Kali knew.

She knew.

There was no way I would be able to get out of this one.

I remember Raven as clear as day. She was the only dead person who consciously entered Folkvang. In fact, she strode in with her staff, her raven, and shifty eyes that looked to be calculating the perfect time for world domination.

She's also the only creature I know that escaped Folkvang.

• • •

Cerberus guarded the third gate of Folkvang. I may call it Folkvang, but in reality, it was Hell. Folkvang was for warriors who died bravely in battle with the highest honors. Hell - Hell was for thieves, drunkards, and other miscreants - Hell was where I belonged.

Freya the Warrior Queen no longer existed in the third circle of Hell. It was just Freya, Chief Drunkard, Death's handmaiden, and for some foolish reason, Guardian of the Dead.

It was on one particular evening, I saw a woman entering through Hell's Gates. She was paler than any other ghost I had ever seen, almost as if she was translucent. I only saw her because of her movement; when she moved there was a blue tint to the edge of her form, creating an ethereal look.

As if that wasn't strange enough, her raven was jet black. While the dead may bring few items and an animal to accompany them to their next stage of existence, the items they bring must die with them before they enter Folkvang.

The raven was clearly not dead, its glossy bluish-black feathers an obvious trademark of its retainment of life. Dead animals were moderately opaque in comparison to their living form, a trait this raven did not share.

Her staff also caught my interest. Its engravings were full of potent magic, the mark of a practicing witch. But the woman herself was no witch. Creatures of magic should be able to feel each other's aura, but I couldn't feel a single thing.

She was unnerving, to say the least.

Cerberus, the three-headed mutt was sleeping when she entered. She kept walking, but didn't stop at the third-gate. Oh no, she continued to transcend each level, until she finally reached the 9th circle of Hell, according to my death radar, otherwise known as my divination skills.

The 9th level of Hell.

There were only nine levels.

The ninth level was reserved for people who committed the ultimate betrayal; the betrayal of life itself. What had she done to deserve the ninth level? She was a woman, for Valhalla's sake. She looked so... fragile, what could she have done?

A chill passed through me at the thought.

∆ • ∆

Days had passed.

I was killing time with Cerberus, throwing him a pomegranate from Death's garden.

Yes, even Death has a garden – he truly is an aesthetically oriented creature as hard as it may be to imagine.

Anyways, I had thrown the pomegranate at Cerberus, but he hadn't come back, even after 10 minutes of waiting on the frozen grass. I huffed and got up, looking for that idiotically adorable dog that had somehow wormed his way into my heart over the last couple of centuries, until I saw her.

Her transient figure was unnerving in itself, but the fact that she came back... I was speechless.

No one comes back from the ninth level.

You can't.

It's impossible.

Or so I thought.

As if that wasn't astonishing enough, I found her smothering Cerberus with lion's skin, but not just any lion skin: Nemean Lion skin.

She had Heracles' lion skin. Cerberus had been captured from Death once before, by the demi-god Heracles, or Hercules (according to the Roman gods) as part of his twelve labors. But how did she have it? Who was she?

Truthfully, I hesitated to help out Cerberus in that moment. I didn't know who she was, and as a goddess, you would be a fool to think you were the most powerful creature out there. There were much deadlier things that lie in wait – that's part of the reason I was here. Death was one of those miserably cunning creatures that used their intelligence to annihilate those around them. I was one of them.

I could hear Cerberus's squeals as she applied more and more pressure. Tendrils of a black, shiny substance sprung from under her long black sleeves, wrapping around her slender fingers. The strips of black matter curled around Cerberus' figure while tightening. I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking about my options.

I could leave, but I wouldn't make it far, that I was sure of. My only valid option was to stay and fight. So I shifted into my falcon form, my necklace glowing and melting into my feathers to form a pattern on my feathers as I took off. The woman saw me, her eyes darkening as she watched me fly closer and closer to the scene. The black tendrils retracted back into her clothes and from underneath her dress, a raven crawled out and flew up to meet me.

I shifted back into my human form, plummeting to the ground and landing with a loud thump. The woman's expressionless face soured, but then cleared. A black substance had started to encase my head, as it forcefully shut my eyes and clogged my nostrils.

I tried prying it apart with my bare hands, but the smooth, artificial material didn't give. I regrew my talons and started to claw at the coating, and the substance suddenly started to retract, but I realized too late what it's strategy was.

I had single-handedly ripped apart my face.

My necklace would prevent any scarring from happening, but I wasn't quite sure how fast I'd be able to heal from my self-induced injuries.

While the strands of shredded skin and muscle knitted themselves together, the black substance had reformed to make an animal.

More specifically, a raven.

A black raven.

Like the one sitting on the woman's shoulder earlier.

I internally cursed myself for not noticing something so obvious. But how...

No creature I knew of could have performed the feat it had. Shapeshifters could only shift to form other creatures, wereanimals shifted only between their animal counterpart and their human form, sirens shifted to form their enemies greatest wish, but... the raven was none of these.

Unless...

No...

She couldn't be...

Or he couldn't be...

Loki?

While Loki could shapeshift, I had never heard of him shift into an inanimate object, but...

My thoughts were disrupted by a vision that came true seconds later as I saw a staff hurtling in my direction. I quickly dodged it, but not far enough to completely miss it as my left hand darted to grab it. As I examined the strangely familiar runes burned into the staff, my necklace grew warmer and warmer the longer I held it.

I had never felt my necklace burn as much as it did that day. I could only fathom the depth of magic it held in its thin frame, but the staff didn't let me stop to ponder as it suddenly turned into a sword. It's hilt encrusted with jewels, I eagerly dove for it.

I never claimed I wasn't vain.

The sword tore into my chest and twisted; I may not be human, but I could sympathize with them – I feel pain just like they do.

I gritted my teeth as the sword pulled itself out, this time turning into a vat of mead and pouring itself onto my wounds. My head pounded, and my chest burned with a fury of a thousand radiant suns.

Why was my necklace not working? Wasn't the staff a magical object? Shouldn't it protect me from magic?

By now Cerberus is mewling, eager to stop the black ropes tightening around his midsection. I transform into a falcon once more, ready to cut the ropes with my newly formed beak. I look for the staff, and when I find it, it's no longer an empty jug.

Instead, multiple ravens emerge out of the wooden, colorful jug while it grows smaller and smaller until the last raven flies out, spearheading towards me in a flock of blue-black ripples across the sky. Their beady black eyes focus on my lithe body soaring towards the woman.

Her black eyes find mine, and her dress starts to rip at the shoulders, blue-black feathers sprouting all over her body. Her pale pouty lips stretch to form a glistening, black beak. But instead of forming a normal-sized raven, she's the size of her human form. She soars towards me who is hovering far above her, and the first thing I notice of her newly formed face is her eyes.

They shift from a fiery orange to a blood red in a matter of seconds.

I ready my own talons to dive from my height towards her, but instead of meeting me, she swiftly veers off path flying right past me. The attention of the flock of ravens is quickly directed towards her much larger form, and the black ropes tethering Cerberus to the ground quickly liquidize and trickle to the ground. The black substance reshapes and solidifies to form a raven, like the one I had seen earlier perched on the woman's slim figure.

I, admittedly, watched them fly past the 3rd gate of Hell before I realized who she had spared.

Cerberus.

I dive and meet the sight of him bleeding out onto the ground, red welts of torn skin, shallow panting, and closed eyes indications of his condition.

I shifted back into my human form and kneel to lightly trace my fingers over the paths of festering skin on Cerberus, using my bracelet to slowly heal his wounds. He starts to calm down, and the more I heal, the sleepier he gets, the magic taking a toll on his body.

I look back up at the hazy red sky as I'm healing him, and I can't help but think about the unfortunate position I've been shoved into.

I've let one of Death's prisoners escape.

It sounds like a sentence that bodes no good will.

I continue to let the thought simmer uncomfortably in my head while I lay next to Cerberus on the frozen ground, him drooling peacefully next to me, leaving me to share my thoughts with no one but myself.

• • •

A weight lifted off my shoulders once Kali left.

She already knew too much, and not a single word had left my mouth about the incident yet.

I could still hear the Norn's words ringing in my ears:

Your fate lies not in your hands, but within the feathers of a bird's wings.

I remembered their large Jotun frames that towered over me, peeling flesh, rotting hair, and the delicate way they watered and sanded Yggdrasil. I also remembered the way in which they turned toward me simultaneously, while speaking in unison:

The time will come when

A goddess is freed to be a slave,

A bird turns servant to man,

And a boy is chained to a cave.

Women will escape Death,

While trumpets resound over the traitor's doom;

The boy no longer his father's pet.

Skeletons will burst forth from their tombs,

And his anger will shatter Odin's Halls.

A ship sails through Hel's gardens with a broken compass,

Its needle spinning in the direction of his soundless call,

Her fury inflicted by love's husk,

A mortal goddess with a heart of Death.

And to think that all I had asked for that day was when they were going to end Loki's life.