When Odin awoke, she felt herself floating in an odd sea of some sort, filled with a strange liquid. She felt the peculiar, fluid feel of water all over her body and realised she did not need to breathe.
Where am I?
A better question, you whose veins harbour my blood, is who.
A weapon or a human?
A warship or a girl?
A monster or a machine, or something else in between?
Were we created to save humankind-or to assist it in destroying itself?
Who are you? Who are we?
Odin floated in the strange ocean, feeling bubbles escape from her nose. By reflex she inhaled, and, after a moment of panic-found that she could in fact do so.
Do not fear. This is a place created of the collective imagination of you and I. Here we cannot die. Here we are safe.
...Bismarck?
Yes. Yes, the humans know me as such. The Iron Chancellor, Terror of The North Sea, Ironblood's demon.
And that, by extension, that makes you a demon as well.
What?
Do you not know, child?
What are you talking about?
I knew it the moment I laid eyes on you, you insect. Somehow that had taken my flesh, sculpted it, moulded it into another life, another form, another failure, another unborn child of war.
You're not making any sense.
But...there's something about you. Something else. I can sense it-you are not wholly mine.
There is the scent of the Siren about you.
Odin was surprised, but her body wouldn't move.
What?
So what does that make you? Siren? Human?
Or are you something else entirely?
Or are we defined not by where we came from, but instead what we did?
That would make you a monster.
That would make you a failure. Unable to accomplish the one goal you were bred for. All that suffering, all those dead sisters, for what?
You can read my mind.
It is hard not to when more than half of it is a copy of mine.
Maybe we are defined by ourselves.
The only thing that line shows is your lack of a spine. You are only willing to accept the idealised version of yourself, the one you believe is right, the one you have crafted as an illusion, uncaring of the effect you might have unknowingly had on others.
If we do not give ourselves meaning, then what does?
The answer is that we are defined by those we kill.
Look down.
Odin looked down.
The floor of the strange ocean was carpeted in uncountable corpses, so many that it seemed as if the entire seabed was made out of them. They stretched out in all directions, staining the water below with a faint red tinge.
Aleph gaped upwards at her, her electrocuted body rigid and unyielding, eyes popping out of her head, sclera blood red from numerous ruptured capillaries.
Vav's twisted body was sprawled down there too, one eye peering from a bloody mess of a head.
Tet's bloated corpse regarded her silently through unseeing eyes that had nearly sunk into the swollen head, her drowned body puffed up to nearly three times her size in life and splotched with brown and green.
Thousands of dead that she didn't recognise, their bodies burnt and charred beyond all recognition. A woman, her gender only distinguishable by her carbonised dress, held the calcined skeleton of a child to her eyeless face.
All of them had their heads turned upwards, staring accusingly at Odin—Shin.
This is our legacy. This is what defines our kind.
Death and more death. A befitting definition for a god of lightning and an iron chancellor
And one day all whom we have caused to die will come to claim us.
Join them.
Odin screamed as she began sinking, but the sound died in a flurry of bubbles.
Join me. Become one with me, or go to the ghosts. I am sure they will be happy to… receive you.
Odin couldn't speak because of the odd liquid clogging her throat, so she closed her eyes and refused to look, the only excuse for defiance she had left.
Please.
Anything.
Just… make the ghosts go away.
Good. See? A good subordinate does not stir trouble for others, or hersel-
And then Bismarck's voice vanished as Odin was wrenched out of the dream, wrenched out of the ocean, the ghosts melting away like the ephemeralities that they were, and she felt herself falling, falling, falling.
Those that were watching, however, wouldn't have seen her fall. They would have been distracted, instead, Bismarck's form hurtling to the ground, pierced by a long beam of purple, crackling light, the black hole above Wilhelmshaven collapsing in on itself and smashing countless pieces of rubble into the ground, and the small figure standing on the sea disappearing into a coruscating portal, with a mess of wild, ash-gray hair, and a long, odd-looking metal bow.