The Valkyrie's Hunt - COMPLETE

Chapter 12. Revelations

The door to Mr Tam's office slid closed behind her as Luci heard Tam tell his once lost, now found, love that the harder task was still ahead of her.

"You must tell your brother, Ana," his voice followed the Valkyrie down the hall, "it is he who may struggle with the truth of the matter."

Luci wasn't so sure that Robin would have as much trouble as the ex-god thought after his time as part of a siren's harem, but she'd not seen him to ask his opinions on having a werewolf as family. And that level of emotional heavy lifting was above her pay grade. She had the second shield, its stone shining in her sister's blood red, and two more to find.

Back at the Lagoon, Luci gave Ella the message from Mr Tam, presumably requesting Robin's presence at Inanna's, and took a short nap to give her body a chance to heal a little more from the damage sustained at the jotuns' giant hands.

Luci woke to a cool body next to her in the silken sheets of her bed, humming quietly.

"Hey Ella."

"Hey yourself." The siren replied, and lifted her hand to run soft fingers across Luci's cheek. Luci clasped Ella's hand in her own warm palm and held the coolness against her skin, resting for a moment in the peace evoked by the music and the gentle glow of the watery mistress before turning to meet her eyes, deeper than the ocean.

Ella smiled and leaned in gently, tenderly, to place a soft kiss upon Luci's lips before slipping away.

Luci watched her leave, tempted, but not tempted enough for an early grave.

After several hundred years, it still seemed early.

And then she remembered, the grave, or at least the land beyond it, was precisely where she was journeying to today.

***

Robin had accompanied Luci back to the starlit club and headed upstairs as Tammuz led Luci down into the basement level, and gestured her toward a downward sloping passageway where the walls grew smooth and dark, glowing as though they were obsidian lit by fire from deep within. Luci took one last look at Tammuz and he gestured crossed fingers at him with a smile, a strangely out of place symbol which Luci could only decide was something he'd picked up from his time on Midgard. Shrugging she turned toward the darkness and began her descent as Tammuz started his ritual chanting to transform this path into one that would go beyond the stone and into the void between the worlds, Ginnungagap.

Luci was on the path to Hel.

It was a long road, and the chanting vibrated along underneath her feet as reality shifted and blurred into thick, dark, mists, and time became, well, timeless.

***

Luci has no idea how long she has been walking for, the road to Hel is eternal and winding, spiral after spiral through the depths of Ginnungagap, the song of the runes Woden didn't catch echoing in her ears, both intangible and deafening at once. The thick darkness makes the infinite space feel cloyingly close, like a fog Luci cannot see, endless, empty, and immediate.

The now stretches on.

Until.

There, here, is a tall figure, a giantess in her own right towering over the Valkyrie, clad in black leather armour with waves of void dark hair spiralling over her shoulders. Her great black dog companion is growling. Between them there is no way forward.

"Mordgud, hail and well met." Luci offers the greeting.

"Not for you, Shieldmaiden." the words resonating in her skull, bones, the very stone of the path itself rumbling with the growls, or is it the echo of Tammuz's chanting? Luci doesn't know.

"I am here to catch a thief."

"No, you are not." Mordgud will not be moved. "This is not your path. And that is not why you have come."

Luci hates riddles. Still hates riddles. And remembers in that timeless moment the words of the three sisters;

"What was lost, now is hidden, what is hidden, must be found, her wings will fly again."

Mordgud's voice continues the prediction;

"And you are merely a pawn, seeking the crown."

Ginnangagup smells of the Casino's incense and Luci is shaking her head to clear the memory which is happening now.

"I don't understand." She is faltering, her certainty lost in the face of this barrier.

"The thief was no thief, but a torch to light your way to your Queen. Her treasure, Hnoss."

"Freya's daughter?" Luci asks, surprise mingles with acceptance of that which was obvious.

"Yes." Mordgud knows, she is seeing Hnoss on the road now, before Luci came. And she knows that Freya is kept safe in Helheim, and now Luci knows it too, seeing through Mordgud's knowing outside of time and space, in the void as she is and always must be.

"But..." Luci also, finally, knows something she could not have known. Her shield is still in Asgard. "But why?"

Mordgud's eyes hold the truth, the valkyrie's must have been willing to believe that Luci had betrayed them, else they would have come together and laid waste to the land seeking revenge. By leaving Luci's shield for the others to find, Hnoss ensured that they would believe Luci was fixing her own mistake, much as Loki was sent to do so many times before.

Luci's heart is breaking. To have such deception believed of her is too much for a being forged in love and desire, and tempered in battle and sisterhood. Too much for a shieldmaiden of Freya's line.

"Go back." Mordgud says. "This was never your quest, and now you know it. This is no path for the living, Helheim will not, cannot, let you enter alive."

Mordgud is holding out a final shield, emerald green stone like a millpond at midnight in the lightlessness of the void. Luci is turning, three shields in her pockets, and a heart full of pain.

There is one more thing that must be done, she supposes, for that which is lost, now hidden, to be found again.

For she who is hidden to be returned home again.

The path back is eternal, and takes no time at all.