In a cave, deep in the forest, there stands a woman.
She has stood for so long now, she's lost all track of time. Days mean nothing to her; neither do seasons, nor decades or centuries. For all she knows, a millennia has passed outside the rocky walls of her prison. She does not care.
She is not alone. Bound before her is a man. His skin is deep blue, markings decorating his limbs, and his eyes were once red. They have long since been destroyed.
And above her, above the rocks the man is bound to, is a green and gold serpent.
She hates the serpent. She pities the serpent. She wonders why the serpent did not warn her of this.
But it doesn't matter, does it? Not really. The Norns would weave their tales as they would, and so they wound Queen Sigyn's tale thusly:
It began with a prison, different from this one but a prison all the same. It began with a simple choice of walking into a monster's cage and seeing if he would tear out her throat or claim her as his own. It began when he spilled his seed into her and she bore his children.
And so it must end with a prison. The one she stands in now is just the one to end her story with.
Sigyn knows she will not leave this cave. As the serpent's venom drips into her bowl, her mind works ever away at working against the Allfather's magic. At finding the threads that make up his power, his spell to keep them all here, and undoing them.
She is the Incantation Fetter. She cannot be bound. Every spell can be broken, if only one knew where to look for the slips in the weaving.
She has not told her husband that he will be departing this cave by himself. Even if she could speak, she would not tell him. She is uncertain he can survive that kind of heartbreak. She is all he has left.
Sigyn glances down at her husband, her dearest Loki, and with a burned hand, threads her fingers through his hair. What once was pure black is now more white, and the parts of his face that haven't been destroyed by the venom are lined and sagging.
We are both so old, Sigyn thinks. I am so weary, my love.
She cannot say this to him. Odin cast his own spell on her, the day he bound her husband. She cannot speak, at least not to Loki. Any time she has tried, no sound comes out, not even a whisper.
The only sound that accompanies them is the never ending drip of the venom, the rattle of Loki's breathing, and her own heartbeat.
Weary as she is, Sigyn holds her bowl high and steady. There is still much time to pass before she can undo Odin's spell, before she can end her life and join her sons in Hel's Realm.
For now, she focuses on the happier times, when her sons were alive and her family happy.
It is all she has to hold on to, anymore.
