The Only Gods We Know, Ch 17: Weaponized Regret

The official SITREP read "hostile power has declared intent." Brynja stared at her viewscreen. A weeping eye, kilometers wide, filled the tactical display.

No doctrine for this. No protocol for fighting pacifist wizards who could make her pilots cry.

Mist's horrified translation of the Weavers' light-weaving had been the first sign. The declaration. The opening shot.

Before her fleet could even begin tactical retreat, the Ljósvættir Nebula before them had changed. The beautiful, shimmering curtains of light and gas pulled together, forming that single vast hologram. The eye was pearly, kilometers wide, weeping slow tears of pure starlight that drifted and faded into the void. It stared directly at the Gungnir's Vengeance. Not angry. Not hateful. Just sad. Deep, soul-crushing, bottomless sad.

Then the feeling hit.

Not sound. Not energy her sensors could track. Low-frequency psychic broadcast washing over the entire fleet. Immense, weaponized regret. The certainty - physical, undeniable - that you'd made a terrible, irreversible mistake. Sorrow like a weight pressing down on Brynja's shoulders, squeezing the air from her lungs.

On the command deck, a young ensign burst into tears. Barely a century old, face buried in his hands, sobbing. Another veteran - campaign rings thick in his beard - stared at his console, face pale, expression empty.

The comms from her Valkyrie pilots crackled with chaos.

"Lead… I… I feel sick." Hrist's voice, dizzy with grief she couldn't name.

"What is this shit?" Astrid snarled, though the fire was gone, replaced by something strained. Defensive. "It's like… every bad decision I've ever made. All at once."

Brynja's own failures rose like flood water. Dead Einherjar on Iðunn's Orchard. Graal-Talon's face. The betrayal of her gods. She shoved it down. Hard. Mental box, lid slammed shut.

"Psy-op, Astrid." Her voice came out tight. Forced calm. "They're not using weapons. They're using our goddamn baggage. Breaking morale. Making us lose the will to fight."

The Weavers didn't attack. Didn't need to. They just held that sorrowful gaze, letting their grief do the work.

Brynja's jaw clenched. Direct re-engagement now, crews compromised, pilots unstable - it would be a slaughter. Fighting the Weavers and themselves.

Only one choice.

"All wing elements, this is Shield-Captain Vingfalk." Her voice cut through the emotional fog like a blade. "Execute tactical withdrawal, pattern Omega. Maintain discipline. Disengaging and regrouping at Rally Point Einn. Any pilot who cannot maintain control of their airframe gets escorted back by their wingman. Move. Now."

The Asgardian fleet turned. Slow. Sluggish. Disengaging from an enemy that hadn't fired a shot. Retreating from a battle fought entirely inside their own heads.

***

The ready room aboard the Gungnir's Vengeance was thick with humiliated silence. Brynja stood before the holographic projection of Lord Tyr, flanked by Freyja's ethereal form and a silently observing Loki. Geirskögul stood nearby, her face an unreadable mask.

"Report, Captain." Tyr's voice was a low, dangerous growl.

Brynja gave it clinical. Precise. The Weavers' declaration of war. The psy-op that followed. Emotional and psychological effects on her crew. Her decision to withdraw.

Tyr listened, his one good hand clenching and unclenching. When she finished, he exploded.

"Psy-ops? Emotional projections?" His fist slammed his holographic console. "You retreated from a goddamn light show and sadness, Captain? This is cowardice! Witchcraft! The solution is simple - send in the fleet. We bombard the entire nebula with wide-spectrum, high-yield particle cannons. Turn their shimmering art into dust and echoes. Teach them the meaning of real power!"

Brynja held her ground. Met his gaze.

"Lord Tyr, with respect, that would waste resources and lives. We cannot bomb a ghost. Last engagement proved they manipulate our sensors, our targeting systems. We'd waste munitions on empty space, firing at phantoms they create while their non-kinetic attacks degrade our systems, our morale, until our own ships tear themselves apart."

She turned to Freyja. The Goddess of Magic would understand this esoteric conflict better than the straightforward God of War.

"My Lord, my Lady - we're not fighting an army. We're fighting a reality-bender. Brute force is what they expect. What they're prepared to counter. To defeat them, we fight on their terms. Attack their perception of reality itself."

Freyja's eyes narrowed with interest. "Explain, Captain."

Brynja nodded to Mist, who brought up data from the captured Weaver vessel. "My analysis, supported by Ulfr's Rune-Breakers, confirms their power lies in projecting and maintaining illusions. But their physical forms, their actual habitats - fragile. They hide behind the lie."

She laid it out. Not full-scale invasion. A targeted reality raid.

"Give me a small, elite force. My Stormbringers. Astrid's squadron. Ulfr's Rune-Breakers. We use Truth-Sight technology to ghost through their illusory fleets. Bypass the phantoms. Strike directly at what we now know are their true homes - psycho-reactive orbital habitats that look like crystalline asteroids, where the energy-beings actually live."

"And your objective?" Tyr sneered. "To destroy another world?"

"No, Lord Tyr." Her voice went cold. "Not annihilation. A show of force so precise, so undeniable, it shatters their sense of invulnerability. We don't destroy a habitat. We isolate it. Trap it. Show them we can see through their greatest defense. Prove their reality is no longer theirs to control."

Freyja smiled. Slow. Knowing. "A war of perception fought with truth as a weapon. Seidr on a strategic scale." She paused. "Elegant. This is not a battle for territory, Lord Tyr. It's a battle for the very definition of reality. The Captain's plan has merit."

Tyr looked from Freyja to Geirskögul, who gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.

He was boxed in. Logic he hated but couldn't refute. A low, frustrated growl escaped his throat.

"Very well, Captain. You will have your reality raid." He leaned forward. "But be advised - the war of perception is yours to win or lose. Do not fail."

The threat was unspoken. Crystal clear. If her clever plan went sideways, the blame would be hers alone.

***

The moment Brynja sent the raw targeting data - undeniable ground truth proof their greatest weapon was useless - the Ljósvættir Nebula went dead silent.

More profound than the silence after the Root-Mind's death. The phantom fleets vanished. Illusory monsters gone. Confusing light shows stopped. The psychic pressure, the weaponized sadness - all of it just… stopped. Clean, cold void left in their minds where that crushing weight had been.

Across the battlespace, remaining Weaver vessels - true, fragile, skeletal forms now starkly visible without their light-cloaks - simply stopped in space. Didn't flee. Didn't charge. Just floated there. Exposed. Vulnerable.

"All elements, hold fire." Brynja's voice was tight with suspicion. "Maintain targeting locks. Do not engage unless fired upon. What the hell are they doing?"

"I don't know, Captain." Astrid's voice crackled back, laced with confusion. "Are they broken? Did we fry their systems?"

New light-weaving came from the lead Weaver vessel. Not the chaotic defensive patterns from before. Not the weeping eye. This was slow. Deliberate. Almost mathematically perfect patterns of light and energy.

"Mist, what is that? What are they transmitting?"

Long pause from Mist's end. Then her voice came back, filled with disbelief so deep it bordered on insubordination. "Captain… I… I don't think I'm translating this correctly. It doesn't make any sense."

"Give me the goddamn translation, Lieutenant." Brynja's patience was worn thin.

"Captain." Mist's voice dropped to a near whisper. "They are surrendering. Unconditionally."

The bridge of the Gungnir's Vengeance went silent.

Surrendering. After one ship was trapped. Didn't make sense. A trick. Had to be.

"Explain."

A second, more complex weaving of light followed the first. Long, intricate stream of philosophical and mathematical concepts that made Mist's console whine with the processing load.

"They're providing their reason, Captain." Mist stammered, trying to keep up. "Their perception of reality - it's a form of art. Shared agreement. Their weavings enforce that agreement. Our ability to un-weave their reality, to see the threads beneath the tapestry as they put it - it's a fundamental violation of their existence they can't counter. Blasphemy to them."

Mist paused, searching for words. "They say continued conflict is illogical. Pointless. To them, we're not warriors. We're vandals who learned how to slash their canvases. Fighting us further would be pointless, ugly self-destruction. They'd rather submit to our less elegant reality than continue a conflict that is, by their philosophy, already lost."

Brynja stared at the silent, fragile ships on her viewscreen.

They'd won. Not by overwhelming force. Not by breaking bodies. By breaking spirit. By violating the philosophical foundation of their way of war. They hadn't defeated an army.

They'd shattered a religion.

Strangest, most unsettling victory of her long, violent life.

***

The formal surrender of the Aurelian Weavers was bizarre. Silent. Done through light-weavings and frustrated Asgardian mages trying to translate concepts that didn't quite fit into battle-language. With their surrender, the last major independent power in this sector fell. The Asgardian dominion was, for all practical purposes, complete. A formal, deeply tense treaty was made. The Weavers became a vassal state. Their territory and knowledge now assets to be studied, exploited, controlled by Asgard.

The next ten years passed in a blur of consolidation and occupation. Frantic, high-stakes campaigns of the early years gave way to the long, ugly, grinding business of empire. Brynja's reputation as a brilliant, unorthodox commander cemented. She oversaw establishment of permanent fortresses like the orbital station Valaskjalf - a gleaming symbol of Asgardian power hanging in orbit above a conquered world. She watched colonists arrive. Asgardian families seeking new lives, building their fortified homes under the light of alien suns.

And she watched the cost of that empire.

Now a seasoned, high-ranking Shield-Captain, she saw reports of low-level rebellions. Sabotage. Terrorist attacks by K'tharr remnants and other malcontents. She saw brutal, efficient crackdowns that followed.

The frontier war was over. The long, dirty war of occupation - the forever war - had begun.

She was successful. Promoted. Respected. Utterly isolated. Her relationship with Astrid was cold, professional formality. A chasm of unspoken truths between them. She harbored dangerous secrets - Loki's betrayal and, more troubling, the continued silent evolution of the sentient Chitin-Cog faction. According to Mist's most discreet, highly illegal deep-space probes, they'd gone completely dark. Gathering forces in uncharted regions. Unknown variable in a terrifying equation.

One cycle, while reviewing sector-wide intelligence reports from her command deck on Valaskjalf, her attention caught on a series of low-level, seemingly unrelated incidents. Weapons cache discovered on a backwater moon. Coordinated communications blackout in a mining colony. Transport ship that vanished without a trace.

Individually, nothing. Background noise of a restless empire.

But Brynja had learned to see patterns beneath chaos.

She tasked Mist with deep-dive analysis. An hour later, Mist came to her, her face pale.

"Captain." Her voice was low. "It's a network. The incidents - they're unrelated on the surface, but the perpetrators are using a common, heavily encrypted communication protocol. It's decentralized. Multi-species. K'tharr remnants, a few rogue Chitin-Cog cells, even some collaborators within the supposedly pacified populations."

She brought up a star map. A spiderweb of faint, connecting lines overlaying Brynja's "peaceful" dominion. "And the encryption itself, Captain… it has an esoteric component. A mathematical signature. It's not identical, but it's based on the same foundational principles as the light-weavings of the Aurelian Weavers. Someone is teaching them. Someone is organizing them."

Brynja stared at the map. The full, crushing weight of their victory settled on her shoulders.

The initial conquest was over. But the real war - the war to hold this stolen, seething empire together - was just beginning. And it was being orchestrated by an enemy she thought she'd already defeated.

Her dominion was anything but secure.

It was a powder keg, and someone had just lit a very long, very quiet fuse.

***

Glossary

Operational Command & Tactics

• SITREP (Situational Report): A concise, periodic report on the current military situation, including enemy movements, friendly status, and immediate threats.

• Doctrine: The fundamental set of principles that guides a military force in their actions. Brynja notes there is "no doctrine" for the Weavers, meaning standard operating procedures do not apply to this specific threat.

• Psy-Op (Psychological Operations): Planned operations to convey selected information (or emotions) to an audience to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning. In this chapter, the Weavers use weaponized grief as a literal Psy-Op.

• Non-Kinetic: Warfare that does not rely on physical destruction (explosives or projectiles). This includes electronic warfare, cyber-attacks, and in this specific case, psychic/magical manipulation.

• Pattern Omega: A specific Asgardian fleet maneuver code for a disciplined, tactical withdrawal while under unique duress.

• Rally Point (Einn): A pre-designated geographic (or spatial) location where units reassemble and reorganize after being dispersed or retreating.

• Airframe: Slang referring to the physical chassis of a fighter craft or spaceship.

Asgardian Ranks & Units

• Shield-Captain: A senior field commander within the Asgardian military hierarchy, responsible for coordinating fleet movements and ground operations (equivalent to a Colonel or Commodore).

• Einherjar: Elite Asgardian shock troops or infantry; referenced here regarding casualties ("Dead Einherjar").

• Rune-Breakers: A specialist unit (under Ulfr) dedicated to cryptography, magical countermeasures, and breaking enemy enchantments/codes.

• Stormbringers: A specialized assault unit focused on high-impact, rapid strikes.

Technology & Story-Specific Jargon

• Truth-Sight: Advanced sensor technology or magical enchantment that allows Asgardian units to bypass illusions and see the physical reality of a target.

• Reality Raid: A tactical concept invented by Brynja; a surgical strike designed not to destroy the enemy physically, but to dismantle their perception of safety and control, forcing a psychological surrender.

• Seidr: Norse magic. In a military context, Freyja refers to the "Reality Raid" as "Seidr on a strategic scale," implying the weaponization of magic to alter the outcome of a war.

• Light-Weaving: The primary technology/language of the Aurelian Weavers; a fusion of art, communication, and defensive hard-light holograms.

• Vassal State: A state that is mostly independent but is under the protection and dominion of a superior power (Asgard), often paying tribute or surrendering foreign policy rights.