The Midnight Game - Skulduggery Pleasant Fanfiction

Chapter 9 - 03:08

"Bring him back!" Valkyrie shrieked into the darkness, and the anger was burning her veins and her blood was boiling and she wasn't scared anymore. There was no way she could be scared now. She felt the red filling up her body and threatening to burst from her fists in torrents of fury, but he wasn't here and there was nobody to hit.

Growling in frustration she stomped back to the other two and carried on past them, leading them.

"Valkyrie, you have to calm down," Skulduggery said sternly, putting a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off angrily.

"Like shit I do."

"How do we find him?" Saracen said from Valkyrie's left. She glanced at him and took in his appearance - pale and shaky and hollow, and some of her anger subsided. 

"I don't know," she replied. "It's five past three, we have like, twenty five minutes. We can find him in between now and then."

There was silence behind her, and Valkyrie clenched her fists and stared straight ahead at the darkness, not daring to glance at Skulduggery, because he'd break her resolve. She knew it. He'd done it before, so she had to keep her eyes from him.

"Val," Skulduggery whispered, and she stopped as he put a bony hand on her shoulder. Weakening slightly, she looked over her shoulder at him. He didn't have eyes, so Valkyrie wondered how she knew he was pleading with her before he even started to talk. "Please don't make the same mistake I did."

Valkyrie opened her mouth to question, but it only took her a few more seconds to understand.

This anger wasn't going to make her strong.

It was going to get her killed - just like Skulduggery. And for her, there wouldn't be any coming back.

In a fraction of a second, the fury dissolved into fear, and fear gave way to despair, and despair fell to emptiness. The chances of finding Dexter within a forty five minute window were slim in a house this size that didn't stay the same. How could she be sure he was even still alive?

Shaking her head, she started to speak again, but she was cut short as a blood-curdling scream darted down the corridor, and filled the house with Hell itself.

"Oh my God," Valkyrie choked out, because there was no mistaking the owner of the scream.

Dexter.

The screech subsided for a second and Valkyrie's breath hitched as they waited for some further sign; and then the screaming commenced again, at a different pitch.

It didn't stop. It wrapped up the three Dead Men and suffocated them, and Valkyrie's entire world turned dark.

* * * * * * *

Dead Men don't fear death.

That had been the saying - always. The seven soldiers of the war against the terrible Mevolent, who went away on a suicide mission, and returned unscathed and alive and surprised everyone.

It seemed to be that they were indestructible - no amount of evil was breaking them. The bad guys fired every shot they had and the soldiers absorbed them all and struggled on, never daring to give up. Hopeless and Larrikin were unfortunate; and they died defending the faith, going down swinging, and fear was not in their eyes. 

It didn't take long for these soldiers to garner an unforgettable nickname that would strike awe into the hearts of sorcerers and mages for centuries to come; Dead Men. The soldiers that did not fear death, that evaded its lethal scythe.

Valkyrie had been proud to be called one of them, and had simultaneously wondered if she really deserved it. She didn't want to die, so was she really worthy of the title Dead Man? It had plagued her now and again - the fact that no matter what she did in her lifetime, she would probably never do anything that amounted to what each individual she surrounded herself with had accomplished in that war and in every moment after.