Chapters Dealing With These Changes
"Do you want to go to Equestria?"
That was the question that started all of this. I don't even properly remember getting asked, because I was so hammered drunk. But you know what? Even if I had been sober, I would have said yes. My jobless, bare-passing classes ass was destitute, my last bit of family had just passed away from cancer, and the world was going to shit. And here I was being offered the land of My Little Pony, my only escape from the shithole that was my life, where the Diarchs Celestia and Luna rule over their peaceful kingdom and ponies live in peace? Hell yeah!
Did I mention that I'm a fucking idiot? Even if the show was like that, what in the name of Celestia's sun-kissed plot would make me think that any place that was real could possibly be that happy and free?
Well let me tell you something sonny, it isn't.
The Equistrian Valley is only a small portion of the world, and while it is very peaceful, it is by far not the only place in the world. The rest of the planet is fraught with danger around every corner, filled with races and monsters with ancient grudges and wars that have lasted centuries. The Diamond Dogs trade slaves freely on the edges of Equestria, and the larger cities such as Manehatten and Stalliongrad have more than their fair share of corruption, just like any city in the human world.
And this? This is the story about how my drunken ass made the biggest mistake of my life... and maybe the best one as well.
When I woke up, I swore upon the names of every God that I could think of to never, ever consume another drop of alcohol for as long as I drew breath, as long as they took the screws out of my skull and made the world stop being so loud. The wind whistling outside sounded like the screech of a thousand banshees to my ears, and for some reason I felt like my entire body had been played with like a toddler had used me as an action figure. Horrid, devilish beams of golden sunlight fell upon my face and sought out my retinas even through my closed eyelids, prompting me to groan as quietly as I possibly could before rolling over and squeezing the large pole in my right hand to my soft breasts. The sunlight now out of my eyes, I resolved to--
Wait a minute. Back up just a few words.
Prompting me to groan quietly…
Rolling over…
Gripped the pole in my right hand to my soft breasts?!?!
My eyes snapped open and all ideas of waiting out the pain vanished as a very real sense of panic settled over me. I sat up in the bed I was laying down in, which my panicking mind vaguely recognized as unfamiliar, and stared straight down at two of the nicest, firmest, and most perky C-cups that had ever graced the face of the earth. The areolas were perfectly proportioned with the amount of area on the boobs, and the nipples were neither too large or too small as they stood to attention in the slightly chilly air of the room I was in. Long, golden locks cascaded down my shoulders and fell on either side of the breasts that found themselves on my body. In my right hand I held a spear unlike anything I had ever seen, a dull gold thing with a three-pronged head and intricate designs on the blade and a portion of the shaft, though I did not pay it that much mind because holy shit I had boobs. A quick touch to my midsection confirmed that it was, indeed, a complete transformation.
I was a girl. I was a naked girl. I was a naked girl with a crazy spear.
Now, put yourself in my situation. You’ve just woken up with the worst hangover that you’ve ever had, you’re naked in some unfamiliar bed, and you suddenly find yourself to be the wrong gender. I think that I responded with more decorum than most would in that situation, and here is about how that went.
Body_Recognition.exe is loading… Loading… Loading… Error, Body_Recognition.exe has identified female elements. Rerouting commands… Commence FTFO.exe Execute.
“HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF JESUS HORATIO CHRIST I’M A FUCKING GIRL~!” I screamed, my voice astonishing me as I realized that it was an octave higher—and much more powerful than it had originally been. My wings flared out in my shock, and I grabbed my chest with the hand that wasn’t holding something for just a moment, to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, and absently noted that my hand now had six long, slender digits that seemed much more dexterous than my original appendages. It was then that I realized what had just happened due to my shock and I looked over to my right, hoping against hope that I had misread my body’s actions, and saw one of the most magnificent sights I had ever seen. An enormous wing of the purest white, seeming as if it had been the source for the original idea of whiteness itself, was extended out fully from my back and the ends of the last primary feathers were directed upwards like the larger birds of prey. I looked over to my left, eyes wide in shock as I confirmed that I now had two angelic wings that seemed more than large enough to bear my weight.
Okay, let me be very clear here. I was not originally a female, nor was I one before I got drunk off my ass the night before, so the fact that I was one now was more than a bit off-putting. But, female thing aside, the fact that I had wings was beyond cool. It was much nicer to focus on than the change in gender, and it gave me the warm fuzzies in a good way, so I focused on it.
Can you really blame me?
It was while I was admiring my new wings, slowly stroking my free hand over the feathers and reveling in the sensations that the new appendages granted me, that I heard a light cough from the other end of the hut followed by a demure voice that said, “Excuse me, but are you alright? I heard shouting.”
Now, I am normally not one to gawk, at all, but this girl in front of me made my jaw unhinge and roll somewhere under the bed I was sitting on. Her hair was nearly platinum blonde and braided into a thick weave that extended only to her lower back, as opposed to my golden hair which hung freely and pooled around where I sat due to its length. Her face was soft and almost childish, though it possessed enough womanly charm to let anyone who looked know that this was no child that they were dealing with, and her blue eyes were like the deepest sapphires in existence. Her wings were a strange shade of off-white that I couldn’t quite place for a bit, before I realized that they were the same shade as snow when it has fallen heavily and unbroken on a field, an almost blue tint.
Her attire was simple, a white summer dress that was tripped along the top and bottom with red, as well as a green-and-gold chestguard and shoulder pauldrons. She wore lace-up sandals, the kind that you see in those movies about ancient Greece, and clutched a large broadsword that seemed to be a bit too large for her to her chest in a slightly defensive manner. Her hands bore the same type of digits as my own, though they seemed even daintier than my own.
I was immediately smitten.
“Uh… I have… wings…”
So, of course, I made an idiot of myself. Brilliance of the caliber I had just displayed deserves to be immortalized in the hall of Moments of Failure in Human History.
The girl looked at me like I had just grown a second head before giggling in the most adorable fashion I have ever seen and good god that should be labeled as a WMD! “Well, silly, of course you do! You are a Valkyrie after all… although, I haven’t seen you around Valhalla. My name's Eir Holybell. Are you from Jotunheim? We haven’t had any news from there in a while,” she said sadly, which might have made me want to wrap her up in the tightest hug possible were it not for my utter confusion.
"I'm sorry, back up for a sec. I'm a what?" I asked obliviously, hoping that she was just mistaken or that she might be making a mistake. After all, last time I checked I was a human, even if I swapped genders... and grew wings... shit... I might not be human anymore, guys.
Judging by the horrified expression on the face of the girl who managed to make even deep concern for sanity look adorable, I was the one that had been mistaken. "Oh, no, you must have really hit your head hard," she muttered as she set her sword against the wall and rushed over to me, placing a hand against my head and pushing with a surprising amount of strength, forcing me to lay down. I could feel the heat rushing into my face as she hung over me, concern laced on her features as she checked my eyes for signs of a concussion. "No wonder you were out in that field. If I hadn't been flying overhead, you could have been seriously hurt!"
As ecstatic as I was to have a girl this cute fawning all over me--and trust me, it pushed all the right buttons--I couldn't help but have a small panic attack as I tried to come to terms with what I had just been told. I mean, what does she mean I was in a field? I lived in Charleston, South Carolina! There were no fields anywhere near the spot where I went to drink, so how in the hell did I get there and what on earth was that girl doing. She held her hands over my head and closed her eyes seemingly in concentration, prompting me to raise a questioning eyebrow before she let out a single breath and began to speak.
"Oh, spirit which dwells within this form, awaken to your true memories! I, Eir, command you!"
My eyes widened in shock as I realized that the language she was speaking was not English anymore, though I could still understand her, just before my vision went dark and my memories came rushing back to me.
I felt like I was swimming through a thick gelatin as I fell back through my memories, reliving the moments before I lost awareness the night before. I had planned to spend the night watching more My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic—yes, I’m a brony, so sue me. It’s a good show. Anyways, I was planning to do that, but one of my acquaintances from my college called me up and asked if I wanted to go out drinking. I had just recently turned 21, and so like an idiot, I had agreed. We got to the bar, I had my first drink, and after that things began to get hazy until I finally saw him.
My sight was filled with the visage of an old, one-eyed man who was staring directly at me, a knowing smile on his face. My vision seemed tinted around the edges, almost a golden color, and when the man spoke it came through as if it were an echo. "Hail and well met, now that thou art lucid enough to understand me. I am Odin Allfather, king of the Ǣsir and your sponsor in this game. If thou art hearing these words, my champion, then thou hast been found by Eir. This is beneficial to thee, for she is a kind soul who shall not hesitate to help thy cause. If thou art not hearing these words, then thou hast been consumed by a beast of the wilds, and I have no pity for thee. Even if thou were inebriated, I granted thee several opportunities to void this contract, though thou simply said, 'I'd love to go to Equestriash, ye old fert!"
Okay, the perfect impersonation of my drunken voice was a bit more scary than the fact that this wierdo was talking to me through my memories, but I was already changed into a winged girl today. Not much else could go wrong--did he say Equestria?
"Aye, I did say Equestria. Currently, your body resides in the Valkyrie's main fortress, the hanging city of Valhalla, but the details art insignificant. The point is that the land of harmony thou sought so long to enter is finally yours to roam. But be wary, for it is not the land of milk and honey thou hast been led to believe. It is dangerous, and because of this danger, I hath given to thee two great gifts, and seek to impart one final piece of advice. The first and foremost of these gifts was to make you into one of my favored children, the Valkyries, and given you my blessing. Thou shalt find that the abilities of the body thou currently possess art far beyond this pathetic shell I hast been watching drool on itself for the past five minutes," he said with a chuckle.
Okay, now that was just rude.
"Secondly, I grant thee my spear, Gungnir. It shall never dull, it shall never break, and most importantly, as long as thou knowest where thy aim is, it shall strike true without fail. Never hast there been an armor capable of stopping my spear, and I pray for thy own sake that thou never find one. And finally, the advice," he said, his tone switching from joviality to dead seriousness. "Do not use thy real name in this world, Alexander Hayes. True names have true power among the darker members of that world. Your new name shall be Skuld. Use it whilst thou art among my children, and in your travels throughout the land. And know this: I have done more for thee from the very beginning than almost all of the others do for their champions throughout the game. Use these gifts wisely, lest I be forced to take them from you."
He paused for a moment, looking down at the ground with a look of concentration on his face as if he were trying to remember something, before he looked up and gave me a grin that all but promised wickedness. ”Oh, and look out for the vase.”
And with that, the memory faded away and I was filled with a sense of falling, screaming wordlessly in protest as I plummeted straight down, down, down…
I awoke once more with a start, jerking up out of the bed that I was lying in and gulping in a few precious gulps of air as my eyes rolled about, searching for the danger on instinct. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned with my hand raised, prepared to strike, before I realized who it was that had just attempted to get my attention. It was Eir, the beautiful girl who had helped me when most others would just leave me to die, and she was cowering away from me as if I was some kind of monster. I lowered my hand and softened the wild expression on my face when I realized that I must have seemed like one to this gentle soul. I slowly wrapped my arms around her and instinctively enveloped her in my wings, a blush coming onto my face as I buried my nose into her hair and whispered, ”Thanks, Eir. I was really confused for a second, but you helped out a lot.”
I was still utterly baffled, of course, and that cryptic message about the other champions that my oh-so-gracious sponsor had spouted did not serve to lessen my confusion, but at least now I had more information than I did when I started. I pulled away from her and gave her a smile which she returned after a moment before she asked, "What's your name, by the way?"
I almost responded with 'Alexander,' before I remembered the warning that Odin had given me about using my real name and caught myself. I trusted Eir, hell, anyone who spent even a second with her would trust her implicitly, but I still didn't want to incite the wrath of a God who had played with my body and mind like I was some kind of play-dough. And I don't even like playdough. Anyways, getting off topic. "I remember my first name's Skuld, but I don't remember my last name," I responded carefully, remembering how she had introduced herself with two names.
She looked down at my chest and then away with a cough as we both realized that I was still naked. Before I could even begin looking around for some clothes she offered up what looked like a dress much like the one she wore, though it seemed a bit larger, and said, ”Um… when you fell unconscious, I thought that you might want some clothes when you awoke.” I took the clothes and began putting them on, feeling slightly emasculated at the notion of wearing a dress. Though, when the alternative was to remain completely naked in front of a chick, I figured it was the lesser of two evils considering I had grown tits and lost… something else.
“You knocked your spear on the ground when you were tossing in your sleep, and I couldn’t pick it up. It is very heavy,” she told me when I had secured the belt that kept the dress close to my body, preventing it from flowing freely in the wind. I looked down and saw the three-pronged weapon on the ground before I nodded to her in thanks and reached down to pick it up, half-expecting to be unable to. You can imagine my surprise when, upon pulling up with all my strength, I nearly took my host out and sent the spear flying through the roof! I extended my wings and pinwheeled my left arm to balance myself out, looking ridiculous enough to make Eir laugh once again. That is, after she had gotten over the terror of almost having the dangerous-looking weapon cut off her head.
I stood up with the spear in hand and looked down at it in surprise as I wondered why Eir hadn’t been able to pick it up, just before I heard the sound of a doorknob turning and looked over to see another Valkyrie enter the house. Her hair was a dirty blonde and her skin was far more tan than either mine or Eir’s, though it was still very fair when compared to a normal person’s skin tone. Her wings, which were marginally smaller than my own, were a dark golden hue that caught the light in such a way that they seemed to shimmer, giving her a slightly ethereal look as she strode into the house with her eyes closed and a smile on her face.
”Eir~, it is Brynhildr! Do you have any blade polish? I have used the last… of… mine…” she trailed off when she saw me standing in the center of the room with a wicked-looking spear in my hand, while Eir sat in a chair at my feet without her weapon. I realized what the scene looked like, a strange woman in her friend’s house with a weapon, and only had time for one thought before all hell broke loose.
Oh, shit!
My assailant and I tumbled out into the open air, each of us fighting for dominance as the two short swords she was wielding struggled against the shaft of my spear as I used it to desperately block her access to my vital organs. I like them all exactly where they are, thank you very much, and it just wouldn’t do to have my first day in the land of ponies and magic be sullied by disembowelment. My wings worked on instinct, flapping hard to both put some distance between me and the insane woman who had decided that I would look better as a shish-kebob. Thankfully for both of us, the room I had been in was a part of a large fortress that seemed to hang from the ceiling of a massive cave, so we didn’t have to worry about not being able to catch ourselves before we went splat.
If I weren’t so busy fearing for my life, I might have taken some time to admire the sheer scope of the architectural glory that surrounded me. The size of the hanging fortress, for there was no other word to describe it, made it seem impossible that it should be hanging from the ceiling like a group of stalactites, and yet it was. How long must this cavern have taken to form? Billions of years, no doubt, and these Valkyries had come in and shaped the very stone according to their will. But, I had no time to be waxing philosophical when a crazy bird-woman wanted to make my insides my outsides.
”I told you already, you crazy bitch! I wasn’t trying to hurt her!” I screamed as I held the spear awkwardly out in front of me, not really sure how to wield the weapon that was a bit taller than I had become, which from what I could tell was around seven feet tall.
If nothing else, it felt really good to be tall for once. Back on earth, I had barely been 5’7’’.
But, back to the manner at hand, the Valkyrie in front of me was holding her blades in what I could see was a very not-awkward way, and the look of fury on her face was more than enough to tell me that I probably shouldn’t have insulted her. ”You dare to insult me, after attacking my friend?! Your blood shall stain my blades!” she screeched in a manner that very much reminded me of the call of a hawk. You know, the one that makes humans a bit nervous and freezes the wildlife for miles around in place? Yeah, that one.
I am not ashamed to admit that I whimpered. She was a fucking scary sight.
Blind luck and instinct guided me as I turned tail and flapped as hard as I could, each beat of my massive wings covering a large amount of distance as my irate attacker went in pursuit. From the fact that I wasn’t currently feeling the wind from her wings on my feet, I assumed that I was at least as fast, if not faster, than she was. Thank Odin for small miracles, right?
I looked behind me to see if she was still following me, and I found that I had put a bit of distance between us due to my far more powerful strokes. I looked ahead and searched for an opening in the fortress’s towers and, upon finding one, dove straight into the ‘alleyway’. I knew she would follow me in there and with her smaller wingspan she stood a chance of catching me, so I searched again for an open window or balcony, anything to hide from Brynhildr. I dove into the first open balcony I saw and stumbled inward as soon as my feet touched the ground, nearly falling on my face due to my inexperience with the whole landing thing.
I dove behind the wall and pressed up against the solid stone as tightly as I could, holding my breath until I heard the rush of wings and an angry yell as my pursuer flew straight by the balcony, intent on finding where I had run to. I breathed out a sigh of relief and clutched my spear tightly to my chest, slowly sliding down the wall and praising Odin for his benevolence in allowing me to live. I wasn’t a particularly religious person, at all, but when a god literally changes who you are after you meet him in a local bar, you tend to start praying.
And then when one of his warnings about looking out for pottery, from a memory recovered by magic, proves to be very useful, you start praising his name. I opened my eyes just in time to see the vase come flying at my head, allowing me to roll out of the way and come up in a crouch as the piece of pottery shattered on the wall. I looked up and my mouth slowly opened in an “o” as I realized what it was that was looking back at me. It was about the size of a lion, and it even had the hindquarters, tail and paws, though it was most definitely not a big cat considering the sharp beak that protruded from its feathered head, and the large wings that were outspread in what was clearly a defensive manner. One of his talons was raised threateningly as the Griffin’s large, expressive eyes narrowed in suspicion at the intruder to what was almost definitely his room. He had a large scruff of black, downy feathers around his beak that gave the appearance of a beard, and three long scars along his chest spoke of a warrior who had survived battle.
Well, if there was any doubt as to where Odin had sent me before, there certainly was not any now. I gawked at the mythical creature that had just thrown a pot at my head, my eyes bugging out of my head as I finally came to terms with the fact that holyshiti’mreallyinequestria! But, alas, the happy dance would have to be put on hold, as the griffin was now shouting at me in what sounded like German. "Was zum Teufel machst du hier? Das ist mein Zimmer! Ich bin der Botschafter aus dem Iron Claw Stamm, und ich werde nicht so respektlos behandelt werden!"
Now, for those of you who do not speak Griffonian, or German as we call it, this is what he said: "What the hell are you doing here? This is my room! I am the ambassador from the Iron Claw tribe, and I will not be disrespected like this!"
Needless to say, I do understand some German, thanks to my late grandmother, so I quickly raised one finger to my lips and shushed him as I glanced out of the room, making sure that Brynhildr hadn't followed me before I whispered, "Es tut mir leid, aber ich hatte zu verstecken. Es ist eine verrückte Frau namens Brynhildr, die versuchen, mich als eine Praxis Dummy für ihre Schwerter zu verwenden. Bitte, lass mich hier bleiben! Sie sprechen eine andere Sprache?"
The griffin slowly lowered his hackles when he heard his own language spoken back to him, likely unused to someone in a foreign country actually knowing any of it, and his wings folded down to his side when I told him what had forced me to seek refuge in his room, a grin on his beak. How a grin formed on a protrusion of rigid keratin? That was best explained by the fact that I was in Equestria. Honestly, I had just used the full extent of my German ability, and I was really hoping that he spoke whatever language the Valkyries spoke. "Ja, I speak Equish. Vat did you do to anger ze frau?" he asked curiously, prompting me to raise my eyes to the heavens in a silent thank you to whatever gods were listening. I was really worried that I was gonna end up in a jail cell.
"It's all a huge misunderstanding," I assured him as I sat down with my back to the wall, leaning Gungnir against my shoulder as the Griffin sat down on his haunches, "She saw me in her friends room with this spear and thought that I was attacking her. She wouldn't listen to either of us, and it was either run and hide or gain an intimate knowledge of what my insides looked like." My delivery was so dry that the Griffin actually burst out in a chuckle, which sounded like a series of squawks that slowly petered out. "My name's A--... Skuld. My name's Skuld. What's yours?"
The Griffin strode up to me and stuck out a talon, which I carefully shook with my own dainty, six fingered hand to prevent him impaling the appendage. "Ze name is Blitz Stahlfeder, mein friend," he introduced himself firmly, the way that all diplomats and politicians do, before he released her hand and sat back down. The next half hour was filled with him asking me questions about the specifics of my circumstances and, without giving too much away, I responded with as much honesty as I could. At the end of my tale he scratched the bottom of his beak as we both sat there, his expressive eyes narrowing in what looked like concentration before he snapped his.. talons... and brought a fist down into his open claw. "If zere is a misunderstanding, ve could ask Freya to--"
"Ask Freya who the unknown Valkyrie in your room is, Herr Stahlfeder? Or was there something else?" a powerful, slightly irate sounding voice came from the door to their right. Both of us gulped audibly as we looked over and saw a woman dressed in a very large amount of impressive-looking armor, large black wings spread out in a threatening manner as she looked down at the two of them. "Because I would certainly like to know why Brynhildr has been flying around the castle, screaming that an intruder attempted to kill my youngest daughter, and you happen to have the Valkyrie who matches the intruder's description perfectly."
I looked up into the blue eyes of what could only be the leader of these winged women that I now found myself a part of, and a sudden urge hit me with a power that was impossible to ignore. I had to say a phrase that I had never before uttered, for fear of being publicly ridiculed, but now that I was in Equestria...
"Aw, horseapples..."
Author's Note
Hey there, readers! This is my first attempt at a fanfiction for My Little Pony, and I know I must be batshit insane to take on a Chess Game of the Gods story right off the bat. But the muse hit me, and there was no stopping it. Please, leave a comment and tell me what you think!
Diplomatic Relations and Battle Strategies
My new Griffin friend and I looked up at the woman in front of us with a mixture of respect, admiration, and pure pants-shitting terror at the way she was glaring between the two of us. Her face was one of a woman barely out of her twenties, though her eyes bore testament to many years intervening between the time when she actually looked her age and now. I suspected that she might have a thing for Celestia’s plot, considering the large, crimson-gold sun emblem that adorned the chest piece of the gleaming plate armor that she wore. She was slightly taller than I was which, considering my new height, was rather impressive. Her majestic black wings were reminiscent of the ravens back on earth and a mite larger than my own when they were spread out fully, making me feel suddenly inadequate despite the rather large, impressive spear that I held in my hand. In her right hand she held a one-handed battle axe that looked like it would feel all kinds of unpleasant should it be imbedded into my skin, and the murderous look in her eyes made me want to say something to prevent that ASAP. I stammered as my terrified brain attempted to formulate any kind of explination in the face of such righteous fury, and I found myself wondering if I would go to Asgard for dying in battle when Stahlfeader cleared his throat to draw attention to himself.
I was impressed that he managed to keep from shaking, which was more than I could say that I was doing, and speak with only the barest of a tremor in his voice as he spoke in his heavily accented 'Equish'. "A-ah, Frauline Freya Bloodaxe, I see zat you haff not had ze pleasure of meeting mein friend. Zis is Frau Skuld," he said with a gesture to me, which drew her eyes back to me once more. I instinctively gripped Gungnir closer to my chest and flinched away from her gaze, half-expecting to be frozen solid simply from the frigidity of the glare. Bltz looked between us for a moment as he considered what he should do, his golden eyes darting back and forth between my cowering form and the imposing fiure struck by the sovreign of the Valkyrie race.
"I know the name of every Valkyrie that lives, or has been born within the last three months, in both Valhalla and Jotunheim. Skuld is not among the names that I know. So, you cannot be a Valkyrie. What are you?" she asked imperiously, prompting me to shift my eyes back and forth as, suddenly, I found the eyes of both the Griffin whom I had befriended and the overbearing woman on me. The former seemed highly curious, which was harmless enough, but the latter seemed very defensive and hostile, which could end up with me as a grease stain on the bottom of the cavern floor so many hundreds of feet below us.
Did I mention that the entire fortress that I was in, which was called Valhalla by the way, was hanging from the ceiling of a cavern that seemed to take up over two thirds of a mountain? I don't know what kind of engineering went into making the whole thing stable, but it was still cool beyond belief even when I was confronted by my imminent demise.
"Mother, wait!" an angelic voice called out from the hallway behind the large Valkyrie, prompting both Blitz and I to let out simultaneous sighs of relief. Freya's wings folded slightly as she turned to look at her daughter, who's face shone with a flustered red glow and a sheen of sweat as if she had just finished sprinting all the way here. Which, for all I knew, could very well have been the case. The larger Valkyrie looked surprised when she saw her daughter, and the spell that she had bound me under with her intimidating presence was broken. Finding that I could move my limbs again I scrambled to my feet and backed away from the duo, making sure that I kept my spear pointed straight upwards so that I didn't get mistaken for a threat.
Brynhildr, the crazy woman who had tackled me out of Eir's room, followed shortly behind her with her head hung low in what looked suspiciously like shame, though I gripped my spear even tighter just in case I would have to contend with those deadly swords again. Eir gave the other Valkyrie a dirty look, which caused Brynhildr's wings to droop even lower when she saw it, and said, "My sister here has something to tell you, Mother." The gold-winged woman mumbled something incoherent, prompting Freya's head to tilt in confusion and Eir to elbow her in the side with no small amount of force, drawing a grunt from her. "Go on, tell her."
She stiffened for a moment and looked up at her mother, teeth grinding in an expression that resembled the one people make when they accidentally swallow sour milk, before she blurted out a string of words in very rapid succession. "Shewasn'tattackingEir," she said, slowing down and growing quieter with each word, "Eir was... actually... nursing her back to health. She found that one out in one of the valleys when she was gathering ingredients for her medicine stuff and brought her back." The look of distaste on her face only grew when her mother's expression turned into one of recognition, then mild annoyance as she realized something.
"Bryhildr Warlust, you had me mobilize an entire wing of Elitstyrka to defend my home from an injured patient of Eir's?" she asked with the infinite patience only a mother with a troublesome child could have, and I slowly began to lessen the deathgrip I had on Gungnir as I realized that the worst of the danger had passed. Brynhildr cringed even more than I had when Freya had been interrogating me, looking as if she had been physically slapped, before she drooped her head and wings even further. I almost felt sorry for her.
Then again, she had tackled me out of a window, so my sympathy was limited at best.
As Freya began to berate her eldest daughter for her stupid mistake Eir slipped past them and ran over to me, pulling me into a quick hug before she began to frantically check for wounds. No matter how much I protested that I was fine she insisted on giving me a thorough check, which drew another squawking chuckle from the Griffin that had made his way over to me during the exchange between the family. "Frau Skuld, zere certainly haz not been a dull moment vith you yet. I like zat," he said with a wink, which I responded to by giving him a thumbs-up. Upon doing so, I noticed that my thumb was not just longer and more slender, but actually had three knuckles. A discreet check of my hand informed me that every one of my digits, even the extra one that was smaller than what I would have considered my pinkie, had one more knuckle than a human's.
It seemed like a slightly arbitrary evolutionary trait, but I decided that it wasn’t very important in the large scheme of things when I considered the fact that I felt a small buzzing in the back of my skull. I reached back and touched the area, surprised to feel soft, downy feathers under the thick golden hair, but found no specific reason for the feeling nor the unease that came with it.
”Hey, Eir, do you feel that?” I asked her quietly as she inspected one of my arms for any cuts, prompting her to look up at me with confusion on her face. I took that as a no and bit my lip, suddenly feeling antsy as the sense of unease in my stomach grew into the same feeling that I always got when I knew I was about to get into a fight. The light-headed rush where everything seems much clearer, you’re thinking at a million miles a second and your feet don’t want to stay still. ”Eir, something’s not right,” I warned, causing her to look around as if searching for a threat. ”I don’t know what it is, but something’s coming…”
”FENRIR ON THE PASS!”
Don’t you love it when your sense of impending doom turns out to be right?
The inhabitants of the room burst into a flurry of action that astounded me with its efficiency. Freya pointed at the balcony and Brynhildr immediately took off, soaring out of the large opening at a speed that made me wonder if she wasn’t holding back a bit when she had been chasing me. The Griffin ambassador was stunned for just a moment before he pounced over to a chest next to his bed, lifting up the lid to get at a gleaming set of silver armor and wing-mounted blades that he immediately began strapping onto his body. Eir’s eyes widened as she looked back to me and grabbed my free hand even as Freya was ordering her to go to the armory and begin suiting up, leaving her to soar out of the room with the Griffin close behind her. The youngest of the Queen’s daughters dragged me through the hall as I tried to figure out what had been so much of a threat that even a foreign dignitary had offered to fight it without even a word of protest.
”Eir, my memory’s still not that clear, so can you tell me what a Fenrir is and why everyone’s freaking out so bad?” I asked as I watched another of the winged women that were now my people run past us, aiming for one of the large openings that lined the hallways and dumped out into open space. Had I not seen the purpose firsthand, I would have just assumed that these bird-women just liked the view.
The smaller of the two of us chose not to answer until she had dragged both of us into the armory, where many Valkyries were grabbing weapons and helping each other strap on gleaming plate armor, each of which bore some variation of the Solar Diarch’s Cutie Mark painted crimson gold somewhere on them. ”Fenrir are monstrous, semi-intelligent wolves created by the Great Nightmare over a thousand years ago, tasked with keeping our warriors at bay while she ran rampant over the land. They delight in death and destruction, and will not hesitate to rip you apart and eat you. Here, put this on,” she ordered as she handed me a chest piece made of a shimmering golden metal, which took me a moment to figure out that she wanted me to put it on. I set my spear against the weapons rack next to me, which had been stripped bare, and began to struggle with successfully putting the armor on. Partly thanks to the fact that I still wasn’t used to the breasts that now graced my chest with their presence, and mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to get my wings through the large slots in the armor designed to accommodate their range of motion.
Eir gripped my primary feathers in between two fingers on each wing and pulled them through the slot, creating a strange sensation that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. ”I am the only advanced holy mage left in Valhalla, so I must cast the whole of the incantation that will strengthen our warriors and disorganize our foes. I will need you to protect me, as I will have to stand on the main bridge to affect all of them, and that will leave me exposed. I am sorry that we have to ask you to fight so soon after getting injured, but we need every soldier that we can get. Fenrir never arrive in small numbers.”
I whirled around to her in order to protest, beginning to say that there was no way I was going to stand a chance in any kind of battle, when I felt a strange sort of calm come over me. A small voice in my head whispered that I could do it, that I was born to do it, and I felt a strange fire begin to rush through my veins as I considered the prospect of cleaving heads from bodies and running them through with Gungnir. The fact that I was excited, rather than disgusted, by the idea should have scared me, but to be honest it didn’t. Also, the look that Eir was giving me was just about enough to make my heart melt due to the depth of its passion.
”Just tell me where the action is, and I’ll be there, Eir Holybell,” I proclaimed with a grin, causing her to offer a sad smile of her own before she began to show me how to suit the rest of the way up.
Did I ever tell you that sometimes I really, really hate small voices in my head? Because right now the gigantic voice of self-preservation was screaming at me to use my new appendages to fly as far away as humanly… or Valkyrie-y?... as possible. I stood in front of Eir in gleaming golden armor that basically screamed at anyone who wanted to take a potshot at me, on a bridge barely wide enough to carry a single car that was the only land-based connection between the hanging fortress of Valhalla and the much wider road that led from the sun-drenched valley below the mountain, into the cavern, and circled around the edge until it hit a huge landing where the bridge was anchored to. Considering the fact that as far as I could tell the only non-Valkyrie on the walkway behind me was the Griffin ambassador, I questioned the logic behind the bridge when it appeared that the only foe they faced on a consistent basis was a land bound species.
But I begin to digress. Allow me to return to the reason for my survival instinct kicking in.
You see, Valkyries must be some kind of human-bird hybrid instead of the angelic humans-with-wings that seemed to prevail as their main image. A good portion of a Valkyrie’s back is covered in small, downy feathers that spread outwards in concentric patterns from each wing. Their toes are longer than a human’s by a fair amount and each end in a wicked talon that could have originally been intended to gouge opponents in mid-flight, though now simply served a Valkyrie when she wanted to perch on a precarious ledge. And their eyes possess 20/10 vision and telescopic properties, meaning that I had a very clear, intimate view of what was coming up to meet us.
Have you ever played Elder Scrolls: Skyrim? If you have, then you know what the werewolves look like. Ugly as sin and scarier than the combined forces of hell when pissed off, they are some of the most powerful creatures in the game, and its easy to see why. The red, glowing eyes, the beastial roars, the teeth the size of carving knives combined with talons that could tear you up worse than an industrial meatgrinder. Not to mention the bulging muscle that Adonis would kill to have.
Now, picture at least 2,500 of those. Carrying various weapons, most of which looked like they were carved from some kind of bone with flint teeth tied on to the edges, which I knew would break off in the flesh of whoever was unfortunate enough to get caught by them. In leather armor adorned with small skulls that looked suspiciously griffin-esque and feathers, some of which were too big to be the feathers of the relatively smaller griffins. If I wasn't fighting the pee threatening to run down my leg, I would have been disgusted enough to vomit, but fortunately the terror was enough to freeze most of my bodily functions. I was getting the feeling that fear was a pretty useless notion to the Valkyries, who were currently lined up along every window and balcony that faced the other end of the mile-long stone bridge that my stupid ass had agreed to stand in the center of as we awaited the inevitable charge of the Diamond Dogs from hell.
I took everything I had ever learned from any martial arts movie and put it to use, holding the long spear in both hands with my feet spread apart and planted solidly. My wings were tucked tight against the armor that I wore, though that was more out of fear than anything else, and the golden, winged helmet that I wore cast the expression of terror that was permanently etched onto my face into a dark shadow. All in all, we both were imposing, though one had the advantage of numbers, and I believe that's what led to the Fenrir deciding that we were worth the effort it would take.
As the wolves erupted in a flurry of movement that caused the bridge to disappear under a writhing black sea of fur and teeth and claws, those wolves not yet in the fray let loose with a howl that seemed to pierce my very soul, whispering promises of pain and defeat into my heart and causing my resolve to protect Eir to falter for just a moment. It was in that moment, when any hope of victory or living was far gone if I stayed though I knew that to run would be to abandon Eir, that she began to Sing.
And when I say Sing, I mean to capitalize the word. You think that you have heard singing? That you know what music is? Until you have heard a Holy Mage of the Valkyries Sing the Song of Battle , you know nothing of what true song is. They fill themselves up with the Holy Music of Creation, the notes that formed the mountains and trees and rivers and the very first whispers of life, and they bend that music with their vocal chords, making it act on their will. I felt something move within me, beyond every notion of base instinct that I ever thought I had, and I wasn't afraid anymore. I didn't even know the meaning of the word fear. All I knew was the song, the singer, my allies in protecting her and the unlucky bastards who were attempting to hurt the source of my Song.
♫"Feel it when you cannot see,
Trust it when you cannot feel.
Stay and fight when others flee;
But without need do not kill!"♫
The Valkyries behind me took to the air as one upon the utterance of the first note, the Song of Battle filling them with spirit as they rushed out to meet their foes, knocking those that they could from the bridge as half engaged the charging wolves while the other hald attacked their rear units. They tore into the wolves with a violence and zeal normally reserved for the goriest of action movies, their swords severing entire limbs and spears penetrating through multiple opponents while the war drums that began to sound within the fortress directed the placement of the troops.
♫"When in great pain - grit your teeth!
Watch your weapon in the sheath.
Believe then, when faith is gone,
Have hope then, when there is none."♫
They knew these drum signals by heart, but I did not, and as far as I was concerned they were merely a pleasant backdrop to the Song. The first of the wolves that managed to make it past those who I now considered sisters in arms reached me, and I felt some force guiding my hand as I thrusted and struck true.
♫"Raise your head when others fall,
And stand proud when others crawl!
Hear your heart in subtle doubt,
To the silence give a shout!
See stars through the smoke of vile...
And through the falling foes – smile."♫
This was going to be a good fight.
Author's Note
I hope this is okay. I'm gonna go into more detail with the battle scene in the next chapter. Please, leave a comment or a review. Tell me how I can improve! I'll really appreciate it.
I impaled the head of the spear that had been gifted to me into the chest of the large wolf that charged me, causing a look of utter shock to come onto its face. Strangely, I didn't feel bad about killing this thing, though that might've been the effect of the song that was currently filling my veins with righteous fury. How dare these disgusting things dare to threaten the angel that was behind me, gracing the world with the music that was used to create every good thing in the universe? I heaved with all my strength and the wolf was sent careening off the bridge and into the cavern below me. I didn't even pause as I heard more thudding footsteps approached me as another one of the creatures got past the Valkyries that were completely tearing through most of their ranks even as more and more poured out from the hanging fortress behind me. I spun and twirled the spear, flinging the blood that was on the blade onto the ground just before I came all the way around and smacked the flat of the blade against the wolf's skull.
Really, I had no idea how I was doing what I was doing. I had never handled a gun in my life, let alone a spear, but the way I was moving felt... right. As if I had been meant to do this for my entire life. As the wolve's head snapped to the side with so much force that I heard the crack of snapping bone and the rest of his body soon followed his compatriot over the bridge, I looked back to Eir to study her a bit closer.
An ethereal glowing light seemed to surround her form as she sang out note after clear note, seeming to draw the breath required for the sustained music out of nowhere. She never paused for breath as she belted out the song that gave all of her fellow warriors such fervor and bravery in combat, and her beauty was never marred by even a token look of effort upon her face. She clasped her hands over the pommel of her long sword and rested the tip of the blade against the ground, much in the same way that you would see a knight do if they were about to lay him to rest. The overall effect was that of indescribable beauty, and my eyes went wide behind my helm as my mission was momentarily forgotten in favor of viewing this fallen goddess.
I got so caught up in staring at her that I didn't notice the presence of the Fenrir until a raptor's shriek caused me to turn around to the sight of him getting tackled off of the bridge by my Griffin friend. His large talons gripped the snarling wolf by the shoulders as his razor-sharp beak tore into its throat and ripped out the monster's windpipe. He immediately spat out the gore and let the wolf drop to the abyss below before he circled back around and landed on the bridge next to me. "Blegh, zose beasts taste like Gammelfleisch. Zey did not hurt you, frauline?" he asked as he watched the wolves, who were slowly, but surely, beginning to be pushed back. blood and bits of gore coated his feathers, especially around his wings where the bladed guards had obviously seen use. His talons were covered by gauntlets with half-foot long, serrated blades that acted like extensions to his talons, which were coated in bits of gore and dripping what I now noticed was completely black blood.
"N-no, I'm good. Thanks for the save," I responded as I turned back to the battle myself, surveying the damage that was being done. For the most part, the wolves seemed to be utterly dominated in the fight, the Valkyrie's flight advantage combined with the high altitude serving as a perfect place for the battle to take place. I began to understand why the winged women had chosen to build Valhalla in the location they had, despite the fact that it seemed very inconvenient to reach if you didn't have wings. In the event of a battle, the bridge served as a natural choke point for any land-based enemies, and a simple crippling of the wings for any airborne army would result in sure-fire death upon reaching the ground. It was the perfect defensible position, and the Valkyries could easily retreat should, for any reason, they needed to abandon the fortress.
The Griffin beside me must have noticed my impressed expression, as a squawking chuckle escaped his lips as he flexed his wings, shaking off a bit of the blood. "You Frauen fight with ein ferocity equal to any Greifgeschwader. It ez no vonder zat you haff not been defeated by zese Ungeheuer, zese monsters," Blitz confided as I listened in, nodding in shocked awe at the battle and still listening to the singing going on behind me. He was right, there was no question that the ferocity of my new sisters-in-arms was unmatched and their skill seemed to be unbelievable. Still, something in the way that the base of my skull was still lightly buzzing the same way that it had in the ambassador's room told me that the worse was yet to come.
"Still, dude, this seems a bit too easy. Even Freya was freaked out by these guys, and we're just trashing them. Is this really the best they can get?" I asked as I tightened my grip on my spear, feeling like I might have just jinxed the whole thing. Blitz looked at me in surprise as he considered the information before he turned back to the army and narrowed his eyes, far more practiced skills than my own analyzing the nuances of the battle. I busied myself with watching Freya and her eldest daughter, Brynhildr, tearing through the Fenrir ranks with a choreographed ease that could only have come from familiarity and much, much practice.
"You are correct, Frauline... Zey do not seem to be vorking too hard at getting srough... almost like..." his eyes narrowed further as I looked over at him, and I nearly shit my pants when his look of calm analysis faded into one of shock... and fear. "Zey are buying time, Frauline Skuld. Zey are not intelligent enough to be doing zis. I haff never seen any Fenrir do more zan charge like dumb beasts. Somesing is wery wrong," Stahlfeader finished just as a howl sounded out from the rear of the pack that was charging the bridge, bringing the fighting to a screeching halt and even disrupting the song that Eir was singing as the entire cavern shook. Loose rocks fell from the ceiling as the howl transformed into a roar and the last notes of the interrupted melody fell away from the youngest Princess's lips, causing her crystalline blue eyes to open and stare at the origin of the roar along with every living being in the room.
A path cleared in the center of the ranks as the largest wolf that I had ever seen, larger by at least full ten feet than even largest of the Fenrir, which could stand at around nine feet tall. Its body seemed to rise from the ground through a dark pool of not-light. That was the best way to describe it, not as darkness, but as the complete absence of any form of light. The strange thing about this wolf was not its size, no, but rather it was the fact that its coat was composed of the same not-light as the portal that it had come out of and shadows seemed to roll off of it, giving the beast a very non-substantial appearance. As if it were merely a hallucination of the worst possible kind. Its teeth, however, seemed to be very much solid and were bared in a feral snarl as foam frothed at the corners of its mouth. Its eyes were a sickly green color that seemed to glow, impossibly, with a black aura around the edges as it stalked forward towards the bridge and, more importantly, towards me.
"Mein gott... a Garmr," Blitz whispered, awestruck, as he beheld the absolute impossibility that stood before him, bearing down on him. "But... zose must be summoned from Tartarus! Zey are ze vorst creations of Nightmare Moon! Only a wery powerful bösen Zauberer could conjure ein monstrosity...Ze Fenrir could not do zis..." He sounded increasingly fearful as the convenient exposition he was spouting continued, and I could kind of comprehend why through the terror that I was currently working through. If the Fenrir could not do this, and they had been buying time for something, that meant that someone with a lot of power and brains was working with them, and anyone who could conjure up such a powerful monster from what I gathered to be the Equestrian equivalent of Hell was not someone that I really wanted to have as an enemy. The stare off between the Garmr versus Blitz and myself seemed to last for an eternity, in which a cold sweat broke out all over my body and my knees began doing their best attempt at the Charleston.
Of course, as all calms before a storm are broken, this one was. By the single stupidest decision I have ever seen in my life. Brynhildr, who had been standing at the far end of the bridge with her mother, staring at the beast, decided that it would be a good idea to raise her sword and scream for the troops to attack the beast, which warranted both her and Freya a giant paw striking them and sending them tumbling into the abyss.
Like I said, stupid decision.
Two other Valkyries immediately dived after their princess and queen as the rest of them refocused their efforts, half engaging the remaining few hundred Fenrir that had survived the initial gauntlet of death that they had created while the other hald threw everything they could at the shadow-wolf that seemed to dominate the battlefield. Their attacks served no purpose at all as the wolf refocused its eyes on me, causing me to actually lose control of my bladder as the sickly green, evil-looking eyes focused directly on me and seemed to stare into my soul. I actually saw my life flash before my eyes as it took the first step towards me, most of which I regretted immensely, before a strange sense of calm seemed to wash over me and a familiar voice rang out in my head.
It was the same voice from my memory, the Voice of Odin, and it said, "My spear, Gungnir. It is the key to triumph in this battle. Focus, allow thyself to sense the Holy Power surrounding thee, and fill Gungnir with that power!"
Of course, I had absolutely no idea what this batshit-insane, one-eyed god who had whisked me away into the land of crazy monsters and so-far-no-ponies was talking about, but I figured that he wouldn't want his chess piece to die, so he wouldn't give me bad advice. I walked forward, away from Eir and Blitz, and towards the unholy monster of death and destruction at the other end of the bridge with a not-so-small twinge of runlikeabitch coming into my head. I closed my eyes even as I heard Blitz began to squawk at me and Eir began to whimper, ignored the sound of the massive wolf stalking towards me, and simply focused on sensing the power that my sponsor said was there. It wasn't even a moment later that I felt it, the residual energy from the Battle Song that had been interrupted, and willed it to come into me and flow into the spear in my hand. It was not a spell, not properly, so there was no molding or changing of the raw power contained within the energy, simply the desire for it to gather. I felt it began to do just that, bending to my will as Gungnir began to feel warm, then hot, then scalding in my grip. Despite this, I did not let go as it began to literally vibrate with energy. I felt the two around me go silent more than I heard it, and I opened my eyes to see that the spear in my hand was glowing extremely brightly with a golden light that cast everything around me into a pallet of soft yellows and dull oranges. I hefted it up in a one-handed grip, like I had seen the javelin throwers do in the Olympics, and took aim at the Garmr that was now loping at an impressive speed down the bridge towards me, ignoring the potshots from the Valkyries that were surrounding him.
"Get back, Valkyries!" I shouted in the same language that Eir used to sing and cast her spells, the mere power of those words, even though they were not a spell, forcing them to back away from the beast. I put all my strength and skill, though the latter was somewhat lacking, into the greatest throw that I have ever accomplished. Some unseen force guided my hand as I threw the still-glowing spear, causing it to fly true straight between the eyes of the beast. Compared to the Garmr my spear was a tiny thing, but the holy energy that I had channeled into the thing was so powerful that it actually caused the beast to stop dead in its tracks and actually take a few thundering steps back.
The entire battle seemed to freeze once again as the Fenrir looked up to the thing that they had trusted to rid them of the witch and her protector and to ensure their victory with confusion and horror as it was stopped, while the Valkyries hoped against hope that a miracle could occur. The wish of the Valkyries was granted, much to my satisfaction, as the shadows that rolled off of the Garmr's coat lessened bit by bit until they stopped completely. The golden light that was in my spear bled into the wolf, slowly changing its not-light coat into pure golden sunlight that quickly became unbearable to look at. I shielded my eyes as the beast let loose with a mighty howl just before it literally exploded, throwing those in the air for a loop as the shockwave rippled out from it and tossing those who weren't prepared for it on the ground completely off their feet, such as myself and most of the Fenrir. In fact, such was the force of the explosion that I was blasted off of the bridge and into the open air.
The last thing I remember before losing all consciousness was watching my spear fall to the bridge, embedding itself blade-first into the stone, then the sight of both brown and white wings taking to the sky and diving towards me.
The void surrounded me, and I was drifting formless through it. Suddenly, a pair of eyes that were lit with the same sickly green glow that the Garmr had possessed appeared before me, surrounded me even as they gazed directly at me, and a voice came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Even though I didn't have a body, the sound of the voice made my skin crawl and my initial instinct was to find the darkest, safest corner of the universe possible and hide from whoever owned such an evil tone.
"Thou art an interesting Chess Piece for Odin, indeed," the voice said as the eyes narrowed in what seemed to be consideration. "Thou wert able to defeat my Garmr, and handled thyself quite well for thine first combat. Perhaps he hast found himself a knight. But know this, mortal. He might be king, and thou might be a knight, but I am a Queen. And the Queen ist the most powerful piece on the board. I look forward to when next we meet, Skuld..."
I gasped and shot up in the bed as I grabbed the arm of the person who currently had her hand on my wrist. Eir Holybell looked startled to begin with, her eyes widening and her wings fluffing out a bit at the sudden movement, before she smiled and placed her free hand over my own. "It's okay, Skuld. It's been three days. The battle's over. You granted us victory," she assured me in the most accurate imitation of Fluttershy attending to a wounded animal that I have ever bore witness to. My labored breathing, which was more from the unnatural voice in my... nightmare? Vision? Whatever the case, it calmed down as soon as the voice reached my ears. I confess that I didn't pay much attention to what she said, though that was mostly due to the fact that I was now looking around and checking for any more strange, glowing eyes.
I slowly uncurled my six digits, which I still found unbelievably cool even with the extra knuckle, from her wrist as she patted it before turning to one of the other beds, where a curtain was drawn around it and two armed guards stood at attention. They didn't even pass Eir a cursory glance as she rolled back the curtain and revealed her mother, who had one of her coal-black wings in a cast while she read a novel with a pair of ancient reading glasses. "Mother, you said you wanted to know if Skuld awoke," she said quietly with a quick nod of her head, causing Freya to look up from the book and at her daughter before turning that piercing cerulean gaze upon me. I bowed my head in respect out of instinct, she had that kind of natural authority that made you want to show her respect even if you didn't really know her, but she merely scoffed at the gesture.
I looked up in confusion, and saw a very faint smile grace her stoic features as she folded the corner of her page and closed the book, which I saw was a well-worn copy Daring Do: The Legend of the Winged Sun Warriors. "So, from what my daughter and every one of my subjects that I've spoken to tells me, your heroic actions saved the battle after the arrival of that dreadful Garmr," she informed me, seeming to take slight amusement from the shocked expression on my face. "Yes, indeed. After me and my daughter were injured--she's asleep in the other bed, by the way--your display of god-like power moralized our troops and scared the hell out of those mutated mutts. The Fenrir ran with their tails tucked firmly between their legs. Your bravery saved us all. The women have begun calling you Skuld Godspear, which means that you officially have a title among us," she said as I floundered in trying to formulate the response that was proper for the situation. I hadn't been brave, I had been scared completely out of my mind and listened to the voices in my head about chucking what equated to a toothpick when compared to the massive size of the monster-wolf. The guards attached to the queen looked back with respect in their eyes and nodded at me, causing me to go further into shock as I realized that this woman wasn't bullshitting.
Let's get this straight: I'm not a hero. I was a guy, going to college, living his life, hoping to get a doctorate in quantum physics nearly 15 years down the line. I was intelligent, sure, but this? This was way, way out of my depth. So you'll understand when my reaction was a simple, if slightly inappropriate one when I realized the magnitude of my actions.
"Well, then... spank my ass and call me skippy. I guess I did save the day, huh?"
All four of the people around me, including Eir, tilted their heads and looked at me with utter confusion on their faces at the strange phrase, seeming to have been thrown for a loop by it. Freya was the first to recover after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, coughing into her hand and saying, "Indeed. Now, that brings us to our next order of business. Guards, if you will excuse us. I believe I can take care of myself for a few minutes." Her subjects looked like they were going to protest for all of a half-second before they acquiesced and gave Freya a salute that involved pressing their closed, left fist over their right breasts while extending their right wing and bowing their head. They marched out of the room and closed the door behind them in order to leave the trio in privacy.
The Queen's voice dropped low so that no curious guards could hear her words and said, "What I was saying in the ambassadors office still holds merit, even if we were interrupted by the Fenrir. You are not from either Vallhalla, nor Jotunheim. I know the names and faces of every Valkyrie born in the last 1,700 years, thanks to an excellent memory, and you are not one of them. Combined with your arrival just when the Fenrir show up in greater numbers than have been seen in many years, as well as the arrival of a Garmr, I am more than a little suspicious. You protected my daughter and saved my people, so I am in your debt, but if you do not tell me the truth about who you are and what your intentions are, I will not hesitate to call the guards back in here and have you summarily executed."
I gulped at the end of the speech, knowing that she meant every word, and considered my options. I was an absolutely horrible liar, and so far the physical transformation hadn't changed any of my core personality traits, so a straight-up lie was out of the window. Even half of the truth would sound so crazy that she'd likely disbelieve me, but the whole truth of what was going on was so crazy that nobody, not even a crazy person, could so thoroughly fabricate it. So, after a moment's hesitation and enduring stares of apprehension from both Eir and Freya, I finally let loose with what I was and how I came to be in the world that I found myself in. After a good fifteen minutes of explination where I told them everything all the way up to the vision with the eyes and the voice, though I left out bits such as the fact that I used to be a guy and that the one who had sent me here was freakin' ODIN, they were both staring at me with unreadable expressions.
Hey, I didn't know if these women hated all men, and considering the fact that there were no men, I thought it best to keep that part a secret.
"Alright, I believe you," Freya said finally as she leaned back in her bed and let out an overwhelmed sigh, "if only because that is so insane that there is no author in the entire world who could possibly make up something so utterly ridiculous."
Somewhere in the multiverse, I just know that there's a fanfiction writer rubbing his hands together in glee as he cackles madly. I don't know how I know... I just know.
But I digress, as I let out a huge sigh of relief as she says those words instead of threatening to lock me up in an insane asylum. "You have no idea how good that is to hear, because I was starting to think that maybe I was just coo coo for Coco Puffs," I confided in her with a laugh, drawing a blank look that the queen quickly shook off in favor of a light chuckle of her own. A thought occurred to me as I she laughed, and I turned to her with a look of seriousness in what I assumed were my now-blue eyes. "So, uh, about the Fenrir. Blitz was telling me that they weren't smart enough to summon a Garmr or plan the way they did, and considering the whole vision... dream... thing that I had, I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that someone with some real bad juju--some powerful dark magic, sorry--is working with them," I said with a pointed look at the queen.
This time, it was Eir that spoke up. "Yes, which is another thing that we must discuss with you," she asserted, her voice taking on a firm edge for the first time since I had met her. Which, granted, wasn't such a long time, but it was still mildly surprising considering who it was coming from. "When my mother determined you were not a threat, I was promised a chance to discuss my plan with you. The Fenrir have grown far more brazen and frequent with their attacks, and this most recent one was an unprecedented display of tactical thinking and magical power. Until a few weeks back, they have never directly assaulted the Holy Mages, choosing instead to slam themselves against the wall of our Elitstyrka. Within those few weeks, we have lost over 13 of my sisters. Something is directing these beasts, and if we do not find the source, Valhalla will fall, and with it the rest of Equis," she said so vehemently that I couldn't help but to be swept up by her passion, fearing for the destiny of a world that wasn't even mine! "I understand that you do not owe this world anything, and that what I ask is very dangerous, but I beg of you, please, help me find who is responsible for this blight."
Allow me to reiterate: I. Am. Not. A. Hero. I very seriously considered laughing in this girl's face, no matter how cute I thought she was. She was seriously asking me, a nobody alien to her world, to go on a quest to save it from destruction? It was absurd, it was insane! It was...
Something more important than anything I had ever dreamed about doing.
I did want to do good in the world that I came from, but it was so far gone that I always thought that nothing I ever did would be good enough, that I would be swinging at shadows for my entire life if I tried to fight injustice there. But here, here was a solid, tangible enemy that I could fight, that would fight back with physical blows. It was more real than anything I had ever experienced back in my world, and the more I thought about it, the more I found myself warming to the prospect.
"Alright, Eir, but just so you know," I said while I leaned forward and spoke as if I was confiding a secret, "I'm gonna have to hog all the action on this little field trip."
"Eef I leave any for ze Frauline, zat is," a familiar, screeching voice called out from the doorway, where two frazzled-looking guards winced apologetically at their queen as the Griffin walked into the room. "Zese monsters haff been raiding ze villages of mein Stamm for ze same amount of time zat you haff been losing your heiligen Könige, your Holy Mages, Eure Hoheit," he informed the three of us as he came to a stop on the other side of my bed from Eir, offering me that weird beak smile that he somehow managed to pull off. "Ze vay I see zis, I can eizer go alone to face zis... Dark Mage, or I can go wiz Frau Godspear und Prinzessin Holybell. I sink mein chances are better wiz zem, ja?" Blitz said with a coyness to his tone that suggested he knew that he was going to get his way, if no other reason than because Freya couldn't really stop him from going.
Freya looked between the three of us for a moment, considering what was being proposed, and nodded in assent with the faintest ghost of a sad smile upon her lips. "So be it," she said with a finality. "Skuld Godspear, Eir Holybell, and Blitz Stahlfeader, you three are tasked with finding whomever is responsible for the Fenrir's recent growth in intelligence and numbers, and put a swift end to their machinations. Now that we've gotten that out of the way," she slowly slid into a non-chalant tone as she retrieved her Daring Do novel and began reading once more, acting as if she was uninterested in her next sentence, "would you like to see your airship?"
I froze when I heard the last word, my eyes brimming with tears of joy as I looked up and uttered a silent thank you to whatever merciful god was listening that my biggest fantasy was about to come true.
Airships, ahoy!
Author's Note
Wow! So, alot of positive feedback. That's great, because you're normally getting the raw product when I post these. I have no proofreader other than myself, so if I'm making people happy I'm doing something right. Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this newest chapter, and like and favorite if you enjoyed! Post a comment if you didn't, tell me what I could improve on! Tell me what you want me to do with each character, how you would like to see them evolve! I would love some feedback! Anyways, this is Eon, signing off.
Before we went to see the mode of transportation that I had wanted to see in action since the day I was born, we had to make two slight detours. First, I had to retrieve my spear from where it had embedded itself in the rocky bridge that had served as a choke point for the Fenrir. As it turned out nobody had been able to move it at all since the battle, and when I yanked it up from the bridge without a problem, Freya told me that it was most likely enchanted so that it could only be wielded by myself. That's cool, right? I mean, the spear never misses a target once it's been aimed, it can absorb magical energy like a sponge, and only I can use it?
But I digress. The second detour we made was to the armory, where I was beholden to one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen in all my years. Not that there were many of them, mind you, but still. Freya had ordered that the fastest--and best--blacksmiths in all of Valhalla make a set of what they called "flyg rustning," and what I call badass. It combined a leather undershirt with fur sewn into the inside, an extremely lightweight chestpiece made of a gold-tinged metal that only covered my chest and shoulders while leaving my wings a full range of motion, a plate-armor skirt that had vertical plates instead of horizontal to allow for maximum leg movement, and a pair of warm socks and boots that had the same type of fur that was sewn into my undershirt. A series of narrow, interlocking plates that were clearly capable of shifting were meant to be places on the top of my wings, and the last plate on each end bore a wicked combination of a 4-inch spike with a 3-inch scythe right beside it. The armor even had a place to holster my spear on my back where it wouldn't obstruct my wings, which I immediately tested and found to be absolutely perfect.
Hey, don't hate. You ever try carrying around a spear meant for a god to use? It was fucking heavy, even if I was chosen by it.
After the blacksmiths made sure the armor was well-fitted, which it was, Freya led the three of us to a place that I couldn't believe I hadn't seen before. In the very back of Valhalla, facing towards the entrance of the massive cavern, was an air dock. No, I didn't say airport, I said air dock, and that's because these fuckers knew what the Gods intended when they gave men the idea of an "airship ." Dozens of ship hulls attached to zeppelins were moored, and dozens of different creatures meandered about as they went about their business. "Mother just opened up this form of trade last year," Eir's demure voice informed me, "and many of the elder council were against it. But Mother went ahead with it anyways, and as a result we are now the second-largest port in the north. We even started working on our own airships, and I believe that is what Mother intends to show us. She always was a bit of a show-off..."
The snigger that I had building up in me at that comment was snuffed out like the butt of a spent cigarette when Freya stopped and gestured towards the ship that was coming into the dock that we were in front of before she said, "And there's the first airship of the Royal Valhallan Air Fleet, ladies and gentlegriffon." For the second time in my life, I was rendered absolutely speechless, and some distant part of my brain noted that both of my companions seemed to be as awed as I was. When Freya told me that there was an airship waiting for us, as awesome as that already sounds, she grossly undersold the magnificence of what the three of us would be flying in. We stood in star-struck awe as the ship flowed gently into place before a series of glowing tethers, emanating from a group of glowing crystals lined up along the dock, snapped out and halted the vessel in its tracks.
124 feet of gold-hued metal, seeming to glow with a soft inner light, formed the hull of a two-zeppelin airship that was the single most badass thing I had ever seen in my life. On the zeppelin balloon that I could see, two pitch-black wings erupted from a golden likeness of Celestia's Cutie Mark, which I assumed was the symbol of the nation. Some part of my brain that wasn't reeling from the sight absently noted that Freya must have some kind of fetish for the Princess of Equestria, but that part was pummeled into submission quickly so that I could enjoy the sights. I could clearly see a large number of swivel-mounted, old style machine guns, looking very similar to the Gatling Machine Guns that had been made famous in the American Civil War, mounted atop the open deck of the warship, along with two twin sets of swivel-mounted 12 pounder cannons at each end of the deck. The massive cannons were covered with metal domes that had relatively narrow slits just below where the cannon's barrels projected from the domes that covered where the firing mechanisms were obviously housed. Six slowly-rotating, massive propellers were mounted on the back of the ship, which was obviously how the vessel moved without the strange-looking sails that were present on the singular zeppelins that were attached to the rest of the airships in the dock. To give you a better picture of how awesome this thing actually was, imagine the hull of an old-style ironclad battleship, paint it gold, attach it to two Zepplins that were each longer than the actual ship, and give it the weapons compliment that I had just described. It dominated the entire dock, drawing the attention of every being on the dock no matter what their species, and I was opening and closing my mouth as I tried to think of anything to say in response to the sheer awesomeness of the sight before me.
Of course, being the master of the English language that I am, an eloquent masterpiece that will be remembered for all time erupted from my lips with all the force of a charging freight train. "Fuckin' A!" I shouted as my eyes greedily drank in the sight before me, and I wondered how in the world I hadn't noticed this fine piece of machinery before the queen had pointed it out.
"Quite an unusual expression, Skuld, but I assume that you are expressing appreciation for the Valhallan Air Fleet's first warship," Freya remarked, causing me to cough and blush heavily as I realized that I had just spat out a curse in front of royalty. She played it off better than I did, however, as she merely flexed her wings--don't ask me to describe how that looks, because until you see it it's nigh-impossible to understand-- and continued, "Then just wait. You're about to meet the people who built it, and those three are slightly more... exuberant than even this beautiful vessel."
I turned to Freya and saw that she was sporting a very satisfied smirk, before I turned to Blitz and Eir only to see them looking confused as I undoubtedly did. What could possibly be more "exuberant" than this monstrous, beautiful machine. I was only a student engineer, and not a very good one at that, but even I knew that without magic there was no possible way a metal ship this large could ever get off the ground, even with the two massive zeppelins that it was attached to. Just then, I heard a feminine voice call out in an accent that sounded alot like the one you heard in the old-timey movies from people in New York, "Get the gangplank, dear sister o' mine, 'cause we've got passengers to board!"
Even though I had never heard the voice before in my life, I recognized the accent as something very familiar and easily related to the universe that I found myself in. Why, I had no idea, but just as I began thinking about it a very similar, yet slightly different voice said, "Of course, dear sister o' mine, I'm on the job!" A metal grate began descending from a space in the deck's railing, physically connecting the stone dock with the mighty vessel that it was magically tethered to. It was covered in a rusty red, shimmering aura that I immediately recognized as Unicorn magic, and my eyes immediately shot up to the deck to seek out the pony responsible. I mean, come on, I had been transported to the world of My Little Pony, and I had yet to see a single Pegasus, Unicorn or Earth Pony my entire time here! I was just a bit excited to see my first one appear from the deck that was raised above the collective heads of my companions and I.
I was also understandably confused when the first pony that came into view at the top of the gangplank was not a Unicorn, but a chestnut brown pegasus pony with a spiked-up, dark brown mane and an hourglass cutie mark. It was obviously Doctor Whooves, but he was also one of the most strangely-dressed beings I had ever seen, let alone pony, from either reality. The good Doctor's ensemble screamed "Steampunk!" at anybody who looked at him, and though I normally considered the style to be gaudy and unattractive, this pegasus managed to pull it off with flair. A pair of bronze-rimmed goggles with several magnifying devices attached to them sat atop his head, keeping his relatively short mane swept back away from his face. He wore a dark beige sports coat with several brass buttons and chains, with a dark brown, ruffled dress shirt and striped gold-and-brown tie underneath. On his left foreleg, extending all the way up to the hock*, there was a strange device that was very obviously mechanical in nature, and so intricate that I don't think anybody could determine what it was unless they had designed it. He sported the cheekiest grin I had ever seen on any creature, and the eyes that seemed to be just a bit too big for his head sparkled with mischief as he cantered down the gangplank.
No, you read right, he CANTERED down that gangplank. Almost a Pinkie Pie-esque bounce.
"Hello, hello, Your Majesty, Lady Skuld and Herr Stalfeader," he intoned in a clearly English lilt as he walked up to each of us and grabbed out hands in his hooves and shook them vigorously in some strange twist of impossible anatomy that made my eyes bug when I saw it. He began"To those that don't know me, my name is Doctor Clockwork Whooves, but just call me Doctor, everyone does. I hope you like what we've done with the ship, aw, who am I kidding, how could you not like it, though I hope you don't mind that I still couldn't get that darn air conditioning system to work in the boiler room... ah, well, enough of that, let's go have a look-see at the V.A.F. Light of Valhalla, shall we then? All aboard that's comin' aboard, as it were," he finished just as he turned around and took off just as quickly as he had arrived, looking for all the world as if he were a toddler about to show off his newest toy.
Now that his whirlwind of motion and fast-paced speech had ended, the four of us that he had been adressing could finally take a breath and give each other looks, three of which were a very similiar "What the hell was that?" while the odd one out was a "I told you so, didn't I?"
I shrugged it off and set off up the gangplank, followed closely by the rest of those that had agreed to come with me on this voyage and trailing just behind the chestnut pegasus that had invited us on board. Freya remained behind, and as I looked back once to her I saw that her eyes were trained solely on Eir, a look of concern clear on her face where there had been only light amusement before. When we reached the deck I felt a low, almost non-existent tremor in my hyper-sensitive flight feathers, which were responsible for sensing air currents and wind direction while I flew. Still not completely used to the idea of wings, by the way, even if their use came naturally to me, but I'm getting away from the point again. It wasn't like the vibrations I got with the wind, which were intermittent when I wasn't in flight, but rather a constant hum that I believed might be from the engines. I looked back to Eir as she stepped on and saw her tense up for just a second, confirming that it wasn't just me, before I turned around again when I was satisfied that it wasn't another extra sense like the one that had alerted me to the arrival of the Fenrir.
"Welcome aboard, don't worry about that sensation in your flight feathers, s'just the boiler. Now, I've got to do a last-minute flight check before we disembark, wouldn't do to have us explode because the ammo isn't properly stored, so I'll have my lovely assistants give you the song and dance routine. And yes, before you ask, that was meant literally. Shim, Sham, the stage is yours my dears!" he called out as he gestured to our left, where I saw two unicorn mares that seemed almost intimately familiar. They were twins, that much was immediately obvious even though they each had a hoof and the brim of a top hat covering their faces. The top hats bore inverted color scheme, the one on the left wearing a white one with a red band around the cylinder portion while the one on the right wore a red version of the headgear with a white band. The coloring of the hats matched their manes perfectly, which made them stand out even more than they would have due to the muted yellowish-tan color of their pelts. They wore identical, bright red and white vests with many pockets, not nearly as fancy as Doctor Clockwork's, though around their necks hung goggles that seemed very similar to the pegasus's. They stood flank to flank in a v formation that exposed their cutie marks, which was a set of two interlocking gears for the one on the right while the one on the left bore a steam gauge.
Suddenly, a bright light shone down on the two of them from the rigging high above the deck, and though all three of us looked up to see where it was coming from I was later informed that neither of my companions had seen the source of the illumination any more than I had. Suddenly, music sprang into being from seemingly nowhere, and though I whipped my head around to try to find out who had brought an orchestra on board, I had no luck in determining the source of that mystery, either. Then, a voice started singing in a tune that nagged my mind to death with how familiar it seemed, even though I could not place it.
♫"Well lookie what we got here, sister o' mine, it's the same on every pier,"♫
The one on the right tipped her hat up to reveal bright green, sparkling eyes and a gleaming smile. I jerked back in shock at their intensity, and was about to ask what she meant when the vocalist's twin looked up and gave a sad frown, looking as though she was about to burst into tears, just before she began as well.
♫"Creatures with gaping jaws, wide eyes and so clueless it makes me shed a tear,"♫
♫"Perhaps they're not aware that there's a better way to get around?"
♫"Well then we need to teach them 'bout the new way o' getting off the ground~!"
I was very, very close to figuring out why this all sounded so very familiar, though the fact that they began performing a vaudville dance routine along with their song didn't help my concentration.
♫"Well you just got an opportunity,with this bit of serendipity~,"
♫"She's Shim!"
♫"She's Sham!"
"The Flim Flam Brothers!" I shouted out and snapped my fingers as I remembered where I had heard the tune before, too late realizing that it was a mistake as the music and dancing immediately ground to a halt. Shim and Sham turned their heads towards me in unison, a look of pure malice occupying their surprisingly expressive eyes while I suddenly found myself afraid. You'd think that rabid wolf-monsters trying to gut me would cure me of any sense of fear, but you don't understand the amount of pure hatred that was emanating from the two unicorn mares. It was like staring at demons. I looked back to get some support from my friends, only to find that they were currently moving back away from me with looks on their faces that told me I was on my own.
Some companions, right?
I looked back to find that Shim and Sham were advancing towards me in unison, the terrible glare still in place while they did so. "We came all the way to the Bergard Mountains, to Valhalla by Celestia's sun-kissed plot, to escape those thieving scoundrel's bad reputation..." Shim informed me as the twins came within just a few feet of me and stopped, looking very intimidating despite their three-foot-tall stature. Perhaps it was the angry-looking, rusty red glow that surrounded their horns, warning me that they were charged up on magic.
"And you're telling us that not only does someone know about them in this place, but it's a Valkyrie? Where in Tartarus did you hear about those crooks? Sham asked with the same amount of venom as her sister. I was starting to sweat slightly as I recognized that she must be using ponified curses, and when they both reared up and planted their forehooves on the chestplate of my armor I am ashamed to admit that a small whimper escaped my throat. I seemed to be getting intimidated by alot of females in this universe...
But enough about my emasculation.
"Well,talk!" they shouted in unison, prompting me to open my mouth and fish around uselessly for a lie that would allow me to maintain my cover as a member of this world. I wasn't sure how the ponies would react to finding out that I wasn't from their world, let alone that their world was a little girl's cartoon show in my world, and I didn't want to be the one responsible for informing them of that second tidbit.
Which was why I was immensely grateful when I heard a chipper English voice call out from behind me, "Shim, why'd the music stop? Did someone mention your brothers again?" I momentarily wondered how many times this had happened before the pair had moved to Valhalla, before the absence of hooves on my chest drew my attention back to the mares. They were both glaring at me with looks that told me this wasn't over before they turned around and began trotting over to the port side of the ship, which was facing the port.
"Not to worry, Doctor, our guests just wanted to get underway quickly, so we gave them the... abbreviated version. Sham and I'll untether the ship, so you go ahead and start guiding the old girl out," she half-lied to what appeared to be her boss as the two unicorns' horns lit up and the magical tethers began fading away from the ship. I looked back to see the Doctor giving me a knowing grin and my two friends in his wake, Eir giving me a sympathetic look while Blitz looked like he was about to burst out into laughter. I scowled at the two of them as the Doctor waved for us to follow him an began trotting to the only raised portion of the deck other than the weapons platforms, which I quickly recognized as the wheelhouse.
As soon as we were inside, the griffin immediately burst out into laughter and fell to the floor, holding one hand over his golden eyes while the other pounded the deck. "Das ist verdammt lutsig! You vere chewed out by ein pony!" he breathed out between belts of laughter, making me want to take that German accent of his and stick it right where the sun doesn't shine.
"Now, that's not very nice, Herr Blitz. They were Unicorns, after all. She would be foolish to disregard them as threats," Eir scolded him soundly as he simply redoubled his laughter, prompting the Doctor to roll his eyes and mutter something about Griffins before he trotted off to the center of the wheelhouse and took a lever in his mouth, cranking it back once before pushing it forward a very small amount. The hum of the boilers picked up and the ship began to move, rolling the laughing Griffin into a wall as those of us who were on our feet managed to maintain our balance.
I most certainly did not let out a petulant laugh at his pain as the Doctor began to guide us out of the dock, somehow managing to operate the steering wheel with his less-than-dexterous hooves and talk at his normal super-fast pace at the same time. "Word of advice, Miss Skuld, don't mention their brothers ever again. Shim and Sham Mechanica--that's their last name, by the way, they probably didn't tell you--designed all the non-apple related mechanical systems on that Super-whatsit-something-5000, and their brothers stole it right out from under them! Nasty business, that, especially after the Apple Trust got wind of Flim and Flam's little showdown in Ponyville. Their brothers made sure that their sisters couldn't make an honest living in Equestria, just because they look and sound similar! I actually met them in Bitsburg, trying to get a grant from my former college's Board of Directors for their engine designs. Oh, but enough of that, you lot should get out there and see the sights! There's nothing quite like looking at the Bergard Mountains first-hoof from an airship, I think you'll find. Go on, shoo," he said as he let go of the wheel and ushered all three of us out of the small room through the same door that we had come in from before he slammed it shut behind us.
Well, if nothing else, that pony is excellent for giving me some exposition to explain WHY I'm in such deep shit. If only he could time travel--and dimension-jump--he could probably go back and tell my past self why accepting deals from one-eyed old men was a horrible idea.
My eyes quickly adjusted to the change in lighting, and what I saw left me speechless for the second time that day. In the time that it had taken for the Doctor to lead us into the wheelhouse, explain why my mention of the Flim Flam brothers' names pissed off those mares so much, and to usher us out, we had cleared the cavern and come out into the open, sunny air of the mountains. And I was immediately made aware of why he had said that there was nothing like seeing the Bergard Mountains first-ha--... hoof. I had realized that the mountain that we were in had to be massive for the cavern that housed Valhalla to not simply collapse, but what I hadn't realized was that compared to the mountain, that gargantuan cave was barely qualifiable as a depression in the earth. The mountain seemed to stretch up into the sky for miles, so far that even if the zeppelins hadn't been in the way, I doubted I could've seen the top. It had to be at least as big around as the entire city of New York, considering the way that the mountainside stretched off almost to the horizon in both directions. As I looked left and right, I saw that we were flying through a valley that was lined on both sides with eight mountains that, while none quite so large as the monstrosity that threatened to puncture the very heavens, all put any description of Mount Everest to shame.
"I haff lived in zese mountains all of mein life," Stahlfeader said, suddenly solemn in the face of the greatest peak to ever exist in what I suspected was any universe, "und still, ze sheer size of Mount Asgard und her eight sisters... es ist erstaunlich, nein, Frauline Eir?" The Valkyrie who had inspired me to take on this quest nodded mutely, evidently just as impressed as Blitz and I, just before the vessel tilted to stern and the ship quickly turned completely around, pointing to the end of the valley where it branched off into several more, lined by mountains that were significantly smaller than the ones that made up this valley, though still overwhelmingly large, and for a moment I realized just how small I actually was, and how big the situation I had gotten myself into was.
I was fu--
Meanwhile, on a almost-empty plane of existence that was not too far removed from the one that our hero currently found himself on, two beings looked down at a very heavily mismatched chessboard. Well, I say "looked" and "chessboard", but only because the actual mechanics of what the beings were doing are impossible to put into words without taking up the entirety of the English language in explaining them. The black pieces severely outnumbered the white pieces, of which there only remained two knights, a bishop, the royal pair and two pawns.
"You send a lone mortal and a few companions against the army that I hath arrayed against you, Odin? Thou art growing senile in your old age," one of the two beings said as a black rook moved and placed the white queen in jeopardy. If our hero were to be listening in, he would immediately recognize it as the voice that had accompanied the glowing green eyes in his dream-vision after the battle. She continued, "That, or thine desperation hath grown more than I anticipated in the face of defeat."
"Perhaps, Granddaughter, though there is one thing that thou hast failed to realize during the length of our conflict," Odin responded as he moved one of his knights to take her rook, simultaneously taking the piece and placing her king in check. A growl escaped the more feminine of the two as this happened, and Odin smiled as the rook vanished from existence. "This is a chess game, dear Granddaughter. I hath never viewed it as anything but," he said calmly, "and thou hast allowed thine self to believe that this is a war. Had it been such, thou most assuredly would win with the current situation being what it is. However, chess is not about who is most aggressive, nor who is most defensive. Chess is all about the endgame."
Odin looked into the glowing green eyes of his granddaughter and smiled, knowing that his calm demeanor was driving her insane. "And thou hast been setting up my victory since the game began. Check."
Author's Note
Well, readers, sorry for the long wait! I was out of town for a while, and I didn't have access to a computer.
Alright, now that you're mollified, it has come to my attention that some of my readers do not understand the mechanism by which the Valkyrie's Holy Magic works, or that they don't even recognize it as magic. So allow me to explain. Holy Mages, like Eir, use the "Language of the Birds" to utilize their magic. This language is the language of creation, and speaks to the very essence of what a thing is, invoking its true name in that language. Anyone who hears it immediately understands it, no matter what languages they do or don't speak, because the language is spoken and heard by the soul rather than the mind. With this language, a simple battle song can cause a person who has never fought before not to fear an army of nine-foot-tall monster wolves or a giant shadow wolf, or cause memories that were blocked out by alcohol to be revealed in the form of a vision. If you'll remember, both of these things have happened to Skuld. The Language can do almost anything, except kill or directly cause the destruction of an object or person. This is due to it being the language of creation, the utter opposite of the language of destruction. (Hint: That's gonna come into play later).
Hope that was helpful! See you when I see you.
*Hock: a horse's elbow
Flockholme: The City of the Three Peaks
I silently circled my opponent as I gripped Gungnir with both hands, while she kept her longsword directly between the two of us to ward off any strike I might attempt. I thrust with a perfect form, the slightly sentient spear making sure that the movement was flawlessly executed, but the flat of Eir’s longsword knocked the deadly, trident-like blades away from her body as she stepped into my guard, closing the distance between us. Normally, the closeness would have made me blush, but I had learned the hard way that when fighting this swordsmistress, it was not a good idea to let your libido distract you. I shored up my grip with an effortlessness born of sheer repetition and spun my spear, causing the shaft to intercept and deflect the blade that had been aimed for my gut.
The clang of metal meeting metal sounded out over the wind that whipped over the deck of the Light of Valhalla. ”Das gut,” Blitz called out from a safe distance, ”now ze ving!” I gave no audible response to the instruction from the old soldier other than turning and lashing out with my armored wing, which caused the Princess of the Valkyries back into my range and out of my guard. ”Und svipe,” the Griffin commanded as I swung my tri-pointed spear at Eir’s exposed left side.
The Princess didn’t allow the strike to land, although it would have glanced off of her armor thanks to an enchantment that she had placed on it prior to the match, as her sword moved with a speed that not even my new eyes could keep up with. She stopped my strike cold, stepped into my guard once more and then swung upwards, forcing me to lean back to avoid having my head cleaved in two by the sharp edge of her longsword. The movement forced me off balance, and I was once again forced on the defensive as I desperately warded off blow after blow with every part of my spear.
”Wiederzuerlangen Ihr Gleichgewicht!” Blitz shouted in German, forcing me to distraction as I mentally translated the command on pure instinct. Eir ducked low and swept my feet from under me just as I figured out that he was telling me to regain my balance, causing me to land squarely on my ass with a grunt. I could swear that the metal deck of the ship was trying to snap my coccyx the way that it hurt my ass, but I had no time to recover before Eir was on the move once more. Her sword point was at my neck in an instant, not quite touching my trachea but close enough that I was wondering if she intended to give me a new way to breathe.
I stared up into her shockingly blue eyes and saw, just for an instant, the cold steel of a warrior behind the kind face that had greeted me upon my conscious arrival into this new world. I was scared of her, and immensely turned on at the same time as the moment seemed to stretch on into eternity. She was ultimately my better when it came to combat, and though it should have hurt my pride as a man, I only felt respect for the warrior-princess. ”You’re dead,” she muttered, somehow managing to make one of the scariest sentences that a person could ever hear into a sweet, subtle admonishment of my skills.
Did I mention that she’s incredibly sexy when she’s scary?
”Nein, Skuld, I told you, ze secret is to strike at ze side vith ze sword! It is not easy, not even for Fürstin Eir, to protect zat side,” my new combat instructor told me for what seemed like the thousandth time, breaking the spell between me and Skuld as he stepped forward. I shot him a glare that promised pain and retribution before accepting the hand that Eir offered and pulling myself to my feet. The Griffin, though now at least three feet shorter than me, still managed to withstand my amazing death glare and give me a reproachful look and a few tsk s.
“Yeah, yeah, and keep my footing, and don’t try to fight close, and use every part of my body as a weapon. It’s been two weeks with the same shit, Blitz, I do get your lessons. She’s just impossibly good,” I complained as I put the blunt end of my spear on the deck and gestured to the Valkyrie in question, who merely gripped her sword close to her chest and gave an apologetic grimace.
We had set out from the Dalnum í Níu, which was what the Valkyries called the valley comprised of the nine tallest, largest mountains in all of the world, which I had come to find had two names. The ponies, and most of the rest of the sentient life, called it Equis, while the Valkyries called it Jarðar. Personally, I liked Equis, but then that’s just me. Anyways, I had realized that unless I learned how to fight, really fight, I would be dead as soon as we came across anyone who knew what they were doing. So I begged Blitz to at least teach me how to fight correctly, and after enlisting the help of Eir, the two of them took turns instructing and fighting me over the course of the voyage. I had learned several things over those two weeks, including that my spear seemed to be capable of changing my movements and form so that no matter where I was aiming, the strike would be perfectly accurate, and that even learning how to fight really, really hurt.
I was considering this while I rubbed my sore tailbone when the loudspeaker, built into the airship’s wheelhouse, crackled to life and let out the dapper english voice of our pegasus captain. ”If I could have your attention, my fine-feathered compatriots, I would like to announce that if you look to port, the grand City of the Three Peaks, or Flockholme as Botschafter Stahlfeader would call it, will be coming into view as soon as we clear this pass,” he announced, prompting all three of us to look to the right just as the airship cleared the mountain. ”Y’know, there’s a funny story about the last time I came here! There were these statues, y’see, that could only move when you weren’t looking at them, and I…” he rambled on, completely ignored by Eir and I as we stared at the city.
Valhalla had been impressive, though that was more due to the conventional impossibility of hanging a stone fortress from the ceiling of a cave. The metropolis that I was currently looking at would be the envy of almost any city on Earth if we were going to compete for sheer beauty and size. The city was built across three of the smaller mountains, though each one had to be the size of Mount Everest at the very least, and each was built in nine tiers with a large castle at the peak. The center mountain was by far the largest of the three, with a massive cathedral built on top of it and grand buildings lining the mountainside on every tier. Airships, thousands of them, floated in and out of docks that had been attached to the great stone walkways that ran between the three mountains, as well as docks on the lower tiers of each peak. My telescopic vision allowed me to see the mass of life, mostly griffins and minotaurs, that flowed through the walkways like a river.
I would have stared all day if the only other Valkyrie on the ship hadn’t spoken up, breaking my concentration. ”Skuld, before we start looking for information, we have to see the council,” she said, which caused me to lift an eyebrow in a silent question. “I have been attempting to force them to send a negotiator for two years now, to discuss sending military aid for the last two strongholds in Dalnum í Níu. They might be able to claim ignorance of my letters, but they cannot refuse an audience to the Princess of all Valkyries.”
“Eure Durchlaucht, ze Triumvirat vill refuse. Not out of spite, but because ze declaration of ein alliance must be einstimmige. Stadträtin Blutkraale vill not commit ze fleets,” Blitz said as he reached up and placed one of his talons on her forearm in a comforting gesture.
“Still, I must try, my friend. Even one Herfylki of Greif Streikflügel… we must be able to take the fight to the Fenrir. Otherwise, both Valhalla and Jotunheim are lost,” she stated resolutely as the pieces clicked into place for me, prompting a scowl to form on my face as I realized what was going on.
I looked back to the city as the Light of Valhalla sounded its foghorn to announce its arrival, knowing that the situation might have gotten a bit more complicated. If we somehow made the ruling body of this city angry, we were going to be SOL when it came to finding out information about where the Fenrir were getting their newfound intelligence. Still, we were going to have to talk to them eventually, if for no other reason than to find out what they knew about the situation. I bit my lip and wondered, for the millionth time, if I had bitten off more than I could chew with the situation at hand.
We docked in the east port, attracting more attention than I was really comfortable with due to the oddness of our ship. I hadn’t realized that the Light of Valhalla was really the first metal airship, or that the weapons on it were almost 100 years ahead of the level that most of the other ships, even the military ones, possessed. After the Doctor, Shim and Sham had assured us that even if someone tried to take the vessel they wouldn’t even get her out of port without the three of them, we had parted ways to go take care of our respective businesses. Blitz, Eir and I flew up to the peak of the center mountain--which was an exhilarating experience, by the way--and blustered our way into the Triumvirat chambers. After flustering a Griffin attendant by informing her that Fürstin Eir of the Valkyries was here to see the Triumvirat, we had been ushered into the main room and asked to state our business.
After Eir told them that the Valkyries needed help and that the Fenrir were getting stronger, I recounted the story of them summoning the Garmr. We were then subjected to more than three hours of dismissal from the Blutkraale representative, questioning from the Eisenkalue representative about everything, even if it didn’t require one, and arguing between the Stahlfeader and Blutkraale representative about whether the Fenrir could even summon a Garmr. Now that you’re all the way caught up, let me subject you to just a snippet of the argument that was going on:
Stahlfeader: ”What do you mean, it’s irrelevant! If the Fenrir are capable of summoning a Garmr, then all of Flockholme--”
Blutkraale: ”The Fenrir are dumb beasts, incapable of more than wanton destruction. Strong, certainly, but they cannot reach us in Flockholme, nor could they possibly summon a Garmr. The Valkyrie must be lying, it is the only explanation.”
Eisenklaue: ”Ah, but what if she is not, Heerführer Blutige? If she isn't, wouldn't that mean that someone is guiding the beasts actions? if this is so, would it not be prudent to send just a small amount of ships to their aid?”
Blutkraale: ”Yes, and meanwhile, we can leave the city vulnerable to pirate raids! Excellent idea, Herr Donner.”
Stahlfeader: ”Bah! You’re the only pirate here, Blutige.”
Blutkraale: ”You insolent son of a Roc!”
Yeah.
Three hours.
And that same argument repeated several thousand different ways.
By the end of it, I was about three seconds from unsheathing my spear and seeing if I could aim at all three of them at once. When the final decision was made and we were refused help, just as Blitz had predicted, it had taken both of my compatriots to physically restrain my arms and walk me out of that room. I briefly considered seeing if my strength exceeded theirs, but whatever reason I had left informed me that such an action would probably end with my broken wings and being thrown off of a very high place.
“Those know-it-all, pretentious, selfish, stupid, goddamn…” I continued to mutter as I walked through the lobby of the main castle, the sheer amount of anger I was radiating enough to make most of the Griffins steer clear of my companions and I.
”Come, now, Skuld. I did not expect them to grant my request after one session. They have been arguing about this issue for more than two winters, now,” Eir said, the ultimate voice of reason against the Triumvirat’s idiocy. I didn’t want to be reasonable, however, so I just grumbled and continued to stalk towards the entrance. I was almost sure that the Griffin and she shared a look behind my back, but I was concentrating on not causing a diplomatic incident. I forced open the wooden doors, which were just tall enough for me to get through without banging my head on the frame, and stepped out into the sunlight.
It was cold up this high, and I knew that any human would be dead even in the relatively warm armor and clothing that covered my body, if not from cold then from the lack of oxygen. Even still, the biting wind actually felt good against my skin, and I had no trouble taking in a deep breath and exhaling slowly to try and calm my nerves. ”Eir, Blitz, we’re gonna go get drunk. Very, very drunk. And we’re gonna try to collect some information about the Fenrir while we’re there. But mostly, we’re gonna get drunk,” I told them, conveniently forgetting what had happened the last time I got sloshed in an unfamiliar bar.
I mentioned before, I’m not the sharpest crayon in the pack.
I spread my wings to their full span, reveling in the sensation of the wind flowing through my new feathers. I forgot to mention before, I think, but flying just kinda came naturally to me. Eir had told me before that the fact that I managed to outfly her sister, even for a little bit, was a marvel in and of itself. I flapped my new appendages once, allowing the instinct imbued into the DNA of my new body to take over as I lifted up off the landing before I angled my body down and began gliding down the mountain. I heard my friends take wing right behind me, and looked back to see Eir looking unsure about the idea that I had. I shook my head to remove the sudden urge to ask her if it was okay, knowing that I needed it if I didn’t want to be unpleasant, and simply continued to fly.
The citizens and visitors of Flockholme all stared at the three of us as we passed, with varying degrees of awe, lust and annoyance on each of their faces. I made sure to steer clear of the airships, not wanting to piss off a captain or run into a hull, and made my way back towards the eastern mountain where my ship was docked. I was sure that I had seen a tavern somewhere on the fifth level, and it wasn’t completely impossible that my strangeness and company might ensure me a free drink or two from interested Griffins. Even if I wasn’t a female in mind, I could at least take advantage of the situation by getting free drinks at a bar, right? I had bought enough of them to earn a few, at any rate.
I landed on the eastern mountain with a loud thud, making sure that I was as noticeable as possible as I stretched out my wings one last time before tucking them in. ”Skuld, is it ein gut idea to drink ven you are angry?” Blitz asked as I strode into the bar, Eir looking around nervously at the Griffin and Minotaur patrons that were staring at the three of us.
I didn’t really blame them, considering what we looked like. The Princess and I were both dressed in our golden flight armor, with her carrying that beast of a longsword on her hip while I had Gungnir in its holster on my back. Blitz was wearing the same steel-colored combination of armor and weapons in one that he had worn for the battle with the Fenrir, which I had learned was the armor of all the Griffin Elite.
”Probably not, Blitzy, but at the moment I need some fucking alcohol if I don’t wanna go back there and give them a personal introduction to the business end of Gungnir,” I retorted with a huff as I sat down at a table, making sure that I was facing the door just in case someone came in looking for a fight. I wouldn’t want to leave them disappointed, now would I?
”And who do I have to bang to get a fuckin’ beer around here, huh?”
While this was going on with our main hero, his three newest friends--by loose definition of the word--were busy going through the market stalls set up along the docks, where the merchants could sell their wares. Each stall was actually set into the walkway and carved from stone, so that way in order to sell wares, the merchants had to rent out a stall from the city. Doctor Clockwork and the Shim-Sham sisters had collected a fair number of knick-knacks that would be useless separately, but that between the three of them could be used to improve the systems on the L.O.V., or create some new features.
You see, while each of them were mechanical geniuses in their own rights, together they could create almost anything you could possibly imagine. The Doctor could calibrate a machine’s operations into the microseconds, Shim could create intricate clockwork beyond the scope of almost any artificer in all of equis, and there was no greater expert on steam-powered and hydraulic systems than Sham. They had designed and directed the building of the L.O.V., and without their genius the ship’s cannons and engines would be things of pure imagination.
So, it goes without saying that all three of them redefined the words “mentally unstable.”
”What do you mean you’ve never heard of a triple-inversion flux regulator?! That piece is key to finishing the final component on my ship’s main batteries,” the Doctor complained as he stared down the Griffin merchant, who had claimed to have come all the way from Bitsburg with technological marvels.
”I meant vat I said, you stupid, puny pony! For ze hundredth time, vat you are asking for does not even exist. Now, take your Freundin und leave,” the merchant said angrily, pointing away from his stall in a random direction.
Sham’s eyes widened up as Shim tried to figure out what he had just called her and her twin, and she slammed a hoof down on the stone surface of the stall. ”Now hold it right there, my good gentlegriffon. My dear sister and I are not in any kind of intimate relationship with the good Doctor! Are you aiming to slander our good name by suggesting we are not only in a polyamorous relationship, but an incestuous one at that?!” the cream-colored unicorn asked indignantly, while her sister’s eyes grew wide at the realization, then angry.
The other mare looked down at the pieces on display and noticed something odd about them, though she couldn’t figure out what it was. Shim’s horn lit up with an arcane power and one of the Merchant’s wares was surrounded in the same rusty red glow, just before it lifted up off of the stall and into her field of view. She studied the piece for a moment, trying to figure out what had caught her interest, before a small twinkle behind her eyes indicated that she had realized it.
The merchant was about to respond to her sister’s accusation when the artificer said, ”You know, dear sister o’ mine, now that I’ve had a good look, I believe this charlatan has attempted to swindle his customers. These machine parts are not from Bitsburg… They are from fillydelphia, am I right?” she asked the merchant, causing him to freeze up and let out a weak, nervous laugh. All three of his would-be customer’s eyes narrowed as they leaned in and glared at him, examining him with a critical eye.
”Did you know, good sir, that the fine for mislabeling merchandise is 50,000 Greifmarks and a one-year suspension from the markets?” Sham asked dangerously, raising a single eyebrow. ”Is it now, dear sister? Why, this fine merchant might just lose his ship if he can’t sell in Flockholme for a whole year… perhaps he should give the good Doctor what he’s asking for. It might be enough to make us forget that he was lying about his goods...” Shim trailed off, leaving the Griffin looking between them as if they were devils straight from the old legends.
The merchant sighed before he reached down under the stall and pulled out a strange, clicking mechanical device, handing it over to the chestnut-brown pegasus with a scowl. ”Und zere goes mein paycheck for ze month…” he grumbled as the Doctor happily took the machine in his hoof before placing it back in his saddlebags.
”Thank you,” Shim said, followed by Sham’s, ”For your cooperation.” The three ponies turned around and began to walk away, a pleased grin on all three of their faces as they shared looks of triumph.
”Good work, girls! Now, all we need is a ruby. Preferably a fire ruby, y’know. They are the best quality, an’ we wouldn’t want a little mishap on account of a faulty firing mechanism. Why, I remember the last time that happened! I was with this lass named Rose Berries. Wierd name, but very lovely girl,” he rambled as they made their way down the marketplace streets, both of the mechanically-inclined sisters rolling their eyes and tuning out their friend. They loved him like family, and they wouldn’t ever speak ill about him, but he had the attention span of a squirrel on caffeine. Shim kept her eyes open for the gleam of fiery red that would betray the presence of their quarry.
”No, no, you dun get it. We literally sent a guy to the moon. On a rocket! Y’know, like… whoosh~! It was, like, 30 years before I was born though…” I slurred out as I motioned the actions of the Apollo 11 mission with my ale mug, causing the amber liquid to slosh out onto the table.
”Mein Freund, du bist betrunken,” Blitz said, his own cheeks a rosy red beneath his pale white feathers. His inebriated state had caused him to revert to Griffonian, and it took me a few seconds to work out what he had just said.
”Nah, I ain’t drunk! I’m barely buzzed,” I said as I slammed down my mug with more force than I had meant to, causing the glass to shatter in my hands. I looked down at my drink in surprise, then dismay as the amber liquid spilled down onto the floor. I lifted up the broken glass and stared at it dejectedly, as if I could will it back into its whole-formed state. ”That’s a new one,” I muttered before I let out a drunken laugh, realizing that the thick, shatter-resistant glass that most mugs were made out of had stood no chance against my new body’s retarded amount of strength.
Eir, for her part, was busy looking worriedly between the two of us as she quietly tried to get us to at least slow down our drinking spree. ”Oh, please, you are both very inebriated, and we still need to gather information about the Fenrir. Can’t we go back to the ship, at least?” she begged as Blitz let out a guffaw at the sight of me holding the shattered mug.
Suddenly, the steady flow of conversation that had been going on around the three of us ceased as sunlight flooded in from the recently-opened door. I wiped the corner of my eye with my free hand as I set the base of the mug down on the stone table that we sat at before looking around in confusion, wondering what had killed the buzz that was going. ”Hey, what gives? Weren’t we havin’ a good… time…” I trailed off as I looked to the door, where every single one of the patrons were staring towards.
The reason for the clientele’s sudden silence was made abundantly clear to me, and that reason made my blood run cold. It was certainly not the Griffin, who was noticeably smaller than most of the others that I had seen in the city, nor was it even the strange draconic, cape-wearing creature that was behind him. They were both well within the bar by the time that I noticed them and, though the lizard was openly staring at me, I paid them no heed beyond the first cursory glances I had given them. No, the reason for my reaction was currently set in the doorway, her frame made into a mere silhouette by the inpouring sunlight coming from the unobstructed celestial orb.
The outline of the creature was grotesque, as if someone had taken a Fenrir and shrunk it down to four feet without removing any of the mass. Its muscles bulged obscenely, and even with my limited visual acuity due to the light difference I could see that it was easily thicker in the chest than even Blitz, who was roughly as thick as a good sized tree in the torso. But, you see, the beast’s physical appearance wasn’t what set off my warnings. After the Fenrir, I was confident that there wasn’t much I couldn’t toss around like a ragdoll. After all, I had literally flung a wolf’s body off my spear and into the abyss with a one-handed swipe of Gungnir.
No, what terrified me was the eldritch flame that was glowing in the hole that was in the thing’s torso, and the glowing eyes that illuminated its otherwise darkened face. As soon as I looked into those eyes, I was transported back to that battle on the bridge. The cries of dying wolves sounding out like an unholy cacophony, interspersed with the rare cry of a Valkyrie giving her life so that others might live. The Garmr stared down at me with its lips curled into a snarl, its glowing green eyes void of anything but hunger as it planned my destruction. Its fetid breath washed over me, and I knew the stench of death.
Needless to say, I did not respond well.
”Blitz, on me!” I cried out, remembering how I had fought alongside him during the battle. My left hand grabbed the heavy stone table and I lifted it with less effort than my old body would have picked up a textbook. I tossed it back behind me, followed closely by my chair as I stood up and kicked it away. My right hand was on my spear by the time the table hit the wall, and the weapon was drawn before it crumbled into fragments under the force of my toss. My wings fanned out to their full thirteen foot span as I took the spear in a javelin hold and tossed it with perfect aim, mostly thanks to the sentience of Gungnir that prevented it from being thrown off-target.
“I fucking called it!” The shout of the weird looking lizard thing was deafening as he zipped in front of my intended target, flourishing his cape out as dark-silver gauntlets appeared along the length of his muscular arms. He then slammed his palms onto the side of Gungnir, sparks flying from how the spinning spear was digging into the metal.
My weapon was greater than his strength, however, and sent the draconic creature back through the flapping doors from whence it came. I scowled angrily as the intended target sidestepped, watching the smaller dragon zoom past with a shocked look on its face. The shock was enough to give me a distraction, and I roared as I flapped my wings and took off across the tavern. I covered the distance in less than a second and gave the beast’s face an intimate meeting with my palm before introducing the back of its head to the stone wall. The masonry cracked under the force of the blow, and a small tremor shook the room as dust fell from the ceiling. I didn’t waste any time as I gripped harder and pulled the thing out by its head and tossed it across the room as hard as I could, causing it to smash through a few tables before slamming into the wall with a deafening crack.
”Whoever your master is, whoever is summoning these beasts from Tartarus, let him know that they’re smokin’ the wrong kind of crack to think they can send monsters to a civilian town and think that they will ever live another second,” I growled, pointing at the creature as it seemed to gain just a bit of awareness back, ”without wondering when I’m going to find them and show them the meaning of the word pain.”
“Cute speech, girly,” the Drake’s voice came from the door, causing me to glare at him indignantly due to the slight on my manhood. Just because I have boobs, long, flowing hair, and no… other parts… yeah, I’m gonna stop. My initial fear had ebbed somewhat, and my brain was beginning to register that the monsters I had fought so far had absolutely no interest in talking. Not even to taunt. “But I think you have my friend confused with someone else. You see, you might think she felt all that shit you just did, but I can almost guarantee that she didn’t. In fact, she’s up and about right now, and she doesn’t look too happy about what you just did.”
I barely looked in time to see her charging, and I never felt pain like what came next. Her massive shoulder rocketed square into my chest, and though my armor prevented any real damage I was still shocked. There was also that part where I went flying back towards the wall I had thrown her from earlier, but I was too busy scanning over what was truly in front of me.
Now that I had a good look at her, I could tell that the ‘Fenrir’ actually shared the characteristics of the ‘Diamond-Dogs’ from that one episode of the show. Her fur was a dark-blue, and the fur around her feet, eyes, and paws was completely white. The sapphires in her eye sockets gleamed with annoyance and, surprisingly, not anger. Her entire upper body was covered by a black biker jacket with silver studs along the shoulders, letting me know what to thank for the stud-shaped bruises I felt coming on where she hit me. They did not show the hunger for death and destruction that I had envisioned with the Garmr, and she was not snarling like I had thought either.
Before I could even begin to process this new information, Eir decided that it had gone on long enough. ”All spirits with anger, fear or doubt in their hearts shall be stilled. You will no longer fight, until you have been given clear reason to do so. So I, Eir, command,” she ordered in the Language of the Birds, the source of all Holy Magic. All three of us, both of the strangers and myself, became relaxed in that instant, and I felt the fear and anger that had fueled my rage simply bleed away.
”Now,” she said as she stepped forward, a smiling gracing her beautiful face, ”we can discuss what you have done to this Diamond Dog. Did you allow her to go into the valley? Even if it was for but a moment, the taint left there by the nightmare could cause this transformation.”
“What, no introductions? You guys are just walking examples of chivalry, huh? I mean, not only do you attack my friend, but now you want to know personal information without so much as a name from either of you?” The dragon’s fiery retort made me grimace in annoyance at the way he was addressing Eir, but I managed to leash my anger enough not to respond.
”Oh, where are my manners? I must have forgotten to introduce my friends and I when I saw clear evidence of what appears to be either some form of necromancy, or Nightmaric influence,” she responded back coolly, her voice as gentle and demure as it ever was while she gave him an innocent smile. ”I am Princess Eir Holybell, Lady Supreme of the Order of Holy Magi, Retainer of the Celestial Paladins, and heir to the throne of Dalnum í Níu. My friends here are Skuld Godspear, envoy of my mother, Queen Freya, and Blitz Stahlfeader, son of Ratsherr Stahlfeader. Now that introductions have been made, perhaps you can answer my question before I take measures to ensure the safety of everyone here?” The entire speech was calm, and her blue eyes never left the drake’s.
The drake’s response was to raise an eyebrow and cross his arms with a huff. ” Well that makes three princesses and a queen to add to the list of royalty I’ve been...blessed, more or less, to meet. And before this situation gets out of hand again, I would like to introduce the members of my guild, Blackbird. You already know Diamond Everwinter, the Diamond Dog that was placed under attack for no fucking reason, but I digress,” The dragon responded crossly, but you could see the anger slowly evaporate from his face. ”I am Silas Epista, Guildsmaster, and the Griffin is Ace...whatever his last name is.”
Eir motioned for them all to sit down and, after she had paid for the damages, ordered a round of drinks for the six as they sat at the table. Well, five really. Diamond was too big for the booth, and opted to sit next to the table itself.
Blitz’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he looked at the Griffin and muttered his name before recognition took over his features. “Ja, Ace, ze stunt griffin! You vere ze vone who challenged me to ein race ven your show came to Flockholme! Ze whole unit came out to vatch.. Did zat ving heal up?” he asked, looking curiously at the smaller Griffin’s right wing as if he could see inside it to find damage.
Ace huffed before slapping a talon to his chest pridefully, giving a cocky smile that would probably rival the ones the clan leaders would often give. ”Ha! I still beat you by an inch, old timer! And that was after you dislocated it with that shoulder tackle! But yeah,” he trailed off as he outstretched the magnificent sky-blue wing in question, nearly whacking me in the face with the appendage, ”She’s healed up quite nice over the year I’ve been away. It’s good to see some people who still know the legend of Ace Strife!”
The older griffin scratched his beak with one metal covered talon, looking as if he were trying to remember something important. ”But… if I am remembering correctly, I vore mein armor. You vere bare, and said somesing about… ‘leaving me in ze dusts’? I do not understand ze words of you southern Griffins sometimes…”
Ace coughed nervously as Silas looked at him with a raised eyebrow. ”I meant...when we passed through the cloud obstacles and was the first one to exit, yeah! We call the clouds ‘dust’ where I come from!” Ace’s explanation caused Silas to snicker and bonk the young griffin on the head playfully, causing said griffin to leer up at him with a frown.
”Okay, look,” I said, stepping in between the two groups and facing Silas. ”First thing’s first, sorry about overreacting, man. I kinda… I had a little episode. I shouldn’t have thrown my spear. Oh, speaking of…” I trailed off as I focused on it, remembering the first time I had accidentally dropped it off the airship. I had simply called out to it…
The golden weapon flew through the door and into my outstretched hand, where I twirled it once before placing it in the holster. Just because I’m apologizing, doesn’t mean I can’t look awesome doing it, right? ”Secondly, if that isn’t a Garmr, then you need to keep the hell out of the valleys. I’ve seen what that nightmare shit will do to a regular diamond dog, and it ain’t pretty. I don’t even want to know what it would do to… her? Yeah, her,” I finished, confident I had gotten the muscle bound animal’s gender right.
Silas, for the most part, went back to crossing his arms and chuckling. ”You hear that, Diamond? Even females can’t tell if you have a taco or a burrito anymore.” Diamond looked stupefied at the words that hit her, but once she caught the meaning. she promptly camel pushed Silas through the door with a snarl. The drake came back in with a hearty chuckle, dusting himself off and going right back to the conversation as if he wasn’t just sent flying.
”I miss tacos,” I mumbled to myself as I took on the thousand-yard stare, imagining going to a Taco Bell and just buying every taco they had.
I had thought my mumble to be indecipherable in any known language but my own, but lo’ and behold, I was proven wrong. Silas’s head snapped up from the lax pose it was in, and he simply stared at me with a dropped jaw as if we were cavemen and I just discovered fire.
”Press pause, put the controller down, and Jarate all over the place! What the hell did you just say!? You miss tacos!? There’s only one thing that could mean!” At the end of his exclamation, I shrugged my shoulders. I was extremely confused about the first part of that sentence, but then again, he was a talking dragon-not-dragon and I was in Equestria. Maybe it was just a thing here? ”Are...Are you a Piece!?”
”Am I a what? Wait a minute... you know what a taco is!” the realization hit me like a ton of bricks, and I openly stared at him now. ”Creepy old guy, offers to take you to Equestria, you end up there not in your body and not a pony, sound about right so far?” I asked, stepping forward as the two crews exchanged confused, or worried, glances.
”Well. you’re right on the third point, but the first one...not so much. Turns out, I was actually taken away when I was asleep. The powerful fuckers don’t ask sometimes, and I just happened to be on the receiving end of that dicking...blegh. Where the hell did that analogy come from?” Silas’s response caused me to nod in understanding, the context of what he said easily comprehensible. Apparently, he didn’t have a choice in the matter, and was just plopped here.
I frowned for a second, thinking about who had it worse between the two of us. He didn’t have a choice in the matter, but I… I decided to tell him, so that maybe he wouldn’t feel so horrible. I motioned for him to come closer with my hand and cupped my hands around his ear so that the others couldn’t hear. ”I’m guessing you at least stayed the same gender, right? Odin didn’t give me a dicking, he just took… well, you know,” I pulled away and looked down, shame and anger mixed together in equal parts.
Silas looked absolutely mortified and his hands slapped softly upon his crotch with a whine. ”Awww, what the fuck!? I’m officially convinced you might be worse off than me, dude! I mean...noooo! Like, sorry for your loss and everything, but shit man!” Well, it seems I’ve succeeded in creeping the poor guy out, so all I did was pat him on the shoulder and told him I’ve gotten used to it....mostly.
”Well, I’m hella strong now and, according to Eir, I’m supposed to be able to do a Sonic Rainboom… or something like it. It won’t be a rainbow, it’ll be all silver and gold, but yeah. So at least it’s awesome in some ways,” I tried to reason out, still looking down on the ground even as my wings fluttered.
”And that spear’s pretty kickass too! Did you craft it yourself?” I wasn’t expecting a question from him, so I admit it made me flinch minutely, but only because he voiced it higher than normal!
I coughed and attempted to play it off, brushing my now-luxurious hair out of my eyes as I looked at him. ”Nah, this isn’t mine. Odin said it was his, and it’s name is Gungnir. Apparently, it won’t ever miss once I aim to hit a target, whether throwing or thrusting. And nobody but me had been able to hold it so far,” I added with a bit of pride as I leaned forward and took it out of the holster, lifting it up like it was made of nothing but air. ”Go ahead, try it,” I said with a smile as I held it out to him.
Silas scoffed as he reached for Gungnir, his scale-covered hand encompassing its shaft entirely as he smiled. ”I’m no idiot, brah. There has to be a trick to th-WOAH!” I couldn’t help but laugh as he plummeted like a boulder in the ocean, falling clean on his face with a yip of surprise. I could hear him mumble something from his new position on the ground, making me ask him to speak louder. ”Real cute. Myou’ve had jis plahnned from da begwinning.” His voice reeked of annoyance and some mirth, which made me chuckle as I came down from my laughing fit.
Eir even let out a little titter as she watched the events unfold, though hers were much more reserved. ”Perhaps this is the ‘macho’ overconfidence I have heard about when visitors travel to Valhalla. You tried to block that weapon before, did you not feel its weight?” she asked, apparently genuinely curious if he hadn’t noticed, or if he was an idiot.
Silas picked himself up with a smile and showcased his pearly whites, which looked sharp enough to chomp through the toughest of diamonds before giving Eir a thumbs-up. ”Well, I might’ve used my gauntlets to block the initial force, but the magic flowing within its confines caused even my gauntlets to break! So, thinking quickly while remembering the magical property of my cape, I used that as my next defense. Long story short, this cape cannot be punctured by any weapon whatsoever, which means Ol’ Gung here might as well of been a toothpick, your majesty.” Silas’s explanation had some traces of cockiness to it, but I guess its understandable since he blocked one of the most lethal weapons in Norse mythology.
”I can’t say the cabbage vendor outside this humble abode was thrilled about my sudden appearance, but through the rolling cabbages and screaming profanities, I could tell that he was a nice griffin!” At this, Eir, Blitz, Silas, and the rest of his entourage all chuckled. I even found myself chuckling as I summoned Gungnir back into my hand, leaning forward to stick it back into its holster.
I stopped to think about what he had said, about his gauntlets being magical, and I snapped my fingers in realization. ”Oh, no, your gauntlets didn’t get overpowered. They got absorbed,” I said simply as I pulled the spear out and examined it once again, noting that there was a faint blue light in the blades. ”This spear soaks up magic like a sponge, dude. I wouldn’t be surprised if those things are hard to access for the next few days, if they always came from the same place. It’ll eventually release it, but… Yeah, sorry about that.”
Silas began tugging on his chin hair, which gave me pause. In the midst of pondering how a dragon grows hair on its head, he began talking. ”Damn. Eh, it’s not like we’re gonna be fighting anything that may require the use of my rings today, so maybe it’s not all that bad. Regardless, I happen to have something quite similar to Gungnir in terms of absorbtion! Here, let me get it out!” Silas began fishing around under his over-cape for something, and the sound of a sliding sword against its sheath made me raise an eyebrow. Smiling all the while, Silas promptly pulled his missing arm out and revealed a beautiful diamond katana, with an obsidian hilt that resembled a dragon in the act of roaring. A flash of red and yellow would pulse through the blade every second or so, making my eyes widen.
”I call her, Hope! And well, there’s a story for another time about her name. In any case, I’ve been tasked with resolving some affairs in the Crystal Kingdom just north of here. That being said, you’d never be able to guess who charged this baby with magic before I left!” Silas’s taunt caused Eir to perk up somewhat.
Eir tilted her head as she looked at the blade, as if she were searching for something, but then her eyes widened. ”This is Lady Celestia’s magical signature. You have seen her, then? How has she been since her sister returned? She was so very depressed for the first three-quarters of the millennium, Mother feared that she would find a way to take her life. Maker knows she tried enough times,” she muttered at the end, seeming to go off into her own little world as she thought about memories from long ago.
”Well, if you must know,” Silas responded and promptly trailed off for a second or so, ”She seemed alright when I arrived, but I know enough about masks to see through the one she put on. I don’t exactly remember what happened to make the situation escalate that far, but I eventually found myself bearing down on her with a couple of slaps or so, rebuking her childish ways and reminding her of her position in leading a nation through a mask of depression. Still, it was all for the be- Did it just get cold in here?” Silas’s question caused him to tilt his head up to the ceiling and ponder it himself.
The oxygen was sucked out of the room by the gasps from every Bergard Griffin--and myself-- that had just heard what he said. I turned minutely to look at Eir and saw her face completely frozen, stuck in mid-word as she registered what the drake had just said. ”Silas, do you have a will? Because you need a will. Like, within the next five seconds when her brain catches up,” I murmured urgently, placing one hand lightly on my spear.
”You did what?” Eir asked so quietly that in any other setting it would have been missed. But in the absolute quiet that followed Silas’s words, they were like a thunderclap that caused everyone around her to flinch. ”You laid your hands upon Lady Celestia, guardian of all free things in the world, defeater of discord, regent of the day and my personal friend since I was but a baby, over 500 years ago? And you did so in violence? Please, clarify that I am correct in assuming that was what I just heard.” She was so scary that I almost wished I was facing down the Fenrir again as she slowly stood and began unfastening the buckles of her gauntlet as she spoke. She paused when the last buckle was undone, focusing her cold malice entirely upon him as she awaited his response.
“Uh, yeah? I mean, it’s not like I did it for fun. Did I do something wrong here, or- Oof!” Silas found it hard to talk when that same gauntlet Eir was unbuckling successfully struck him across the mouth as it completed its flight path.
”SILAS EPISTA,” she roared in the oldest language in the universe, the very mountain shaking with the power behind every word. She evoked his true name in that language, forcing him to be very quiet and listen to every syllable that came from her mouth. ”BY STRIKING CELESTIA, YOU HAVE DISHONORED ME: DISHONORED MY MOTHER, DISHONORED MY PEOPLE, BESMIRCHED THE STATION AFFORDED TO CELESTIA BY THE ELDER GODS, AND ABOVE ALL ELSE, BROUGHT MORE SHAME UPON YOURSELF THAN YOU HAVE ANY RIGHT TO LIVE WITH!” She pointed down to the gauntlet that now rested on the table, her expression a mask of pure fury. I had never even imagined that she could get this angry, and now that I was seeing it, I never wanted to see it again. Golden light seemed to radiate out from her as she channeled Holy Power to evoke these words, and her hair whipped about wildly in an unfelt breeze.
”YOUR ACTION DEMANDS THAT I CLAIM RECOMPENSE! I CHALLENGE YOU TO A FIGHT TO THE DEATH. DO YOU ACCEPT?!”
I could see by the look in Silas’s eye that this wasn’t the first time someone had used magic on him, or been involved with a fight to the death. I could also see that he had a resistance to the volume that could’ve only came with experience. ” I mean, if it really bothers you that much, I don’t see why not. It’s just that I really don’t have any plans to die today, as I’m sure you don’t either. That, and it is strictly against my personality to lay hands on a female; and I know that might sound hypocritical considering all the times I bitch-slapped Celestia, but believe me when I tell you that she’s perfectly cool with me, and holds no bad blood for what I did whatsoever. Do you understand where I’m coming from, gorgeous?”
I could now see why Eir wanted to pound this guy, even if I wasn’t that big of a Celestia fan. ”Dude, I’m not trying to be mean here, but you’re a fucking--” before I could find a word that described his level of stupidity, Eir leveled one finger at Silas.
”This body that houses such a disrespectful spirit, hear my orders. You shall stand, bend over, offer your neck to my blade, and not utter a word or move until I say otherwise. So I, Eir Holybell, command,” she said very calmly, and I resigned myself to sitting back and watching this unfold. If only I had some popcorn...
“Oh please. As if I’d actually do-HURRN!” Silas’s retort was choked off by Eir’s spell as it took effect, silencing the drake completely as a look of fear overtook his face. He looked so desperate to scream, so desperate to talk his way out of this as he stood up full and bent over at the waist. I almost felt sorry for him as he stuck out his neck against his will.
Almost. He’s still a fucking moron, so I didn’t feel too bad about it.
Eir drew her longsword with a long, fluid motion as she stepped into his field of vision before she laid the edge on his neck, allowing the starmetal to press down on his scales and crack a few of them. ”You struck her to remind her of her station, Silas? Do you know what you are to her, even after this? You are a flicker of a candle. Even I, who will live well into my two-thousands, am just a fleeting glimmer in the ocean that is her life. She measures her actions in eons, Silas,” she said, tapping the edge of the blade on his neck again with the word ‘eons’. ”She defeated Discord. You don’t know, you can’t know, what his rule was like. Nowhere else in the world remembers. They made it into a children’s bedtime story. But the Valkyries… we remember. My mother’s mother was there, lived through that turbulent time. Discord was a monster, a sadist, and his torture of choice was madness.
I was kinda wondering where she was going with this, when she leaned down and looked Silas dead in the eye. ”Discord is the reason Celestia is who she is. He drove her father to madness, forced him to kill his wife, and then released him for long enough to let him realize what he had done. In the end, he slit his own throat with a magical blade that he had sworn to use against that demon. And all of this while Celestia watched. She was more helpless to do anything against him than you are to do anything against me. You know nothing of her pain, of her fear, or what is acceptable for her. If I ever hear of you disrespecting that alicorn again, I will hunt you to the ends of reality, through any world and any time, and I will kill you with my bare hands. Is that understood? You may nod, by the way.”
And nod he did.
Author's Note
Sorry bout the long chapter folks, but it's time for the event you didn't know you were waiting for!
In this corner, with an overall undefeated record and more power than he really knows what to do with, we have the liberator of slaves, the conqueror of gods, the leader of the Blackbird Monster Hunting guild... Sila~s Epi~sta~! He is the reigning champion of Badassery, folks, and never has he been bested when it comes to combat! Could that change tonight?
And in this corner we have the challenger, a brand new player on the board! Hailing from the distant hanging fortress of Valhalla, wielding the spear formerly owned by the God Odin, we have... Sku~ld Godspear! His monster count stands at an unspecified number of Nightmare-tainted Diamond Dogs, known as Fenrir, and one mother-of-fuck scary Garmr! He doesn't have as much experience as the champ, and will probably be a smear on the pavement by the end of this, but can the rookie pull a victory out of his ass? Well, stay tuned for the next chapter to find out!
The next few chapters will be a crossover with this story: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/134695/blackbird
Go check it out!
*Purple: Pure German
