5★ Aesir

Fire Aesir

In the little Viking girl Aesir’s village, there is a legend that’s been passed down for generations. This legend states that warriors who fought valiantly and died in battle would go to Valhalla, while those who spent their lives in peace would go to Helheim, also known as Hel. This led the villagers to diligently train for battle every day, forging new weapons while dreaming of the time they could finally use them on the battlefield.

Aesir was no different. She longed for Valhalla more than anyone else, working daily to become just a little stronger. She possessed a superhuman strength that was considered a blessing in Viking society, and which allowed her to easily wield an iron axe that adults had difficulty even picking up.

One unintended outcome of the legend was that it led people to despise the elderly—those who never stood on the battlefield, but instead lived peacefully to an old age, like the woman who lived next door to Aesir.

It may go without saying, but when it comes to snacks, older people’s tastes tend to be much different from children’s tastes. And yet, the cheerful Aesir accepted snacks from the old woman next door without so much as a hint of aversion. Due partially to her fondness for free food, Aesir found herself beginning to worry about the old woman’s future. Unless something changed, she thought, the woman was sure to end up in Hel.

Early one morning, Aesir headed to the woman’s house and pounded on the door, urging the woman to head off to battle and promising to go with her if she was scared.

However, the old woman did not respond. Acting on a sudden, ominous hunch, Aesir tore off the door with her superhuman strength and ran into the house. She found the old woman on the floor, gasping for breath. The old woman looked at her with eyes that seemed all but ready to close permanently.

Aesir pleaded with the woman to head immediately onto the battlefield and fight, but the woman shook her head and started to say things Aesir couldn’t understand.

Things like how half of the legend of Valhalla is a lie.

Water Aesir

“Warriors who fight valiantly and die in battle go to Valhalla, while those who spend their lives in peace go to Hel.”

The old woman asked Aesir if she had really never thought this part of the legend to be strange. Aesir couldn’t respond.

The woman’s breathing became more labored, but she continued on, pointing out how there may just be an ulterior motive for depicting death on the battlefield as glorious and the elderly as contemptible.

Surely there was someone standing to benefit from decreasing the number of older people—who consume resources that could be used by other members of society—and increasing the number of young warriors eager to fight.

A confused Aesir then presented a question to the old woman. “If the legend of Valhalla really is just a lie someone made up, does that mean all the effort and training that warriors have gone through to reach Valhalla has been for nothing?”

The woman smiled and said, “Battlefields are not only physical. Honorable battles can be waged anywhere.”

Those were the woman’s last words.

There is a saying that goes, “A smart mind prevents hard labor.”

However, there are things in this world that can only be easily resolved with force. Such was the case with a small Viking girl from a faraway land; she could resolve any problem using her massive axe.

Her foe that day donned legendary armor once believed to be impenetrable, and hid in a mighty stronghold fortified at great cost, but it all may as well have been as weak as flimsy sheets of paper against the girl’s destructive axe.

Suddenly defenseless, the corrupt leader fell to the ground, his face as pale as a corpse. He trembled pitifully, like a miserable dog drenched in rain, or like the countless people he had glared down at previously, just before they met their end.

At the first sight of the axe blade’s gleam, months of unpaid labor were immediately compensated. At the second sight, exploitative labor contracts were annulled without hesitation, and of course, the money forcibly taken from laborers under the pretense of having borrowed an old cloth was also repaid.

Thus did a girl and her axe put aright unjust deeds long sustained by oppression and systemic corruption.

Hers was quite literally a hero’s journey across an unending battlefield perpetuated by her iron axe. Should her life reach its terminus at the end of this fierce little war of hers, then her soul just might be able to enter into the rest of Valhalla.

Wood Aesir

“These issues would’ve taken a lifetime of legal battles to fight, and even then they would’ve been hard to resolve. And yet this Viking girl, who showed up out of the blue, managed to take care of it all with a single axe. Her sheer physical strength actually made a lot of things possible. Force sometimes precedes the law.

…

Oh, but I’m not advocating taking the law into your own hands. On the surface it may seem exciting, but with proper perspective… well, a society that relies on a small number of heroes to operate properly isn’t much of a society at all.”

“Would anyone in the class like to answer? You, there. What lesson can we learn from this story?”

“Hm… That being strongest is best?”

“Could you word it a little more… eloquently?”

“A strong body prevents hard thinking?”

“…Ahem. I suppose that is true, although the phrase is usually ‘a smart mind prevents hard labor’… But yes, there are often instances in which the opposite is true. Those who are strong often don’t need to think as much.”

“Wait, so I was right?”

“Yes, but you look like you’ll need to rely more on your brains than your brawn…”

“Wh-what does that mean…?”

“Anyway, your basic means of resolving problems cannot be using force to help yourself; that only works in novels and comic books, so stop reading comic books.”

“But having a little Viking girl wield a huge axe and be super brave is awesome!”

“It only looks ‘awesome’ because it’s a work of fiction! Meanwhile, we live in reality.”

“I’m pretty sure there are works of fiction in which characters say stuff like that. Maybe we don’t actually live in reality!”

“Stop speaking nonsense…”

Light Aesir

A little Viking girl named Aesir brought with her to Latecia an invigorating wind that swept across the entire land. How could such strength come in such a small package?

She seems to think the secret to her strength is all the milk she drank when she was younger, but no one else believes that to be true.

“Agh, I didn’t get any taller today.”

“I don’t think there will ever be significant change in a single day…”

“Why not?! I drink milk every morning! Something’s wrong.”

“You might just be naturally short. Don’t let it bother you, though. They say short Vikings are scarier than big ones.”

“Really? They say that? Wait, is that why I’m so strong?!”

“No, I just made that up…”

“…”

– A conversation between Aesir and a master

“There’s that one famous story, right? About how there was this prophecy saying that whoever could untie this crazily convoluted knot would rule the world, and then this one king just takes out his sword and cuts the knot loose. Aesir’s like that, but worse. If there were some door that could only be opened by solving a puzzle, Aesir would just smash it to pieces. Makes me think if I ever upset her, it might be my head that gets smashed… Oh, and I’d like to keep this interview anonymous. Yes, leave my name out of it.”

– Interview with an anonymous master

Dark Aesir

“The little Viking had a little toy axe. She really loved her little axe. The two would talk and play and have a great time together.

“Until one day, that is, when a little crow flew down and stole the little axe away! The little Viking was sad, but she decided to be brave.”

– Excerpt from the suspicious story book, “The Small Hippo… Er, Viking”

“The next day, the little Viking hiked over a little mountain… crossed a little ravine… climbed a little oak tree… and…”

Part of the text is missing, followed by “the little crow’s little belly…”

“Things did not go well… for anyone who messed with the little Viking.”

– Excerpt from the suspicious story book, “The Small Hippo… Er, Viking”

“So yeah, that’s the story book I read. I wanted to show it to you.”

“Wait, the little Viking in that story isn’t supposed to be me, is it?”

“Well, it’s probably not entirely unrelated. Remember that village you made a scene in a while ago? The book was written by a master from that village, who said ‘The little runt rampaged about like a wild boar, shaking the very earth’… Haha. Apparently he wrote the story in the style of a parody of some famous story from his world.”

“That’s funny to you? I’m not a little runt! And ‘like a wild boar’ sounds like something you’d say… Wait, you’re the one who wrote the book, aren’t you?!”

“H-hold on. Put the axe down and let’s just talk normally.”

“What did it say in that story? ‘Things did not go well… for anyone who messed with the little Viking’…?”

“I, I’m sorry!”

– A conversation between Aesir and a master