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[ HERETIC ]
DAGMAR ─── oath keeper
" the gods I pray to are dead. "

and it's my whole heart
weighed and measured inside
and it's an old scar
trying to bleach it out
and it's my whole heart
deemed and delivered a crime
i'm on trial, waiting 'till the beat comes out
i'm on trial, waiting 'till the beat comes out
who's a heretic now?

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I. When Dagmar was born, her Father left her to the gods.

Small for a newborn and incredibly delicate, the babe was unnervingly quiet in her mother's arms. She wouldn't cry, not like her sister had when she was born over a year prior, not even when she was ripped from her mother's arms and handed off so that Esther could bring a wailing Finn into the world just moments later.

One of the village healers, with Dagmar in her arms, went to where Mikael waited and told him with an unwavering conviction that the babe would not survive the trauma of her own birth-- that she was not strong enough to do much more than breathe shallowly. So, lest his wife grow attached to the child that would die when there were two others who would need her, He walked out far into the woods and laid her in the moss, praying to Frigg that the girl's death was painless before leaving her for nature to reclaim.

When He returned in the morning for the body, however, He was met with a screaming, living child and the feeling that something in the woods was watching him.

Mikael then took the babe home and named her Dagmar, meaning Maiden, in honor of the goddess he thought had saved her.

(Not knowing that the eyes in the trees were crows.)

II. Five years later, the consequences of birth came for them.

The siblings had been playing in the snow behind their home when a woman emerged from the thicket with twigs in her hair and eyes black as coals. She assured the children, in a voice thick like the honey the adults used to make mead, that she was an old friend, and that she'd like to speak to their mother. Dagmar, naturally suspicious of all things but especially those of the woods, had been the one to get Mother once pressured by her siblings, and the one most startled when the Woman greeted their Mother with hostility. They spoke to one another in a language that none of the children would come to understand for some years and then, before any of them could figure out what would happen, the Woman took Freya in her arms and returned to the trees.

Dagmar had cried and the woods that birthed her croaked as she tried to will them to return her sister to her.

Before she could raze the forest, her nose bled, and she lost consciousness.

When she woke days later, Mikael thought that Freya was lost to the plague.

III. Dagmar's duty to a lying mother was the only thing that did not abandon her as she grew up in a foreign land with a cold Father and a quiet brother. She helped raise all the children her mother had after them, and studied under Ayana, and revered the spirits that walked in the woodland.

But said lying mother preferred Finn's company, and in her dreams she always returned to that snowy meadow. To the moment that she sealed her sister's fate but almost razed the trees.

IV. Marriage turned her for the worse; suppressed her, made her angry, made her a coward. Her Father's only intention, truly, for a child that he came to fear.

But, Mikael should have known that a power like that has no care for the wills of Men, and the girl who came back from the woods that day was not the exact same girl who went in...

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

         → HERETIC
         → PROLOGUE: blood rite
         → AN ODE TO DAGMAR
           → ooi. the bastard runt
           → oii. an ancient kind of magic
         → ACT ONE, 1000s, pre-canon
         → ACT TWO, 2010s, tvd

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CAST

KATHERYN WINNICK as DAGMAR

PROPHET GIRL, DO YOU HEAR THE GODS WHISPERING?

CURSED DAUGHTER, DO YOU REGRET  TAKING THIS VOW?

DONALD SUTHERLAND as THE STRANGER

alongside the cast of the shows aside from...

drew fuller as damon salvatore

pedro pascal as alaric saltzman

freddy carter as kol mikaelson

kristine froseth as elena gilbert (etc.)

kedar williams-stirling as matt donovan

travis fimmel as hvitserk
diane kruger as young! dagmar
jordan patrick smith as young! hvitserk
harry gilby as young! finn
harry collett as young! elijah
nathan o'toole as young! klaus
elliot griohault as young! kol
ruby o'leary as young!rebekah

& astrid as described

HERETIC
©️ 2024, -punisher

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NOTES

→ WARNING(S): DARK THEMES; more than canon typical blood and gore; character death; both physical and psychological abuse; descriptions of war (wwi, etc); slavery and discussions around it; trauma; depictions of mental health issues; rituals and heathen religions; child loss and fertility issues; and sexual themes. please take caution before proceeding. your readership is not worth jeopardizing your own health!

→ me? being pissed off about the mikaelson backstory in canon? more likely than you'd think. so much about klaus and kol's personalities makes sense when you realize that they were raised by people who practiced ritualistic human sacrifice but the canon refuses to elaborate, so i will.

→ dagmar isn't a heretic in the canon typical sense, but she also isn't a vampire in the canon typical sense. she is some other, third, more sinister thing! (think an eldritch horror wrapped in the skin of a very kind yet stern woman.) it has to do with the stranger & norse mythos but like you're not going to get any kind of explanation until the end of act i.

→ i have... canon is a suggestion. mostly. like, especially when it comes to magic and how magic is practiced... turn away now if that will piss you off!

→ mads mikkelson is hot, yes, but his character is not a love interest. you're allowed to simp but if I see you say anything abt shipping them im deleting your comment!

→ all of my recasting was done in a bid to be more book and age accurate, add a little bit of color to the cast, and not give problematic actors the spotlight. I know fanfiction doesn't really do much for their careers but I really didn't want a bunch of racists, misogynists, and otherwise freaks in the cast of my story. I don't care if you imagine the original cast, this was for me more than anything-that means that you don't have to spitefully inform me of your choice to disregard it <3 also fxllmoons foxgIoves and _naomiwrites  gave me the ideas for most of the recasts.

→ DISCLAIMERS: whilst i made the cover and any graphic made for this story, the pictures/videos used belong to the people who made them. the gifs aren't mine. the lyrics/quotes are credited. i also only own any original characters, plot lines, and dialogue, everything else belongs to the creators of the original media.

→ A WORD FROM YOUR AUTHOR: you are not required to do anything, but please read with the awareness of how much your interaction and engagement can help an author out. not only does it help boost the book in wattpad's algorithm, but it makes all of the work I do so much more worth it. we authors do this for free out of passion and/or love, but we also do this for you, too. voting and commenting comes at no cost to you, and it makes me want to write more, so please show your support if you're enjoying the book! that being said, i want my page to be a safe space for all people. if you are coming here to be hateful or just downright mean to others, you'll be reported and blocked. please respect my boundaries.

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started on: january 5th, 2024
ended on:
word count: