Chapter Text
Odin Sphere
Prologue
The door clicked as it was unlocked, and her grandfather ushered her into the attic. Dust hung heavy in the air, faint motes lit in the glow of the lamp. The curtain was pushed back, and the room was filled with new light.
Alice’s grandfather shuffled around, mumbling about finding those old books for her to keep herself entertained with. Alice watched him with the faint fascination children had for their grandparents, as if she was observing some new and unusual critter. Socrates, her black cat, wound his way around her legs, earning a brief, distracted scratch atop his head.
“Here they are. The Saga, all first editions. Here, Alice. I wish for you to read them. I’d have been about your age when I first read them,” he said, pulling a stack of six books from a ribbon bound box, and blew the dust from their covers. Each book was set with a silvered coin, displaying a unique King or Queen’s head on their surfaces.
“What are they about, Grandpa?” Alice asked, picking up a red book, its cover decorated with the portrait of a delicate faced Witch-Queen. Her grandfather chuckled, easing the book out of her hand and giving her a book bound in blue. A Lady in a feathered crown, staring with a calm, serene expression was embossed on the silver coin. The words Book One, The Valkyrie, were printed onto the front in flaking silver.
“Oh, old kings and queens, fighting for glory, their sons and daughters and their lives fraught with peril. About witches and sorcerers and dragons and wars. About the end of the world and prophecies and hope. Good, heady stuff. You’ll enjoy them,” he said, as he removed a cover from an old arm chair, age and use having made the cushions into soft comfort. “Now, you be a good girl and take care of those books. I believe your mother wanted something from me,” he said, walking from the attic, stooped and weary with age. Alice watched, smiling at him. Socrates let out a soft mewl and she gathered him up under one arm, climbing onto the armchair.
She opened the book, letting Socrates curl up on her lap, his large eyes regarding the pages as she opened them to the cover.
“In the Land of Erion, war was stirring its ugly head. A call had been sent out, and it was the days of thread cutting and life taking.
Twas the end of the long ten years after the fall of the Kingdom of Valentine, and in the wake of its death, the nations of the Aesir and Vanir went to war. The Kings and Queens sought out the secrets of the dead nation, eager to pry them from the cooling corpse like looters upon a finished foe. The Fae of the Vanir emerged from their shadowy forests, like water welling up through the soil, eager to find something to save their kind from a slow decline. The Ragnans of the Aesir descended from their Eyries, like birds of prey upon their quarry, their hearts set on besting the Fae to the prize. Relics of the Magical Kingdom would be the victory laurels of any nation who could hold them.
The field that had once been Valentine’s Proud Castles was to be the stage, the soldiers as actors and their Lords as the playwrights. Twould be Griselda, Proud Maiden-Knight of the Valkyrie and her Sister, Gwendolyn, to take the field, against the Fae Queen Elfaria, and her chosen champion, the Shadow Knight Oswald.
One could taste the death on the air…