"She wears strength and darkness equally well, the girl has always been half goddess, half hell."
- Nikita Gill
I had always tended not to dwell on the past. Always strove to remain as present as possible, as able to adapt––but gods this much spare time would be the death of me.
John, Kaden and myself had always found ourselves busy with our endless pursuit of coin or ale or lovers... filling that dull void that most called a span. I spun the makeshift dagger I had made out of glass and wood in my hand. It glinted back in wicked imperfection. It would, by no means make a clean kill on the victim...
"Footwork!" The Valkyrie had shouted in the forest clearing.
"This is hardly the time for your ballroom dancing lessons, immortal." I retorted as I had stepped under a quick jab aimed for my face.
"Oh? Experienced such formalities have we?" She quipped with a brow raise. "I was under the impression you would sooner have your partner on the floor rather than in step."
I threw a kick at her waist and a cross for her jaw. Both were dismissed with a simple sidestep and an elbow.
"What's wrong with having one on the floor!" John called out to be met with cackling from the edge of the tree line.
I smirked over at the men, "Not sure why you laugh Kaden. You would need to have one first!"
John started coughing out his laughter while Kaden jumped to his feet––the process scared a few birds from their trees.
"Speak up, little girl, before I give you a lesson really worth learning!" He threatened, playfully cracking a fist and squaring his stubbled jaw.
The Valkyrie paused before me and let out a short puff of frustration. She walked swiftly to me in a few steps and dropped her mouth to my ear. I had remembered the effect it had taken. The first time I had noticed that pure smell of pinewood and otherness. The strand of gold that fell loose and grazed my cheek.
"Put the buffoon in his place, before I put him in a grave." She promised in a murmur.
I chuckled and withdrew to face her––my own but inches from her.
"Don't offend me by making it sound like a challenge." I murmured back.
She drew her black hood up in response and walked backwards, "Let your actions speak louder." Then turned her back on me and moved with that otherworldly grace to the opposite tree line.
I felt the ground moving before I heard the heavy steps of a human boulder coming head first for me. "No weapons!" was all he called before ducking low and making to grab me by the waist.
Honestly. It was almost cute.
I rolled out from under his grasp and kicked off my landing foot to engage his unprotected back. But a swing even from behind would not stop him. No, he needed to be worked a little. So I kicked him square in the hind to provoke him.
John hooted from the side. "A woman going for his ass first? Truly all has been seen on this realm."
Kaden swung a wild arm around his back that would unseat any soldier from horseback. But I was no soldier following the book. I dropped to my knees letting it sail over and sent two quick jabs to his abdomen catching the air from his lungs.
He still sent a front kick into me which clipped my side as I danced away. But I was grinning at him now. "No shame in calling quits, friend."
"I never did like the way you acted on the winning side." He growled.
"Was that because of how often it happens or your inexperience––"
I had not finished the sentence because a plume of white smoke exploded before my vision and had me coughing and swiping before my face. A foot appeared in the haze and kicked me off my feet. I sucked in yet another smoky breath and collapsed onto the ground.
"You––dirty son of––a whore–" I coughed out.
He ran through the smoke quickly closing the distance to me. But the steps before he could touch me a white shot of electricity scorched a mark before his feet. He ground to a halt and flicked his eyes up to a hooded figure slowly approaching.
His shocked grey eyes suddenly switched to amusement.
"How sweet." He cooed. "Coming to aid her time of great need."
"The only great feat here, Nafferion, is how openly you mock the most powerful adversary ever stood before you."
He scoffed, even casting disbelief back to John. He crossed his large arms before her and even took a step forward. Even on the floor I remember slapping a hand into my face.
"I have witnessed your fancy magic tricks, Valkyrie. But what have you to show for in a game of hand to hand? Fighting against one twice your mass." He said eying her up and down with a smug look.
But there was not even irritation on her her face that day, not even vague challenge in her eyes. The words she said next pretty much summed up what I already knew of her, what she was capable of and how she had absolutely no patience for Kaden's shit that day.
"Mortal, I could entertain this and send your nose through your skull and paint the grass behind it with your blood, but in all perfect honesty it is a waste of my time and will be tiresome to clean the remains of your head off my armour. So, if it is all the same to you, I would like to resume my training with Tayah, so that I can withdraw from the realm you inhabit as soon as possible." She stated flatly, walking past Kaden whose mouth was left hanging wide.
I actually remember that being one of the first in many winters I had enjoyed someone's words so thoroughly. Even when she grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet, I was still laughing. But the true best part of that day, was the fact that she wore her own smile as she watched me, that it disappeared as fast as it appeared when she turned back to the others. That it was to be one of many moments shared between us, only us.
I chuckled as I looked more closely at the melted glass base I had fused into the wooden shaft with a small piece of immortal power. She would deem it such an unsatisfactory tool but condone the fact I was combining weapons with power as a strategy. It would be enough to trim the fur off a few roaming bears when the time came. But ultimately I needed the damandium blades once more. Losing them them to Anselle was out of the question.
I set the blade down and removed another shard from the bottle lying near me to fashion another. As my vertically established friend always claimed, you could never have too many weapons. Only too many buffoons to wield them. The smile that cracked my mouth vanished as I heard my door open slowly.
I slid the completed blade into my waistband in a blink. In the next moment the bottle was kicked beneath the bed with little protest from my legs. I remained sitting against the foot of the bed watching the door slowly open.
The largest man on the ship stood behind the threshold shrouded in darkness. The Captain's second.
I cocked my head to the side with a sweet smile. "Room service is always appreciated, you'll find the privy to the back." I jutted my thumb behind me with nonchalance.
He remained wordless, staring at me in the shadow.
I dropped the smile and stared at him with boredom painted on my face. "As revolutionary as your social skills are, I'm going to have to call time on this one, dark and stormy."
He moved into the room and my hand dropped casually to my side. The door closed behind him. I made out the deep black grooves craved under his eyes and meeting his thick matted beard. My blood spiked adrenaline into my system as I could not bring up a logical answer as to why Anselle's second had stolen into my chamber this night.
* * * * *
I internally cursed my injured legs to the darkest realm. I could likely burn her second to a crisp even with the painful cost but that still leaves the question... why is he here now?
I noted several things that made this situation wrong.
Firstly the eyes. A blackness I came to expect from her crew, but this was different entirely. There was only one way such endless pools could claim features. Thanatos.
The dark lines beneath his eyes seemed one with their pitch black. He moved with disjointed steps, as if they were jerks more than conscious decisions to move.
I clenched the makeshift knife hard behind my back on the floor, readying my legs for the moment he showed aggression.
"It seems Anselle is not the only one harnessing the immortal weapon." I ventured, hoping to get any information.
But the towering body of furs and darkness had nothing for me, nothing human in his eyes. I had also lost patience with playing the helpless captive. Before he closed in the last few meters I whipped my hand forward throwing the glass shard forward in a blink.
It hit its mark and sank deep into the bear's chest. But he did not even seem to notice the damage. I did not wait to find out how he would respond. I rolled away from my position, grasping the unfinished second shard and flinging it into his leg as I moved.
Again, not a grunt or cry of despair, only a momentary fault in his steps towards me. It was as if the thing before me no longer held position of his form on realm–gods he may as well be in the underworld already–
I watched as black blood leaked carelessly down his lips, his internals already haemorrhaging from the shard in his chest.
"Gods, just die for once." I growled in frustration.
He drew two axes from his hips to engage, closer to the bed than before. I responded by lighting my fists viciously.
"You want immortal power, Anselle?" I snapped at him. Aware of he was merely a puppet. "Let me oblige you."
Instead of simply reducing him to ash before me, I cast my hands upward and called upon the strength of Odin. Thick vines of white exploded through the cabin ceiling above the dark second in a crash of splinters and wooden boards breaking.
I sent the entirety of my anger and focus into it and felt no drain whatsoever. The pain in my legs–only secondary.
Piles of beams and barrels from the floor above crashed onto him in mounds until I could see nothing more of the black furs. The dust and wood cleared a few moments after to reveal the bright moonlight in the hole above my chamber.
I grinned up at it, content with my redecorating.
I knew how the captain would approve so much... Let her see what becomes of pawns she sends to my room in the dead of night. I sniffed and turned my heal on the mess. I hopped on my plush bed, kicking off a few stray pieces of wood in the process, and lying back with my hands tucked under my head.
It did not take many blinks for my door to be slammed open.
A pack of black clad bears crowded the entrance in stoic silence as they beheld my personal chaos.
"More toys to play with?" I quipped innocently. "Oh, Captain you spoil me."
The dark voice that followed had no humour whatsoever.
"So glad my little demi-immortal has recovered so nicely." It called over the large men. "It had taken you long enough..."
That did catch my attention. I crooked my head to scan the line of men. "Too much it appears, you cannot even show your face."
A bitter laugh filled the room. "Still so ignorant, such short sight. Can I really blame one who has not even lived a single lifespan." It mused in the shadows behind.
I sat up and rested my head on my chin.
"Yes, yes my mortality is such a bore I know... let me show you my immortal side once again. It has missed you dearly..."
Another laugh. This time the giants stood aside to reveal her.
Although it was hardly her at all. The connection, or should I say binding of Thanatos to her had been extreme if not complete. Her skin had blackened in clawed lines so thick they left little skin colour remaining. Her eyes seemed to have gone altogether, lost inside the blackness. But her hands... they emanated the very smoky black power in waves. As if it couldn't all be stored in a body at once and had to be excreted somewhere.
My blood spiked as I took her in and fear had replaced my joy at my brief return in power. It was too fast, we were supposed to have more time, a plan to at least––
"I can smell the shear panic without even watching your eyes, mortal." She murmured in a husky tone taking steps forward. "It is delicious."
I swallowed heavily and shifted in the bed, my arms no longer resting my head but bracing the cloth.
Her black orbs roamed me. "And now what becomes of you... would you not like to know." She whispered, tilting her head like a snake. "–why I took you, why I kept you on my travel to immortal ascension. Why you are so important, dear Tayah."
My voice was lost for once. I was a child again. Baring down the stare of a merciless killer as it swept into my village and killed all those I loved. I was helpless before this otherworldly demon.
She moved onto the bed and kneeled before me, the black smoke caressing the space around her as she sat.
"You are so valuable to me because you are the one thing of value to the Valkyrie."
My heart froze, taking on a hardness when she spoke of her.
"–the only thing she cannot fight, Tayah. Is you. That Valkyrie will follow me to the realm I seek after this inferior one has served its purpose and I cannot have that you see." She said with a voice slowly and lethal. "I have the tools to end the only thing standing between ascension and you my dear, will help me."
"You can go to the underworld." I whispered, staring down those bottomless black pits. "You can take Thanatos with you, you can take me with you and stay in the realm you belong in. But you leave the Valkyrie untouched."
She smiled so sickeningly, her lips contorting too much, I had to resist the urge to shudder.
"I am afraid your option of choice has come to an end. You will help me whether you are aware or not."
I had no time to block, no time to anticipate the move as her hand shot forward and grabbed my head. The moment her black hand touched my skin was the moment I lost my tether to the realm. Lost my very existence. Became a vessel of outer experience and nothing conscious at all.
I was thrown from light, into the realm of nothing. Into cold, not cold but the lack of warmth.
No fear, no shock, the emotion had left what I was too. I was nothing but a voyeur now. Watching the body of another as its arms turned black with vines of power. As another in black laughed viciously for reasons unknown.
Moonlight from the realm cast down in a broken circle from above. It starkly made the black figures both spectre and demon.
The newly blackened arms fell to sides and the cackling figure drew hands on the face.
"My newly found apprentice. My vessel. My own little demi-immortal, you shall help me irradiate the last adversary standing between my destiny. Do you understand?"
The head nodded in confirmation. In silence. Obedience incarnate.
Lost to the fabrics of darkness the nod continued. Lost to the realm of living. Of feeling, of memories and things. Nothing more than a watcher.