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Note: Karnilla played by Rogue.
As the swirl of Karnilla's magic closed around her, Amora felt her entire form freeze up. She could sense the shift in the balance of power. As they left the Realm Eternal and entered the Kingdom of the Norns, her heart thundered hard and fast in her ears. The throne room materialized beneath her feet, the coolness of the marble's polished state came into being, followed by the dimness of the tall expanse of the great chamber. It was dim, but only in comparison to Asgard's shining halls, which was more than enough to sink into Amora's bones.
The shackles were gone, and the Enchantress rubbed at her wrists, the flesh bruised from where she had struggled hard and in vain to break them. Yet she was still muffled magically, she could feel the cold grip of Karnilla's enchantments on her, almost worse than the feeling then the shackles.
A lump formed in Amora's throat as she shifted on her toes, her eyes landing on the large and luxurious throne and dais—and upon the aged minor sorceress that lingered there and bowed with her usual groveling.
"Haag.." Amora scowled, her lips twisting into a thin line. She had hated the aged woman when she trained under Karnilla willingly, now the old hag indeed, was even more grotesque. Even if the old woman cackled softly and muttered about manners and respecting one's elders. Calling her 'little 'Morra'. Which had always gotten on Amora's nerves.
The golden haired goddess swiveled, her jaw clenched as she eyed the expansive hall for where she knew the exits were…
*
They descend through the realms in a heartbeat via a cord of power tethering the statuesque, raven-haired monarch to her realm. In the past it might feel like passing through a ripple of threads or crashing through a tunnel of time, but in this moment the circular vortex envelops them. Karnilla steps forth a moment later, her handmaidens and courtiers immediately moving to bow and abase themselves as suits them. A look of concern passes over a young woman curtseying near the throne, scarce concealed in her great blue eyes.
"Be at ease. Safely I hath returned from the All-father's realm as Haag foreordained," says the queen. A wave of her hand banishes the portal of energy opened behind her, power collapsing to a single mote that travels over to her palm. She shuts her fingers around it, reopening it to produce a dragonfly that zips and threads around the room in geometric zags.
The seeress in her grey cloak peers over a table laid by all manner of strangeness, and she stirs, the usual pungent herbs crushed between her fingers. Nornheim's throne room takes on a character to honour the harvest season, and dark blossoms gather in fiery profusion upon the columns, twisting around every seat, laying out a carpet for Karnilla to walk upon. Her boots disappear to reveal perfectly shaped feet, and she almost indulges in this sensory experience.
Her 'throne' such as it is serves as a pile of petals, something she reclines upon and curls onto her stomach. Violets and clematises drip out from under her fingertips, the silken petals chasing elbows and cheeks. "Kara, Hildr, bring forth mine wine that we might pay propitiation to the Norns this night. Behold what come to me, now."
She raises her hand, and a faint light shimmers around her in a radiant aureole. "Nornheimjar, know it that Amora the Apprentice stands under the protection of Karnilla, the Norn Queen. Any who harms her harms me. Any who denies her denies me. Bring her transgressions to Lady Kara."
*
A scowl followed as Amora felt the eyes of the court turn back to her and stare. Her hair was still the disheveled mess that it had been in the court of Asgard, her clothes still rumpled and forlorn from the Blot. Worse still were the shadows that lingered around her eyes, giving her an even more tragic air. Oh yes, Amora was the sort of tragic beauty in that moment, that the skalds would no doubt take to writing tales of in Nornheim once more.
Then, she crossed her arms, now free of shackles and turned her sharp glare upon Karnilla.
"I am Amora the /Enchantress/." She hissed, her fingers flexing as she reflexively reached for power that was well and truly blocked to her. "What did you want with me you harridan?" She openly glared then, pacing forward a step. Anger was easy. Anger chased away her fear and made her bolder. Better to be angry than fearful and seen as weak, after all.
"Over two thousand years since you kicked me out, for the very same offense you claim I am guilty of now! And yet you demand the right to me? I'm no one's apprentice, much less yours. State your business and have done." A hand raised and she waved toward the courtiers.
*
The skalds might write of Amora the Apprentice if they value their tongues and pens. For the moment, the woman curled up on her bed of flowers accepts a simple glass goblet full of a dark, rich wine nearly a shade of amber. She brings it to her lips, refreshing her palate after taking nothing in the All-father's hall.
"Observe how defiance bursts forth from her," murmurs Karnilla. "Vanity this is not, for mine apprentice grows wroth as the unrequited affections of the elder Odinson poison her." The murmur of dismay from the two women attending upon her holds a somewhat pitying element, for Amora's affections are hardly a secret in the annals of the Norns' realm. Indeed, intelligence is a currency in stock and trade here.
Another sip, and the queen holds the glass in one hand, tipped to and fro. "Of course, you fail in your heartsick rage to fathom what I have done for you. The All-father seeks in his wearied state to make a lesson of those who violate his vaunted will." Her tone is somewhat matter-of-fact, a slow purr as she drops out of the more archaic forms of Aesir favoured with Odin for something else. Piercing eyes flick towards Amora. "For the duration, you are the Apprentice. It chafes at you like a heavy yoke, that I do very much see. Yet you cannot perceive the simple lesson I would instill in curbing your vitriol and unbalanced humours, your passions that will be the death of you. Already they corrode out your soul, girl."
A sweep of her hand reveals an inkling of power, a wavering distortion in the air laced in edgings of scarlet and purple to match the flowers. "Odin has confirmed you as mine apprentice, no enchantress, and in mine realm as in Asgard, and the Nine Realms, you are. Or you may deny this and face his fury unguarded, stripped of your magic, capable of raising not a single argument he will consider. Choose for yourself."
*
Rage lit up her skin as she glared at Karnilla, "I have done everything that was commanded of me! The All-father commanded I turn his son's eye from improper women—and that he return to Asgard. Hath he not returned to his duties? The All-father approved of the suit, and so in my duty was observed!" She snarled, her hands dropping to her sides, that if she had her magic would be glowing brilliantly. Yet all they did was clench into tight fists that made her knuckles ache.
"Thor Odinson commanded I tell me aught else that might have been kept from him by his friends, and I did my duty to him. I told him all that I /thought/ he might be ignorant of. Yet when it became clear the night of the Blot, he claimed I /kept/ the information of the Jotun on Midgard from him on purpose. In which I had not, what purpose could I have in not revealing that until the night of revelry? There is none." She growled, her frame practically shuddering from the vitriol in her voice.
"I have done /everything/ commanded of me by my King and Prince. I am the wronged party in all of this. The Nine Realms and the All-father be damn'd to Hel for disbelief in my words." She thundered, and thumped a hand to her chest in her passion.
"And I ask again Karnilla, why now do you play this game of apprenticeship when you have left me discarded these two thousand years."
*
The courtiers gather in their stony witness, at once averting their gazes to avoid being called out for eavesdropping and caring every much all that is said. "Thor Odinson hath returned, and so hath thee, delivered in a stupor stinking of foul magicks such that Frigga might have swooned of it fourteen leagues away," Karnilla replies, a sharpened tone mingled among her droll, languid speech.
The wine agrees with her, and she sets it down amidst several leaves already curling and yellowing as the season advances. "Now is no hour to court sympathy through aspersion, and seed the field by your outrages upon mistreatment. When have ever the men of Bors' line shown the very least consideration for their womenfolk when it suits them otherwise? Name a one adopted or born to that line that gave the distaff honour and credence."
Her own position could be argued upon it, and she draws her knees beneath her long gown, the violets crushed to release a sweet fragrance upon the air that lies well with wine and ivy. "Odin the All-father pays honour to Frigga and Karnilla, by sufferance, that we have wrested respect by our terms. You hold no such blessing in this hour.
"See you not before you at the court consequences for defiance? His son, stripped of title. His son, thrown to the dungeons. The youngest plucked from his mother the Queen's chambers to serve as a warlord. Your defiance would see you dead, apprentice, stripped and set forth, whipped through Asgard as a mean, powerless cur, to make a point. What fate is worth such?"
*
Amora glowered, her lips thinned to a fine line of white as she finally fell silent for Karnilla's chiding and she folded her arms once more. Still glaring with those luminous green eyes. "What magic I worked was never meant to take form. I was angry, as I have said. I was drunk and miserable. As I have told. But had not The Thunderer taken me to task for an imagined slight, naught would have happened. The magic cast there was caught up in the magic of the ritual. Had I my full store of power, that would never have happened." She muttered tightly.
"And thus I ask again, Karnilla, why now? Why after two thousand years do you affect the visage of a kindly mentor, when there has been no love lost between us for eons? Where were you when I was exiled any number of times prior to this?" She tilted her head, and pushed blonde hair back from her features.
"I have no love for the line of Bor in this time or place, harridan. If you seek to scold me on my hatred then attempt another key. I see no point to this tirade any longer. I have spoken my piece." She glanced away from the Norn Queen, her lips peeled back as she glared at several members of the court that stared wide eyed at her.
*
"Sayst thou 'No harm be done' now, but in the heat of the moment when faced with thine heart's ache? Oh, child, try not to serve your cause by wearing an innocent's face. You nor thy sister were ever capable of wearing it, not even when babe in your mother's arms." Karnilla is too arch to eye-roll, though she drinks the wine in her time. "The Thunderer took you to task. Your spells twisted near awry. I taste the ashes upon you, the bilious stench woven unto your garments now. Had you, did you, if only. The amount of an equation of nothing, Amora! Be you so foolish to imagine these arguments would gainsay the vision the One-Eyed takes with you, in light of all this? You are a thorn to him, a burr in his beard, a spike under his boot and he will crush such insolence if only to make a point of his supreme authority over his unruly sons. Know you nothing of pride, girl? You've it in spades."
That declaration is only fair. "There be no love lost between us, nay, and I hath nothing to gain by incurring the All-father's ire, do I? Whatever could I, Norn Queen, stand to gain plucking you from the maw of disaster and denying him a chance to make of you a worthy object lesson for that wretched sister of yours, and his newly minted daughter-by-law, or his ever unhappy sons?"
Her smile becomes a tease of the least arc, her glimmering eyes almost unreadable in the fogs of their brilliance. "Think upon why, of all things, I might seek such. Kara shall see you to your room, and you will find your things suited to station and name. Those rags be so dire an affront to man and beast they cannot be saved." A snap of her fingers and the green dress evaporates, slithering off in so many coiling, pulsating vines that wither and die. In their place is a simpler garment, fitted at the shoulders and sleeves by fragile pins, a soft leather bodice measured of it. "Go forth and rage at the fate woven for you. We are all subject to them in the end, save I, by my edict. Feast, wash yourself, and rest.
"When you are presentable we shall speak again. Until then, rely upon your graces and skills rather than the arts and spite you have cultivated to your own loss."
*
Amora's sense of self preservation had always won out in the end when it came to her pride, and so when Karnilla spoke she did not interrupt. Not even when the woman paused to sip at her wine. Her anger had been a hot spike on her tongue for days, and it was exhausting to keep up—righteous as it was in her eyes. A wretched night and day spent in the dungeons had done its work and further spite was muted as the Norn Queen wrapped her in magic. Her eyes following the flow of the magic with a critical eye and a faint twist of her lips in disgust.
More over Karnilla's words sank into her mind, and chilled a line down her spine. Anger was exhausting but so was the inevitable fear of the unknown. The Queen was toying with her, and she was well aware of it. After all, Amora had picked up the habit from her teacher all those years ago..
A hand reached up to smooth over the bodice and pluck in irritation at the skirt, a roll of her eyes following, so much like the youth in Midgard that she had lingered around for such a time. It was possible that even a Midgardian styled swear or two fell from her lips.
Then she made a mocking bow, and without further arguments, turned her attention to stalking off down a hall without waiting for Kara to direct her. After all, she figured Karnilla would keep her in the same miserable quarters as before. The woman did so like to gloat.
*
The Norn Queen's magic is expert, the weaving arranged so tightly that the very energies fill a natural matrix that resolves in a blink of an eye. Karnilla finds little difficulty with conjuration and especially not here, the realm she holds dominion over almost boosting her finesse to superhuman levels.
So too does every ward twinkle and lie in wait, buried so deep that the woman's bound senses are unlikely to recognize them, much less trace them. Amora will have her escort of Kara, the courtier accompanying her with a deft, wordless ease. If this is somehow punishment, she does not show it behind the neutral, polite mask.
"Haag," the queen flicks her fingers. "Mind that you treat her appropriate to the station. Assure that she does not come to harm by her own foolishness."
The courtiers might titter or bestir themselves, but she acknowledges them through a wave of her hand. "All will be as the fates accorded."