A black bolt of energy cut through his blizzard and drilled a hole straight toward Aiden. The residual power of the spell's passing widened the haze of frost pervading so much of everything---the biggest downside to the wide range of power his blizzard held. Though, where there was frost, he could sense.

Whoever had attacked remained outside his frost's range, wisely enough, likely having seen the lethality of Aiden's domain. What would cause him pause normally, Aiden ignored after walling off that entire section to buy himself time. He needed answers, he needed Blizzy, and he needed Leyla.

What he definitely did not need was to get caught up in a magical firefight and fall behind. If his progress delayed too long, maybe others as strong as the black bolt's caster would press Aiden. If he stopped moving forward...

Being tied to Leyla and Blizzy meant he had a responsibility to keep himself alive and well, and while remaining out of this haphazard forward charge made the most sense, rejoining them and tackling these things together would be the best way to make sure they all either lived or died. If Blizzy died, he'd never gain Halla's Authority from Kyriall and Khione would perish in the void, then Aiden and Leyla would die too. If Leyla died, Blizzy might survive to succeed Tiamat, but Aiden wouldn't live to see it.

So he crept forward, wielding his power with indiscriminate fury. A slash with Silver sent forward a wave of sharp, crystalline ice that spared nothing and rent the earth. Once the snow from his blizzard pervaded all things, he replicated Needle Storm. All traces of frost within lungs, stuck to skin, waiting beneath feet, he called upon to wreak havoc.

But still the numbers limited his progress, and he remained blind as Blizzy's presence moved farther toward the unaffected stake. Now that he moved forward, its true size loomed over everything ominously. What could it possibly be?

The sensation of emptiness approaching caused Aiden to pause, as the strange power was the same as the black bolt. It left a trail of emptiness that his frost couldn't reclaim. The air and earth became inaccessible to him.

A problem approached, and it brought friends.

"Time to skedaddle. Enough taking it slow." Raising Silver and his other hand to the sky, wincing as he jarred his injury, snow formed into an icy path upward and dissipated the moment he took a step. More steps formed as he continued forward, a small miniature blizzard hovering around him as the rest of his domain struggled to keep up with his pace. He thought to draw it back within himself, but it was enough of a barrier between the concerning powers and provided a smokescreen worth keeping active, even if all other enemies within had fallen.

The bombardment of arrows and spells here paled in comparison to what he'd been dodging, weaving, and blocking since Leyla first took off and Blizzy began leading him to possible answers. Now, he drew close enough to witness what lured Blizzy.

A platform had been erected in front of the invading portal. At the center, shackled, bound, and bloody, the holder of Valhalla's Authority. Once he knew what to look for, he could feel it from her. The same hum he'd felt from Earth's Authority, but more powerful, though not quite as overbearing as Midrath's. A strange mid-range.

"Xenith."

"Nice of you to join me," Aiden groused as Leyla hovered beside him as he continued to take step after step. "Care to enlighten me?"

"I... too am clueless." Bitterness and shock—Leyla couldn't take her eyes off Xenith. "I-I am very... sad and... confused. To see her brought so low like this." Was that affection Aiden heard in her voice? "Whoever they are, this was not their battle to claim victory in. It is tradition, has always been tradition... The next matriarch would slay the last, absorb her power, rise to power and bring Valhalla glory."

Now that was new information—information that didn't shed a wink of light on the current situation. "Do you recognize the invaders?"

She gripped her scythe until her knuckles whitened. "Hathronian scum."

"I'm sure that's supposed to mean something."

"A mid-grade race much like you humans. Tenacious, reproduce like... like Evils. Highly adaptable. Quick to grow, high mortality rate." She gestured around at the countless bodies. "Questionable intelligence."

"Mid-grade?"

"They auto-ascend from F-grade to E-grade. Most will never surpass D-grade, let alone higher. A few do though." She explodes back the direction Aiden had abandoned with her scythe whirling in a violent flurry of black-violet.

Stolen story; please report.

"Are we dealing with them, or...?" Aiden still didn't think stopping to deal with the threat they posed was anything but a terrible idea, especially as Blizzy raced across ashen wastelands toward Xenith's broken, restrained form. He could only wonder who had done that to her amongst the Hathronians.

He had a sinking feeling he would become very acquainted with said invader before his time to leave Valhalla came. He nearly missed his next step as his heart sank into his gut. Just in case, he'd tried to activate Midrath's Authority to tease out whether he could teleport out in the event things got a little too heated and he needed to abandon Valhalla entirely.

He couldn't.

At all.

As if the Authority was being entirely suppressed.

The sky high stake with the eclectic array of runes might have something to do with it, but now he knew any chance of escape was off the table and they were fully committed to whatever they were doing here.

"Maybe..."

Olivia, Anna, Josh, James, and countless others---hell, the whole of Zion. If he'd marched into Valhalla with them, would he have been leading them to their deaths?

Surely.

Seeing the power the Hathronians brought to bear, a quiet acceptance and validation of his choice as the right one soothed much of his initial doubts. He had made the right choice to come here without the others. They would've been nothing more than liabilities, a distraction he had to protect, no matter how hard they wanted to be otherwise.

With a shake of his head, he cleared his thoughts and continued in step without missing a beat. The icy steps continued carrying him toward the platform.

The closer to the platform, the more he could make out.

Ten figures, each equidistant and arranged in a circle around Xenith, contorted painfully. Chains gripped them around the throat and dragged them back, but their arms were pulled tight at an angle to their side. The chains in their legs looked the thickest and were by far the shortest. All of the chains of red metal extended out of the platform itself, no anchors or bolts keeping them in place.

As far as Aiden could see, there was no easy way to free those shackled below. And Xenith, the worst of the lot. Her chains ran through her arms and legs, anchoring her flesh directly.

Even worse than the fleshy chains, each being on the platform was Valkyr. He knew this because of the bloodied wings, white and black, lain out in front of each person. Whoever had done this, their cruelty showed. Aiden couldn't stop the wince as he imagined someone doing something so horrible to Leyla.

Seeing Xenith so helpless, the whole situation started to paint a grim picture.

Leyla returned to Aiden's side holding a head. "Got one."

"Gross." Aiden pointed at the platform. "Got a plan for that?"

She flinched away from him, her eyes unfocusing when she looked back at Xenith and the other Valkyr. "...no."

"I'll handle it." Not sure how, but he'd find a way. Even if to spare her having to do it, he'd find a way to get to the bottom of this. "Keep our uninvited friends off my back."

"I-I'll do my best," she said with a timidness so unlike her, he wondered if she was even the same person. She turned to fly away and stopped, hesitantly looking back at him over her shoulder. "And Aiden, th-thank you." She threw herself back into his trailing blizzard, her own miasma of anti-everything keeping her safe from its passive invasiveness.

"All alone, with nobody here beside me," he hummed. His next steps began lowering him down to the platform. His instincts told him going anywhere near the platform spelled his imminent death, but... what else could he do? Leave Xenith here like this after watching the pain and uncertainty in Leyla's face? Even without Leyla's own emotional chaos stew in the mix, Aiden couldn't, in good conscience, slay Xenith when she looked like this.

She hadn't been spared the de-winging treatment. Her mosaic of wounds bled a faint gold, and tears of silver stained like spilled ink on her cheeks. Blood and ash matted her hair into a tangled mess, not that she was in any position to care about style choices. He just... couldn't fathom what had done this to her. This dishonor, was she deserving of it?

His continuous steps brought him before her. From afar, he hadn't been able to tell she was what he imagined an amazon woman to be. Even in such dire straits, her frame held such power and hummed with hearty vigor and stubborn vitality. Shackled, forced to kneel, she still matched his height.

"The Ruler... foolishly comes... himself. Joy. Do you come... to offer... further dishonor?" Each time she spoke was like a breathy whisper, soft and warming yet with a subtle pain.

"You look like you've suffered enough for now." More than enough. Even should they have fought, he didn't think anything she'd done deserved such cruelty. "How has this happened?"

"Leave... and take... my daughter... away from this place." Her hollowed eye sockets opened to stare back at him. "Do not... let her close. Let her remember... my strength."

"I'd love nothing more than to leave," he said and gestured wide with both arms, waving Silver toward the Valkyr, "since this isn't my idea of a vacation either, but I have some business to attend to." In a situation like this, he questioned himself. Could he really leave her this way? Was there nothing he could do but try and receive Valhalla's Authority and damn the place to this fate? "Obviously a fair fight won't be possible, but I've still come for your Authority, Xenith."

With great strength, she lurched forward. A fierce, bone-shaking growl ripped from the depths of her soul. "Even now... your greed... is damning!" Her flesh ripped, and new streams of pale gold streamed from where the chains pulled. "Even now! No! Be damned, foolish Ruler! Be... damned!"

As fast as she'd exploded forward, nearly reaching him, the strength faded. She deflated as if the life had fled her entirely. Hanging there without a single movement, he worried she might actually have died.

"I don't mean to offend you, Xenith, but I have no idea what's going on." Honesty was the best policy...? Maybe?

"Begone..."