The Breaker of the Oceans, Chapter 18

Its name rose on a breath that was neither word nor tone, but a layered crescendo of meaning. Hela caught it through the All-Speech, each piece unfurling like a slow, spiraling tune. The identity filled her mind with passing impressions: forest glades, silver streams, quiet dawn. It was not a simple name. She reckoned even a full minute of careful recitation might not do it justice. There had been a time, in Alfheim, when the elves of Alfheim shared a similar notion of naming. Their greatest trees bore titles shaped from whispered songs that no mortal tongue could form. Hela let the memory pass—her father, Odin, guiding her along paths that shone with soft, fey light. Another life, another era.

Now she stood in these sundered halls, her black cloak still caked with Valyria’s ash. A narrow beam of murky sunlight cut through a ruined window, glinting on the ragged chain that bound the small figure before her. Twig, that was what it called itself and by that name it shall be called. The other name was too vast, too deep. She watched as the Ifequevron’s single red eye flickered with faint amusement.

A smirk played at the corners of her lips. 

“Twig suits you,” she said, voice low. “You’ll forgive me for not singing your real name.”

Twig inclined its head just enough that the chains rattled. 

“No offense taken,” it said, the words laced with a thin rasp. A sheen of sweat clung to its brow—if it was sweat at all. This place was hot, after all, the air thick and stinking of sulfur. The battered walls bore scorch marks that glowed faintly in the half-light, each etched with the residue of old sorcery. “In truth, even my people seldom used our full names when we communed.” 

Hela glanced around the chamber once more, letting her gaze pass over the soiled floor. The hush of the ruin pressed in. She knelt, brushing a palm against the blackened stone. Her cloak shifted with the movement, revealing the pommel of Brightroar at her hip. 

“How did you end up here?” she asked, glancing from chain to chain, each link carved with runes. The letters pulsed in a weak, crimson glow, as though warding the creature from any attempt to free itself.

Twig breathed, slowly and shallowly. Its slender shoulders rose and fell, a visible effort in each motion. “Call it mischance. My kin seldom roam so far from the forest. But I was compelled to learn what I could of Valyria, like you–perhaps. My curiosity got the better of me and I wandered too far away from my home. The blood sorcerers captured me, bound me for their… rites.”

Hela let her fingers trace one link of the chain. It hummed, or perhaps shuddered under her touch. She sensed power, ancient but waning. 

“Rites,” she repeated, scanning the runes. She recognized a handful—Valyrian glyphs akin to the ones etched in so many battered artifacts she had found scattered across these ashen plains. “And you can’t free yourself without the blood sorcerers? I cannot break these chains–not as I am now. They feed on the land’s malignant force. I have endured.”

A dry laugh came from Twig’s throat, a sound that stuttered into a cough. “They died. The Doom claimed them. Their spells remained, locked in place. I have lingered.”

She exhaled, a soft hush in the gloom. Her gaze lingered on that single red eye, on the stumps where limbs might once have been. She reached for the chain, a scowl tugging at her mouth. 

“Are your people immortal?” She let the chain slip between her fingers. The runes flickered, the power curling around her hand like a feeble serpent. She felt the faint prick of wards designed to keep a creature pinned to the mortal plane.

Twig lifted its chin. “In a manner. We live for hundreds of years, certainly, and so do our brothers–the Giants. When we die, our bodies are consigned to the earth, where our minds join and become one with the Old Gods of rock, stone, sky, and river. In a way, we never truly die.”

Hela’s face remained impassive. She tightened her grip, necroblades stirring in her flesh, a subtle ripple that brushed the surface of her skin. She thought of slicing through the chain. Yet those runes carried a nuance she did not fully grasp. Cutting it might free the Ifequevron, or it might release something else. Her eyes narrowed. “Do you want me to cut you loose?”

The Ifequevron managed a short nod. “That would be a kindness. Unless you prefer to see me rot here.”

Her gaze dipped to the runes again, measuring their shape. She recalled the dwarves’ warnings about meddling in spells left by unknown magi. A single misstrike might unleash a pent-up curse. But she had no fear of mortal curses. The powers of this world were far weaker than any world she’d ever been to, including Midgard. Still, caution tugged at the edge of her thoughts.

She pressed her palm to the chain, channeling a spark from the necroblades. The metal hissed at contact, runes flaring bright gold. A low hum reverberated through the chamber, stirring dust from the walls. She felt the wards push back, resisting her intrusion. Her lips curved in a near-silent snarl. Then she inhaled, letting a fraction of her old might surface, the same force that once shattered armies under Asgard’s banner. She willed it into her hand, pressing forward.

The runes crackled, golden turning to white-hot. The chain glowed red near her fingers. She clenched her jaw, feeding more of her power into it, until a crack formed, a jagged line racing along the link. A snap resounded, echoing through the hall. The link broke, the runes guttering out in a swirl of sparks. Chain segments rattled to the floor. A hush followed, thick as a final breath.

Twig sagged, the glow in its chest dimming, but it no longer stood bound. The creature stumbled forward, nearly collapsing. Hela caught it with one hand, her grip firm under its slight weight. The chain slid away from its body, runes flickering one last time before dying. The air around them felt calmer, as though some ancient tension had dissolved.

She eased Twig to the ground, letting the Ifequevron’s light weight sink into the dust. Its chest rose in a ragged gasp, the air thick with the stale tang of long-dead magic. One red eye blinked once, then closed, then opened again. Its breath rattled. Ash swirled around them in slow eddies, pale against the ruined stone.

“I thank you,” Twig said. Its voice came thin and raw. And then its skin began to break away in delicate flakes, each fragment drifting on the still air. Hela watched with narrowed eyes, seeing the creature’s form crumble by inches. Twig gave a low exhalation, glancing down at its own disintegrating flesh. 

“The same sorcery that chained me also kept me breathing. Now that it’s undone...” It trailed off.

Hela knelt, steadying the Ifequevron’s shoulder. The flakes of skin fell like powder, revealing raw bone beneath, dark patches of muscle dissolving before her gaze. She felt the faintest stir of something in her chest—a flicker of memory from when she herself had tasted death’s edge. She blinked, forcing away the thought.

“You’ll die free,” she said, voice quiet in the hush. Her words echoed faintly among toppled pillars and crumbling arches. A mild breeze carried sparks of old magic.

Twig’s eye flicked closed, a faint rasp leaving its lips. 

“Better than dying a prisoner,” it whispered, each syllable formed with effort. Hela said nothing. She recalled her own final stand, Surtur’s blade cleaving Asgard’s heart, her own life slipping away while she remained bound by half-forgotten oaths and her father’s lies. The memory of that binding coiled in her thoughts, the sense of a cage she had not realized she wore until it was too late.

She rose, stepping back a pace. A swirl of ash drifted between them. The Ifequevron’s body continued to crumble, bits of flesh and bone dissolving into the pall of dust. She watched in silence, no comfort in her lips, no illusions in her hands. Her cloak stirred at her ankles.

“My name is Hela,” she said. “Once, I was the Goddess of Death. Now, I don’t know what I am.”

The Child’s single eye flickered. Pale flakes of its skin fluttered away with each breath. A low sigh escaped its mouth, and it seemed to smile, turning its face to her. “Now, you can be anything you want to be, Hela.”

It looked to the ceiling, an arc of broken stone overhead. The ashen gloom pressed in, swirling with each faint wind. Muscle and sinew fell away from the Child, sprinkling the floor with dust, until little remained but a frail husk. “I know this may seem a lot,” it rasped, “but will you grant my dying wish–if at all possible?”

Hela inclined her head. “Ask.”

“Bury my heart beneath a Weirwood Tree…”

Before she could speak again, its body slumped forward, half-reduced to powder. No breath came. One last shudder, and the Ifequevron was gone. Hela stood still, cloak brushing against the worn stone. She watched the faint outline of the creature scatter in the wind, like a dream fading at dawn.

Then, from the dead center of the dust, a red crystal pulsed. She crouched, reached out, and picked it up. A heart, glimmering with power and faint heat, each beat echoing life and death. She held it close, gazing at the swirling energies laced in its surface. Her breath came slow. It was beautiful, in a somber way, and she did not question what enchantments it might hold. She recalled the creature’s final request.

“Very well,” she said. She slipped the heart into her pouch with no flourish. She doubted Essos had Weirwood groves, but there was time. The dead waited.

She rose, scanning the chamber for anything else of note. Old wards stained the walls, the mortar scorched by ancient fires. Debris and charred bones lay scattered, relics of a sorcerer’s lair. Her eyes narrowed on a small black chest set behind a fallen column. Its surface gleamed like wet ink in the half-light, and red markings crawled along its face. Valyrian steel, by the look of it, sealed with a cunning lock. She tested the lid, found it immovable. She pressed harder. The lock did not yield.

A faint frown touched her lips. Even in her might, she could not simply break Valyrian steel. But she carried other weapons. She summoned a small necrosword. It formed from her flesh with the barest hiss, black as midnight, edges flickering with a subtle shimmer. She slipped its point between lock and lid, twisted. The necrosword cut through the lock with a dull snap, the metal fracturing like brittle glass.

She lifted the lid. A breath of warm vapor rose, smelling of cinder and life. Inside lay a single egg, deep crimson, the shell etched with patterns that resembled living scales. Steam coiled off its surface as though it housed a tiny furnace. She let her hand hover above the egg, feeling the heat radiate through her glove. Within it was a crystallization of power, a wellspring of magic–dormant. How one egg had so much of it was something of a mystery. She looked closer. 

A dragon egg. Quickening with each breath of this cursed air. The swirl of ashen gloom made the shell’s color glow darker, as if the ember within pulsed, waiting. That certainly explained a lot. She let out a slow breath. She had not expected to find such a thing here, hidden under wards and gloom. She cast a glance around the chamber, as though checking if some guardian might appear. None did. 

She closed the chest’s lid, though she did not lock it. The necrosword dissolved back into her flesh, leaving the chest free to open at her will. She slipped the whole thing into the crook of her arm, balancing its weight. The egg felt warm through the black steel walls. She wondered if House Targaryen or some other might pay dearly for such a treasure. Or if she would keep it.

Huh… she heard that dragons only ever obeyed those of Valyrian blood. Was there truth to that legend or was it just a means for the Valyrians to keep all the power to themselves? After all, she tamed and trained Fenrir–how hard can a dragon be?