1963-10-02 - New Directions for the Apprentice
Summary: Amora the Apprentice is going to take a different tack in life. For now.
Related: Heartless is Next to Godless
Theme Song: N/A
rogue amora 


Note: Karnilla is an NPC played by Rogue.

Amora sat on the edge of the bed that Karnilla had transported her to two days previously. Her shoulders hunched as she sat staring out the window at the skyline beyond. It was the dawn of the second day. The time in which the Norn-queen had told her that she would be returned. After Doctor Strange had left her there, alone and without answers or comfort she had mutedly stalked the streets of New York. The Doctor had figured out her situation… and done nothing. Offered nothing. Told her it was a lesson and had left. Perhaps that was why Karnilla hadn't bothered with a geas.. No one would care.. No one did care.

Oh of course, on her desperate night out, she had taken advantage of a man or two. Eaten what food or drink she desired… and stayed up late into the night at various clubs before she returned to the apartment.

She had slept only a short portion of time, before waking up to watch the sunlight warm the horizon into ever brighting pinks and orange.

*

The summons does not come in any obvious fashion. No manifestation in a physical fashion will interrupt Amora. Whyever should the Norn Queen descend to Earth with her business of ruling a realm demands its due?

Dawn rises to a blazing glow along the Atlantic's rim, giving the brick and glass buildings a rather pretty copper finish that echoes flames. Flames and blood, the harbingers of Ragnarok, the end of the worlds. Streetlamps flick off, cars sputter along the streets, and pedestrians emerge even at this languid hour where the lucky sleep a few minutes longer. Weary servants bustle out to start the idling engines of the city.

The wisp of a voice echoes in the back of the blonde goddess' thoughts, simply there like a bubble floating over her psyche. Whatever the clamor or silence in her head, that cultivated feminine voice is perfectly clear.

"Hail, apprentice." Acknowledgment at the speed of thought will work well. "How fare your nights and days on Midgard?"

*

A wince followed the Norn-queen's words that echoed in Amora's mind. Her lips peeling back as she hunched forward, her fore arms settling on her thighs as she closed her eyes against the flicker of sunlight that brushed through the crooked blinds nearest to her. A hitch in her breath followed, as Amora attempted to focus and ground her thoughts to a center.

"They go as you expect, Karnilla." She muttered, her eyes narrowing into slits as she glared at the floorboards before her.

"What more do you wish of me? To keep me stranded on Midgard? What purpose is there in my presence here? Or even in your realm?" Her voice was soft, flat. Empty of intonation.

*

Karnilla's voice holds its usual weight and resonance, as if she stands behind Amora's shoulder instead of however many miles away. Not an ounce of an impression physically or visually accompanies the articulate, smooth alto of the Norn Queen.

"Your assumptions of what mine expectations be? Do enlighten me." The vaguest hint of laughter almost paints her thoughts, tinged by the barest of watercolours upon Amora's mindscape.

"I am eager to hear what you pursue, freed from the All-father's demand and stifling weight. What concerns do you have, beyond no knowledge of my wishes?"

*

"That you expected me to find myself as alone as always. Bereft of any that actually find care or concern for my state. You took my heart, you harridan. You took me back as your apprentice after kicking me out some two thousand years ago. For what reason could you possibly have in holding me thusly? I have puzzled it for the long hours that I have been kept here. Which I can only imagine that you expected me to do.." Her voice continued to be flat, even as she curled her hands together on her lap and released them slowly.

Her chest rose and fell with a slow intake of air, and her head hung forward as her hair spilled over her shoulders. "I pursued knowledge, a meager attempt made in vain given this realm's slow and stunted magic. There's nothing here, as you well know."

*

"One may assume a great deal of another, but separation of twenty centuries weakens the foundations of your assumptions. Were you basing your adoration and affection for Thor Odinson based on the man he was in his youth or the man you associated with now?" Karnilla's voice tips through a delicate flood of statements, each immaculately controlled via their mental link. "You were well warned in the great hall of the Aesir what should happen if you endangered your heart."

She holds no sound of remorse, but then her tone is like the calm-eyed queen on her throne, the stoic and mindful embodiment of the power feminine, yin, ice, purity. "You pursued your fatal course, regardless of its consequences. Rage upon me all you wish. I will bear your anger even as new possibilities open before you, and chances are seeded in preparation for a long denied spring to come. Patience may be needed yet, but did you ever believe you were truly alone? You, a seidr, closed your own eyes to the heedings of the Norns. It need not always be so. Dare to open your senses, and imagine fearlessly. Even if this is a place of stunted magic. Have you relied too long on your magic and talents in one direction to the harm for the others?"

*

"Do not lecture me on my own heart!" She snapped, her shoulders flattening as she sat up, her voice flat and lacking in actual heat. Merely a remembered ghost of the emotion that still rattled in the empty confines of her figure. "My feelings for the Thunderer were born of ages past and cemented in his golden nature and his honesty. He had until of late, never used me foul and had always treated those about him fairly. He is.. was… a good man in mine eye." Her voice dropped into a whisper and she sagged back against the bed with a groan of springs beneath her weight.

"Your and the Norns of the world's fate, the Wyrd sisters.. are two very different forces indeed. They hold no favor for me. Just as you are of no friend nor ally of mine. Do not attempt to claim otherwise Karnilla. You shoved me out as a child, and only came to claim me when it suited you, for reason that you will not state. Your words are of little and no comfort to me. Speaking as you do with my heart in your palm."

*

"No?" Karnilla pauses for a brief moment. "Do not lecture you on the very story grooved in all your years upon it, as pained and deep a tale as any skald ever wove on a winter's night to bring an audience to its aching knees? Do not presume to understand the pain of inevitably toiling to earn a man's respect, when your nature is desire, and your beauty a toxin to every man?"

The tremor of the spell settles into a tighter connection. "Tell me how it is not tragic, Amora. What drama lies between you and Thor Odinson who now seeks to court another, a woman of Midgard presented in honour to the All-father and his wife when you were held nigh in disgrace, plucked from Asgard's dungeons? This is no mystery to me. I personally have seen a hundred relationships of unrequited love, and felt the threads roughened by unmatched romances pass through my fingers. Yet every pain in Asgard of the heart is no doubt all the louder and stronger for your rare fidelity to this concept when you are the embodiment of want. Need. And all this time. I have you at your lowest, yes, and do you expect me to crush you in my talons?"

An impression of a frown carries over the distance. Denial. "I claim not to be your friend. Your mistress now, yes. Another woman in a world harsh upon our sex, assuredly, and I may claim an insight to your struggles, and the bony scars that twenty centuries have granted you. As a student, true, you were terrible and distracted, ill-suited for your studies, and uninterested in the wisdom I would impart except for its immediate gain. What changes in time changes in you. So it is time, then, for you to look elsewhere from the lost task of a man not in your hand."

The lengthy delay in thoughts might well suggest a departure, except there is a stopgap. "I have a task for you."

*

Green eyes shut against the insistent words that trace back to her through the realms from Karnilla. The tightening of the magic, the swell of the connection between them causing Amora to grit her teeth together as in irritation or perhaps even pain at the woman's words. Her hands clenched the fabric of the blankets beside her tightly as she stared at the far away point on the wall opposite of her in the otherwise bland apartment.

"I am aware of what the skalds would say. Aware of the torment I inflict upon men that would fall to their knees for want of me.. when I myself am unable to win affection from the one that have longed for for time untold. That my magic, my presence.. my everything is not enough for him. Shall never be enough. Not in any of the times past or future.. shall I ever be the one he desires fully.. wholly. That he picks mortals.. so flawed and weak. Why remind me of all this, Norn-Queen?" She muttered, her gaze flitting from the wall to the room around her at large.

The mention of a task draws a curl of her lips, but otherwise she doesn't seem to react at all for several long moments. Then the expression is gone, and she sighs, her frame uncurling to fall back against the bed. "What else have I to do to?" She muttered.

*

Karnilla's control over the window through the realms is absolute, but then the anchorage is something solidified between them ages ago. They are well enough established to be certain of their link here.

"No. Imagine what they might say of the woman who is desire being deprived the one thing she desires." The Queen of Nornheim is not given to mincing words. "A tragic irony. A sadness. I remind you to illustrate that your heart is heavy and that your fate is to lie elsewhere. Is there nothing wrong in accepting that?"

Let Amora stew, then, and then she slips back into a direct role, seeing no advantage perhaps to waiting on an answer for overly long. "I will you learn the plans of the Prince of Asgard. Balder, not Loki Lightbringer or the Thunderer. Discern what purpose he holds over Jotunheim and whether this is something to bring the realms to violence or no."

*

A grimace pulls at full lips as Amora stares up at the ceiling above her. "I know well what they would say. It is a tale fit for the skalds.. I feel naught for others. I cannot choose what my heart feels, Karnilla. 'Tis not a choice of logic. The fault lies in the organ, not in me. My love for the Thunderer has soured greatly as of late.. A thing that they claim to be the opposite of love. Incited from passions too hot to burn to a hatred more potent. So much so I suppose I should thank you for taking away such a foul thing, no?" A golden brow rose in question and then she dragged herself up to stand again.

"You wish me to got to Jotunheim? I cannot travel there on what meager magics you have allowed me. I cannot so much as hold a simple illusion and scry currently. How am I to find Balder the Bold in my state? Much less avoid the other brothers?"

*

"The passion that poisons, the passion thwarted. I am well aware, Amora. This then is a chance for you to separate yourself from the effect. Be glad you are given a reprieve, a chance for a long-open wound to heal as you might so badly need." Karnilla does not leave any further doubt on the matter to fester, but addresses it with a few selected words. Then she changes tact.

"No," she says. "I wish to know what Balder Odinson intends with Jotunheim so far. He is sent down to Midgard with them. Discern why and what aims he attends upon. You and he are within the same realm, so I imagine this shall not tax you overly to attain. You will not speak to him of the state of your heart; though prevail on him all you wish, otherwise, though be ware that he is not the fool some would take Frigga's guarded son to be." Hodur, on the other hand, poor blind god is constantly forgotten. "Maintain your purpose silently."

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