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The first glimpse of her you catch is close to the end of the battle when you've already cleaved a path into her lines—and you are aware of her presence gliding over you as silent and final as death itself.
She is beautiful even from a distance, cloaked in armor dark as the night, eyes glinting dark and solemn as she raises her weapon above her head—a beacon for her allies and a guillotine for her enemies. Its fine gold filaments and delicate intricacies aren't visible in detail to you, but you can see the scattered rubies along its grip catching the light in beautiful spills of color, as if blessed by the gods themselves. You are entranced by the regality of her straight back, the sorrow in her eyes and the firm press of her lips as she leans in her saddle—further than even the most daring wyvern riders would usually reach—and drenches the flat of her weapon with blood.
There is a story behind her axe, behind the Valfreyja of legends, that they say begins at her fifth birthday when it first chose her—the turmoil that had been in her young eyes then, the nights spent awake in agony and the dread of her first kill—that culminated until the first moment she beheaded a man to protect her younger brother at the age of seven. The stories say that Valfreyja had been larger than her at the time, broader—but that though tears dripped off her chin, her eyes had burned with a fire to rival the gemstones in her weapon.
The years have not changed her for worse. You see as much in the set of her shoulders and the high raise of her chin, and you realize that she is nothing less than the protector of her family, the Crown Princess of Nohr, and though her tears are for you as well they are no weakness.
Her arms raise and fall and her head tilts back, lilac hair billowing in blood-matted clouds, and as she weeps and raises her axe, you realize that she is both your goddess and escort to hell.
.
The battlefield is loud but she is a splotch of pure white in the indigo skies, her voice crying out eagle-sharp as her naginata swirls the air, and you blink and squint and swear that you see the clouds collecting and spinning from its sharp tip. She is the Crown Princess of Hoshido that you've heard so much about—the woman that is said to command the old dragons of the sea with slices from the silver weapon in her hands, carved to look as if the blade is rolling softly from sea foam.
Her reputation is understandable within minutes. You watch as she dives in and out of the fray, the infamous Suijinkiri arcing in bright swaths of light as she surfaces, leaving disarrayed waves and sprays of blood in her wake. She fights with the fury and the dignity of the ocean itself, with the rolling movements of typhoons and steadiness of an inescapable flood. You are ordered not to move from your position until she is in range, so there is nothing for you to do other than watch from your perch as whole swaths of men roll and collapse under the bite of her steel.
Her fingers raise and spin, and you see in her eyes the grim determination of the protector, seared into her since the day she was chosen by Suijinkiri at the age of five. You can still see in her remnants from the thunderstorms that night—the cakes upon cakes of blood cleaned off of its blade, all of them spilled for the sake of her brothers' lives. It makes sense to you, now, why every cut of her naginata is so sharp and final—it comes to you with the knowledge that her brothers are, even now, fighting amongst the Hoshidan ranks, and that she is not a tyrant or a conquerer but a guardian at heart.
You raise your bow into position, arms impossibly stiff from the innumerable times you've drawn it before, and feel the moment her eyes turn to lock onto yours from her position in the skies. Her gaze is searing and fierce, and you feel your breath still in your lungs. There's one chime that you think you hear, from some unplaceable location in the distance, and then she's diving towards you—Suijinkiri cleaving a single, glittering arc down from her position—the men falling aside like parted waves from the tip of her naginata until you feel it surge through your own chest in a sharp crash.
.
You spot her hair from miles away on your end of the battlefield—you are attracted to the swirls of golden blond as an insect to honey, to her grim frown and creased brow as a pet to an owner. Her horse tosses its mane and shifts forward, confident and poised, and she raises a slim arm to the skies and calls something loud and clear to her allies. You hear her foreign words with a chill to your heart and a pang—you see her men's faces change, growing confident and passionate, but her rallying cries are not for you.
Her divine staff, Idunn, raises in her hand, burnished silver and detailed in spiraling vines and leaves and topped with an apple-red gem, and you realize that her cheeks are rounded and soft and her eyes are still wide and clear. You feel ripples of energy surge across the battlefield—you've been warned that it's the only warning you will have before your muscles begin to weaken and your eyes blur—and you are suddenly filled with a fear as the Nohrian princess draws and weans your life for the others around her.
Your instinct is to cry out and reach and ask why, but you look into her eyes and see that it's not necessary—that though her eyes are gentle and sweet, they are hardened with the heartbreaking understanding that you cannot be spared, that you were unfortunate enough to be born to the other side, where you aren't allowed to take up arms for her innocent but noble hopes for peace. The realization hurts more than the slow drain of your energy from Idunn, and you struggle to stay upright and fight the urge to scream in frustration in the face of this princess that commands hearts so easily.
She does not smile for you—you tighten your grip on your sword and understand now that she is not an angel to you, that though she turns away from your face in regret and will clasp her hands together in prayer afterwards, you will not be saved by her today.
.
You will never see her close up, but you can feel the purity of her magic tugging against your own, and it makes your stomach roll and skin prickle. You can recognize it as easily as tasting chocolate in water—the knowledge and understanding that she should not be here, that someone of her grace and gentleness is not meant to stand where steel meets skin in blooms of blood.
But this is irrelevant, and this is wrong. Hachimanjin's magic rolls towards you and your comrades in waves, and even though you know she isn't targeting you right now you can feel it searing under your skin, clear and sharp like the cut of a dove's wings. You squint towards her position and see the near-invisible rippling in the air of a barrier, the sparkling in the grass that you know feels soft and rejuvenating under sore feet.
Her frame is small and delicate, and you know that your strongest man could snap her wrist in two, but you look at her and marvel because you know that she knows this as well—that she also knows her soft clothes would give like air to the sharp point of a sword or axe. The beauty is in what follows after, in the fact that she digs her heels in and raises her chin defiantly and spreads her scroll in the air nonetheless. It is that serenity and poise that has your magic recoiling, turning in on itself. You will not know explicitly her fights behind the scenes against her own brothers, arguing for her place beside them on the battlefield despite her divine weapon, but you can feel her self-possession in every turn of her wrist and every clench of her jaw. Hachimanjin reverberates with her determination and echoes her heart outwards like a beacon—she is not here for war or triumph, but for the peace after victory and the recovery after the fall.
You raise your tome to cast your magic out, hoping to finally find a dent in her impenetrable defense—and it is then that she notices you. She doesn't have the time to spare you a glance, however—you see the slightest flicker of her fingers as she spreads her scrolls towards you, and as Hachimanjin bursts towards you in a scattering of doves you feel clarity spiking in your head before you fall to your knees in submission.
.
Her footsteps are light on the battlefield and she glides, smooth and silent, more beautiful than all of the rumors say. You are entranced by the sweep of her arms, the tilt of her head and the hooded regret in her eyes as the segmented harpoon swings around her arms and digs in soft bites into eyes, throats, chests. Chains clink around her feet in a steady rhythm, swinging around her limbs and torso in familiar trails of bruises that you can make out even from your distance.
This is the famed Angrboda, you realize immediately, and you know this because the men that hadn't died immediately at her feet had lived long enough to report that its grace was only matched by its wielder. They recall her as the siren of death, and her harpoon's tip is said to be so sweet and gentle that no man is ever fully conscious of his own mortality until her eyes are closed in prayer for his soul.
The closer you urge your horse forward the more you realize intricacies that the other men had referenced but hadn't been able to voice, and you begin to understand why—because there is something terribly sad in the twist of her body and the part of her lips, and as you watch the chains continue to snap and roll against her body in deepening bruises, you understand that she is as trapped in her role as you are in yours, fighting for royalty you don't entirely believe in. You watch as she beckons you to come closer with a flick of her weapon, a solemn chime of chain and clang of segmented harpoon shaft swinging and crushing men behind their armor. You understand that she's leading you into the arena she's formed—a perfect circle of Angrboda's radius, flat and red and blanketed with bodies.
The men all whisper that she is not fighting to kill—and you realize as much as you ride into range, your javelin at the ready—because she turns on you with her golden eyes glowing and chains bunched in her fist, harpoon cleaving innocently through the air as if it was nothing more than her hand reaching out to caress you on the cheek. It is only a split second, but you see in that moment before the darkness that your death is so fleeting and uncircumstantial in the face of her agony that, if you had the time, you would weep for yourself.