Chapter 21 – “The Blooming Blight”

Directly following Arnar's submission. Theme: brutal enforcement, psychological warfare

~900 words

The hall still reeked of blood and scorched iron when the banners were lowered.

Jarl Arnar had bent the knee. His warriors had dropped their axes, their eyes filled with cautious hope—or deep resentment. Tanya could see the lines drawn already: those loyal to Arnar, those still dreaming of Sigmund's defiance.

And resentment was a disease that spread.

"You bought their submission," Mayuri muttered beside her as they walked through the cooling embers of Arnar's holdfast. "But not their hearts."

"I don't need their hearts," Tanya replied. "Just their fear."

News of Sigmund's execution and Arnar's public surrender traveled like lightning. Yet scattered resistance flared in borderlands and in isolated villages that once swore to Sigmund's banner. They didn't accept the new order. They called Arnar a coward. Called Tanya a foreign witch who'd poisoned the jarldom.

So Tanya gave them something new to fear.

"Deploy the growths," she commanded.

Within days, her enforcers—disguised as wandering traders or passing raiders—distributed sacks of "emergency provisions" to those villages: grain laced with Mayuri's new weapon.

He called it "The Blooming Blight."

It looked like mushroom stalks grown from barley husks—plump, earthy, aromatic. Harmless at first. Delicious, even. But the spores carried something more than sustenance.

Not death, not yet.

Surrendered villages, like those under Arnar's new banner, were spared. They were given real food, coin, and protection. But those that spat on Arnar's name, that insulted Tanya's rule, that denied the arrival of a new age—those became test sites.

Tanya sat in Arnar's high seat when the first report arrived.

Drekagard burned for three nights.

She didn't rise from her seat, didn't react when Ivar approached with soot-stained scouts who described what happened. People bursting into flame while cooking. Homes exploding from within. Children screaming as crimson fungus bloomed from their skin.

"And now?" Tanya asked.

Ivar hesitated. "The survivors fled. Most to Arnar's keep. Some to the wilds."

Tanya nodded. "Good."

"What do you want us to do with the survivors?"

She looked at the hall full of Arnar's warriors—men still uncertain of their new place in her order.

"Bring them here," she said. "Let them speak for themselves."

The next morning, two dozen half-starved survivors, blackened with ash and shock, knelt before the firepit of Arnar's longhall.

They trembled.

Tanya stepped forward, arms clasped behind her back. She did not shout. She didn't need to.

"I offered unity," she said, voice calm. "I spared those who yielded. And I promised fire to those who did not."

No one answered. One boy sobbed quietly. An old man stared at the floor.

"You refused Arnar's command. You rejected his peace. You denied my word." Her voice sharpened. "And so the gods bloomed in your blood."

One woman looked up—young, dirt on her cheeks, knuckles white from clenching. "What… are you?"

Tanya stared at her.

"I am the end of your choices."

Mayuri clapped his hands, delighted. "Oh! Can I write that down?"

"Later," Tanya snapped.

She turned to Arnar, seated uneasily beside her.

"Let your men hear this," she said. "Your rule continues only because I allow it. You lead now not as a sovereign, but as my vassal. Those who disobey you disobey me."

Arnar said nothing. But his jaw clenched, and he gave a sharp nod. One of his men shifted uncomfortably, and another slapped him to stillness.

Tanya approached the survivors.

"You'll live," she told them. "But you'll carry your story to every village that doubts. You'll show them the blight that grows in rebellion's soil. And you will kneel every day you breathe."

She leaned close to the woman who had spoken.

"If you don't," she whispered, "I'll let him experiment on your children."

Mayuri waved from behind her. "Only a few! And I promise it'll be very informative."

Tanya stood, cloak snapping as she turned.

"Let them go," she ordered Ivar.

He raised an eyebrow. "Unmarked?"

"No. Carve them with flame. Let the scars speak louder than their words."

And so, marked by fire and fear, the survivors were released.

Not dead.

Not free.

But changed.

They became walking sermons in Tanya's gospel of terror. Her enemies called her a devil, a Valkyrie, a walking curse. Some even whispered she had burned Sigmund's soul into the soil.

She let them talk.

Because in Vinland, legends ruled longer than kings.

And hers was just beginning to take root.