“By the name of Fjalar and Galar.” Fey spread her arm as her crutch hit the pavement of the newly constructed road. “No dwarven poet could have come up with this idea, haha ha!”
Where they had arrived at was an abandoned and half-finished tunnel construction site for a freeway. The constructions ceased during the pandemic and haven’t resumed because of miscommunication in prolonging the contract. The tunnel was empty and closed off, with equipment haphazardly strewn around and an excavator in a corner.
And above all that, a few white wisps were swirling around in the air, around the tunnel and the trees nearby.
“Remind me, why is this good?” inquired Maya as she climbed over a concrete barricade. Val had offered her hand multiple times to help her over, but Maya refused since she could do it on her own.
Val dejectedly stared at her feet.
“It’s a dwarven entrance!” Fey announced elatedly and hobbled further in where the concrete pavement was peeling off, and soft ground emerged. “Perfect to lure this thing and use our surroundings. You see, dwarves are crafty little bastards. They know where and how to build their stuff.”
“...” Maya gave her a blank stare. The same one she gave Austin whenever he talked about weird mythology stuff Maya didn’t understand. “In human language, please.”
Fey backtracked and took a deep breath, sucking in the ambient air and exhaling happily. “The zephyr brims with energy!” she sang fervently. “They put the constructions on hold for a reason. The dwarves use it as an entrance to their realm below.” Fey balanced herself with her crutch, rubbed her hands in anticipation, and licked her lips. “I can do some shenanigans here, hehe.”
She was more than a little eager.
“... I’ll let you do your thing.” Maya sat down on a concrete barrier, getting some rest before Fey tugged at her arm again. “W-what is it now?”
“No rest for the wicked. We got work to do, and I need an assistant!”
“But I just sat down,” Maya complained. “And an assistant for what?”
“You’ll see! Come!”
Val stood in place, trying to reach out for Maya before Fey pulled her away. She planned to sit down next to her for at least a few minutes since Val felt she was being avoided today.
Rubbing her arm, Val felt agitated by the lack of attention suddenly. She had been looking forward to making breakfast, even though she didn’t eat in the morning.
She only wanted to do this for Maya and see her adorable face whenever they were together. Val remembered the instance she woke up today, face leaning into Maya’s neck. It drew an unfamiliar heat into her face, and Val placed a chilly hand on her cheek.
“I want to go back home with her,” mumbled Val, and walked around the abandoned construction site. The Valkyrie followed the little wisps and tentatively reached out for one before the entrance. It flew down to Val’s finger, hovering right above it for Val to touch.
Val hesitated.
The last time she came into contact with one, she felt a surge of wild energy coursing through her system, causing her to go into a weird delirium, making her body and mind do things to Maya Val never believed she would or could do.
“What if,” Val reached out to the flying wisp, “it could give me strength to experience it all again?”
The warm feeling it gave her when Val found the courage to be closer to Maya was intoxicating. Val felt weak at doing it all over again, but the wisp flew away upon hearing Fey’s voice.
“Hey there, Miss Handsy,” Fey called with a frown and a hand on her hip. “Concentrate. I can’t have you go all crazy over your girl there. Do that later. We’ve got to use those wisps as bait. Scout the area for any advantages, will you?”
Val retracted her hand and fumbled as if she was caught in the act. Gazing over, she noticed Maya hiding her sheepish face. The Valkyrie couldn’t help but hold a little smile at the reaction.
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“Be right. Back,” said Val, and headed out, doing what she did best, being a Valkyrie, a divine warrior who lived on the battlefield. Val steeled her expression, masked her emotions and buried them for until later.
She first had her duty to uphold.
—☾—
“Only the dead have seen the end of war,” laughed one of Val’s sisters-in-arms. “Only the Draugr or Einherjar truly know that phrase, don’t they?”
“Contrasting the Honourable with the Dishonourable is an offence, you know that,” reminded another Valkyrie, stern-faced.
Another one chided with a click of her tongue, waggling with her finger. “Two armies that fight each other is like one large army that commits suicide, don’t you think?”
“Can’t believe we are discussing war philosophy during our break,” sighed another Valkyrie, tugging at her short white dress over her trained body.
Each of the Valkyries wore a white, knee-long and short-sleeved V-neckline dress as they served the honourable dead in Valhalla. They may look like young maidens in their mid-twenties but were battle-hardened warriors with toned bodies and various scars that reflected their long years of experience with war and death.
They were all Norse but also held origins from different parts of the world as they were predestined to become the Choosers of the Slain.
One Valkyrie was Zhou, a petite Chinese woman with choppy black hair and a feisty attitude from the Chinese Civil War.
Another was Alice, a German blond and dainty-looking gal who fought during the last great war in the resistance against her country—she loved her shiny axe.
The third was Marie, a former actress with Irish roots and fiery long orange hair, who dressed as a man to fight against slavery during the American Civil War.
The last one was the reserved Ava, with white skin and silky long black hair. She was from the era of the Russian Civil War and witnessed the massacre of the last tsar and his entire family.
Each of them was a young fighter in their own right from an early era. They knew war. They knew how to fight and were all chosen for their proves—their inert beauty was a huge perk as well.
“What do you think, Valory?” they turned to their sister, the fifth member of their little circle of young Valkyries. Val sat silently on her stool, knees together, straight back and hands on her thighs.
She looked like a teenager back then, and were it not for her toned physique, like with her sisters visible from their revealing dresses, she would appear like a child from a noble household. Like the other four of her sisters, she was a young Valkyrie but didn’t reveal much of her past or liked to talk in general.
Among the group, she was a quiet oddball.
“Yes, tell us.”
“What’s your take on this, sis?”
Val absently braided her blonde hair, staring unfocused at the ground. “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.”
Her gaze blurred. Her sisters disappeared, and Val only felt the firm grip of someone important on her shoulder before she dove into the battle with her shield in hand.
“GRoaaoAAR!?” The Draugr Giant exclaimed as Val struck her shield against its nape. They had waited patiently for it to arrive, baiting it with the congregated wisps of Val’s divinity that agitatedly swirled through the trees. “Gra- OARG!”
The giant Draugr tried to claw Val out of its nape but couldn’t reach her as she hit deeper and deeper with her shield until she breached its cervical spine. Another loud shriek escaped the Draugr and sprayed Val’s warm brown skin and silk blond hair in dark black and gooey blood—the shower she will need will be immeasurable.
“Time for the next step, no?” drawled Fey, drinking in the ambient mana around her as she hit the ground with her crutch and transformed it into a wrought iron rod. Symbols and runes manifested, danced, and folded themselves together like butterflies. “More, we need more!”
“Don’t rush me!” complained Maya and drew with an acid green glowing crayon a rune into the asphalt. She got instructions from Fey to continue scribbling the various runes on whatever surface she could find.
It didn’t matter what surface or their size. Principally, Maya had to keep scribbling the runes until they shed off the surface like old skin and flew off.
Fey smiled. Green smoke billowed out of her hair, eyes, and mouth like a smoke screen and blanketed the construction site. Green sparks shot out like tendrils of the ground, enveloping the Giant and scorching its armour and skin away.
“That’s good! Soon you’ll be mine again, hahaha! Alf Sowilo!” Fey laughed manically as she set Draugr Giant aflame. She was so high drunk with magic power that she didn’t notice the wisps above them shuddering and shooting out little sparks of explosions.
One such wisp exploded into a literal bolt of lightning and launched the excavator over their heads. They dug their heads as it crashed against the tunnel entrance with the force of a missile. If Maya hadn’t jumped at Fey, it would have reduced the witch to a dwarf’s size.
“Sorry, got distracted—” Fey noticed too late that part of her prepared rune circles were erased by the flung earth of the excavator—smoke smouldered from them. “Oh no, oh nononono. That’s bad-”
“GROOOAAARGH!” hollered the Draugr. It snatched Val up from its nape and shot her through the canopy of trees, clearing it from all the foliage from the force it flung her.
“Val!?” Maya exclaimed in a panic, watching as the Giant Draugr seized one of the wisps. Its eyes burned hot white and set the falling leaves ablaze and tremored with its yell. “What do we do now!?”
Fey grimaced and nervously rubbed her bad leg. “Hope for divine intervention?”