The Valkyrie & The Viking

Chapter 1: The Start of an Adventure

            She didn’t always think this way. She used to even enjoy being alive, knowing that she was helping the world one careful choice at a time. But then she experienced grief firsthand, and saw how it tore apart men and gods alike from the inside out. She herself recovered from her grief, yet it still changed her to her core. Others could not handle their sorrow quite so well, and she wondered how humans as a people ever managed to function with so much sadness in the world. It was a mystery she feared she would never solve.

            She knew she had to choose someone at some point, so she decided to get it over with. She followed the man with the sword, the Viking who had killed the two other warriors. He was quickly creating a pile of bodies as he charged through the Saxon masses. Svipul watched is silent grief as their blood poured out, soaking into the earth where it would remain until the end times.

            She floated back down to the battlefield, hoping to stop the fierce warrior. When another Valkyrie saw her, she sent a quick nod of greeting to Svipul and flew off to another part of the battlefield where she would resume her duties elsewhere.

            Svipul wanted to choose the man, but she hesitated, realizing that he must be a berserker*. The berserkers were considered the Warriors of Odin, and to choose one was forbidden by the gods. Meanwhile, she delivered each of fallen men up to the Gates of Valhalla*, where they would spend their days training with the rest of the Einherjar*. She felt another burst of guilt for choosing these men to die, but it was the way of nature, she told herself.

            Her heart grew heavier as she watched the man go about in what she assumed to be a drug-induced frenzy. The herbs they used would have made his spirit susceptible to her kind, allowing his body to become inhabited by an animal spirit. With the spirit comes all of its strength and ferocity, but just like a wild beast the man loses all intelligence and self-awareness. To volunteer for such a life was a very brave act indeed. But brave didn’t seem like the right word for such a thing, not to Svipul. Reckless, she corrected herself, it is very reckless.

            She could certainly see why the man below was chosen to become one of the berserkers. She momentarily wondered if he might be part of Dane nobility—he shared the same characteristics of the kings she’d occasionally seen in battle, from his towering height to his large build. His body was thicker than the trees found on the mountains surrounding the battlefield, and like most of his other fellow Vikings, hair seemed to cover every portion of his face.

            When she could bear it no more, she flew above the raging berserker and reached inside his body, gently separating his soul from its mortal vessel. She’d never chosen a berserker before, and was not prepared for the resistance she received from his spirit.

Suddenly, a snarling wolf flew out of his body and lunged at her. Before she could react, it clamped its jaws around her throat and began to squeeze. She drew her sword from her side and stabbed it in the heart, but the blade had no effect. She could feel her life force evaporating. Any more and she would be destroyed.

            But then a voice from below called out, “Halt!” and the wolf stopped, though it shook with the effort of trying to move. Svipul pried its jaws off of her neck, and the wolf spirit crashed to the ground. She stared at the wolf for a moment, amazed at its sheer ferocity.

            “You invite the wolf spirit in once, and it will never let you go,” the voice said. She turned to it and saw the berserker, looking desolately down at the wolf. “They said that to invite the spirit into your soul was to accept the gods’ gift of great power and become a mighty warrior, but they didn’t tell me how much that gift would cost.”

            “What did it cost?” she asked, curioius.

            He turned his eyes to her, and she could see the hollow depths of sadness lurking within them. “My freedom. My sanity. I’ve had this…hunger. For flesh and blood, the bones of my fellow men. I did not want this. Thank you for freeing me from the spirit. You have my gratitude.”

            “The spirit will follow you into Valhalla. When you invited it in, you asked it to be a permanent part of your soul. The wolf spirit is you now.”

            An instant change overcame him, and the emptiness of his eyes was fueled into a raging, panicked fire. The sudden transformation startled even Svipul. “No, please no! I beg you, let me live a little longer so I may change my fate.”

            “There is no changing fate. It’s been decided far before you were ever given to this earth.” Her heart broke as she said the words, but they had to be said. It was a truth she had discovered all too painfully on her own. No matter how much one struggled against fate, it always reigned in the end.

            “No,” he protested, “I have heard tales of a man who can change destinies, alter fate. Allow me the time, and I will find him. I swear it to you.”

            She considered this. She was slowly beginning to discover throughout the conversation that the wolf had sapped more of her strength than first appeared. Keeping a wavering spirit attached to its body, even for a short time, took a lot of power. In fact, it would completely deplete her magic, rendering her, for all intents and purposes, completely human. And that idea appealed to her immensely. If she became a mere mortal, the gods would not be able to find her among the millions of other ordinary humans. It could be the chance of escape she had been seeking for so long, especially if the man who could change fate turned out to be real.

            “Please!” the Viking pleaded, drawing her from her thoughts. “You do not know what it feels to have a beast inside you, urging you to kill every moment of the day. Trying to make you become as it is. I would rather suffer the gravest punishment in Hel* than go through another day with it inside of me.”

“Alright,” she conceded, running subjective calculations in her head. She wondered how much magic it would take to do what needed to be done, but then made a rough guess. “I will grant you one month to live in which you may try to change your destiny. But, I will accompany you on your quest. I must be able to find you when it comes time for you to die.”

            She knew she would be punished by Freya for granting his request, but she knew just as strongly that it would be worth it if there was even the slightest chance she could become mortal. She placed her hand on the spirit’s head and lowered him back into his body. The wolf she kept on the ground, and placed a binding spell on it to keep it there until the next moon. Then she chained the man’s spirit to his body. There were thirty links on the chain; one would be broken every day until his time was up. With the last of her power, she blew the both of them far from the battlefield until the war was just a speck on the horizon.

            The gust of air finally slowed down and they crashed into the ground. Svipul brushed herself off and stood up in amazement. The ground! She was actually touching the ground! She glanced towards the warrior with excitement, but he seemed to have more trouble standing than she had.

            “I feel…weak,” he said.

            “You are no longer possessed by the wolf. He gave you power that normal mortals could never hope to possess.”

            He smiled and finally made it to his feet. “Then I like this new weakness.”

Feeling the dust beneath her feet and the wind blowing her hair, Svipul couldn’t help but agree.