“You little- ARGHHHH!!!” The Draugr clutched Maya in its hold until her shouts turned to yells and cries. “You think I keep you for your worth? I can ya kill if I want.”
His grip on Maya intensified, shutting off Maya’s cries and replacing them with the cracking of rips and gurgling of blood drowning from the corner of her mouth.
“MAYA!” Val shouted, her body firing up further, but she crumbled again. Her muscles and body ached too much to move. The Valkyrie rolled to the ground as her lungs collapsed, and she struggled to breathe. “No. Not this. Too!” The damn asthma she developed was getting to her as well.
“Hey, come on, stand up!” Fey wobbly heaved herself up on a barricade, trying to stand. Her one good leg was cramping. “Great, just great! Hey, Miss Handsy, do you want to let your girl die there?!”
Val eyed Fey irritatingly, her eye dimming between white and amber. “What did you. Just say?” she asked between wheezes.
“You heard me. If you don’t bust your butt there some more, then her body is getting crushed to mush! I’ve got one last trick up my sleeve, but before I can do anything, she’ll be a goner.” Fey pointed at the shield embedded into the street. “Go, save her.”
Val wheezed angrily past her collapsing lungs and put a hand on the ground, digging stones and other shards into her palm as she stood up. “I’ll punish you later, witch,” cursed Val, rushing towards her shield.
“Sure, do that.” Fey leaned heavily against a wall, breathing erratically. “Oh, I hope if we survive this that Maya will quell her mood… one way or the other-” she noticed from the corner of her eye how her creation eyed Val suspiciously and raised its sword. “Valkyrie, watch out, it-”
“Perish, fallen swan!” The Draugr brandished its sword down towards Val again.
The Valkyrie lept out of the way and rolled to pick up the shield as the Draugr’s sword destroyed the street to follow the Valkyrie and kill her. A white wisp escaped Val’s shield and entered the window on her chest, revitalising her as she took the brunt of the sword and stood her ground.
Her blood boiled, her soles tore, and her whole body screamed in agony. Val could barely keep it from breaking apart as the wisp slowly refuelled part of her divinity, but it wouldn’t last for long—and Val was getting out of options.
“What should I do?” Val despaired, feeling the hopelessness gripping her as she saw Maya getting crushed while Val couldn’t stop the giant Draugr’s attack. “I have to save her, somehow.” Val’s eyes flared. “Even if it burns up my body!”
It was Val’s last resort. She could put her remaining divinity as a Valkyrie on the line and send her body on a last overdrive. It might cost her everything, her position, her status, but to kill her enemy and save Maya, she would willingly put it all on the line.
Val didn’t hesitate. She raised her shield and concentrated at her core, coalescing her divinity. Her eyes returned to their amber sheen. “I would gladly do that and more.”
“That’s a bit too hasty, don’t you think?” Val heard a raspy voice travelling through the air. She thought it was Fey at first until Val saw the hills rise, realising the voice came from the ground. “Need some assistance, Valkyrie?”
A hand more enormous than the Draugr Giant moulded itself from the earth and grabbed the Draugr’s sword arm, crushing it and ripping it apart. The Draugr screamed.
“The rest is up to you, Miss Handsy. Love that nickname, will remember it for later,” spoke the voice before its arm retracted back to the earth and disappeared, leaving Val with a ripped large zombie arm and a shrunken rusty sword. “By the way, that thing is a parting gift to you. Enjoy~”
“Youkaldadk!? What was that!?” The Draugr complained, stumbling and struggling to realise what just happened. It then spotted Val reaching out for the sword. “No, you don’t. It’s mine! They gave it to me!”
Val picked up the sword just when the Giant Draugr’s foot came crashing down on her. “Val?” Maya weakly reached out from the Draugr’s grip and saw a flash of light as the Draugr’s foot was pushed back by Val’s shield.
The Valkyrie stood there, a gleaming steel sword lined with runes in hand and her shield in the other. Her white armour and helmet glimmered in their sheen, with a translucent cape fluttering in the wind as it all tried desperately to cling to reality.
Val adjusted her intangible winged helmet and sprouted a pair of large white swan wings from her back. “Hold on, Maya,” she said with a confident smile. She flicked her sword to the ready position. “I am coming to save you.”
With a strong flap of her wings, Val sprung from her spot and aimed for the first thing that could give her an edge—the eye. Her sudden boost of energy and appearance was sure to take the Draugr off guard, but when Val brandished its sword to cut its face, it instinctively reeled back and sliced the side of its face.
The Draugr Giant already struggled with its depth perception from Maya’s discus throw, but it stumbled backwards towards the tunnel entrance when Val subsequently bashed her shield against its nose and kept the pressure going.
“By Thor’s stupid beer belly, FINALLY!” proclaimed Fey, and dropped herself to the cement ground with her hands, igniting another set of runes. “Time for Plan T.” She sneered. “I have more than enough of you rebelling against me. Suffer for eternity in Helheim!”
The runes lit up into five different circles underneath the Draugr’s right foot and condensed into one larger viridian circle. Fey’s eyes were glowing as green mist billowed out her mouth.
She coldly said, “Alf Nagaz.”
The ground underneath the Draugr’s right foot liquified before hardening back to cement and bringing the giant off balance. Val dived under its left foot and cut his calf open, sending free the wisps and absorbing them back into her body.
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The Draugr swayed and fell backwards, unable to stand. Landing on his right hand, Val sliced off the fingers and retrieved Maya from it.
“I’ve got you.” Val landed on the ground with Maya holding on to her.
“Thank.. you,” Maya struggled and collapsed into Val’s arms as she was finally set free of its vice. She could barely breathe, and her ribs ached. She leaned against Val’s soft chest and listened to her loud heartbeat. “Ok, is it hot in here, or is it just you?”
Val smiled at the question. Her armour vanished, and she collapsed into Maya’s arms like a sack of potatoes, who almost fell back from the weight. It shocked Maya to touch Val’s body, finding it scalding hot like a kettle.
Maya laid her down on her lap and placed a hand on Val’s forehead. “You’re burning up! We have to get you back soon-”
“Do you think this is over!?” rumbled the Draugr, shaking up the tunnel with its booming voice. He turned with his mangled body and crawled towards them, reaching out with his stump. Maya leaned with her body protectively over Val. “I’ll come back. I’ll crush you. I’ll eat you. I’ll never die! FOR I AM-”
“Take a hint, would you? Haglaz,” Fey put a hand to her mouth and blew a green mist into her crutch before clanging it against the ground, fissuring it and bringing the tunnel to an early collapse—burying the undead into a new cairn. “Eihwaz, never return.”
Fey collapsed, her clutch clattered before her. “Ergh, I’m beat!” she complained, with one leg stretched out front and the other bent. “I could use a bath and just NOT come out of my apartment for a week.”
“Amen,” agreed Maya, exhaling an exhausted breath as well. “We’ve had enough for a month. Let’s just go home.”
—❂—
Content Warning: Spicy bit😳
Do not ask how Maya got herself, Val and Fey back to the apartment—let’s just skip that part. The girls collapsed after entering Maya’s apartment, piling themself on the floor.
“I’ll take the first bath if there are no complaints.” Fey crawled herself out of the pile and struggled herself up by using Maya’s shoe cabinet for support. “Be done in an hour or so.”
“What, a whole hour!?”
Maya couldn’t extract herself from under Val and watched how Fey gave her a smirk before disappearing into the bathroom and closing the curtain for the bathroom doorframe—since Maya had no time to buy a replacement yet.
“Have fun in the meantime~” Fey called from the other side and magically imitated the clicking sound of a locked door.
“Huh? No, you don’t, I-” Maya tried to pull herself out, but Val made herself too heavy to do so. “Come on, get off of me, Val. The floor isn’t good for you-”
When Maya turned herself around, Val suddenly pinned herself with her whole body on her, planting the side of her face against Maya’s chest and pulling an arm around her waist.
“Don’t care. I feel. Comfortable.” Val suddenly purred contently, gripping Maya’s back tightly. “It’s soft here. I don’t want to let. Go.”
“I- Val, please,” Maya begged, trying her best to keep her own emotions in check. “You’re not well. You’re being delirious again. This isn’t you-!”
Maya heard a ripping sound coming from her shirt. She realised too late that the Draugr’s acid breath damaged parts of her clothes, and they struggled to keep themselves together as Val gripped tighter and pulled herself even closer to Maya with her overheating body.
The frenetic Valkyrie opened her glowing pair of white eyes and pressed Maya’s body against hers, picking her up in one sudden motion.
A yelp escaped Maya. “AH- Val, what are you-”
Without listening to her protest, Val carried her over to her room, closed the door and plopped Maya down on her duvet while trying to maintain as much close contact with her as she could. Val kept her grip on Maya’s shirt, and another held on to her broad thigh.
Maya repressed a heated whimper as Val pressed her forehead against hers. “This is. Me,” said Val, breathing out a hot, minty breath and opening her eyes, glowing in their usual amber light now rimmed with a white halo. “I’m not. Delirious. I. Like you. I want you, Maya.”
“D-do you?” Maya struggled for words, shuddering from both anticipation and fear. “Do you mean what you say? It’s not your delirious state talking?”
Val pulled in closer but stopped as Maya turned her head to the side. Carefully, Val cupped Maya’s cheek and slowly turned her face back to face Val’s.
“This is. Me. This state makes my feelings. Come true. To show you. What I normally. Could. Not.”
“Why, though?” asked Maya, bobbing her head closer to Val’s warmed palm and holding her wrist. “Why would you like me? I’m nothing special like you, a Valkyrie. I’m not captivating or attractive. Seeing you fight like this today, getting hurt, I,” Maya raised her hand to put it on Val’s cheek, “can’t help but think I’m not good enough.”
“You? Good enough?” Val pulled her hand out from underneath Maya and took her hand, bringing it closer to her lips to kiss it. “I worry. I’m not. Good enough since I don’t. Understand emotions—desires. But with you. I know I don’t want you to be away. Away from me.”
Val put Maya’s hand back on her cheek and leaned into it as she drew herself closer, hair falling over her shoulders as her braids came undone.
“You’re captivating me. I can’t take. My eyes off you. I like your smile and your personality. Also,” Val couldn’t hold back fiddling with the holes in Maya’s shirt and making them bigger and kissing the skin peeking out, “I find you very attractive. Why would you think. Otherwise?”
“Why?” Maya turned her body and face away from Val so she could cover her heated face. “Because I’m chubby. I’m fat, and no one likes a woman with a body like mine.”
Hesitantly and with shaking hands, Maya pulled her shirt up over her chest to reveal her considerable paunch. “Could you like someone with a body like mine?”
Val stopped; she felt flustered by Maya’s sudden motion and didn’t know what to do or say from how off guard she was. Maya interpreted the hesitation in her own way.
“Thought so. Of course, you wouldn’t. No one would- AH!” Maya yelped and started laughing. “Stop it! STOP! HAHA!”
What Val did was to blow raspberries. She opened her lips into an O shape, brought them down on Maya’s navel, and blew at her skin. It brought Maya into a fit of laughter as Val mercilessly continued and held Maya captive to continue the teasing.
“Please, oh gods, I’m gonna pee my pants if you don’t stop, HAHA!” Maya panted when Val finally stopped. Her ribs tingled from the treatment, but Val’s soft lips made her forget the pain. “Oh, that was awful. I hate you,” joked Maya with another laugh she couldn’t suppress. “What was that for?”
“To prove to you,” Val reached closer and kissed the birthmark on the side of Maya’s belly as she did not so long ago, “how much I like your body. Unlike mine, yours is warm, soft, and supple. Some. Days. I can’t help but be. Near you. All. The. Time. Even more so. Now.”
Their foreheads touched, and Val exhaled a cool but feverish breath. “Can I. Kiss you, Maya?”
Maya nodded, trying to restrain her eagerness and emotions as much as she could, but the moment Val’s lips touched hers, Maya couldn’t help but lean into it. She wrapped her arms around Val’s neck to pull her closer.
Val’s lips were chipped and bleeding, but Maya didn’t mind as the sensation spread over her face and body as Val’s hand went further up and settled on Maya’s bra. She pulled more on Maya’s already tearing shirt and ripped another big hole into it to give Val a clearer view of her bosom.
They would have lost each other in the heat of the moment if Fey hadn’t burst the door open, with only one towel wrapped around her waist and chest barely covered in her wet curly hair.
“Sorry, did I interrupt? Thought you were already done. By the way, the conditioner is empty.”
“GET OUT!” The two of them yelled, and each threw a pillow at Fey, who promptly closed the door before they could hit her.