Arc 2, Chapter 15: Valkyries

  The warmth of the tavern pressed against him, but the weight of the question remained.

  *Why are Valkyries here?*

  Elite warriors didn't garrison backwater villages. They answered to the crown directly, stationed only where strategic necessity demanded their presence. Yet three of them sat across from him, armor the color of old blood catching firelight, eyes that had witnessed horrors he could only read about.

  The younger one spoke first.

  "Lira." She pressed a hand against her chest, fingers bearing the calluses of someone who had spent years gripping steel. Hair the color of warm honey spilled past pauldrons forged from metal that seemed to hold the memory of flames. Her smile carried genuine warmth — an unexpected quality against the battle-scarred plates encasing her form. "That's Thea."

  The woman beside her offered a careful nod. Dark hair pulled back in a knot tight enough to suggest discipline bordering on punishment. Features that might have held beauty if they weren't arranged into an expression of constant watchfulness — the face of someone who had learned that letting down one's guard invited consequences. The same deep red armor covered her frame, though she wore it like a sentence rather than an honor.

  "And this—" Lira tilted her head toward the scarred woman who had claimed the seat across from Ash, "—is Sigrid. She speaks for us. Usually before anyone asks her to."

  Sigrid offered no denial. A scar carved a pale path from her temple to her jaw, tugging one corner of her mouth into an expression caught between scowl and warning. Hair the color of iron filings cropped close against her skull. Eyes like wet slate — flat, grey, holding the weight of too many winters and not enough springs.

  She lowered herself into her chair the way a predator settles into tall grass. Every angle measured. Every exit noted. Every soul in the room weighed and catalogued.

  "We're grateful." The words ground out of her throat like stone against stone.

  "Most folk suddenly recall urgent matters elsewhere when they see us coming."

  He gave her nothing in return. Kept his attention on his plate. Let the silence stretch into an invitation she could fill however she wished.

  Food arrived for them without anyone placing an order. The waitress carried the plates with the careful haste of someone handling objects that might explode — dishes set down quickly, retreat executed faster. Sigrid either failed to notice or had stopped caring about such reactions long ago.

  Quiet descended over their table. Metal scraped against ceramic. The noise of the tavern pressed inward from all directions — conversations at other tables had resumed their rhythm, though softer than before. Eyes found excuses to look elsewhere while remaining keenly aware of the blood-armored women who had invaded their ordinary evening.

  Sigrid shattered the stillness.

  "Nowhere place, this village." She spoke around mouthfuls, her manner suggesting that observation was simply how her mind worked—constant assessment, constant narration.

  "The kind of settlement where nothing ever happens. Until it does."

  Lira made a quiet sound of agreement. Thea kept her focus fixed on her meal, offering nothing.

  "We're here because one of our units stopped answering." Sigrid's words carried no special weight, but the air around their table changed. Her companions had ceased eating. "They were running patterns through the second layer of the Abyss. Routine work. Though nothing is truly routine when you're breathing air thick enough to chew."

  The second layer. Ash had consumed texts about that place in a life that felt like someone else's dream. A wound in the world's fabric that had refused to close after the ancient war. Rings descending into darkness, each one more saturated with wrongness than the last. The kind of place that consumed the unprepared and seldom bothered returning what it swallowed.

  "House Valendris reached out to us for assistance."

  His hand stopped between the table and his mouth.

  "House Valendris reached out?"

  The words escaped before caution could catch them. Sigrid's slate-colored eyes found his, and he watched interest awaken behind them. Calculation beginning.

  "You have some familiarity with them?"

  He set his hand down. Placed it flat against the wood. Kept his expression arranged into neutrality through will alone.

  "I've encountered the name. Old blood. Practitioners of the darker paths."

  Sigrid held his gaze past the point of comfort. Then she shifted her shoulders — a dismissive motion that scraped her pauldrons together with the sound of grinding bone.

  "Their blood runs differently than ours. Whatever flows through their veins lets them wade through filth that would empty my warriors' lungs in half a morning." She knocked her fist against her breastplate. The metal answered with the dull voice of quality steel. "You know what this armor demands in payment? Enough coin to purchase this entire village and the dirt it squats on. And still it barely keeps the deeper rings from killing us inside a few hours."

  He filed the information away. Added it to the growing collection of questions lacking answers.

  *What is my house doing in that wound? Why did they need the Valkyries? What silenced the unit that went looking?*

  "You carry dark mana."

  Sigrid's observation cut through his thoughts — a pronouncement rather than a question, delivered with the certainty of someone who had learned to read magic users the way hunters read spoor.

  His shoulders tightened. The instinctive preparation for judgment. For disgust. For the careful distance that usually followed such identification.

  "That doesn't concern us." Sigrid's scarred mouth bent into an expression approaching dark humor. "Our orders flow from the Queen. What the King believes, what the old one preaches from his pulpit — none of it touches us."

  "Sigrid." Thea spoke quietly. Almost softly. "Please. The Father deserves respect."

  "Respect." Sigrid's expression soured. "A thousand years drawing breath, and all he's mastered is tightening his fist. The King hears no other voice. Considers no other view. And the Queen—"

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Her teeth came together. Air hissed through her nose. When she resumed, her tone had flattened into careful neutrality.

  "The heroes treat the Princess without care."

  The Princess.

  His chest tightened. A reaction he couldn't quite suppress, couldn't quite conceal. His fingers twitched against the table's scarred surface.

  Sigrid continued talking. Matters of authority. Boundaries of jurisdiction. The friction between those sworn to the crown and those who served only themselves.

  Her words flowed past without finding purchase.

  *What business occupies my house? What happened during my absence? Should I ask—*

  Glass exploded against stone.

  The sound tore through the tavern's murmur like a blade through silk. Conversations died. Movement ceased. Every face in the room turned toward the source.

  Two figures stood near the entrance.

  Everything about them announced what they were before words could — that unconscious entitlement, that assumption of significance woven through stance and expression. The taller one wore hair the color of old rust, face arranged into wounded displeasure. His companion stood shorter, broader, built like someone who had never learned that mass alone solved nothing.

  The waitress who had served them stood before them. Her hands had risen in the timeless gesture of appeasement. Shattered glass glittered at her feet like scattered tears.

  "Please, sirs." Her words shook. "Every seat is occupied. There's no space—"

  "No space?" The tall one made a sound that might have been laughter in a different life. "Do you understand who you're addressing?"

  "We carry the title of heroes." The broad one stepped forward. The waitress stepped back. "We hold documentation bearing the Father's own seal. We enter where we wish. We sit where we please."

  Power gathered at the edge of Ash's vision.

  Dense and dark, bleeding from the woman seated across from him.

  He shifted his attention to Sigrid.

  Her features had gone still. Past anger, into rage frozen before it could burn. The air around her trembled with pressure that had nothing to do with temperature.

  The cup before him began to shiver.

  Every surface in the establishment that held metal or glass. Blades rattled against ceramic. Vessels chattered in their hollows. A bottle behind the counter crept toward the edge of its shelf.

  Objects throughout the room began to rise. Knives. Forks. Drinking cups. All lifting from their resting places, suspended in currents of mana the color of fresh blood — dark, visceral, pulsing with Sigrid's barely leashed fury.

  "Sigrid." Lira's words came tight. Controlled. "Your power is showing."

  The rising stopped. Objects settled. The blood-dark haze surrounding Sigrid faded to a less visible shimmer, though her jaw remained clenched hard enough to crack bone.

  Near the entrance, the situation worsened.

  "Please." Tears threatened to spill. "I cannot — there's nowhere—"

  The tall hero's arm moved.

  The crack of palm against cheek rang through the silence. The waitress stumbled backward, catching herself against a table occupied by farmers too frightened to intervene.

  Then the hero's steel cleared its sheath.

  Mana coated the blade in an instant — some skill activating, power channeled through whatever system governed their abilities. The weapon hummed with energy that made his teeth ache.

  "Perhaps you require instruction in proper hospitality."

  The sword rose.

  The waitress screamed.

  Sigrid disappeared.

  In one heartbeat, she occupied the chair across from him. Next, she stood between the hero and his intended victim. Her bare palm intercepted the descending blade — wrapped around the edge and held it there, power meeting power, flesh gripping steel that should have parted her fingers from her hand.

  The hero's eyes went wide.

  Mana, the color of spilled life, blazed along Sigrid's forearm. The energy coating his weapon flickered. Dimmed. Died — drained away by whatever technique she employed, absorbed like water into cracked earth.

  Her grip twisted.

  The hero's wrist bent at an angle nature never intended. His fingers spasmed open. The sword clattered against stone.

  Sigrid's free hand found his throat.

  She lifted him clear of the ground — a feat that should have been impossible given their relative sizes, but rage had its own physics — and threw.

  The hero crossed the tavern in a graceless arc. Tables scattered. Chairs exploded into kindling. He met the far wall with enough impact to crack plaster and embed his sprawled shape in the surface.

  He did not rise.

  "Ah." Lira's words carried the exhaustion of long familiarity. "Once more."

  Thea was already moving. She crossed to the entrance in three efficient strides, positioning herself to block the exit. The remaining hero — the one who hadn't drawn his weapon — found himself suddenly trapped between Sigrid's fury and Thea's quiet competence.

  "You dare!" His words cracked. Fear wrestling with outrage. "The Father himself protects us! You have no authority—"

  "Under the Queen's law." Sigrid cut through his protest. "Those who wield power against common folk forfeit their protections."

  She stepped toward him. Each footfall deliberate. Final.

  "You stand accused. In our Queen's name."

  The hero's expression cycled through responses — anger, disbelief, calculation. His gaze swept the room, hunting for options, finding none.

  Then it found Ash.

  His face shifted. Desperation condensing into a decision.

  He lunged.

  Ash registered the movement a fraction of a heartbeat before the hero's arm closed around his throat. Felt his body wrenched backward — chair toppling, frame hauled against the hero's chest like salvage.

  Cold metal kissed his neck. A blade he hadn't seen him draw. Power flickered along its edge — weaker than his companion's sword, but sufficient to part flesh without effort.

  "Nobody moves!" Higher registers now. Frantic. Unstable. "I'll open him up! Your boyfriend dies if anyone twitches!"

  Boyfriend. The word landed strangely against his ears. Foreign. Displaced.

  The three Valkyries had frozen. Lira's hand hovered near her weapon. Thea's stance had shifted into a coiled readiness. Sigrid's eyes blazed with rage held barely in check.

  The blade pressed deeper. He felt its edge indent the skin above his pulse.

  The hero's breath came fast. Shallow. The panic of a cornered animal.

  But he had miscalculated.

  He believed Ash needed saving.

  Ash shifted his weight — a subtle adjustment that resembled fear but served as preparation.

  The hero's attention remained fixed on the Valkyries. On the visible threat. He had dismissed Ash entirely — merely another body to hide behind, merely another tool to purchase time.

  Ash moved.

  His elbow drove backward into the soft tissue beneath the hero's ribs. Air exploded from the man's lungs. The grip on Ash's throat loosened — a fraction, a heartbeat — enough.

  He twisted free. His hand shot up and caught the hero's weapon arm, wrenching the blade away from his neck. His other hand locked around the man's wrist.

  One sharp wrench. The hero's fingers spasmed open. The blade clattered to the floor, ringing against stone.

  Dark mana pooled in Ash's palm. He struck the side of the hero's skull — precise, contained, power condensed into the point of impact. The man's eyes rolled back. His body went limp, folding to the sawdust-covered floor like a puppet with severed strings.

  Silence reclaimed the tavern.

  The three Valkyries closed the distance in swift strides.

  "Are you harmed?" Lira reached him first, warmth evident even through concern. "Did his blade find you?"

  "This is our fault." Genuine distress colored Thea's words. "Our presence invited this—"

  "Remove them." Sigrid's command sliced through the apologies. She stabbed a finger toward the two unconscious heroes. "Drag this refuse out before I forget our Queen prefers prisoners to corpses."

  Lira and Thea moved to comply — each seizing one of the fallen, hauling them toward the entrance with the efficiency of long practice.

  Sigrid lingered.

  Her slate-grey eyes studied him with fresh interest. Fresh assessment. The kind of evaluation that followed watching someone reveal abilities they had kept concealed.

  "Dark mana." Observation, not accusation. "You handled that well."

  He offered nothing in return.

  She held his gaze a moment longer. Then she turned, following her companions through the door, leaving the tavern to gather the fragments of an evening that had shattered.

  The door swung closed behind them.

  Quiet settled over the room like dust after a cave-in. Gradually, voices returned. Motion resumed. The ordinary rhythm of existence reasserted itself around the extraordinary event that had disrupted it.

  He righted his chair.

  Sat down.

  Looked at his half-finished meal.

  *The Princess. The Abyss. A missing unit. My house reaching out for assistance.*

  Questions accumulated like snow in deep winter. Each one adding weight to what he already carried.

  Outside, the grey afternoon had begun surrendering to dusk. Shadows stretched longer through windows that needed cleaning. The tavern's warmth pressed against him, but failed to reach the cold settling behind his ribs.

  Tomorrow, he would walk into a cave with three strangers who believed they understood this world.

  Tonight, he would sit with questions that had no answers.

  He retrieved his fork.

  Continued eating.

  The food had gone cold.