Fey had it with the constant rumbling, shaking, being forced to crawl out of rubble, and barely dodging the flying debris. Sure, Fey was a gymnast—and she LOVED hoisting herself over the excavator and other obstacles—but not under constant threat or with her bad leg.
“AH!” Fey hit the floor and covered the head from more concrete exploding over her head. “This is it. Undead Warriors of this size are not sustainable. Gotta find an alternative-”
Fey covered her head again from another uproar of the Draugr Giant and was sent rolling and hitting a concrete barrier—she yelped when a concrete mixer crashed just past her.
“If I survive this, no more Draugr for me! No matter how convenient they are for transportation or cheap manual labour!”
The Draugr Giant hit the paved road again with its sword and sent more debris flying—and Fey was on its trajectory, unable to escape. Val managed just in time to smash the concrete to smithereens with her first.
“Oh, my goddess, that was close!- OH HOLY FJCKING DRAUGR!!!” Fey gasped at Val’s mangled fist.
The skin tore right through her knuckle, revealing the bare fractured bones, but Val toughened through the pain as the damage slowly regenerated—although not fast enough. “What. Happened?” Val asked, exhaling sharply and hunching with gritted teeth.
“The usual,” grimaced Fey, picking out concrete pieces from her curled hair. “My little creation here smashed my barrier, sending me spiralling through the recoil, and-” Fey’s expression paled. “Oh goddess, I can’t say the last part-”
Fey dropped her crutch when Val seized her by the arms and picked her up, letting Fey hang in the air with her feet dangling. Val’s fingers dug into Fey’s lithe arms.
“Spill,” hissed the Valkyrie, gripping tighter.
Fey yelped from the pain. “Ow, ok, ok! I talk! The Draugr escaped as Maya tried to reestablish the rune circles. She’s pretty smart, I give her that.”
“Of course she is.”
“Keep the fawning to yourself. I’m aware you like her,” retorted Fey, spotting a hint of a blush on the Valkyrie’s face. Thankfully, this made her soften her grip on Fey, but not enough to put her down. “Tell me, do I even weigh anything to you?”
“No. It’s like holding a pair of grapes,” Val replied in perfect clarity. Then Fey noticed a singe of fire on her arms as Val’s hands and biceps steamed. Her eyes changed from amber to white. “Where did the monster go with her?”
Fey motioned to the destruction of trees. “Take a wild guess, hotshot-” Fey yelped again as Val ungently sat her down on the concrete barrier. The witch rubbed her rear from the pain, watching Val sprint into the forest. “Oh sure, just leave me here… I’ll prepare a trap or something… ow, my butt.”
Val rushed through the path of destruction, dodging and diving through the obstacles that flew her way like rocks and uprooted trees. At one instance, she strained the muscles on her legs and posterior so much that they almost combusted so she could jump over two meters into the sky and hoist herself up on a tree, proceeding her way through the canopies like a monkey on speed.
“Back to the lesson, shall we?” asked Tamara, holding class to the young Valkyrie girls while balancing with them on the high treetops of a cedar forest in Norway. “Question: Do we even need wings to fly?”
The girls gave Tamara a confused look. Marie, the redheaded former actress and Civil War soldier, scrunched her nose and replied nasally with a, “Yes? Of course we do-”
Then Tamara threw an axe at the tree branch Marie balanced herself elegantly on, like a ballerina with her hands on her hips. She fell like an amateur paraglider through the branches, snapping many of them in the process before landing on one that hit her between the legs.
Her sisters winced.
“Any other suggestions?” asked Tamara innocently, steepling her hands. “No wrong answers, really.”
The young girls looked uncomfortably at each other. They whispered what to do next as Tamara fiddled with her axe in hand. Then Zhou stepped forward, the smallest and slimmest between them, but just as dangerous. Her sisters tried to warn her, but she crossed her arms behind her back, stuck out her chest and said proudly, “No-”
You can imagine what happened next. Needless to say, Zhou had a branch snap right at her chest and her face. She and Marie hung right next to each other, groaning in pain.
Ava and Alice took a step back, hiding behind Val’s frame, who remained in front and absently staring at her feet. Tamara crouched and looked at the girls, contemplating. She threw her axe like a boomerang over their heads and snapped their branches when it returned. Val recovered from her daze and was witty enough to hold on to something. Ava and Alice, though… they joined their sisters below.
“You girls need to be witty. This was good,” she pointed at Val with her axe, “but not good enough. I’ll show you.”
Tamara leaned over the branch a bit too far and fell. She somersaulted and launched herself up from another branch like a springboard, used another to shoot through the canopy and came through another with a twirl and balancing herself elegantly on a branchlet.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Use your strength, use your wit, use your powers! Sometimes we cannot fly as we wish to, but we can use our arms and legs like flying squirrels to navigate the air. Why else do you think we train our buttocks for? Clench it and fly!”
She slapped Val’s so hard that she shook off her daze as the giant Draugr came back into view. Concentrating on her burning muscles, Val tightened and strained them to launch herself up and use the trees as leverage to go higher—almost flying for the rescue as she had yet to get back her wings.
She dove towards the Draugr Giant with her fists at the ready. “I’m coming for you!”
—✶—
“I feel like that lady from the King Kong movie,” Maya grumbled as she was squished inside the large zombie hand. It hollered at least once every minute, deafening Maya to the point she feared she might need a hearing aid later.
At least the poison breath didn’t melt away her skin, or worse, her clothes—though her hair felt a bit damped. “Could we stop the charade, please? I dropped out of theatre class years ago.”
“Groooaurgh!” the zombie replied in indignation, uprooting another tree with its rusty sword. It stared at her with its beady white eyes focusing on her. “Firefly. I’ll use you. To steal divinity. And regain my status. REVENGE ON THE VALKYRIES! I’ll rip apart every one of them for denying me the Valhǫll.”
Maya was appalled; the colour drained from her face. The Giant Zombie Viking spoke, demanding bloodshed as it hollered and destroyed everything in its wake.
“You can talk!?” Maya blurted out.
The giant zombie warrior rolled its massive eyes at her. “‘Course I can talk, duhhhh!” Maya was covered in its spit and glared at him as she had the urge to bathe and scrub her body for a week. “Just because I’m brain dead doesn’t mean I can’t articulate myself, Jezebel.”
“Right, sorry, Mr. Zombie Viking. Although I don’t know what that word means.” Maya wiped the spit out of her face with her sleeve. She was shaken through as the Draugr rampaged with its sword once more, feeling nauseated and glad to have skipped breakfast.
“You’re good bait,” said the Draugr. “That Valkyrie’s back, what a tramp.”
The zombie Viking brandished its sword again, unleashing a torrent to uproot trees and remove the leaves from the crown of trees to whip them towards the Valkyrie.
However, Val had already leapt out of the way and descended right above the Draugr, slamming her fist through its helmet and breaking it to pieces—shattering her hand and arm. She landed on the Draugr’s right arm with which he held Maya prisoner. Val had some trouble finding her footing as the Draugr reeled back, and she held her arm in agony with blood spurting from the wound.
“Val, your arm…”
“It’s nothing,” hissed Val, trying to hide her broken arm. Val was sweating hard as she steamed from going into overdrive so much. Her body could barely take the strain. “Hang in. There. I’ll get you out soon.” she turned to Maya, smiling in confidence with blood and sweat covering her face. “Trust me, dúllan mín.”
Val jumped again before the Giant Draugr could flatten her like a mosquito. She freefalled down its body and used its knee guard as a jumping board to get back into the trees.
“You little insect, get back here!”
The Draugr dashed madly after Val, who had to resort to running on the ground again after a while when more trees were destroyed. Val panted hard as her body overheated and ran a fever. Maya wished she could do something, but like last time, Val’s shield weighed heavily against her.
“Have to wait for the right moment.” Maya hugged the shield tighter. “Wait for it, just wait.”
“Gotta wait for the right moment.” Fey hid underneath the excavator, waiting for the giant Draugr to come closer as the trembling of the ground shook her body. She bit on her broken nails, trembling with anticipation. “Come on, come on, get closer!”
She saw Val rush past and orange sneakers squeak on the cement ground from friction and steam. Val panted, having stopped right in front of the tunnel's half-excavated entrance, readying her fists as the Draugr rushed into the construction site.
Her stance was poor, and her blonde hair was plastered against her warm skin. The Draugr came not soon after her.
“GOT YOU!” yelled Fey and slapped her hand against the concrete, activating the runes to bring the Draugr to a sudden halt. “Alf Eiwhaz!”
Runes exploded from the ground and flew into the air, enveloping the Draugr in the cold, misty air of the underworld, Helheim. Fey’s eyes glowed madly. “Now, get back under my control, you stupid, braindead and mindless zombie-”
From the corner of her eyes, Fey spotted Maya gesticulate hastily with her arms in the clenched hand of the Draugr. Fey blinked, unable to understand. “Ansuz.” she cast to talk to Maya. “What are you trying to say-”
Maya shouted into Fey’s mind, “THE DRAUGR GAINED CONSCIOUSNESS! DON’T ATTRACT ATTENTION TO IT!”
“Huh?” Fey stuttered and noticed almost too late the Draugr’s smart eyes as it raised its heavy boot to crush its former master. “Ah, fiddlesticks. Not again-”
Unable to walk away with her bad leg, the foot almost crushed Fey if Val hadn’t dashed and picked her up just in time. “Hold. On. To. Me.”
Fey slung her arms around Val’s neck, holding on for dear life as she was slung behind Val like a backpack. “No need to tell me twice!”
Val jumped away again and again with Fey swaying behind her madly and clinging to her almost too tightly. Fey grumbled into Val’s ear. “Why in Hel did he gain consciousness!? He shouldn’t have!”
“You tell me, witch,” Val barked right back and somersaulted over a barricade with Fey shouting enthusiastically like she had not for years. It died down quickly when they crumbled to the ground as Val sprained her leg with a loud snap.
“What was that? WHAT WAS THAT SOUND!?” Panic riddled Fey’s voice as the Draugr raised its sword, and Val knelt on the ground, holding her foot.
Val gritted her teeth as she fought through the pain. “Bone. Snapped.”
“IT SNAPPED!? You can heal it, CAN’T YOU!?”
The answer to this was a profound ‘maybe’. Val had overexerted her strained divinity. Her body could only take so much in its reduced state. It couldn’t hold on any further.
“Goodbye, former master and little Valkyrie,” said the Draugr and raised its rusty sword at them again. The heavy-duty Viking sword came flying down at them. Val saw her life flashing before her eyes. She had been in near life-and-death moments several times before, but this flash was something new. In this one, she only saw Maya’s face, which she knew she would never see again.
A tear rolled down Val’s cheek, but the sword’s blade curved at the right moment to miss the pair. The Draugr spasmed, hollering in rage and stumbled as blood squirted out from its right eye where Val’s shield struck it like a boomerang and fell like a shooting star to the ground.
“Stay away from them, you monster!” shouted Maya, seething with rage. “If you hurt her further, I’ll kill you myself.”