To Everything There Is a Season (tag: Isis & Harmonia) “Hedylogos is dead.”
Sigyn stood frozen to the spot as the two foreign gods simply dropped that bombshell and then left. Left her inhaling the smell of smoke in the charred remains of the room around her. Left her surrounded by the twisted and broken corpses of once familiar servants. Left her, hollow and frozen inside. Left her without Hedylogos. Her brother was dead.
The finality in that statement made her want to scream and rage, but somehow she couldn’t seem to get enough air in her lungs to manage it. She stood there gasping, hot tears streaming down her cheeks, as she tried to think. Think! Hedylogos was the only family she had besides Loki, and she simply wasn’t willing to lose another so dear to her heart. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She would find a way.
When Baldr had died at his brother’s hand, when Frigg’s grief had kept Asgard grey, silent but for weeping, for days on end, there had been an agreement. Hel would release him if every creature wept for the loss of Baldr. The bargain had been struck with the Queen of the Dead. The Greeks had to have an equivalent, didn’t they? Of course they did. Makaria was the goddess of Blessed Death, and she’d said her father was the ruler of the Underworld. Sigyn would go, then, to Makaria. She would beg and plead and promise, whatever she needed to do, to get an audience with the girl’s father. And there, she would make whatever bargain it would take to bring Hedylogos back. And then she would see it done. She would not fail as Frigg had done. Sigyn was going to save her brother and bring him home.
But home to what? For the first time since Philammon and Asklepios departed, the Norse goddess looked at her surroundings. Truly looked. Now that the initial shock of seeing the damage had passed, she could start to see the room in a more practical fashion. The scorch marks told the story of the fire’s path, and it was obvious that this room had taken a hard blow. What about the rest of the chateau? The building was primarily made of stone, so though this section of the building was heavily damaged, Sigyn had hopes that other portions had not been as badly affected. Though there was still a worry about smoke damage; even if fire had not reached every area of the building, the smoke would have.
Sigyn realized in that moment how much she had come to rely on the convenience that Hedy’s staff had provided for her. Despite her original discomfort in having others do things for her, she’d grown very used to it. And in this moment, her first inclination was to set people to work on clean up and organizing the repair while she set off to find Makaria. But the building was not the only part of the home that had taken such a drastic blow. The servants here were in even worse shape than the chateau. Those that remained looked shell-shocked and lost, and Sigyn knew there was no way that she could leave them now. She was their last connection to their missing master, and if she left now, it would be abandonment. Nor could she make these people work when they had just lived through such a traumatic experience.
What she needed was a place for them to go, to clean up and rest. What she needed was some help with the organization of how to clean up the chateau, discover how extensive the damage was, how many of the servants had been lost. Though her heart cried that what she really needed was Hedylogos. She couldn’t argue with that, but like Asklepios, she must see to the living first. Hedy would want her to care for his people, and it was not only for his sake that she couldn’t leave them now. They were her people too.
So she did as she said she would do, and attempted to contact Isis. Would the prayers of a Norse goddess reach the ears of an Egyptian Queen? Sigyn sincerely hoped so, because she could not take the time to go to Isis physically. Not when she had faces looking at her like she was the last anchor in the storm.
Moving toward the bloodied and soot-covered mortals that were left in her charge, Sigyn spoke gently and moved slowly. The last thing they needed was to be pushed, but it would be better for them to leave this room and the death that lingered here. The kitchen would be a better place for them to gather until she could find a place for them to rest. A quick head count revealed far too low a number of moving bodies. But she had hopes that some of the others had hidden themselves or fled.
They would have to be found. And the chateau set to rights. Then she could go and get Hedylogos back from the Greek land of the dead. That was her plan. She would cry later, she told herself, not realizing that she’d been crying the entire time.