"Do we have to leave already?" you whine, holding Herkja tightly in an embrace.
"Yes, pretty one. You must go. You have learned all that you need for now," she says, patting your back.
"Besides, if my mother returns to Fensalir and we are not there I fear the repercussions," Loki says.
"Don't tell me you're scared of your mother," you say with a laugh, pulling away from Herkja and glancing over at Loki.
"Terrified, darling," Loki says, placing a kiss to your temple.
Standing in front of Herkja's home, you glance around the small little shanty town one final time. You had grown quite fond of its strange inhabitants.
"You know...we could use your help, Her," you say. "Amora won't be easy to take down."
"And I will lend what support I can, little læknir. But no one at the palace aside from you, Loki and the Crown Prince are aware that my powers have been unbound. I cannot risk being found out."
You nod your head in understanding. You're about to respond when suddenly, a commotion from down the street catches your attention.
You, Loki, and Herkja all turn to see the various residents of the small, concealed village scatter, hiding within their small structures or disappearing all together. But you don't see anything that would cause such a reaction.
The three of your peer into the treeline in the distance, a thick, uncomfortable and unnatural silence falling over the tiny shanty town.
Finally, from the tree line in the distance step dozens of tall, pale figures.
Eerie and menacing, dressed in shining silver armor with arms longer than their legs, they cause a shiver to run up your spine. Shoulders slightly hunched with long, pale faces, they simply stand at the edges of the brush, staring into the vast nothingness of the clearing.
They shouldn't be able to see you. Yet something tells you that they can as they seem to peer right into you.
"What are those things?" you whisper.
"Loki, take her inside," Herkja commands.
"What? W-why?" you ask nervously.
But Loki obeys without question grabbing your hand and pulling you inside Herkja's home, slamming the door behind you and securing it with his seidr.
"Loki, what's going on?" you ask.
"Quiet, love," he whispers.
Your jaw snaps shut, and your heart begins to pound.
Once Loki finishes securing the door, he pulls you into his chest, holding you tightly as you both strain to listen for any noise at all.
But there's nothing. Only silence.
"Loki, please, what's -"
"Hush, darling."
Loki holds you tightly. You can feel his heart pounding in his chest and you notice his breath quicken. The silence in the hall is deafening, and you strain to hear any sound from outside.
But there is nothing.
Until a piercing scream fills the air from beyond the walls of Herkja's home.
You flinch and Loki's arms tighten around you.
Then the world explodes.
Screams, angry roars, and the clash of metal on metal cause the walls to shake as the shadows of fighting, thrashing bodies and purple seidr flicker across the window panes. You know that Herkja has begun to fight whatever threat has descended upon the tiny village.
"Loki," you whimper above the noise, "what's going on? What are those things?"
Loki opens his mouth to respond but a loud, pained cry from outside draws your attention.
Herkja.
"Stay here, and stay hidden. Do not come out for any reason," Loki says, untangling himself from you. Before you can react, Loki binds your wrists and ankles in a band of his green seidr, and disappears in a flash of green.
"NO!" you shout, struggling against his bindings.
The noise intensifies as you watch flashes of green and purple light up the inside of Herkja's home.
Outside, the screaming and shouting intensifies. The sound of bodies hitting the ground, howls of pain, and seidr flying through the air fills your senses. Your head begins to spin as you start to panic, and you desperately fight against the bindings Loki has wrapped you in.
Taking a deep breath, you concentrate on the feeling of Loki's bindings on your wrist. You can feel them vibrating, and notice they feel a lot like the infection you had destroyed in the young boy the day before.
Blocking out the sound of the fighting past the door, you try to focus on the vibrations of his bindings, and fight against them with your own seidr until finally, you feel them release.
Looking down at your free hands, your eyes widen and you then focus on the bindings on your ankles, doing the same until they disappear.
Now free, you rush to the door of Herkja's home and give it a strong pull, but Loki's seidr has locked it in place. Letting out a cry of despair, you lean into your seidr and teleport outside.
Right into the middle of a massacre.
When your feet hit the ground you watch as the tall, pale figures from the forest have descended upon the village. The bodies of several villagers lay lifeless or wounded in the streets. And Loki and Herkja fight back to back as they're surrounded by at least 20 or 30 of the remaining creatures. The rest lay dead or dying on the ground around their feet.
Frozen for only a moment, you leap into action and send several strong blasts of your own seidr straight into the side of one of the creatures getting too close to Herkja. It lets out a scream but doesn't fall. Instead, it turns to you, and breaks away from the group, advancing on you.
"Oh shit," you mutter under your breath.
"I told you to wait inside!" roars Loki as he lets loose several green bolts of seidr, dropping two of the creatures in front of him as he pivots, and drives his dagger through the face of another. Herkja plunges the tip of a long spear through one as she twirls around Loki, finishing off another.
"You tied me up, you asshole!" you shout back, conjuring two daggers in your hand and squaring up against the pale, humanoid creature coming at you.
It glances at the daggers in your hand and a snarling grin crosses its face as it pulls a long sword from its back.
"Oh fuck," you whisper under your breath.
"Aim for the neck, Valkyrie," Loki shouts.
Your eyes focus in on the creature's neck, noticing a strange patch of scaled skin. That must be its weak point.
You quickly tap twice on your temple.
"Athena, what the hell is that thing?" you ask as you and the creature slowly circle each other.
"Biometric scans return zero results."
"Zero results? Are you kidding me?!"
"Apologies, Miss. Asgardian biometric profiles have not been uploaded into my database."
"Oh great," you say.
You tighten your grip on your daggers as the creature lowers its body, raising its sword high as it lunges, advancing quickly.
You match its pace, teleporting in short bursts and advancing forward, lunging from side to side and catching the creature off guard. Lashing out, you feel your blade make contact with skin, and drag your dagger roughly down the length of the creature's arm.
It hisses and lets out a scream, leaping backwards as a strange silver blood oozes from its wound.
"Yeah? That hurt? Come at me again, Dobby!"
The creature looks down at its arm and growls, snarling as it faces you once more.
Your eyes flit to Herkja and Loki, who are making quick work of their opponents - only about ten remain.
But your momentary distraction has afforded the creature stalking you the opportunity it needs to lunge, striking you across the face and knocking you on the ground so hard you roll several feet.
Curling into a ball as your body skids violently across the ground, you groan in pain as you open your eyes. They widen as you see the creature leap into the air, descending upon you, sword raised.
In a desperate attempt, you throw your hands up, conjuring your defensive screen just as the creature's sword makes contact, making a loud, glass shattering sound.
Holding your screen in place you feel it beginning to crack beneath the force of the creature's weight as it bears down on you, pressing its blade into the shield as it sneers and looks into your eyes.
"Veikburða," it growls.
"Oh, so you speak? That's nice. Would love to get to know you better, but I just don't have the time," you grunt, as you roll to the side, suddenly releasing your shield, causing the creature to fall to the ground.
In a flash, you spin and drive your dagger through the creature's neck, and stagger backwards as you watch it scream and hiss before falling limp on the ground, silver blood streaming from the wound you've inflicted.
Chest heaving, you stare at the lifeless, human-like creature on the ground and crawl towards it slowly. Reaching out a hesitant hand, you reach out and touch its skin, its hair, its hand.
You've never taken a life before. Not even HYDRA had made you kill. You had been a weapon to torture the living. And get information from the already deceased.
But as you buried your dagger in the creature's neck, you had felt its life ooze from its body.
That was all together different. A new kind of horrific.
You can't tear your eyes away from its face, its eyes still open, glazed over in a film of death.
Suddenly, someone grabs you, and you lash out, fighting desperately to escape the grasp of whatever has you in its clutches.
But a familiar scent overwhelms you, and you relax into those comforting and familiar arms as you sink to the ground, shaking and sobbing.
"Shh, Valkyrie. It's over," Loki whispers in your ear.
You collapse into his embrace and you feel him lift you from the ground, carrying you several paces away before setting you down once more and placing a hand on your face.
"I need you to calm yourself for me. Are you hurt?" he asks.
You shake your head as you take several deep, shuddering breaths.
"N-n-no," you stammer. "I'm o-okay."
"You fought bravely, love. And you killed only in defense. Do you understand me?"
You nod your head vigorously.
Loki glances over his shoulder at something before turning back to you.
"Herkja needs our help, can you calm yourself enough to help us?"
You nod again, and let out another shuddering breath.
"Good girl, come," Loki says, standing and extending a hand down to you.
You reach up and take it, pulling yourself to your feet.
Once standing, Loki interlaces his fingers with yours as he takes off, guiding you both back towards where Herkja is kneeling over the body of a young woman in the street.
"Of the living she is the most critically wounded," Herkja says while frantically trying to heal the most grievous of the woman's wounds, which leak rivers of blood into the earth below her body. "I need help."
You take a deep breath, shoving away the dark thoughts in your mind. You drop to your knees on the other side of the woman's body, and look up at Herkja.
"Tell me what to do," you say.
Loki kneels beside you. "I'm here as well, Her."
"Thank you," she says. "Her heart has stopped. We have only minutes to get her blood flowing again. But we must close the wounds or she will bleed out. Loki, you have more knowledge on closing wounds, begin with the most severe."
Loki nods, and you watch his hands glow green as he focuses on a gash on her abdomen.
"Little læknir, you must begin moving her blood through her body," Herkja says as she concentrates on re-aligning a small bone that protrudes from the woman's forearm.
"Wh-what? Move her blood?"
"Yes, her heart has stopped. You must do it."
"O-okay," you say, placing your hands above the woman's chest. "What do I do?"
Herkja's hands glow purple and you wince, fighting the nausea in your stomach as you watch the bone in her forearm slide back beneath her skin, the muscles rippling.
"You will use your seidr to push her blood through her arteries, then pull it back to her heart through her veins. It is a never ending cycle. Think of it as a circle of rope. You pull on one end, and the entire loop moves. Understand?"
"No!" you shout.
"Good, give it a try," Herkja shouts, moving onto a gash on the woman's thigh.
Letting out a breath, you close your eyes and focus on finding the woman's blood. But unlike the sick and injured you've worked on before, you feel nothing. Her body is still.
The serpent no longer slithers.
But you can feel the blood still in the body, and you reach for it with your magic, grabbing hold and focusing on the feeling of holding it within your grasp.
"I think I've got it," you say.
"Good," Herkja answers. "Loki, when you're done, help her."
You focus on moving the blood as quickly as you can, but you find it difficult to keep hold without losing your magical grip. You know you're circulating her blood as the wounds that had stopped oozing have once more begin to ooze, but the blood isn't circulating fast enough.
"Loki, I need help," you cry out.
"I'm almost done, kærasta," Loki says, grimacing as he finishes closing the final gash on his side of the woman's body.
Adjusting his position, he places his hands on top of yours, and passes his seidr through your hands, helping you to move the woman's blood through her body. Immediately you feel it flow easier, smoother, faster.
"Thank you," you exhale.
Together, you and Loki keep the woman's body alive as Herkja works on the rest of her broken bones and internal damage.
Finally, the woman sputters, and her eyes flutter open. She lets out a groan of pain, and you and Loki remove your hands.
"Shhh, dear one. You must rest," Herkja, soothes her.
You watch on as Herkja places a tender hand on the young woman's cheek, and brushes a strand of blonde hair from her forehead.
"Loki, let's go," you whisper, pulling him away and leaving Herkja alone with the woman on the ground.
After a few moments comforting the woman, Herkja teleports her to the healing tent, and walks up to you and Loki.
"Are there any more that need our help?" you ask.
"No, the rest are already taken care of, or dead," Herkja says angrily.
"What were those things?" you ask.
"The skemmd ljós," Herkja snarls, gruffly kicking the lifeless body of one of the creatures on the ground nearby. "A scourge of the Ljósálfar. Rogue light elves that terrorize those who live beyond the safety of cities."
"Are you okay?" you ask Herkja, noticing a gash on her arm, and that her nose is dripping blood. She must have taken a blow to the face.
"I will be fine," she answers. "I need to attend to my people," she says, motioning to the small crowd of unharmed residents that have gathered in the street. "You must return to your palace. I am sorry for what you have experienced here today."
"Shouldn't we stay? In case they come back?" you ask.
"They will not come back, pretty one," says Herkja.
"She's right, Valkyrie. I am familiar with this clan. This was their entire band. There are no more this side of the mountain," says Loki, taking your hand in his.
"Okay, if you're sure," you answer.
"I am," answers Herkja. "I must go."
Herkja places a friendly hand on your shoulder and gives Loki a nod before turning and walking to the small crowd that watch her apprehensively.
"Come, darling. Let's get cleaned up," Loki says, pulling you into his arms gently as you feel the ground fall away.