Chapter Synopsis of The Valkyrie - The Edda-Earth Wiki

Iunius 6-10, 1954 AC

Sigrun receives a phone call from her half-sister, Sophia Caetia, is god-born of Apollo, on her mother’s side, and is, therefore, a Pythia of Delphi. Sophia has suffered the gift of prophecy since she was ten years old.
Her sister warns her to beware a black bird, the size of a man, who’ll feed her heart to his god, so he can share his god’s power. And also to beware the bumblebee, who just wants to bleed the god out on the ground so that people may lap up the blood.
Kanmi, goes with Trennus to inspect a local ley-facility, designed by potential revolutionary Xicohtencatl.
The facility is atypical, and as best Trennus is able to ascertain, it is not a tapping station, so much as a receiving station, drawing non-ley power from something that feels like as if it is derived from the Veil, the universe from whence spirits come.
They also uncover that there is a body buried under the facility.
Sigrun is assigned to keep watch on the facility overnight, while Livorus calls for Imperial-level police forces assist them with a more thorough investigation.
Before the police are able to get on scene, people begin to dig up the body at the site in an effort to conceal it. The site manager claims that Xicohtencatl is the one who gave the order.
The body is that body of a missing Jaguar warrior—a high-status warrior in the prime of life, much like Ehecatl. And it is evident that the heart has been removed from the man’s chest without any cuts or wounds to the chest or torso. This suggests that magic has been used to assist in this murder, and magic plus murder tends to suggest sacrifice.
Unfortunately, both Xicohtencatl and Tototl have vanished, though Kanmi mentions to Sigrun that Xicohtencatl’s family name means bumblebee, rattling her.
Without further options for investigating the murder, at the moment, they return to their primary task: making contact with the local rebels, and helping Livorus negotiate some sort of a peaceful resolution to the unrest that plagues the region.

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Iunius 11-14, 1954 AC

Adam and Sigrun have made contact with the local rebels, including their leader, Smoke Jaguar. Adam convinces the man that negotiation directly with a propraetor may gain him more of the regional autonomy that is the rebels’ goal.
Smoke Jaguar confirms that he formed an alliance with Xicohtencatl.
Smoke Jaguar volunteers that Xicohtencatl and Totol, who was also involved in the unrest, frequently mentioned the abandoned city of Teotihuacán. It is considered a holy site of Tlaloc, and an archaeological treasure trove.
Trennus and Kanmi find corroborating evidence for this location.
They move to Teotihuacán, but what they find in the great cavern under the ancient Pyramid of the Sun, however, is no worldly threat, but Tlaloc himself.
He is bound in the form of a material avatar, and his power is being drawn from him into machinery to power equipment across Nahautl, and is being fed sacrifices.
He sees them all—particularly Sigrun, as a child of the northern gods—as a threat, especially as they are here to arrest his “chosen servants.”
Ehecatl is severely wounded in the ensuing fight, and Tototl, the high priest of Tlaloc, puts him on the altar, and reaches through Ehecatl’s chest with his bare hands, attempting to remove the Jaguar warrior’s heart. Ehecatl kills the high priest.
The god breaks free, using the material connections of the machines to circumvent his own bindings, and pours himself from one physical avatar, into the dead body of Xicohtencatl.
Adam notices that the god hardly seems to recognize his presence; he has no magic, and, as a Judean, he is the bound servant of another god. He gets the others to distract the god, and fires at the stalactites above its avatar’s head, bringing the rock formation down, possibly killing the god’s avatar… or possibly the god himself.
Adam is a numb to the implications until Kanmi calls him a godslayer. And tells him he might well become as hated as Akhenaten the Godslayer ever was—and Akhenaten, one of the first godslayers, is universally reviled, and his name has been an anathema for three thousand years.

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Iunius 14-20, 1954 AC

Sigrun recovers at a local hospital. Sophia calls and imparts prophecies to Adam and Livorus, telling Adam that he’s always been a godslayer, and that “his name is your name, and your name is his name,” and that his wife will be his widow, ere he meets her again. Livorus is told not to shake hands with the man who hates his roof, or his blood will be boiled in his veins.
As Sigrun recovers, Trennus receives healing from Lassair, who seems to have acquired some of Tlaloc’s power.
Kanmi receives a phone call from his wife, Bastet, chiding him for being out of contact, and informing him that one of his sons fell and broke his arm.
Livorus realizes that he can’t control what the gods will do about the situation—they will either go to war with each other or not, and humans cannot change that. But he can ensure, by his silence, that the locals can make their own decision about believing in a god who is no longer answering their prayers.
Kanmi begins investigating an organization of technomancers called The Source Initiative, and, while they are all placed on administrative leave, and subject to a high-level review of their actions, promises to start reading up on this collegia.
Ehecatl resigns as a lictor, while remaining affiliated with the Praetorians.
Sigrun is recalled to the Odinhall for her own review, before the rest of them are due to return to the main Praetorian office in Rome. Adam asks if they will be permitted to offer testimony on her behalf, and all the others choose to go with Sigrun to Burgundoi (San Francisco) in order to speak to her superiors.
They ascend to almost the top of the Odinhall, a massive skyscraper in downtown Burgundoi. They see some of how Sigrun was trained, and are introduced to Brandr and Erikir, one of her instructors and one of her former classmates, respectively.
Then they enter the ‘interface room,’ which allows humans to enter a safe, attenuated portion of the Veil directly.
Inside the room is Dvalin, the dwarf who is the keeper of the runes and records of the Odinhall. He informs them that they are expected, and then Tyr One-Hand appears. He tells the lictors that while they will be permitted no further into the Odinhall, their words and loyalty to Sigrun will be considered in the gods’ judgment of her, as if they were permitted to speak before the tribunal, themselves.

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Maius 6-7, 1955 AC

Livorus moves to the governor’s palace in Jerusalem for safety.
They receive word that both the Chaldean emissary, Erida Lelayn, and the Median envoy, Kashir Maranata, have also been attacked. Erida is a member of the Magi, the organization of Chaldean sorcerers, summoners, and philosophers that have been the backbone of Persia’s military might for centuries; she is also related to the ruler of her small nation. And someone fired a Judean-made rifle at her, catching her in the arm.
They move to the hall where the Space Exploration convention is being held, which serves as a cover for the intricate diplomacy that is supposed to take place.
Erida Lelayn reports that her people in the Magi have found evidence that the pazuzu’s prison and three dozen prison ‘bottles’ known to contain alu-demons—spirits of night and darkness that took the form of hyenas, centuries ago, before being bound—were stolen from a museum in Persepolis several weeks ago.
Negotiations begin. Media and Chaldea are concerned because the ruling Persian Emperor is exhibiting a rapid decline into dementia, and his line of succession between his twelve sons—all sired on concubines and lesser wives, not on the acknowledged Empress—is unclear. They expect civil war inside of three years, and wish to depart the Empire.
Outside the convention center, a man ‘finishes his drink’ and throws the bottle away before the guards can get a good look at it, wrapped as it is in a paper bag. It is actually a jar that houses an alu-demon, and it and many others are being planted in precisely the same way.
Hours pass, and then Erida’s chief bodyguard and lover, Abgar, sends an electronic triggering signal. Kanmi is immediately alerted to the source, and attacks the bodyguard. Abgar, himself a magus, retaliates, and all the water in Kanmi’s veins pushes through his veins and into his lungs, leaving little more than a sludge of blood cells in his heart, and threatening him with drowning in his own fluids as he falls to the floor.
In the next instant, Abgar pulls Erida to him, and puts a knife to her throat.
The lights inside the convention center fail, and dozens of glass bottles, shatter and release alu-demons, one of which materializes inside the darkened negotiation chamber, only to be driven back by Sigrun and Lassair’s combined light.
Kanmi begins to cough up frothy, blood-tinged water at their feet… .

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Maius 7-8, 1955 AC

Adam and Sigrun try to track down Abgar and his hostage, Erida. Abgar has revealed himself as a member of Persian Intelligence, posted inside Erida’s family for over a decade. His orders seem to have been to end their incipient rebellion and ensure that Erida’s death was blamed not on Persia, but on Rome and Judea.
Lassair keeps life in Kanmi’s body long enough for him to stop drowning on his own fluids, and he manages to reverse the osmotic flow, forcing his body’s fluids back into his veins… but he’s in no condition to fight.
Trennus binds as many of the alu as he can reach, while Lassair provides light, protecting the civilians from the demons, at least temporarily.
Adam and Sigrun pursue Abgar out into the darkness beyond the main convention hall, and Erida herself kills her erstwhile lover, removing all air from the area around him in a sphere, resulting in explosive decompression and rapid suffocation.
The Judean soldiers in the area turn and fire directly on the alu-demons surrounding Adam, Sigrun, and Erida. These spirits, however, can de-manifest at will, and do so, sending the bullets aimed for them into Adam’s body. The flak jacket he’s wearing isn’t enough; he falls to the ground, dying.
Sigrun takes the wounds, which would be mortal for Adam, but might not be for her, on herself.
Adam, Trennus, and Erida are forced to work together, fighting off the last of the alu, and Erida summons an efreet—Illa’zhi, the Light of the Dead—to her side, offering him a year of her life in exchange for his assistance.
The lictors extract Livorus and the other diplomats, and find themselves once more in the hospital.
Kanmi’s wife, Bastet, makes it clear that she will wait until he’s healthy to discuss the matter of him leaving the Praetorians, and he makes it equally clear that he will not leave the Praetorians.
Adam, once Sigrun has undergone heart surgery, tells her that she can never take a mortal wound from him again, and kisses her in her hospital room, because he’s realized that she’s come to mean very much to him.

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1955-1960 AC

The Persian Emperor, Tiridates X, dies without naming a successor, and his empire collapses into civil war. Chaldea and Media join the Roman Empire.
Sigrun and Adam are married in 1956, in the Odinhall’s interface room, a little piece of the Veil, into which humans may pass. The ceremony is conducted by Tyr himself, though the god warns Sigrun that she will know much sorrow in this relationship. For she will watch her husband die, day by day, as age comes to claim him.
Sophia is there, and claims that her prophecies for Sigrun remain entirely unchanged—that Sigrun is unwed, as far as a Judean is concerned, and that the end of the world is still coming.
A waiter spills white wine over the bride at the reception. Sigrun feels a chill go through her—unusual, for her, as she is normally immune to cold. And for some reason, she sees tears in her sister’s eyes after that incident.
Moments later, Sigrun sees that Frittigil, the girl she and the other lictors rescued in Ponca, was able to come to the ceremony. Fritti chatters at her happily about her new mentor, a bear-warrior who insists that she face her fears, rather than remaining frozen around one bad moment in time, as so many god-born do, and who has pushed her to reach out to the Evening Star and her people.
She tells Sigrun that this bear-warrior, Radulfr, has told her that none of the gods seek Ragnarok. Because it is a battle that none of them can win. Sigrun doesn’t recognize the bear-warrior’s name, but that’s not entirely unusual; there are 25,000 or so god-born of Valhalla, spread across the world.
Trennus introduces Lassair to everyone in her new human form. He is living with her as if they were a young human couple, and even introduces her to his large Pictish family, with less than salubrious results.
His father, in particular, points out to him that he saw the white hind that is the spirit of the Caledonian Forest (Saraid) when he was but a child… which is usually taken to mean that someone is destined for greatness. His father, the king of the Picts, asks Trennus if he’s sure he’s on the right path.
Kanmi has continued to work on his research projects… and on the life project that is dealing with his unhappy wife.
He begins divorce proceedings, and Roman law does not believe that mothers have any more natural bond with children than fathers do, and actually gives fathers primary custody.
Kanmi is willing to share custody with Bastet, but she attempts to take the children away, in secret, to Egypt. She’s caught, and kidnapping charges are leveled against her, resulting in her banishment from the Empire, into regions of Numidia outside of Imperial control. Which leaves Kanmi the divorced father of two boys at the age of thirty-four, in a high-risk, high-travel position.

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Aprilis 7-10, 1960 AC

Dr. Minori Sasaki has spent the last twelve years in Lutetia Parisiorum in Gaul (Paris), as a ley-engineer, and believes that she has found strong evidence linking the ‘experimental ley-tapping’ uncovered in Nahautl five years ago with earthquakes and volcanic activity that may be the result of uncontrolled energy spikes transmitting along the ley-lines to distant locations.
Her theories have resulted in threats towards her and her fellow researchers. As she begins to present her latest findings at a conference, two men in the audience question her analysis sharply—a Pictish summoner and a Carthaginian sorcerer—pointing out flaws in her reasoning.
After the conference, her colleague, Belator Camulorix, introduces her to Kanmi and Trennus, and informs her that he invited them to the conference.
Kanmi and Trennus corral Minori, Belator, and their notes and research, confining them all to a hotel overnight.
Kanmi is stunned by the fact that she’s uncovered similar patterns of earthquakes following the expansion of the ley-grid in Tawatinsuyu (Peru) … which suggests that there is a second group at work down there, possibly attempting to replicate Xicohtencatl’s efforts to bind Tlaloc and use the power of a god for human purposes.
He cannot, however, entirely trust the good doctor; she’s a member in good standing of the Source Initiative, the same professional collegia to which Xicohtencatl had belonged, and before 1948, Minori Sasaki only exists on paper. His inability to verify her background makes him extremely suspicious and hostile towards her, in spite of the brilliance of her mind and her work.
Belator, concerned for one of his daughters, sneaks out of the protected hotel room in the middle of the night, and is found dead by his daughter when she returns to her home in the early morning. There is not a mark on his body, but there is an odd smell of cooked meat in the vicinity of his corpse.
As such, the lictors insist on bringing Minori to Rome with them the following day. For lack of a proper safe house, Kanmi allows Minori to stay with him and his sons so that he can be sure of her safety, and so that he can continue to go through her research.
Lassair, in the meantime, realizes that she’s pregnant with Trennus’ child. The fertility spirit is overcome with joy, but fears that de-manifesting will result in her losing the child.
Adam and Sigrun watch one of the moon landings, which awes Adam as an example of what “we mere mortals can do” and expresses his conviction that humans are here to build. But now, they’re recalled to Rome.
Livorus divulges to his lictors that Minori is actually the semi-exiled daughter of a samurai. As a high-ranked noblewoman, she had discretion instilled in her at the Nipponese Imperial Court. Kanmi is therefore allowed to explain what really happened in Nahautl five years, and expresses concern that the pattern is repeating.
Livorus tells them that since they have turned up results, he will ask the Emperor to permit half of them to go as an ‘advance team’ for a state visit by Livorus. They can scout the area, and look for inconsistencies ad evidence.
Given the fact that Minori’s research has already stirred someone into wishing to silence her, she might make good bait. Kanmi objects, as they will need to protect her. Even though she’s a military-grade sorcerer, she’s never been in combat before.
Minori agrees to go, and use her ley-engineering background to try to get them access to facilities. Livorus recommends that since Trennus and Lassair would be travelling as a couple, that Kanmi and Minori should do the same—a suggestion that neither of them particularly embraces.

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Maius 17-21, 1960 AC

Adam and Sigrun meet with Emperor Caesarion IX himself, and the emperor gives Adam and Sigrun temporary ambassadorial credentials.
They and Livorus arrive in Cuzco, where the others have made contact with Micos Cornelius, one of the sons of the local governor. He’s a sorcerer who’s approached Kanmi on the grounds that Lady Erida is a mutual acquaintance… and the man appears to have the ear of the Sapa Inca.
His wife is not at his home when Kanmi, Trennus, Minori, and Lassair visit him; he says that she has Paredes’ disease (Parkinson’s) and that she is at a medical facility to the south. He seems to share his emperor’s interest in the public works projects, and in bringing a kind of rebirth to this country.
They have also made contact with a god-born of Mamaquilla, Cocohuay.
When Mamaquilla was released from the Lines with Lassair, the goddess came to her god-born descendant, and told her that those who bound her there tried to force her to Cocohuay’s body as her new avatar. If she’d given in, they would have kept her bound to that body, and enshrined her in a tower somewhere. Since she refused, they threatened to sacrifice the goddess. An impossibility, or so it would seem.
On meeting Sigrun, Cocohuay, who is dedicated to a fertility goddess, tells Sigrun, that some god has cursed her, and that no life can be held in her, until that curse is lifted. Sigrun has better things to worry about at the moment, and promptly forgets the words.
Mamaquilla has asked, through Cocohuay, that they release the other gods and spirits trapped in the Lines. Trennus is concerned that doing so might cause seismic problems in a geologically-active area. Livorus gives him and Kanmi leave to travel with Cocohuay and examine the area once more.
Minori and Lassair remain at the hotel, under the guard of two additional lictors.
Adam, Sigrun, and Livorus depart to speak with the Sapa Inca in person.
The Sapa Inca, Sayri Cusi, appears to be massively unstable once he enters into discussions with Livorus. He shifts mannerisms from a screaming kind of rage to coy, almost coquettish speech, back to plain, business-like mannerisms, almost between sentences.
He threatens Sigrun, using electrical powers, and beguiles Livorus with enchantment in his words, which the propraetor has difficulty resisting.
Angered, Livorus unwisely delivers the ruler an ultimatum… and Sayri Cusi has his armed guards take them captive. He orders his people to take Livorus to his summer palace at Machu Picchu, and orders Adam and Sigrun taken to his power facilities on the volcano of Coropuna.
Minori and Lassair’s hotel room is attacked, and while Minori kills two of their assailants with her derringer and her high-caliber magical skills, a knife’s put to her throat, and her hands are bound.
Their attackers force Lassair into a prepared metal container for transport. Unwilling to de-manifest, and unwilling to see Minori suffer for her sake, Lassair complies, sending Trennus a message through their soul-bond, telling him that she and Minori are now in very deep trouble, indeed.

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Maius 21, 1960 AC

Trennus and Kanmi have returned to the Nazca Lines with Cocohuay.
Trennus remains unwilling to release the trapped spirits until Lassair’s message comes through to him. tells Kanmi that Minori has been captured, as well, and that two Praetorians are dead.
They attempt to enter the tower at the center of the Lines to use the phone line there, and even showing a Praetorian badge gets them nowhere.
They breach the tower and take the guards captive. On attempting to contact their fellow lictors, Kanmi quickly realizes that he and Trennus are effectively alone and cut off. They have no idea where Adam, Sigrun, and Livorus currently are, and they don’t know where Minori and Lassair are being taken.
Minori awakens where she’s been drugged, bound, and gagged, and one of her captors introduces himself as Dr. Huallpa. He is a trained medical doctor and sorcerer, and specializes in internal uses of sorcery… such as moving organs around inside the body cavity. Stopping and restarting the heart, so that someone can feel themselves dying, and understand that their life is completely under his control.
His chief interest is the Name of the spirit with whom she was captured.
Minori resists his interrogation. Lassair does her best, from where she’s bound in a circle, to take some of Minori’s pain away.
Lassair is re-introduced their captor… Micos Cornelius, and to his wife, Pitahaya. Pitahaya has no control over any muscles in her body any longer, and must be cared for, around the clock, though her mind remains, cruelly, sharp and aware, though she can no longer speak. Cornelius demands that Lassair heal her.
Unfortunately, Lassair can only heal by demanifesting and entering a human body. She can’t do so, she believes, without risk to the child she’s carrying.
Cornelius is enraged by the thought that a spirit is to have a child, when he and his wife didn’t even have that much. He tells Lassair that Minori will continue to be tortured until she says yes. And if she’s so attached to the body and the child supposedly in it, then he will remove that issue from the equation. With that, he unleashes deadly sorcerous attacks on her, inside the binding circle, where she cannot de-manifest or protect herself.
Adam and Sigrun are imprisoned on Coropuna. Their warden is no less than Supay, the death-god of Tawantinsuyu—which gives them a partial explanation for who is receiving some of the sacrifices. Sigrun and Adam take out their guards, and toss the keys to the other prisoners in the cells, before making their way outside.
Meanwhile, Mamaquilla herself appears to Kanmi and Trennus, and states that she cannot find her brother-husband, Inti, no matter where she has looked. Mamaquilla determines which of the guards at Nazca bear guilt in the matter of imprisoning her fellow gods and spirits, and entombs them in the earth, sparing the rest, while Trennus shatters the Nazca Lines, which have imprisoned thousands of spirits. He catches the Names and stories of many of them, and inscribes their Names in his grimoire. Each acknowledge that they owe him, a favor for a favor.
Mamaquilla then carries them and Cocohuay, her priestess high into the atmosphere, a parabolic arc that mimics the flight of a rocket, as she helps them transit the five-hundred mile trip to the dormant volcano of Coropuna and its temple sites.

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Maius 21, 1960 AC

The earthquake caused by the Nazca Lines releasing their trapped gods and spirits hits Coropuna, and with that as a distraction, Minori kills her torturer.
She forms a hollow needle of frozen air, embeds it in his carotid artery, and injects air directly into the man’s bloodstream, causing a stroke within thirty seconds. She is, however, in shock, and cannot focus her mind enough after this to unlock her own chains.
Lassair sees Micos Cornelius reflexively step into her binding circle to dodge a piece of falling roof. She makes herself part flame, part flesh, and superheats herself as she wraps her arms around him, carbonizing the sorcerer.
She’s unable to summon enough heat to render the cement floor under her feet molten, which would efface with the binding circle that keeps her trapped.
She does suddenly recall her past experiences, as a triune goddess of the early Gauls, along with her sisters, of whom nothing remains but their Names.
Adam and Sigrun hide under an ushnu, an ancient libation place and temple, and in so doing, find Inti, the sun-god of Tawantinsuyu, who has been bound there.
He’s been forced to take the body of one of his own god-born as an avatar to save the man’s life, while his energies are siphoned off by machines and magic to bind the other gods at Nazca and in the towers surrounding the area. He’s been told that if he resists, the great machine into which he’s been plugged will break, and the land itself will twist on itself, costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of his people. They release him from his chains, anyway, though he continues to maintain the bindings on the other gods out of caution.
Inti is able to tell Adam and Sigrun that his emperor, Sayri Cusi, has broken off pieces of other gods, and embedded them within himself, making Sayri Cusi a modern Akhenaten—someone who is destroying gods in order to consume them. To make himself into a god—with another god, Supay, as his ‘sponsor,’ just as Akhenaten had Aten as his sponsor.
At that point, Sayri Cusi himself appears with Supay, with a variety of elemental spirits and human guards for backup. Inti begins to fight Supay directly. But Supay is empowered by sacrifice, while Inti has been weakened. Sigrun and Adam enter the fight, as best they can, trying to give Inti a chance against Supay and the empowered, maddened human ruler.
Lassair and Minori have already mostly rescued themselves, so Kanmi, now on scene, releases Minori, and Cocohuay does her best to heal the woman’s internal injuries. Kanmi’s first instinct is to get them to an ornithopter, a safe place, and then go looking for the rest of their team, but Mamaquilla has finally caught Inti’s presence, and rushes to her beloved’s aid. The others know that Adam and Sigrun are likely at the heart of the trouble, and they all go together towards the ushnu.
Sayri Cusi sees Lassair, and wants her power for his own. He entombs her in earth, trying to force her to give him her Name, or suffer the loss of her physical avatar. And empowered as he is, he might be able to kill her spirit-self, too.
Trennus cannot free Lassair from her earthen tomb. He gives the rest of his soul to her, to empower her, and impales himself on a knife—self-sacrifice. Lassair catches his spirit before it can flee, and tucks it in the Veil, keeps his body alive with some of her essence, and bursts up from the floor as a half-woman, half-phoenix, and descends on Sayri Cusi, tearing the emperor apart.
Sigrun fights Supay directly as Mamaquilla is dying, damaged by Supay’s powers. Cocohuay gives up her body to her goddess, to empower Mamaquilla once more. Another self-sacrifice, and there is nothing Adam can do to help.
He lifts his revolver to fire on Supay once more, and Inti stops him. Already wounded and weakened, the sun-god bids Adam to kill him. The self-sacrifice of a god, done out of love for his people, and controlled, as best he can, so that his people will not suffer unduly… it’s all Inti has left to offer.
Adam doesn’t think he can manage to do this, until Inti changes the .45 revolver in his hand. Makes it capable of firing ‘the tears of the sun,’ and tells Adam the Godslayer that there is no other mortal to whom he thinks he could entrust such power.
Adam, regretfully and sorrowfully, pulls the trigger.

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Maius 22, 1960 AC

In Cuzco, the priests at the Inti Kancha, the largest temple of Inti in the whole of Tawantinsuyu look up in horror as the golden sun-mask of their god falls from the wall on which it has hung for centuries, and shatters on the ground.
Astronauts working at the Libration Station and on the moon base see a pillar of what looks like plasma erupt out of the side of Coropuna. The plasma collects in low earth orbit, miles from Libration station, and forms a tiny star; it lights up Tawantinsuyu and other parts of the night-side Earth as if it were day, and the astronauts panic, concerned about radiation and gravity and other such threats.
In Tawantinsuyu, one by one, the gods linked to the great machine are destroyed as Inti’s power leaps through the circuit formed by the ley-lines. And because this type of power doesn’t take time to move, instead transmitting instantaneously through the resonance of the lines, it takes only seconds for the power of the other dying gods to leap back through the completed circuit, washing through the entire underground chamber.
Kanmi and Minori have shielded themselves from the blast of the sun-god going, effectively, nova.
Adam was shielded from the blast by Inti’s last effort of will.
Trennus’ mind is still in the Veil, while his body is held away from true death by Lassair’s power. As he experiences a world in which there is no time, and effect can come after cause, Saraid—though he does not recognize her—comes to him as his guide, and shows him how to make allies here.
Mamaquilla, suffused by the power of most of her pantheon, holds the dead body of her brother-husband, weeping, while Sigrun attacks Supay, trying to give the moon goddess time to compose herself.
Supay attempts to use a lethal attack on Sigrun… which surprisingly has no effect. As battered as he is by the loosed power of the other gods, and his battle with Inti, Sigrun actually kills him… something that is not supposed to happen. A final tendril of his power lances from his dying body into her chest, and all Sigrun can think is that he missed, for again, nothing happens.
Lassair kills the Sapa Inca with tooth and claw and flame, pouring herself into his body and destroying him, and the fragments of the gods inside of him, ordering the tiny remnants of Names that they are to return to the Veil, if they wish to live.
She withdraws herself from the dead body, and begs Saraid and Sigrun to help her heal Trennus. They do so, and Trennus awakens as the wholly-surrendered servant of Lassair; his eyes blaze with her mark, burning like the inmost heart of a flame. He is spirit-touched now, and Lassair confidently states that they will be a part of each other forever, even as Saraid departs, as silently as she came.
At the moment, the lictors have other concerns. Coropuna, which has been dormant long enough to wear a crown of glaciers, is, thanks to all the unleashed energies poured into its earth, about to erupt. They flee in a stolen ornithopter, piloted by Adam ben Maor, and make their way back to Machu Picchu, and retrieve Livorus, with the assistance of twenty other regional Praetorians.
Minori and Kanmi, on an adrenaline high after surviving a day that no one should have survived, make love, and Minori reveals her entire history to Kanmi, including the secrets that drove her from the Imperial Court.
They then regroup with the others to debrief, and try to get straight what they can tell the Roman emperor, agreeing that they need to leave the country before the local government, currently headless, begins to ask pressing questions of them as to what happened to their ruler.
Mamaquilla breaks almost every convention there is, and carries Inti’s body to the ruins of his temple in Cuzco. Mounting the stairs, still holding his body, she goes live on camera—a very different method of revelation—and her voice is carried everywhere that radio signals can currently reach within her people’s domain.
A new order has begun, she declares, stating that she has few commandments for her people. They will worship dead Inti as the Sacrificed God, in the hopes that he may, someday, return. They will worship her and the three minor gods that survived out of a pantheon of a thousand lesser spirits. Monotheism has come, and there will be sweeping social changes.
While Adam is concerned with having executed a surrendered god, and its implications for his soul, Trennus is consumed with Lassair’s power over him, and Kanmi and Minori are exploring the ramifications of their new relationship, Sigrun is silent regarding her own problems. Since just after Supay’s death, she’s been experiencing synesthesia-like symptoms, which she does not recognize, but that the astute reader may recognize as akin to Lassair’s Veil senses.
Before they leave for Rome, Sigrun is awakened in the middle of the night by a ringing phone, which she refuses to answer. Somehow, she knows that it is her sister Sophia, who is calling to tell her that the destruction Sigrun has seen today is just a of the greater destruction that is coming
Sigrun shouts at her sister, telling her that all she wants is a normal life, a human life, with Adam, and that if her sister ever speaks one more word of prophecy to her, it will be the last word they ever exchange. Sophia, horrified, begs her not to abandon her, because she knows that she cannot face the future alone. And she apologizes, from the heart, but assures Sigrun that she can never have what she wants.

+ Recap

- Recap

1960-1964 AC

The lictors, as they are bodyguards, are not involved much with the investigation of what precisely went on in Tawantinsuyu, but they are placed on administrative leave for six months, and attend literally hundreds of sessions of the Senate before they’re permitted to go back to being Livorus’ guards.
Sigrun and Adam spend much of the first six months of their leave in Judea, continuing to fix up their house, in the expectation that sooner or later, Sigrun will get pregnant, now that she’s decided to go off birth-control.
But Sigrun must also travel routinely to the Odinhall. There, she’s examined by the gods themselves, Hel going so far as to sniff her and inform her that she smells like a corpse. Freya, Odin’s wife, and the goddess of magic, or seiðr, is intrigued by the synesthesia-like symptoms that Sigrun has been experiencing, and informs her that this “othersight,” as Sigrun comes to call it, is now one of her powers, and that she, Freya, will teach Sigrun how to control it.
In between training sessions with Freya, Sigrun must also endure re-education sessions with her old mentor, Reginleif Lanvik, who accuses her of defying their gods, putting her own wisdom and judgment above the gods’, arrogance, and pride.
She informs Sigrun that she, Reginleif, should have been sent to Tawantinsuyu, instead of Sigrun. Sigrun informs her that the other lictors would not have accepted her as part of the team, and Reginleif reminds her again not to be prideful.
Lassair encourages Trennus to buy the other Judean house ruined in the pazuzu attack beside Adam and Sigrun’s home, so that they will have someplace besides northern Britannia to live in the cold winter months. She comes to term in nine months, and Sigrun and Trennus help her deliver her first child, a daughter she names Latirian, for one of her lost sister-selves. Latirian, like all of Trennus and Lassair’s children to come, has Lassair’s mark on her features, and to be immune to fire.
Trennus has spent every night in the Veil since Tawantinsuyu. Every night, Saraid guides him and teaches him, but she rarely manifests in the mortal realm anymore, saying only that he does not need her, though he finds that he misses her.
Every day is spent on Praetorian work and with Lassair and the new family, and every night, he is building something new in the Veil. A forest, modeled after the Caledonian Woods that are Saraid’s home. A place where continuity can happen, through his willpower. A place where spirits that have allied with him are welcome to come and taste a little of what the mortal realm is like, without having to brave the danger of real and final death. The Wood in the Veil becomes a kind of kingdom for him, and Lassair views this as his gift to her.
Kanmi and Minori continue to spend time together, and she reconciles with her parents. They visit her family in Hokkaido, where they are married under Shinto rites, and Minori finds a job with the University of Rome. Her own life is now so full, she has to struggle to adapt to having two step-children, a new job, and a husband who travels three out of every four weeks for his job… but they are also extremely well-suited to one another, and Minori is brought aboard as a consultant to the Praetorians, once she passes all of her background checks.
Sophia’s madness is explored, and it’s revealed that she acts as she does because she believes that if she doesn’t do exactly what she sees herself doing, the path of reality that ends in at least the tiny hope of her sister’s survival, and one country’s continued existence after Ragnarok—Judea—that that hope will be lost.
If she sees herself sleeping with someone, it’s not a possibility, but a certainty, and she feels she has no choice in the matter. Also, because she knows that every single person she meets will die, she feels that all the choices in their lives don’t matter. It doesn’t matter that they’ll marry someone. All that matters is that she sees the exact method and date of their death, and sees their faces as rotting corpses. Even with her lovers, as she’s having sex with them, they tend to turn into corpses in her eyes. She also knows that she has a mountainside appointment with some centaurs—creatures that do not exist—in which she will be raped and terribly injured. That Sigrun will come too late to save her. But the only choice Sophia feels she has, is to accept everything, because to rebel against fate might make it not happen… . and if it doesn’t, the world will die.
Making matters worse, Sophia tells Sigrun that they need to be in Cimbri-on-the-Caestus (Chicago) in time to see their father die. She prophesies to her mother, Medea, that she’ll be crippled by a stroke in twenty years, and that she’ll die, trying to push her wheelchair to escape monsters that have entered the hospital, and a second, massive stroke will mercifully finish her off.
Sigrun manages to convince her sister to come and exhume their father, and give him a proper pyre, rather than the mausoleum that her stepmother, Medea, put him in. Sophia agrees, tentatively, but is terrified that she may have altered the future in so doing. She explains to Sigrun, that the fundamental difference between the two god-born sisters is simple: Sigrun is a servant, and Sophia is a slave.

The Edda-Earth Wiki

Ex nihilo nihil fit

The Valkyrie

Part I: The Morning Star

Chapter 1: Beliefs.

Chapter 2: Rituals.

Chapter 3: Scars.

Chapter 4: Alterations.

Part II: Tears of the Children

Chapter 5: Ripples.

Chapter 6: Backgrounds.

Chapter 7: Investigations.

Chapter 8: Secrets.

Chapter 9: Reverberations.

Part III: Wounds

Chapter 10: Preparations.

Chapter 11: Cross-Purposes.

Chapter 12: Subversions.

Chapter 13: Invictus.

Chapter 14: Relations.

Interlude I: Unions

Part IV: Fire in the Heavens

Chapter 15: Seiches.

Chapter 16: Lines.

Chapter 17: Tephra.

Chapter 18: Xenocrysts.

Chapter 19: Lahar.

Chapter 20: Kipuka.

Interlude II: Settling Dust