The statesman across from Inga shifted uncomfortably, folding his hands over a rotund gut fatted like a pig’s. He was not the first such statesman to find himself unhappily sent by his masters to plead their case to her. The City of Ravenna was not built on the borders of Valheim were the galaxy’s dignitaries and their complaints insufficiently plentiful for them to require diplomatic assays near the seat of Valkyrian power.
Typically the whining of ambassadors bored Inga. Their complaints were all the same. Forces she did not directly command, and over whom she possessed only limited authority, had given local governments the opportunity to prosecute identified violations of the Mythic Treaty. Whether by laziness, corruption, or incompetence, no efforts were made to bring said perpetrators to justice and the Valkyries were activated to prosecute in blood what humans had failed to by their own laws. Humans never liked how the Valkyries handled business. Ever their cries were of injustice and disproportionate response.
Valkyries, they never failed to recognise, were not attorneys. They were warriors, the mighty bastion defence force of the Mythica. If activated as part of the Mythic Treaty Enforcement Escalation Protocols, the opportunity of peaceful resolution had closed. There would be blood in the streets and more bodies than the morgues could handle. That is the way it had always been.
Wise leaders would receive the message for what it was. Insufferable, disdainful, small-minded whelps would send their minions as messenger to deliver their vapid remonstrations and veiled threats of reprisal by proxy. All their empty declarations carried the same teeth of a slime mould. Diplomacy was, of course, a more favourable alternative for all parties to war, something Inga tried to keep in mind as she listened to this gluttonous slug of a man prattle on about injustice and indignity and his proposition for a more mutually respectful and beneficial relationship.
“Our interests are aligned in this, no?” the ambassador stated, nervously.
Inga, who had tuned out midway through his tedious religious tirade, raised an incredulous eyebrow. This particular empire hadn’t changed their talking points in four Aions. She’d heard everything the current greaseball had to say a hundred thousand times.
“These are not unreasonable demands,” he argued.
“I’m sure you’ll agree the treaty your people signed with mine was not unreasonable in its demands,” Inga responded.
“No, not at all.”
“Then I would humbly request you elucidate to me precisely how the enforcement action undertaken on the seventh-local was unreasonable,” Inga challenged.
“I think the general principle here is a matter or proportions,” the ambassador objected.
“In what way?” Inga challenged.
“Your people slaughtered or abducted an entire town,” the ambassador objected.
“A town responsible for the gang rape, torture, and execution of an Orkidean,” Inga responded, “I am aware.”
“Don’t you think that a bit excessive?”
“Yes, I did find the rape, torture, and murder of an Orkidean to be excessive,” Inga countered, receiving a subtle nudge from one of the vólar at the doors to her audience chamber.
“I don’t know anything about that,” the ambassador blustered.
“Then perhaps you should return when you have been fully briefed on the situation,” Inga concluded, “that way we may have a more productive discussion.”
“Is that the response from Valheim?” the ambassador challenged, rising angrily.
Inga rose from her seat and looked down at the small, portly man.
“I’ll discuss matters with the Lodge Elders,” Inga said. “Depending on how fruitful our next conversation is, they may be open to returning a portion of those trophied.”
“I’ll inform Wnosíł,” the ambassador put, scuttling away from her in the direction of the doors.
A nudge to her door guards had the doors opened for his swift departure. Once the greasy slug had waddled his way out of Inga’s audience chambers, Gná-Þrúnðir, the Commandant of the Custodial Guard, entered. In the expected gesture of performative genuflection, she kneeled and bowed her head.
Both knew how Inga despised the whole show, but neither could be seen dispensing with tradition. Much as Inga might have liked to issue a fresh set of reforms to do away with so many ancient things out of time and place in the days they were in, she knew this was one Chesterton Fence which had been set in solid ground. To do away with some tedious annoyances was unwise.
“Gná-Þrúnðir,” Inga addressed, “who beckons at my doors?”
“Grand Maþr Sunbeam, Erská,” the vólva responded.
“Send her in,” Inga ordered, “at once!”
“It shall be done, Erská,” Gná-Þrúnðir said, rising.
The vólva turned and swiftly exited the chambers. Moments later, a healer entered her chambers.
By her appearance alone, none would suspect who she was. Hair and feathers the colour of sunrise breaking over the northern range, a face and arms decorated neither with tattoos nor many scars, she brought attention to herself only in four unmistakeable ways.
The first way was in her eyes, the colour of rich amethyst, one rare amongst Valkyries and which spoke of one destined for greatness. The second way was her hair, a golden curtain cascading below her hips, the mane and mantle of a sacred Flamekeeper. The third and fourth were the scar at her throat and a bosom heavy with the burden of the Revenants she sustained. These signs alone signified one to whom great reverence and deference was to be given, though one would be forgiven for mistaking her as someone of no great significance when seen at a distance. She wore a plain dress of linen, and a simple belt of plaited leather to keep its bodice flush to her waist, making of herself in almost every way indistinguishable from any other healer.
Those who knew her, knew well the ways of their beloved Sunbeam. They knew better still that she was not simply another healer. Sunbeam was a Valkyrie of twelve thousand names, a being of strength and majesty as to dwarf all others. Only the Valkhearts claimed esteemed of greater measure to hers.
As the doors swung shut behind the healer, Inga lowered herself as Gná-Þrúnðir had moments before. Before her stood a truer and nobler queen of their people than ever would be she, Inga, Acknowledged-Spirit Njörðír, Jarlas-Captain, Erská of Erskár,. A hand found Inga’s shoulder, and she lifted her head.
On the healer’s face was an expression of resigned annoyance. Seeing Inga’s own feelings reflected in Sunbeam’s eyes brought a smile to her face. Tired resignation to the pomp and ceremony of their society combined with the nagging sense of being ever-unworthy of such admiration in a gaze of repeating mirrors. The absurdity of it all brought smiles their faces as Inga rose.
“Mother Sunbeam,” Inga greeted, gesturing to a pair of armchairs set against a wall on either side of a small table, “I am honoured to receive you.”
As Sunbeam moved toward the armchairs, she responded in Valkyrian sign language, “the honour is mine to be received, Jarlas-Erská.”
“Something troubles you,” Inga detected, taking a pair of drinking horns mounted on the wall above the small table.
Inga filled the horns from a nearby cask of mead before sitting down. She handed one to Sunbeam who, in one, deep draught, emptied the horn. Inga grinned with amusement. Even as ancient as she was, Sunbeam still paid heed to the Old Ways, silly as some were. Sunbeam set the empty drinking horn down on the table between them, freeing her hands to speak again.
“I received a letter this morning,” Sunbeam signed, “Aþril, my daughter Luba’s hjärtahjóldi, she voiced to me many serious concerns.”
Inga took a long drink from her horn as she collected her thoughts. Something in the back of her mind had been itching of late. Kitsune Hill, one of Valkyria’s oldest and proudest diaspora garrisons, had been growing more distant and obstinate in recent days.
This was not a turn without precedent. Captains were not paragons of perfection. Crisis, loss, and the many trials and vicissitudes of life could darken and harshen a Captain’s mood, making for increased friction between Þær, Þær House, and Valheim. Inga’s response to her wayward siblings in the Captainry, once harsh, had tempered with time and reflection. As much grace as she could give, she did. She still had a duty to keep her people united, but harshly disciplining her subordinates in the Captainry was now a practise she reserved for more serious acts of defiance.
To receive word that Hafdís’ house was losing confidence in their Captain bade grievously ill. Dissent respectfully delivered was a Captain’s duty and obligation to receive with grace, and there could be no tolerance nor grace given for acts of retaliation. A Captain ruled by consent of Þær kinfolk, and Þæ who ruled a house resentful would not rule it long. Rather Þæ would see it fragment, for Valkyries were a proud and headstrong people. None would tolerate tyranny happily, nor for very long.
“All is not well with your sister,” Sunbeam continued, reading Inga’s expression like an open book, “the seeds of Mjölnirim’s poison have wormed their way deep into Þær mind. I worry the last fragments of Hafdís will soon be subsumed entirely. The rot of consumption speaks harshly through the words written of Þær.”
“I am grieved to hear this,” Inga responded.
“The hour of the Spire draws near,” Sunbeam stated, a puzzling pivot, “the Harbinger of Loss bares her fangs as she rakes her talons against the ramparts of New Rio. It will not be long before the binding forces which have forestalled the doom of the last drop of The River fail.”
“Forgive me my ignorance,” Inga replied, “but how does this relate to Hafdís?”
Sunbeam looked at Inga quizzically, then signed, “There is nothing to be forgiven, the fault is mine. My thoughts move too quickly. Two nights past, I was visited by Súlna’s Great Seer. From her riddles I deduced her message as such. Though I cannot be certain of her intentions nor her plans, I feel as though she is wise to the ways of the warp. Some rejoinder to the Spire, and by extension, the Maw is at hand. In this I have faith.”
“But what of Hafdís and Kitsune Hill?” Inga asked.
“I worry Hafdís is all but gone,” Sunbeam signed, her face turning dark, “glimmers of her still remain, but it is Grigor who stands as dominus, and there is little hope of returning.”
“How is this?” Inga pressed.
“The Ravenings of Possession,” Sunbeam answered, “a symptom of New Rio’s declining condition, and something I should have seen in the splitting of Ivii and Luba six Lunes ago. They are sisters by blood, twins.”
“And our laws, our ways…” Inga interjected, “why was I not informed of this sooner?”
“Forgive us our dereliction,” Sunbeam responded, “it was our belief that Hafdís had reported Þær just causes to you.”
“I was given no such warning,” Inga growled, her temper rising.
Sunbeam’s brow furrowed, her confusion and vexation palpable.
“By the Grace of Charities,” she responded, “I would humbly submit for consideration that the Banshee’s Wail to which this Flight was sent would not have given Hafdís opportunity to seek approval. Further, it was the eve preceding the Blót of Nuísk Aunnún.”
“Then there should have been no separation!” Inga argued. “Hafdís should have known this! And even if I had approved, I possess no more authority to enforce compliance to such orders as Þæ did! Only the Valkhearts supercede the sacred bonds of blood! Þæ knows this! Not even Mjölnirsnatt is reason sufficient to bind one sister as the other begs for her aid! There is no greater call than Maþrblúþ!”
“In this I agree,” Sunbeam said, her hands speaking as much to her sorrow as did her face.
“This violation of our laws is cause enough for me to give Hafdís stern rebuke,” Inga announced, “yet my instincts inform me Aþril’s letter was not preoccupied with past indignities.”
“Indeed,” Sunbeam confirmed, “she speaks of the same shade returning. In her words, I beheld a darkness falling over Grigor’s house. I dare not speak the word, but it is there and it is rising. And what my heart desires most, I am warned against asking.”
“Name it,” Inga commanded, “and I will make it so.”
“I must not,” Sunbeam insisted, “events must take their course. Their cost I am duty-bound to bear. It is in Aisling I feel I now must place my trust, even if the shadow of Desolation must darken our skies once more.”
Inga emptied her horn before responding. When she did, she sought only clarification.
“Grigor denies Luba the sacred right to fly to her sister’s rescue?”
“No,” Sunbeam answered, steel in her face, “he forbade Ivii’s rescue entirely.”
A cold pit formed in Inga’s stomach. There was no mistaking the sign of ‘he’. In Sunbeam’s practised hands, the form of that word was one made with intent. No Captain would suffer such an insult from Þær kinfolk. Captains were of two spirits. All of them. Even Inga acknowledged the parts of her which spoke the name Njörðrín, if only in hushed tones. Only a Harpy defiled by his Ignoble Ravenings was reduced to but one spirit; the dæmon of hærki.
For the Valkheart Mother to condemn a Captain so, and Grigor no less, it gave Inga sobering pause. Of all Valkyries, none knew so deeply, so intimately, and so painfully the signs of hærki as did Sunbeam. It was, after all, her own child who was first to be consumed by his Ravenings. His name was Mjölnirim the Tyrant, First-Traitor, Despoiler of Ymirra, Scourge of Miðgarðr, Allfather of Hærkimannar. It was he who had betrayed all creatures of Ymara so many Aions ago. It was his hærki, his weakness-of-man, that had divided the Mythica, and it was the same which brought the Day of Desolation to his house.
Sunbeam knew this poison. She would in no wise speak such evil upon a Captain unless there was no question to the matter.
“It is too late?” Inga asked, though she already knew the answer.
Sunbeam spared Inga her reply. To speak the truth was to make it real. Though that moment would come, neither wished to hasten its arrival.
“I will convene a Conclave of Jurists,” Inga decided, “if nothing else, Luba’s Denial demands reply. Go to New Rio as my Twilight Rafna. I will draft documents to make way for you and to request Midwinter’s assistance.”
“I have for many winters owed Venus a visit,” Sunbeam signed in response, “it is a disappointment that such circumstances should finally compel me to her. A poor friend is one who only shows her face when in need.”
“I’m certain she will understand,” Inga reassured.
“I should have visited sooner,” Sunbeam insisted, “whether she is forgiving of this dishonour does not absolve me the responsibility to make amends.”
“Yours are lives of many duties, Sunbeam,” Inga argued, “that centuries span between your meetings, and that it should be hours of need that most compel your paths to cross, is but a necessary consequence of your respective stations.”
“This is true,” Sunbeam accepted, “but I am scarcely assuaged by it. I owe her better.”
“If it should bring you peace, I could draft orders compelling you to visit at least once per century,” Inga offered.
A smile and silent laughter beamed from Sunbeam’s face, warming Inga with infectious mirth.
“Worry nothing of Midwinter,” Sunbeam signed, her amusement fading to seriousness, “I have long claimed Venus as sister-in-kind. She has always been a friend to me and to Valkyries. As her coven has oft come to ours, had she but asked it, I would have followed her and Ivii into the depths of New Rio in search of her stolen songbird.”
“Very well,” Inga accepted.
“I will report all that I witness,” Sunbeam signed, “may the Wisdom of Wótann guide the Conclave and the Grace of Freyja inform their judgement.”
“Indeed,” Inga nodded, “may it be so.”
“Be strong, Inga,” Sunbeam encouraged, “though dark is the day upon us, it is not one which we are without agency to forge our own fates within.”
The words gave Inga little comfort. Each time a Lodge had fallen was a moment of great despair for her. Regardless of the manner of its desolation, the loss of a noble house of her kin, she always felt the lion’s share of the blame for. She was their leader. The desolation of a house was her failure. Faced with the desolation of a Garrison, such a failure was almost too much to bear. As Jarlas-Captain, she had no choice but to.
“To believe Kitsune Hill should fall again,” Inga murmured in dismay, “is there truly nothing to be done?”
Sunbeam reached out and placed a hand on Inga’s. Warmth spread from her palm throughout Inga’s body, until she could feel the presence of Sunbeam in the deepest recesses of her spirit. A voice like Freyja’s own whispered softly to her of a path unfolding.
When Sunbeam’s hand retreated, Inga could see a piece of Aisling’s vision. Though small, it was enough. Interpreted through the depth of Sunbeam’s gaze, it was bitter with its necessities. Kitsune Hill would fall. To one force or another, its majesty would crumble into dust. This fate had been foretold Aions ago. All that had altered was the day of its arriving. Kitsune Hill’s sanctity had been all but forsaken. All that could be decided was how it would fall and what future its end would serve.
As Sunbeam rose and exited the chamber, Inga sat in silence. Only now, faced with the same cruel monsters as Sunbeam had conquered before, did Inga find herself in unsettling envy of the experience of her forebears. Hastening a new Day of Desolation might save the galaxy, but it would cost Inga her soul. This was her dilemma.
Rising from her seat, Inga strode behind her desk, to an artefact encased in glass and wrought iron. Inga stared into it, at the fragments of the past speaking harsh truths to the present. These were the shards of The Sun’s Beam, the spear of Freyja, the weapon with which Urkih Kova slew Mjölnirim. Inside its sealed case, painstakingly preserved through the ages, these shards remained as they were the day they were placed inside.
The consequences of the choice Inga was about to make were irrevocable. They were also necessary.
Inga closed her fist struck the glass casing. Shards pierced her skin and bloodied her knuckles. The sound of glass breaking and signals from her nerves reverberating across the psychic hum between her and her Custodial Guard had Gná-Þrúnðir and the day’s retinue bursting inside her chambers.
Reaching inside the broken window, Inga retrieved a single shard of The Sun’s Beam. When she turned around, shard in hand, she saw in the eyes of these twelve peerless warriors of her Custodial Guard the shade of such dread as words could in no way describe.
To Gná-Þrúnðir, Inga commanded, “Summon Forgemaster Akridis and thereafter commit yourselves to silence!”
Raising the shard, she gripped its sharp edges until it cut into her fingers and her palm.
Blood dripping in rivulets down her wrist, and from her hand and the shard, she declared, “A Blade of Desolation is to be, this day, forged!”
On a throne made of bones of the Am Aqijj’s fabled titan drake sat Captain Hafdís-varþa-Grigor. Head crowned with laurels, body clad in glittering power armour of the finest make, flanks guarded by twelve of The Ways’ greatest witching women, he was a paragon of might and dominance. Of all the kings and queens, emperors and empresses, titans and transcendents of this galaxy and beyond, none were as resplendent nor commanded as great a force as did he, Hafdís-varþa-Grigor, Captain of the New Rio Garrison, Þænnan-Jarla of Kitsune Hill.
To his right sat Saaja the Sanguine, a warrior and battlemage without rival. To his left was Ayris, a field commander and strategist more fearsome and capable than The Major of the First Marines—a force merely playing at a Valkyrie’s prowess. Assembled in his Great Hall was the totality of his house, a force of singular greatness. His were warriors of no finer quality. His were commanders superior to all contestants. His were healers more adept than all the Mercies and Deaths Ends of Midwinter combined. His were vólar more clever and more subtle in the art of seiðr than all the visendakonar of Maþr Hjälla. He was himself mightier and subtler in the arts of war than all his legions combined.
He had no equals.
These things, Grigor knew. This, his fiefdom would, with the return of his stolen Elder, would sweep across the cosmos, in a grand crusade, bringing all The Way’s people under a new and luminous Dominion. His would be an empire untainted by the weakness and myopia of Mjölnirim. Under Grigor’s leadership, the Mythica would flourish, and the humans would remember their place—in obsequious servility to their true masters.
When the immense, gilded doors of Grigor’s Great Hall ground open, they revealed two captains flanking the healer he had summoned.
At this, Grigor scoffed loudly. The message his former Elder was trying to send was obvious, but the means to back it? Pathetic! Did this healer earnestly believe Sigman and Jornvik could stand up to him? Preposterous! Absurd! The least of Grigor’s warriors, a youth of not even a thousand years, could by herself have obliterated the three of them without even a drop of their blood sullying her armour.
Yet they strode up to him with a haughty gait that stank of disrespect. Grigor felt his lip twitch with irritation and he began to reconsider the offer he had made to the healer. Her demeanour stank of the same ærgi—the same weakness—as had defiled Luba and Ivii. The same rot that had polluted Kita. It was a filth he thought he had purged from the Garrison’s midst.
The trio strode up to his dais and stopped on the seal of his house. Engraved in Minotauri adamantium and set into the paving stones before him, it was sacrosanct. A scrape of the healer’s boot, grinding his face beneath her heel, was the final straw. This dishonour had Saaja from her seat, power crackling from her fingertips. To his left, he sensed Ayris preparing something of devilish design.
A faint play of the light glinted in the corners of Grigor’s vision—a warding spell precast. Such efforts were wasted. Saaja had not yet encountered wards she could not penetrate with practised ease, and Ayris was peerless at undermining magical defences.
The three insolent guests in Grigor’s house stared him down with expressions of unmistakable disdain. Evidently they respected Saaja’s power as much as they honoured their new Jarlas-Captain. Grigor scowled. It seemed a waste to dispose of the two Captains, but Hönna the Sunbeam especially so. The Last of Freyja’s Own, a living legend. Of course, Kita was as well, but sacrifices had to be made for the greater good.
Beside him, Saaja’s patience expired.
“You would dishonour your Captain!?” she challenged, drawing arms.
Sunbeam met the visendakona’s challenge with a glare of such intensity as Grigor had never seen before. Around her, the air grew dark and heavy. Bolts of strange and fickle energy from places not spoken of fanned from Sunbeam’s eyes like wings adust. It wasn’t until Saaja had returned, limbs trembling, to her seat beside his that Grigor took notice of Sigman and Jornvik having drawn arms, aiming at him.
Sunbeam turned her head with the patience of deity. Seconds stretched into eternities as Grigor beheld, bit by excruciating bit, what must have been the last thing seen from the edge of a black hole’s maw. When she had locked her eyes onto his, Grigor saw nothing but two voids, blazing with fury.
A voice like thunder bellowed in his head, “You dare summon me here like an honourless traitor!?”
Silence broken, the voice of Sunbeam could no be mistaken. In the moment she turned her gaze from his to spit on the seal which she had trodden, the echoes of her thunder reverberated in his head like the altitonance of an organ whose cries to the heavens filled its hall for many moments after its pipes fell silent. In the lingering of her voice, Grigor understood then what Kita had meant. There is nothing louder in all The Way than the revenant-mother who breaks her Silence.
When she returned her gaze to his, Grigor grinned with amusement. It seemed Kita had not lied to him after all. Sunbeam had lost nothing in the Aions since she’d been stolen from New Rio by Maþr Hjälla’s feeble old aristocrats.
“I may wander where there is need, but I am not at your command, Grigor!” Sunbeam thundered. “I answer only to Maþr Hjälla!”
“Maþr Hjälla!?” Grigor scoffed, rising from his throne. “They are old and weak! Fossils afraid of the worlds beyond their halls! While they have cowered and grown fat from their comforts, we have grown strong! Behold! The might of New Rio! The true destiny of Valkyries! The rightful crown of Freyja’s Own!”
“Oh Grigor,” thundered the voice in his head, “how you defile yourself with treason.”
“Treason!?” Grigor bellowed. “It is not I who has betrayed our ways! No, that disgrace is upon Maþr Hjälla! Do you not see how they have led us to this stagnation!? Do you not see how they permit man to defile our sanctuaries!? To pollute our homes!? To rape and pillage and murder our kin!? They are old and feeble and weak! They claim to know our ways, but where are they when the humans encroach on our lands!? Where is their strength and wisdom visible in the burning of the holyfields and the slaughter of the Graces!? Where is the nobility and honour they speak so highly of when our own are taken off to be butchered for the cruel pleasures of Pommelhorse’s blood houses!? You see this as well as I! They have abandoned us! Abandoned their duty! Their honour!”
“And you would, what!?” Sunbeam countered. “Crown yourself king of a new empire!? Wage a holy crusade against your own for the failures of a few to measure up to your rubric!? You would kill so many of our selfsame kinfolk, kinfolk we are charged to protect, and for what!? What could you possibly hope to gain that could justify the cost!?”
“A new Dominion!” Grigor responded, closing his fist. “We will remind the humans whom they should fear! Whom they should serve!”
“You impudent, imperious, fool!” Sunbeam returned. “We do not serve them! Nor they us! The Dominion of Mjolnirim was not some golden age of our kin! It was an era of brutality purely for its own sake! A dispensation of unspeakable cruelties on uncountable innocents! Not just against the humans who had fomented such festering hate, but against our own!”
“YOU LIE!” Grigor raged.
“I WAS THERE!” Sunbeam fired back, the force of her words throwing Grigor back in his seat. “I am the Valkheart Mother and I have faced this treachery before! The dagger Mjölnirim wielded bit deeper than yours ever will! Mjölnirim was my daughter and he was a monster! A murderer, a tyrant, and a traitor!”
“He lacked vision!” Grigor argued.
“And you are no different!” Sunbeam’s voice intensified. Blood began trickling from Grigor’s ears as she continued. “You stand on the bones of my daughters and send me a summons to return as their replacement! I have come for no such purpose! Neither I nor Maþr Hjälla honour nor dignify your toothless declarations! I come here only to deliver a final dispensation of overdue damnation upon you! You are not worthy of crossing blades with! You are condemned as hærki! Your Lifægr and Værkrhjeim are anathema! The memories of you and all those who follow you have already been erased! This Garrison ceased to exist the day you ordered the Purging of Ivii and Luba!”
“You think you can so easily forget about me!?” Grigor challenged, his own fury building.
“You have already been forgotten!” Sunbeam fired back. “When Artemis’ Champion arrives and, by his hand, you join Bartimeus in Þær grave, only the name Brindi-varþa-Bartimeus will be sung rejoicing in Mjölnirsnatt’s returning!”
At this challenge, Grigor could not help but scoff. Rising with his mirth, he took up his axe and pointed its tip between Sunbeam’s eyes.
“You think some pathetic First Marine will topple me!?” he guffawed. “All of mankind’s brilliance and that is their champion!?”
Lowering his axe, he stepped down from his dais, his laughter stopping as his rage grew. Grigor stepped forward until his nose was nearly touching Sunbeam’s.
“For your treachery,” he growled, “you will watch as I dash your champion to pieces against the stones of Bartimeus’ Cut! Then you will join your daughters!”
Sunbeam’s reply came so swiftly Grigor did not even see the motion, only felt its effects. A thunderclap in his right ear burst his eardrum. his head snapped over and he stumbled over. Disoriented, inner ear swirling, Grigor threw out a hand, catching himself on the flagstones. Fingernails dug into his scalp, a thumb into his eye socket, and he felt himself dragged back, his face turned upward. Desperately, he tried to resist, but the moment he did, a psychic lance split his head, and the thumb in his eyesocket thrust through his eye and struck his skull with such enormous strength, he felt himself slip out of consciousness. One jerk of Sunbeam’s wrist, and he was brought back to reality, to meet her gaze with his one remaining eye.
A thought glanced across the surface of his mind, a recognition that he was unmistakeably and in every sense of the phrase under Sunbeam’s thumb. his knee was on the floor, his back bent to her will. As her gaze bore into him, Grigor saw power. Raw, unfaltering, indefatigable power.
In Sunbeam’s eyes was not the light that had won her the name, but darkness. It was all darkness. Not like night nor the depths of the SubCity, not even the void of space between galaxies came close to the ravenous black pouring from her gaze. Sunbeam’s eyes were wild with it, the shade of realms even the Goddess Hel dared not wander long within. What descended from her was no absence of light. It was the swallowing of it, the devouring, soul-consuming essence of light’s destruction. In the event horizons that were her eyes, photons died, their existence put to an end. And from her eyes all light was snuffed out and Grigor’s hall was subsumed in fell pitch.
Then came wrath.
Four wings extended, bolts of fell lightning arcing from her eyes, and the figure of Sunbeam rose to impossible size. Ten thousand leagues tall, a being of shadow, wreathed in flame, she was the Lady of Strife, First of Loss, Harbinger of Ash, the Sower of Discord, the Song of ARMA Returning. Screams of uncountable numbers ripped through an inscrutable plain of unfathomable vastness. Curtained with smoke and pitch and pillars of fire rising, the air burned his lungs. Each breath was a paradox of unbearable heat and intolerable cold and coated his lungs in soot and ash and dust.
With each bolt of fell lightning striking the ground from heights beyond comprehension, death and obliteration followed. Anything touched by the hellish energies Sunbeam commanded was instantly turned to ash. Rising from the ashes came shades, their eyes glowing red, their mouths gaping maws of malevolent scarlet flames. They rose like legions of swarming beetles, voices rising together, howling, howling.
Each one Grigor knew.
Each the voice of…
It could not be…
None had that power…
But their fury could not be denied.
Neither’s Grigor’s ears nor eye could deny it.
The dead, they had risen.
At Sunbeam’s command, she had returned them. Thousands of them, tens of thousands, rising from the ashes of his great hall disintegrating under the weight of wrath flowing through Sunbeam. And they were howling,
howling,
HOWLING.
Grigor had never heard such a noise before. The din rattled his bones, battered him like bombs. his teeth began to crack, his eardrums burst and the finer structures exploded, and the sound only grew louder. The metal of his armour groaned and whined and then was ripped away, the intensity of the noise taking his skin with it. his lungs were crushed and liquefied, the bloody pulp leaking from his respira. Sunbeam’s hand maintained would not let Grigor suffocate, but like those Purged, sustained him. Instincts drove a scream from his throat, but he could hear nothing over the sound of his enemies.
Then, they stopped. He was still screaming, but he could not hear his own voice. Tendrils of Sunbeam’s might wormed their way through every part of Grigor’s body, repairing with excruciating effect the things destroyed by the Chorus of Wrath. Gradually, Grigor’s senses returned, and his voice fell silent. The sound of wings fluttering followed, and the crowd carved their words into him.
“YOU! ARE! NOTHING!” they screamed, runes of Ancient Valkyr burning themselves into his skin. “WE FORSAKE YOU, HAFDÍS-HÆRKI-GRIGOR, CAPTAIN OF NOTHING!”
“No! No! No!” Grigor whimpered, clutching at his head.
It was them. All of them. The dead. The ones he had killed. The traitors. The defiant. All those who refused him.
“YOU WILL FALL!” they thundered, the figures of Luba and Ivii emerging from twin bolts of fell lightning.
“YOU WILL NOT BE REMEMBERED!” the voices roared, more and more of the defiant appearing from bolts of fell lightning.
“WHEN YOU ARE DEAD!” the voices shouted. “ONLY THE NAME OF THE VALKHEART WHO CONQUERED YOU WILL BE SPOKEN!”
Grigor sputtered and blubbered, squeezing his eye shut. He felt hot urine pouring down his leg. Then his bowels evacuated. The hand gripping the side of his face released him and he crumpled over, shaking and sobbing.
“When you are gone, there will never again be a garrison here,” Sigman spat.
“New Rio is proscribed,” Jornvik spoke, with finality.
Grigor lifted his gaze in time to see Sunbeam draw from her gown the sum of all terrors. All Valkyries knew of this symbol. They knew of the curseforged swords to be delivered to Captains Errant. They were dreadful things. Things of pig iron—ugly and unrefined. One singular piece of metal forged in the image of all that was the antithesis of the Valkyries. It was a Blade of Desolation, its feral form containing a shard of Freyja’s spear, The Sun’s Beam, broken in the Triumph of Urikh Kova.
This was Valheim’s reply. To him they had given their final repudiation and irrevocable condemnation. In this Icon of Desanctification, Valheim had delivered their declaration of proscription against all souls loyal to his house. In this Blade of Desolation, Valheim had accepted his challenge. War was to be their answer.
Sunbeam looked into his eye and, again, he heard that voice thunder again, “You think you are powerful, Grigor. Yet I, the least of Maþr Hjälla’s Matrons, have met your challenge and brought you low. I made you kneel in submission before me. I only stayed my hand that the glory of Triumph may be claimed by one worthy of the name Valkheart. Draw arms against me again and I will spare you no mercy.
“To your challenge, I accept. I will watch your battle to come. I will watch the Aþenëan push your broken, defeated body into the ignoble hole of Bartimeus, a fate so much more merciful than you deserve. When you draw your last breath, the last thing your eyes will see is the reflection of the flames of your burning empire dancing in mine. I curse you and forsake you. You are dead to me and all Mythica, hærkimanna.”
The hafts of two greatspears thumped twice against flagstones. Jornvik and Sigman raised two war horns to their lips and blew. A long, terrible noise filled the hall. It was the wailing call of Ragnarök, the horns blowing at the end of days.
Abruptly, the war horns stopped, and, as one, Jornvik and Sigman declared, “Kitsune Hill will not rise a third time. There is no honour here. Only traitors and hærkimannar. Your shame will never be Purged from our midst. May none survive the coming Triumph of the Shieldbearer, the Many-Scarred, the Titan-Slayer. May no mercies find you. May no kindness be given. May death claim you and may your souls be forever battered against the Bridge of Knives. May those cowards who flee this place find their rightful place atop Icons of Sin in the Labyrinth of Ljókinn, for-ever.”
With the words of the Captains still echoing, Sunbeam lifted the Sword of Heresies above her head and drove its point into the adamantium which bore Grigor’s seal, splitting the crest and embedding the blade into the bedrock of New Rio. She gripped and twisted her hand until blood from her shredded palm ran over the crossguard and down the blade, sealing the proscription in the blood of a Rafna. When she took her hand away, he saw the rough iron, left unground and unfinished, had cut her to the bone.
Sunbeam pulled a white ribbon from her hair and bound her hand, completing the Desanctification of the Lodge. In perfect silence, she and the two Captains she had bore, turned and departed. When the doors swung shut behind them and leaving only the boom echoing off the walls, Grigor saw, drifting through holes, in Sunbeam’s fury, torn through the Great Hall’s roof, that the sun had gone with her.
In the silence that followed, Grigor came to understand the name Sunbeam in the fullness of its final revelation. Never before had he so wanted for a beam of sunlight to break through the darkling world she had left behind. The gloaming had lost its glow. The sun had lost its name and all the comfort its warmth. It was but another star in the night sky, now. A brighter luminary, a closer celestial object, its light no less cold, its photons sterilised and cast down to the world like fallen angels.
As he beheld the aftermath of Sunbeam’s seiðr Grigor saw only ruins left in her wake. His great garrison had been cut in half, Sunbeam’s culling scythe indiscriminate. Souls great and small had been turned alike into dust. Turning toward his dais, Grigor’s hearts sank deep into New Rio’s core. Of his visendakonar, only three remained; Saaja, Xiaowen, and Kjótta. The rest had been turned to dust. Even Ayris, his beloved.
Cold draped over Grigor like never before. Frost seeped into the hollow of his bones. Talons of ice raked across his skin. A spectre of some forgotten frost loomed long in the space just beyond his periphery. Hungry eyes glinted a hairsbreadth beyond sight. Fangs dripping with a basilisk’s rot flashed like assassin’s daggers in all the places he was not looking. Scales coated in rime glittered, heralding a storm swiftly rising from beyond the offing. Though he knew the names of the beast, he dared not speak them.