After living for so long in the hellish world outside the wall, the peace and homeliness of the temple and the hill it crowned served as a series of small shocks. Outside, everything was broken and decayed. Areas that were once populated were empty, desolate. Steel skeletons melted into piles of rust, concrete stood cracked and pitted from acid skies, and glass lay haphazardly upon the ground. Even nature had turned surly, flinty stones and plentiful nettles making a hazard of what was once a paradise.
In here, however, the grass was a riotous green, the sky a pure and clear azure. The trees were not twisted and black, were not bare sticks drinking blood from the soil. Sunlight shone unhampered by smog or smoke. Inside, the wood floor enjoyed a deep luster, honey-gold grain presenting the care of its proprietor. The rice-paper that divided the living space shone with pearlescent purity. Here and there, personal touches proved the temple to be a living place. A framed photo, three women ("Goddesses," Raven thought to herself with an instinctive chill) behind a short, plain Japanese man. A plaque on one sliding door, reading "Urd's Laboratory." An apron, worn thin in places and slightly frayed about the edges, hung in the kitchen.
"You have waited long for a chance to enter here," stated Skuld.
"No," Raven replied. "I tried over and again, and was routed just as often. I did not wait for a chance to enter this place: I won my right to enter here."
A short silence before Skuld said, "Indeed. Although I am unsure of the wisdom involved in allowing you here considering the path you chose to reach us, what I have to say in this is moot, regarding the circumstances.
A considering pause. "You are not Jon," Raven said warily, wings rustling and tail showing the slightest hint of an arch.
"Not fully. Sit, Raven, and hear something of the one you know of as Jon, and something of myself, a passenger upon his soul."
=-=-=-=-=-
I entered the mortal world in a dimension far from here, similar yet different to this place you have adopted as your home. For some years I lived in a temple of which this is a model, enjoying the company of my older sisters and partaking in a childishly surly war for my not-eldest sister's affection against her intended. As I have told you, my name is Skuld, daughter of Odin, Norn of the Future. Part of my gift as a goddess-
"Lightbringer," whispered a dark voice in the back of Raven's mind-
-is that of prophecy. I began to dream of darkness and fire and stone, a wasteland heralded by a defender of the light, and the heritage that overwhelmed her. All was not dark, however. This servant of the light and slave to the darkness could yet be saved by one who had passed through the mists of Neiflheim and the fires of Muspelheim, and had been forged anew. This person came to my world an imperfect blending of demon and man, and committed atrocities against my person which shall not be mentioned here. He struggled against the darkness within himself, an overwhelming force which his stalwart mortal heart eventually stayed long enough for a binding to be worked upon him by my sister and I. However, we were unable to exorcise the demon within, for it had taken root deep within his soul and to destroy it would destroy the man as surely as if we had taken ax to his heart or stave to his head. He was, in essance, a good man whose soul was tainted by his demonic parasite. As his crimes against me would forever bar him from Valhalla, and as he was not fully in control of his faculties at these times, my sisters and I showed mercy and offered him a choice of penance. We could send him home, to a dimension far from here and likewise from whence I hail, or we could set him a geis to deflect the prophecy of which I had been plagued.
Remorseful and noble, he chose the geis and was transported here through our power over Man's fate. Jon is that man. You are that servant. He comes as the Avatar of Prophecy, Chosen of the Norns. His duties are dispatched, and you are his proving, Raven, Daughter of Trigun the Terrible. Arise, Nephilim, and state your chosen path.