In this timeline, Saoirse fled south after escaping the witch trial and ended up in Dumbarton. She lived there for a short time and began working as a healer again, following in her parent's footsteps, but she hadn't settled for long before the Great Heathen Army attacked. Although the army couldn't penetrate the city's heavily-fortified walls, they laid siege to it for a period of time, and Saoirse helped to tend to the men who were injured while defending the city. However, even though the Vikings couldn't enter the city, they successfully trapped its' people within, and the wells soon ran dry. Dumbarton couldn't hold off the Vikings any longer, and when they entered, their slaughtered nearly every living man in the city, while taking many women and children as slaves.

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Before the prisoners would be taken off and stored someplace until the heathens decided what to do with them, a crippled man who introduced himself as the feared Ivar the Boneless spoke to the prisoners and said, "If anyone of you believes they're worth more than slavery and could be of any use to me, by all means, come forth." Hoping that her odds would be better if she served him rather than being sold and shipped to some far-away place, Saoirse stepped forward and offered her services as a healer. That's when Ivar brutally severed the hand of a captured woman and made Saoirse prove herself by saving her life. She did, but the woman didn't live for long.

 

Later, Ivar threatened to have all of the prisoners killed as sacrifices, but Saoirse was able to speak with him and come to a compromise; that he would sacrifice only one, and sell the others. However, it came with an unexpected and horrifying twist when he made her choose the sacrifice. While looking among the slaves for her choice, she found the woman with the severed arm. She knew that unless the heathen men allowed her to tend her, she would die of shock and infection, so the handless woman was chosen as the sacrifice. The woman was tortured and burned on a pyre, which left Saoirse's soul damaged. She once took an oath to never to do harm, yet everything that happened to this woman was her fault.

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Still, she refuses to let such dark circumstances crush her completely. While her naivety has diminished, she clings to the words that her older brother Ramsey said to her as he helped her escape. His words are what lights her way as she navigates this new, terrifying world of the Vikings, while under the rule of Ivar the Boneless.

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For now, that's where I'll leave this section, but as more key events occur in the Vikingsverse, I'll include them here for future reference!