A Valkyrie's Apprentice: Book Two

Where Is She

– K Á R A –

"I've done everything you've ever asked of me." I told the god calmly. "I've done everything. Now you can tell me where Tayah Ashrive is. It is all I ask of you." I murmured at the tall cloak of shadow and power.

"You know why you are here. You know I cannot, Stormbringer." The voices carried over the air to my home in emptiness.

I grit my teeth and raised my eyes to the god. Displaying my true rage would do nothing for me. But the reason to my being was somewhere down there while I remained up here. It was not something I would ever accept. I measured a breath before speaking.

"You should also know I do not care for my own life. Only that it is spent by her side. Where I belong."

"She is safe." Odin said softly.

"I can't know that–not on the mortal realm." I murmured, rising from a knee and staring past to the horizon of mountains beyond my balcony. "Not if Anselle and Revna live."

"What do you ask?" The voices spoke simply.

"I ask to return to the mortal realm. To track down the one that has caused this and put an end to it quickly." I said emotionless. "She has nothing to hide behind now–I will go through anyone that tries to stop me."

"You sound much more like your former self... only much further from it."

I looked back to the God. "She has changed me so completely that I cannot return to what I was. When I end the immortals responsible I will find her, Odin." I said with no room for negotiation. 

The god tucked arms behind the blackness and nodded slowly.

"I expected no less. But you know the cost now."

I shook my head with a humourless laugh. "You are all seeing–all knowing. Your time in the realms is unrivalled. Yet you cannot still see what this woman means to me."

The god tilted a dark head at me and drew a ball of pure white energy between us. It flashed many times before taking the shape of the face of the very woman I loved. I stared intently. It changed to that of her on the ground with an arrow through her arm staring up as I came crashing into her world. My chest ached painfully. Then it morphed into that of her many more times. Times I had not seen. Her staring at my back on a horse, my form when I fought, a secret smirk when I insulted her mortals–

"Please stop." I whispered.

"You say I do not see. But I see more than you could ever know, Stormbringer. I know well what you are to each other. But I also know the cause and effect if the fate came to be when you were with her again. If you were truly killed."

"So, find another. You have plenty of Valkyries–" I began in a rush only to have an arm raised and the light change once again to show that of war and fire. Bodies and chaos.

"Perhaps I could find another that fights unparalleled. But none have my elemental running through their life blood like you do. You know this. It changes the outcome of every variable."

I stared at the disaster cast in the light. It went against my being. We were the immortals sent down to keep balance in the world and not let it fall to this... I had kept it safe for so long. Instead of the new argument I sought with the god I whispered the words differently.

"Show me her again."

The images in the light changed from disaster to that of Tayah. Her green mortal eyes staring at me in awe. Her scowls when I drew a sword against her to train. Her laughter when Kaden pushed me too far–