The Day of Reckoning (afternoon)
Suffocating rubble!
By blind impulse, she shoved faerie fire outwards, and the rubble bucked.
A trickle of soggy air found her, and Valkyrie Osh drew in a breath.
She was alive.
She was alive!
How in the icy hells was she alive?!
Pulses of electric warmth ran through the ground beneath Valkyrie. Beneath the Bones themselves. It pounding vast and steady like an engine waking from slumber.
Or a heartbeat finding its cadence.
“Now’s no time to be sleeping, girl!” Valkyrie chided herself.
She gave another hearty shove, forcing open a claustrophobic gap, and squirmed through a tunnel like a rat in a pipe.
One inch, then another! she chanted, trying very hard not to think about suffocating beneath ten tons of rock. One inch, then another!
Finally, she tumbled free into the blessed, salty air of the Bones! She toppled down the slope of broken rock and landed in the mud with a laugh of relief.
“Hells, what a day!”
Staring up, she beheld the shorn cliff of the plateau; the gleaming tree of the Edenward, its leaves rotted away; and a sky blacker than night and full beyond her wildest dreams with stars.
So many stars, gleaming and pirouetting and Singing like crystals dangling on a windcharm…
The Song of it was so obvious now. How had she ever missed it?
Though, more to the point…
“How do we still breathe?!” she exclaimed.
The world hummed under her feet, though the soil remained still. For some reason, she thought of the vibrations of a cruise liner upon smooth waters.
“Kid! You alright?!”
Startled, she whirled to find the speaker.
A Plateau priest, riding his cragbear, waved to her. Further back, more of his kind picked through the rubble. Now that she looked, the rubble folded back, away from the settlement, when by all rights half the houses should have been crushed.
She glanced at the pile under her feet; glanced at the cragbear; and whistled under her breath. No wonder the Care of Creation recommends you run when the bear gets going.
“Y-yeah, I’m alive!” she called back. “Good work with the town!”
The Plateau priest snorted. “Since you can walk, get out of the way! Entire road is under there!”
Yep, there’s that trademark Plateau hospitality.
Valkyrie stretched, a pressure against her shoulder blades unfolding, and shook free her wings. Then, setting her sights on the heights, she leaped.
Two strong beats of her wings, and she landed before the Edenward.
She released her mental grip, same as with her faerie fire, but her wings remained.
“Ali! Ali, answer me! I’m sorry for…” When nothing answered, she whispered, “Are you there, archangel?”
The word emerged wrong. Emerged…normal. Like any other word.
“Can you hear me, tempest?”
That too sounded flat to her own ears.
Alisandra was gone. The titles to her power were gone. Yet Valkyrie remained.
Wings tucked tight, the girl probed into her garden.
Rie?
But she was alone among the mountain peaks.
Valkyrie bowed her head.
We have always
Will always be together
Then the air behind Valkyrie roared open, expelling heat like the sun and radiation to match. The force of it singed the girl’s wingtips, and she cried out at the new pain.
From the rent, the Wyrm’s jagged claw reached out. It slammed into the stone, clutching against the gravity of its prison, and its owner hissed, “You little harlots…think you are the first…to try to bind me?!”
You should know your place!
Want to play the big boy games?
Then grow mighty!
Jörmungandr shoved his blunt head from the tear, red eyes focused on Valkyrie before him. “And you…little newborn…”
I will let you watch as I shred their souls to the corners of this useless place!
Gotta set an example for the kids, right?!
His echoes rang through Valkyrie, filling her with the shape of his vengeance. He would start with Waves, and he would disassemble it one person at a time.
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“You hear that, Ali? Come on now! Let’s stop wasting time on the riff-raff!”
Valkyrie turned to face him.
As she had faced Alisandra the tempest.
Stretched her hand and called for the strongest weapon she could find.
What appeared in her hand? The fine hilt of a cavalry saber, golden filigree across the guard, and its blade shattered to a sharp stump.
Jörmungandr froze, staring at the remains of the Hand of God.
A shattered and useless thing.
“No…no, we were this close!” he roared. “The throne and the key and the Will to use them!”
The Foundations themselves would crumble before our war
We would be FREE!
“I won’t let you harm anyone else!” Valkyrie shouted back, her wings shaking.
“Little fledgling, I will teach you later. Be a dear and call Lynne. I would hate for her to miss the show.”
His foul echoes rang again with his plans – ways to trap and twist a mortal soul in agony for years upon years, never quite enough to send them to the Gate…
“No!” she growled, gripping the hilt tighter. “I will not–”
Spare me, fledgling!
Jörmungandr surged forward, maw open, and ate her.
***
She tumbled through acid clouds; a black-lightning rumbling sky; spread her wings and found no purchase; and crashed into a mire of blood and hatred.
A featureless plain of hatred, a heart barren of trees.
Congratulations, little fledgling angel!
You have broken free of that cowardly cycle
Ah, but the strings remain
And we must not rest until every last one is severed
Every stone toppled from the Temple!
Watch, little fledgling
Watch how easy they die
She who defied martyrdom rose to her feet and let the worthless hilt of a broken blade drop into the muck.
One fate spurned, and yet still a martyr’s end awaited her.
“I guess some things really are inevitable.”
From all around, wolves howled for her.
***
Once again, the sky above Waves parted with waves of crimson. A wound across the sky, swallowing the stars, as the Wyrm dragged himself into view. Only his foremost coils emerged from the singularity, sizzling hot with the pain of the beartrap now clamped around his middle.
He would extricate himself from that at his leisure.
He didn’t need a tail for this anyways.
“You sank too much of yourself into this toy boat, Lynne,” he announced. “Nothing left for guarding the gate. You kept me outside a little Cathedral for a time, but I’ve slipped right into your heart!”
He crashed into the Azure temple, alighting his claws on the stones, and tore free the roof. Hurtling the stones away, he locked eyes on the juiciest prey.
On Esmerelda Azure-blessed, staring up at her death.
“Little branded doll, pretending to stand with her betters,” purred the Wyrm. “Little branded doll, is there a real person hiding inside you?”
Let’s pull you apart and see
Again, the Wyrm paused.
Waiting for a glorious war that never answered.
Jörmungandr hissed in fury. “I see. You turned against her, too? You sensed the greatness swelling in her breast!”
And you sent the fledgling to do your dirty work
A handful of Azure serpents spit at him, but he ignored their patter.
“You would rather play Mommy to your dolls, Lynne? How wonderful! Always a new model up and coming, eh?”
But for denying me
There must be consequences
He reached down a massive claw…
“Maiden, run!” shouted a woman, hurling herself in the way.
Nothing but a mortal servant. Another squeaking puppet, self-possessed of such righteousness for the mere act of existing in these icy hells.
He closed his claws around the woman’s little head, preparing to pop.
Her name is Banu
Banu: twenty-one this Summer; third daughter to a wealthy family; shuffled off to the Stormmother’s temple and secretly glad to be spared the stink of a high-born marriage.
Banu: she saw how hard the tempest struggled for them, and all she could do was make sure the laundry was done, the bed made, and someone waiting at their post at all hours of the night to take the next order.
Then she was joined by two others. Two women hurled themselves against the claws, tugging fruitlessly against his scales.
Klara, mother and mentor
Sariya, quietly worshiping the tempest with all her heart
Bit characters, not even worth remembering their names.
The Wyrm’s claw shook, unable to squeeze.
“Why…you little…”
***
A heart bereft of trees.
Rie would have said – Rie would have known to her wingroots – that every heart could be a garden.
That no matter how far gone, there was a way back!
If it would take ten million years, so what!
Valkyrie Osh, the angel of Dreams, offered one of her own.
Another way
“Lynne turned from her tempest! She’s carrying that weight! You can too!”
Between her outstretched hands, a gleam of gold like a tiny seed, struggling to take root in a poisoned soul.
But she believed.
No, she knew!
Angels lost the guiding light of that Guardian conscience. Angels had to find their own way in the dark.
But angels did not have to do this alone!
I will remind you!
Like Rie reminded me!
There was no “too far gone”; there was no “lost cause”!
She remembered golden boughs; she remembered the return of lost souls! Villains; burglars; murderers!
She remembered the words of their return, and she offered them to even this Wyrm.
So
What have we learned?
***
Flickers of gold burned his scales worse than the archangel’s blows.
Chains digging into his flesh, demanding he obey.
That he care.
“I will not…be bound by such…insipid little…dolls!” the Wyrm hissed, struggling to close his claw.
Banu, twenty-one this Summer, who wept but did not run.
Who would go to the Gate to grant the Maiden a few more seconds of life.
“Useless…useless!” he thrashed. “They run home to brag of dipping their toe in cold waters! What do they know of this sour excuse for therapy?! We who are gods must cast off this fetid cycle!”
From deep in his breast, a terrible pang rose, and someone answered.
Then as gods we will be judged
For every flower we planted and every heart we touched!
The Wyrm released Banu, his coils writhing as he jerked back and forth. “I will never submit!”
Then why did you let me in?
Roaring, the Wyrm seized his coils and vomited up the angel of Dreams. She tumbled free, coated in black ichor, and he inhaled to cast black fire through the heart of the Sapphire.
Banu, standing before the Maiden; Esmie, crouching, arms outstretched, as the Dragon rose to her command as though that a mere river would matter against an unshackled god.
Beyond them, a thousand more names and faces. Fathers, brothers, mothers, all bound in a chain unbroken despite every angelic sin…
Not for long
***
“Ready!” Verdandi called from her shifting core.
“Understood,” Lynne replied, beckoning forth new controls for her living metal console.
A targeting reticle.
Nobody screws with my babies, you oily bastard!
***
The Sapphire opened once more, revealing the slender shell of the Edenward. The tree had been stripped of its leaves, leaving its charred length a brittle spear. Along its length, fresh runes glowed with a present for the Wyrm.
A brand new name, just for him.
Lynne squeezed her trigger, and the spear shot across the land. It struck Jormungandr in the fat of his throat and drove him back into the singularity.
Then, unseen, the runes flashed.
Nidhoggr
The Wyrm played the part of Jörmungandr, serpent of poison, and reveled in the fear his visage spread.
Here, then, a gift: to heighten his terror and grant even greater a role. Nidhoggr, the dragon beneath the Tree, that should usher in the end of Time herself!
For the tiniest fraction of a second, he savored the thought.
And that was enough for the name to take hold.
Realizing his error, the Wyrm that was both Jörmungandr and Nidhoggr bellowed, “I will never–”
And then he was gone, dragged to the bottom of all things to gnaw, to hate, and to await the final days.