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// Humans, in my Equestria? Not likely! 
// Story: Valhalla? 
// by Kumei 
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Sigfrid liked axes. Like, really liked. In fact, one could go so far as to say that if he was any more in love with axes, he'd have found a way to animate them in horrible axe-golems and he'd just rule a village of them, but of course he's never thought about that on long, uneventful days when there weren't any raids going on, and the metal-smith wouldn't let him in the forge that day or let him buy another whetstone. That would be absurd. No really, he doesn't. Probably. Anyway, if there was one thing he loved besides his family and mead and gallons and gallons of freshly spilled blood, it would be gallons and gallons of spilled blood! Or maybe not so much the blood, but making it was plenty enjoyable by him and he'd often work to such a level of excitement as to single-handedly row the ship across the channel to the next raiding location, or back from in some cases. They made terrible time, when this happened, and his fellow warriors often convinced him pretty quickly that he needed help, at least two other people rowing they'd say, and he'd finally cave and accept their assistance. Yes, Sigfrid sure loved violence and the instruments therein. But not as much as his family, he'll be sure to remind you.

In any case, one night during a feast celebrating and simultaneously wishing luck for the next settlement raid, the man found himself alone, out in the cool night air. He remarked to himself that it was going to start getting cold again soon, and noticed with strange peculiarity that the full moon seemed to be ringed by four bright stars, and it seemed to have a dark figure embedded in its surface. Sigfrid blinked quickly, and found nothing out of the ordinary, so he decided it must be his imagination, that it was surely just the copious amounts of mead he'd had already, and walked back into the Great Hall to rejoin the festivities with a great smile. In but a fortnight, they'd have supplies aplenty once again, and food nigh everlasting.





Just under a week later, Sigfrid and thirteen of his strongest warriors waited, scattered around a large settlement in a wooded area. All of them were waiting, anticipation running high as they looked on at the town in the glowing light of the moon. Waiting impatiently and excitedly. Waiting for the signal they had all come to recognize as the single most terrifying thing to hear in the dead of night in their warm beds, the signal which lead the charge in the field, and simultaneously alerted the warriors of an invading force in the night. Eventually, after what seemed to be an eternity after the last flickering candles light was extinguished in the last house, Sigfrid grinned. A great, wide, toothy grin that belied his battle-lust. He grinned, raised his enormous great axe and began spinning it in a circle above his head with one hand, while a low, slow roar began to rumble in his chest, gradually growing in pitch and volume as his axe simultaneously whistled and whined through the newly split air. Still roaring, ever louder, he charged forward out of the woods with a crash as one of the medium sized trees fell to the ground. The signal given, thirteen additional voices lent themselves to the cool, still night, seemingly ever louder, as the invaders charged inward towards the center of the village. Some men and women got right to work, storming through wooden houses and relieving the inhabitants of their lives, while others ignited their torches to burn some of the larger and less residential buildings. Sigfrid himself, finally returning his breath, got to work hacking at buildings and any of the bleary-eyed defenders who came stumbling out from the guard barracks alike, with the apparent ease which a hot sword might cleave through a ceremonial banner pulled taut. 

After a few minutes, or perhaps an hour, it was always difficult to tell time during times like these for Sigfrid, he found himself in a very smoky great hall, squaring off against the village chief and his personal guard, well the half of them who were intact. The hall itself, in addition to the raging fire around them, had a number of splintered timber supports and shattered stone pillars, with blood and bodies everywhere. The three remaining guards stood at the far end of the hall, while a winded and battered Sigfrid stood in the center of the great building, blood flowing from a number of wounds in his arms and legs, and one particularly nasty looking gash in his abdomen. It wasn't the worst he'd had, but that didn't make it any less painful, which was evident enough to the opposing chief when the enormous bear of a man took a number of glancing hits before finishing off the guards.

Spattered in blood that was only mostly his, Sigfrid could only smile at the lone man he now towered over. "It's over for you, old man, taste my axe!" he cried, swinging mightily with both hands, cleaving clean through timber and stone, before he stepped forward and followed up with a backhanded swing upwards that sent the villages chief's head sailing into the air and left the humongous axe lodged firmly into the rafters of the great hall. After a couple of seconds of admiring the bloody fountainous stump on the slumping corpse before it collapsed under it's weight, he grunted and pulled at his axe, which the roof released with a series of cracks and groans, which Sigfrid noticed too late signaled the imminent collapse of the hall. Too many supports were damaged, whether by axe, hammer, or fire, to support the weight any longer. As the walls crumbled inward and the ceiling fell, Sigfrid could swear he heard a faint laughter coming from everywhere at once, as though taunting him, to which he responded by throwing his chest out and his head back and roaring at the top of his lungs.

In the town, most of the other raiders were finishing up the slaughter at the village when they began hearing loud cracking noises from the Great Hall, and they stopped to stare as the vaulted roof began to sag, and finally buckle downwards through the fire. A section of wall collapsed near the deep end of the hall, away from the entrance, and just before the roof finished caving in they saw a horrifying dark figure in the inferno, not unlike a man, if a man were near to eight feet tall and could howl like the foulest beast of Niflheim. They even saw that as the roof collapsed, a section seemed to stop for a second before falling to the ground, where the hellish figure was seen to be standing. It was a while before the terrible cry was no longer heard ringing through the settlement, and the proud warriors realized with a heavy heart that Sigfrid, who had singlehandedly defended his family from the great bear whose pelt he had worn when he was but ten winters old, with naught but a light throwing axe and a short sword, had perished. When the men and women had finally dug through the rubble, they found nothing but the charred corpses of the violated settlements chief and his guard, with no sign of their own chief save for carved gashes in the stone floor in places.





Sigfrid groaned. His whole body ached, and he was pretty sure that wet feeling wasn't just his sweat. After a few aeons of agony, he opened his eyes to be nearly blinded by a too-bright and colourful forest, no, orchard. The enormous man forced his eyes open again and struggled to his feet, using a nearby tree for support. After taking a few moments to catch his breath, he discovered that the sun was rising. He grimaced at the golden light shining over the horizon for a few moments before he picked up his axe, which had been laying next to him, and used it to aid in his shambling journey towards the sunrise, hoping that it would lead him towards somewhere familiar, perhaps a river or even the sea where he might get his bearings. After walking for a few minutes, he heard a few voices fade in, though he couldn't understand any of the words. He immediately became suspicious, he had no idea where he was or what he was near, who knew what these people were like, so he figured the best plan would be to assume they liked newcomers almost half as well as his village did, and attacked on sight. With a little effort, he found he could walk without the aid of his axe, so he could keep it at the ready for a counter-attack if needed. A few more minutes, and he could see a clearing, no, a path, and the voices seemed to be coming from the path, though he still couldn't understand their words, they must be speaking a different language than his own. He crept along more cautiously now, taking care to not step on fallen branches or anything of the sort, and keeping always in the shadows behind the trees, though this meant that he could not see his potential assailants just as they wouldn't see him.



Applejack, Twilight Sparkle, and Spike were walking along the trail, the orange and purple mares each with filled baskets of apples and talking jovially. After a short time, Spike belched a jet of flames that materialized into a scroll sealed with the Princess's mark, and as he read it out he revealed that contained within the scroll was two tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala, to which Applejack became very excited about, and began describing what she would do if she got to go. "An' we could finally fix that saggin' roof! And we could finally replace that saggin' plow for Big Mac! An' we could finally replace Granny Smith's saggin' hip!" And she went on, working herself up nearly to a frenzy over these tickets when suddenly a great brown and grey blur jumped out from behind a tree, screaming like a banshee, and in that fell swoop cleaved her orange head clean from her body, which fell with an audible thud to the ground, spraying a red jet across the dirt path. Twilight screamed and threw Spike to the ground as what appeared to be a great bear with a misshapen, bald face and no fur on it's arms or legs stood upright and readied a massive axe, turning it's attention to her. She screamed again and fired a bolt of force energy at the weapon, knocking it from the beast's great paws, and then encircling it in a purple bubble. Breathing a shaky breath of relief, adrenaline pumping and heart pounding, she hastily told Spike to send a letter to the Princess.



Dear Princess Celestia,
Please help! A monstrous creature has just murdered Applejack, I have it contained for now, it looks gravely wounded, and it keeps shouting things that sound like words, but I can't understand it! Please, Princess, I need you here right now!
Your distressed student,
Twilight Sparkle