Valkyrie lied perfectly still, dumbfounded by the emotional intensity of what she had so briefly experienced. Indeed, it had only been the space of about four seconds between Valkyrie being pinned to the ground by Flip and blasting him off with the Royal Scepter. Valkyrie recovered from her adrenaline – or at least, she tried very hard to – all while the light from the Scepter dissipated and while her eyes slowly readjusted to the dark of the cave. She sprang up the moment her eyes were sufficiently adjusted and her emotions were more-or-less under control, expecting to see Flip up and ready for a fight. To her relief, he was on his back and unconscious. He might very well be dead, but even if he wasn’t, it seemed obvious that he would not awake anytime in the recent future.
Her relief in this observation was suddenly disrupted by a deep echoing boom – like a roar, but less organic and more mechanical – coming from the door. For whatever reason, the Black Ocean behind it had not yet poured out to swallow up the shores of Light, but Valkyrie figured that it quite certainly would do so sooner rather than later. She had to stop it; whatever it took, she had to stop it. She ran again to resume her since-interrupted task of pushing the massive door closed.
At first, she despaired, as the door did little more than budge under every ounce of force she could possible apply to it. She grunted and groaned between sobs, partly because the task was so laborious and partly because it was so hopeless. So this was to be her fate? Following a duel with her own friend (that is, with one she thought to be a friend), she was to waste her remaining energy on that which could never be budged, prior to being swallowed up by a horror which she herself had released – her body crushed, her soul imprisoned, her life without a semblance of fulfillment? She might have sunk to her knees right there and sobbed out of sheer self-pity, were it not for the perpetual drive of her survival instinct. Burning tears streaking down her face, she pressed on.
She stopped sobbing for a moment upon realizing that her shoving was pushing the door further now. It seemed that she had got the momentum going, and the weight of the door was beginning to move itself. She now almost yelled between pushes, her determination rising exponentially. What was this? There remained barely more than a yard left to push the door, its momentum ever-increasing!
This realization produced two reactions in Valkyrie. The first, and much weaker of the two, was actually a reaction of disappointment and fear at the prospect of successfully closing the door. For she would, after doing so, simply return to the party – and her life as princess regent – as if nothing had happened. She would be living two grand lies. She almost preferred the idea of honestly bearing the punishment for her sins, as potentially horrid as that truth might be. The idiom, “A pleasant lie is better than a painful truth,” was decided by this part of Valkyrie to be ridiculous.
That reaction was quickly thrust aside by the second, more natural reaction of complete relief. She would not have to bear the punishment of her sins. She would not have to watch as this Nightmare Matter, unleashed by her own hand, swallowed Dreamvale whole. No one needed to know of the results of her misguided thrill-seeking and outright naïveté, and that was best. She could live under the shelter of a beautiful lie. Her sin would never find her out.
“Only a few inches now…”
YOU ARE READING
Nightmares
Fantasy“C’mon,” Flip said to Valkyrie somewhat mischievously (a mood which was wholly inappropriate for the situation at hand), “Let’s open it.” He was referring, of course, to the imposing wooden door which stood before them, some three times Valkyrie’s...
