The Diary of the Exile: Chapter 5 ~ Give Up Forever

[Jared]

((Closed to The Valkyrie. All bunnies are approved by both parties.))


The year of the Lion, Date unknown +107

The wrong and the right, the good and the bad... Lines between them blur the more I ponder on the predicament that got us this far. If the reasons behind Bryn’s actions are right, then why this... this bitterness inside my gut that keeps burrowing through me like a throng of maggots, urging me to act? If our affection is genuine enough for me to trust that flaring determination in her eyes, then why do I feel necessary to proceed with this ludicrous task? If Eryk’s damnation is so wrong, why does a thought of him burning in the Underworld for eternity feel so satisfying? I keep looking at her motionless body, at the shell that used to hold the dearest thing I ever had, and I can’t deny this anger that makes my hand shiver even as I write these lines. Because she ventured beyond the door I cannot pass. Unless...

***

“This is madness, Brynhilde! It doesn’t make sense and it’s too damn risky!” Jared spoke in a disconcerted tone, his feet making him pace through the dimly lit room like a caged beast that repeated the same walking pattern over and over again. His brow was furrowed, his eyes transcending the physical world around him and peering into the deepest corners of his memory in desperate search for the alternative solution. Because there had to be another option that wasn’t as nonsensical as the one she decided to follow.

If his mind worked optimally, the exile would have been able to ascertain that there was a plausible logic behind the plan that they were about to follow. Bryn needed to get into Underworld and it was logical that she couldn’t do that in her physical form. Consequently, it was logical that she needed to die in this plane of existence in order to emerge in the other. It was logical to think that Yarina’s armor would serve as a conduit, making the transfer between the realities nonmalignant for the Valkyrie. And to end the logical disposition, the assembled armor was supposed to protect her from any and all foes that inhabited the accursed realm.

But love and logic seldom went hand in hand.

He paused his automated motion through the bedroom that the cultist priests provided for them, looking at her tranquil figure sitting at the edge of the bed. He hated how she managed to keep her cool in moments like this, how her rigid philosophy seemed to circumvent every statement that he put up as an opposition to her will. He tried to chisel through that defense for a while now, ever since they started their fateful journey from Fallien to the underground Haidia cave. It was in this realm of demons and constant scarlet illumination that their final step awaited, the leap of faith that would make them or break all of the things they’ve build up from the ground. A cultist group called the Garnet Interlopers, situated in the somewhat secluded town of Vla’toros, was to provide the proper ritual, the demonic priests working under the wing of the White Knights that already encountered the warrior woman that was on a mission to save her former lover, Eryk, from the shackles of hell itself.

“At least wait until the baby is born. It’s only a couple of months away now.” Jared continued, moving to the bedside and taking a seat beside her on the velvety silver sheets. His hand found her own, his eyes looking desperately in the emerald depth in hers and seeing the two people that were about to perish temporarily to save a man from damnation. He wanted to hold her, gather her in his arms and take her leagues away from this frigid chamber and the precarious issue that hovered above their heads like a rain cloud that was about to drown the world. He wanted to purge the intention from her mind, to break that adamant resolve at least once and make her look from his side of the specter.

“Eryk lasted this long. A couple of months is a short time. And maybe we find an easier way to do it during that time. Either way, it’s a risk that we shouldn’t be taking.” the exile spoke, his voice trying the subtle, soft approach of reason to make her concur or at least reconsider her participation in this ritual. For a couple of seconds the only response he got was a heavy silence filled with anticipation of that minute shift in her eyes that would make her yield to his proposition. The walls around them, dark brown from the orange light of the shimmering torches, seemed to close in on their hunched figures, collapsing on their backs like a burden that further amplified the graveness of the moment.

[The Valkyrie]

The calmness she felt should have been impossible with the decision she had made. Somehow though, Brynhilde felt at peace, her hands folded on her rapidly expanding abdomen, a bemused smile on her face. It hadn't been an easy decision to make, but it had turned out to be the only logical one.

Turning her emerald gaze on Jared, she reached out and took his hand, placing it on the mound that was their child. The baby turned against his hand, and she smiled up at him.

"This is something I have to do. I swore that I would save him, and I can't go back on my promise Jared, you know that," the Valkyrie told him gently, "Besides, I have the armor and I've been taking the herbs Jya gave me in Fallien - she promised that those would protect the baby no matter what, and I'm positive she knew what I must do."

Letting her lover's hand drop, Bryn stood slowly from the bed, and crossed to where her armor hung in a large wooden wardrobe. She stood before it, in nothing but a brief linen shift, her bare feet chilled on the slate floor. This was her decision, and she couldn't go back on it, even if the look on Jared's face made her want to give it all up and go live in some little backwater, happily ever after.

He wanted her to wait, but that would be four months by her calculations, and that was four months more than she could ever imagine asking anyone to spend in hell. She remained silent for a long while, searching for words to explain to him why she must do this now, and not wanting to sound angry at him. Normally, his words would have made her furious, but the calm that had overtaken her transcended even her anger.

"I can't leave him down there any longer. Four months may not seem long to you, but it would be if you were in the Underworld. And besides," Bryn pointed out, "It would be longer than that - you know that after I had the baby, you'd be asking me to wait until she was older. To wait until I was fully recovered, to wait until we were married, to wait until something else was right. I can't wait any longer."

As if on cue, there was a low rap at the thick oaken door, and the Valkyrie smiled to Jared as she crossed to it, opening it just a crack. One of the cultists stood outside.

"The V'dron is ready to perform the ritual, my lady," the young man said in a hushed tone, his dark eyes seeming black in the dim red glow of the demon world.

"I need just a moment more, if it pleases her grace," Bryn answered reverently. The man nodded, and Bryn closed the door and turned back to Jared.

"It's time now," she said, crossing once more to the wardrobe and pulling out the breastplate and beginning to strap it on - it was uncomfortably tight over her belly, but if she left the last buckle very loosely bound, it was something she thought she could live with.

"Now, are you going to help me, or do I have to try to do this myself?"

[Jared]

“To hell with your promise, your pride, your integrity, your goddamn Eryk! Do you realize where are you heading, Bryn? Do you realize what are you trying to do? Do you understand that you’re crossing the boundary that was only meant to be crossed once? And that you’re doing it with my baby... Our baby?” was just a portion of the cannonade that his heart and mind conjured, insisting on the utterance that might tip the scales towards the path of reason that seemed so obvious to Jared. But though he was utterly bewildered by the ritual that followed his every thought like an executioner’s noose, he bit his tongue because in one glance of her green eyes he acknowledged the futility of such words.

He always knew there was steel inside of her - cold and stoic and dauntless - and he adored her for that characteristic. But right now he hated it, hated the semi-indifferent demeanor and the serenity that borderlined with frigidity as she explained her reasons to him as if he was a student that needed to brush up on his studies. Sure, there was truth in her words, but Jared selectively neglected it, canceled it out because to agree with it would be to agree with a course of action that involved her untimely death and unlikely resurrection after she strolled into the devil’s backyard.

One of the priests tapped on their doors subtly, his hooded figure playing his role as the harbinger of death as he reported that they were all ready to kill his beloved, and the exile felt the need to rip his innards. Unlike him, Bryn managed to find enough benignity to send him away with a tender plea. He wanted to scream, to let go of the emotions that were stacking up inside him, to make her see that she’s being the lamb led to the slaughter. And he wasn’t even talking about the murderous ritual. No, the ritual was just the transportation device. The real horror was what would follow afterwards. And when the agony and the darkness gathered around her like a mist and the dark realm leaned on her back with an intention to crush her, he wouldn’t be there to stand by her side.

He moved to her wordlessly, reluctantly, like a living dead that just rose from six feet under and didn’t know what to do. He didn’t opt to help her with donning of the Yarina armor just yet. Instead his hands found their way around her breathtaking body, holding her gently for a couple of seconds as he looked at her angelic face.

“I... I understand, Bryn. I don’t agree with it, I never could, but I understand. I just... I have to let you go into the worst place of all and I can’t go with you. I can’t be at your side. Life, death, it doesn’t matter to me as long as you’re with me. Promise me you’ll come back. You have to promise me you’ll return to me. Because if you don’t...”

His head wanted to drop shamefully at this display of weakness, but he held her eyes on her own stubbornly, unyieldingly. This could be the last time he would have her in his arms and he wanted to look at her until the imprint of her face burned itself into his irises, hold her until the texture of her skin and the scent of her hair were the only sensation he could feel. Her suave hand made a move for his face and cupped his cheek tenderly, benevolently, as her lips curled into a smile. Jared thought it was as fragile as a cracked eggshell, but it was genuine and he was thankful for it.

“I promise.”

He kissed her. He kissed as if he never kissed her before, gentle and deep and lasting as his hands shivered under the gushing contradiction of his emotions. He wanted to hold on to her more then anything and he was letting her go. He wanted to help her and he was staying behind. He wanted to give her heaven and he was sending her to hell.

Their joint efforts donned her armor in silence. To Jared the silence felt like the one that occured in a cell of a convict that was having his last meal before they put his head on a wooden block. And yet, despite the disconcerting atmosphere, he took his time, rechecking, double-checking and doing it all over again. But even that granted him an extension of mere minutes before they made their way out of their chamber and into the hallway. They walked hand in hand, like lovers that strode down the aisle, but nothing mirthful waited them at the end of their journey.

The ritual chamber was a morbid manifesto to the demonic architecture and the obscure religion that the Garnet Interlopers followed. Grand in size – stretching some hundred paces in all directions – the room was enlightened with a myriad of candles that stood against the walls as if they were set on bleachers. The walls were nondescript, their natural gray color repainted by an orange shimmer and a theatre of wavering shadows. In the center of the room stood the altar, surrounded by four metallic staves imbedded in the floor below, their heads glowing with an eerily magical light that fell into the monotony of the xanthous environment with its hue. Six circular steps led to the stone table in the middle of the room where V’dron, the chief priestess, awaited as solemn as a statue made of obsidian.

Jared gulped dryly, his hand tightening around Bryn’s ever so slightly. This was it, the last step on the path to hell. And only she could take it.

[The Valkyrie]

"I promise," she whispered, cupping his cheek and holding his gaze. Brynhilde only prayed that she would be able to keep that promise - was it a pie crust promise: easily made, easily broken? She hoped not, and tried not to think of what it would do to this man she loved if she were never to return.

But he kissed her, and all thoughts fled for the moment, all need to fulfill her responisibility to Eryk, her honor to the gods, her destiny that would allow her to return to Val Halla.

It ended too soon though, and in what seemed like only the briefest of moments her armor was fastened securely, her sword belted across her back, and the Torque of Protection at her throat. It did her no good as a mortal, but still she wore it as a reminder of who she was.

In silence the pair found their way down the desolate corridor, and with little hesitation, the Valkyrie stepped through the massive iron doors into the chamber where the ritual would take place that would send her to the Underworld - possibly for eternity. Fighting off a shudder, she crossed to the V'dron, a woman with straight black hair that reached down to the floor and strangely glowing amber eyes that seemed to stare into Brynhilde's soul.

"You do this voluntarily?" the priestess asked the question of the Valkyrie that she'd asked at least a dozen times since the couple had arrived at the gates of the strange fortress in Vla'toros. Bryn only nodded solemnly, her eyes never leaving the priestess' face for a moment.

"Then you are aware of the consequences of your actions - you will not be rewarded upon your death, but will travel immediately to the place where souls that are not honorable are damned to."

"That, your grace, is the point," the Valkyrie explained for the first time, "Through my decisions to love a man and spare him from death, I've become the reason he's been cast into the Underworld. I come to you for transportation to the land of the dead. The armor I wear will hopefully be enough to bring me back."

Nodding, the priestess lifted a hand, pointing a long finger toward the altar at the center of the vast chamber. Letting out a ragged breath, Brynhilde turned to Jared one last time, taking his hand and kissing his palm.

"I'll be back," she promised once more, then let go his hand and somehow managed not to appear completely clumsy as she clambered up onto the altar, cradling her unwieldy bellly as she did. With a final glance at Jared, and a reassuring smile, the Valkyrie lay back and took a deep breath.

Two priests stood at her sides, and the V'dron stood at her head. Each of the priests had a bottle full of a dark liquid, with a tube coming from the top of it and a needle at the end of the tube. The V'dron held Brynhilde's head between her hands and nodded once to the priests who each took a wrist.

Slowly the priestess began chanting, heavy lids closing over those strange amber eyes. As she did, the priests simultaneously pierced the Valkyrie's skin at the crook of her elbow with the needle. The dark liquid oozed down the tubes like sap from the most evil of trees, and slowly inched its way into her veins. Bryn bit her lip, afraid that the solution would burn, but it did not.

Instead, as it spread through her body, the Valkyrie realized that she could no longer feel her limbs. She fought down a wave of panic as the child within her turned and spun for a moment in her belly and then grew still. Moments later, her entire body seemed to have disappeared, and it was not long before the entire world around her faded away.

Then there was only silence.

[Jared]

“I’ll be back.”

Jared was unable to decide whether he should fear the uncertainty – subtly concealed behind another one of those delicate smiles - or embrace the reassurance that stood as a promise that she would do everything within her power to return. He wound up doing both, standing calmly beside her deathbed and feeling the trenchant desire to jump out of his skin. He was like cocked gun, waiting for the slightest sign of things going wrong in order to react. But nothing went wrong. Nothing could go wrong because all of this – the hardhearted priestesses and the ghoulish underground tomb - was already as wrong as it gets. And there was nothing he could do about it.

They begun to chant, vocalizing the dreadful tune that echoed dully through the room and raised the hair on Jared’s scruff. It made the already heavy ambiance downright unbearable, the sounds somehow creeping through the shadows and invoking the darkest of thoughts. The two priests that stood beside Bryn brought their apparatus to her skin and injected her with a foul liquid. Jared expected some fireworks, some sort of magical explosion that would signify the opening of a portal to the Underworld, but the limbs of his beloved merely shivered a couple of times before they, like their owner, went dead soundlessly. And though he didn’t realize it until now, his hands were balled up so tightly that his nails drew blood from his palms.

Brynhilde was gone. Death that came for her seemed in sync with the creepy-crawly chant – it was cold and frightening and despite all the words spoken and preparations done, the exile wasn’t ready for it. He stumbled forwards reluctantly, nearly tripping over the steps as his disbelieving face peered at the lifelessly wan of his lover, before he knelt at her side.

“Is... Is there anything we can do... Anything at all to help her?” he asked the V’dron, his hands barely daring to touch her skin in fear of defiling her, disrupting the delicate balance of the process that sent the Valkyrie to hell. The priestess looked down on him stoically, her golden-hued eyes somehow managing to be colder then the ritual chamber that went dead with the departure of Bryn. How could somebody take a life and be so indifferent about it was beyond Jared.

“The path she chose she must walk alone. You know that and she knew it as well.” the voice came from above him, serene, colorless to the point of annoyance. His luminous azure eyes looked up, radiating with an eerily light as they usually would when emotions raged within him. Perhaps it was this display of inner struggle that softened the priestess because once she continued, her voice deviated ever so slightly from the insensate hue. “But you could pray for her.”

“Pray? Pray to whom?” he asked. His faith in the Creator was in shambles, crushed by the truth he found out in Aletha, and the deities that played with Bryn’s and his destinies didn’t seem prone to listening.

“It doesn’t matter. If the prayer is genuine, it will find an ear that would listen to it.” her voice fell back to the usual flat-lined dullness as she retracted into the shadows with her associates.

“Pray? Sorry lady, I’m all prayed out. I met the gods and they are nothing but a bunch of spoiled brats with magic wands. People can beg and pray and die if it fits their agenda. Pray to that? Never!” his face went grim, his brow furrowing deeply at the thought. Gods put them in this mess in the first place with their who goes, who stays, who gets to go on the ludicrous mission to the pits of hell. They were unyielding, ultimate, and yet even now Jared felt the need to defy them. He looked down at her tranquil face, at the cherubic lips that might never smile to him again, and a sentence that he didn’t finish back in their chambers replayed in his mind.

“Because if you don’t... I’m coming after you and I’ll make the devil sorry he didn’t let you go.”

[The Valkyrie]

It was cold now. And so quiet that her mind kept trying to create sounds. Or was that really laughter she heard? Not happy laughter, like a child, but malicious laughter. With more force than it seemed like it should take, Brynhilde opened her eyes. But there was not even darkness, just a dull grey dimness that sent a shiver through the Valkyrie.

"Did you really think that this would work Brynhilde?"

Emerald eyes fell on the one sight that could make the Valkyrie's heart break. Her former mistress sat before her, a cloak of shadow and spidersilk flowing around her as she sat royally perched on a divanlike throne made entirely of skulls. The eerie laugh could be heard again, and Bryn lifted her chin in defiance.

"I know that this will work. And if it does not..." she trailed off, if anyone could call her bluff, Hel could.

"And if it does not, you will serve me once more, but not as a Valkyrie, and only in eternal dishonor. And your beloved Eryk will remain," Hel laughed, and Bryn realized that the laughter had been hers.

"It will work," she said again, more emphatically this time.

"You may be here, but you will never leave, even if you find the warrior."

The Valkyrie paused, and realized with a glimmer of hope that her former mistress knew nothing of the armor she wore. With only a small quirk at the corner of her mouth, Bryn bowed her head to the lady of death and found herself walking past the throne, into the grey depths of the Underworld.

There was no pattern of corridors, no rhyme or reason to the way she wandered, and she began to wonder if she'd find the warrior, much less her way out. After what seemed like hours of walking down the strangely silent halls of the Underworld, she stopped.

Why was she hearing footsteps besides her own? The Valkyrie took a few steps more, trying to decide if the sound was only the echo of her own feet. But it wasn't, and in exasperation she spun around, expecting to see Hel following her to heckle her once again.

The girl which stood before her was the polar opposite of Bryn's former mistress. Tall, with long wavy chestnut hair and piercing eyes that were the color of the sea in summer, the girl smiled almost lovingly at the Valkyrie. Bryn tilted her head in confusion, blinking as though to erase the vision. The girl remained though.

"Who are you?" the Valkyrie asked, stepping towards the beautiful young woman, who seemed almost eerily familiar.

"It doesn't matter, I'm here to guide you," was the only answer the girl would give.

[Jared]

Despite the fact that the room became abysmally frigid after Bryn’s departure, Jared refused to leave. Unlike the V’dron that sought solace in one of the many underground chambers, the exile slumped to one of the circular steps and took out a batch scrolls. He knew them by heart now, memorized all the information about Yarina’s armor and its usage, he even composed a simple melody for the verses that the authors often used to conceal the real clue to the armor whereabouts. And yet he shuffled busily through them once again, seeking at least a shred of reassurance amidst the meticulous drawings and refined handwriting, secretly hoping for a clause that ensured the survival of his beloved.

The two remaining priests murmured a haunting chant, standing on the opposite sides of the Valkyrie, their voices a little more then a caustic whisper of incomprehensible words. Jared assumed that it was a part of the ritual, some uncanny way to sustain the status quo of the body that Bryn left behind, but he dared not to ask, fearing he might disrupt their immersion. But even though his eyes attempted to survey the scrolls incisively, his thoughts haplessly drifted away. And he envisioned a place so dark that it devoured her golden curls. A place so cold that it extinguished the flare in her eyes like a candle left on a windowsill. A place so malicious that it murdered every sign of her gentleness in cold blood. A wretched place where everything ended and nothing begun.

The chanting deviated from the monotonous tone abruptly, sounding as if somebody was somehow stretching the sound until it became so thin, it stopped to exist. Jared picked up his head precariously. The shadows that shimmered on the grayish walls were standing unnaturally still, like black paintings on an already sullen canvas. His head snapped sideways, towards the magical flames that stood mounted on the four staves around the altar. The fiery tongues were caught in a still frame. Before Jared managed to remember that he was in such a situation before, a voice broke the eerily serenity of the moment.

“The answers you seek are not in that pile of paper, Jared.”

The voice was piercing, gallant, reverberating through the ritual chamber with unearthly might. It made the exile rise swiftly, turning his eyes to the origin his senses designated. With his back propped against the wall and his figure clad in an azure cloak that seemed to flow and glitter at the same time, Loki looked at Jared with a careless, almost playful glance. His posture was casual, his hands folded over his chest, his hair like embers seconds after the flames left it.

“Loki.” Jared said and there was about as much enmity in that utterance as there was bitterness. “I suppose you are here to enlighten me.”

“Now, there’s that tone again I don’t really appreciate.” the trickster deity responded with faux contemplation, his feet taking him in a stroll around the room frozen in time. “The time is coming, Jared. You fail to see the immensity of what is taking place right now, but you two are setting in motion something that is going to shake the very foundations of Val Halla.” With the conclusion of his sentence, the emerald eyes that seemed rather bland sparked significantly for a couple of seconds.

“I really don’t care about Val Halla and your ridiculous charades, Loki.” the mortal spoke, finding more then enough defiance to stand up to one of the gods. He was losing everything and like a cornered beast, he would bite and scratch until he either won or dropped dead.

“Oh, I know. But I think you’ll find this story rather interesting. It’s about a woman named Yarina.” The deity kept sauntering and kept that superior I-know-something-you-don’t smirk on. Jared’s brow furrowed, his eyes following Loki more closely now. “I see I got your attention.”

“What about Yarina? Do you know something that is not in the scrolls?”

“Of course I do. I am one of the gods, Jared.” he spoke, his tone condescending and even a tad mocking, as if Jared was a child that asked why was the water wet. It vexed the exile to the point where he wanted to take Loki by his neck and bludgeon a straight answer out of him. “But I thought you should know the ending to the tale of Yarina. Your scrolls say that at the end she saves her own child from the Underworld and that is correct. However, what the scrolls fail to remark is the sacrifice she had to make to save her child.”

Loki moved behind Jared and out of sight, looking like a predator uninterested in the prey, making Jared turn his body in order to follow him. “What do you mean?” the exile spoke, his voice still strong, still unyielding. At this point stories weren’t enough to intimidate him. Or so he kept telling himself.

“Let me answer your question with another question. Why is there no mention of Yarina after her heroic endeavor? Why is there nothing in recorded history about the fate of somebody so dauntless, so unbelievably courageous?” Loki stopped his circular motion, slowly climbing up the handful of steps and leaning over Bryn’s lifeless body to peer into Jared’s eyes that no longer looked so stoic and adamant. “I ask and I answer: Because she had to sacrifice her life for the life of her child.”

“Poison. You are poison.” the exile nearly growled through his teeth, his hands crumpling up the ancient scrolls. “The armor is there to protect her, to take her there and bring her back safely. I don’t know what kind of sick game are you...”

“You’re only half right there, Jared. The armor will take her there safely. But Underworld rests on one simple rule: Nobody gets out. The doomed souls are doomed forever. Unless, or course, some mortal gets the foolish idea to trade places with a doomed one. Yarina did that, sacrificing her own life and condemning her own soul to eternity of pain so her daughter could live.”

Though Jared couldn’t see his own face, he could feel it become as pale as Bryn’s, paler even. The scrolls fell from his hands, unrolling at his feet soundlessly.

“So now we come to the predicament. Do you think Brynhilde will do the same for her former lover? Does she even know of the price she has to pay?” Loki kept speaking nonchalantly and Jared kept sinking to desperation like a rock.

“You... You bastard. You bastard! You should’ve told us! You should’ve told her!” Jared’s voice started with a whisper and ended with a bawl as he lunged towards the deity with a powerful hook. But even as he came in the proximity of the azure-clad god, an invisible force pushed him away so ardently, his body flew about ten paces backwards before rolling on the stone floor like a sack of wet hay.

“I could’ve told you, but that wouldn’t work well with my plan. If I told you, would you have let her proceed?” the deity spoke from some distance to Jared who lay on the cold floor feeling like a broken marionette. “Remember what I told you back in Fallien, about the choice you’ll have to make? That time is coming soon.”

And just like he appeared – stealthily and effortlessly – Loki faded away into the darkness and the fabric of time returned to its usual flow like a broken record that just found a route to the next track.

[The Valkyrie]

"Guide me..." Bryn echoed, looking the girl up and down, "You're a servant of the Dark Goddess then?"

A soft smile lit the girl's face, sparkling in those strangely bright aquamarine eyes even in the chill darkness. She shook her head, the chestnut curls falling around her face as she did.

"No, I'm not hers. But I do know where Eryk is," she told Bryn, holding out her hand to the Valkyrie, "Will you let me take you to him?"

Brynhilde stared at the girl, not sure what to do or say to this woman-child that stood before her and seemed so familiar. Her heart told her that she knew this beautiful young woman, but the Valkyrie couldn't recall how.

"I suppose I have little choice in the matter do I?" she said softly, taking the girl's hand. Her guide looked down at Bryn's stomach, and took a breath before beginning once more down the long corridor that supposedly led to Eryk.

"You always have a choice. You are mortal," the girl said softly.

"I just hope this is the right one," Bryn answered several moments later, looking at the girl, "Isn't there something I can call you, you must have a name."

"There is no right or wrong choice here," the girl replied, as they walked along the hallway, its ceiling extending so high above them that it disappeared in the grey darkness, "I have no name, not yet."

Bryn walked slowly beside the girl, wondering how it was she had no name, and what she meant by "not yet". This place was so strange, and nothing like she'd expected. They'd seen nobody yet, least of all dishonored warriors or damned souls, only what seemed to be miles and miles of vast stony corridors and vaulted cavelike ceilings. Her hand wandered to her belly as she walked, an unconscious habit that had comforted her as she'd traveled to this moment with Jared.

Her stomach was flat though, no soft rise, no flutter of movement, no pull at the stays of her armor. Panic rose as it had when she'd breathed her last breaths, but now she found it difficult to fight down. Looking down at her abdomen, she clenched her jaw against the sob that choked her.

"Your child is fine, Brynhilde, you just cannot enter the Underworld in the state you were," the girl explained calmly, meeting Bryn's frantic gaze and holding it steady. Something tugged at Bryn's mind, telling her there was something important she was missing, but she pushed it away with the urge to panic and scream.

"You're with child?" an all too familiar voice asked, and Bryn turned to find herself face to face with the man she'd come to the Underworld to save. Eryk raised his hand to rest against her belly, looking at her with a mix of wonder and horror. "But you..."

"I'm not with child here, but yes, I risked that to come and release you from ... this thing I've done," Bryn replied, trying to keep her calm. Somehow Loki's words came to her at just this moment, reminding her that perhaps she was wrong to haVe risked this though - what if Loki was right about Eryk's love?

"I knew you would," Eryk said, lifting his hand to caress Bryn's face. But the Valkyrie only shuddered at his touch, pulling away and looking down at the stone floor.

"Tell me the truth Eryk. Is what Loki said true?"

[Jared]

The chant of the priests returned to the regular monotonous hum as if nothing transpired – as far as they were concerned, nothing did. The obscure shimmer of the torches danced once again with same unrestrained vigor. Only Jared was out of place, sitting on the cold tiles with disbelief in his eyes and cold sweat bathing his back and forehead like a rain. Loki’s words were long gone from the hallowed ritual chamber, but they echoed in the exile’s mind as if they were spoken seconds ago. The sacrifice. Life for life. Nobody gets out. And round and round they went like a carousel, prompting him to do something to save the sleeping beauty that lay on the altar before him.

“But what? What can I do? She crossed over and only she can bring herself back. And if Loki is right, she won’t do that. Damn her stubborn honor. Will she really give her own life for him?” Jared wasn’t certain, but that was disconcerting enough. Because that uncertainty left a possibility that she just might choose that course of action and entrap herself in Underworld for eternity. And that was a risk that the exile wasn’t ready to take. When it came to Bryn’s life and the life of his progeny that she carried in her belly, maybe just wasn’t good enough.

He got up to his feet hastily, like an athlete that fell a couple of feet from the finish line, and ran out of the hall and into the adjacent passage. He had to find the V’dron. The priestess was a frigid hag that made every conversation a trial of patience, but her knowledge in the Underworld was vast. Jared found her in what looked like meditation chamber, smoking wooden sticks spreading conflicting scents through the simple room with no ornaments and a single chair. She seemed undisturbed by his bullheaded entrance.

“I... I need to talk to you, your grace. Something terrible is about to happen and I have to stop it.” he spoke in a frantic tone, and only seconds after he finished he could see a trace of life on her hooded figure. The priestess picked her head up only slightly, her hands gathering in her lap.

“You are talking about the sacrifice, Jared?” she said flatly, as if it was common knowledge, making Jared think how come everybody knew more then he did. “There is nothing that can be done. I asked Brynhilde was she aware of the consequences and she said yes.”

“But we didn’t know. I... I didn’t know!” the exile insisted, his words once again failing to find a sympathetic ear with the V’dron.

“That is no longer relevant. We can’t bring her back unless she decides to return.” the priestess spoke from the shadow of her hood, her dark scarlet robe falling over her frail frame as if there was a skeleton underneath.

“I can bring her back. I will bring her back. You just have to send me on my way just like you did with her.”

“The armor chose her. Only she can use...”

“To hell with the armor! I don’t need it. Just send me on my way.”

Silence crept into the room after his words, his eyes luminous and her breath paused in contemplation.

“Are you aware of the consequences?” she finally asked after what seemed like minutes, her tone still unwavering. “Without protection you will be exposed to...” but he cut her short again. Usually she would get aggravated by such insolence, but his determination was adamant, unyielding.

“Listen to me. Bryn is down there and she’s walking into a goddamned trap. I won’t let her give her life for Eryk! Just make the transfer so I can get her out.”

“You don’t understand, Jared. Without protection there will be no way out for you.” the V’dron spoke, this time a touch of what seemed like patronization in her voice.

“I will find a way.”

“There is no...”

“I WILL FIND A WAY!” he shouted, taking a step closer and peering into the inky darkness that was her face. They stood in the stalemate for a couple of seconds, neither of them blinking, neither drawing breath, his resolve clashing with her reason. But he knew that forfeit was not an option. His life didn’t matter. If there was sacrifice to be made, he would gladly do it to make things right, to right the wrongs, to save her and his child. The V’dron could read that in his eyes as if they emitted it through his stare that bore into her skull.

“Very well. Follow me.” she simply said, seemingly undisturbed and casual as she stood up and let the way down the hallway. The last time he went down this corridor he walked with an enthusiasm of a convict. Now he was a convict and yet he didn’t want to waste a single moment on tarrying.

As the V’dron did the preparations and summoned the priests that would aid her in this ludicrous task, Jared sat at the stairs and wrote what he was certain to be the last entry in his journal:


The year of the Lion, Date unknown +107

The wrong and the right, the good and the bad... Lines between them blur the more I ponder on the predicament that got us this far. If the reasons behind Bryn’s actions are right, then why this... this bitterness inside my gut that keeps burrowing through me like a throng of maggots, urging me to act? If our affection is genuine enough for me to trust that flaring determination in her eyes, then why do I feel necessary to proceed with this ludicrous task? If Eryk’s damnation is so wrong, why does a thought of him burning in the Underworld for eternity feel so satisfying? I keep looking at her motionless body, at the shell that used to hold the dearest thing I ever had, and I can’t deny this anger that makes my hand shiver even as I write these lines. Because she ventured beyond the door I cannot pass. Unless...

Unless I proceed with this. Unless I save her. If it means my own damnation, then so be it. I owe it to Bryn. I owe it to the child that she carries. They can keep on living without me. But I could never keep living without them. If you’re reading this, Bryn, I want you to know that I love you. And if you don’t, then at least we’re suffering eternal damnation together.

“It is time.” the V’dron said, her words the last ones he would hear in this plane of existence. Jared closed his diary swiftly, tossed the pen aside and climbed onto the altar next to Bryn. He didn’t feel last minute jitters because there were so many and they made him sweat profusely. His thoughts came in such a rapid succession, they numbed his mind, turned into an incomprehensible mush. He was never afraid of death, but nobody was until the grim reaper got so close, you could feel his cold breath on the back of your neck. But he took her lifeless hand and detached himself from the doubts, the panic, the mind that told him to reconsider, to ponder some more on the matter.

But the time of pondering was over. And time to prove he was worth a damn was now. And as the poison entered his veins, he clung to the mental image of her smile, hoping it would guide him through the netherworld and into her arms. And to whatever damnation they had in store for him.

[The Valkyrie]

Eryk only looked at Bryn, didn't answer, didn't even acknowledge that she'd asked him a question. He strangely didn't even seem to notice the girl who had been guiding the Valkyrie to this point. He only stared at Bryn, his hand still slightly uplifted as though her face pulled at his hand beyond his ability to resist.

"Eryk, please answer, I need to know the truth," she urged him, taking his hand and pushing it down to his side. The warrior stepped away from her and frowned.

"The truth always changes everything," was his answer after a long moment of silence, "Besides, do you really WANT to know the answer to this?"

Bryn looked away, emerald eyes searching the barren stone floor as though for some clue as to what her heart needed to know. After all, what would she do once she knew the truth? What would happen if Eryk didn't love her and never had? Would she simply leave him here as punishment for his lies? Or would she cling to her honor and do her best to take him with her from the Underworld. It didn't matter, she finally decided, looking up at him, her brow creasing in thought.

"It does change everything, but... and I may not want to know the answer, but I believe I need to know. Eryk, tell me the truth, I demand it."

The warrior pulled her to him once more, violently pressing his lips against hers, his hands cool against her skin. She struggled against him, trying to push him away, but he only kissed her harder, holding her arms to her sides. It was as though he wanted to devour her.

"Jared has come," the girl said, standing nearby and staring into the darkness of the corridor they'd only emerged from moments before.

"You wanted to know the answer," Eryk said, as he finally released the Valkyrie, leaving her gasping for air. "Well, remember, the truth hurts sometimes. I'll tell it to you now, and only be happy with the fact that no matter what you decide, you won't be leaving here without me. If you even leave at all."

"Stop stalling," Bryn said angrily, part of her not even caring if he said he'd never loved her. "Just tell me the gods be damned answer and get it over with. It doesn't matter now, I just need to know the truth."

"No."

"No what? No Loki was lying? No you never loved me? What is no?" she raved at him, her rage overcoming her. She was beginning to hear whispering, seething, and she didn't know what it was. She wanted to make her time here short, she wanted to find a way out and go back to Jared, to her life with him. Her fists clenched at her sides, and it was all she could do not to throw herself at him, drawing her sword and holding it to his throat to force the answer from him.

"No. I never did love you. I coveted you, I desired you, I wanted you more than anything I ever wanted while I was alive. And I realized that you had the power to spare me from death, the power to turn me into a legend, a hero. But I never loved you. I needed you, and I didn't ever intend for this to happen. But once I was here, I had to keep up the charade, or I'd be here forever," Eryk paused and a look of regret came over his face. "I never ever meant to hurt you though, that was never my intent."

And somehow, for some reason, it didn't hurt. Bryn stood there shocked, blinking in disbelief. But it didn't hurt. She found that she could let the words slide from her like the cool water of the Oasis in Fallien.

"Of course it wasn't. And of course I believe that," she said sarcastically, turning away from him and seeing Jared emerging from the shadows.

Her heart blossomed, and she realized that she had never been more relieved in her life. Shaking her head at Eryk, she smiled and ran to Jared, taking his hand in hers.

"But it doesn't matter if you did or not, because although you may have hurt me once, this doesn't hurt now," she paused and turned to Jared, then frowned, "You shouldn't have come here... what have you done?"

[Jared]

The darkness around him was ultimate and hollow. Gazing into it was like gazing into the eyes of a deceased lover. It filled Jared with woe as he seemed to be caught in it like a fly caught in a spider’s web. The dread of the emptiness might have lasted a fraction of a second or an eon to him, but he managed to form a coherent thought in his mind that seemed to lose ground to the darkness that crept into it. And he thought that if this was hell, it wasn’t that bad.

But then along came the spider.

The first thing he saw – except the disconcerting darkness – was soil as red as blood before his eyes. And before he even managed to consider contemplating, he was puking his guts out onto that dry red sand, his body convulsing as cold pain crept over it like a hastily advancing disease. The wind around him was raging, as if there was a continuous typhoon that blew from all sides and from no side at all, creating crimson clouds made out of red dirt. The only movement he managed to complete was raising his head high enough to take a look at his surroundings. It was a view that froze the very humanity in his bones.

("Pray")

Around him, for what seemed like leagues upon leagues, an empty scarlet wasteland stretched, whipped by the ferocious hot wind that ravaged the desolate surface. No demons, no fiery lakes, no tormentors that would exact the eternal punishment. He looked down on the contents of his stomach that he emptied seconds ago, finding half-digested meat parts and what seemed like carrots. Although he was pretty certain that he didn’t have carrots for lunch. His arms and legs worked in unison quite well, bringing him to his feet. His silver robes were thrown around his figure wildly. The rancid stench of sulfur and decay invaded his nostrils relentlessly. It still didn’t seem as bad as he thought it would be.

("Pray")

“You know, you’re not the first one that enters my realm with the illusion that he would leave it with his soul.” the voice was feminine, and yet more powerful then anything he heard in a woman, Bryn included. The overwhelming power was obscure, unearthly, making him recoil and turn around to face its origin. Behind him, on a throne made out of what seemed like pure ivory, sat a woman wrapped in a black cape. Her eyes were red with fire, glowing vehemently as they peered down at him. Jared saw this apparition once before. In Aletha, when Mareena was a hairbreadth away from electrocuting Brynhilde, he saw this same figure lurking in the shadows, waiting for the soul to collect. Her throne was hovering in mid air, her figure untouched by the wind that raged around them. She leant a fraction closer to the exile. “I’ll save you the trouble of asking. None managed to do so.”

("Pray")

“So they keep telling me. But I don’t care. Where is Brynhilde?” he spoke, his courage failing to dwindle in the presence of the deity of death. Hel, that’s how Bryn called the dark goddess. Jared thought it was an appropriate name.

“She’s around. She finally returned to her goddess. Only this time she won’t be my servant. Oh no. She will be one of the damned. Oh, how the great ones have fallen.” the death wench spoke nonchalantly, twirling a lock of her inky hair.

“Not if I can do something about it, wench!” he retorted angrily, swinging his robes around himself and turning his back to the mesmerizing deity.

“Jared, Jared. You seem all riled up. I don’t think you appreciate the hospitality of my realm. Here, I’ll help you a little bit.”

Her fingers snapped. Nothing happened. Jared’s first step was filled with confidence and spite, a silent statement to one of the gods that he wasn’t afraid, that he wouldn’t yield to whatever trick she tried to play on him. But by the time he made the second step, his eyes blinked and opened up to something more then just the endless scorched desert.

("Pray")

He stood in the middle of what might’ve been a great city several millennia ago (“Aletha” his mind said. “This is Aletha”). And it was Aletha, only not the one he found in Raiaera that was on its way to hell, but not quite there yet. No, what stood around him was the perfect Aletha that he carried in his mind, the perfect realm that existed only in his mind. It was his refuge for a long while, a sanctuary in which the streets were paved with gold and two suns exterminated every sight of the night. The slim towers reached for the heavens higher then the highest buildings of Alerar and Raiaera combined.

Only, in this here and in this now, it was corrupted. The suns were banished from the lands, the towers were nothing but chipped pencil tips that crumbled under the crimson dusty winds. The streets were covered with sooth that the wind kept usurping, painting the entire setting into a sickly hue of crimson. And there were figures in midst of the destruction, faces both unfamiliar and familiar, women raped by men, men raped by demons, bodies torn asunder with screams that screeched like nails on a chalkboard, their wounds infested by maggots, their agony prolonged unto eternity. Fiends crawled through the scenery like locusts, gangly, spider-like creatures with human faces and inhuman teeth hanging from their jaw. They started to gather around the man in the silvery robes, hissing in devilish voices and snapping at each other like predators fighting for the prey.

("Pray")

“Welcome to your new home!” came from behind his back almost in an echo and by the time he turned, Hel was gone. The circle around him was shrinking by the second and soon he would find himself in a situation where he had to stop a sea with his bare hands. His fists clenched at his sides. He had to find her, had to save her. The voice in his head kept repeating that same word over and over again, the voice vaguely familiar, coming to him almost as if it passed through water. Though he didn’t know it, it was the voice of the V’dron, offering him one last advice.

He took it. Despite the horrors around him, he closed his eyes and begun to chant a prayer, a whisper that got lost in the chaos around him the very second it parted with his lips. He prayed with his heart, prayed for Bryn and her baby, prayed for the gods to grant him the ability to save them. He spoke in a tongue unknown even to him, words simply coming into his head and his lips pronouncing them in a continuous murmur that cleansed his mind, fending off the cackles and the gritting teeth around him. Until, about a minute after he begun with the seemingly futile prayer, they stopped completely. When he opened his eyes he could see that his body emanated a clear azure glow, creating a perimeter that the demons dared not breach. One of them tried, but the clawed hand got singed as if he touched the surface of a volcano. Jared’s first couple of steps were precarious, but the sea of lurking bodies and faces parted as if pushed aside by magical hand, enabling him passage to the castle that come to existence somewhere between the beginning and the end of his prayer.

By the time he reached the interior though, he was so weak he barely stood on his feet. The hallways before him somehow opened up to him, and he felt as if the surroundings are bending around his will, presenting him with the right path. But he clung to her image desperately, to her twinkling emerald eyes that smiled in sync with her lips as if both were the last straw that could keep him going, and they led him to her side. And she smiled to him, in the way only she could, the smile of an angel that led him this far and that even now provided him with enough strength to keep going. In the place as dreadful as this, her voice was a symphony to him.

“What I’ve done doesn’t matter, Brynhilde. There is something that scrolls didn’t say, something that the V’dron didn’t tell you either.” he spoke, holding her hand gently as his weary eyes looked into her own. “You... You can’t save a soul from the Underworld unless you give your own in return. Yarina did that, for her child, and for that she was damned for eternity. And I... I can’t let you do the same.”

“You are too late, boy.” Eryk’s voice rumbled from beside them, the weathered warrior standing with confidence and looking over the two like a tyrant. “She entered with the purpose to save me. Her soul is marked.”

“That’s not true.” the girl with chestnut hair spoke, Jared only now noticing her presence. She was a sweet little thing, definitely unlike anything he saw in the damned realm so far. “She has to make her decision willingly.”

Jared’s left leg gave in to the taxing effects of his spell and he fell on one knee, still holding to the hand of the Valkyrie. “You... You have to decide, Bryn. I don’t know how much longer I can hold them at bay. They... They say there’s no way out of here. But together... Together we’ll find a way.”

[The Valkyrie]

Bryn looked from Jared to Eryk and back to Jared, confusion setting in with a numbing cold. She knew that she had to make a choice when she decided to honor her promise to redeem Eryk, but she'd foolishly failed to realize that it meant sacrificing her own soul - for eternity, not just the few days it might take to wander through the Underworld, find the warrior, and fight her way back out.

Whether Eryk was right, that she was marked, or whether the girl was right and she had still a decision on her hands, Bryn wasn't sure. At this point, her mind had ceased to function in an orderly fashion, and she just mumbled something incomprehensible and looked to the girl pleadingly.

Jared fell to one knee, and Bryn knelt at his side, snapping out of her stupor and pulling him back to his feet, fully supporting his weight. Wrapping her arms around him, and placing her forehead against his, she locked eyes with him.

"Who are they, Jared? There is no one here but you, me, Eryk and.... her," Bryn explained, motioning to the girl who had guided her.

The sinister whispers returned, this time louder, and a foul breeze stirred the air in the great cave-like room. Bryn looked up from Jared, and shook her head at the shadows racing along the ceiling at the edge of her vision. An icy chill ran down her spine, and she looked back at Jared, no longer doubting his sanity.

Turning her face away from him she looked at Eryk, her piercing emerald gaze stony as she tried to reach through the fathoms of her decisions and all of its consequences. Eryk squirmed and fled from her glance, turning his back on her, but looking over his shoulder almost pleadingly every few moments.

"I made a promise," she said finally, "And that was to take you from this place... this place you are in because of my choice to love you. I made that choice then, and I'll make the choice now, because..." she paused and looked at Jared for a moment, almost apologetically, "Because you may not have ever loved me, but I loved you and part of me always will, Eryk. I can't give up on that love and leave you here, no matter what you feel for me. That wouldn't be honorable. And it wouldn't be love."

The girl gasped, as though she hadn't expected that decision, as though the choice the Valkyrie made somehow caused her pain, but Bryn only looked at Eryk who had turned back to face her. He had a look of suprised relief on his face, and genuine gratitude.

"I knew that you would do the right thing," he said, and stepped to her, kissing her brazenly in front of Jared. Bryn, growled and pulled away from him, and if she'd not been supporting Jared, she'd have slapped the warrior.

"I never said it was the right thing, it was simply the only thing," she said in a low voice, turning away from him and facing Jared once more.

[Jared]

They gathered around them like hyenas drawn to a fresh cadaver, crawling over the walls and the rotund ceiling like insects, hissing and whispering in their sickening voices. He could understand them now, his mind somehow tuning up to the right frequency that could recognize the words spoken. They spoke of the things they would do to his cunny, the things they’ve done to his father (“My father? My father is dead?” he thought, realizing through the storm of voices that the man that gave him life, the man he never knew, was a part of this madness), atrocities beyond human imagination. Not only that, but they projected images of such deeds into his mind, attacking his sanity, creating an internal conflict that ravaged his insides and made him want to hurl. And to top it of, their auras, dark and vile and growing stronger with each second, pressed down on him like amplified gravity.

Despite being captured in this web made out of agony that drew him in the more he opposed its power, he kept track of the conversation between Bryn and Eryk, his eyes looking at the bulky warrior with clear enmity. He hated Eryk before he fell into Underworld and the malice around him only further amplified the rage that was building within him. Jared thought it culminated with Bryn’s decision. In reality, it breached all limits and reached a new peak once he pulled the Valkyrie close and kissed her.

“No!” the exile growled, pushing Bryn aside rather harshly, his strength fueled by his fury. His eyes were burning, his aura – that seemed to be veining only seconds ago – exploded, illuminating the dim environment. The devils that loomed around them squealed and fled before the white fire. “I won’t let you be her damnation, you bastard!”

Jared rushed forwards like a bull, his advance unhinged, his fist balled so tight, he didn’t feel his fingers as he took a swing at the physically more impressive warrior. Eryk caught his right with his left effortlessly, as if he intercepted a feeble punch of a child, then proceeded to do the same with the follow up. And for the first time the former and the present lover of the Valkyrie met face to face.

“You can’t harm me, boy. She made the call.” Eryk said, smirking maliciously, like a tyrant that just vanquished yet another nation. “Besides, you’re too pathetic.”

The shove of his arms seemed like a mere flick of his wrists, but the power behind it was inhumane, divine, sending Jared sliding across the tiles and on his knees. The peculiar girl – that just seemed somehow vaguely familiar even in the midst of this turmoil – tried to help him up, but he pushed her away angrily. The voices assailed him again, quenching his aura, bathing his body with cold sweat and taking over his mind slowly but surely. He didn’t remember Bryn’s face anymore, nor the smile that brought him this far. He wanted to fight and inflict pain and let his rage run rampant. He charged like a wounded animal again. His leg launched a blistering kick aimed at Eryk’s temple, but once again the warrior blocked it and pushed it away. A cold iron grasp caught Jared’s windpipe. The exile tried to swat it away, but it felt like hitting rock with bare hands. The warrior pulled her close enough to smell the sweat on his forehead, close enough for their eyes to nearly spark electricity as their glares clashed.

“It’s over.” Eryk whispered with a sadistic grin. “You three are going to stay here for eternity. And whenever you look at her, you will know that I had her first, and that she died for me, that she gave her soul for me. How’s that as food for thought for the next millennia?”

There was no chance for a rebuttal as Eryk lifted Jared as if he was a sack of dry sticks and flung him across the room. The two women gathered around Jared’s fallen form that had just enough strength to lift his head and look at the warrior that suddenly stood in a beam of light so pure, it exterminated every demon in the room. The bastard within the beam smiled, spreading his hands, levitating above the nondescript tiles. And suddenly the castle around them exploded soundlessly, fragments of is bursting out as the body of warrior ascended at blistering speed, disappearing in less then a second. And once again they stood in decayed Aletha.

“No. No.” Jared muttered, still on all fours and feeling as if he just ran fifty miles under Fallien sun. “What... what kind of gods... accept somebody like him? What kind of gods... would leave us here?”

He was at the edge of exhaustion, his eyes staring blankly ahead. He came here to stop this from happening, to stop Bryn from making this sacrifice. And yet she did it anyways, because of her foolish pride, because Eryk had her first, because she died for him. He pushed both women away from himself, his hate now directed to all those around him, the whispers of the demons getting inside of his head and plaguing his mind. His aura was almost completely gone now, dying like a burnt candle.

“We need to move.” the unnamed girl spoke, trying once again to lift him up. He snatched his arm from her own, his face frowned and ugly somehow, as if there was a shadow that fell over it. His mind kept replaying Eryk’s words, the sly voice in his head etching those words into the very fabric of his brain.

“Move? MOVE!? Move where? Reality check! We’re in hell and our oh-so-noble Valkyrie just chose to give her soul for a bastard because of some foolish sense of honor. How stupid is that?” his voice was caustic, his face revealing a toothy malicious smile. “You two go on ahead. I’ll just sit and rest a little bit. It’s not like we’re going anywhere any time soon. Maybe they just take me and you two can escape and have a nice little threesome with Eryk.”

[The Valkyrie]

Bryn fell to the stone floor as Jared pulled her away from Eryk and lunged at him. Fists flew, but Jared seemed to have little effect on the warrior who swatted Jared's blows away as though they were nothing more than obnoxious insects flitting around his head. The Valkyrie stared in horror for a long moment, but as Jared fell to his knees, Bryn stood angrily, her sword flying from its sheath with an angry hiss.

"You can't Brynhilde. Just like you made your decision, he made his," the unnamed girl spoke, her hand on Brynhilde's arm like a cold steel vice. The girl met Bryn's gaze, but even as the Valkyrie struggled to get loose and rush at Eryk, her grip held tight.

Eryk threw Jared across the room, where he landed at her feet, and she fell to her knees beside him. The warrior disappeared, leaving them alone in the stillness, only whispers of what Jared heard threatening around them.

Jared spoke and his words were scathing, like a blistering wind that would tear one's soul away and send it howling into the sky. Bryn choked, unable to respond. How could he question what she had done now? Now after he'd come with her this far, he could say such things? Shaking her head in disbelief, she sat back and stared at him, tears flowing openly down her face. She couldn't even be angry with him. Her worry and fear combined with hurt and only left a gaping hole where her emotion should have been.

"Father, how dare you?" the unnamed girl hissed, slapping him across the face hard. Bryn's head snapped around to look at the girl, as though she were the one slapped, and she gaped at this beautiful young woman who called Jared father. Had he been married and had children before they met? Was there something she didn't know?

"You knew what mother must do, you knew that her honor and her love for him were strong, and now you say these things to her?" the girl seethed, her eyes blazing to life, her chestnut locks lifting as though a phantom wind blew them into a flurry. Bryn stared at the girl in disbelief. Had she heard her call her mother? But it was impossible. The child had not even been born yet. How could she be here, as their guide?

"Stand up," their daughter demanded, jerking Jared violently to his feet, "We're going. If we can make it to the River of Souls before Hel finds us then we may be able to leave here somehow. Move."

[Jared]

For some reason beyond his defiled corrupted mind, it felt good to see Brynhilde on her knees crying and peering at him with disbelief. He caught a vile whisper of an unknown voice in his head and it said: “That’s what you get, bitch. That’s what you get for sitting on two chairs.” And in a demented state that Jared was currently in, overrun by the dark energy of the environment (that started as a speck back when he just arrived in the Underworld and turned into a this immense reverberating power that shook the very fabric of his existence) it seemed right to see her suffer. Because once again she picked Eryk over him and now she was getting what she had coming for a while.

Lost in desperation and the deceiving voices that weren’t only whispering in his head now, but became an established entity, Jared decided that lying down and let go to whatever torment was waiting for them was a good thing. And if his sister Mareena dropped by – which, he was certain, she would do sooner or later – he would kiss her once again in front of the Valkyrie out of spite. Maybe even have a wild intercourse with her just to hurt the bitch that...

A slap broke his malicious train of thought and the exile wanted nothing more at that moment then to slap the girl back and tear her head off. But there was something that steadied his hand, something she said. Was it... Father? The outraged girl peered into his malevolent eyes as if she wanted to incinerate them just by looking, speaking the words that went in one of his ears and out of the other. Or at least, that’s what the voices in his head wanted him to believe. The truth was that there was something in those azure eyes that clarified her words, a flaming determination that he saw before, in another’s eyes. In Bryn’s eyes. Only now that resolve was incased in a different set of irises, the one that he saw so many times in his life looking back at him from the mirror.

“Could it be?” his mind now started working again, forming coherent thoughts and sending her eyes to Bryn, specifically her stomach. “But, how? And why?” His alleged daughter yanked him to his feet, but he was still in a daze, contemplating, trying to answer the questions. How wasn’t the issue, however. In a place such as this one, where your worst nightmares turned into reality with the snap of the fingers, how was irrelevant. Why though certainly made him ponder as the chestnut hair girl hauled him down the seemingly endless stretch of scorched earth. The demons gathered around them once again, but the two women failed to see them, their souls still protected by Yarina’s armor. For how long though remained to be seen.

“Why?” his mind repeated as his feet moved on auto, just trying to keep him upright. The Valkyrie walked beside them, but she didn’t seem too fond of Jared right now. He couldn’t blame her, not after what he said, what he thought, what a part of his mind still thought. But the girl at his side was dauntless, moving forward despite having to support her father. “Could it be?” he thought as he looked at her profile that had her mother’s lips and nose. “Could it be that even a pure, untainted soul such as that of an unborn child can see what was right?” Perhaps. Perhaps when you’re at the beginning of your path, you see things with utmost clarity. Perhaps to separate the good from the bad you had to be neither. The voices in his head said otherwise. The voices in his head told him to kill Brynhilde and make love to his daughter right then and there, before tearing off her hands and legs and leaving her to scream for eternity. He had to get them out.

“Stop. Stop!” he finally said, crumbling to his feet again and out of her grasp. He covered his face with his hands and once again did what the V’dron told him to do. “Please, I beg of you, help us. Help me save them. Help me chase away these thoughts.”

“We have to make haste!” the girl implored, but even as she wanted to reach for Jared, her eyes were nearly blinded by sharp white illumination. All around them, shrieks and growls of pain and fear echoed throughout the desolate land. The aura around the kneeling man first enveloped the three of them, then spread to some ten paces in diameter. In the epicenter Jared rose up slowly, like a phoenix in a demented land, his eyes luminous.

“I... I’m sorry, Brynhilde. This place was... is in my head, demons that prowl around with spite and malice. It wasn’t me who said those things.” he spoke to the blonde. However, how much of that was the truth was beyond him. This place didn’t put things in your head, it merely stirred the pot and made all your darkest thoughts surface. His hand reached for hers and though it was cold, he grasped it gently before he smiled minutely.

“You are right.” he then spoke to his daughter, his voice powerful and exalted as he peered into the distance. His robes fluttered in accordance with his powerful aura, opposing the lashing wind that only he felt in this place. “There is still hope. Follow me.” Jared simply said and placed one hand in front of himself, splaying the fingers. And even as he did so, a beam of light burst from his palm, cutting a clear straight path through the landscape and – in his eyes at least – through the legion of demons. He started to run. Whatever gods watched over answered for once and he wasn’t going to waste any time on pondering why. He needed to save that which was dearest to him.

They ran. They ran until their legs were numb and their lungs breathed fire and they exhausted every single iota of energy from their bodies. The scenery never changed around them, ruins of places forsaken by gods passing by with a handful of familiar visages and a throng of unfamiliar ones, all caught in some abhorring state. He was glad neither of the two managed to see all of this with their eyes. The demons snapped their jaws and seethed with fury, but dared not to step on the cut that he made. And after what seemed like days of running they could see a black river that cut through the decayed landscape. On its shore, small and seemingly insignificant, stood a ferry that looked more like a shabby raft. And the hooded ferryman was waiting for his toll.

[The Valkyrie]

All had seemed lost. They were never going to leave here, Jared hated her for making a choice even though it was the only one she could have made, and her daughter was here too. And she didn't even know where Eryk was to save him. Out of nowhere came a light so blinding and perfect that it seemed to light the entirety of the Underworld. The Valkyrie blinked, almost expecting to be standing in Val Halla as her eyes adjusted to the brilliant glow Jared produced, but they were still in the Underworld.

He apologized, and though she was still stunned, Bryn nodded, managing a smile, and took his arm as they started to run for the River of Souls. She feared they'd never make it, that Hel would play her games and turn the endless corridors into a labyrinth which they would wander for eternity.

But there before them, was the river. It flowed wildly, like a river after days of storms in the midst of the spring thaw. Whitecaps topped its torrential current, and at the shore bounced a meager raft that looked as though it would collapse on itself at any moment.

Standing on that raft was a hooded figure, the ferryman. But Bryn paused. The others continued forward without her, but Bryn knew something they could not. Even in the Underworld, even as a mortal, she could sense when her mistress was near. This was her. Bryn had expected games, and this was the ace her mistress had up her sleeve.

"Wait," she said in a low voice as Jared and their daughter rushed forward, eager to board the tiny raft and cross to the other side and what they hoped was freedom.

"What is it Brynhilde?" the too familiar voice purred, the hood falling back to reveal the midnight hair and empty black eyes, "Afraid of what I'll do once you're on the ferry? I just want to help you cross to the other side."

"You only want to keep us here. You want to punish me for whatever it is you think I accomplished by loving Eryk, and by surviving this long as a mortal," Bryn fumed at Hel angrily, stepping forward in front of Jared and drawing her sword.

"Put your sword away Brynhilde," her mistress laughed, waving her hand absently. The sword flew from Brynhilde's grasp, skittering with a metallic hiss across the stone floor and into the river. "None of that has done you any good. In fact, I think the armor has done its job. As I did to Yarina when she came, I shall do to you. You are mine, the armor has no power here for you any longer."

It was as though a curtain fell around the Valkyrie. The dead silence of the Underworld faded, the grey darkness seeped away, the still windless air began to move. Her skin began to burn and her hair whipped around her like a war-banner in the midst of a gale. And the voices began. She put her hands to her ears to muffle them but they only whispered louder. Was this what Jared had been experiencing all along? Bryn looked to him in horror and then back at her mistress as she fell to her knees, the demons and imps crowding around her and pulling her down to the burning dust.

"You made your choice Brynhilde," her mistress purred in her ear, suddenly kneeling at Bryn's side, "Aren't you so thankful for free will?"

[Jared]

Faces. Endless stream of faces – horrid and malformed and gray as death – passed by at a devastating pace, caught in foul black molasses. Their screams were an ear-splitting symphony of dementia, a plea that would never be heard or answered. Their eyes looked anywhere and everywhere, glassy and unfocused in their desperation fueled by agony as the stream took them into oblivion. They were the undecided, souls of the mortals that squandered their days by preserving a status quo, not meliorating the world around them, but neither worsening it either. For their lack of resolve they were to forever fight the River of Souls, forever struggle in between salvation and damnation.

Jared didn’t know how he knew that (perhaps some of the malicious whispers spoke of it during their endless jabber), but the sound of those cries chilled him to the bone and twisted his guts into a ball and his mind offered only that explanation. He wondered how could a raft as shabby as the one that stood before them – no more then about two dozen wooden trunks linked by that looked like black wines – survive such a powerful stream, but then remembered once again that reason and this place had a rather limited number of things in common. If any. But even such a crummy transportation seemed like a lifesaver when compared with swimming through the river of half-dead bodies caught in endless torment.

As it turned out only seconds later, even such a minimal hope was disallowed. The ferryman that at first sight looked like a hunchback monk, revealed a terrifying pale face that he saw... hours ago? Days? Years? Time was relative enough in this place to vex one’s mind to the point where you ran in circles and tried to define the indefinable. Regardless of the temporal distortion, Hel stood before them in all hers malicious glory, her pale face a terrifying contrast to her abysmally dark eyes as her raven-black hair fluttered ever so gently, creeping around her like a myriad of snakes. The chestnut hair girl (Jared still have trouble accepting the fact that she was his daughter and that she wasn’t in her mother’s belly) swallowed dryly and uttered a minute whimper, but refused to yield and take a step back. She had her mother’s steel, there was no doubt about that little foible.

Brynhilde proceeded to display that steel, facing the goddess with a frown on her face and her trusty blade in her hand – Aisling she called it – but it seemed all for naught. Hel held dominion over these lands and she displayed her power by ridding the Valkyrie of the thing that protected her sanity in this place. The armor still clung to Bryn’s body, but Jared could see on her face – in her pale green eyes – that it no longer worked its magic. It was a gaze of fear and agony and desperation and horror all rolled into one. And it was in both Bryn’s and the eyes of his daughter.

“You stay away from her!” the exile shouted at the dark goddess, throwing himself on his knees and into the sooth, embracing her strongly. His aura, though gradually diminishing ever since it exploded around him a while ago, was still strong enough to protect them both from the lurching horde of devils that cackled and whispered and snapped their fanged jaws at the barrier made out of illumination. The unborn daughter of the pair ran to her embraced parents and stood defiantly between them and Hel.

“I won’t let you hurt them.” the girl said, spreading her hands wide as if that alone was enough to stop the deity of the Underworld. And it was. Because even as the black goddess made a move to strike the girl, her hand was fiercely pushed away by an unseen force. The chestnut girl smirked the way Brynhilde did when she knew she had the upper hand. “You cannot touch me, Hel. I am unborn, unsullied, untainted. I am not of this world any more then I am of any other world. And I don’t belong to you.”

There was fire in Hel’s eyes, vehement and vicious as she peered down on the seemingly frail lass that she, in all her foul divinity, couldn’t touch. She hated the girl, hated her from the bottom of her godlike existence, because she was the first one that stood before her and failed to yield to her will. But the expression of hatred lasted only for a second, erased by an annoyed smirk as the dismal goddess took a step back. “Very well.” she spoke, her tone flat and emotionless. “You may be out of my reach... for now. But the two of them aren’t.”

The pale fingers (that, Jared thought, must’ve been as cold as death itself) snapped once and the world shifted around broke as if it was made from jigsaw pieces. The raft was blown away into the middle of the river that instantly exchanged the blackness for red flames that erupted from the tar that coursed with the damned souls. The heat from the fire seemed unbearable, singing Jared’s skin, but it lasted only for a fraction of a second before the ground beneath them erupted. What seemed like sooth only a blink of an eye before now became a plateau of scattered human skulls that was moving skywards, bringing an ivory mountain of bones in tow. And before either of the three even managed to react they stood on the top of the white mountain that stuck out of the humdrum red-and-black landscape like a sore thumb. Out of the enflamed river a legion of hellhounds stepped out and started charging up the bony slopes, joined by the rest of the horde that inhabited the accursed lands. Their red eyes were like an ocean around their little whitewashed isle that slowly got overrun by the tide.

Jared was breathless. His daughter stood with courage, but he could see the hopelessness in her eyes. This would be her end as well. If Bryn’s soul was claimed, she would perish in the real world (though the mayhem of this world seemed pretty damn real to him) and the lass would never be born. Instead of torment of the Underworld, she would fade away like an inscription on a chalkboard. But what could she do against the hundreds of thousands that marched up the hill?

“I... I...” she stuttered, her eyes welling up with tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

Jared wanted to lie down and let them sweep over them and have their way with them. His body and, more importantly, his mind were fatigued, the maintenance of the holy aura taxing on every bit of him. And even if it wasn’t so, it didn’t matter because there were so many around them... So many. So many that only wanted to claim what was rightfully theirs; two souls that chose damnation willingly. Free will was a bitch.

But then he looked into Bryn’s eyes, those emeralds that were paling in front of the horrors that stood around them. He looked at her face that was still so damn beautiful even in a place such as this. He looked at everything he loved, his life, his soul, the captor of his heart. And he couldn’t let her go without a fight.

“We’ll fight them.” he said resolutely, grasping Bryn by her shoulders and lifting her back to her feet. “We’ll fight them until time stops ticking and the fires stop burning. Because I’m not letting either of you go without a fight. Come, come to me.” he called his daughter. “We’ll fight them with this...” he pointed to his temple. “...and with this.” he pointed to his chest, then extended his hands at his sides, one to his daughter, the other towards the Valkyrie. “We need to pray. Together.”

[The Valkyrie]

It felt like her skin and her soul were both being peeled away by the same searing wind that ripped at her painfully. Bryn tucked her head to her chest, the tears that stung her eyes blown away before she could ever think to cry. Her daughter should not be defending her, it should be the other way around. This child was not even born and yet she was the only thing standing between the Goddess of Death and the woman she had damned to mortality and now threatened to damn to eternal torment.

As Hel snapped her fingers and the world changed around the three, the Valkyrie struggled to her feet, standing between her daughter and her lover. The legions of the Underworld marched toward them up the hill of skulls upon which they now stood, and Bryn's heart quailed as she realized that she had neither weapon nor armor to protect her or those she loved now. There was nothing to be done.

But Jared took their hands, and told them to pray. She frowned at him, although she gripped his hand so tightly she could feel the bones shifting in his palm. The entire Underworld crept unceasingly upon them and he suggested they pray? It was a goddess who put them here, it was the gods who had allowed this to happen. Who did he think would listen? His false god of the imaginary Aletha?

Her words remained tangled around her tongue though, and the Valkyrie remained silent, only nodding and closing her eyes. If prayer and hope was all they had, then this was what they must cling to, even if it was the last thing they ever did. She memorized every facet of her daughter's face, every line and curve of the girl's body, and then did the same of Jared, as though that memory would stand the tides of eternity even in this realm.

"Freya," she prayed to the only gods she still had even an iota of trust in, "Odin, Thor, Baldur, save us. Save us please..."

Her voice was barely a whisper over the roaring of the fires, and the endless screams and growls of the hordes that quickly approached. Once more she fell to her knees between the two loves of her life, but this time not in fear, but in hope that such obeisance would not fall on gods that sought to ignore their servants.

Hel stood on the burning shore of the River of Souls, her uncanny laughter echoing throughout the Underworld as the three tried to stand against her and her armies. There was little ground left for the demonic army to cover now, and they crept irrevocably closer. Bryn opened her eyes to stare down the mountain of skulls at their grinning faces.

"You are the only ones who can do this!!" she screamed now, her voice becoming stronger, her face turning upwards as though that was where the gods could hear her best, "Please hear me! I served you faithfully, would you ignore that service now? Please at least save my daughter... please... and save Jared... I love him..."

[Jared]

“If the prayer is genuine, it will find an ear that would listen to it.”

Jared clung to these words as if his very life depended on it. It was mostly because it actually did, and not just his own. Three souls were at stake and the only bargaining chip that they had left was the belief in the words of an old crone that had a tendency to speak in riddles. It wasn’t a genuine belief as most necessity-inspired beliefs weren’t; everybody believed in something when the water reached that critical level just above the jaw and you knew that you’d be sleeping with the fishes before long. Down here the water was made out of fiery crimson eyes and the sleep was bound to be a nightmare that would stretch out into eternity, but the belief was the same cry of the indigent, fueled by desperation and nothing but a whisper in the fury of the storm. And it alone couldn’t stop the demonic tsunami.

“Creator, hear my plea!” the exile uttered, barely hearing his own voice through the cackles and hisses that seemed to reach the pinnacle of the mountain of bone, gathering around his diminishing aura. They couldn’t pass through the white light yet, but it was dying, flickering like a worn lightbulb. All they had to do is wait and prowl around. “Deliver your servants from the oblivion. Deliver the righteous from the lands of the wicked. I beg for your mercy, save us from the storm, help us weather it, overcome it. And grant us passage to your eternal kingdom.”

It was a prayer spoken with all the fervor that Jared could muster, and yet when he opened his eyes the effects were nowhere to be seen. Bryn was on her knees, shouting to the scarlet sky to save her daughter, to save him. The only answer that all their prayers got was the maniacal cackle of Hel whose ivory throne now levitated above them, her abysmal eyes seemingly murdering all hope. The aura of white flames that fluttered around the hapless trio shrunk even further, now barely voluminous enough to encompass all three of them. Jared’s head snapped upwards, but his eyes peered through Hel, joining the Valkyrie in the undetermined gaze towards the gods that weren’t there.

“Will you not help us?” he spoke in little over a whisper that was instantly overwhelmed by the commotion around them. Toothy grins and scarlet eyes of the devils peered at them from the other side of the barrier, scuttling this way and that like cats around a bowl of hot milk. “Will you do nothing?”

The disconcerting red sky didn’t open up. The great white beam of light didn’t appear to lift them to Val Halla or whatever the hell waited the righteous in the afterlife. The demons around them didn’t perish. Jared cursed the V’dron in his mind’s voice. The ears of the deities were deaf to their plea, their hearts relentless, leaving them to the doom of the Underworld. He had a strong dislike for the gods, but he hated them now, hated them more then anything in his short life. They didn’t deserve to play with the destinies of the mortals, not when they allowed something like this to transpire. He was right and the V’dron was wrong; gods were nothing but spoiled brats with an ant farm.

Jared collapsed to his knees, his shoulders slumped, his head shaking in dismay as the abominations around them got another foot closer. His daughter took a step back, but there was no more space for withdrawing as she struck Jared’s side. Hel looked like she was having a ball, her smile vile and permanent. The exile let his eyes drop to the doleful face of Brynhilde. And even in midst of the bedlam that was snapping its jaws at them, ready to devour them, her visage drew out a smile on his face. His hands reached for her face, both cupping her cheeks as his thumbs wiped the tears that started to flee down her soft skin. During their time together he saw so many emotions in her eyes, divine righteous anger, genuine coy fear, adamant resolve, cruel despair and, of course, mirth. He wanted to see it again, one last time, the happiness that was inspired by their affection, fueled by the love that started as nothing but a stray seed and grew into something that transcended life.

“We gave it a good run, Brynhilde, but I fear it ends here.” he spoke and only now he realized that tears were trickling down his cheeks as well. His voice was quivering, weak, but he was certain that she could hear it. His hand pushed one of her curly golden locks aside, his fingers relishing in what was probably the last time he would touch her suave hair. “I want you to know that, regardless of this end, being with you was... was more then I deserved. I’m sorry I couldn’t save us, that I couldn’t save you and return the favor. Because you saved me, Bryn. You have shown me what life should be like, what love should be like.”

His hands embraced her tightly, desperately, his nostrils taking in one last breath filled with the scent of her skin, her hair, her delicate sweat. “I love you, Brynhilde, and nothing that happens from now to the eternity will change that.”

[The Valkyrie]

The demons were upon them, their breath searing and rancid as they hissed and spat menacingly at the three who now clung to each other behind the wavering light of Jared's protective aura. There seemed nothing left for them to do, Jared's strength was waning, and no matter how loudly or ardently they prayed, no one seemed to listen or care.

On their knees and face to face, Bryn tried to cling to what little hope she had left, her hands over Jared's as he cupped her cheeks. Their daughter stood behind them, her hands at her sides as though she'd given up. Bryn looked up at the girl and then back to Jared, trying to find words to say what was an inevitable goodbye.

"Even if this is the end... even if I lose you... and our daughter," she glanced up to the beautiful young woman who was their unborn child and smiled lovingly, "Even then, I am still more blessed than any Valkyrie, or even the gods, more blessed than anyone could hope to be."

Jared's aura flickered and began to fail, and Hel shrieked loudly, her laughter maniacal. Bryn pulled Jared to her, placing her lips against his, wanting the taste of him, the feel of his mouth on hers to be the last thing she experienced if she was going to spend the rest of eternity without it.

"I wouldn't have changed anything, even if I could," she whispered, placing her forehead against his.

The white light flickered once more and then disappeared, the demons cackling as they rushed up the pinnacle of the hill, swarming over the three. Bryn screamed as her daughter was ripped away from her by the demons, and then again as Jared was pulled from her grasp.

As the ragged claws and teeth of the demons closed on her arms, snatching at the Valkyrie, she closed her eyes, crying out one last time to the only god who had ever shown any interest in her.

"Loki, you pretended like you cared about what was happening! Please... do something..."

"Well all you had to do was ask," a familiar voice purred in the now striking silence.

[Jared]

Jared never believed in the cheesy cliché of life that flashed before your eyes moments before you died. It was an expression that people liked to utilize in order to add a more dramatic flare to that last handful of moments that, on their own, sounded tedious and uneventful. And even if they weren’t, he sincerely doubted that the mind’s last duty as a working organ was to replay the events that took place in the past. In support to that conclusion were the two times he died during his time with the Valkyrie and on neither of the two occasions he saw a short resume flashing before his eyes. The fact of the matter was that death wasn’t spectacular, it wasn’t all that of which the books wrote. It was just death, a pale cold finale of another cycle that in celestial proportions wasn’t even a drop in the ocean.

And yet once his aura extinguished and the gnarled clawed hands tore him away from his beloved, something did appear in front of his mind’s eye. Only it wasn’t a flash, but a paused frame that despite its stillness was somehow vivid and alive. And in that moment that preceded the eternal torment, Jared Namarealyen realized that his skepticism about the cliché was unwarranted. Because something that was his life flashed in front of his eyes.

It was Brynhilde’s face.

And when he was finally ready to let himself go to the forces of the underworld, the torment failed to begin. The malicious gloating laughter of Hel stopped as if somebody erased it. The hisses and devilspeak quelled down until they ceased to exist. The commotion of epic proportions that was bound to swallow the three that stood on the top of a hill made out of bones was stopped by a divine intervention. And once again, the exile found himself in a paused environment, where everything save for himself was simply intermitted. The demons and imps that seconds before fought for the latest catch simply stood, their limbs cramped in a static position. Even Brynhilde and their daughter were under the influence of whatever decided to put their doom on hold.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?!?” Hel bawled from above, but Jared wasted no time at searching the answer for that question. He snatched his limbs from the cold slimy hands of his paralyzed captors and started to make his way through the demonic crowd. He was halfway to the Valkyrie when the familiar voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Temper, temper, my dear Hel.” it spoke from somewhere in the crowd. The Underworld goddess wasted no time at searching for this intruder, snapping her fingers again and turning her entire army into vapor effortlessly. All that was left on the small plateau of bone was dumbfounded Jared, two lifeless bodies of Bryn and her daughter, and one wily deity.

“Loki.” she growled from above, her levitating throne slowly descending until its ivory texture touched the bony ground and melted into it. “What gives you right to come into my dominion and stop me from doing my bidding?”

The red-haired god that Jared met on several occasions already merely smirked knavishly, making an expression that intentionally tried and failed to look like genuine thoughtfulness. He walked towards Hel’s throne with agonizing slowness, tempting her already worn patience, twirling his fingers playfully. Once he was almost close enough to step on her benighted dress, Loki finally replied to her inquiry. “I’m here to make you an offer.”

“Offer me what? I have everything I need.” Hel replied, her indifference and her condescending tone describing her lack of interest perfectly.

“Do you now? Let’s have a closer look at that. You lost one soul already, you’re bound to lose another one, and you gained two.” he did the numbers on his fingers, counting to two, then counting back to zero again in clear mockery. “I’d say you did a lot of work just to keep everything even.”

Hel was getting annoyed in a hurry, her eyes rolling and her fingers tapping on her throne. But Loki was always a jester and she knew how to take his little games in stride, so she let him speak further. “What are you babbling about now?”

“That girl over there, the one that opposed you so openly, the one even you couldn’t touch...” Loki spoke, nodding towards Jared’s daughter and provoking a frown on the pale face of the mistress of the Underworld. “If you proceed with this, you won’t be able to claim her soul. Because if Bryn remains dead, her daughter will never be born and the one person that stood against you and lived would just fade away into oblivion.”

The dark goddess wanted to retort, but she knew he was right. The little bitch that seemed unimportant at the beginning of all of this became a major nuisance and a thorn in her side. She wanted the girl, wanted her out of spite, out of malice, out of sheer hate towards the meddlesome pair that walked into her backyard and caused all this ruckus. She wanted to own her, to defile her and make her one of her slaves, one of her damned minions.

“So what is your offer? To let Brynhilde go and then hope that her daughter winds up here?”

“No. You let both Brnyhilde and Jared go and let them live their lives the way they want to and raise their child the way they want to.”

“And why would I be so benevolent?”

“Because you get their daughter once she grows up.”

“And who is to assure me that it will be so?”

“He is.” and with that said, Loki’s finger pointed to Jared who insofar felt like an audience member that watched a dialogue that took place on the stage above. Still in a rather stupefied state, Jared could only watch as the trickster deity walked up to him with that same quizzical grin that seemed always on that divine face of his. “This is what I was talking about Jared; the moment of choice. In one hand you have this, the eternal damnation in this place that consequently makes her...” he pointed towards the chestnut haired lass. “...perish. On the other you have salvation for you and your beloved Bryn and a good number of years with your daughter.”

“Before I turn her over to eternal damnation?” Jared concluded bitterly. “You’re asking me to pick between my own doom and that of my daughter?”

“Aye. I told you it wouldn’t be an easy choice. Between the longing of your heart and the righteousness of your soul, which will you choose?” Loki asked, his voice finally losing the jovial hue and becoming serious and strict. Behind him Hel was silent, obviously satisfied with the way things are revolving. Jared’s eyes fled to the two women that lay on the carpet made of bones as cold sweat trickled down his back, over his forehead, making his entire body feverish. To save one, he would have to doom the other. To get Bryn, his heart’s greatest desire, he would have to sacrifice his daughter’s soul and consequently his own. Because such betrayal could never be redeemed.

And in the end, it all came to the hypothetical situation that he mulled on for a number of times. If he had a wife and at birth there had to be a choice made between the child and the mother, he always said to himself that he would opt for the mother. Because they could always have another child. But after seeing his daughter in flesh, after seeing the magnificent woman she was bound to become, the simple choice wasn’t so simple anymore. However, in the end his love for the Valkyrie was too strong. He looked back at her and saw in her all that he ever wanted, his life, his soul, his fabled soul mate. Together they could weather whatever storm. Together they would make it.

“Very well. I... I...” he paused again, his eyes fleeing to the beautiful young lass that he was selling like a mere slave at that very moment. It tore him apart, but with both choices being so wrong, he thought he was picking the lesser evil. “I agree to your proposal. You may have her when the time comes.”

Hel smiled. She smiled like a scoundrel that just won the lottery. She was feeding on his anguish, on his despair. It was her drug, the food for her malice, and today she won in more then one way.

“So be it.” Loki said, his hand touching Jared’s shoulder gently. And even as he did so, the exile’s eyes darkened, his knees buckling beneath him as he passed out. The last thing he heard was an excerpt of the conversation between Loki and Hel.

“What’s your angle in all of this?” the goddess asked.

“Let’s call it a... long term investment.”

[The Valkyrie]

The baby was kicking again, turning somersaults and gouging into Brynhilde's ribs, leaving tender bruises. The girl was going to be a handful, that was for sure. Bryn shifted position, then opened her eyes with a horrified gasp, her hands going to her belly and her mind identifying the monotonous sound that filled her ears as the chanting of the priests and priestess around her. In a panic she struggled to sit up, a young priest helping her to her feet as her eyes darted around the room.

Jared lay on the altar right next to the place she had just left, not breathing, completely still. With a heartbreaking sob, she touched him, draping her body across his. What had she done? She'd hoped it had all been a dream, but here she was, alive and heavy with child in a demonic land, and the only person that held her together was laying lifeless on an altar. She may as well have killed him herself, she thought as she clung to what was left of the man she loved.

Two men, relegated to the Underworld, left to suffer at the hands of a goddess that hated Brynhilde and anything to do with the Valkyrie. Two men who would endure eternal torment, and all because she was foolish enough to love them. And now the armor that had taken her to the Underworld to begin with was useless, she couldn't even go back to try to bargain with her former mistress for Jared's soul.

The chanting stopped. A gentle hand lay on her back, and Bryn lifted her head from Jared's chest long enough to stare into the amber eyes of the V'dron. If before the eyes had seemed cold and uncaring, now they were filled with emotion, warm and comforting and full of sorrow. But the Valkyrie shrugged the hand away, shaking her head and closing her eyes as she lay back down across Jared's body once more.

She had failed. And this ceremonial chamber, dimly lit and smelling of incense, seemed more like a tomb. She would as soon die here as try to go on, living a mortal life and raising a child - his child - without Jared at her side. And what was his life the payment for? Nothing it seemed. Nothing at all. He was gone, Eryk still remained in the Underworld (where she thought he might belong after all), and she was alone.

But that was such a selfish thought, she realized, as the baby kicked once more at her ribs as though reminding her just what had happened. How could she worry about herself at a time like this? Just what had Jared done to send Bryn and their baby back, only for him to remain in the Underworld. Did he still lay atop that hill of bones? Were the demons tearing his soul to shreds at this very moment, tormenting him with visions of what he'd given up? Or did Hel herself have the exile in her clutches, leading him down the paths he might have taken, showing him what would become of his Valkyrie and their daughter?

A rending sob tore at her throat at the flood of images that ripped through her mind. She knew what Hel did to her victims, and the very idea killed the Valkyrie.

"You prayed, did you not?" the V'dron asked softly, still standing nearby, as though holding vigil over the solemn scene before her.

Bryn looked up once more, the light from the candles flickering like molten gold in her curls. The V'dron raised an ebon eyebrow, her bronze skin shimmering like the metal it resembled in the candlelight.

"I did," the Valkyrie whispered, "But no one heard."

"I believe you are mistaken," the priestess argued, "Think again."

Bryn thought back to the last moments before she awoke. She'd cried out to Loki as a last resort, begging him for help as the demons began to tear at her, with a pain that was anything but physical. The Valkyrie struggled to remember what happened next, and with a shock, she remembered.

The voice. It had been Loki's. He'd come and she'd woken up. But why the hell was Jared dead, if Loki had answered her prayers? Bryn began to shake with anger, her whole body trembling, and her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides.

"Wait Brynhilde Darkthorne," the V'dron warned in a threateningly low voice, "The gods do not always work in the time we believe they should. Perhaps your man here made a deal for your soul."

She stared at the priestess, emerald eyes wide in horror at the terrible realization of what Jared might have done. And she knew that if it came down to it, that was just the noble gesture he would make. With a low cry of anguish, Bryn turned her face away from the V'dron and back to Jared's still form, her clenched fists angrily pummeling his chest.

"How could you! You can't leave me here! I don't know what I'm doing here without you... please... oh gods please don't take him too..." she kept hitting him, although not hard now, her voice choked with burning tears as her fists thudded dully against his unmoving chest.

[Jared]

Jared thought that once the treacherous deal was concluded, he would be rid of the pain, the coldness and all the other traits that Hel’s realm had in ample supply, but he wasn’t. Because he was cold again, floating weightless through the abyss that seemed to pour more into him with every passing second. And then there was the pain, dull and far from deadly, but still drumming in his chest as if he was tied into a sack and getting beaten by a prizefighter. It was more then enough to make him think that Loki pulled a fast one on him and, in his divine power, decided to cast him in some kind of limbo. Not suffering eternal torment, not returning to life, but floating somewhere in between. Forever. And from that perspective it seemed even worse then being in the Underworld.

Luckily, the nothingness of the oblivion around him didn’t last long. At first he felt as if the abysmal darkness was somehow shallowing, not changing in hue but in depth, suddenly not seeming that endless. It became more coherent if that could ever be said for a heap of nothing, more mundane and not so despondent anymore. Still cold though, chilling his bones from head to toe. But then came the voice, distant and dreamy, filtered through a membrane that he couldn’t see, making it sound miles away. And it said:

“How could you! You can't leave me here! I don't know what I'm doing here without you... please... oh gods please don't take him too...”

At first, he was just overjoyed to hear something other then the beating of his own heart in ears. Beating of his heart? But wouldn’t that make him alive? The pain in his chest was veining, but it felt flat to him, empty and dormant. He decided to make an attempt at breathing and he succeeded, albeit with some difficulty that manifested itself in dry weak coughs. And then, as if somebody flipped the switch, the dense blackness around him was gone and his eyes opened up to behold the world again. And out of all the sights in the world of Althanas, his eyes were granted the most magnificent one. And suddenly he knew to whom that voice belonged to, he knew that he wasn’t drifting anymore and that Loki didn’t trick him. Because Brynhilde loomed over him, her face tearful and desperate, her fist knocking on his chest feebly. She never saw a sadder face on her and she was never more glad to see it. Because it was real, it was tangible... It was alive.

“I’m not going anywhere.” he spoke in a raspy, decrepit voice so unlike him. His hands were numb from the coldness, but he managed to put them in motion, lifting them to grasp her own that stood against his chest. And even though he was cold all over, feeling like a living icicle, Jared managed to procure a smile for her, meek and genuine. “You know that I always like to sleep late.”

He didn’t know where did the jest come from, but it was instinctive and he couldn’t stop it any more then he could stop bringing her hands to his lips and caressing them over and over again. Because she was alive and he was alive and they were together after a dreadful ordeal that couldn’t have a fairytale ending, and if that wasn’t a reason enough for mirth, then chances were there wouldn’t be one during their entire lives. The ritual chamber around them was silent, the priests ceasing their chant and stepping back from the altar where the two lay, rejoined and rejoiced. Only the V’dron stood close and though Jared couldn’t see her face, he could almost feel her smiling with satisfaction. After all, how many times one gets to facilitate a journey to the Underworld that concluded with something other then utter demise?

“I made a promise, Brynhilde. A promise to myself, to you, to her...” the exile spoke after he showered her hands with kisses, one of his hands touching her bulged belly. “I promised that if you don’t come back, I’ll go get you. And I’ll make the devil sorry for not letting you go. And here we are. All three of us.”

“For how long?” an acrimonious, realistic side of him spoke, reminding him of the deal he made and the betrayal of the child that the Valkyrie carried in her womb. But at this moment he brushed it aside, his subconsciousness brushed it aside for him, and he was just happy to hold her once again. His hand touched her face, touched the magnificent suave curls of her hair that he thought he would never touch again. And he felt that his soul was worth it - that his daughter’s soul was worth it as horrible as it sounded - just to have Bryn.

[The Valkyrie]

6 months later - Suravani's Oasis - Fallien

"Astrid, stop squirming while I change you," a golden haired beauty with a dirt smudged face growled as she struggled with a tiny chestnut haired little girl of only two months old, "You're making a bloody mess child."

Tucking in the edges of the diaper and lifting the baby into her arms, Bryn turned to Jared and sighed. The heat was getting to her and the baby, and they were both cranky and tired - the Valkyrie hadn't slept in at least a week, she thought.

Handing the baby girl to her father, Bryn wiped her forehead on her arm, then collapsed in a rocking chair near the door of the small stone cottage the Esseker clan had built for the expecting couple when they'd come there after their return from the Underworld. At least here there was a slight breeze, and Bryn closed her eyes just for a moment as she cooled off.

A familiar face sprang into her mind like a wildcat onto its kill, a face she'd been dreaming of lately as she drifted during the short hours the baby slept between nursing. It was as though her mind was asking of her the question she'd been too afraid all this time to ask of Jared - what had become of Eryk's soul? Opening her eyes wide, and glancing at the exile, Bryn frowned and bit her lip.

"Jared," she said finally, her voice tentative, "You never told me... what happened down there... in the Underworld after the demons... what happened to Eryk... what happened to you? How did we both get out Jared?"

She knew that anytime she mentioned Eryk it hurt Jared, cutting into his heart like a knife. It was why she hadn't so much as breathed his name since they'd woken up in that chamber in Haidia six months before. But not knowing was killing her, and she knew that if she didn't ask now it would drive her mad.

Bryn stood from the chair and puttered around the cottage, arranging and rearranging glass figurines on a shelf (presents from the Essekers and the Deklans for the birth of Astrid), wiping crumbs from the table, folding clean diapers, and keeping her eyes from wandering back to Jared's face. She wouldn't blame him if he didn't answer, or even if he flew off the handle like he had before when she'd talk about Eryk.

[Jared]

For the first time since the illusion of his homeland was broken and he wandered through the known lands of Althanas, Jared Namarealyen could say that life was good. Better then good actually. It was elysian. The chancy adventures were behind them now, stored away neatly in their memories just as their gear was in a wooden casket they held in their bedroom. And instead of the uncertainty of the road and the hostile encounters that frequently resulted in life or death situations they now had a sanctuary within the walls of their new home. Fallien was a land by Bryn’s liking, a realm of strong women and hard workers, but a realm attractive in its spartan way. Because you haven’t seen a dusk in its full glory until you saw it descending over the prairie around the Suravani’s Oasis, enflaming the sky as the blazing orb sunk beneath the horizon. Because you haven’t seen a night sky so big, so endless as the one above your head during the sleepless nights (which they had quite a few lately).

But the scenery was just one part of the medal, a small, less significant part. What mattered was that in this Oasis in the middle of Fallien desert, they made an oasis of their own, raising it with their love until it became their fort... their home. And of course, there was Astrid, the very materialization of this affection, a tiny beautiful thing that undoubtedly had her mother’s flare and determination. But even though she was a handful, it was a sweet trial for the pair. And when it didn’t seem so, Jared always liked to say what his mother always said: Little children, little trouble. Big children, big trouble. It seldom helped when you haven’t slept for three nights in a row, but it was something.

And in the midst of this storm of good events that swept them off their feet and simply carried them through the days, Haidia, the V’dron, the Underworld and the terrible bargain that was made simply faded away. Or at least that was what Jared kept telling himself. In reality it struck as the important things always did, blindsiding yhim in some dull hour of the night and making him mull until either the morning came or he fell asleep from mental exhaustion. It haunted him at random, this whisper in the back of his head that reminded him of Loki and Hel and the River of Souls. And he would curse himself for making a deal, curse as his stomach churned so much he wanted to puke. But then Bryn would sigh in her sleep or her hand would brush against his skin, and he would pull her close and chase away his demons with her divine beauty.

Today, however, the night demons came forth during the day and it was Brynhilde that initiated its appearance. She was sitting in an armchair, exhausted by Astrid’s strange sleeping habits, and the question just came up, catching Jared by surprise. He didn’t show it though. Instead he held Astrid leant on his chest, rocking her gently as he gazed over the grassland that was uncannily lush around the Oasis. It was a question that was hanging over his head for months now, a noose that he tried to evade in any way possible, but one could never escape the inevitable.

Finally, when the silence because dense and burdening and the Valkyrie begun doing some minor housework, he turned towards with an intention to speak. But what was he supposed to say? That this child that he held in his hands, this gorgeous baby that was both of them and neither of them, that he traded it for her? For this home that had a countdown that ticked away the seconds of their mirth? No, he couldn’t tell her that. She didn’t have to know that. Not now anyways. Not now when Astrid was still a baby and the time of her departure was waiting for her at some undetermined point in the future. Later. He would tell her later. No use ruining the time of rejoice with the doom that was yet to come.

“I...I don’t know.” he lied, keeping his face as honest as possible. He hoped that she would acknowledge the grimness of his face as something inspired by the reminiscing of their terrible experience in the Underworld. “When the demons overwhelmed us, I passed out, just like you did. And the next thing I know, you’re beating the life out of me back in the ritual chamber.”

He finished with a smile, weak and faux, but given the fact that neither of them was terribly fond of this topic, it was to be expected. “As for Eryk...” he continued, his tone unintentionally hued by a touch of bitterness. “I can only assume that by entering the Underworld and reaching him, you redeemed his soul and sent it to Val Halla. Although, if you ask me, if such a bastard winds up in Val Halla, I’d rather go back to Underworld when my time comes.”

At these words, prominently acerbic and hostile, Astrid squirmed in his hands and started to cry. He tried to hush her, rocking her gently once again, but to no avail. “Uhm... Maybe she’s hungry.”

((SPOILS: Holy - Jared discovered this spell during his tribulation in the Underworld. The effect of it are twofold. First, it imbues him with an azure-white aura some ten feet in diameter. Within this aura he and any of his allies have their morale elevated, and though it has no physical influence, it steels the will of whoever finds himself in the area of the spell. Second, the aura has a different effect on his enemies. Within the aura they feel discomforted, their focus wavers and they feel as if the energy is leeched out of them. This goes double for all the demonic and undead creatures that might flee in terror (if they are of lower level then he is). The spell lasts for five minutes and can be cast twice a day. It takes five seconds of focusing (praying) for Jared to summon this spell.))

[The Valkyrie]

Bryn knew he was lying about what had happened, and it hurt that he feared to tell her the truth, but part of her understood. And she knew in her heart that when the time came, he'd reveal what actually happened during their time in the Underworld. With a smile that mirrored Jared's false one, the Valkyrie nodded.

"I understand," she said, standing behind him and wrapping her arms around his neck, her hands laying over the baby that laid Jared's chest. But she didn't understand. And maybe she never would. It didn't matter now. What was done was done, and she had a home and a family, and that was the only important thing. Even if Eryk remained in the Underworld, there was little or nothing she could do now that Yarina's armor was useless to protect her in that place.

As the baby started crying, Bryn sighed, taking the Astrid from her father's arms once more and carrying the girl to the rocking chair. The Valkyrie calmly bared her breast, and lifted the baby to nurse. The beautiful child began to suckle noisily, making happy little sighing noises as she did. Bryn looked over their daughter's head at Jared with a loving smile.

"I'm happier than I ever imagined I could be," she admitted, tears rushing to her eyes, "I've never had a home before."

((Spoils - Bryn no longer has either the tiara (the elves in Raiaera wanted it back) or the boots (she returned them to the Esseker tribe) that belong to Yarina's armor. Somehow though, Bryn still has protection against the creatures of the Underworld anytime they visit this plane. Also, several glass trinkets from Fallien.

[INDK]

Well this was one of the best threads I remember reading on Althanas. It was dramatic but always appropriate. What a way to finish off a series.

Total Score= 81 Jeepers Batman! Take this judgement, print it out, and stick it on your refrigerator!

Introduction – 7 This introduction was pretty well done. The one qualm I have with it, is it really didn’t give me as great of a glimpse into the task at hand for these two as I would have liked. I knew it was something tough, and admittedly if I was familiar with the saga I might have known more. However, I felt like you took a bit too long to introduce some semblance of a problem. I don’t mean that in your first post you have to introduce the antagonist, but here I really couldn’t imagine what kind of an adventure this was going to be from the introduction.

Setting – 8 Though you two seemed to take a more minimalist approach to setting here, I felt it worked well. I especially liked it when Jared likened his feelings of futility with Jared running tired through unchanging scenery.

Strategy – 10 Now that was something I did not expect in the Climax! It was ingenious, since it kept with the cost/benefit theme that seemed so prominent in this thread, without seeming forced or in any ways illogical. Had you fought your way through an epic battle, it wouldn’t have scored so high.

Dialogue – 8 In a few cases, the dialogue was melodramatic, but it wasn’t needless melodrama. You guys did a really good job in keeping it balanced between conveying the character’s emotions and being too over the top.

Character – 9 The characters here were very elaborate. I don’t really have much to say, other than I felt you both managed to generate a great deal of empathy for characters that seemed both meaningful and unique.

Rising Action – 9 This thread kept me interested, which kind of surprised me. This really had a feel of culmination to it throughout, and it seems you both got the reader to feed on that energy.

Climax – 8 The strategy here was brilliant, but I don’t feel that Jared’s decision was synchronized with Byrn very well. In a battle, I couldn’t expect that, but in a group quest I should be able to expect a little more communication from the players involved. Also I felt like Jared should have spent a bit more time on the decision, or perhaps even begged for another way. While the idea was brilliant, the execution was only very good.

Conclusion – 7 I loved the irony in the conclusion with Astrid crying. However, I can’t say I was particularly thrilled here. It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t feel like I got enough of Jared’s emotions after six months.

Writing Style – 7 I was a bit turned off by some of the Valkyrie’s descriptions. Talking about a baby gouging at your ribs gives it a real sinister sense, which I don’t feel at all is what you were going for, especially when it should have been a moment of happiness. Be very mindful of your diction.

Jared, there were a few minor malapropisms in here most that didn’t seem intentional. Also, your flow seemed a bit off from time to time.

Wild Card – 8 All in all, this was a very good job. I haven’t tallied up the numbers, but I’m rooting for this to score 80+.

Spoils=

Valkyrie, I’m okay with you getting the glass trinkets without much specification, but I’m going to have to require that they be under 750 GP in cost should you decide to sell them.

Anyways,

Jared receives 1800 EXP and his spoils.
Valkyrie receives 3000 EXP and her spoils.

[Zieg dil' Tulfried]

Since I don't think this got EXP, I'm adding it now.

EXP Added! Jared levels up!