Hel

Current year: 2018

Age: 1961

rare picture of hel actually using her magic

## Appearance

Hel has black skin and a muscular build. Her skin looks suspiciously smooth because it regenerates itself so often, particularly on her face. Her hair is naturally curly but she keeps it in braids, and has done for a while. The thing that tends to jump out is her eyes—where the iris is, it looks as though there are flames inside.

Are there? Well, only she can know.

## Background

Listing out the events of the near two thousand years of her life would be tedious, so to summarise...Hel has seen shit. Born into slavery, orphaned, experimented on, she has fought countless wars, died in more ways than you can imagine and touched the lives of millions in the many aliases she has taken on over the millenia. She's travelled the world, but after a while she always ends up returning to the place that made her—a small island country in the North Sea, (provisionally) named Gwlad, ad that is where you'll find her now.

## Relationships

### Her Father

After so many years, Hel doesn't remember her father's name, or even his face. What she does remember is his kindness. The loss of her mother and sister left them alone in a strange country racked by a magical war neither of them understood. Her father never learned the language of this new place, so it was Hel's job to translate for him most of the time, meaning they spent little time apart. This never bothered her. They were different to the other humans, this much she understood, and when the fighting came time and time again to whichever village they made their home in, they escaped together. They also defected together, to the side of the fairies. He was the first person to teach her a lesson she learned many times after—that kindness was a quality of the strong and something to be proud of. His death destroyed her, in a way she hadn't thought possible. Had her father lived just a few more years, Hel would have lived out her life as a normal human and died when her time came, but she'd clung to her father all her life, and without him she was left adrift. In all the years since, Hel was never been cared for by a parental figure that way again, which makes the memory of her father special, but also bittersweet.

### Clara

This is an odd one. If we're going to get technical, Hel met Clara barely months ago, but for magical reasons that would take too long to explain, she has the memories of a woman who was once among Hel's closest friends...two thousand years ago. Clara likes to joke that this makes her the only person alive older than Hel—while this is lighthearted, the implication of Clara's memories is that she's the only person who knows of a Hel who was young and afraid and unstable. Neither of them have spoken about it, but Clara knows to keep this knowledge to herself, and Hel is very grateful.

Aside from this, Clara is an idealistic youngster reeling from both past and present bereavements who, while Hel admires and respects for her determination to change the society that's screwed her over, also gives her a lot of worry. Clara does listen to Hel, and she does respect her opinion. But she's also a headstrong girl unafraid of personal consequences which terrify the people around her, Hel in particular. Despite meeting relatively recently, the two have bonded quickly, mostly over the loss of Clara's sister, whom both were close to. Naturally this has given Hel something of a complex regarding protecting the remaining sister from the dangers which she continually throws herself into, and this sometimes causes tension, but they get over it. The two live together with Clara's stepsister and Hel's current adopted children, so if they stayed arguing, they wouldn't last long.

## Powers

As well as being literally unable to die, Hel has what most people call power over life and death. She can kill someone with a single thought, and give their life to someone else. However, you won't catch her using these powers anymore.

She also has some of the more standard fairy powers: flight, and creating fire.

## Quotes

"You leave a space, see? You leave a space for the sister you miss so dearly. There will be more spaces, there will be more graves and more tears. I have seen it all before and I have no wish to see it again."

"If Hell has angels, little one, then I am one of them."