//------------------------------//
// The Godspear is Born 
// Story: Flight of the Valkyrie 
// by EonCronus 
//------------------------------//

	I impaled the head of the spear that had been gifted to me into the chest of the large wolf that charged me, causing a look of utter shock to come onto its face. Strangely, I didn't feel bad about killing this thing, though that might've been the effect of the song that was currently filling my veins with righteous fury. How dare these disgusting things dare to threaten the angel that was behind me, gracing the world with the music that was used to create every good thing in the universe? I heaved with all my strength and the wolf was sent careening off the bridge and into the cavern below me. I didn't even pause as I heard more thudding footsteps approached me as another one of the creatures got past the Valkyries that were completely tearing through most of their ranks even as more and more poured out from the hanging fortress behind me. I spun and twirled the spear, flinging the blood that was on the blade onto the ground just before I came all the way around and smacked the flat of the blade against the wolf's skull.

Really, I had no idea how I was doing what I was doing. I had never handled a gun in my life, let alone a spear, but the way I was moving felt... right. As if I had been meant to do this for my entire life. As the wolve's head snapped to the side with so much force that I heard the crack of snapping bone and the rest of his body soon followed his compatriot over the bridge, I looked back to Eir to study her a bit closer.

An ethereal glowing light seemed to surround her form as she sang out note after clear note, seeming to draw the breath required for the sustained music out of nowhere. She never paused for breath as she belted out the song that gave all of her fellow warriors such fervor and bravery in combat, and her beauty was never marred by even a token look of effort upon her face. She clasped her hands over the pommel of her long sword and rested the tip of the blade against the ground, much in the same way that you would see a knight do if they were about to lay him to rest. The overall effect was that of indescribable beauty, and my eyes went wide behind my helm as my mission was momentarily forgotten in favor of viewing this fallen goddess.

I got so caught up in staring at her that I didn't notice the presence of the Fenrir until a raptor's shriek caused me to turn around to the sight of him getting tackled off of the bridge by my Griffin friend. His large talons gripped the snarling wolf by the shoulders as his razor-sharp beak tore into its throat and ripped out the monster's windpipe. He immediately spat out the gore and let the wolf drop to the abyss below before he circled back around and landed on the bridge next to me. "Blegh, zose beasts taste like Gammelfleisch. Zey did not hurt you, frauline?" he asked as he watched the wolves, who were slowly, but surely, beginning to be pushed back. blood and bits of gore coated his feathers, especially around his wings where the bladed guards had obviously seen use. His talons were covered by gauntlets with half-foot long, serrated blades that acted like extensions to his talons, which were coated in bits of gore and dripping what I now noticed was completely black blood. 

"N-no, I'm good. Thanks for the save," I responded as I turned back to the battle myself, surveying the damage that was being done. For the most part, the wolves seemed to be utterly dominated in the fight, the Valkyrie's flight advantage combined with the high altitude serving as a perfect place for the battle to take place. I began to understand why the winged women had chosen to build Valhalla in the location they had, despite the fact that it seemed very inconvenient to reach if you didn't have wings. In the event of a battle, the bridge served as a natural choke point for any land-based enemies, and a simple crippling of the wings for any airborne army would result in sure-fire death upon reaching the ground. It was the perfect defensible position, and the Valkyries could easily retreat should, for any reason, they needed to abandon the fortress.

The Griffin beside me must have noticed my impressed expression, as a squawking chuckle escaped his lips as he flexed his wings, shaking off a bit of the blood. "You Frauen fight with ein ferocity equal to any Greifgeschwader. It ez no vonder zat you haff not been defeated by zese Ungeheuer, zese monsters," Blitz confided as I listened in, nodding in shocked awe at the battle and still listening to the singing going on behind me. He was right, there was no question that the ferocity of my new sisters-in-arms was unmatched and their skill seemed to be unbelievable. Still, something in the way that the base of my skull was still lightly buzzing the same way that it had in the ambassador's room told me that the worse was yet to come.

"Still, dude, this seems a bit too easy. Even Freya was freaked out by these guys, and we're just trashing them. Is this really the best they can get?" I asked as I tightened my grip on my spear, feeling like I might have just jinxed the whole thing. Blitz looked at me in surprise as he considered the information before he turned back to the army and narrowed his eyes, far more practiced skills than my own analyzing the nuances of the battle. I busied myself with watching Freya and her eldest daughter, Brynhildr, tearing through the Fenrir ranks with a choreographed ease that could only have come from familiarity and much, much practice. 

"You are correct, Frauline... Zey do not seem to be vorking too hard at getting srough... almost like..." his eyes narrowed further as I looked over at him, and I nearly shit my pants when his look of calm analysis faded into one of shock... and fear. "Zey are buying time, Frauline Skuld. Zey are not intelligent enough to be doing zis. I haff never seen any Fenrir do more zan charge like dumb beasts. Somesing is wery wrong," Stahlfeader finished just as a howl sounded out from the rear of the pack that was charging the bridge, bringing the fighting to a screeching halt and even disrupting the song that Eir was singing as the entire cavern shook. Loose rocks fell from the ceiling as the howl transformed into a roar and the last notes of the interrupted melody fell away from the youngest Princess's lips, causing her crystalline blue eyes to open and stare at the origin of the roar along with every living being in the room. 

A path cleared in the center of the ranks as the largest wolf that I had ever seen, larger by at least full ten feet than even largest of the Fenrir, which could stand at around nine feet tall. Its body seemed to rise from the ground through a dark pool of not-light. That was the best way to describe it, not as darkness, but as the complete absence of any form of light. The strange thing about this wolf was not its size, no, but rather it was the fact that its coat was composed of the same not-light as the portal that it had come out of and shadows seemed to roll off of it, giving the beast a very non-substantial appearance. As if it were merely a hallucination of the worst possible kind. Its teeth, however, seemed to be very much solid and were bared in a feral snarl as foam frothed at the corners of its mouth. Its eyes were a sickly green color that seemed to glow, impossibly, with a black aura around the edges as it stalked forward towards the bridge and, more importantly, towards me. 

"Mein gott... a Garmr," Blitz whispered, awestruck, as he beheld the absolute impossibility that stood before him, bearing down on him. "But... zose must be summoned from Tartarus! Zey are ze vorst creations of Nightmare Moon! Only a wery powerful bösen Zauberer could conjure ein monstrosity...Ze Fenrir could not do zis..." He sounded increasingly fearful as the convenient exposition he was spouting continued, and I could kind of comprehend why through the terror that I was currently working through. If the Fenrir could not do this, and they had been buying time for something, that meant that someone with a lot of power and brains was working with them, and anyone who could conjure up such a powerful monster from what I gathered to be the Equestrian equivalent of Hell was not someone that I really wanted to have as an enemy. The stare off between the Garmr versus Blitz and myself seemed to last for an eternity, in which a cold sweat broke out all over my body and my knees began doing their best attempt at the Charleston. 

Of course, as all calms before a storm are broken, this one was. By the single stupidest decision I have ever seen in my life. Brynhildr, who had been standing at the far end of the bridge with her mother, staring at the beast, decided that it would be a good idea to raise her sword and scream for the troops to attack the beast, which warranted both her and Freya a giant paw striking them and sending them tumbling into the abyss. 

Like I said, stupid decision.

Two other Valkyries immediately dived after their princess and queen as the rest of them refocused their efforts, half engaging the remaining few hundred Fenrir that had survived the initial gauntlet of death that they had created while the other hald threw everything they could at the shadow-wolf that seemed to dominate the battlefield. Their attacks served no purpose at all as the wolf refocused its eyes on me, causing me to actually lose control of my bladder as the sickly green, evil-looking eyes focused directly on me and seemed to stare into my soul. I actually saw my life flash before my eyes as it took the first step towards me, most of which I regretted immensely, before a strange sense of calm seemed to wash over me and a familiar voice rang out in my head. 

It was the same voice from my memory, the Voice of Odin, and it said, "My spear, Gungnir. It is the key to triumph in this battle. Focus, allow thyself to sense the Holy Power surrounding thee, and fill Gungnir with that power!"

Of course, I had absolutely no idea what this batshit-insane, one-eyed god who had whisked me away into the land of crazy monsters and so-far-no-ponies was talking about, but I figured that he wouldn't want his chess piece to die, so he wouldn't give me bad advice. I walked forward, away from Eir and Blitz, and towards the unholy monster of death and destruction at the other end of the bridge with a not-so-small twinge of runlikeabitch coming into my head. I closed my eyes even as I heard Blitz began to squawk at me and Eir began to whimper, ignored the sound of the massive wolf stalking towards me, and simply focused on sensing the power that my sponsor said was there. It wasn't even a moment later that I felt it, the residual energy from the Battle Song that had been interrupted, and willed it to come into me and flow into the spear in my hand. It was not a spell, not properly, so there was no molding or changing of the raw power contained within the energy, simply the desire for it to gather. I felt it began to do just that, bending to my will as Gungnir began to feel warm, then hot, then scalding in my grip. Despite this, I did not let go as it began to literally vibrate with energy. I felt the two around me go silent more than I heard it, and I opened my eyes to see that the spear in my hand was glowing extremely brightly with a golden light that cast everything around me into a pallet of soft yellows and dull oranges. I hefted it up in a one-handed grip, like I had seen the javelin throwers do in the Olympics, and took aim at the Garmr that was now loping at an impressive speed down the bridge towards me, ignoring the potshots from the Valkyries that were surrounding him. 

"Get back, Valkyries!" I shouted in the same language that Eir used to sing and cast her spells, the mere power of those words, even though they were not a spell, forcing them to back away from the beast. I put all my strength and skill, though the latter was somewhat lacking, into the greatest throw that I have ever accomplished. Some unseen force guided my hand as I threw the still-glowing spear, causing it to fly true straight between the eyes of the beast. Compared to the Garmr my spear was a tiny thing, but the holy energy that I had channeled into the thing was so powerful that it actually caused the beast to stop dead in its tracks and actually take a few thundering steps back. 

The entire battle seemed to freeze once again as the Fenrir looked up to the thing that they had trusted to rid them of the witch and her protector and to ensure their victory with confusion and horror as it was stopped, while the Valkyries hoped against hope that a miracle could occur. The wish of the Valkyries was granted, much to my satisfaction, as the shadows that rolled off of the Garmr's coat lessened bit by bit until they stopped completely. The golden light that was in my spear bled into the wolf, slowly changing its not-light coat into pure golden sunlight that quickly became unbearable to look at. I shielded my eyes as the beast let loose with a mighty howl just before it literally exploded, throwing those in the air for a loop as the shockwave rippled out from it and tossing those who weren't prepared for it on the ground completely off their feet, such as myself and most of the Fenrir. In fact, such was the force of the explosion that I was blasted off of the bridge and into the open air.

The last thing I remember before losing all consciousness was watching my spear fall to the bridge, embedding itself blade-first into the stone, then the sight of both brown and white wings taking to the sky and diving towards me.









The void surrounded me, and I was drifting formless through it. Suddenly, a pair of eyes that were lit with the same sickly green glow that the Garmr had possessed appeared before me, surrounded me even as they gazed directly at me, and a voice came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Even though I didn't have a body, the sound of the voice made my skin crawl and my initial instinct was to find the darkest, safest corner of the universe possible and hide from whoever owned such an evil tone. 

"Thou art an interesting Chess Piece for Odin, indeed," the voice said as the eyes narrowed in what seemed to be consideration. "Thou wert able to defeat my Garmr, and handled thyself quite well for thine first combat. Perhaps he hast found himself a knight. But know this, mortal. He might be king, and thou might be a knight, but I am a Queen. And the Queen ist the most powerful piece on the board. I look forward to when next we meet, Skuld..."







I gasped and shot up in the bed as I grabbed the arm of the person who currently had her hand on my wrist. Eir Holybell looked startled to begin with, her eyes widening and her wings fluffing out a bit at the sudden movement, before she smiled and placed her free hand over my own. "It's okay, Skuld. It's been three days. The battle's over. You granted us victory," she assured me in the most accurate imitation of Fluttershy attending to a wounded animal that I have ever bore witness to. My labored breathing, which was more from the unnatural voice in my... nightmare? Vision? Whatever the case, it calmed down as soon as the voice reached my ears. I confess that I didn't pay much attention to what she said, though that was mostly due to the fact that I was now looking around and checking for any more strange, glowing eyes.

I slowly uncurled my six digits, which I still found unbelievably cool even with the extra knuckle, from her wrist as she patted it before turning to one of the other beds, where a curtain was drawn around it and two armed guards stood at attention. They didn't even pass Eir a cursory glance as she rolled back the curtain and revealed her mother, who had one of her coal-black wings in a cast while she read a novel with a pair of ancient reading glasses. "Mother, you said you wanted to know if Skuld awoke," she said quietly with a quick nod of her head, causing Freya to look up from the book and at her daughter before turning that piercing cerulean gaze upon me. I bowed my head in respect out of instinct, she had that kind of natural authority that made you want to show her respect even if you didn't really know her, but she merely scoffed at the gesture. 

I looked up in confusion, and saw a very faint smile grace her stoic features as she folded the corner of her page and closed the book, which I saw was a well-worn copy Daring Do: The Legend of the Winged Sun Warriors. "So, from what my daughter and every one of my subjects that I've spoken to tells me, your heroic actions saved the battle after the arrival of that dreadful Garmr," she informed me, seeming to take slight amusement from the shocked expression on my face. "Yes, indeed. After me and my daughter were injured--she's asleep in the other bed, by the way--your display of god-like power moralized our troops and scared the hell out of those mutated mutts. The Fenrir ran with their tails tucked firmly between their legs. Your bravery saved us all. The women have begun calling you Skuld Godspear, which means that you officially have a title among us," she said as I floundered in trying to formulate the response that was proper for the situation. I hadn't been brave, I had been scared completely out of my mind and listened to the voices in my head about chucking what equated to a toothpick when compared to the massive size of the monster-wolf. The guards attached to the queen looked back with respect in their eyes and nodded at me, causing me to go further into shock as I realized that this woman wasn't bullshitting.

Let's get this straight: I'm not a hero. I was a guy, going to college, living his life, hoping to get a doctorate in quantum physics nearly 15 years down the line. I was intelligent, sure, but this? This was way, way out of my depth. So you'll understand when my reaction was a simple, if slightly inappropriate one when I realized the magnitude of my actions.

"Well, then... spank my ass and call me skippy. I guess I did save the day, huh?"

All four of the people around me, including Eir, tilted their heads and looked at me with utter confusion on their faces at the strange phrase, seeming to have been thrown for a loop by it. Freya was the first to recover after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, coughing into her hand and saying, "Indeed. Now, that brings us to our next order of business. Guards, if you will excuse us. I believe I can take care of myself for a few minutes." Her subjects looked like they were going to protest for all of a half-second before they acquiesced and gave Freya a salute that involved pressing their closed, left fist over their right breasts while extending their right wing and bowing their head. They marched out of the room and closed the door behind them in order to leave the trio in privacy.

The Queen's voice dropped low so that no curious guards could hear her words and said, "What I was saying in the ambassadors office still holds merit, even if we were interrupted by the Fenrir. You are not from either Vallhalla, nor Jotunheim. I know the names and faces of every Valkyrie born in the last 1,700 years, thanks to an excellent memory, and you are not one of them. Combined with your arrival just when the Fenrir show up in greater numbers than have been seen in many years, as well as the arrival of a Garmr, I am more than a little suspicious. You protected my daughter and saved my people, so I am in your debt, but if you do not tell me the truth about who you are and what your intentions are, I will not hesitate to call the guards back in here and have you summarily executed."

I gulped at the end of the speech, knowing that she meant every word, and considered my options. I was an absolutely horrible liar, and so far the physical transformation hadn't changed any of my core personality traits, so a straight-up lie was out of the window. Even half of the truth would sound so crazy that she'd likely disbelieve me, but the whole truth of what was going on was so crazy that nobody, not even a crazy person, could so thoroughly fabricate it. So, after a moment's hesitation and enduring stares of apprehension from both Eir and Freya, I finally let loose with what I was and how I came to be in the world that I found myself in. After a good fifteen minutes of explination where I told them everything all the way up to the vision with the eyes and the voice, though I left out bits such as the fact that I used to be a guy and that the one who had sent me here was freakin' ODIN, they were both staring at me with unreadable expressions.

Hey, I didn't know if these women hated all men,  and considering the fact that there were no men, I thought it best to keep that part a secret.

"Alright, I believe you," Freya said finally as she leaned back in her bed and let out an overwhelmed sigh, "if only because that is so insane that there is no author in the entire world who could possibly make up something so utterly ridiculous."

Somewhere in the multiverse, I just know that there's a fanfiction writer rubbing his hands together in glee as he cackles madly. I don't know how I know... I just know.

But I digress, as I let out a huge sigh of relief as she says those words instead of threatening to lock me up in an insane asylum. "You have no idea how good that is to hear, because I was starting to think that maybe I was just coo coo for Coco Puffs," I confided in her with a laugh, drawing a blank look that the queen quickly shook off in favor of a light chuckle of her own. A thought occurred to me as I she laughed, and I turned to her with a look of seriousness in what I assumed were my now-blue eyes. "So, uh, about the Fenrir. Blitz was telling me that they weren't smart enough to summon a Garmr or plan the way they did, and considering the whole vision... dream... thing that I had, I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that someone with some real bad juju--some powerful dark magic, sorry--is working with them," I said with a pointed look at the queen.

This time, it was Eir that spoke up. "Yes, which is another thing that we must discuss with you," she asserted, her voice taking on a firm edge for the first time since I had met her. Which, granted, wasn't such a long time, but it was still mildly surprising considering who it was coming from. "When my mother determined you were not a threat, I was promised a chance to discuss my plan with you. The Fenrir have grown far more brazen and frequent with their attacks, and this most recent one was an unprecedented display of tactical thinking and magical power. Until a few weeks back, they have never directly assaulted the Holy Mages, choosing instead to slam themselves against the wall of our Elitstyrka. Within those few weeks, we have lost over 13 of my sisters. Something is directing these beasts, and if we do not find the source, Valhalla will fall, and with it the rest of Equis," she said so vehemently that I couldn't help but to be swept up by her passion, fearing for the destiny of a world that wasn't even mine! "I understand that you do not owe this world anything, and that what I ask is very dangerous, but I beg of you, please, help me find who is responsible for this blight."

Allow me to reiterate: I. Am. Not. A. Hero. I very seriously considered laughing in this girl's face, no matter how cute I thought she was. She was seriously asking me, a nobody alien to her world, to go on a quest to save it from destruction? It was absurd, it was insane! It was...

Something more important than anything I had ever dreamed about doing.

I did want to do good in the world that I came from, but it was so far gone that I always thought that nothing I ever did would be good enough, that I would be swinging at shadows for my entire life if I tried to fight injustice there. But here, here was a solid, tangible enemy that I could fight, that would fight back with physical blows. It was more real than anything I had ever experienced back in my world, and the more I thought about it, the more I found myself warming to the prospect. 

"Alright, Eir, but just so you know," I said while I leaned forward and spoke as if I was confiding a secret, "I'm gonna have to hog all the action on this little field trip."

"Eef I leave any for ze Frauline, zat is," a familiar, screeching voice called out from the doorway, where two frazzled-looking guards winced apologetically at their queen as the Griffin walked into the room. "Zese monsters haff been raiding ze villages of mein Stamm for ze same amount of time zat you haff been losing your heiligen Könige, your Holy Mages, Eure Hoheit," he informed the three of us as he came to a stop on the other side of my bed from Eir, offering me that weird beak smile that he somehow managed to pull off. "Ze vay I see zis, I can eizer go alone to face zis... Dark Mage, or I can go wiz Frau Godspear und Prinzessin Holybell. I sink mein chances are better wiz zem, ja?" Blitz said with a coyness to his tone that suggested he knew that he was going to get his way, if no other reason than because Freya couldn't really stop him from going. 

Freya looked between the three of us for a moment, considering what was being proposed, and nodded in assent with the faintest ghost of a sad smile upon her lips. "So be it," she said with a finality. "Skuld Godspear, Eir Holybell, and Blitz Stahlfeader, you three are tasked with finding whomever is responsible for the Fenrir's recent growth in intelligence and numbers, and put a swift end to their machinations. Now that we've gotten that out of the way," she slowly slid into a non-chalant tone as she retrieved her Daring Do novel and began reading once more, acting as if she was uninterested in her next sentence, "would you like to see your airship?"

I froze when I heard the last word, my eyes brimming with tears of joy as I looked up and uttered a silent thank you to whatever merciful god was listening that my biggest fantasy was about to come true.

Airships, ahoy!