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Summary
Angels are brothers, but gods are kin. Coda to Episode 5.19 -- "Hammer of the Gods"
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c1/1
https://archiveofourown.org/works/83373
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Bookmark Notes:
Kali returns to Elysian to lay the dead to rest. She finds Hel attending to her father's body.
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The woman ignores Kali. She is, instead, picking at the outline of Gabriel's wings, sliding her hands under the ash, and carefully pulling. The ruined, insubstantial limb peels off the floor and folds like a fan. The woman brings it forward, to lay over Gabriel's body like the edge of a cloak.
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"He was not your father. He was not even Loki." Kali snaps, her rage at his deceit, his distrust of her bubbling up again. "He was an archangel of YHVH. He was Gabriel."
"Yes, he was Gabriel," the woman said, finally looking up. Her eyes were cold, hard and deep. "Taxiarch and messenger, the bearer of the Trump of Doom. I know this. He was also Loki the Liesmith, far traveler, skywalker, and my father."
"Who are you?"
"I am Loki's daughter. I am sister to Ulf and Orm," the woman smiles, showing teeth that are sharp as wolves' fangs. Her face is sharp, and beautiful, but disquieting, as if there is something hideous under the surface. "I am Hel Half-Rotted, Great Kali."
Kali takes in a breath through her teeth. The Norse gods might be fading, might be hanging by a thread, but gods of the underworld, no matter how shattered their pantheon, are always to be respected. And this one -- this one claims an archangel as her father.
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"I couldn't defeat Lucifer, not here," Kali admits, the truth as bitter as gall. It was humiliating, to have been defeated by a disgraced and dismissed servant, not even a true god. "In my homeland, in my place of power, I could. But the Apocalypse will be here in America, and my strength is limited. Lucifer was not even harmed, and if Gabriel had not intervened..."
Kali sighs, and looks down at Gabriel's corpse, his shining sword still in his chest, and one wing sprawling to the side. He looks... small, and so strange lying there dead. If not for the glory -- the angelic Grace -- fading by the moment, and the burnt feathers, he could be a dead human.
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Kali holds the body down as Hel pulls the archangel sword from Gabriel's chest. The cold goddess looks at it for a moment, her face unreadable.
[That is an unlucky weapon, great lady,] the ghost says.[It killed its master.]
Hel smiles at the dead man. "Unlucky or not, I need it. If it can kill one archangel, it can kill another."
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Hel turns her attention back to the corpse, and begins peeling Gabriel's other wing off the floor to arrange properly -- though it is more difficult because it fell on floor and table, and seems shattered.
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Everything is unsettled, and the eagle-chieftain's death was strange.]
"I do not think one of the archangels had ever died before," Hel admits.
Kali thinks she is right, and it worries her. YHVH's servants killing each other is disrupting the balance of the universe; it is just like him to not care how his people effect everyone. It is one of the things she detests most about the western god -- his utter self-centeredness.
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She had ignored the fact that the servants of YHVH indwell, instead of manifest as gods do. At least Gabriel's promise to this dead soul -- a death worthy of Odin's hall -- will not be false.
Finally, she and Hel finish. Gabriel is as presentable as possible under the circumstances -- his legs are straightened, his hands folded over his chest, and his insubstantial wings wrapped over him like a cloak. His hair is smoothed away from his high forehead, and his eyes are closed. His face is blank and inanimate, and that is the only wrong thing -- even when he slept -- feigned sleep, Kali now suspects -- his face was always alive, emotions flicking across it like sunlight on ocean waves.
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"I will go after my other uncle. If I can not challenge Lucifer Kinslayer himself, then I will kill every demon, every human, every ally that dares to follow his banner. He can stand alone against the Host of Heaven. For there is a debt to be paid for my father, and I will accept no weregild but blood."
Kali raises her brows. "You're ambitious."
"If I can do no else," vows Hel Lokisdottir, daughter of a murdered archangel and goddess over the dead, "I will warm my hands at Lucifer's funeral pyre."
Kali looks at the other goddess. She looks young and skinny, beautiful yet rotted. But she has an archangel's sword in her belt, divine wolves at her feet, and the command of all the inglorious dead that the Norse ever produced.
Kali laughs, "When that happens, I'll bring the mead, and my dancing shoes."
Hel smiles, and they are agreement.
Lucifer Morningstar, killer of his own kin, will regret this day, soon, and for the remainder of his life -- however long or short that may be. -
Bookmark Notes:
"And then," Hel says, "I will go after my other uncle. If I can not challenge Lucifer Kinslayer himself, then I will kill every demon, every human, every ally that dares to follow his banner. He can stand alone against the Host of Heaven. For there is a debt to be paid for my father, and I will accept no weregild but blood."