Lane looked out through her visor at the ranks of wolf-things that made up Aeric’s Wild Hunt. They hovered there, more than any one person could defeat. So be it, today was a good day to die.
With glacial slowness, their eyes blinked. Smoothly she spun herself to her feet, stopping when she had her back to the gate, transferring the spin to her bar. It twirled like an extension of her wrist, waiting like the rest of her for one of them to lunge.
Before they could, Loki’s scream rang across the room. “What the hell?! I knew that bastard was going to betray us!” Like a switch had been flipped, Loki calmed, his demeanor cold and superior once more. “You know you cannot hope to win, child. I control everything here. I control the Hunt, I control the Valkyr behind them, I even control the ground you stand upon.” He flicked the remote back into his hand. When he pointed it at the carpeting, it unraveled, revealing an endless void. Eyes filled that, too.
Before it could fully unravel beneath her feet, she followed her instincts and took a tiny hop onto the handle of Gil’s hammer. When the carpet dissipated, it remained rock steady. She balanced on it, sliding one foot forward, spinning her bar behind her with one hand. The other hand reached out, palm upward, toward Loki. With her fingertips, she made the ‘come here’ gesture she’d seen from Jun Fan so many times.
Loki sneered, “You think we can’t close that gate and reopen another? Watch me.” He gestured again, and the elevator doors slid shut behind her. Through the soles of her boots she felt the great hammer shudder. Once more, acting on instinct, she willed the doors to stay open. The hammer stilled, and behind her the doors stopped moving.
Loki’s calm cracked, his voice rang through the aether, “Hunt! Take her!”
The eyes surged forward, fangs glittering beneath them. Calm and centered, Lane waited for them to come. When the first came within her reach, she launched herself into them. With her every moment among them, another hound found a new way to die. Her hook, her blade, her hands, even her armor itself spelled death for the hounds. In turn, they bit and clawed feebly at her. Her green surcoat tattered quickly, but the gleaming plate beneath remained unscathed. Within seconds, the first wave of hounds dissipated into the aether and she returned to balance on the hammer’s handle.
She expected to need a quick respite, but with every strike, with every death, she felt a little stronger, a little faster. Her bar slid from hand to hand, and sparks danced along its length. She laughed aloud at the sensation. The hounds came on once more. In all their experience, only the mad laughed at them, and they intended that this mortal met the same fate as her insane kin. Once again savagery met steel, this time without respite.
Lane flowed through them, power surging through her with each hound dispatched. At the hundredth hound, she stopped counting. The hounds fell too fast, their forms becoming a blur. She felt like she could punch through steel. As an experiment, she kicked one hound, catching it under the chin. Its head disintegrated on impact with her boot, its body flew backward, somersaulting.
She laughed, savage and wild and free. She moved through the cloud of death, ricocheting form one hound to another, always orbiting the gateway and hammer. One tried to sneak through. She willed the gate to close around him. It did, he fell sundered, and the gateway opened once more. She landed on the hammer, crowbar laying waste to the hounds that reached her, and stared balefully at Loki as she destroyed the Hunt one hound at a time.
***
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Loki looked on in horror as one lone mortal faced down the Wild Hunt. She must have held back against Morgan’s demons. She moved too fast for him to see her move. Her bar licked out, and a dozen hounds dissolved into aether as he watched. The screens behind him went blank; one flat black, one staticky white. He had no idea how the council members assigned to the other gates fared. He hoped one of them managed to set off the apocalypse on time, because he certainly would be delayed.
She stared at him. She executed the Wild Hunt without even looking at them. She stared at him, lifting that one hand again, this time bathed in the blood of the hunt, and beckoned him to come to her. He was about to order the Valkyr in when something happened that shocked him to his core.
The Hunt broke. The ones in the front had nowhere to go but inward. The ones at the edges, however, edged backward. They could charge the laughing madwoman destroying them faster than they could reform, or they could chance the outer darkness. Some still pushed forward, but more and more slunk away, choosing slow, painless dissolution over a short, painful one.
Cowards.
He called out, his own voice sounding just a touch shrill. “Oberkommandant!”
The thing appeared beside him. Its body took the form of a man. It clothed itself in a uniform of martial grays, but a sigil of paired ravens replaced the twin lightning bolt insignia it wore in its mortal life. It hovered on wings of death and night, awaiting his commands. Silently, for which he was quietly thankful.
“Destroy that obstacle. Destroy it, pass through the gateway, and purge the world!”
The lesser Valkyr moved toward the dervish that stood before the gate. A moment after they did, his vision dimmed and he clutched at his ears when the Valkyr spoke. Its words were pain and death and aggression given sound, but the meaning forced its way into his mind.
She is not an obstacle. She is a warrior.
“I don’t care! Destroy her!”
In the distance, he heard the flat thrum of that damned crowbar spinning. The sounds on impact changed from the death howls of the Hunt to Valkyr screeching. By the sounds of things, she killed them even faster than she had the hounds.
She is not just a warrior. She is valiant. She charged us. We have no conflict with this one.
“So? Go around her, get through the gate, and purge the world! It is your mission!”
Do not presume, Liesmith. She will not allow passage. She stands before the gate and allows no entry. I say again, we have no conflict with this one.
“And I told you to destroy her!”
The Valkyr’s fist hammered Loki to the nonexistent ground. Staring at the thing in a daze, he saw it hold that same fist over his torso. The thing opened its fist, and a small pin fell out. Loki stared stupidly at the twin ravens on the pin as the Valkyr mantled and drifted back away.
You have broken the pact. We are free.
As it dissipated, its voice became human once more. A wry grin twisted its lips around its final words, “Good luck stopping her yourself.”
***
As Lane cut her way through the second rank of winged angel-guys, all of a sudden they all faded away. Without thinking, she summoned the hammer to her, pulling herself back to her position in front of the gate. Looking around, she pouted a bit. Everyone gone, and her still ready and raring to go.
She looked across the room, however far it was, and saw Loki climbing from behind his desk. He stepped out, walking on nothing, drawing a gleaming glassy sword from its sheath as he did so. As he advanced his voice reached out ahead of him, soothing and mocking all at once.
“You don’t think that just because you’ve scared away the Hunt and the Valkyr that you’ve won, do you? Fenris has obviously eaten your friend Artemis, and soon he’ll grow bored, find the gateway, and consume your world. That is, if the demons your little witch summoned don’t invade it first.”
The thunder echoing from her own voice surprised Lane, “Not my problem. This gate is. You give up?”
“Hardly. My blade, my armor, both are pure magic. Nothing mortal can penetrate either. Say goodbye to your precious crowbar, little girl. When I strike, it will cease to be.”
“Bring it.”
***
Tokugawa said, “the sword is the soul of the samurai”. A warrior’s soul is one with her body, and her weapons are an extension of her body.
Two weapons met. Two souls set against one another in battle. One a soul of magic, glass, and illusion. One a soul of cold, hard iron.
One soul emerged shaken, ringing like a bell, perhaps in need of retempering.
One soul shattered.