Brynhildr’s icy blue eyes fell on me in all my ragged glory. Her eyebrows shot up as her wide grin flipped into an equally large frown. After dealing with the uncaring nature of the Mindscribe and the apathetic audience, the clear empathy plastered on the Shieldmaiden’s face caught me off guard.
“What is this?” she asked, her question quieting the audience, which had once more begun to stomp their feet. “She is a child.” The Shieldmaiden cast an accusatory glance at the overhanging section where the royal family watched. “This is your saintess candidate whom I am to test? Putting the life of a child in mortal danger goes against the very ethos of my creed.” The warrior let her hammer drop to the ground, the heavy metal sinking lazily into the sand.
Eir snorted. “Age has no bearing in our commands from the King and the Cardinal.” Unlike Brynhildr, who spoke with a melodic, almost rhythmic accent, Eir’s accent came off as rough and brutal.
“You would attempt to kill a child?” Brynhildr accused and glared at the Valkyrie opposite her.
“Do not attempt to manipulate my words, Shieldmaiden,” Eir responded, her nose raised just high enough for her to peer down it when she spoke. “Where is your shield anyways? I wouldn’t have thought one of your kind would part with that toy of yours.”
Brynhildr snarled and bristled at Eir’s words, but her reaction was cut off by the soft and ethereal voice that emanated from the cloaked figure of Skuld. “That is not a child.” Goosebumps raced up my spine, and I could feel a cold, curious gaze rest on me from somewhere in Skuld’s shadowy form.
“What?” the Shieldmaiden asked, furrowing her brows in confusion. Skuld didn’t elaborate, but Eir scoffed.
“Who cares what she is? Pick up your hammer, Shieldmaiden, and do your duty to the Crown,” Eir said with no small amount of irritation in her voice.
“No,” Brynhildr said in a voice that brooked no argument. The warrior stalked over to the gate closest to me that I knew led back to the dungeons. Three guards stood there, each looking increasingly unsure about what they should do the closer the Shieldmaiden got to them. When she eventually reached them, Brynhildr didn’t say a word and grabbed a giant shield from the first man. As she stormed back to her original position, she released a stream of curses I was sure would shock even the most weathered of sailors. “I will not attempt to kill a child, even on order from the Crown. I am a Shieldmaiden.” She grabbed her hammer and slammed it against the shield. “And I will not allow anyone else to kill a child before my eyes.”
“You think you can stop me?” Eir sneered, her green eyes locking with Brynhildr’s blue pair. And, for just a moment, a split instant so fast I might have imagined it, I saw a spark of amusement in the eyes of both women.
They’re acting, I realized. Just like everything else, the disagreement between the Fates was part of whatever historical act I was apparently starring in.
The river of rage I’d managed to push down reared its ugly head and surged to the surface. I could feel my energy gurgling up, screaming at me to seek release and annihilate those who mocked and jeered.
A deep, familiar voice interrupted the play-acting and boomed in my head, unwanted and unannounced.
[Mindscribe killed. Heart energy being provided to Awakener - Lilith, Title - Queen of Rot, Class- Soul Weaver.]
[You have absorbed sufficient energy to create the first heart ring atop your Core. Proceeding with formation of heart ring.]
[Formation complete.]
[One of three heart rings obtained until an upgrade to Silver level is available.]
[Error.]
[Heart Core overriding the Blood of Orpheus. New heart ring unstable.]
[Jurisdiction of Orpheus being contested.]
[Heart ring formation undone. Heart energy is retained. Heart Core rejecting the Orpheus System’s attempt to proceed with automatic formation.]
[Unable to override Heart Core.]
Before I had a moment to contemplate the interactions between my heart core and the Orpheus system, an enormous wave of energy slammed into me like I’d been hit by a horse. And yet, I felt no pain. Rather, I was invigorated. While the heart energy I’d received from the fight couldn't do anything about the bloodied rags that I used as clothing, it sealed the wound on my shoulder from the Drakoryx’s stinger. As the puncture wound began to heal and new skin slowly crawled over the opening, black fluid poured out and down my chest to be absorbed into my already disgusting clothes. The pain and lethargy I’d been fighting against since the stabbing vanished in an instant.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I blinked, only vaguely understanding what had happened.
“What the fuck was that?” Eir asked, and I realized then that the three women were staring at me, eyes wide. Well, at least Eir and Brynhildr were. Skuld remained cloaked in her shadows, so I had no idea what she was thinking.
“The Gods have warned of this,” Skuld hissed from her shroud of darkness. “They have prophesied the Soul Weaver’s advent.”
“Okay, hold on,” Brynhildr said, holding a hand up. The bewildered look on her face, as she turned toward Skuld, didn’t look like it was part of the acting. I figured I could be wrong since Orpheus’ muttering about the ‘advent of a Soul Weaver’ hadn’t exactly been discreet. Still, it was odd to mention if this was supposed to be some type of saintess candidate test. “The advent of the what?”
In a voice so low that, even despite the silence of the audience, I had to strain to hear, the Seer whispered her answer. “The Goddess of Life balks in the face of the Soul Weaver.”
“Skuld, what in the Goddess’ name are you going on about?” Eir said, rolling her eyes. “How many times do I have to remind you that you are a Seer? Not a prophet. You can’t know what the Gods think. Are you having another one of your episodes?”
“I’m not having an episode,” Skuld snapped, the ethereal voice she’d been projecting instantly broken, revealing the voice of a girl who couldn’t have been older than her late teens. “You can’t just disregard my visions as episodes, Valkyrie.”
“Uhhhhh,” Jarold’s voice interrupted the bickering as if he was, like me, unsure whether the trio was still acting. I was no scriptwriter, but it seemed they were way off whatever script they’d originally been given. None of them had even referred to me as a Saintess or Gideon, which I figured should have been at the core of the test. “E-even in the darkest of moments when our hero, the great Gideon, was faced with the death of his comrade and tested by the Gods, his strength and determination made him unfathomable,” the man rambled. “One of the three Fates, the first of the Fates, Lyrielle, chose to protect Gideon against the unreasonable nature of her sisters. Her sisters were angered by the decision, believing Lyrielle to have betrayed them. But Lyrielle knew that Gideon’s destiny would save them, would save us all.” Halfway through, Jarold had found his stride again. His voice grew increasingly louder as he spoke. “Whooooo’s ready to see Gideon and Lyrielle triumph over their foes to save the healer and the world?!”
The crowd bellowed, and I could feel them stomping their feet as the ground rumbled. Despite Jarold’s encouragement to start the fight, the three ‘Fates’ simply remained where they stood, Eir and Brynhildr casting uncertain glances at each other. I could tell they were debating whether to continue the play in the face of Skuld’s real warnings.
Unlike them, however, I had no intention of proceeding with any such playacting. Above each of the three monster corpses left to rot where they lay hovered a blue-gray ball of light. In the chaos of Jarold’s announcement and subsequent hesitation, I extended three strings of invisible light outward. I wasn’t sure if the strings could be seen, but since no one had mentioned them when I’d brought back the slave soldier, I could only assume.
“I am unsure what it is you speak about,” I said. All three figures snapped their attention toward me. Brynhildr’s blue eyes found mine in the same way they had searched for Eir’s.
“Do you truly have no understanding of my sister’s warnings?”
I shrugged, buying time for my tendrils to reach their targets. Hopefully, once they did, I’d be able to revive them instinctively. “I’m not even certain what she is talking about, much less the meanings of her warnings. What is a Soul Weaver?”
While the two women whose faces I could see continued to cast furtive looks at each other, Skuld the seer began to shriek, and the shadows around her quivered.
Then, like a whip, they unwrapped Skuld from her cocoon of darkness and whipped out toward me with a crack. In my attempt to trick the sisters into letting their guard down, I realized I’d inadvertently lowered my own just enough that Skuld’s surprise attack actually did manage to take me by surprise. I only had a moment to cross my forearms in front of me before the dark tendrils lashed into them.
The whips split my skin like hot butter while the force of the blow sent me tumbling backward, kicking up a cloud of sand in my wake. I heard one of the other women shouting in alarm, but I’d hit my head at some point during my fall and couldn’t hear properly. I focused on my tendrils of power that reached for the monster corpses and redoubled the energy I was pushing into them.
Perhaps if I had been a silver core at that moment, I wouldn’t have bothered with resurrecting the creatures and simply fought the Seer’s magic with my own abilities. Unfortunately, I was not a silver core. I wasn’t even close. The other women hadn’t released any energy and were apparently good at hiding it from prying eyes, so I had no idea what levels they were at. But Skuld was not bothering to hide it from anyone, her full twenty heart rings on full display.
I used the moment of my tumble to land back on my feet and immediately started running toward the Seer and her tendrils of power. If I could get close enough, maybe I’d be able to steal her soul somehow like I had with Gideon.
Skuld seemed to know that was my plan. Most of her tendrils stayed in close proximity to her after the initial attack while only a handful stretched forward to lash out at me. Brynhildr and Eir still hadn’t moved from their starting positions.
That was fortunate.
Whack.
One of Skuld’s tendrils struck from my blind spot, and my vision swam. Blood ran in warm streaks down the side of my face and blinded me in my right eye until I found my balance and flicked the liquid out of my eye.
Then, like a click in my mind, I felt my three links of energy connect with each of the felled creatures. I glared at Skuld and met her now visibly fear-filled, snow-white eyes. I grinned and screamed as each of the souls sunk back into their old bodies and immediately began to drain my energy. The souls pulled energy from my heart core with such hungry ferocity that it felt as if my heart was being ripped out of my chest.
My vision flickered between black and red. The energy was sucked out of me like it had never wanted to be mine in the first place. I remembered the slave soldier who’d forced his energy to flow inside me, and I suddenly understood. These resurrected creatures require sustenance in the form of energy.
I had to feed them heart energy.
Time slowed as the souls fed further from my reserves. When they finally stopped pulling from my core, I was drained and exhausted as if another eternity had passed in the Nothingness. But my head still stuck, and my ears still rang from Skuld’s attack. The Shieldmaiden and the Valkyrie still stood watching, uncertain.
An eternity of only seconds, I mused and collapsed to the ground where I sat, heaving.
“The mighty Soul Weaver,” Skuld snickered, her voice taking on a raspy undertone completely different from her initial ethereal whisper. I might have asked what was wrong with her if my heart and lungs had allowed for it. “Felled by the shroud of a See-”
The Seer didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence as the giant maw of a lion's head closed around her from above. The woman disappeared in a blink and a splash of red blood as the resurrected Chimera chewed down on her. The creature devoured the Seer with such speed that the only remaining sign of her existence in that spot was a single splatter of her blood.
Screams burst from Brynhildr and Eir. Both tore past me and headed for the remains of Skuld, carrying mixed looks of panic and rage.