Choices

Chapter 95
"Send me to Midgard now," Rorik clenched his fist in frustration. A guard had come to fetch him. Heimdall had seen his aunt in danger but had not been able to save her with the Byfrosts beam, she simply moved around too much.
Rorik should have gone to her sooner. He felt ashamed that months had gone by and he hadn't even gone to say hello, now he might never get a second chance.
"I can send you, but I am unable to see her." Heimdall told him.
"Some all-seeing eyes you've got," Rorik growled. His mother would be angry at him for allowing his anger to show. She always stressed that being calm in the face of danger was best.
"The waves swept her away faster than I expected." Heimdall sounded regretful, but it didn't make Rorik feel any less angry.
"You were suppose to watch her." Rorik roared.
"I have many things to watch. The event with your aunt happened so quickly, I'm lucky to have caught sight of it at all." Heimdall shoved his sword into the pedastal. "With each passing moment, the ocean swallows her. When you land be cautions that you also do not get swept away."
Rorik hated the gatekeepers calm demeanour, but he couldn't argue any further. He stepped to the swirling tunnel and felt the jolt as he was sucked inside.
(Cephera)
The first breath she inhaled was stale and salty. Her head pounded. She lay along dark gravel that held a shine of deep blue. Water no longer surrounded her.
Lifting her head she noticed the sky above was red with swirls of white like creamer just poured into a colorful hot beverage. There was no mood, no stars, and no sun.
Her eyes came to rest on a person who materialized nearby.
"Hela?" Cephera questioned staring wide eyed at her stepdaughter as she climbed to her feet. "How..." She began. Hela stood with her staff in hand. A cape strung across her shoulders and her dark hair loose to hang to her waist.
She was just as Cephera remembered.
"You are dead." Hela stated with an indifferent shrug.
"What?" Cephera was taken aback by the news. "Dead?" It wasn't possible.
"Drowned, even your kind can't avoid that." She replied, her tone neutral.
"The baby?" Cephera touched her belly. Cephera assumed that because she was dead she must be in Helheim, but how?
"Dead, I assume. My only interest was in your soul." Hela shrugged.
"I have to go back. If I can get back..." Cephera felt panicked.
"Get back? Like opening a gate and running home?" Hela laughed, an echo across the dead landscape. "What part of dead don't you understand?" Hela's mocking tone irritated Cephera.
"Don't play with me, you can let my soul go before my brain dies. I know you Hela, you like to play with people. If I were dead I wouldn't be in Helheim." Cephera insisted.
"Maybe, but we have something to discuss." Hela's voice held an odd tone of concern.
"Is it about Loki? Is your father okay?" Cephera's train of thought turned around.
"He's fine," Hela assured her. "It's of your child's father we must chat." Cephera was stunned only for a moment.
"You know who he is?" She asked stepping closer.
"You do as well," Hela told her. "He is the same man who forced myself and my brothers into exsistance. The same man whose whispers have been reaching my father's ears while he slept, urging him into letting the Jotuns into Asgard the day of the coronation. The same man who enchanted Thor." Hela look pleased that she'd known all this.
"And you never told us?" Cephera was appalled and angry, and yet not surprised.
"You're affairs mean nothing to me." Hela waved her hand at the notion.
"Then why now?" Cephera demanded.
"Because had I known what his overall schemes were leading too, I would have told you long ago." Hela paused and Cephera was becoming impatient, a very hard thing to get her to feel.
"Who is he Hela? What is he plotting?" Cephera urged her.
Hela, for once, looked afraid. A deep terrified look in her green eye before she blinked it away.
"He is Loki. Not our Loki but an older, much more volatile one. A man whose mischief knows no bounds. He's torn his world asunder with his mischief. Brought about the end of the Aesir and has grown tired of playing with those left behind. He's come here to cause mayham. To corrupt my father into becoming just like him. To make my father cause another Armageddon, Ragnorok." Cephera noted the shiver than ran over Hela and made her stiffen.
"The prophecy Odin knew about back when you were conceived." Cephera swallowed, her throat feeling dry. "Where is he now?" Cephera asked.
"I don't know. I only know of the things he's caused, but not where he's been hiding." Hela's frown deepened. "I have a sort of connection with him." She admitted. "It's minimal now that I'm in this world. It's dimmed."
"I don't understand." Cephera shook her head.
"And you don't have time to. Whilst you are here I need your help to pull aide through from his world. His wife, Sigyn."
"Sigyn?" Cephera thought of the Prose. "I've read tales about her." A sinking feeling hit Cephera's stomach. "Was I never suppose to marry Loki? Had we been fighting against fate all these years?"
Hela laughed. "You are thinking far too much into this. There are no fates to carry out a chain path for you. Your life is what you make of it. These tales you are referring to, have been created by this old Loki. He's fed his own story to the old people of Midgard. He's narcissistic that way." She furrowed her brow. "His marriage to Sigyn was created on deceit, while yours was love." Hela gave an awkward smile.
"The difference has made a huge change in my father and how his life could have been. You relationship has saved him from making the same choices as the old Loki, so of course for his plan to work he needed you gone. He needed my father isolated and abandoned. He thought getting you caught bedding someone else would be the nail that sealed the coffin, and would cause my father to lose his mind, but he underestimated the trust you have in one another. Sickening trust if you ask me," Hela added.
"So, I'm not so much a threat, rather I'm an annoyance." Cephera glared at the thought and ignored Hela's barb.
"Pretty much," Hela waved Cephera to follow her. "We need to get this portal opened before our chance is lost."
Cephera followed. "Hela, was magic used to conceive my child?"
"No. He's educated about your kind. That was just icing on his cake." Cephera was relieved that she was not tainted by dark magic and angry that she'd been used for some game.
"Time works differently here," Hela said. "When this portal is complete I will send you back to the world of the living and my debt to you will be paid."
"Debt?" Cephera asked stopping near a very large cracked platform.
"You saved me and my brothers from death, and now I am returning the favor." Cephera shook her head, but didn't argue. She didn't feel Hela owed her anything, but she wasn't going to argue being sent back to life. "Once you return to the living I won't be able to grant life a second time. It's only because I marked you that you have this chance at all."
Cephera looked down to her arm on instinct and the hand mark from centuries ago was gone.
"Focus," Hela caught Cephera's attention. "We need this portal to open wide, and stay strong or we risk killing the only woman who might be able to help us stop old Loki." Cephera had forgotten why they'd come to this broken rock.
"Tell me what I need to do." Cephera agreed.
***
When Cephera opened her eyes and drew in a breath, her lungs burned as salt water gushed down her throat. She was being pulled through the ocean on the current just as she had been before her awakening in Helheim.
She struggle to swim upward, but it was useless.
To her right she noticed a head of blonde hair also being whisked away.
Sigyn!
Cephera reached out and was able to grab the woman's arm. She held on tight hoping that help would come any moment. Hela couldn't have just sent them back to drown.
As if her hopes had been heard, a dark hole opened in the water and both Cephera and Sigyn were sucked in.
Cephera landed on the rocky shore, coughing out water and vomiting whatever lunch was left in her belly.
Turning quickly, Cephera turned Sigyn over. She wasn't completely like the young Sigyn of this world. She was older, lines across her face showing her many more years, but it didn't make her less beautiful.
"Sigyn," Cephera said shaking her gently. She was breathing, so she was alive. After a moment of trying to wake her, Cephera gave up and looked around. To her surprise, Tony's house - what was left of his house - was only a short distance away. "I'll be back," she told the other woman, hoping she could hear her.
Cephera ran to the road to get help. She could see police lights flashing near the crumbled mansion. Cephera hoped Tony and Pepper were okay, but right now she had her own problems to deal with.
Before she took another barefooted step a burst of light and a whirling wind behind her caught her attention. She spun round and felt joyous to see a familiar face.
"Rorik!" She cried running back down the rocky slant of a hill. Rorik turned and caught her to stop her uncontrolled run.
"Cephera, you're safe." He looked surprised.
"Help me," Cephera tugged his arm to turn to the unconscious Sigyn. "We need to get her somewhere safe." Cephera told him.
"What about your safehouse?" He asked and Cephera nudged her head toward the ruins. "Oh," without asking who she was, Rorik picked up the blonde. "Where to?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure what happened to Tony and I'm afraid bringing her up to the house will cause too much attention from police and news reporters."
Cephera had planned to go to the house alone to find help, but with Rorik there she could just use his help. She searched the pockets in her dress and utter a small sound of annoyance. "I lost my waystone," she said.
She had no way to get to her son's now.
"Heimdall isn't permitted to allow you into Asgard, but I could take her there to be seen too...,"
"No," Cephera said firmly. "It's a long story, I'll explain when we find somewhere to sleep." She added seeing the look of surprise on his face.
"Alight, it won't look strange carrying a unconscious woman over a long stretch of road." His sarcasm was thick and reminded Cephera of Seraphina.
"We'll worry about explaining that if we are stopped. Come on." She made her way up the bank with Rorik at her heels.
***
Two police cars stopped them. After using the embaressing drunk friend story, the second vehicle offered to drive them to the city.
Cephera had no money and neither did Rorik. Finding a motel was hard, but they managed to find a creepy little spot in a shady part of town. The guy at the front desk accepted a ring Rorik had been wearing after giving it a quick bite.
The room was just as grubby as the lobby had been and the walls paper thin..., either that the woman next door was just a very loud screamer.
Rorik gave the bed a distasteful look, but had no choice but to put Sigyn on it. Her breathing was steady, like she was just sleeping.
"Do you have time to explain now?" He asked his aunt, one eyebrow raised. Cephera nodded sitting in a chair, dust puffing up from the pillow, and a questionable stain on its armrest.

Notes