In the meanwhile on the other side of the ghost town…
“What’s the progress for the Valkyries?” The grand priest approached as his eyes somehow managed to look even more tired than before.
“Inert.” The lead researcher turned around slowly, his hands pinching the cover of his book of Casts, “The formulations worked as intended from the records, and there were no noticeable side effects beyond what's expected.”
“Good.” The grand priest said when the guards behind him suddenly started yelling, and the sounds of weapons clashing and people screaming that followed immediately made both of them alert at the same time when the grand priest felt a familiar presence in the Wave.
“You are dead!” Alina declared, her eyes seeing red as a white outline of the Great Northern wolf enveloped her body, the fangs biting straight down at the soldiers before tossing them easily out of the way like dolls.
The grand priest immediately reached a hand to the side as the lead researcher nodded and placed a scroll in his hand.
“Alina Vuk...the stubborn remnant of the old system. The supposed shining star of Talonia...” The grand commander said slowly, his dark eye bags twitching with every word, “Partial demonic transformations…activate! Valkyries...to me!”
Instantly, a few of the houses exploded from right behind the grand priest, then, Valkyries with their forehead covered in by the dark lines leaped through the air and started attacking Alina from all angles as the grand priest and the lead researcher turned tail and started running.
“Get out of my way, girls.” Alina said, halting for just a moment, though the Valkyries ignored her words, instead of attacking more furiously at the same time. She easily evaded consequent blasts of Wave and a pair of melee fighters that tried to rush the distance between her and them. Alina swiped her hand to the side, knocking back the closest of the Valkyries when the other growled and slammed into her Wave armor with a Wave construct of her hammer.
However, Alina turend her hands out, catching onto the handle of the hammer with ease.
“Have you forgotten your training?!” Alina raised her voice, spinning around and throwing the one Valkyrie with the hammer off to the side. Then, she felt heat coming from her righth when a pair of Valkyries used a combination Cast to dent into her Wave armor, “What is this garbage attack formation?!”
“ARGHHH!” The group of Valkyries seemingly recognized her tone, though their responses were quickly diminished by the influence of the dark lines their attacks became more and more disorganized and relentless.
“Alina! All of them are breaking out!” Wu’s voice pierced through the air when Lera raised her fist up in the air as massive vines shot up from the ground, binding to the Valkyrie’s bodies as they tried to claw their way out from the binds.
“You go after the main target!” Lera added as Wu dashed through each of the Valkyries as they planned to break free before tapping his palm over their foreheads, unleashing pulses of Void Domain that temporarily overloaded their minds and knocked them out.
With their bodies going limp, the dark lines of the partial demonic transformation started to become thinner before retracting back into a single hair-width line over their foreheads.
By the time he worked through the majority of the Valkyries, the last one managed to break free from Lera’s trapping Casts, and she tried fighting back against Wu with a pair of Wave blades when Wu twisted his wrist, unleashing his own blades and deflecting her attack before his free hand conjured up the Void Domain laser and shot through the Valkyrie’s skull.
She twitched once, her entire body trembling as her internal circuits of Wave struggled to react to his attack. However, the struggle lasted for only a split second as Wu tapped her on the forehead and put her to sleep too.
“We will gather them all together and get them out of here!” Ita said, turning and speaking into a communication Cast with the rest of the girls from Leodora who broke off from her after they escaped the prison with Shadow, “We will take them back to my home!”
“Sounds like a plan.” Lera nodded, “Where’s Shadow gone?!”
“I…I haven’t seen her since the Valkyries started attacking Alina...” Ita said in a rush as she directed the chariots entering from the exterior of the village before the Leodora girls started loading up the passed out Valkyries.
“She can take care of herself. I am sure.” Wu said, “We…just need to focus on what we need to do.”
As the Valkyries fought and bought time for the grand priest and his lead researcher, the remainder of the soldiers that accompanied them into the village had to contend with the enraged predator in the form of the Great Northern wolf and a dark shadow that traced its steps right behind her.
“What are you doing here?!” Alina asked as she rammed through a trio of soldiers, shattering their shield Casts and throwing them against the trees. Shadow emerged from the darkness under Alina’s body and kicked another soldier across the jaw, shoving his body off the chariot before she leaped towards the Grand Priest alongside Alina.
“I am here cause I want to be here.” Shadow replied, her dark hair flowing in the wind as she spun and avoided the rudimentary attacks from the lead researcher, “You got a problem with me?”
“If you are thinking of betraying the commander…”
“Shut up about the commander already!” Shadow growled, “Can't you see? Haven’t you realized? He’s just using you, the same way the grand priest is with the other girls! You idiot! You idiot bitch!”
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“You are not understanding things here, Shadow. All the commander care for is the prosperity of this kingdom.” Alina replied calmly as if a mother's calming down a child's tantrum, “The plans of the Descendants of Winter will plunge this kingdom into chaos.”
“An intriguing perspective coming from the instigator of a broken system, Alina.” The grand priest step, pushing aside the researcher before he put both hands out as Shadow lunged at him, “under the new transformation, every girl and boy will have their dreams fulfilled. No one needs to die in order for the rest to survive the program.”
"Say your final word, old man." Alina said, moving even faster as outlines of claws hovered over her fist. Her body flickered through the air and passed striaght through the guards before she was ready to deliver the finishing blow when the grand priest looked up, his dark eyes glaring woodenly towards her.
“Is your commander the man named Caligo?”
Alina landed hard in the chariot of the grand priest, and her claws paused inches away from scraping through the fragile neck of the man who brought her so much pain by plotting to destroy her Valkyries. However, she knew that Caligo would appreciate answers more than corpses from all of her years working for him.
“How...did you know?” Alina asked, leaning forward as her aura started to dominate the air around the grand priest’s body.
“Because I was a political opponent of his. Obviously.” The grand priest said, his voice stern as he leaned forward into Alina’s claws, forcing her to draw it back, “And as revenge for me pushing back against the barbaric practice of the Valkyrie’s system…he brainwashed my daughter, and recruited her into the program.”
Alina felt her body stiffen, and her eyes widened as her breathe started feeling heavy. Images of deaths and bodies of the girls that failed to become Valkyries flashed in front of her eyes.
“Did you even remember any of their faces, when they failed the challenges and died? Did you even remember their names, or are they mere flashes in a pan, a number on a sheet?” The grand priest asked, a silent rage filling his tone, “Or are you too self-absorbed in your mockery of a patriotic glory, built on a mountain of corpses?”
Alina blinked, and she tried to remember.
“Oh…that’s right. Caligo meticulously programmed you to look forward, and focus on your duties to the kingdom.” The grand priest cracked a pained smile, revealing his dirty teeth as he grasped onto Alina’s wrists, “Think about it…think about your past. Think about your memories…”
Alina blinked, and despite her training of controlling her own mind, she couldn’t quite suppress her own curiosity.
“THINK. And tell me what you see?”
There were flashes of light. There were severed bits of dialogue. There were dizzying and spinning rooms…there was fire… But.. nothing legible. Nothing that made sense, nothing that was clear.
Alina froze in place for a moment, and she blinked a few times before refocusing on the man in front of her who felt the same.
“Unlike you, not all of us are able to forget that easily.” The grand priest said, shoving Alina back as she was still stunned from her attempt at recall.
“Why…why wasn’t there anything…I thought…I thought when you became the general of the Valkyries, you share the burden…All of it...what's...what's he hiding still...” Alina murmured, her eyes darting from one place to the next.
“Go back to your commander, your abuser, and the monster that started it all.” The grand priest said, “Like a good dog you had always been.”
“Shut it!” Alina growled, the Great Northern Wolf returning to her body as she lunged forward, “Whatever happeend with your duaghter does not excuse you for what you have done!”
A flash of cold shot through the air, and even Alina felt the sudden chill piercing easily through her Wave armor. She looked up, and a massive ice spike slammed headfirst into her body before shattering into countless pieces of shards. Alina tried to recover her body’s position in space when a platform made of ice rammed through the air, knocking her straight up before two more clapped into her from the sides.
The Great Northern Wolf howled in pain, mirroring Alina’s own body as she ejected herself from the outline, gliding through the air towards where she sensed the origin of the attack to be.
Then and there, Icy Hale stood tall with her blue hair flowing through the wind, and she held an ice sword as her eyes locked onto Alina’s body.
“Kill her. She must not be allowed to exist. The only source of strength in Talonia is through the Valkyries program, and anything else is merely an abomination.” The voice of Caligo rang true in her head, and Alina blinked a few times before letting out a howl, talons of the Great Northern Wolf forming over her hands.
Icy smirked, swiping the ice sword when massive blasts of snow and winds swept through the air, picking up Alina’s body and sending her flying into rows of trees with ease.
Then, twisting her blade, she froze Alina’s body into the trees like a statue before hooking onto the fast traveling chariot of the Grand Priest and flying away.
Alina struggled to break herself free, but the fatigue of battle and ringing pain from her right eye prevented her from doing anything. As layers of ice started sealing up her face, she noticed a shadowy outline emerging from the darkness behind the tree trunk.
“Wow, you look pathetic." Shadow commented, materializing beside her as she slammed her fists into the ice. However, it was far tougher than she had imagined. Fog started steaming up the ice chamber that Alina was encased in, and through rushing the Wave back and forth in her body like currents in a basin, she started melting the ice with the heat from within.
Eventually, the layer of ice became thin enough for Shadow to break through, and she ripped her arms straight through, pulling Alina out at the cost of a few scratches over her smooth skin.
“Thanks...” Alina asked, breathing rapidly and looking at Shadow. She was never conventionally beautiful, with her long black hair that wasn’t common within Talonia, and her eyes were assymetrical in size despite its deep purple color, “I thought you...hated me…?”
“Of course I do! But you are still useful, despite being so stupid.” Shadow smirked, “I know you will return to Caligo with your sorry ass, so I am coming with you on that front too.”
“You…You know I can’t let you hurt him. That's part of my duty, and what I was trained to do.”
“Oooh, I know.” Shadow giggled, “But it’s okay. I just have questions for him. His reckoning is coming, I know it. But before then, I have my own curiosity that needed fulfilling and my own desires...”
“I…too have questions, yes…” Alina held onto her own hands and felt warmth slowly return to her body.
She certainly knew of the purpose and origin of the ghost towns…but why couldn’t she recall other details about the human cost of the Valkyrie program? How much more secrets is Caligo hiding underneath the surface?
How much more is there? And how deep does this go…? Even as the Valkyrie general, as the one who sit atop it all, there's still so much she doesn't know.