigurd’s trusted Generals.

Ahzi was proud of her, but for this same reason it was proven; she wasn’t his daughter.

That woman hadn’t inherited his powers, the powers of the Dahaka Family, instead, she was of Tiamat’s line, the house dragon’s loyalty to her had all but proved it.

“I often wonder,” Said the old general as he stared upon slave girl, “When will it be our turn to face justice for our actions? When will it be we who have courted death one too many times...and received its smile.”

Sigurd looked into his glass of wine with a heavy brow.

Grimnir, the God they worshiped, was the strongest of the Vanir, which also meant he was the one who would leave this planet next.

Once that happened, once their God fled this plain, their empire would lose its backer.

That day wouldn’t be tomorrow, or even a year’s time, it might even be a century before it happened, but it was coming and he had to prepare for it.

That’s what this war was about, at least in some respects.

He sighed again and thought that if only he had not inherited this slave driven economy from his predecessors of ten generations.

There was nothing for it, however, Sigurd could only lament that when their God leaves them so too does his blood, which was used to create those witless slaves, would go with him.

He could only do what he could to mitigate the damage caused by that coming day.

“Death is a fickle maiden. At least for today, it’s not our turn to receive her favor,” He said, holding up his glass for a toast.

Yes, it wasn’t their turn to face the reaper’s smile, not yet.

The Centurion Kingdom had started all of this four generations ago, and now it would come back to bite them.

The Nidhog army would slaughter all of their enemies and offer the lot to The Blood of Grimnir.

This time, if need be, he was even willing to command Ahzi to invoke that Beacon and call upon their God to personally deal with his Empire’s oldest and most persistent adversary.