//------------------------------// // Diplomatic Relations and Battle Strategies // Story: Flight of the Valkyrie // by EonCronus //------------------------------// My new Griffin friend and I looked up at the woman in front of us with a mixture of respect, admiration, and pure pants-shitting terror at the way she was glaring between the two of us. Her face was one of a woman barely out of her twenties, though her eyes bore testament to many years intervening between the time when she actually looked her age and now. I suspected that she might have a thing for Celestia’s plot, considering the large, crimson-gold sun emblem that adorned the chest piece of the gleaming plate armor that she wore. She was slightly taller than I was which, considering my new height, was rather impressive. Her majestic black wings were reminiscent of the ravens back on earth and a mite larger than my own when they were spread out fully, making me feel suddenly inadequate despite the rather large, impressive spear that I held in my hand. In her right hand she held a one-handed battle axe that looked like it would feel all kinds of unpleasant should it be imbedded into my skin, and the murderous look in her eyes made me want to say something to prevent that ASAP. I stammered as my terrified brain attempted to formulate any kind of explination in the face of such righteous fury, and I found myself wondering if I would go to Asgard for dying in battle when Stahlfeader cleared his throat to draw attention to himself. I was impressed that he managed to keep from shaking, which was more than I could say that I was doing, and speak with only the barest of a tremor in his voice as he spoke in his heavily accented 'Equish'. "A-ah, Frauline Freya Bloodaxe, I see zat you haff not had ze pleasure of meeting mein friend. Zis is Frau Skuld," he said with a gesture to me, which drew her eyes back to me once more. I instinctively gripped Gungnir closer to my chest and flinched away from her gaze, half-expecting to be frozen solid simply from the frigidity of the glare. Bltz looked between us for a moment as he considered what he should do, his golden eyes darting back and forth between my cowering form and the imposing fiure struck by the sovreign of the Valkyrie race. "I know the name of every Valkyrie that lives, or has been born within the last three months, in both Valhalla and Jotunheim. Skuld is not among the names that I know. So, you cannot be a Valkyrie. What are you?" she asked imperiously, prompting me to shift my eyes back and forth as, suddenly, I found the eyes of both the Griffin whom I had befriended and the overbearing woman on me. The former seemed highly curious, which was harmless enough, but the latter seemed very defensive and hostile, which could end up with me as a grease stain on the bottom of the cavern floor so many hundreds of feet below us. Did I mention that the entire fortress that I was in, which was called Valhalla by the way, was hanging from the ceiling of a cavern that seemed to take up over two thirds of a mountain? I don't know what kind of engineering went into making the whole thing stable, but it was still cool beyond belief even when I was confronted by my imminent demise. "Mother, wait!" an angelic voice called out from the hallway behind the large Valkyrie, prompting both Blitz and I to let out simultaneous sighs of relief. Freya's wings folded slightly as she turned to look at her daughter, who's face shone with a flustered red glow and a sheen of sweat as if she had just finished sprinting all the way here. Which, for all I knew, could very well have been the case. The larger Valkyrie looked surprised when she saw her daughter, and the spell that she had bound me under with her intimidating presence was broken. Finding that I could move my limbs again I scrambled to my feet and backed away from the duo, making sure that I kept my spear pointed straight upwards so that I didn't get mistaken for a threat. Brynhildr, the crazy woman who had tackled me out of Eir's room, followed shortly behind her with her head hung low in what looked suspiciously like shame, though I gripped my spear even tighter just in case I would have to contend with those deadly swords again. Eir gave the other Valkyrie a dirty look, which caused Brynhildr's wings to droop even lower when she saw it, and said, "My sister here has something to tell you, Mother." The gold-winged woman mumbled something incoherent, prompting Freya's head to tilt in confusion and Eir to elbow her in the side with no small amount of force, drawing a grunt from her. "Go on, tell her." She stiffened for a moment and looked up at her mother, teeth grinding in an expression that resembled the one people make when they accidentally swallow sour milk, before she blurted out a string of words in very rapid succession. "Shewasn'tattackingEir," she said, slowing down and growing quieter with each word, "Eir was... actually... nursing her back to health. She found that one out in one of the valleys when she was gathering ingredients for her medicine stuff and brought her back." The look of distaste on her face only grew when her mother's expression turned into one of recognition, then mild annoyance as she realized something. "Bryhildr Warlust, you had me mobilize an entire wing of Elitstyrka to defend my home from an injured patient of Eir's?" she asked with the infinite patience only a mother with a troublesome child could have, and I slowly began to lessen the deathgrip I had on Gungnir as I realized that the worst of the danger had passed. Brynhildr cringed even more than I had when Freya had been interrogating me, looking as if she had been physically slapped, before she drooped her head and wings even further. I almost felt sorry for her. Then again, she had tackled me out of a window, so my sympathy was limited at best. As Freya began to berate her eldest daughter for her stupid mistake Eir slipped past them and ran over to me, pulling me into a quick hug before she began to frantically check for wounds. No matter how much I protested that I was fine she insisted on giving me a thorough check, which drew another squawking chuckle from the Griffin that had made his way over to me during the exchange between the family. "Frau Skuld, zere certainly haz not been a dull moment vith you yet. I like zat," he said with a wink, which I responded to by giving him a thumbs-up. Upon doing so, I noticed that my thumb was not just longer and more slender, but actually had three knuckles. A discreet check of my hand informed me that every one of my digits, even the extra one that was smaller than what I would have considered my pinkie, had one more knuckle than a human's. It seemed like a slightly arbitrary evolutionary trait, but I decided that it wasn’t very important in the large scheme of things when I considered the fact that I felt a small buzzing in the back of my skull. I reached back and touched the area, surprised to feel soft, downy feathers under the thick golden hair, but found no specific reason for the feeling nor the unease that came with it. ”Hey, Eir, do you feel that?” I asked her quietly as she inspected one of my arms for any cuts, prompting her to look up at me with confusion on her face. I took that as a no and bit my lip, suddenly feeling antsy as the sense of unease in my stomach grew into the same feeling that I always got when I knew I was about to get into a fight. The light-headed rush where everything seems much clearer, you’re thinking at a million miles a second and your feet don’t want to stay still. ”Eir, something’s not right,” I warned, causing her to look around as if searching for a threat. ”I don’t know what it is, but something’s coming…” ”FENRIR ON THE PASS!” Don’t you love it when your sense of impending doom turns out to be right? The inhabitants of the room burst into a flurry of action that astounded me with its efficiency. Freya pointed at the balcony and Brynhildr immediately took off, soaring out of the large opening at a speed that made me wonder if she wasn’t holding back a bit when she had been chasing me. The Griffin ambassador was stunned for just a moment before he pounced over to a chest next to his bed, lifting up the lid to get at a gleaming set of silver armor and wing-mounted blades that he immediately began strapping onto his body. Eir’s eyes widened as she looked back to me and grabbed my free hand even as Freya was ordering her to go to the armory and begin suiting up, leaving her to soar out of the room with the Griffin close behind her. The youngest of the Queen’s daughters dragged me through the hall as I tried to figure out what had been so much of a threat that even a foreign dignitary had offered to fight it without even a word of protest. ”Eir, my memory’s still not that clear, so can you tell me what a Fenrir is and why everyone’s freaking out so bad?” I asked as I watched another of the winged women that were now my people run past us, aiming for one of the large openings that lined the hallways and dumped out into open space. Had I not seen the purpose firsthand, I would have just assumed that these bird-women just liked the view. The smaller of the two of us chose not to answer until she had dragged both of us into the armory, where many Valkyries were grabbing weapons and helping each other strap on gleaming plate armor, each of which bore some variation of the Solar Diarch’s Cutie Mark painted crimson gold somewhere on them. ”Fenrir are monstrous, semi-intelligent wolves created by the Great Nightmare over a thousand years ago, tasked with keeping our warriors at bay while she ran rampant over the land. They delight in death and destruction, and will not hesitate to rip you apart and eat you. Here, put this on,” she ordered as she handed me a chest piece made of a shimmering golden metal, which took me a moment to figure out that she wanted me to put it on. I set my spear against the weapons rack next to me, which had been stripped bare, and began to struggle with successfully putting the armor on. Partly thanks to the fact that I still wasn’t used to the breasts that now graced my chest with their presence, and mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to get my wings through the large slots in the armor designed to accommodate their range of motion. Eir gripped my primary feathers in between two fingers on each wing and pulled them through the slot, creating a strange sensation that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. ”I am the only advanced holy mage left in Valhalla, so I must cast the whole of the incantation that will strengthen our warriors and disorganize our foes. I will need you to protect me, as I will have to stand on the main bridge to affect all of them, and that will leave me exposed. I am sorry that we have to ask you to fight so soon after getting injured, but we need every soldier that we can get. Fenrir never arrive in small numbers.” I whirled around to her in order to protest, beginning to say that there was no way I was going to stand a chance in any kind of battle, when I felt a strange sort of calm come over me. A small voice in my head whispered that I could do it, that I was born to do it, and I felt a strange fire begin to rush through my veins as I considered the prospect of cleaving heads from bodies and running them through with Gungnir. The fact that I was excited, rather than disgusted, by the idea should have scared me, but to be honest it didn’t. Also, the look that Eir was giving me was just about enough to make my heart melt due to the depth of its passion. ”Just tell me where the action is, and I’ll be there, Eir Holybell,” I proclaimed with a grin, causing her to offer a sad smile of her own before she began to show me how to suit the rest of the way up. Did I ever tell you that sometimes I really, really hate small voices in my head? Because right now the gigantic voice of self-preservation was screaming at me to use my new appendages to fly as far away as humanly… or Valkyrie-y?... as possible. I stood in front of Eir in gleaming golden armor that basically screamed at anyone who wanted to take a potshot at me, on a bridge barely wide enough to carry a single car that was the only land-based connection between the hanging fortress of Valhalla and the much wider road that led from the sun-drenched valley below the mountain, into the cavern, and circled around the edge until it hit a huge landing where the bridge was anchored to. Considering the fact that as far as I could tell the only non-Valkyrie on the walkway behind me was the Griffin ambassador, I questioned the logic behind the bridge when it appeared that the only foe they faced on a consistent basis was a land bound species. But I begin to digress. Allow me to return to the reason for my survival instinct kicking in. You see, Valkyries must be some kind of human-bird hybrid instead of the angelic humans-with-wings that seemed to prevail as their main image. A good portion of a Valkyrie’s back is covered in small, downy feathers that spread outwards in concentric patterns from each wing. Their toes are longer than a human’s by a fair amount and each end in a wicked talon that could have originally been intended to gouge opponents in mid-flight, though now simply served a Valkyrie when she wanted to perch on a precarious ledge. And their eyes possess 20/10 vision and telescopic properties, meaning that I had a very clear, intimate view of what was coming up to meet us. Have you ever played Elder Scrolls: Skyrim? If you have, then you know what the werewolves look like. Ugly as sin and scarier than the combined forces of hell when pissed off, they are some of the most powerful creatures in the game, and its easy to see why. The red, glowing eyes, the beastial roars, the teeth the size of carving knives combined with talons that could tear you up worse than an industrial meatgrinder. Not to mention the bulging muscle that Adonis would kill to have. Now, picture at least 2,500 of those. Carrying various weapons, most of which looked like they were carved from some kind of bone with flint teeth tied on to the edges, which I knew would break off in the flesh of whoever was unfortunate enough to get caught by them. In leather armor adorned with small skulls that looked suspiciously griffin-esque and feathers, some of which were too big to be the feathers of the relatively smaller griffins. If I wasn't fighting the pee threatening to run down my leg, I would have been disgusted enough to vomit, but fortunately the terror was enough to freeze most of my bodily functions. I was getting the feeling that fear was a pretty useless notion to the Valkyries, who were currently lined up along every window and balcony that faced the other end of the mile-long stone bridge that my stupid ass had agreed to stand in the center of as we awaited the inevitable charge of the Diamond Dogs from hell. I took everything I had ever learned from any martial arts movie and put it to use, holding the long spear in both hands with my feet spread apart and planted solidly. My wings were tucked tight against the armor that I wore, though that was more out of fear than anything else, and the golden, winged helmet that I wore cast the expression of terror that was permanently etched onto my face into a dark shadow. All in all, we both were imposing, though one had the advantage of numbers, and I believe that's what led to the Fenrir deciding that we were worth the effort it would take. As the wolves erupted in a flurry of movement that caused the bridge to disappear under a writhing black sea of fur and teeth and claws, those wolves not yet in the fray let loose with a howl that seemed to pierce my very soul, whispering promises of pain and defeat into my heart and causing my resolve to protect Eir to falter for just a moment. It was in that moment, when any hope of victory or living was far gone if I stayed though I knew that to run would be to abandon Eir, that she began to Sing. And when I say Sing, I mean to capitalize the word. You think that you have heard singing? That you know what music is? Until you have heard a Holy Mage of the Valkyries Sing the Song of Battle, you know nothing of what true song is. They fill themselves up with the Holy Music of Creation, the notes that formed the mountains and trees and rivers and the very first whispers of life, and they bend that music with their vocal chords, making it act on their will. I felt something move within me, beyond every notion of base instinct that I ever thought I had, and I wasn't afraid anymore. I didn't even know the meaning of the word fear. All I knew was the song, the singer, my allies in protecting her and the unlucky bastards who were attempting to hurt the source of my Song. ♫"Feel it when you cannot see, Trust it when you cannot feel. Stay and fight when others flee; But without need do not kill!"♫ The Valkyries behind me took to the air as one upon the utterance of the first note, the Song of Battle filling them with spirit as they rushed out to meet their foes, knocking those that they could from the bridge as half engaged the charging wolves while the other hald attacked their rear units. They tore into the wolves with a violence and zeal normally reserved for the goriest of action movies, their swords severing entire limbs and spears penetrating through multiple opponents while the war drums that began to sound within the fortress directed the placement of the troops. ♫"When in great pain - grit your teeth! Watch your weapon in the sheath. Believe then, when faith is gone, Have hope then, when there is none."♫ They knew these drum signals by heart, but I did not, and as far as I was concerned they were merely a pleasant backdrop to the Song. The first of the wolves that managed to make it past those who I now considered sisters in arms reached me, and I felt some force guiding my hand as I thrusted and struck true. ♫"Raise your head when others fall, And stand proud when others crawl! Hear your heart in subtle doubt, To the silence give a shout! See stars through the smoke of vile... And through the falling foes – smile."♫ This was going to be a good fight.