#( hurricane of power

[salvagedsouls]

The Death of Freyja

warnings for the following: murder & genocide, victim blaming, abuse, child abuse, slavery, war, child marriage, domestic abuse please take care of yourself first. this background has heavily mature content, triggering content, and may be intense. it will be placed under a readmore for initial posting but the post will eventually be made fully visible to the dash later on. if you do not want to read the actual content but would still like a summary, please let me know and i’ll figure out a more sfw/friendly-ish way to explain without going into detail. please please message me if additional warnings or tags are needed. DO NOT REBLOG.

Freyja is a child, one of the younger ones in Vanaheim. She’s raised intensely tied to the magic of her people and their realm, learning quickly and adapting quite naturally even for those close to her age, and her skill develops fast. Once it’s safe and not unwieldy she begins training with weapons as well, finding a particular taste for daggers and curved short blades that match both her speed and are easy to tie with her magic. Her parents, her people, are proud of Freyja for being so powerful without abandoning her own self. She knew that expectations began to rise that she would be able to lead one day, if she truly wanted to.

But she’s still a child when the war happens. Old enough to know the dangers if her people lose but too young to be considered part of the fight. She sees friends give their all to try power defenses and buy time, sees family fall to an army that seems to never end. Sees her world burn as the Aesir chase Vanir out of places good for ambushes, and then driven away from temples that are dismantled and destroyed. The circle that closes around them proves to be a noose, the Aesir army choking off her people and cutting down those she used to be sure could never fall to anything but perhaps age. All for gold, for conquering, and she’s sure it’s because they had discovered they could so they did. The Aesir didn’t seem to care what the costs for everything else would be.

Freyja is part of the group of children that are rounded up and captured, a rather final way of making the adults that are left to surrender. She kicks and screams with an unforgiving hand holding so tight to her hair that some is certainly torn out, her feet barely touching the ground. She feels sick when she sees the way the Aesir leader looks at her, can feel the way her magic tries to protect her from the gaze and the way it breaks when her parents are swiftly deposed right in front of her. Odin there calculating and indifferent as the leather of her clothing soaks in the blood now covering her. 

He’s the one who says taking a bride would end the war. 

Again with the gaze, and he doesn’t seem to notice or care about the tears down her face, though he barks out an order when her brother moves to try protecting her like their parents had wanted to. Only then does Freyja’s voice find words that aren’t half-nonsensical curses, desperate to protect her people. Herself for her people wasn’t so bad a trade after all, was it? She could stop the murdering, the destruction, all of it. Could save their world from a complete wipeout, give the rest a fighting chance to recover. She could protect everyone left; she knew what he wanted, of course.

She could save her people.

Freyja pretends not to hear her brother’s protests or angry oaths, offering herself on the singular condition that the rest of the Vanir, the rest of the realm, be spared. Part of their magic is their word, so if he accepts there’s no running. She knows he knows, can see the way Odin considers very carefully, but still there’s some note of victory when he nods and holds his hand out to her. Expectant. Demanding. The last thing she ever does as a free girl is give an apologetic look to her brother, keeping her eye on him until the pair of them have walked too far for her to still see him. All she can think after that is how small her hand feels in the Asgardian’s, how many steps she has to take just to keep up with him. How her entire being cries out when her feet leave the ground of their realm for the final time and she can feel the pain of the forest at losing another daughter. The king doesn’t even let her see Vanaheim fade into the distance as he takes his leave.

Mere hours later Freyja has been scrubbed clean and dressed in fineries she’s never seen the like of before, in materials she’s never touched in the past. All she had been wearing before is taken away and she never sees it again, assuming it is all destroyed. The few tattoos she already had are covered up by first some sort of concealing make-up and then again with glamours she can’t undo herself, every braid undone and every bead removed. By the time she sees her reflection there’s no recognition of the girl staring back. She looks Aesir, she realizes miserably, and feels hollow inside. She never wants to look at a mirror again.

Is this what it feels like to die?

Freyja looks Asgardian for the wedding, for the horrid ceremony she’d already bound herself to go through because of her word. She can feel herself choking inside as each vow ties her very being to Odin and his control, shrinking her magic to be contained in some tiny, controllable, disposable box. Then he calls her by a new name and every fiber of her being both wants to tear away in disgust and come closer in obedience. He waits until the seal is nearly complete, tying her to this foreign name in this foreign world and to a foreign people while erasing the last connection she was going to cling to Vanaheim with.

He calls her Frigga. He calls her his. She wants nothing more than to cut his head off.

But it's too late. Vows have done it, magic has worked its power, and he was now her husband and king. Her ruler, her controller. Her abuser. The taste that thought leaves in her mouth is bitterer than any poison could be, yet there is now nothing to do but obey her newest duties. She is now a queen by title, but he has clipped her wings of freedom, put her into what amounts to a gilded cage. A cage gilded in stolen gold and the blood of her people. There would never be any escape for her unless he dies, which the Aesir do not do according to the same laws of living that mortal beings do. Her first full night in Asgard is spent lying awake silently crying and full of pain, sure this is what death feels like. But she’d protected her people.

So she thinks until the next morning.

Some high-ranking soldier came to the king with news of a bloodied realm and a handful of leftover living Vanir who had been threatened into submission, waiting to be dealt with as he wanted. She wants to scream and fight, to declare Odin bound by their vows the same way she is, but nothing more happens than a trembling lower lip. He’d stripped her of innocence, of power, of voice. He’d made her a husk that her own people weren’t going to recognise after less than a day apart.

He had killed Freyja and buried her in Frigga the Queen.

The Allmother, companion to his being Allfather. Proof he had defeated Vanaheim and taken what he wanted, evidence she would never again trust him even if she couldn’t act against him. Queens don’t cry in front of slaves, and though her broken heart tries to reach out to what remains of her people, even her brother doesn’t recognise her as she stands in front of them. Then he’s bound from ever seeing her again so long as Odin reigns, and it’s only as he’s being dragged away that horror strikes in seeing what the Aesir did to his baby sister, only as he vanishes from sight for the final time with the scream of a dead girl’s name that Frigga drops her gaze. No one else of the survivors dares to speak toward her again, even though Odin lets them live. She doesn’t look to see who he wants to keep like they’re some sort of collector’s item rather than people, and she doesn’t look when the remaining are exiled and escorted from the palace.

Instead of saving her people, she had broken them. Their realm was broken, forest crying out loud enough she swears she can hear it for weeks before silence arrives once more. All because she believed that everyone was bound by the oaths they make. All because Odin wanted glittering decoration and a bride who couldn’t fight back.

[salvagedsouls]

Among the Stars: Yggdrasil and The Nine Realms

this post will be long, addressing the realms as a whole and then more individually. mentions of violent history will be made, but nothing in depth. brief blurbs and more included. this is more a visualistion explantion for how i see everything working out. this is also to pave space for The Hills, which will get its own post for clarity since that is something I completely made up. DO NOT REBLOG. please message me privately if something needs to be tagged.

there are nine main realms that connect yggdrasil and make it a complete tree, with recognition that there are secondary realms that either have not yet been explored or not yet found ( at least in asgardian memory ). those nine are: vanaheim, muspelheim, nidavellir, svartalfheim, alfheim, niflheim, midgard, asgard, and jotunheim. each realm has a capital planet or area that shares its name, often being where the majority of royalty/chieftains and realm-associated races reside, and tends to be the location most often travelled to between realms and thusly have the most established passages.

yggdrasil is comprised of secondary ( and tertiary ) realms as well, and is littered with pathways that link most of them. some are twisting and labyrinthine, some are simple; some are magic-heavy to even open, some need but a touch; if the tree does not want a certain set of individuals or peoples going somewhere, it closes off the pathways to minimize errant wanderings. the tree is alive in a sentient sense. it reacts and responds to damages done within the realms, it brings forth new life and new realms as old cycles out. unsurprisingly, it has been unbalanced by efforts of certain individuals, and the order of the realms as they stand is NOT natural and they do not like being bent so.

the tree has fought back in its own way, most notably cutting off the majority of old pathways from asgard to outside realms, but the functioning of the bifrost still makes travel relatively easy for the aesir who are allowed or care to leave. in theory, if one can track and manipulate the right type of magic, closed pathways could be forced to reopen, but may not remain stable. many have pockets that are closer to being in-between worlds than solid parts of a realm or otherwise accessible, even with magic like the bifrost; these locations have a habit of wandering the tree, and occupants may find themselves entering from one place and exiting somewhere realms away or from near the inside of the tree to the very fringes of it. it is very dangerous to linger within pathways or to wander without a secure way to map back or know how to return home. yggdrasil has also kept alive the main sets of each realm, and no home species has been completely wiped out. driven underground or dwindling in numbers, but the tree finds a way to keep them alive. should any be completely wiped out, it may well be enough to destroy the tree and unwind the rest of the realms, but no one is quite sure if that’s the case or if anyone is truthfully able to do something of that magnitude.

asgard is the birthplace of the aesir and under odin’s rule has been turned into the leader of the nine realms. asgard the city is where most asgardians stay, and while some live scattered across the rest of the realm, they are largely insular and stay away from the other realms unless invited specifically or going as a warrior or diplomat ( usually the former ). has a lot of constructed scenes, such as cityscapes and molded parks, throughout the realm. most of the power remains concentrated through the city. not a place of powerful magic, but has a large range in the magic-users that do exist.

 jotunheim is the realm of the frost giants. jotunheim the planet is largely desolate, and partially destroyed after war with odin and subsequent attacks from both thor and loki in later years. the remaining frost giants are scattered across their realm, though a few remain on the planet and are trying to make at least basic repair. not a realm outsiders tend to visit without intent to battle.

svartalfheim is the realm of the dark elves. noted for literal darkness, their magic is also dark, often cold as a side effect. svartalfheim the planet is a cold desert after the war against odin with the aether, and very few dark elves remain especially after the later attack led by malekith into the city of asgard in attempts to retake the aether when its found by jane foster. most of the realm has very little light and many of the species who live there have otherwise adapted, often with some level of magic use. was one of the most technologically advanced realms before the big war.

alfheim is the realm of the light elves. much of the realm is bright and flourishes, though in some places tread the line of being harsh in its light. alfheim the planet is full of forest and soft grasses, with occasional valleys of plains. the light elves are not unkind, but do not throw the doors open idly either. the most notable exception to this was an acceptance of odin’s desire to rule, but it was a decision largely made to preserve the planet and the rest of the realm. the realm is known for producing light- and warmth-specific magic users, with swaths of medical and healing knowledge. closest working relationship is with nidavellir.

niflheim is the realm of mist and lost souls. it is most known for the doorway that it holds to helheim, where civilian and mundane deaths take souls. it is cold and dark, and rumor has it if one is not careful the mist may simply…dissolve memory, perhaps more. most are uncertain in knowledge of this realm as it holds no living peoples and most of the dead have various reason to want to avoid them.

nidavellir is the realm of the dwarves. nidavellir the forge-city is where many of the dwarves can be found, heavily fond of privacy at their homes. it is dangerous to show up uninvited at a home, but the forge welcomes visitors if they can mind manners. the realm is full of inventive and creative species, feeding into a healthy barter system within and the means to have a very healthy merchanting system with other realms.  

muspelheim is the realm of sutur and firebeasts. it is hot and dangerous, particularly on muspelheim the planet where sutur stays. most magic users from the realm have flame- or heat-specific magicks. much of the realm has harsh lighting, between abrupt shadow and flashes of violent light. not welcoming to idle travellers, often a challenge for warriors.

vanaheim is the realm of the vanir. of the old gods and said to be the birthplace of magic, vanaheim the planet is semi-sentient and its towering forests are half alive with beasts. now a place of ruins and ghost, overgrown vines and vicious spells that attack anyone who enter. pockets of asgardians with believed claims to the lands live on the outskirts attempting to regain the old realm and its secrets ( sidenote: concise blurb courtesy of smudge who has since left tumbl). these outposts are often bare and need outside supports. as more time passes, the realm grows increasingly mysterious to outsiders, often becoming even more dangerous as a result. not for the faint-hearted.

midgard is the realm of the shorter-lived mortals. midgard the planet, aka earth, is specific to humans but asgardian definition of the realm has expanded over time. originally seen as little more than an amusing planet, eventual conflict with others like the olympians results in necessary withdrawal and agreement to leave midgard as a middle ground. most of the realms do not interact with midgard on the whole, but individuals from all of them have come and gone throughout time by use of various passages, the bifrost, or outside systems. recent years has the planet agreeing to host individuals like thor, but they remain mostly uneducated about the reach of its own realm, the depth of the other eight, or how much lies beyond.

[salvagedsouls]

tag dump five!!

ft. bucky, dugan, frigga, & jack ♥