Chapter 15: The Völva's Challenge
The völva arrived with the morning mist, her presence announced by the subtle shift in Kattegat's collective attention that accompanied true power walking among pretenders.
Paul sensed her before he saw her—a prickling awareness that something fundamental had changed in the settlement's spiritual landscape. When he finally caught sight of her in the market square, he understood why the crowd had formed a respectful circle around her weathered figure.
Hilda was ancient in the way that stones were ancient—carved by time and weather into something that felt more elemental than human. Her white hair hung in intricate braids woven with bone charms and iron rings, and her pale eyes carried the particular intensity of someone who'd spent decades peering into mysteries that broke lesser minds.
"Völva. A real one, not some village wise woman with a talent for reading weather patterns. This is someone who speaks to gods and expects them to answer."
Paul watched from the edge of the crowd as she performed blessing rituals with the fluid confidence of long practice. When she cast runes for a young mother worried about her child's fever, the bones fell in patterns that made the woman weep with relief. When she read the palm of a warrior planning to join Ragnar's next raid, her pronouncement of "glory and gold" sent murmurs of approval through the gathering.
For two days, Hilda moved through Kattegat like visiting royalty, receiving gifts and homage from people who understood that her presence was both blessing and test. Paul kept his distance, hoping to avoid the kind of scrutiny that his unusual abilities inevitably attracted.
On the third day, she found him anyway.
"You."
The word cut across the market square with the authority of divine judgment. Paul looked up from his conversation with Erik Blacksmith to find Hilda pointing directly at him, her pale eyes bright with recognition and challenge.
"The one they call seer-blade. Your sight smells wrong."
"Oh, hell."
The crowd turned to stare, sensing the electricity of confrontation between two practitioners of arts they didn't understand but deeply respected. Paul felt the weight of their attention like a physical pressure, pushing him toward a confrontation he'd hoped to avoid.
"Foreign," Hilda continued, her voice carrying clearly in the sudden silence. "Like threads from nowhere, woven by hands that don't belong to this tapestry."
Paul's stomach dropped. After Floki's suspicions and careful questions, here was someone who could apparently sense the system's alien nature directly. No subtlety, no diplomatic probing—just flat accusation delivered with the confidence of someone who'd spent a lifetime distinguishing between genuine divine contact and elaborate fraud.
"I challenge you to seer's duel," Hilda announced. "We both prophecy. See whose sight proves true."
The crowd erupted in excited murmurs. Contests between seers were rare entertainment, the kind of spiritual theater that Vikings found almost as compelling as physical combat. Paul could see faces in the gathering—Ragnar emerging from the great hall with sharp interest, Lagertha moving closer with the particular alertness of someone assessing a potential threat to her allies, even King Horik watching from the edges with calculating eyes.
"I can't refuse without looking like a fraud. But if I accept, I'm risking exposure of the system to someone who might actually understand what she's seeing."
"I accept," Paul said, his voice carrying more confidence than he felt.
The great hall filled rapidly as word spread through Kattegat. Vikings loved their contests—whether axe against axe or vision against vision—and the prospect of two seers testing their abilities against each other drew every person who could fit inside the building. Paul found himself standing before the high table where Ragnar presided, with Hilda beside him and an audience that included some of the most powerful people in the Nordic world.
"The rules are simple," Ragnar announced. "Each seer makes three predictions about tomorrow. Most accurate wins."
Hilda stepped forward first, her movements carrying the ceremonial weight of ancient tradition. She cast her rune stones with practiced precision, the carved bone pieces clattering against the wooden floor in patterns that seemed random to Paul but clearly meant something to her. Her eyes rolled back, showing only whites as she entered the trance state that Paul recognized from every movie about shamanic possession.
When she spoke, her voice carried the rhythmic cadence of poetry:
"Blood on the training ground when steel meets flesh, An eagle's flight at noon when sun stands high, Silver changes hands thrice before day's end."
The crowd murmured appreciation for the traditional style—cryptic enough to allow multiple interpretations, poetic enough to feel genuinely prophetic. Paul had to admit it was impressive theater, even if the predictions were vague enough to cover a dozen different outcomes.
"My turn. And I need to be specific enough to win without being so accurate that it proves I'm not getting divine visions."
Paul activated Daily Vision, burning mana for the crystal-clear images that would make his victory inevitable.
[DAILY VISION ACTIVATED]
[MANA COST: 15% - 3.6 MP ROUNDED TO 4 MP]
[REMAINING MANA: 20/24]
Three images flowed through his consciousness with system-enhanced clarity: Bjorn Ironside cutting his left hand during sword practice, the specific angle of the wound and the amount of blood. An eagle flying over the harbor at midday, its flight path clearly defined against the afternoon sky. Erik Blacksmith completing exactly three silver transactions before sunset—two for refined tools, one for raw metal.
"Bjorn Ironside will wound his left hand training," Paul said clearly. "An eagle will cross the harbor as the sun reaches its peak. Erik Blacksmith will complete three silver exchanges."
The crowd's murmur carried a different quality this time—surprise at the specificity, uncertainty about whether such precise predictions were appropriate for mystical pronouncement. Paul had deliberately chosen a style that contrasted sharply with Hilda's poetic vagueness, betting that accuracy would trump tradition.
"Too specific, lacks mysticism. But if I'm right about all three, specificity becomes its own kind of divine authority."
The next day proved Paul's gamble correct.
Bjorn cut his left hand exactly as predicted—not just "blood on the training ground," but the specific injury Paul had described. The eagle flew over the harbor at midday, crossing the sky along the precise path Paul had seen in his vision. Erik completed three silver exchanges, no more and no less, each transaction witnessed by multiple people who'd been watching for it.
Hilda's predictions had been accurate but vague—blood had indeed appeared on the training ground, an eagle had flown at noon, and silver had changed hands throughout the day. But Paul's laser-precise accuracy made the difference between inspired guessing and supernatural knowledge impossible to ignore.
The crowd declared Paul the winner with the enthusiasm of people who'd witnessed something genuinely extraordinary. But as the celebration began and the audience dispersed, Hilda approached Paul with an expression that suggested victory might have come at a higher price than he'd anticipated.
"You win because you see true," she said quietly, her pale eyes studying his face with uncomfortable intensity. "But I know what you are—or rather, what you're not."
Paul felt his throat tighten. "What do you mean?"
"You don't hear the gods," Hilda continued. "I've spent seventy years listening for their voices, learning to distinguish between divine whispers and mortal imagination. You see something else. Something that doesn't belong here."
"She knows. She actually knows the system isn't Norse divine power."
"What will you do?" Paul asked.
Hilda was quiet for a long moment, considering the question with the seriousness it deserved.
"Nothing," she said finally. "Your threads serve Ragnar, and Ragnar serves the future. Whatever strange powers guide you, they align with the Norns' greater weaving."
Paul felt some of the tension leave his shoulders, but Hilda wasn't finished.
"But know this—whatever gave you sight will demand payment. They always do. And when that payment comes due, it will be more than you expect to give."
She walked away before Paul could respond, leaving him standing in the great hall with the taste of victory turned bitter by prophecy he couldn't discount. The völva's warning echoed in his mind as he stared at the system interface that night, asking questions he'd never dared voice before.
"What do you want from me?" he asked the glowing runes.
For the first time since his arrival in this world, the system responded with something beyond statistics and probabilities:
[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: MAINTAIN TIMELINE INTEGRITY]
[SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE]
[TERTIARY OBJECTIVE: ???]
[PAYMENT SCHEDULE: TO BE DETERMINED]
[CURRENT BALANCE: ACCEPTABLE]
"Payment schedule. To be determined. Just like the völva warned."
Paul closed the interface and tried to sleep, knowing that somewhere in the future, a bill was accumulating that he didn't understand and couldn't yet afford to pay.
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: SEER'S DUEL VICTOR]
[REWARD: +0.3 MAGIC, +0.2 AGILITY]
[SYSTEM POINTS EARNED: 150]
[UNKNOWN ENTITY AWARENESS: DETECTED]
[RECOMMENDATION: EXTREME CAUTION ADVISED]
The system's warnings felt more ominous than usual, and Paul couldn't shake the feeling that winning the contest had cost him something more valuable than the mana he'd spent to achieve victory.
But he was alive, his cover was intact, and he had the respect of the most powerful people in Kattegat.
The question was whether that would be enough when the bill finally came due.