Chapter 309: Prodigal Daughter

Chapter 309: Prodigal Daughter

If you want to support me check out my patron at /athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

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13th May 2013, Helheim

(Hela Odinsdottir POV)

Her name was Hela Odinsdottir. She was the proud daughter of Odin, the Crown Princess of Asgard, the Heiress to the throne, and the Goddess of Death. She was born during a time of war and death and grew to revel in it.

She understood when she was a child that the strong survived and thrived, while the weak perished to make way for their betters. This was why Hela's mother died giving birth to her. She was weak and could not handle the power of the daughter of Odin. At least, it was what she told herself when she was younger to fill the void her mother left behind.

That was the core of the Asgardian philosophy, the reason for their existence. They were strong, which means that it was their right to rule over their lessers.

Her father embodied such an ideology. He was a master of weaponry, unrivaled with a spear, and had a mastery of the Asgardian magics that no one had ever seen before. No one in Asgard had ever even come close to Odin in strength as a warrior, and Hela tried to emulate him as much as possible.

She did not have a mother, and with the realms being at war, she was constantly surrounded by generals and warriors. She never had the luxury of a mother's love and care. She has never been hugged goodnight, like the rest of the girls were. Instead, she was ignored in favor of her father's war.

At first, she hated it, then she had grown apathetic to it, and finally she ended up looking down on it. After all, she was strong like her father, why would she need a cowardly woman fussing over her? Instead, Hela devoted her entire life to becoming the best warrior in existence, to surpassing her father and helping him conquer the realms that were rightfully his.

Hela ignored the jeers from the court, the dismissive glances of the soldiers that she had forced her father to tutor her in the art of war and instead focused on what mattered, becoming Asgard's greatest warrior. Day and night, she trained. She mastered every weapon she had access to. She was peerless with a sword, but still adequate with a lance. She could beat men centuries older than her who had actual battle experience. She was a prodigy in warfare. And yet Odin did not even blink once at the mention. He simply did not care, considering her to be barely more than a child, a lady, not a warrior.

It was so bad; she was constantly drained of her power. She was weak, she was always in pain, and she couldn't reach out, or ask for help. Death would have been preferable to thousands of years of isolation and pain. Nifleheim was a void that always drained her powers, even her physical strength, and yet she could not die. Every day, she starved and could not move. All she had was her hatred of Odin. He wasn't her father anymore, just a creature that looks like him. No father would condemn their daughter to this. That one eyed bastard, after everything she had done for him, betrayed her to a fate worse than death.

She had almost escaped once. After centuries of honing her control, she had gathered enough power to try to get out of Helheim. She didn't know if she could leave the realm of Nifleheim, but it was better than her prison. A change of scenery would have been nice.

However, her father had seen it and sent the Valkyries after her. Hela stopped caring anymore. Her former sisters in battle did not protest her imprisonment, and now they were actively trying to send her back. She killed every single one of them, in bitterness and anger. And by the end, she was so drained that she was instantly pulled back to Helheim. She didn't feel a sliver of guilt when she killed the Valkyries. She was the Goddess of Death, after all, and that was the first taste of death she had in centuries.

After that, she stopped caring. Odin would always know when she left the cursed realm and send fodder to exhaust herself against until she was pulled back to her prison. Instead, she wanted him to suffer. The prison was bound to Odin's life force, and she was the Goddess of Death. She could manipulate life force on a very small scale. And so, she did her best to make him sacrifice as much as possible to keep her imprisoned. She had cost him thousands of years from his life expectancy. It was fitting in a way, to play the long game, to truly hurt him, to make him remember that she was still there, killing him from the inside, that she would have her revenge when he dies, that she would destroy everything he built and reconquer the nine realms in her name.

And it was coming soon, Odin's death that is. He was getting weaker, and older. A few decades at most, and she would have been outside. That was until something happened. Someone had contacted her. They called themselves the Gods of the Gods, what a pretentious title. But she saw what they were, they were parasites, that Odin was rebelling against.

Hela could see past their pride and arrogance. They were desperate. Odin truly had a chance to destroy them, and they were terrified. These Gods of the Gods knew of the unfairness of her treatment and yet did nothing until they needed her. These were not saviors, but cowards and opportunists.

And yet, when they made her a deal to kill Odin, to destroy his heir and his empire in exchange for her freedom, how could she refuse it? After all, that was all she had ever wanted. Hela's father was dead, and it was right that she killed the creature that took his place. That cursed man had taken everything from her. Death would have been preferable to what he had done, but he didn't even give her the honor of death through combat. He had to be a coward and bind her. That was a mistake that he will pay for soon.

So, as these Shadows opened a portal to what was supposed to be the empty realm of Svartalfheim and she saw Asgard's army, which paled in comparison to what it used to be in the past, fighting Dark Elves, who as far as she knew were supposed to be extinct, she didn't care. Instead, she killed almost half of Odin's army in seconds and looked for the supposed mighty king.

He looked nothing like the proud warrior he used to be, just an old man with a sword. Hela should have felt excited, ready to kill the man who failed her so, but all she felt was nothing. She wasn't angry, she wasn't afraid, she was just empty. But still, killing Odin was necessary. He would keep trying to bind her otherwise, to send her back to that hellhole. And Hela would rather die than return.

Perhaps if she killed Odin, she would feel something, anything. She was always going to kill him; she had made a deal after all. Instead, she gave the King of Asgard a look and forced a smirk onto her face, "Well, Odin. Long time no see."

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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.