Demon-Killing Sword

21.5 Valkyrie

At last, Muninn cleared her throat. "That was it? You two left, and never came back?"

"We came back. Once or twice, when we were both young. You might remember... I don't know. One time we went to the wall and he showed us the lake."

Muninn's eyes widened. "I do remember," she whispered.

He nodded. "But then Dad got a job at the college. We had to pose as humans—you know how humans are. They never would've let a half-demon near the college, no matter how good Dad was at alchemy. He started as an assistant, but then the alchemy professor poisoned himself doing some crazy experiment, so Dad got the post. People started to pay attention to him. It wasn't safe for him to come around anymore. If someone saw him wandering the slums with a couple of half-demons..."

Anger flushed Muninn's cheeks. She twisted her lips. "Right, I get it. I was pulling trash out of the mud to get by, and you and Dad were living it up in the city. I get it."

Huginn raised an eyebrow at her. "You really think that's how you survived? We sent money back. Did you really think you could afford a house on river trash?"

Muninn glared at him. Didn't send enough for Mom's medicine. Didn't send enough for food.

Behind her, a sharp crack rang out. She turned. A huge white orb leaned up against the edge of the bowl, as tall as she was and twice as wide. Muninn blinked and rubbed her eyes. "Is that... a giant egg?" she asked. She reached out and put her hand on it. It was warm. Something shifted under the shell. Muninn yanked her hand back as though stung. It's alive.

A caw split the air. Both of them whipped around to stare at the sky. After a beat, pain lanced through her arm and chest. Muninn grabbed her shoulder and laid back. No fast movements.

"Shit. The egg's hatching. Momma valkyrie is going to kill us," Huginn muttered.

Muninn blinked at him, lost.

"We're stuck," Huginn said, and gestured around them.

Muninn moved to the edge of the bowl and peered over, and froze in place.

Below her, the earth dropped away. There was nothing. The bowl—nest—hung out over the edge of a cliff, only half perched on a narrow ledge, the other half hung over the void. She glanced up, but the cliff continued past them, a sheer wall. Below them, the cliff evened into a steep slope, but the cliff was soft, earthen. If her feet slipped, one clod of earth came out from under them, she'd never be able to stop falling.

At the bottom of the cliff was a valley full of sand. Past it, in the far distance, she thought she could see a hint of white amidst the miasma's purple light: Midgar's old castle, the one they'd been stolen from. How far did the valkyrie carry us?

The wind blew, and a thick, heavy, sickly-sweet scent enveloped them. Muninn pulled a face. Rot. She turned to look, and froze again.

The niche the nest had been slotted into continued to the right, no less narrow there than where the nest sat. Large sticks and small trees had been peirced into the niche's floor, each one strung with a corpse. Deer hung beside little green demons, who in turn were strung up alongside a wolf pup, and more, a forest of the dead, each body pierced through and hung to die.

Muninn swallowed back the urge to puke. Gross.

"She knows we aren't dead," Huginn said, craning his neck at the dark sky. "She was waiting for us to bleed out, so the meat would be fresh for her baby, and the rest of it was a warning. Or something. She ate some of it... I don't know. Demon thoughts are messy." He glanced at her. "But then you recovered."

Muninn nodded. She kept her injured arm close to her body and scooted closer to the edge, slowly. The nest creaked under her. A breeze blew, and the fetid reek of rot slapped her in the face. Muninn coughed and spat.

"Oh, that's awful," she muttered.

"Welcome to the whole last week," Huginn muttered back.

Muninn bit her lip thoughtfully. How do we get back to the castle? They'd been brought such a long way. She had no idea if they were closer or further. It was frustrating. And now we don't even have the smugglers to guide us.

Down past the valley, motion caught her eye. Where the edges of the valley met the forest, some of the trees began to move. She narrowed her eyes. A wind?

Huge hands pushed the trees aside. An enormous man stepped out of the forest. The trees looked like saplings around him, the valley little more than a ditch. He cleared the valley in a half-dozen steps, then vanished into the trees on the other side.

A giant. Even the jotunn didn't compare. She stared after it, watching the trees move where it passed. How can anything be that huge?

A dark blot drew her eyes to the horizon, past the valley. Pure black lumped there. A shadow? But what was casting it?

Muninn squinted. Slowly, the details of a castle faded out of the black. Dark and solid, it was built into the mountains. Stony cliffs made steep walls on all sides but the front, where a narrow path led to the front door. Unlike the human castle, the windows never widened. It was almost more a fortress than a castle. Even Muninn could tell it had been made to be defended from its blunt towers and thick walls. A wide door hung open at the end of the path, but it was an impervious kind of black, darker yet than the castle around it. No light passed through the door. Not even demons dared approach.

How are we supposed to get past that?

A memory struck: the sword, sliding through Huginn's fingers. Falling to the floor so far below. She sagged back to the nest. None of this mattered. She had no way to take out the demon king anymore.

"Does it hurt?" Huginn asked, concerned.

She looked at him. "The sword is gone."

"No, it's not. I caught it." He reached under his coat.

It appeared in slow motion. First the pommel, metal glittering purple in the faint light. Then the hilt, wrapped with leather. The crossguards dragged at his jacket before they appeared, little ghosts in the stained white. Then the blade, bare inch that it was. Once, it had ended in a straight line, almost broken. Now the end was soft and rounded, like melting ice.

She stared at it, then looked at him. How...?

"Remember what I said about changing memories? I borrowed your memory of it falling out of your hand and changed it, just a little. Repeated it, so it kept falling past where I caught it. The valkyrie was so focused on it, I thought maybe she would let us go if she saw it drop..." he shrugged. "Didn't work, but it was worth a try."

Muninn snatched the sword. For a second, she held it tight to her chest. The cold metal felt impossibly solid, far too real. It's back. I found it. It's not gone. She took a deep breath. Pain welled up in her chest suddenly, pain that didn't spring from the wound on her shoulder but somewhere deeper. I can save you, Mom. Wait for me.

She tucked it into her belt and breathed out. We can still win.

"I don't know about that. We've still got all that ahead of us." Huginn gestured at the valley ahead of them, the trees, the vanished giant. "Not to mention we're stuck up here, and the valkyrie wants to kill us."

"Stop reading my thoughts." Muninn glanced upward for the valkyrie. No sign. She drew herself back. "Besides, we aren't stuck."

"What do you..." Huginn trailed off. He went pale. "You can't be serious."

She grinned and threw herself against the lip of the nest.