Of Gods & Valkyries: Book Three

Off Realm

"There's more to being a warrior than killing. A true warrior — the best warrior — isn't cruel or mean. He doesn't claw an enemy who can't fight back. Where's the honor in that?"

― Erin Hunter, Forest of Secrets

– T A Y A H –

I stared at her back in awe as we climbed back through the fissure in the rock. Her blonde war braids moved over her gleaming cuirass of gold. Thanatos adorned and protected her–but it seemed like she needed it little. She was death incarnated. A relic curved around her torso giving her power all the more potency in combat. But I was all too content to smell the familiar scent of wild jasmine and pine on her furs now around my neck. I wouldn't miss mortal-made armour. We were adorned to end armies. But not even that may be enough. 

Yet she gave up her memories without a second thought.

It became ash in her hands. All of her past and her former-self. I knew it gnawed at her, followed her dreams–I would make this right. In the ways I was made a mercenary, a Demi-god, and daughter of flame–at the edge of my blade. 

The light cutting through the gap in the stone briefly blinded me as we scrapped our armour and weapons back the way we came. When Kára finally broke through the gap she turned back to me with a small smile. Ever the steely-eyed warrior that softened only for me. 

That was last thing I saw before a blast of pure power cracked through the air beyond and shattered the realm in half. 

My senses were overwhelmed. I knew enough to know the earth had moved around me, crushing me, stealing light–

My ears screeched. They sounded like bells ringing in my head. My vision was blurred or black. I tried moving my arms but they felt paralysed. Pinned. I grit my teeth and my eyes burned. But my immortality was a powerful thing.

I centralised it. Focused and honed myself into a singular point. My wounds over my body and face began rapidly healing–then I sent a blast of pure power out around my fists. Everything came back into focus very quickly.

Rubble, rock and mud was strewn everywhere. Like the gods themselves had punched a whole through this part of the realm–and they had. I staggered to my feet, unsteady from the surge of power I had used. So, I took the helm of Athena from my belt without hesitation–without room to doubt and I placed it upon my head.

The surge was unforgettable. All of Athena's lost power rushed my body. The immortality I had burnt through was a drop, the raging fire was a storm. I opened my eyes and I no longer swayed. 

But I saw nothing I ever could have dreamt of.

Fifty metres from the crater I emerged from was the abomination of pure relics. Of total power. Its fused, glowing arm around Kára's throat and Thanatos at her feet. 

Not again. Not again. I won't let this happen again–

"You should not deviate from the plans of Gods, daughter!" The words of many rang out across the space from the hell being.

But I was already running on pieces of pure flame, skipping through the air faster than I ever had. I did it on instinct–on pure need to move through the realm. My god-made sword was already tearing through the air in burning promise–

They vanished.

A beam of pure energy surrounding them both in the very same way Kára had shot down into my realm as a mortal. Now she was taken from it. But I was no mortal woman to be held at the whims of the gods. And I had travelled the realms once before.

I came down from the air and drove the sword into the ground where they were with a force of fire so strong the arc split the earth in two and melted the stone. I roared at the burnt circle they left behind. Athena's helm sung brighter. My power grew stronger. I tore an inferno around me like a cloak. Lost to the rage. But lethally calm to kill. It burned hotter still. Hotter than the fire that tore Anselle's face apart. Hotter than the flame God. I planted his sword into the ground and punched both fists into it.

Then I saw the blackness of Thanatos left behind.

"Tayah." Her voice murmured, like a dream. Distant in its memory. 

"–feel the pain as you feel your energy. Do not try to hold it. Let it flow through you just as you felt Thanatos. As you felt the helm of Athena. Never hold it." 

"You are stronger than you know." 

She had told me never to use two relics. But I was never one for following rules.

I picked up the relic of death incarnate and took the surge of a second God to the chest. 

Then to every fibre of my being. It was a blinding and endless stream of unchecked power. I dropped to my knees as it engulfed me. All of the pain and burning promise it had to tear me apart. I saw so many faces behind my eyes as I shut them to the immortality that raged inside me.

I saw the Assassin master mocking the deaths of my parents for scraps of iron. I gripped Thanatos tighter as the darkness spread through my arm. I heard Anselle's wild cackle as she drove my dagger through Kára's heart. I saw John and Kaden's faces in a flash and they were laughing in delight as I sung off-tune over a fire. The cold spread to my heart. I saw Yanu shaking me in a cold, dark hole where we were fated to die in a Kanton fighting pit. I saw poison in my veins killing me on a beach before a horde of assassins. The darkness was devouring my entire body now. Pure energy piled on top of the raging demands of Athena's strength. Too much, far too much–

Then I saw that field where I was meant to die a mortal. 

Riding my horse hard into the face of death, to rows of archers and pikes, as free as the wind itself and the fire in my heart that was as bright as the flames of immortality. I hadn't believed in the stories my father had fed me, of the warriors in their gilded halls, the shimmering mountains of Valhalla. And of Valkyries. But I rode all the same.

Suddenly I could see the edges of power. Raging and immeasurable. I seized all of it and I rose to meet its endlessness. 

"I'd love you anywhere, immortal. In this realm or the next."

I sent all of the relics combined energy into the heavens through my hand. It was an arc of tangled darkness and light so beautiful I stared. When the power reached its end I looked down at the blackness tearing through my body. It had receded back into its shield form, humming under my control. 

I almost laughed. But I had Gods to kill first.

So I called on the memory. The home that we made our own place among Valhalla. The details of her mountains, the beauty carved in every pillar, every drifting curtain, every flaming torch–then I twisted it at the last moment into that of the prism bridge. To the place that Odin called upon us to conduct the whim of the Gods. No longer.

A different kind of power enveloped me. 

A white light took over my fire and suddenly the familiar rush and nausea of traversing the realms took hold of me.

The Gods would regret wronging the daughter of fire.

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