NOTE: The events in HERALDS: ORIGINS take place after the current LADY LIBERATORS series.

Delphi stirred the waters of the oracle, and another image began to emerge – much to the consternation of the watcher in the shadows.

There should only have been five. This sixth portent, this sixth glimpse of some distant but seemingly crucial occurrence, it was unwelcome. It-

“Watch,” Delphi breathed. “For this is where it ends.”

And so the Mistress of the Ten Rings did as she was bidden, reluctantly, but with a swell of sick, dreadful fascination…

THIS ONE IS THE WAIF

By Meriades Rai

“Oh, daddy, I don’t want to get married!”

Thiazzi of Jotunheim regarded his only daughter with sadness as she stood before him, wringing her hands with distress. To witness such misery etched upon that beautiful, beloved face, to hear the genuine sorrow in her voice… it was more than a father’s heart could bear. But what choice was there? This was the decree of fate, the law of destiny, and who was he to break the Eternal Cycle?

Skadi of the Frost Giants stamped her foot and flattened an entire copse of pine trees, for which she was immediately sorry, because she was a nature lover at heart and also because she wasn’t wearing any shoes, and pine trees could be decidedly sharp. She then bowed her head, her soft white hair falling about her face like the impossible cascade of a frozen waterfall, and her alabaster skin marked with the glitter of icicle tears.

“Is it because I’m stupid?” she asked, snuffling. “I never wanted to be stupid either.”

Thiazzi flinched, his chest contracting. Another break. Soon there’d be nothing left but splinters.

“You aren’t stupid, Skadi,” he whispered. “You’re… special.”

“Well, that’s just words.”

“No, my love. No it’s not.”

Thiazzi reached forward and gathered Skadi in his arms, feeling the evidence of her grief, wet upon his skin. He held her all the tighter, breathing into her hair, and as the pair of them rose beyond the jagged cut of the Thyrmheim mountains they all but blotted out the light of the moon.

“Njord is a fine fellow,” Thiazzi murmured. “Strong, and kind. He’ll take care of you when I’m gone.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

Thiazzi smiled, sadly. “There, little one, we’re in agreement. But I’m old and my body is… failing. And when Hela comes for us there’s not much any of us can do to turn her away.”

“Like when she took momma?”

Thiazzi’s eyes hardened. “Yes,” he said, quietly. Remembering that day, and the sound of wheels and hooves, and the steady click of black heels upon stone, and the sight of those blood-bright green eyes appearing in that shadows of the night in the hour before dawn. Remembering the Goddess’ smile.

“Yes, like when she took your mother.”

Skadi sniffled, then sagged.

“I still wish I wasn’t… special,” she muttered, reaching up to twine her hair with a long finger. “If I was clever I’d be able to break the Cycle. If I was clever I might even know what the Cycle was.”

“That’s not for the likes of us to question, Skadi. Now, please. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is… a big day.”

Skadi giggled, despite her tears.

“We’re giants,” she said, nudging her father in the ribs. “Every day’s a big day for us.”

Thiazzi smiled at this familiar joke, and as he did so the tears spilled and his chest tightened once again. Another break, another break, another break.

“I love you, Skadi.”

“I love you too, daddy. Goodnight.”

Skadi reluctantly extracted herself from her father’s hug and settled back down in the valley that was her bed, among the soaring peaks of the Thyrmheim pass, beneath the stars of the swirling galaxies that turned endlessly in the night skies of the Nine Worlds. As Thiazzi trudged away, the majestic pines of the forests brushing at his knees and the ground trembling beneath every gargantuan step, Skadi gazed up into the darkness of the universe and bit her lower lip. A flock of ravens fluttered past her eyelashes but she was too miserable to even swat them away. A frosted tear rolled down her cheek and fell, washing away a rope bridge that explorers from the world of the small folk had once strung up to span a yawning crevasse, and which had held firm for centuries before Skadi had unwittingly lay her head down beside it.

It wasn’t fair.

She would do anything to change this. Anything.

She sniffed, and closed her eyes.

“Anything…?”

Skadi frowned, then twitched her nose. She opened one eye again, and turned it in a circle. Then she opened the other one. She stared at the stars.

“Over here,” said the voice. The same voice that had spoken a moment earlier, but which Skadi wasn’t sure if she’d imagined.

Skadi rolled her head, ignoring the now familiar crunch of splintering foliage. Close by her shoulder, a beautiful woman – a tiny beautiful woman, one of the small folk, no bigger than the palm of Skadi’s hand – was languishing upon a rock, eating a golden apple. The woman was wearing a green bodice that seemed more intent on proudly displaying her ample bosom than concealing it, a tasseled green skirt that was so short and scant it really served no purpose whatsoever that wasn’t deliberately provocative, and sleek black stockings decorated with a hypnotic sequence of green circles that, again, seemed designed to draw the eye to her shapely legs and ankles.

Skadi blushed furiously. These little folk, they knew no shame. Apparently, from what she’d heard, all they did was drink and brawl and indulge in lewd and disgraceful assignations, often in public. Skadi had never met one before, but now that she had she was inclined to believe all those whispered tales. This specimen? She was positively… naughty.

“Would you really do anything to escape your fate, Skadi of the Frost Giants of Jotunheim?” the little woman asked, biting into her apple with a slow and luxurious movement of the mouth, its golden juices glistening upon her lips. Her hair was long and lush and golden, a touch disheveled and barely held in place by a green, horned headpiece, and her eyes were heavy-lidded and a quite brilliant green. She looked like she’d just roused herself from a strange bed she’d committed numerous acts in, none of which was sleeping. Skadi merely looked alarmed.

“How did you know what I was thinking?” she asked. The little woman arched an eyebrow, in much the same manner as she then hitched her superfluous skirt at her thigh, to allow her to cross her legs with a soft, silken hiss.

“I crawled in your ear,” she said, in a low voice. “Honestly, there’s all sorts in there.”

Skadi gasped. The woman smiled, wickedly, then licked her apple.

“What if I told you,” she said, “that you didn’t have to get married tomorrow? That I could cast a spell to put distance between yourself and your troubles?”

Skadi gasped again and clapped her hands, causing a wind that gusted her smaller companion backwards off her rock with a bump, her legs no longer crossed but now akimbo and pointing to the sky. When the woman righted herself once more a minute or so later, blowing her unruly fringe out of her eyes and smoothing herself down with a huff, she fixed the giantess with a baleful glare.

“Please don’t do that,” she said, in a way that suggested she wouldn’t ask so politely if there was a next time. Skadi nodded meekly.

“A spell?” she asked. “Are you a witch?”

The blonde woman seated herself once more and then smiled her widest smile. “I prefer the term… Enchantress,” she purred. “And you, sweet Skadi, may call me Amora.”

“Oh. But… but what would your spell do? I wouldn’t want anything to happen to poor Njord.”

“No?”

“No! He’s a fine fellow, my father said. Strong and kind.”

Amora the Enchantress curled her lip. “Yes,” she said, sardonically. “Strong and kind. And old, and with a keen eye on pretty, susceptible young girls, apparently. And also, now, remarkably wealthy at the exact time that your dying father finds himself much poorer than he was. A dowry, to… sweeten the deal.”

“The deal?”

The golden-tressed witch eyed the giantess with an even gaze. “You’re not the sharpest sword in the smithy, are you?”

“I’m not a sword at all.”

“No. You’re… what? Eight hundred cycles old? A thousand?”

“Twelve hundred,” Skadi said proudly.

“But with a mind no more advanced than four hundred, likely less.”

Skadi blushed and looked away.

“Special,” said the Enchantress. Skadi blinked, shedding another icicle tear.

“That’s the word my father uses,” she said, quietly. “But I know what it really means.”

“Words have power, it’s true,” the smaller woman declared, “but sometimes they’re as worthless as pegasus feathers.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that how someone feels is more important than what they say. Your father loves you; to him you shine brighter than the most virulent star in the twilight skies above your head. Don’t dwell on words, Skadi.”

The giantess looked back at her companion, her eyes shadowed.

“Can you truly help me?” she asked, softly. Amora trailed a delicate hand along the swell of her thigh, kicking her heels slowly and deliberately.

“I can,” she murmured, “and our friend Njord won’t suffer a moment’s anguish, believe me. It will, however, involve you leaving the place you’ve called home since birth…”

“Thyrmheim?” Skadi whispered. Then, judging her companion’s bemused expression, she gasped at the full implication. “Jotunheim?”

Amora laughed softly. “Far beyond, young Skadi. Far beyond. You’ve heard of the realm of Midgard, yes?”

Skadi blinked. “Where the underdressed little people live? Like you?”

The small witch grimaced. “No. No, not like me. I, Skadi, am a true Asgardian Goddess. Midgardians are… less exceptional.”

“And little.”

“Yes, and little. But don’t worry that your fellow Frost Giants will come looking for you there and discover you with ease. As the great Odin and his celebrated son Thor would attest, not to mention my own scurrilous sister,* there are ways to… disguise oneself when abroad in the land of the mortals.”

* See Marvel Omega’s Lady Liberators mini-series for the full story!

“Would I need a hat?”

The Enchantress sat a while on her rock, studying her stockinged feet as if they were suddenly incalculably interesting. She seemed to be counting beneath her breath.

“No,” she said, eventually, and with admirable patience, “you won’t need a hat. I’ll provide you with everything you require.”

“But what about my father? He’s… not well, you see. If I’m not here, then-”

The witch raised an exquisite hand, and when she flourished it the sparks of magic that danced so sensually between her fingers were immediately spellbinding. Enchanting.

“Your father spoke of the Eternal Cycle, the magnitude of which you couldn’t possibly comprehend. In truth, few can. But Thiazzi has his role to play, and so in turn, Skadi, do you, if you follow the tried and tested path. If you remain, your father will die and your life will be dull and fruitless; which is to say that it will be unrewarding and you will achieve nothing of note, not that it will lack apples. If, however, you accept my offer…”

“Things will be different?” Skadi asked, her eyes suddenly bright with hope. Amora smiled once more, beautiful and radiant and surely so very innocent.

“Some things,” she said, sweetly. “One can never be sure what will transpire when the Cycle is interrupted and the wheels of fate run wild.”

Skadi bit her lower lip, drawing up her legs and wrapping her arms about her knees. Her bare heels gouged two new furrows in the canyon beneath her, and from the morrow the valley river would forever more be split and travel upon a new trajectory, but such things were, as so often, beneath the notice of giants.

“Why would you do this for me?” Skadi asked, after a moment’s more deliberation. “In all the faerie tales my father ever told, witches were highly dexterous.”

“I think you possibly mean treacherous. Or duplicitous.” The Enchantress paused, then smiled slyly and stretched out one of her long legs to make small circles in the air with her toes. “Although I guess it depends on the witch,” she purred.

“But-”

“In answer to your question, I am a woman of certain schooling who is loathe to accept the customary function allotted to our gender – to you, and to I – in the scheme of all things. I’ve never been one to follow protocol, Skadi,” the Enchantress said, “especially when it dictates that women are to strive and suffer whilst the men of the Nine Realms, regardless of class or stature – in the case of your people, literally so – are habitually gifted their freedom and honored in myth and canticle whilst we are painted in a darker scarlet. Besides, every boon carries a price…”

Skadi frowned, but her companion waved her hands once more and the magic cavorted about her devilish touch.

“A trifle,” she breathed. “Nothing to concern yourself with. A good deed for you now, Skadi, and one day, perhaps, I may call upon you in turn to favor me. Does that sound fair?”

“Well, yes,” the giantess agreed, nodding slowly. “But surely there’s nothing I can offer you? Not when you know magic.”

Amora the Enchantress smiled wide, showing a tiny hint of tongue.

“Oh, I’m sure we can think of something when the time comes,” she said. “Now then. Are we agreed? Because, if so, I think we should begin. Be prepared, however. There are certain elements to this particular spell that can… sting a little. But you be a brave girl now, Skadi. When you wake up, all the sorrow presently darkening that precious heart of yours will seem like a distant dream…”

“The sixth. A temperate heart of joyful innocence. The wandering child. The orphaned voyager far from home. This one is the waif, eliciting in others a protective shield.”

In the oracle of Delphi, there was silence for a time. Then, finally, the watcher in the shadows spoke.

“So, what does this mean?” the voice demanded, quietly. “What are you showing me here, girl? If I’ve already observed the five Heralds, according to your divinations, then this-”

“Six,” Delphi persisted in furious whisper. She snatched back her hand from the waters of her scrying pool, her golden hair tumbling about her naked shoulders and her eyes darkening. “Six Heralds.”

“My own forecast was for Five. This isn’t-”

“Your forecast was so obscure that you were forced to seek me out,” Delphi retorted, her voice raised in anger for the first time since her current associate had made her acquaintance. “You were uncertain of their identities, these five from your augury. Their purpose may have been revealed to you, but not who they were. And it was all so obscure… isn’t it impossible you were mistaken with the number? Or perhaps…”

She trailed off. Ten rings flickered with reflected light as they flexed in agitation. “What?”

“Perhaps, Five at the end of things,” Delphi murmured. “But at the beginning?”

The movement in the darkness stilled. Considering.

“Six at the start, Five at the end,” the voice said, eventually. “If one should fall…”

“Yes.”

“But which?”

Delphi scowled. “Does it matter?”

But of course it did, the girl knew that as much as the other. No future was carved irrevocably in stone, even one forged in the most powerful magic and rendered so vividly by the oracle. Time itself is fluid, not fixed, as the ghostly voice at her ear had whispered. There were always variables, and critical junctures where everything that might have been would pivot and dissolve and become the things that never were. If the certainty in this matter was that one of the Six would be lost, the uncertainty – the variable – was the identity of that one. Dependent on this, there were six possible outcomes, all of them potentially different to an immeasurable degree. In one outcome the watcher in the shadows would emerge triumphant in her schemes, but otherwise…

“Why does the image in the oracle persist?”

Roused by the voice, Delphi absently glanced back at her pool and her heart stilled. She frowned. She was no longer in contact with the waters, and this usually resulted in the dissipation of any sorcerous manifestations the oracle had conjured. In this instance, however, an image did indeed remain.

The beautiful face of Amora the Enchantress, Goddess of Asgard, was staring out of the pool, all honey-blonde hair and green eyes and beguiling, illusory innocence. She was still perched upon her rock beneath the night skies of Jotunheim, quite literally a world away from Delphi’s true location, but of the Frost Giantess Skadi, daughter of Thiazzi, there was no longer any sign. Amora gazed up at the stars, absently twirling a lock of golden hair about her fingers and running one of her long, stockinged legs against the other to produce an erotic hiss. When Delphi returned slowly to the edge of her pool back in the scrying chamber, so the sorceress smiled.

“Hello, there,” she murmured to the sky, her eyes heavy-lidded. “Always a thrill, to be spied upon. Like a maiden, stripped naked to bathe in the waters of some secluded lagoon, moonlight dusting her skin… I’ve never been able to decide, is it more exciting to watch or be watched?”

In her chamber, Delphi’s breath caught in her throat and she shivered in fear. She made to withdraw from the rim of the oracle once more, but that was when the Enchantress extended a lazy hand and blew a magical kiss.

And then Delphi ignited in a ball of green flame.

The girl screamed, limbs flailing and spine arching as she writhed, the fire dancing wickedly over naked skin that was previously as soft and pale as milk but was now blistering to black, just as her heavenly hair of sugar-spun gold scorched and withered to her scalp and her ocean blue eyes melted in their sockets. Her blood boiled and smoked and her organs fried, and then, finally, her heart burst from her chest like a fireball and exploded in the air, showering the entire chamber in hissing, emerald sparks.

Delphi gave one final shriek, her blackened, twisted hands clawing at the crater in her chest… and then she died.

In the waters of the oracle Amora stared up through her dark eyelashes and smiled sweetly, her hands now folded in her lap. “Ah, yes,” she said. “Definitely more exciting to watch. But, as you now appreciate, those caught spying must face the consequences.”

Her gaze traveled then, and when she found what she was looking for her green eyes narrowed.

“Well met, Mistress of the Ten Rings,” she murmured. “Do we… know each other?”

In the scrying chamber, candlelight flickered and smoke mingled with the stench of roasted flesh. The watcher in the shadows paused for a moment, then stepped forward to stand over the oracle and meet the implacable gaze of the beautiful, diabolical face that stared out.

The Mistress wore silk robes and sculpted body armor of gleaming gold trimmed with emerald. She wore a crown and cowl of the same, her long, black hair spilling out of the crown’s domed skullcap like a feathered plume, and her countenance was hidden behind a full facemasque of gold molded with classically beautiful but otherwise non-specific features. Her hands were sheathed in gauntlets of steel and golden silk, and upon each of the five digits of either hand she wore a ring, ten in total, each of different color and design.

“You can call me Lady Mandarin if you prefer,” the Mistress said, softly.

In the oracle, Amora’s smile darkened. “And behind the masque…?” she asked.

“A secret I choose not to share at present.”

“Indeed? An identity hidden is an identity of importance. I do know you then, I’d wager.”

The Enchantress raised her hand one more, fingers splayed. In the scrying chamber, the Mistress of the Ten Rings – Lady Mandarin – lifted her own left hand in response. The ring worn upon her first finger was glowing red.

In the pool, Amora arched an eyebrow and smirked. Then she laughed, genuinely amused, and lowered her hand once more.

“Just so. Well then, my fair Lady… it seems we’ve both learned something on this splendid, enchanted evening, yes? I have a delightful mystery to occupy me, and you… well, you’ve discovered that you won’t have things all your own way in whatever schemes you’re hatching. You’ve overstepped your boundaries and ruffled feathers. I, and others like me, we don’t take kindly to spies and trespassers. Or ill-conceived power plays.

“Beware, Mistress of Secrets. From here on, things get deadly serious.”

Amora blew another kiss, this one unaccompanied by sudden bursts of sorcerous flame but otherwise no less sinister, and then her image faded away and the waters of the oracle became still and dark and colorless once more.

Lady Mandarin glanced wordlessly at the charred and sundered body of the one-beautiful prophet Delphi, now black and twisted at her feet, and her gloved hands clenched into fists. Each of her ten rings glowed softly.

She thought of her Heralds, Six instead of Five, although one of them would prove expendable.

She thought of the trails that lay ahead.

Behind her facemasque, the mysterious woman who would risk everything in pursuit of one, all-consuming goal, smiled darkly.

“War it is, then,” she said. “War it is. And when I’m done, everything that walks and sings and loves and breathes will worship me…

“…the One True Goddess.”

COMING SOON in HERALDS # 1…

Ornamental lawn sculpture. An antiques auction house. Tea on the King’s Road, West London. An erupting hydrothermal vent. The dark mirror. The gathering storm.

The Wasp, The Black Panther, Spitfire, Clea, Namora and Glacier: the Heralds.

And now, the real adventure begins…