Choices

Chapter 84
(Present)
Cephera stared at her wedding ring. Old memories still rushing through her mind. This ring was not the only one she ever had, for a brief time she had a second ring and that one was shrouded in mystery.
(Past Cephera)
"You're worried over a set of cuffs that you and mother found lying on the floor." Loki looked amused, Cephera was not.
"They disappeared." She reminded him.
"And yet all prisoners are accounted for." Loki reminded her in kind. She bit her lip, he was right. "You know what I think?" He asked a teasing look crossing his face.
"What?" She asked reluctantly.
"I'm thinking some sexual mischief gone astray from the bedroom." He smirked and Cephera rolled her eyes.
"Right, magical cuffs, used by the prisons to contain magic, somehow used for bondage sex instead out in the halls. And then they realized they left them behind and 'poof' they summon them away." She put her hands to her hips glaring at him.
"Not completely impossible." Loki chuckled and Cephera rubbed her head and rolled her eyes.
She left Loki to his work in his tower, mulling over more magic books. Cephera had lost her diligent nature where magic was concerned, she still practiced but not as often. Loki knew much more than her, they no longer did classes together. It just sort of stopped when the children came into things.
She skipped down the stairs two at a time and landed at the bottom with a crunch. The bottom of her thin lined shoe hit something and it felt like a rock beneath it.
Stepping off it, Cephera looked down and lying on the floor was a ring. A golden wedding ring. She picked it up and inspected the design on the outside. All Asgardian rings where engraved with designs. This one had a vine like motif with tiny flower petals. Cephera's had feathers and wings.
Knowing full well the rings were usually very important to the wearer Cephera began her search for its owner.
***
No one knew who owned the ring. Odin had promised to send anyone who might be looking for one to her. Cephera neglected to tell of its design, easier to know who it really belonged to if they could tell her.
She placed it on the table at her side of the bed before dressing in her nightgown. She wasn't sure why she bothered putting on a dressing gown at all. Loki would show up soon and she would not go to bed in it.
In fact, Cephera never slept wearing anything, but she didn't go walking around the room nude, at least not when she wasn't trying to distract her husband.
Forgetting the ring, she sat down at Loki's old worn oak desk and began her own little study as she waited for her husband to come to bed. Her day had been odd to say the least. The mystery cuffs earlier that day, the wedding ring.
She yanked open a thick geography book. She was attempting to find a body of water deep enough to accommodate Jör. If it couldn't be on her world or Asgard it meant Jör would have to go somewhere they weren't familiar with.
It burned her heart to have to be separated from him. Cephera enjoyed going to visit him after breakfast, then Fenrir afterward and finally Hela after lunch.
She and Loki had their own routines on when they spent time with them, some days it was together but most were not.
***
It was coming. She could feel it, she dreaded it. It was all her fault, she should have seen it coming, should have stopped it.
Cephera was confused. Why did she feel this way? Her heart pounded as light flooded her eyes and screams echo'd all around her. She couldn't see, couldn't feel. She was surrounded in darkness now and a pair of wide blue eyes opened before her, tears spilling into the darkness.
"Don't go," it begged her from a mouth Cephera couldn't see.
Before she could respond Cephera woke. She sat straight up in bed panting and shaking from the reminance of a dream she could no longer remember. Curiously she brought her left hand up. It was clenched hard and when she opened it the wedding ring was pressed into her palm. Cephera looked to the bedside table and indeed she'd grabbed the ring in her sleep.
Shaking off the creepy feeling she got, she placed the ring back down, staring at it a long time before she settled close to her husband and fell back to sleep.
***
Three more nights of dark dreams that faded when she woke and Cephera was beginning to wonder more about whom owned the ring. It was always in her hand when she woke, and so naturally she blamed the ring for being cursed somehow.
By the forth night she struggled to remember what the dream was about, but all she had was the fading feeling of hopelessness, guilt, and fear. By now she dropped the ring to the bedside table, not questioning its strange presence in her hand.
In the morning she woke, her eyes staring at the table as she blinked awake and the ring was gone. Sitting up, Cephera instantly looked to her palm and there was no ring. She jumped from the bed, waking Loki as she pulled the sheets off the bed leaving him naked and confused.
"What are you doing?" He asked groggily.
"The ring's gone," she told him, half frantic.
"What ring?" He rubbed his eye lazily, sitting up to stare at her.
"The wedding ring!"
"How did you manage to lose your wedding ring?" His eyes were wide now.
"Not mine, the one I found." Irritation swept over her.
"You found a ring? When?" Now he gave her a strange look.
"Haha, very funny." She wasn't amused at his teasing, but after a second of him just staring at her she realized he wasn't joking at all. "Loki, the wedding ring I stepped on four days ago that's been giving me nightmares."
He shook his head getting annoyed with her in return. "Cephera, I don't know what you're talking about." Cephera was about to argue further and stopped herself.
"Oh whatever," she said and went to the bathroom to start the bath. She didn't need the haunted ring anyway.
***
But throughout the day it played on her mind. She asked Frigga, Sif, and even went so far as to ask Thor but no one remembered the ring. It's like it never existed.
"Am I going crazy?" Cephera asked Hela when she'd stopped to visit her. At least Hela would be truthful on that.
"Sadly, I don't think so," Hela replied with a heavily irritated sigh. She wasn't happy to see Cephera show up with all her concerns and curiosities. "You ever think that whoever took the ring made everyone forget."
"Really? Why? Why go through that kind of trouble? Why do I rememeber it?" Cephera asked.
"Do I look like a fountain of information?" Hela barked. "I'm speculating here. It's probably rolled under your bed somewhere. Or maybe is disappeared like the cuffs" She waved at Cephera to leave her alone.
"I checked under the bed." Cephera muttered with a sigh. "And we all still rememeber the cuffs." She added.
"You said the ring was causing you to have nightmares, maybe it's best it's gone." Hela added when she realized Cephera wasn't leaving any time soon.
"I suppose you're right." Cephera frowned.
"I am always right," Hela corrected. Silence followed and then a knock on Hela's bedroom door. A guard opened it after Hela called out.
"The All Father has made a decision." He told Hela.
"Excellent." Hela replied a smile lighting up her usually angry face.
"A decision? You've been to see Odin?" Cephera asked, standing.
"I don't need your permission for these things, don't sound so surprised." Hela chided Cephera as though she were the child.
"Hang on a minute." Cephera made to grab Hela to get more answers but Hela's blank eye socket blazed red, something Cephera hadn't seen happen before and it frightened her.
"Go fetch father," she said walking off with the guard.
***
As much as Cephera didn't enjoy being bossed round by Hela, she felt Loki should know something was going on.
She fetched him just as Hela had wanted and together they rushed over to the throne room. Hela was stood near Odin and Tyr was with them, he was beaming proudly.
Odin handed Hela a rather odd looking gnarled staff with a black gem on top. He noticed Cephera and Loki coming in and gave a nod.
"What's going on?" Loki asked. Odins face changed.
"You didn't tell them?" He spoke to Hela in a disappointed tone.
"I'm no child who needs their parents permission." She drawled before setting her eyes to her father. "I've asked dear grandpa to find me a position worthy of my gifts." Hela stared at her skeleton hand. "I don't belong here, I want to be gone from here." She added.
"So you make plans to leave without telling us?" Loki gestured to himself and Cephera. Cephera's heart was pounding. She knew Hela wasn't happy, but she had never been sure if anything could ever make Hela happy.
"I told her to fetch you didn't I. I'm telling you now." She smirked.
"Where will you go?" Loki asked glancing at the staff.
"To the dark side of Valhalla." She responded.
"We've named it Hell in honor of its new mistress." Tyr's smile never left his face.
"The lands of the dead? No one but the dead can enter there." Loki stepped forward. Cephera stood in silence, not sure what to say.
"I can. Tyr has been checking into it for me, he assures me that I can enter and rule over the souls that find themselves inside my new domain." She seemed pleased, more than Cephera had ever seen her.
"Hela, think this through," Loki cautioned.
"I have." She replied nodding. Stamping the staff to the floor, it whirled and vanished leaving a spark of red light that followed Hela's every movement.
"Let her go Loki," Cephera pulled at his sleeve. "You're happy with this choice? This will make you happy?" Cephera made sure looking at Hela with sadness and understanding.
"I've never been more sure of anything." Hela agreed.
"Yes, but you have thought this through completely. If you do this, you'll never see us again?" Cephera had a small hope that Hela might have some sort of attachment to them, but doubted it.
"Stop that, your concern is not welcome. You want me to wallow around this place forever, masquerading as though I'm normal?" She hissed and glared. "To rule a world of my own. To be around the dead and lifeless, just like me." She grinned, a look that never looked right because her face was only half flesh.
"You'll be missed." Cephera looked to Loki.
"Very much so," he agreed.
Hela rolled her eyes. "I leave as soon as possible." She announced pulling her cloak over her shoulders.
"So soon?" Cephera's mouth dropped in a frown.
"Were you hoping for a more happy goodbye? To have one last chance to make the best motherly impression on me? Are you disappointed...,"
"That's enough Hela." Loki intervened wiping the smug look off her face.
"Fine," Hela stepped forward and reached out toward Cephera. "Something to remember me by then, a token of appreciation for keeping us alive when everyone else wanted us dead." Hela offered.
Cephera felt hesitant to claim Hela's flesh hand in a shake. Hela was never nice. Still, she didn't want to turn her down. Cephera took her hand and Hela's second hand came up and grabbed her arm between her wrist and elbow.
The skeleton fingers burned into her skin red hot. Cephera screamed in pain attempting to yank away. Loki had yelled at Hela and made a grab for her to detach them but Hela's red light engulfed her and pulled her to her new world by the new magic afforded to her by her soulstaff.
As Hela's image faded away her voice rang clear, "Until I see you in death, Mother."
Cephera was cradling the arm that still burned. Her teeth clenched. When Loki was finally able to get Cephera to show him the damage a ash-like hand print was imprinted onto her skin like a tattoo.
"To the healing room, they will mend you." He forced her to walk away from where the three of them had just been standing. Cephera was too stunned to react to any thought of her own.
Odin was calling out to them but Cephera hadn't heard his words.
(Present day, Cephera)
Cephera pulled up the sleeve of her dress and looked down at the handprint her daughter left behind. They never could heal it from her, and rumors began to circulate that the mark was Hela's claim of death. The mark of the damned.
Cephera never took heed to the rumors. After her initial shock wore off she was more interested in the fact Hela called her mother for the first, and probably, the only time.

Notes