Emma Joan Tallis

chapter one: Prologue

"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
~ Winston Churchill

~*~

The sound of German tanks rumbled outside, and I was truly beginning to regret not going home. Not home to England, where my husband was buried in 1585, but home to Asgard.

    Unfortunately, my morals, conscience, and just plain stubbornness would not allow me to leave the people I had been living among for the last few centuries. Fortunately, common sense told me that if a man like Johann Schmidt was obsessed with the arcane, objects of power that my mother used to tell me about as a child, then I should try to protect the damn things.

    Curse Odin for leaving one of the infinity stones on Midgard unprotected. I am not a one-man army, I'm not even a one-woman army. I'm just a female Asgardian hiding in Norway. A female Asgardian working for Great Britain, and under orders to try to kill Schmidt.

    Because that will be easy peasy lemon squeezey.

    As I heard the sounds of tanks, the villager came running into the church where we were guarding the cube. The Town Keeper had no idea who I was, but he had grasped I was there to protect the cube. It was Jan that figured out I was also planning to kill whoever came for the cube. "They have come for it!" Jan exclaimed in Norwegian.

    "They have before," the Town's Keeper said solemnly.

    "Not like this," Jan said nervously.

    "Let them come. They will never find it," the Town's Keeper said firmly. I turned quickly when we heard a rumbling, and then the door was blasted apart. Stones fell all around us, I quickly jumped to cover the Town's Keeper with my body. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the sound of Jan's screams as he buried and killed by the falling debris.

    "Thank you," the Town's Keeper said to me as we went to where Jan was, his upper body was not buried, and closed his eyes.

    "You should leave," I told the Town's Keeper.

    "They will not find it," the Town's Keeper said as HYDRA soldiers flooded in and surrounded us and forced us to our knees. I was waiting for a very specific person before I acted and got us killed.

    "Open it! Quickly, before he-" a lieutenant said, but then the man I was supposed to assassinate walked in.

    "It has taken me a long time to find this place," Schmidt said to us. "You should be commended. Help them up." As soon as we were hauled to our feet and pulled out a knife and threw it at Schmidt, it lodged into his chest, but he just smirked at me before I was restrained by several soldiers. "Admirable attempt," he told me as he pulled out the dagger, and then stabbed me in the stomach, "but a failed attempt nonetheless." My dagger was laced with poison, and it wasn't a poison that could kill me, but it should kill Schmidt.

    It will kill any normal man, but if the rumors were true, it might be impossible to kill Schmidt.

    I glared at him as the soldiers grabbed the Town's Keeper, "I think that you are man of great vision. And in this way we are much alike," Schmidt said to the Town Keeper.

    "I am nothing like you," the Town's Keeper said angrily.

    "No, of course. But what others see as superstition, you and I know to be a science," Schmidt said.

    "What you seek is just a legend," the Town's Keeper said.

    "Then why make such an effort to conceal it?" Schmidt asked as they opened one of the old tombs and pulled a glass cube from the skeletal remains of a long dead Viking. "The Tesseract was the jewel of Odin's treasure room," Schmidt said as he turned and dropped the cube. "It's not something one buries. But I think it is close, yes?"

    "I cannot help you," the Town Keeper said.

    "No. But maybe you can help your village," Schmidt said, or you can help her. "You must have some friends out there. Some-some little grandchildren perhaps. I have no need for them to die. She, however, has already caused me some pain."

    I didn't even flinch as he walked up to me and punched me right where he stabbed me. It hurt, but no more than that battles I had been in previously. I looked up at Schmidt and glared at him, this seemed to make him smile. Schmidt picked me up, and then threw me across the room. I landed heavily, and as he walked up to beat me more, he paused.

    "Yggdrasil. Tree of the world," Schmidt said as he looked at the carving behind me. "Guardian of wisdom and fate, also." He pressed a part of the carving, a button of sorts, and out slid the cube. "And the Führer digs for trinkets in the desert. You have never seen this, have you?"

    "It's not for the eyes of ordinary men," the Town's Keeper proclaimed.

    "Exactly," Schmidt said, he should be dead by now, my poison is not very slow acting. Of which, I could attest, because my body was already fighting the effects of the poison. Who was this man? "Give the order to open fire," Schmidt told the lieutenant. 

    "Jawohl!" Was the enthusiastic response.

    "Fool! You cannot control the power you hold. You will burn!" The Town Keeper said.

    "I already have," Schmidt said as he pulled out a gun. I jumped in front of the Town's Keeper to block the shot, but it went through me and killed him.

    "You will burn," I told him as I head-butted him in the face. He staggered back slightly, but then raised his gun and fired at me multiple times. I wasn't fast enough to dodge in my current condition from the poisoned dagger. Schmidt frowned at the mess he made, and then walked away. 

~*~