***WARNING: Graphic depiction of childbirth***
If Hela hadn't known any better, she would have sworn she was dying. Her labor pains had been mild throughout the night - she had been able to sleep through the early ones - but now each pain gripped her body like a vice and stole her breath. She clutched Laufey's hand when another contraction started, as though it was keeping her from drowning, and he winced when the bones in his palm cracked from her strength. Now in the final stage, the pains were nearly on top of each other and Hela was growing restless.
"My Queen," Laufey begged her, stroking his icy hand over Hela's sweaty forehead to offer her a bit of relief, "you must remember to breathe. Try walking around again, that helped you earlier when your waters broke."
Hela clenched her teeth and let out a sharp breath. If this lasted much longer she would seriously consider using her own sword to cut the baby out herself, if only to end the agony. She awkwardly rose to her feet from the bed and took a few steps before another contraction started, forcing from her a snarling scream. Laufey was at her side instantly, whispering words of encouragement as he held up her shoulders. He pressed his forehead to hers and they breathed together until the pain subsided.
"I don't know how the great Queens went through this multiple times," Hela groaned. "I'm not sure I could ever do this again, if it's always this torturous."
"Hela, my love -"
Laufey's sentiment was cut off by a deafening roar, accompanied by the unmistakable flashing light of the Bifrost glaring through their bedroom window from the castle grounds. He rushed to the open window and was paralyzed with both fear and rage as Asgard's soldiers poured from the portal in hordes. Within seconds there were easily more than a thousand, with more coming, each of the Einherjar armed to the teeth and out for blood. Odin himself stood at the fore of the battalion, saddled high on his eight-legged steed, his spear raised and ready to signal the attack. Laufey turned to his vulnerable queen, his words unable to find their way from his brain to his mouth. If he didn't act quickly it would be mere moments before they would reach the castle gates. Hela's cries brought him back to himself and he strode resolutely toward the door.
"What's going on? Where are you going!?" Hela's face was distorted in pain and anger, tears falling as she held her hardening stomach. "You can't leave me!"
Laufey stopped to look over his shoulder at her, only briefly, for he didn't want the sight of her to change his mind. "I have to alert the soldiers," he explained. There was no mistaking the gravity of his choice - he knew that to leave this room was to place his life on the line for the future of his realm.
For his son.
Without another word, Laufey passed through the doorway and down the hall, leaving Hela on her own. She fell to her knees when the next contraction started, this one less than half a minute from the last, and wrapped her arms around her belly protectively. Sobbing quietly, she waited for the pain to slow down and tried to rise to her feet. She wanted to see for herself what was happening outside.
"HELAAA!" Odin's commanding voice rang out across the expanse of the frozen landscape, freezing Hela to her spot on all fours on the floor. She took a few gasping breaths and sat up on her heels. Now was not the time to panic. "Surrender or my men will ensure that no Jotun shall live to see another day!"
The ultimatum dropped into Hela's gut like a block of ice. She had to do something. The Jotuns were hopelessly outnumbered, if Odin had brought all of the Einherjar with him. If it was war he wanted, it would be less of a war and more of a slaughter.Collecting what strength she still possessed, Hela crawled the few more feet to the window and pulled herself up to standing using the sill. She had one shot, and she had to take it between contractions.
In her right hand Hela concentrated her power and summoned a deadly black spike the length of a lance. With her power weakened from the labor, it was brittle, she could tell from its texture, but its obsidian surface still shone in the light of the torch next to her on the wall, its familiar weight in her hand a comforting feeling in this turbulent moment. Wavering on her feet and breathing hard, she closed her eyes to focus through the pain. Once she felt in control, Hela opened her eyes, raised her right arm back as far as she could, her left extended to the front to help her aim, and with all her might she threw the spike through the window, its needle-sharp tip pointed at Odin's heart.
She never saw if her spike hit its mark; the momentum of her throw put her off balance and Hela dropped heavily to the floor on her side. She had no choice but to lay there and pray her child had not been harmed until she adjusted to the fresh pain in her ribs. Below her, the floor began to quake - Laufey must have succeeded in rounding up the soldiers. The pounding of their feet echoed through the castle like a stampede. It did little to reassure Hela, but it was better than letting the Einherjar storm the gates with no resistance.
At last Hela found the strength to sit up and rise to her feet. It was nearly time for the delivery, Hela knew, as each contraction was now immediately followed by the next with no more than a few seconds between them. She didn't waste her energy screaming out the pain like she desperately wanted to. There wasn't time. She could hear a clamor outside the castle as the Jotun soldiers left the castle to face the Asgardians head-on, and that meant the interior of the castle - with her in it - would be unguarded, so she needed to get to safety. For all her strength, there was not a chance in Helheim that she would be able to fight off an Einherjar, or Odin himself.
Laufey had shown Hela months ago where to find a hidden safe room, were anything to happen to him and she couldn't fight. Steeling her nerve and swallowing her pain, step by step Hela made her way across the bedchamber and into the hallway, stopping every ten or fifteen steps to breathe through her contractions. She was beginning to feel an overwhelming urge to bear down and push as she came to the last room in the hall, and she had to stop herself from doing just that while she opened the heavy door. Hela had to turn around and push the door with her back and she was horrified to see a steady trail of blood on the floor leading from the bedchamber. She was so focused on reaching the safe room that she hadn't even noticed. Her eyes followed the blood trail and her heart nearly stopped at the sight of her gown, the bottom part of the viridescent fabric between her legs stained a bright crimson. She ran one hand over her stomach, feeling the muscles in her womb tighten beneath her shaking fingers.
My baby…
The sound of forged steel shattering ice brought Hela's mind back into focus. She still had her back braced against the door and for some reason she couldn't pinpoint she was waiting to finish opening it. Soldiers both Jotun and Aesir were shouting at one another as they fought, making her long to hear Laufey's voice commanding his army.
"ODIN! Come and face me yourself, coward!"
As if her wish had summoned Laufey into existence downstairs, Hela heard the Jotun king roar his challenge for the realm to hear. Everything in her wanted to run down there and join him, to defeat her father by his side, but she knew Laufey would want her to be safe and protect their child, so she braced her feet on the floor and gave the door one last shove to open it enough for her to get inside. Just before it shut behind her, Odin's words echoed through the hall.
"THEIR BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS, HELA!"
Hela turned and engaged the lock on the door, a simple metal barricade that slid across the door and into the frame to keep anyone from pulling it open. Simple, but effective.
Time to get busy, she thought, and crossed the room to the emergency cradle situated in the corner. Laufey had ensured he had stocked it with furs just in case. The small room shook and Hela could just barely hear the struggle between Laufey and Odin. Metal clashed with metal and every few seconds there was another guttural scream. The urge to push was becoming overwhelming, and a small pool of blood was forming at her feet. There was no more time.
Hela took one of the furs out of the cradle and placed it on the floor between her feet, squatting over it and gripping tightly with one hand to the only chair in the room for leverage and balance. She closed her eyes, waiting for the next contraction to start and trying to ignore the sounds of battle drifting through the walls to her. Come on, Hela, she told herself, time to be strong. Counting down from three, Hela took a deep breath, clenched her teeth, and bore down, pushing as hard as she could.
The pain was like nothing that had come before. It was as if the child was tearing her open from inside her body, and Hela nearly lost her balance again trying to compensate for it. She pushed until she reached the count of ten, just like she had read, and stopped to take a breath. When she opened her eyes she saw stars dancing in her vision. There was no time to rest, as the next contraction began just a moment later and Hela had to push again. Through her tears of pain she pushed even harder, forcing herself to not give up, and finally she felt the baby slide down into her birth canal with help from gravity. She reached down with her free hand to feel for her child with her fingers and nearly wept with joy when her fingertips touched a head full of slick hair, still stuck two or three inches inside of her.
That one touch worked like magic, renewing her sense of determination, and Hela took another deep breath to prepare herself for the next push. Once again she bore down, her hand beneath her to feel when the baby's head breached the surface. She stopped right at that moment to breathe through the intense burning in her pelvic floor. Fear of being torn open made her sit idle through another contraction to gather her nerve. Then an anguished scream from Laufey shot adrenaline into her veins and Hela readied herself for the final push.
Do it for Laufey.
No longer caring about whether she screamed, Hela pushed with every bit of strength she had left, until finally her baby's head popped out into the open air. She stroked the wet hair with her hand and pushed down lightly again, supporting the baby's neck and head, until the shoulders came out, the rest of the body sliding out easily with a rush of thin, blood-tinged fluid.
Hela let the baby down gently onto the furs and sat down on the floor to examine him. The Prince was Jotun all the way through, with dark blue skin and unique markings, and he had her black hair. He had not taken a breath yet and was not moving.
Gathering the limp baby into the bundle of fur, she took him in her arms and used her mouth to cover his nose and suction the tiny bit of mucus out, rubbing the bottoms of his feet with her thumb. When that didn't work, Hela flicked her wrist and conjured a small dagger, using the sharp blade to cut through the umbilical cord. A tiny flash of seidr cauterized the end of the stump of cord protruding from the baby's navel. After an agonizing minute that felt like an eternity, the baby started to move his limbs around, and at last he took in his first breath and cried quietly. He opened his blood red eyes and Hela began to sob openly, her gasps of relief shaking her entire body. She slid her finger into his open palm and he grasped it tightly.
"Loptr," she whispered, a tear falling onto the baby's belly, "I love you so much." The baby heard her voice and turned his head toward her, searching for food. Hela was about to pull the front of her gown down to feed him, until Odin's voice bellowed from nearly right outside the door.
"I killed him, Hela! Your precious kingdom and its king are all dead because of you! I know you're in there!"
Hela's heart pounded frantically in her chest. All that she had done, leaving her father to marry Laufey, conceiving his heir, nearly uprooting the foundation of Asgard's monarchy… all of it was for naught if Laufey really was dead. She gazed down at the child in her arms, now disinterested and falling asleep, and knew that if she was going to die at the hands of Odin, she wasn't going to make it easy for him.
Wrapping little Loptr tight in the furs, and thanking Laufey's forward thinking that there were no windows and plenty of shadows in this safe room, Hela kissed her baby son on his forehead and used her shadow power to transport him to the safety of the temple where the Casket of Ancient Winters was kept. It fatigued her already-exhausted body, and she swayed a little when she used the chair to help her stand. The floor beneath where she was sitting was saturated with her blood, and she still had yet to deliver the placenta, so she was still having mild contractions. I'm going down with a fight, Hela thought, and it may not be a long one but it will be an honorable one.
The barricaded door cracked around the frame and Hela assumed Odin was trying to use Gungnir to blast the door down. A second blast took the door from the wall, breaking the lock, and it hit the floor with a thunderous crash. Hela did not run, but instead summoned a great necrosword and flung it at her father. It nearly took Odin's head off, and he dodged it just in time for one of the jagged curves to catch the side of his face as he turned sideways. Before Odin could retaliate Hela threw another sword, but could not aim as well, and she stumbled over her own feet and fell over. The sword threw sparks as it glanced off of the Allfather's chest armor. Hela was so depleted of energy that she could not get back up off of the floor. Odin aimed the golden spear at her and she closed her eyes, thinking of her baby, waiting for her father to kill her.
Odin spoke again, soft and serious, and Hela opened her eyes, stunned momentarily to see that her sword had claimed one of his eyes. "My father," he said slowly, "always said there were fates worse than death. None of them are good enough for you. Hela Odinsdottir, Princess of Asgard, Goddess of Death, the punishment for your treason is to be locked away to rot, stripped of your power, until the event of my death, after which you will be released, no more powerful or royal than a mortal. You are responsible for the death of the Frost Giants. Your soul will never set foot in Valhalla, and you will never see your son again." He paused to wipe the blood dripping from his wounded eye. "I hope it was worth it."
Hela no longer had it in her to fight him. She held tightly to her brief memory of Loptr and hoped he would be found by one of the small villages when one of their people came to the temple. Odin held up his hand and spoke a few arcane words, surrounding her with a golden light, and she was gone.