Lamb to the Slaughter

[Azula]

“Dun dun dun dun dun dun…”

Azula’s eyes snapped open. The wind whistled through the curtains of her bedchamber, high in her pitch black tower on the eastern edge of Azgard. It carried the tender notes of a long-lost song. Sunlight — a perpetual annoyance on Opealon, but particularly bright now — beamed in through one of the most skyward windows of Barad-dûr. The rays seemed almost to push her eyelids open, forbidding them from shutting again and letting her fall back asleep. The humming on the breeze drew her upright, her long, dark hair cascading past her shoulders.

It fell farther than she’d remembered it falling for quite some time. The last time any of her raven-colored locks had been shorn off, it had been by her own hand, haphazardly and unevenly, hours before facing off against Zuko and his whore in the Agni Kai that had changed her life for the worse. The battle where she’d been defeated so soundly and beaten so shamefully that it had catapulted her into another fucking dimension. Onto this sad, sad world, filled with water and hopelessness and creatures just trying to make ends meet.

She had defied those odds. She and her compatriots had built something out of the nothing they’d been handed — and now, she awoke to it in all its glory. Her expansive bedchamber, lined with beautiful obsidian ornaments buffed with carnadine linings and fixtures. The orange gems traced a path through the room directly to her canopy bed, where she now sat, staring mindlessly ahead.

Through the sheer, crimson curtains, she could almost see the silhouettes of figures gathered around her desk at the opposite end of the room. She pitched forward, bursting through the drapes, her nightgown flowing behind her as she galloped towards the small, dark escritoire.

A small pastry with a single candle sat upon a tiny plate. Azula reached out, grabbing the chair and sliding it away from the desk before placing herself demurely upon it. She looked at the tiny, pathetic excuse for a cake for a few seconds before letting out a long, weary sigh. Her gaze slowly drifted towards the window, where she could look and immediately see the places where her compatriots took up residence, just across the island.

She scowled. Those bitches forgot my birthday.

The fire princess lifted a finger, a small blue flame sparking and dancing on the tip of her nail. She slowly brought it down and lit the candle, then blew it out without a word.

***​

Azula was dressed and ready for the day mere hours later.

For months now, things had progressed at precisely the same click. She would wake up, proceed to her bath, which had already been drawn and heated by one of her orcish peons. She didn’t exactly need them to heat the water for her — firebending and all that — but she knew the decorum of being one of the ladies of the city. She’d been the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation, after all, for all of her life, and the Fire Lord for at least a day of it; she would allow her lessers to pamper her, since that was in their job description.

After she’d finished bathing and been sufficiently strapped into her armor, she would descend the stairs of Barad-dûr and make her way to the throne room, where she’d be served a breakfast of whatever fish the orcs had managed to snatch from Opealon’s oceans and some assorted fruits and vegetables. She hadn’t been forced to enter into combat since the days of Dante’s Abyss, but she made a point to keep herself healthy.

You never knew, after all, when some clown or other would send an assassin to try to take you down.

Ugh, that wasn’t even true, though, was it? Ever since Hela had broken ground on this little ‘present’ of hers — Azgard itself, of course — even the politics had become quite boring. To tell the truth, the city was just far too well-protected for anyone to try and come challenge the girls in charge. Between Azula’s Burning Legion and the zombies that shambled around at Hela’s command, they were perfectly safe. And that wasn’t even mentioning their pet dog.

Following breakfast, she’d mosey up into her chair in her own time, waiting for one of her guards to bring her news that never came. She prayed for something exciting, for some threat of violence. Her face and name had been broadcast across the Crossroads, but she supposed the price the City of Hope had put on her head had been far too meager to attract any bounty hunters of note.

Not too surprising, considering they’d just begun recovering from having a whole suburb of their city yanked into the ocean by ‘the Dark Side’ or whatever the fuck the overbearing evil of the universe was being called these days.

She scoffed. Back in her day, she was that overbearing evil.

Now, who was she? An eighteen-year-old who’d already become a has been?

Perhaps, she thought snidely. After all, by now the routine had become so rote that she’d practically memorized the moment when Chakub the orc corporal would come waddling into the throne room with what would, inevitably, end up being quite depressingly uneventful news.

A fresh beam of sunlight streamed through the throne room’s windows right on time — eleven in the morning — as, like clockwork, the large metal doors swung open and Chakub, a skinny young orc with glasses and a mop of stringy brown hair, came rushing in. His black leather coat, the edges charred from the many times he’d displeased his sovereign, billowed behind him as he rushed toward Azula’s throne with, admittedly, a little more urgency than usual.

“Your grace,” he sputtered, almost falling to his knees as he struggled to go prostrate before his queen.

“Spit it out, Chakub,” the fire princess leaned on one of her hands. She was already bored.

“Your grace, it pleases me to report that we’ve taken a prisoner!”

Azula blinked, and waited. Chakub didn’t look up; in fact, by now, his nose was touching the obsidian bricks on the floor and his glasses were slowly, almost comically, sliding down towards the ground. The princess leaned forward, not out of interest, but out of expectation.

“...is that all you’ve got to tell me?”

Chakub bolted up. “Uhm,” he stammered, “she seems to be a warrior of some kind?”

“Is it Rominia?” Azula joked, leaning back and kicking her legs over one of the arm rests. “Did you and your idiotic men arrest the dog, Chakub? Not that she doesn’t deserve it, she’s barely been around lately to tend to my needs.”

“No, ma’am, it’s not the dog, it’s — uhm — I believe her name is… Lamb?” Chakub tried his best to justify his existence, though Azula had been back and forth on the necessity of any of these ugly-ass green-skinned ‘soldiers’ (used loosely) for months now. His fumbling now wasn’t going to endear them to her anymore; nothing would, she knew, except them actually fucking doing their job for once.

“Always with the fucking animals,” the firebender spat. “Animals and hags. That’s what I’ve got to surround myself with.”

She let out a deep, uninterested groan, and hopped out of the chair, striding quickly down the stairs and within striking distance of Chakub. And then she struck him.

“Owowowowow!” he shouted as the back of Azula’s hand swung cleanly across his face, sending him flying into the ground. He splattered onto the floor, sliding towards the window, and Azula massaged her hand for a moment until the throbbing subsided. “I’m s-s-sorry, mistress!” he whined. Azula wasn’t having it.

“Quit your blubbering and get out of my sight,” she commanded, spinning around and marching back up toward the chair. She glanced over her shoulder at the last moment and shouted at him as he scrambled toward the door.

“And get someone from the kitchen to bring me a damn mango.”

***​

Azula’s teeth bit into the third mango of the day as she slipped on her nightgown and prepared for bed once again.

Another day had gone by without so much as a ring from Hela or Rominia. It wasn’t that she cared for the old women, but seeing as they were essentially running a small city-state together, she’d have liked for them to at least come by and knock every once in a while. She supposed she could do the same, but, well… it was in her nature to be antisocial. She couldn’t be expected to reach out. She was the petulant teenager, after all.

“And you’re sure no one’s heard from Stheno?” she asked Chakub as he finished her debriefing at the end of the day.

“No, ma’am, but once again, we did catch someone lurking today — ”

“Out of my sight,” she sighed without so much as looking at the skinny orc, and within seconds, he’d disappeared through the door. She trashed the remainders of the mango she’d been snacking on and headed toward her bed, slipping through the curtains and snuggling up beneath the blood-red silken sheets.

She’d especially expected them to call upon her today. It was her birthday, after all. She’d been alive — on this planet or another — for eighteen years as of today. Didn’t that warrant a house call?

Shut up, Azula, she scolded herself. They’re not your friends.

…

You don’t have any friends.

That was the last thing the birthday girl thought before she drifted off to sleep.

And good riddance.

***

Outside the window, someone else lurked. Azula was fast asleep by the time the slinking assailant reached the windowsill. They slowly lifted the window, the air hissing as it snaked into the fire princess’ bedchamber… and as whoever they were slipped in after it.

 

[Hela]

It was sometime around three o’clock in the morning.

Hela scowled as she paced over to the window and try to angle her head in such a way that she could see the large clock that dominated this sector of the fortress-city of Azgard. “Need another window,” the woman grumbled as she skulked back to the oversized chaise lounge chair that often occupied her whilst she endured these moments of twilight unease.

Leaning to the side, the queen opened the globe and fished around for a bottle of malbec. For a moment, her eyes lingered on the assortment of rums and distilled spirits from the City of Hope, but this didn’t seem like it was one of those nights. Closing the globe, Hela sneered at its simplicity. It was, after all, a recreation of the World, so that meant the entire thing was just one fucking off-blue sphere. The designers hadn’t bothered to add details like the myriad floating islands that decorated the World when viewed from space, and Hela had to assume that was a decision aimed at allowing the whole thing to rotate on its wooden rest like an oversized globe.

“Still stupid,” she muttered as she popped the cork and drank straight from the bottle.

The Goddess of Death wasn’t quite sure what, if anything, caused her to suffer from these periodic bouts of insomnia. Restlessness? Boredom? Oversleeping? Too many sweets during the day?

Hela sneered at the majority of those theories, much as she did when the court physician had attempted to diagnose her. Since slitting that particular man’s throat had sparked a little fire in the woman’s belly, she assumed that these issues were likely related to lack of genuine excitement in her life.

Who could blame her, either?

When they had raised this floating fortress, the three women at its core had assumed they would draw the ire and enmity of this World’s lesser tribes. After all, they had essentially built this fortress on the skeletons of hundreds of its seafaring denizens, and with all the enemies that Azula’s charming personality had made during Dante’s Abyss, they all excepted some sort of lingering excitement.

Unfortunately, there had been little in that sphere. People came to Azgard, but many came there seeking solace, rather than violence against its overlords. They were all the more willing to throw themselves at the feet of Hela, Zuzu, and Dog, and even worse, they almost never rose against any of the women. Through no real effort on their own part, the group of women had somehow managed to force an effective military state into existence simply by building it.

Had Hela been a connoisseur of Midgard culture, she likely could have appreciated the reference therein, but because she was a curmudgeonly warlord still only a few years removed from imprisonment in Hel and embarrassment at the hands of her idiot brothers, she simply finished the wine.

“Well at least tomorrow’s another nothing day in a sea of them.” With that, Hela telekinetically whipped the bottle out the window, rolled over on the chaise, and drifted eventually into a mostly enjoyable sleep.

***​

Five or six hours later, Hela awoke with a scowl to direct sunlight splashing through her windows.

“Insufferable,” she muttered as she slid the dark curtains closed before slinging her feet off the side of the chaise lounge. By the time she was back to a fully vertical position, her normal suit of body armor had replaced her night gown. Rather than comb her hair, she just ran her hands through it and sheathed the whole thing within her horned helm.

In the light of late morning, Hela’s sprawling chambers, nestled atop the tallest tower in Azgard, were an exercise in opulence, designed to evoke all the feelings of awe and terror one would have experienced in the classical chambers of Asgard. Satin curtains of green and black accented enormous open-air windows. The shelves were lined with stolen books and various trinkets and baubles, and more than a handful of taxidermy monsters, animals, and pirates adorned the walls and sitting areas. In true Asgardian fashion, Hela lavished her personal abode with not just the spoils of the vanquished but sometimes with the vanquished themselves.

“Good morning, Captain,” Hela sneered as she poked the preserved (albeit grotesquely stitched together) corpse of Jolly Roger on the center of her forehead. “Boop.”

The high ceilings were adorned with artwork once again inspired from her home realm—sprawling, opulent paintings that shimmered as if they were made from stained glass. Yet, the scenes depicted were not of her and Odin but of the three of them and the various steppingstones they had surmounted in their rise to primacy. While the décor usually interested people, it was always the tile artwork that seemed to hook them. This was one occasion where Hela wasn’t quick to judge, since she also had to admit that she had a soft spot for the style.

Pausing near her foyer, Hela glanced up at a depiction of her, Azula, and Rominia standing triumphantly on a burning pirate ship. The flames of the ship and those that wreathed the little fire princess caught the light and seem to flicker as if they were formed from flecks of real fire. Hela held tile-Azula’s stern stare for a few moments, and the older woman’s lips pursed up as she started to wonder if she was misplacing information on something.

Eventually, Hela broke her staring contest with the piece of art, shook her head, and threw open her ‘front door’ with a wave of her hand. Outside of the compound, she found herself stepping onto an overlook that was connected down to the rest of the tower. From here, she could spot Azula’s Barbie Play Castle of Barad-dûr across the isle, and in the other direction, Rominia’s sprawling doghouse had its own particular stylings.

“Good morning, Queen,” a voice whispered as Hela’s attention was pulled from the princess’s tower and over to one of her retainers. Because she tended to stop tolerating anyone after a two day timespan, the queen rotated her chambermaids and hangers-on to prevent herself from gutting or decapitating them once she had her fill of them.

“Hello, Severus,” Hela remarked as she stared at the unsmiling, greasy-haired, hook-nosed man. Supposedly, he had been a teacher or something before washing up at Azgard, but the Asgardian wasn’t sure what institution would want to hire the gaunt, black-eyed man to be around children. Azula had immediately voted to murder him on sight (which, in hindsight, was likely why Hela had spared him in the first place). “I see you didn’t bother to comb your hair or dress in your finest to see your Queen this morning?”

The wizard’s unsmiling visage curved into a deeper scowl as he executed one of the more bitter curtseys Hela had seen this week. “You must beg my indulgences, My Queen.”

The Asgardian rolled her eyes. Truth be told, she hated Severus the least out of her members of court, because she admittedly had a soft spot for petulant, cynical hangers-on.

On that note: “How’s Azula?”

Barely containing the urge to roll his eyes, the wizard responded in his trade markedly droll tones. “The child endures. Perhaps you could just… visit?” When he received a glare, the middle-aged wizard didn’t miss a beat. “If it pleases the Queen, naturally.”

Hela turned her nose up at Severus as she tried to switch the topic. “News from around the city?” She asked as she allowed herself to be escorted over the open-air walkway and back down into the complex that housed her court.

“Droll, per usual,” the dark-haired wizard retorted. “Your eminence remains a fearsome and awe-inspiring presence among all the sea rabble.”

“So, another boring day at court?”

“Reports say that there was an arrest that occurred in the Barad-dûr region.”

Hela twisted to look at Severus. “Arrest?”

“That’s all we know. They took some kind of prisoner who was slinking through the streets.”

The Goddess of Death sneered. “They probably just arrested Rominia. The dog likes to skulk through the streets. Do you have any real information or is just going to be another mind numbering day of court?”

Severus, who wouldn’t dare roll his eyes under the direct scrutiny of his queen, somehow managed to make it sound as if he was when he spoke. “It would seem that way, My Queen.”

Rolling her eyes. “Make sure you make my coffee extra strong this morning, Severus.”

“Of course, My Queen.”

***​

It was nearly midnight.

Four hours of court had been filled to the brim with mind-numbing reports of trade routes, successful protection rackets on local nomads, and harvests of food. If Hela had to hear about another ‘full crate of mangos’ delivered at the docks, she was certain she should have decapitated the entire assemblage in an orgy of knives and arterial spatter.

I can’t keep living this life. The woman was garbed once again in her nightgown, an almost shiny green garment with black lace trim. This is the sort of domesticated lifestyle that Odin was looking for when he betrayed me and locked me away. Old, insufferable bastard. Is that what Hela had been reduced to?

With a scowl, Hela conjured a necrosword and had it twist and twirl in the air above her head. As the shard of obsidian moved at the behest of her will, the Asgardian found herself drawn to the far wall of the room, where a shaft of moonlight had fallen upon another of her decorative pieces. The twenty-foot tapestry that hung from the nearby wall. Unlike her drink globe, this depiction of Opealon detailed many of the various isles that floated above the unending ocean of the World. In the light of the moon, the City of Hope was illuminated.

Hela tilted her head slightly as the floating black blade tilted forward and launched itself into the heart of the city. The satisfying thunk as it sank into the masonry behind the map brought a smile to her face. Perhaps.

As vision of genocide danced in her head, Hela was rudely interrupted by a knock at her door.

At this hour?

“Who the hell is it?” Hela barked as she floated off her chaise and essentially stomped her way over to her entryway like an irate, woman-sized toddler. Throwing open the door with her telekinesis, the Goddess of Death managed to grow somewhat more displeased at the sight of Severus, who seemed just a bit too amused in the moment. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Pardon my intrusions into your…” The man tilted just enough to see the sword-impaled map. “Diplomacy practice, my Queen. There were some issues in the kitchens today that delayed the arrival of the baked goods you requested.”

Hela frowned. “I requested no baked goods.”

Severus, who also knew she had done nothing of the sort, managed not to betray his own internal amusement. “Oh?” He asked with a tilt of his head. There was something of a twinkle in those black eyes that Hela didn’t entirely appreciate given the time of night and the context. “I figured you had commissioned the cake for her birthday. The bakers had to work double-time after an accident in the ovens during lunchtime.”

At that, the wizard stepped aside to reveal a silver cart that housed a red-and-black cake. Two-tiered in design, the icing featured themes of fire, mangos, and bloodshed. At its center, green and orange stick figures were joined by a frowning dog. Hela was certain she would have nightmares about the whole arrangement, but she drifted her eyes to the center of the top layer, which sported—in black icing—the phrase: Happy 18th Birthday, Zuzu.

Hela’s eyes went wide. For his part, even Severus Snape couldn’t help but smirk as the realization dawned on the woman.

“Fuck,” the Goddess of Death muttered. Her eyes shifted to the hole she had punched in her wall to let her see the central clock. “It’s not midnight yet. That little monster would never let me live this down.”

“Teenagers are cruel,” Severus muttered softly, his tone possibly betraying something that Hela didn’t have the mental awareness to catch.

“I’ve got to go,” Hela scowled as she encased the cake in a protective black sphere, and the two of them were off into the night sky, leaving the wizard behind in the dark of night.

Even though he’d had a few internal laughs, Severus knew that tomorrow would be another exercise in carefully navigating the woman’s insanity. “I hate this job.” He grumbled.

***​

Azula had been asleep for what Hela hoped was hours when the Goddess of Death, after withering her nighttime guards with a simple glare and a bevy of floating necroswords, silently breached her bed chambers. With the cake properly in place, Hela paused to look around the room. Was this what passed as décor nowadays?

“Teenagers,” Hela whispered as she glanced through the curtains that surrounded Azula’s bed. Were those intended to be a layer of protection? As she slunk closer to the bedside, the woman paused suddenly. She had never changed from her night gown, and she had just felt the distinct chill of an ocean breeze wash over her feet and ankles. Had the window been open?

Frowning, Hela silently glided around to the other side of the bed, and as she rounded the bedpost, she spied the figure as they reached their hands to draw open the curtains.

Eyes going red, the Asgardian swooped forward and grabbed the outstretched hand of the would-be assassin. “The Princess doesn’t take visitors after curfew,” Hela seethed as she squeezed. The assassin, for their part, didn’t cry out but drew a blade and tried to strike out at the woman. For her part, the Goddess of Death heard the pitter-patter of her blood on the floor before she even felt the sting in her cheek.

Without a second thought, Hela snapped the attacker’s wrist and casually threw them through Azula’s bed, tearing the canopy off the young woman’s bed in the process.

Pursuing the downed assassin, Hela whipped away the downed curtains and pulled the poor, unfortunate soul to her. There was a shriek as a necrosword sliced a long, terrifying gouge across the man’s chest, splashing blood in a wide arterial spray that caught not only Hela but a fully awake Azula, who was still sitting upright in her bed.

“What the actual fuck is going on!” The princess shouted as she took note of Hela, the intruder, and then the blood-spattered birthday cake that had someone not been toppled over amid the scuffle.

“Happy birthday?!” Hela declared as she telekinetically slammed the intruder up into the ceiling before letting him fall to the floor with a wet thump. The older woman sighed as she wiped some of the blood from her face but only really succeeded in smearing it across most of her features. “You should really lock your windows and doors at night,” she added as conjured a small necrosword. “...Does the birthday girl want make the first cut?”

 

[Azula]

“Does the birthday girl want to make the first cut?”

Azula blinked, then wiped the blood off her face. “Looks as though you already have, hag,” she scoffed, sliding out from beneath her blankets and moving to get a better view of the downed assailant.

Her crimson bed-curtains lay in a heap in the opposite corner of the room. Just a few feet away, the mangled form of the assassin crumpled before her eyes, a huge gouge slashed into his chest. Still, though, he breathed in and out, and the fire princess knew she couldn’t let life slip away from him just yet.

Her bare feet squelched as she tramped through the pool of his blood soaking her bedroom floor. She stopped just before him, lifting a leg and sending a not-gentle kick into his abdomen, rolling him over. She held up her hand, flames beginning to dance around her pale fingers, and splayed her palm out before her, sending embers toward the cut to cauterize it and keep the man from bleeding out any more than he already had.

“A sign of restraint,” Hela mused behind her. “How uncharacteristic.”

Azula whipped around to face the matriarch of their triad.

“I’ll have his head on a pike as soon as I know who sent him,” she spat.

The princess reached for her black, silk robe, hung on a rack near the entrance of the room. She wrapped it around herself and tied it quickly without a word to the witch, then burst through the doors of her bedchamber, Hela at her heels, and began the trek down the large spiral staircase leading up from the rest of her tower. She cast a cursory glance at the absence of guards next to her door as she passed, and growled low under her breath. Why the fuck had they left her unprotected?

She supposed the assailant had come through the window, but she’d still expected Chakub or whomever was on guard with him to burst in once Hela had started making her commotion.

She hated, beyond everything, that the hag was once again responsible for saving her life. She could’ve handled herself.

“Oh, you’re welcome, by the way,” Hela piped up, as if she’d read her thoughts.

Azula ignored her, speeding down the staircase and bursting into the main corridor of Barad-dûr seething with fury. “Chakub?” she called. “Chakub!” Nothing.

“Can’t get good help these days, eh?” Hela narrated from behind her.

Flames materialized around her hands and she found herself spinning again towards the witch, her fire-free hand reaching for the woman’s throat. Her fingers wrapped around Hela and she lifted her up, slamming her into the doorframe. For all the force she’d put behind it, Hela responded not with a flinch, but with a chuckle, smirking as she looked down at the furious fire princess.

“Now, now,” the older woman taunted her, “temper, temper, Princess.”

Azula scowled. “I fucking hate you.”

Reluctantly, she released her grip on Hela. As much as she despised the woman, infighting amongst them now wouldn’t be productive — someone had just tried to murder her in her sleep, and though she was absolutely flattered and would be bragging about that later to Hela and Rominia, right now she had a much shorter, much more urgent to do list. First: find the guards that had abandoned her and make an example out of them. Second: find the asshole that thought they could assassinate her and rip them to fucking shreds.

At that moment, a door to a nearby broom closet squeaked open, and Chakub slipped out, looking altogether ashamed. Azula’s eyebrow raised suspiciously, and his compatriot slipped out as well, half-clothed, his eyes faced down at the ground.

Fucking hell.

“An office romance,” Hela nodded. “How quaint.”

“How infuriating,” Azula rolled her eyes.

“Ma’am,” Chakub sputtered, “we’d like to apologize—”

“Blah, blah, blah,” the princess crossed her arms, “yes, yes, very happy for your love. Please, please tell me you did not leave my chambers unguarded because you thought you’d just go suck each other off in the nearest broom closet. I am begging you.”

Chakub gulped. “Well,” he started, “Azorh and I, we’ve been seeing each other, see, ma’am. And when we saw Queen Hela entering the room, we figured you’d be alright for a little while, and—”

“Firstly, what have I told you about referring to her as Queen Hela?” Azula sighed.

“It’s only accurate,” Hela shrugged.

“Fuck off,” the teenager bit back. “Secondly, I — I truly do not have time for this right now. Take yourselves to the dungeons and I’ll burn you to a crisp later.”

The orcs uttered a broken ‘yes, ma’am’ and turned tail and ran toward the dungeons at breakneck speed, before their mistress changed her mind. Perhaps, they thought, after having some time to come down, she might not want to kill them anymore. Of course, they knew that wasn’t likely given their master’s penchant for violence, but it was a better alternative than getting cooked right this very moment.

For her part, Azula turned back to Hela. “You forgot my birthday.”

Hela gasped in faux shock. “I did not! I brought you a cake.”

“With maybe ten minutes to midnight.”

“Don’t get so wrapped up in details, young one,” Hela advised, “it’ll make you go mad.”

Azula scoffed. “I’m already mad,” she smiled. “Furious, even.”

For maybe the first time in the entire time they’d known each other, Azula’s face was graced with a grin when she met Hela’s eyes. The witch, too, smiled down on her would-be ward, and in an uncharacteristic moment of tenderness, reached up and touched her cheek.

Azula slapped the woman’s hand away. “Shall we go interrogate our captive, then?”

 

[Hela]

Darkness was scary.

After all, there’s no telling what might lurk in the shadows. That might be nothing, or it could very well be a killer, a beast of the night, or some eldritch horror plotting to drag you away. The darkness is the unknown. It’s natural to fear it.

Disease and sickness are also very scary.

After all, there’s no telling when you might be laid low by something that could easily cascade through your body in life-altering fashion. Ones immune system might respond masterfully, or one ill-placed viral packet could shatter the whole thing. Plus, sickness can be silent, and once it begins to spread, it becomes harder to trust the community. People hide away. Decency can rapidly unravel as desperation increases. It’s natural to fear plagues or pandemics.

Death itself is also rather terrifying.

After all, who said there has to be a great unknown? Who says that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t anything more than the final, screaming gasps of life before a silent, unfeeling spiral into the nothing of death.

Yet, for Benjamin Malthues, the most terrifying thing in the world wasn’t shadows or sickness or even the threat of death itself.

It was the pair of women who he had failed to kill.

The man wheezed as a knife cut another shallow incision across the back of his leg. At this point, his brain had mostly been shattered by the torture, with each cut less a form of torture and more a way to jolt him out of the trauma-induced stupor.

“We haven’t lost you, have we?” The older of the two women sneered before slapping Benjamin the side of the face. “You still have at least another half quart of blood you can spill before you should start going cold.”

“More than that, probably,” Azula commented from the back of the large torture room. The princess was standing next to one of the eggheads and staring at the screen of a tablet device. “Our new friend here isn’t entirely organic human.”

Hela shrugged her shoulders. “Most things on this world are ‘human plus’ … also, stop your scowling, you’ll get wrinkles.”

Azula, who was still staring at the other woman’s back, could only scowl further as she restrained herself from squeeze the frail piece of technology in her palm. “This is different,” she finally answered. “There are similarities with the tonics that the Skylanders use to grant themselves extra-human powers, but this is something … well, different. It’s rawer and far more unrefined. These reports seem to…” Azula trailed off as she tried to make sense of the mishmash of numbers and science jargon on the report.

“I can complete the report, Princess,” the scientist muttered softly before having the tablet thrust into his chest. The man didn’t dare look up at the young woman’s eyes, nor did he need to do so, since he felt them burning down into his soul. “The, uh, the man here has had his DNA modified by some type of experimental solution. Even in the Crossroads, this is some fairly powerful material, whatever it may be.”

“He looks unimposing,” Hela muttered as she put a hand under the man’s sweaty, bloody chin and lifted his face. Both eyes were nearly swollen shut, and part of the lips had been sheared off by Azula a few hours ago. The Asgardian glanced back at the other two in the room. “If he has superpowers, why doesn’t he just … use them?”

The scientist, who felt both leaders of the fortified city-state now glaring at him, took a deep gulp and continued his explanation of their tentative findings. “It’s more subtle than that, but it is likely that these modifications are what permitted him to infiltrate Azgard. Yet, it also seems like these abilities require a chemical agent that is not naturally produced, and when exhausted, it renders these effects dormant.”

Hela let out a snorting, haughty laugh as she let go of the half-conscious man’s chin and glanced at the scientist. “You’re saying he ran out of batteries?”

“More or less,” the scientist muttered. “Either way, there are limitless applications to this technology, if we could get our hands on samples or it or research notes.”

“Ready to tell us where you’re from?” Hela asked as she picked up some boiling water and threw it in the man’s face. After his fit of screams, he seemed to be relatively alert enough that he recognized where he was and what was going on.

“Fuck you,” he groaned.

Hela rolled her eyes as she summoned a fresh necroblade and dragged it across the man’s chest, opening up another fresh curtain of sputtering blood. “Be more original, Dear.”

“I-I just,” he muttered. “You’re worth a lot of ADAM,” he added as he looked over at Azula.

Seeing the man’s focus had moved, Hela frowned. “Surely there are people even higher on that list,” she added with all the subtlety of a runaway locomotive.

“Everyone…” Benjamin paused to gather himself and keep conscious as he spoke. “Everyone assumes that you’ll be dead in the next few years from old age, so they want to take out the heir.”

“Old age?”

“Heir?”

Both women made moves to stab the man with the nearest thing they could find, but it was the scientist whose voice momentarily broke them from their haze of rage.

“Who sent you? And before you tell us they’ll kill you I hope you’ll take a moment to reflect upon your current situation.”

Benjamin would have smiled if the muscles in his face hadn’t been cut a few dozen times. “I was paid by a man named Fontaine… He’s trying to out-fox Ryan, so he’s taking out hits on a bunch of you warlord types up here on the surface.”

“Ryan?”

“Andrew Ryan. Fancies himself the leader of Rapture since he founded it, but he’s got about as much real control over that city as you or me. Whole place perpetually feels like it’s on the edge of disaster, and everyone’s got an ego the size of this island.”

“You’ll fit right in,” Azula rasped.

Hela laughed. “Pot. Kettle.”

“Fuck off,” the younger woman replied.

“Yes, yes, I appreciate your continued existence as well, ‘Princess’,” Hela intoned with an eye roll as she summoned a necroblade and slit the man’s throat, eliciting a gasp from the scientist. “Better get to work quick and autopsy our man from thirty thousand fathoms.”

“You didn’t think he knew any other useful information?” Azula remarked as the two headed out from the torture chamber.

“Maybe, but I’m sure it’ll just be easier if we wait for the next messenger.”

“You think they’ll try again?”

Hela paused in the hallway and shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe not someone from ‘Fontaine’, but whose to say that their would-be King Aegir won’t try and ‘reach out’ as well?”

“Then what?” Azula muttered. “We torture that guest when they try to kill me?”

“I’m expecting a more amiable outreach from Ryan. If his adversaries want us dead, then I imagine we’re in line for some friendly overtures.”

“The enemy of my enemy?”

“You’re learning, Little Zuzu.”

“Just need to be ready for when you die of old age,” Azula replied without missing a beat before ducking to avoid a lazily thrown necroblade.

 

[Azula]

Hela could not have been more wrong.

Several weeks after Fontaine’s assassin failed to murder Azula in her sleep, and the doors of the various castles and towers of Azgard had not been so much as slightly darkened. No efforts had been made — by either Fontaine or by this ‘Andrew Ryan’ character — to get in touch with the fire princess or the hag, violent or otherwise. Days went by with their borders uncrossed, their sleep undisturbed, their queendoms uncontested.

Azula was, of course, pleased to see Hela’s ‘expertise’ in this particular brand of politicking so superbly subverted. But she was also dreadfully bored. Each day was the same — wake up, let her orc servants bathe her and dress her, then march lethargically down to her throne room to see if anyone finally had anything interesting to request from her. She’d had plenty of time throughout the past month or so of dreary nothingness to think of several delightfully cruel ways to deny peasants their basic needs, but it had been a long while since someone had even dared to cross her threshold.

But there never was any business; she’d go downstairs, slump into her huge obsidian chair, and wait… and wait… and wait for anyone or anything to show up. Hell, she would’ve been happy with a food shortage at this point. At least then she might be able to pop over to a nearby floating village with her soldiers and raze it to the ground for grain. She missed the days of being sent out on missions for her father, hunting down Zuko, capturing the Avatar. She missed the days of Dante’s Abyss, where — even when her soldiers were actively trying to destroy her plans — she could really be in touch with her power.

Mindless, day-to-day bureaucracy was not something the fire princess was meant for. Not at all.

Truly, though, it hadn’t really set in until she received a very professionally-made looking invitation from Hela to come play golf with her. Golf.

Azula stalked out to the edges of Azgard, to one of the few places they’d allowed any green to grow. Yes, the grass was more of a… sickly, Hela-coded green, but it was green nonetheless, and they did, graciously, allow their citizens to come here and enjoy it during their time off as if it was some kind of park. Today, though, the goddess of death had banned anyone not named ‘Azula’ from joining her on the grounds. For once, Azula couldn’t even find anything to complain about — she’d been aching to get away from her orcs for once.

Hela stood about fifty meters from where the grass met one of Opealon’s oceans, golf club in hand and a series of skulls lined up in front of her. When she heard Azula’s stomping, she glanced over her shoulder with a smirk.

“Ah, there you are, princess,” she smiled.

“Long time no see,” Azula snarked. It was true: they barely saw each other when there was no drama to be dealt with. It had been almost as long since she’d seen Rominia, but the werewolf did, occasionally, make her rounds to check and make sure security in Barad’dur was up to snuff.

The fire princess glanced down at the line of skulls. “These look fresh.”

“Maybe they are,” Hela turned back towards the sea and took position next to one of them, sliding her club into place. She aligned it carefully with the side of the skull, lifted it up, and brought it down. The sphere of bone launched into the air, rolling towards the ocean and dropping into the waves with something more akin to a plunk than a splash. Azula narrowed her eyes a bit, trying to gauge exactly how far out into the sea it had gone.

“Impressive,” she scoffed. “Do I get a club? Or would you hate getting shown up by someone so immensely younger than you?”

Hela chuckled. “Of course you get a club, Zuzu,” she smirked, holding out a hand and materializing one out of thin air. Like her own, it was of the same black-and-sparkly green make as her necro sword. She tossed it to Azula, who caught it with one hand, easily, then sauntered over toward the second skull.

“Watch and learn, old-timer,” she said, catching herself grinning ever so slightly.

She would admit that, for the first time in several months, she found herself feeling some sort of joy, but it was compounded by an annoyance that Hela had been at the root. She and the witch had never gotten along swimmingly, but standing here, positioning her necro-golf club next to a human skull-golf ball the hag had procured, she would relent just a bit and admit that most of the fun she’d had since falling into the Crossroads — Dante’s Abyss, of course, excluded — had been at the behest of the old woman.

Azula would never admit it, but the hag and the dog really were basically her only friends here, in this new universe. Toga, too, she supposed, but she hardly knew how to get in touch with that little psychopath.

So she allowed herself, for one single moment, to just enjoy this. She lifted her club in the air and swung it down, knocking her skull into the water, a little short of where Hela’s had fallen.

“Oh, I’ve watched and learned now,” Hela cocked her head sarcastically, raising an eyebrow.

Azula felt her face go red and her brow furrow.

Well, so much for just enjoying this.

Hela pushed past her as politely as she could manage (read: not politely at all) and moved to the next skull, lifting her club and swinging it down without so much as a word to the fire princess. The skull was launched into the air, and Azula could just tell that it was going to go even farther than the first one. She felt the fury in her gut build up, and without even thinking about it, she pushed one of her palms into the air and shot off a fireball at it. It collided in mid-air with the skull, exploding the thing into shards of bone that spilled all across the water. She spun, lifting another arm and conjuring another fireball in Hela’s direction.

Hela slapped her arm to the side, the fireball launching at the ground and scorching the already disgusting-looking grass.

“There’s the spark I’ve been missing,” she smiled.

Azula’s eyes flitted up to the hag’s face. “I could fucking murder you.”

“I’m sure you could, Zuzu,” Hela nodded, a little patronizingly, “but why don’t we take that energy and put it somewhere more… useful?”

Azula blinked, then relaxed her stance.

“Alright, hag,” she crossed her arms, “I’ll bite. What did you have in mind?”

 

[Hela]

The Queen grinned with all her teeth as she snaked an arm around Azula’s shoulders and turned the younger woman to face the sea. The firebrand immediately shrugged off her esteemed mentor’s contact, but before she could bark something unsavory, Hela had summoned a floating object in the air in front of them.

“That’s a boat.” Azula deadpanned.

“It’s a ship.”

The Fire Princess turned and glared, but the other woman’s emphasis was on expanding the scale of the model. Once she’d enlarged it enough, Hela finally deigned to give a glancing look at her young compatriot. “Recognize it?”

Another roll of the eyes. “It’s a random boat made out of whatever the hell you term your black space rock nonsense.”

Hela grinned. “It’s the CHS Erebus.”

“Is this going anywhere? Are you telling me about some documentary for old people that you watched?”

“It’s an ocean liner,” the older woman remarked. She turned and looked at Azula with what seemed to almost be an air of … pity? “Now I know you come from some dictatorship of wood and steel, but an ocean liner is a luxury vehicle that takes people on leisurely jaunts around the oc—”

“I am familiar with the concept… Hag,” Azula added for good measure. “What does this have to do with anything?”

Another smile. Azula couldn’t stand the older woman’s penchant for grinning and smirking and stalling to build tension.

“CHS stands for ‘City of Hope Ship’, and this one is about to launch on its maiden voyage. It’s a luxury vehicle, but the whole thing is also loosely an effort by the Skylanders to flex their power and majesty on the peoples below them.”

“We’re below them.”

“Only geographically.”

“No shit.”

Hela chuckled as she rearranged the floating mobile so that it represented just a sliver of the liner’s stern. The Queen simulated a number of figures strolling around on the promenade. “It’s rumored that the ship will likely be the target of some sort of retribution by Rapture, and it’s even possible that there will be agents of Ryan’s onboard the ship.”

“And?” Azula rolled her eyes. “So it’ll also be filled with scanners and heavy weapons.”

At that, Hela gave one of her patented smug chortles as she waved a finger at her companion. “Except there’s none of that. The City of Hope isn’t using a military escort or even stockpiling heavy tech onboard.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard, and I’ve been listening to you talk for the last half hour.”

“If you ask me,” Hela muttered. “They’re almost inviting something bad to happen to the ship. ‘Who attacks an unarmed civilian ship’? The whole thing smells like a public relations stunt to shore up support for more crusades against the pirates below. You know … galvanize the people with a martyr?” She furrowed her brow as she turned to face Azula. “Any of this clicking in your head? I know you’re not good at the statecraft or the stuff involving actual human interactions.”

“I hate you.”

“Yes, I know that I’m correct, but you didn’t answer the question.”

Azula rolled her own eyes but restrained herself from lashing out with a few fireballs, despite the mental image of her old colleague running around with her body half consumed by flames. “What do you want to do?”

Hela reached into her pocket and produced two slips of paper. She wagged them in the princess’ face and continued in an almost singsong-y tune. “We’re going on a cruise.”

“No.”

“And I have the perfect outfits picked out for us. You're a size 8 for dresses, right?”

“No.”

“After all, it is important that we blend in on this very important espionage mission.”

“No.”

“We’ll leave tomorrow morning. Make sure you take a shower for once.”

“N—”

Hela pressed her index finger against Azula’s lips, smothering the unheard protestations. When the Fire Princess lashed out a split-second later, her damnable ‘companion’ was already gone in a puff of black smoke.