[X] Your Tome: It wasn't the first text you wrote, that had long been lost to time. It was a copy, written and illustrated for you by the High Priests of Jorvik shortly before you disappeared. It was unaltered, removed from centuries of religious reforms and changes. It was your words and the words of the gods, pure and uncorrupted by time.
[X] The Bunker.
/
"Why do you carry that book?" Astrid asked as you made your way through the maze of vine covered rusting automobiles. Her gaze almost always on the horizon. "It's your book, you wrote it. You know what's in it."
"It gives me comfort." You replied "And it's nice to have a reminder."
"But you wrote it."
"Over a thousand years ago. And well, in my experience human memory is a fragile thing."
"But your ancestors retained all those stories for hundreds of years without writing." Astrid commented "Surely the gods' will is harder to forgot?"
You sighed, pulling up old memories "When I set out to right the tomes, I gathered every Gothi of note I could find. In total, I had gathered some fifty men and women, from as far away as Estonia. Most of them remembered all the stories and legends I could remember, very few were the same. and some of the differences were drastic, entirely different endings, the tale having entirely different meaning, gods had different fates. I had two men nearly kill each other because one said Loki was imprisoned for killing Baldr while the other bizarrely insisted Loki was imprisoned after he called out the other gods for their misdeeds. It created confusion, confusion the Christians used to their advantage. One set of tomes, one set of canonical Sagas, that ended the confusion and strengthened the faith."
You traveled more for a time. Walking through the abandoned motorway. This had all been forest when you first became Queen, barely more than a collection of small villages outside the city walls when you gave up the throne. Now, this place could hold millions and still feel empty. It still frightened you in a way.
You were close now, hopefully they had not buried the damn thing under concrete.
"What are we looking for exactly?" Astrid asked
" A large knotted willow with a silver rune near it's base."
"What if they cut down the tree?" She pressed
You groaned "They better not have, I threatened to come back at the head of a Wild hunt, screaming for vengeance if they ever harmed the tree."
Astrid laughed.
You found the tree, well it wasn't the same willow, the roots were vastly different and more chaotic, but you saw the silver rune, Tarnished but largely intact.
It was only a word, Eternal. To the common folk this is the spot where you gained immortality. That spot lay a good deal away from Jorvik or Hull. This spot was a marker for something else entirely.
You turned your head to the right of the rune. There was a manhole cover. Exactly on the spot.
Astrid pulled it off, grunting and complaining about it's weight but refusing any offers of help.
She dropped it on the shattered concrete. She pulled out her flashlight as you both stared into it.
"What are we looking for?" She asked as you both stared into what seemed like an endless abyss.
"A metal hatch, made of solid silver. Inscribed with spells of protection...Oh no."
You spotted the hatch, it had been ripped open, from the inside.
"No no no." You muttered under your breath as you climbed down, barely hearing Astrid's protests.
He couldn't have escaped, not after all this time.
You made you way down to the bottom. Another door stood before you, almost completely covered in rust and bent open from the inside.
You stepped inside. Someone did extensive remodeling of this place, metal walls had been replaced with concrete, modern lights hung lifeless from the ceiling. Only the kings and Queen of Jorvik along with a select few of the Jomsvikings holy order should have ever known about this place. Why would they alter it so drastically.
"What is this place?" Your daughter asked
"A prison." You said simply "For a man over a thousand years older than me."
/
One Hundred Years into the Reign of Maer.
(1000 AD)
You sat on your throne, ideally playing with a bit of your long red hair. Soon the priests would come try to convince you to add your tales, how you escaped aging, to the Sagas. You didn't know how to feel about that, the Sagas were for heroes, gods, elves and Jötunn. what right did you, a mortal woman, have to share pages with them? It was tempting, and unnerving all the same. You decide when they came in you would...
[]Forbid it
[]Allow it
-[]Embellish the details
-[]Tell it simply and truthfully.
Something smashed against the massive doors to the throne room, sending chunks of door flying off. The bodies of two of your guards were tossed into the room, their necks snapped.
A man charged in. His hair wild and dirty blonde, with a red beard that stretched to his chest. He carried a bronze axe in his left hand and was dressed in bear skins.
"I have come for you, defiler!" He bellowed "Your sins against Wuotan end here."
"What sins are those?" You asked sternly, pulling a secret rope on your throne.
"You risk too much, walk too openly. We are meant for the shadows, our kind."
"Our kind?" You questioned.
Suddenly dozens of guards poured into the room, surrounding him in moments. The silent alarm had worked perfectly, as had the hidden guard posts.
The man fought for a moment but was quickly overpowered by the sheer number of men and forced to the ground.
You approached, carefully.
"Who are you?" you asked
"Als." He replied bluntly.
"And who are, our kind?" you asked again
"I was ancient when Rome first reached Gaul. I remember the days when Angles and Saxons worshiped the true gods. You mock Wuotan and Tor with your texts."
"So the gods are generous in their gifts." You commented "Guards, take him to the cells. I will have a great many questions for him later."
/
In the end Als never did tell you much, and he made it clear if he ever escaped he would kill you. so you had him locked in a cell, buried beneath Jorvik so he could rot there until the end of time.
Now he had escaped, with any luck the fall of civilization had killed him somehow.
"Wuotan?" Astrid asked
"His name for Odin I believe."
"He wrote it quite a few times along the wall, and well that."
Astrid pointed to the far end of the room, shining her flashlight upon a great mural.
In the Center was the Yggdrasil tree that connected the nine worlds. It was burning, most of it's branches reduced to ash. the dragon Níðhöggr twisting through what remained.
Below was a drawing of Odin, the one eyed god was rotting upon a field. to the left, Loki; trampled by the hooves of a thousand horses. Thor lay dead in a snake pit.
All around the tree were blasphemous drawings of the gods, dead or dying in often ironic fashions. The top of the tree was different, atop the tree stood Baldr, he was tangled in the burning branches. But someone was trying to pull him free. It was a woman clad in bronze armor, tomes and scrolls attached to her waist, a burning spear in her free hand. Her red hair flowing freely in the wind. Her face seemed very familiar...
"Oh." you said with sudden realization.
"Well, that's...different."Astrid commented
"He's mad." You declared
"He thinks your some sort of god." she noted.
"He wouldn't be the first." You replied dryly.
You wondered what to do with the mural. It was incredibly tempting to just ignore it, maybe even destroy it. But the man who left was several thousand years old, it might mean something important, or it might just be mad ravings of a man who's mind broke after hundreds of years in a cell.
Murial
[]Pretend you never laid eyes upon it
[]Have Astrid record the details of it.
[]Write in
/
Note: How we got the immortality had a big effect on Als's origin. Also this is based a bit off a CK2 event chain but that involved Caligula's immortal horse, and that really didn't fit the tone of things.
