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Anno Domini 877 – A Testament From the Ashes of Mercia

Readers of my blog (I do not dare yet to call you “friends” or “fans” because my blog is still so little) seem to be eclectic as I am because they liked my reviews on PGA Tour 2K25, Rise of the Ronin, and Hot Wheels Unleashed. This time, I will try something different, and I am very curious what the feedback will be: I will write a fan fiction piece. So bear in mind it is not a review of the game but my pure imagination with some outside help putting together a short story.

Of Iron and Flame — The Hour of Reckoning

We are besieged. Not merely by steel, but by madness. The Norse spill forth like locusts from the northern fjords, serpent-sailed and blood-hungry, snuffing the light of Christ where it burns warmest. This parchment trembles under my quill not from old age, but from fear. I write beneath broken rafters, the chapel roof shattered by axes that cared nothing for sacred stone.

I saw it — I watched Eivor of the Raven Clan ride at the head of a fury no mortal saint could contain. She bore the mark of a wolf, and if God wrought beasts in man's image, then surely her soul is stitched from fangs and fire. What her warriors did to Saint Werburgh’s priory, even the dead would scream.

Imagining walking through Assassin's Creed Valhalla felt different. Monks dashed against altars. Relics seized like coin. They laughed as the Eucharist was overturned, wine pooled like blood. Not one spared. Their courage was absolute — their mercy absent.

Mercy Lost — The Cost of Civilization

We were once a people of law and rhythm. Our traditions folded into the liturgical calendar. We plowed in peace. We knelt at vespers. Our mead was humble, our tongues gentle. Children sang under the sycamores while we recited verse.

Now, those same children cry in Saxon and Norse, mingled tongues — neither one whole. Eivor pledges alliances with our thanes only to crack our borders with raiding. She helps us to stand only so we might kneel more politely.

They build settlements — Ravensthorpe among them — not as homes but as monuments to conquest. Each forge hammer sings of the monastery it looted. Their bakeries rise on soil that once housed harvest festivals in God's name. Anglo-Saxon life now grows as grafts on Viking limbs.

Is this progress? Or perdition?

The game sees Eivor as hero. I see only the quiet procession of graves trailing behind her.

The Land Screams — Devastation in Snotinghamscire and Beyond

Snotinghamscire burns in silence. Thatched roofs, once golden with autumn light, are now charred outlines against the gray sky. The forests — sacred homes to deer and fairies alike — echo with war cries and the clash of iron. I bore witness to the desecration of a cairn mound by Northmen singing of giants and serpents, stomping over our ancestral tombs without pause.

The fields of East Anglia are littered with bones, but players who buy cheap PS4 games cannot stop here. We once sowed barley there. Now we find collarbones tangled with rusted shields.

This is no longer England. It is Fenrir's mouth.

Where Are Our Gods? A Cry Into Heaven

O Lord, bend thine ear. The people call for thy justice, but the skies offer only wind and silence.

I watched Father Heorstan clasp his crucifix with bloodied hands as Eivor's raiders kicked the chapel doors from their hinges. He did not scream. He sang. Psalms, through broken teeth, until the axe silenced him. His body rests now under a yew tree. His voice — I pray — ascended.

We are promised divine retribution. Are we abandoned? Or tested?

And yet — a flicker persists. I heard a young girl in Lincoln recite the Beatitudes while hiding beneath a swine cart. Her voice shook, but it stood. That is how light survives. Not as fire, but as whisper.

The Barbarian's Creed — Masks of Morality

They claim to carry principles. I overheard Hytham — one of the silent men who shadow Eivor — preach of “freedom from control.” He wears robes like our monks. He speaks of justice. But his blade speaks louder.

And Eivor, though she mourns her dead and honors her foes, kills indiscriminately when provoked. I watched her spare a Saxon ealdorman in Kent — only to butcher his kin two days hence during a misunderstanding. Honor, it seems, is not consistent. It is weather. It changes when it suits her.

The Hidden Ones claim wisdom. But if their teachings mold monsters, what wisdom remains?

Hope Wrought From Ash — The Call to the Faithful

Yet I write still.

There are those who remember. Farmers who till beside razed halls, planting wheat with Psalm 23 stitched into their breath. Bakers who share scraps with widowed strangers. Soldiers who bury enemies with rites they do not understand, simply because that is what good men do.

In Winchester, I met a youth named Aethelred who offered healing to both Saxon and Norse wounded. His hands shook, but his heart did not waver. He does not fight. He mends.

This chronicle is his inheritance.

And to those who read: rise. Teach your children the old hymns. Hide your scriptures beneath hearthstone. Etch your prayers into cider barrels and barn doors. Faith endures when spoken in code. Make your sermons in silence if need be.

A Final Benediction — Fire Cannot Kill What Is Rooted

If this be my last entry of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, let it stand not as eulogy but as embers.

For the north wind shall pass. The longships shall rot. Ravensthorpe will one day falter. But the spirit — ours — shall sink into soil, rise through reed, and sing in the tongue of the sky.

Eivor may not see it. But those who play — those who guide her — will feel it.

We are not vanished. We are waiting.

And Christ still listens.