The Three Goddesses of Storm

Eliudnir, built against the mountainside, was made entirely of obsidian. It took Salomon and Hela a full day to travel from the palace to the bedroom at the mountain's summit. Though they would soon be meeting in battle, Salomon did not mind taking this opportunity to chat. Hela had even less objection. She knew the battle she craved was about to arrive. Having endured thousands of years of solitude, waiting a few more hours was nothing. Like old friends who had known each other for years, they looked down upon the nine River Styxes drifting with white mist and shared the finest Mead of Poetry Salomon had swiped from the banquet.

Hela went on and on about Odin's cruelty and lies, while the Arcanist nodded repeatedly, privately admiring Odin's methods and ruthless heartlessness. Though Asgard's history books had completely erased that period amid the smoke of burning corpses, Kamar-Taj's books still contained scattered records, allowing Salomon to study them repeatedly and infer Asgard's political situation at the time.

Perhaps the Asgardians' innate bluntness left the All-Father incapable of playing intricate political games, but Odin's choices regarding the overall direction of the political situation had been extraordinarily wise. Not only had he completely eliminated an heir whose ideals differed from his own and who was highly likely to disrupt postwar stability, but he had also used Hela's own hand to purge the Valkyrie, who should have gained tremendous prestige after the war and might even have stirred the noble class into turmoil. With that, every factor that might have affected postwar recovery had been removed. Asgard no longer possessed any group or individual capable of threatening Odin in either power or prestige, cementing an authority unmatched since Borr.

"We still have much to discuss, but not now." After tossing the horn