There were no seasons at Hvergelmir's Wonder, and no passing days. There was nothing but her own heart to mark the passing of time, and normally, that was the feeling one had, here at the last oasis: that time passed, here, only if the mind believed it to be so. That here, all things could wait. Here, there was space to rest. It was warm and placid and calm and rejuvenating.

Normally.

On her last few visits, it had felt different. It was as though night had fallen over the well -- as though winter had, at last, come here too. There was a chill in the air that she'd never felt before, one that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. She'd stood near the edge of the island, staring out into the starscape, and the familiar sensation of beckoning -- the call of the void -- had no longer been the greatest discomfort she felt on the island. Now it was part of an unpleasant white noise, constant and unabating. A sense of unbalance, of unease.

It followed her wherever she went. Most visits, she worked in the crystalline serenity of the weaving room within the temple, preferring the towering loom there for her work. Lately, though, she'd tried to combat her disquiet by moving the smaller loom out of the temple and setting it up near the center of the island, closer to the well.

It hadn't helped. She still couldn't quite settle in.

As empty as the island was, Hvergelmir found herself constantly preoccupied. Even with Eikthyrnir tucked up comfortably on the ground near her feet, its antlers dripping as it dozed, she had the sensation of not being quite alone. Her normal peace was disrupted by the ever-present feeling of being observed: which, in turn, made her antsy to get out of her chair and address whoever was there.

The difficulty was, there wasn't anyone.

Over time, the feeling had grown more and more oppressive. Her once soothing sanctuary had become bleak and unfulfilling, of late, and then ominious, and then downright unpleasant. (Was this what Scholomance had described feeling?) Something distinctly felt wrong.

She was struck, by and by, with the notion that something was in fact wrong . . . not with her, or her service, but with the island itself. Hvergelmir had brought several people here, some of them Negaverse agents -- but even with Bischofite, she'd trusted them not to bring harm to her Wonder . . . and trusted, likewise, that there was no real misfortune that a single agent was capable of doing to it. The Well was great and powerful and ageless. No one man could truly harm it, surely.

Still -- thinking of Ida's asteroid and its mysterious illness -- she did her best to check and make sure that everything was in order. Hvergelmir found herself, finally, at the bottom of the steps beneath the huge marble pedestal near the well, back down into the impenetrably black room at the end of the staircase, where there may or may not have been a floor.

All seemed well. The Code piece was there, as it had been before.

Hvergelmir sat on the bottom steps and folded her arms over her knees.

"Hello, again," she said.

The pulsating orb of energy, about the size of a baseball, hovered in the darkness of the room, alone. It seemed to have a presence—like it was more than just a light. While it did not share the same mist-like appearance as the Code Piece on Olympus, there was no denying that this orb of light was one in the same. Although smaller, it still seemed powerful.

And it had always been helpful. Perhaps Hvergelmir ought to have been spending more time consulting it. Perhaps trying that now would lift the feelings of disquiet that she couldn't seem to escape.

Well, she always had plenty of questions at the ready. It was worth trying.

"How did all our worlds die out, a thousand years ago?" she asked, her voice sounding soft in the darkness. "No one seems to know why everything suddenly stopped."

The glowing orb hovered for a moment, and suddenly an image appeared of two beings, one in white and one in black. They seemed engaged in combat and hacked and slashed at the other. Over time, the figures whittled away into nothing, battered by age and battle. In the end, they were each only a pile of bones. And then dust--nothingness.

From the dust, though, two new figures arose. They grew, side by side, but soon they two were engaged in combat. Soon they were whittled away. Soon they were bones.

Soon two more figures replaced them.

And so on, and so on.

The cycle didn't end.

War, then -- endless war, in countless cycles that had perpetuated themselves until every star, every planet, every tiniest comet that had once housed defiantly thriving life was dead.

This time, when the cycle had begun again -- Order versus Chaos -- they had all risen up from the soil of the Earth. The war had this planet as its battlefield because it was the only one left. The rest of humanity had died out in this conflict.

"Is there any way to stop it from happening again -- to change things?" she asked. "What's left, if Earth falls too?"

She didn't get an answer she expected.

The cycle before her flickered and was gone, leaving the Code once more hovering before her. A moment passed and then the Code shifted again; this time, a lone figure stood. Her form was pure white, and she glistened in her solitude. The symbol of Cosmos was imprinted upon her chest.

Suddenly, a second figure appeared. This one was dark, though did not seem particularly threatening. He extended his hand to the woman, and she took it. The black spread from his form to hers, like ink spilling on a blank sheet of paper.

She did not seem afraid.

Slowly, the blackness crept over her entire form, and the symbol of Cosmos was washed out. She still glistened.

Both figures stood together in their darkness, holding hands, and they remained like that for a while. Finally, they both faded, together, and were replaced by an image of the Earth.

It continued to spin, calmly.

Hvergelmir stared for a while.

The oppressiveness she'd felt before -- the malice, almost -- closed in around her. It seemed to leach into her bones. She couldn't speak.

No, she wanted to say. That's not me. That's not what I've been trying to do, it's not like that.

I'm not Metallia's servant.

That's not what I've been doing, she wanted to insist.

She was a knight, free and self-determined. Even if she showed compassion to Negaverse agents sometimes, she cared about her knight brethren, she wept for their sorrows and their suffering. She wasn't -- she wasn't --

A traitor? her mind supplied.

In her head she could picture Scholomance and Mimisbrunnr, wounded -- Ploutonion, corrupted -- civilians dead at Avalon's feet, and Sailor Ate's.

Hvergelmir had stood by as all these crimes had been committed -- or had given succor and comfort to the people who committed them. She'd reaped the benefits of fraternizing with the enemy while others, like Amphitrite, had been left behind to suffer.

If the Code was accusing her of something, Hvergelmir didn't think she could deny it. But why else would it show her something like that?

"I see," she whispered quietly into the darkness.

She got to her feet, shaky and shaken -- in no state to continue trying to decipher the Code's meaning. Instead, Hvergelmir went back up, letting the marble pedestal slide back into place behind her, and looked around her Wonder once more.

Eikthyrnir was there waiting for her.

She slid her fingers up into the great caribou's soft blue fur, then leaned in till she could bury her face in its neck. Hvergelmir cried into Eikthyrnir's throat, and it let her -- standing quietly while she sobbed.

She went home without finishing her weaving.