"We have no time to repair a faulty machine," you told her.
"A bad workman always blames his tools," she replied, meeting your gaze without blinking, and it was too late by the time you heard my madness in her voice and recognised my sword in her hand.
She never relinquished the treasures she stole in your name or delivered the souls you bade her collect. She knew that you had armies and artifacts enough of your own, noticed that you were using them to carefully not quite win a war, while she and her small band of under-equipped Einherjar would be forced to fight a mockery of a decisive battle alone. She noticed that sending them away meant she couldn't train them up any more, maybe not enough to keep them alive during the final battle, that giving you her treasures didn't necessarily mean you would give her enough in return to fund the expeditions you sent her on, those vital crusades such as breaking into my home and stealing my belongings.
The Infernas had always been her favourite treasure. She used to run a finger down the dark greatsword's pommel and watch a ripple of flame run down the meteoric iron blade, sending broken reflections of herself cascading down its jagged surface in painfully crimson light. Something about the feel of its hilt in her grip would reassure her, as though the flames that wreathed the sword warmed her soul against the oncoming chill of the winter night.
She used to dread the night, ever since you took her aside once, after her monthly evaluation, and softly whispered into her ear that her next failure would result in her annihilation. She returned a few items to placate you, even a soul, once, but the pretence bored her and she soon forgot.
You noticed the sword in her hand too late. You saw her draw back her head and screech like a drunken harpy as she unfurled crimson wings and darted at you from the shadows of the tree that burst into flames at her touch, but you understood its significance, why the innermost depths of your forgotten divine nature was screaming at you to run, too late. And soon nothing was left but ashes and charred feathers as she walked out of a conflagration that lit up the night, your blood still dripping from her blade.
I took over only once, so that she could walk alive out of that swamp. Every single time after that, she followed me of her own volition. Because she saw herself in me. Saw another soul betrayed by Odin, lost in exile, out in the cold. Another who could only see through his lies when the madness consumed them and they realise what he left them with was only a fraction of their power.
So she came to free me from my imprisonment in a cage with the illusion of a throne, leaving red stains in the thawing snow, flowing down into the icy valleys in rivers of blood and frost. Loki had come to visit that night, too, to make me a deal. He found my seat vacant and me absent. He realised he had lost the opportunity forever to have anything worth bartering with, because I was no longer powerless, I was free. But he wasn't looking behind him so he didn't see his pet wolf go down without even a whimper, the blade cutting clean. The poor thing had no defences against my fire – for a trickster, Loki could be a fool at times. We left only Bloodbane alive. I always did have a soft spot for dragons.
At first she was afraid to return with me to Muspelheim when I appeared before my true brothers and sisters and told them I would never leave them again, that it was time to march for victory. But I took her aside and I showed her that you don't get burned if you become the flame yourself. Not until you burn yourself out, but that's what happens when your flame is at its brightest and purest.
Then I came for Frey, and the look in your brother's eyes said he knew he was doomed. Maybe it was a mercy that in his final moments, he actually remembered his original destiny and, for the first time in his existence, questioned Odin's lies. At that moment, he was truly alive. We gave him a proper funeral pyre as our vital flames consumed Asgard Hill and we battled the other pale shadows of the Gods once again in their ruins. It took four of their lives for Odin to even notice something was wrong, and by then, I was at his door.
She has a power you don't know about, that machine you discarded, the one you decided was faulty rather than admit you had no idea what it did. A power to create that reaches beyond yours. But you can't truly create without destroying first. I'm working on that part. Welcome to the Ragnarok.