voidgsgow

  1 | Light PiercesCLANG! RIIIIIIING! SHRIIING!

  Metal against metal, a dance of dark and light, and the scent of death.

  Swish, shhhhhish, stomp, CLANG!

  Filthy iron drawing against the stained soil. Dry, on occasion, and then—

  Squelch... Crack, snap, snap.

  I gritted my teeth and steeled myself for the next heavy blow from my unseen pursuer, my feet digging into the flesh of the corpse below, only to feel a sharp pain in my back. I roared in agony, my own warm blood sloshing onto the ground to mix with the blood of one I’d already sin. The yellow-livered bastard stabbed me in the back! It was not noble, but of course how could I ever expect nobility from those who had chosen to ambush a pair of valkyries?

  I twisted around, my spine sending signals of protest as I gripped the bde which rapidly fled from my reach, the harsh scrape of metal gauntlet to metal dagger slicing through the air. I pivoted and swiped my leg out, straight into what I strongly assumed was the belly of my assaint.

  “Khakitpijit! Orgoi worothsit!” a serpentine voice snarled, and I internally recoiled—that nguage was the low buzzing, hissing static inside my head I had assumed was a result of this world’s ecosystem. It was the nguage of entities that were not meant to belong in this world, and as I listened longer, I felt my heart sink into the depths of my stomach. The magnitude of the static was increasing further and further to a feverish chorus! A thousand locusts swarming with zeal!

  This was not a petty ambush; this was a decration of war.

  Hundreds of questions raced through my mind, my body whipping through blind motions of sensing the barest brush of air and countering each murderous second blow by blow. This isn’t good, I thought, squinting through the bckness which had obscured my vision. The barest hints of reality were peeking through the smoke, and that reality was bleak.

  [ Well, isn’t this a cute little shitshow? ] my sister’s voice echoed inside my head, and despite the pain I was in, I couldn’t help but crack a smile. [ A quick job in Saenggarth my ass. You think it was Tyr? It’s gotta be that bastard Tyr. ]

  I assure you, dear sister, he has done questionable things, but he loves me very much, I replied, and I could have heard her disdainful eye roll even with closed ears. If only I could have closed my ears—and my mind, for that matter—to the infernal refrain assaulting me. Although I’d been in this situation multiple times given the nature of the job, it had never gotten easier for me to withstand.

  [ FUCK! ] the sudden excmation jolted me out of a brief lull in my reactionary thoughts, and I almost forgot to avoid the barbed club (or was that a tentacle?) that swung at my head. [ It really is an army! ]

  I think you can make that kind of obvious remark without killing me, I replied dryly, although I would be lying if I said I wasn’t simirly stunned by the sight beyond the smoke. The once-quiet red grassnd had been flooded with oily figures of various shapes and sizes. Most, however, shared surprisingly human traits—namely, faces and having four limbs. Unlike actual humans however, it was frequent that the attributes were disorganized into a seemingly inconvenient mashup of anatomy. Some were bipedal, but some used one limb, four limbs or even none of their limbs to actually move. Even without the hazardously bck ooze dripping from their misshapen mouths, from their skin or from their wide-open eyes, they were some of the ugliest, most disgusting humanoids I’d ever seen.

  Well, I thought, grimacing as I swung my longsword out into a wide arc to catch half a dozen of the things on the edge of it, thankfully, they don’t have the weapons proficiency of Goldria. Things could be worse. Though I’m starting to think they hit something important when they stabbed me earlier.

  A pilr of bzing, angry fire swelled and shot into the air some distance away from me, and even the heat began to touch me as the smell of burnt grass and corpses bludgeoned my nose.

  [ Don’t lecture me. ]

  I wasn’t going to, Silverity.

  [ It really feels like you’re lecturing me. ]

  For Freya’s sake, this is not the time. You’re the older one, so act like it, please.

  [ Oh shut up! ] As if she had needed to punctuate the thought, I caught a figure flying through the air out of the corner of my eyes, the shine of silver glinting off the garnet sun. A bloodthirsty yowl shredded through the whispering, shuffling cmor of enemies, and the earth shook under my feet. [ AS, BA! ]

  You really enjoy wasting energy, I replied, irritated, and I unched up off the ground, gritting my teeth as I forced the muscles in my back to move, only to find that some of them were locked together. Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s downright disgraceful—not only do I get stabbed in the back, but they locked up one of my wings. Fantastic.

  Before I could fall to the ground, a hand closed around my wrist and threw me farther away from the scene, just as the ground I had once been standing on opened up and swallowed dozens upon dozens of the creatures into the soil. As wind rushed past my falling body, I watched as the creatures were sucked down past bedrock, straight into what was apparently a geothermally significant site, considering the molten rock welling up into the earth’s open wound. She wasn’t being stupid and trying to create it herself, at least.

  [ They have projectiles; are you a moron? BA means BA! ]

  I cursed under my breath, in part because just as she said that, I saw sharpened rocks, arrows and what I could only assume were primitive grenades flying towards my falling form. I had been too preoccupied with my own shame to remember she had given two orders, not one.

  “Barriere?kning!!” I hissed, making rapid gestures at the more severe projectiles. All below 100 meters per second, good enough. Their aim is ridiculous; are they intelligent or simply militaristic? Fshes of green, followed by the projectiles simply dropping to the ground informed me of my success, and I turned my attention to the more pressing issue—the ground. Yeah, this was going to hurt regardless. “Kraftreduksjon!” I managed to spit out before my body smmed into the ground, no doubt bruising everything under my chainmail.

  [ Can we ever go on a trip without you getting injured? You really are a failure of a valkyrie. ]

  “Stuff it,” I grumbled aloud with my thoughts, vaguely realizing that my sister had dropped next to me with the grace of someone who hadn’t flunked flying lessons five times, and she was busy inspecting my back. “Stop being a worrywort; I’m fine.”

  [ It’s turning bck, you’re not ‘fine’... ] For not the first time, I could feel the turmoil of how much of our minds we were forced to share with each other. More and more, it seemed as if our shared souls were more of an emotional burden than a tactical advantage. [ What’s going to happen if you end up turning into one of those things or something? ]

  Then you kill me, obviously, I thought, although I winced all the same. Partially because she spped me before the thought was even out of my mind. Stop using valuable time to—

  “Silvoranna!” her voice shot through my noisy mind which watched the creatures advance towards us again, if reduced in number. My sister circled around to the front of me, and the features that had once been so simir to mine peered back at me instead of the hellscape. There were scratches all over her radiant face, and dry, disgusting blood that clearly wasn’t her own dyed the hands which squeezed my cheeks. “Would you stop it with this sacrificial nonsense? You’ve been weird ever since Mom died!” I pressed my lips tight.

  “What about stating facts is nonsense? If I become your enemy, you kill me, dammit!” I retorted, shoving her away before I cast out my hand at the approaching entities. “Vampyrr?tter!” Immediately, the red grasses shifted and changed, my strength rapidly leaving me as the first enemy touched the area and became engulfed in tangles of glowing roots. The grass devoured them one by one, then ten by ten, and then there were none left. I was exhausted, but it was good enough. Good enough…

  My vision wavered, and I stumbled into my sister before my legs failed, and she had to help me down to the ground. Humiliating, I thought briefly, expecting a snarky response, but she said nothing. Instead, she held onto me tightly, her short, silver hair grating against my tender neck.

  “...We share everything. Our hearts, our minds, our very souls, and you’re telling me to kill you if you become my enemy? Do you even realize what you’re saying to me?” Her wet face hurt, and her palpable sorrow made my heart clench. “I know the pain you felt while doing every job. I know how much it hurt you when I was threatened. I know the kind of happiness you feel when you see me happy. Killing you would be like… like not living anymore. I would still be alive, but I would be a shell of myself—how can you ever ask me to do that?” I turned my head away. “Stop hiding it! Why won’t you say anything or even think of anything every time I bring up her death?”

  I bit my lip so hard it bled, trying not to think about it. Would she even believe me if I told her? What would she think of me? What would—

  “Dear, oh dear, what an unfortunate mess.”

  Faster than I could react in my state, my sister jumped up and shoved both her swords at the figure’s neck like scissor bdes, ready to snap it off if he so much as blinked. The figure was the same oily bck as the things we had killed, but he… this thing was certifiably human in origin. Something that had been turned away from being human.

  Time passed in milliseconds, and before the bdes could snip through the thing’s spinal column, it slipped away like water—as if its oozing skin was made of liquid itself.

  “I never thought you’d kill them all in under ten minutes,” the figure remarked. “Truly remarkable beings… Valkyries.” An experiment? “The Sister Moons, The Silver Reapers, The Twins… you two have a great many epithets.”

  “Who are you?!” my sister spat at the thing, her feet ready to unch her into full assault; I imagined the only reason she hadn’t gone flying at him was because she had already spent too much of her energy.

  “Me?” the figure said, and it smiled with the guile of a toothless snake yet the brutality of its shark-like teeth. “I am No One. I am also Everyone.” I might have rolled my eyes if I hadn’t heard the confused shrieking inside the figure’s head. It was thousands of voices, and yet none of them were saying anything of worth or sense. I had run into collective beings like this before—it was simir to my sister and I, although our bodies were separate. But this… this was horrific. Fear and wrath and euphoria blended together into a confusing, writhing mass of chaos, as if the entirety of humanity had been bound into a singurity.

  I groaned as I forced myself to stand back up, my weakened muscles aching with the wound in my back. Is this your curse, Goldria? Is that why my body no longer moves the way it used to move? I thought without caution, and for a second, I watched my sister’s attention dart away from the figure before shifting back again. Although it could have been a lethal slip of attention, I was impressed she managed to flip back to the enemy so quickly.

  “What is your intent, you horrific monstrosity?” I rasped out, and the figure let out a soft chuckle like billowing, toxic smog.

  “You Valkyries have a singur job—to act as the arms of the Fates.” That’s not how it works. “Don’t you think it would be interesting if those arms were to be dismembered?”

  I screamed. I screamed because I saw it and couldn’t react quickly enough—the creature’s hand shot out like pressurized gas, jabbing through my sister’s ribs like a nce. Under the red sun, her crimson blood appeared almost closer to orange as it sprayed from her back and spurted from her mouth like syrupy projectile vomit.

  “Son of a bitch…” she rasped, baring her teeth at the creature as my body finally started to move.

  It was this thing, I realized suddenly, my rage mounting further than it had in a very long time. This thing destroyed her. This thing really started all of it. My rage was a frigid poison, the nguid, powerful waves of which drowned all sense of self. I hated it—and yet I hated this entity thousands of times more, which is why I attacked. Beyond being rational, beyond my exhaustion and my muscles’ screams of protest, I flew at the creature with my longsword.

  “Rive sjelen!” I roared, and the metal fshed from bloody grey to the bzing green aura of my magic. Briefly, and to some of my disgusting satisfaction, I saw the creature’s eyes widen with a trace of fear as they attempted desperately to get away from me. I gave chase, feinting and swinging against its limbs. Misses were close—millimeters. I couldn’t hear my sister calling after me, and I didn’t care. “Holde tilbake!” I snapped in frustration, and there was a moment of faltering before the grasses thickened and tched hold of the figure just long enough so that I could ssh through its torso. A clean, beautiful cut, dyeing me in bck.

  “Behind you!” my sister’s voice rang out, and I barely reacted in time to stop myself from suffering the same fate she had moments earlier.

  “You’re a stubborn one,” the creature acidly chuckled, unnaturally leaning its head towards me until its neck looked broken. “That really hurt, you know. Would that glow happen to be part of your soul?”

  I responded by taking off its arm, leaving the area soaked in its cries of agony as its voice, such that it was, crowded the open nds. The blood on my skin burned as it dried in the rush of air against my rapid movements. Rather than being able to nd another strike however, I found my feet losing purchase, weightlessness suffusing my body for the second time today, and it was with startling crity that I realized—cliff. This is a cliff. But there shouldn’t have been any… except there was one. This one.

  A set of bck toes pressed into the fingers I had instinctively tched onto the cliff’s edge, and I hissed. It was bad; I had consumed a lot of energy before using that particur technique, and now part of my soul had been taken up by that creature. Earlier, when I had sliced that creature’s torso, it had torn off the energy and absorbed it; I should have known. I should have known.

  The unholy screech resounded again, and the pressure was taken off my hand to be repced on my wrist. I looked up at my desperate, bloody twin sister, and I already knew in that moment that I was going to die. I knew when she was weak, and right now, she was just as spent as me.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” my sister whispered, her voice shuddering as she squeezed my wrist harder and harder. Tears bubbled up in her eyes, and as if in sympathy rather than my own sadness, the tears grew in my eyes too. [ Don’t you fucking dare. ]

  What else do you want me to do?

  “DO YOU WANT TO DIE?!” she shrieked down at me. “Answer me, you fucking bitch!” Her searing hot tears nded on my forehead, and despite it all, I couldn’t help myself from smiling stupidly.

  Of course not. But… you know something, sis? My nose prickled, and the tears started to fall in a steady stream. When was the st time I called her that? When we were teenagers? When we were kids? I don’t think I deserve to be alive, either.

  “What the hell are you talking ab—” her body betrayed her as she was cut off by a sharp bout of coughing, and her blood spshed into the abyss about to consume me whole. Her pain nced through my heart, and it hurt to know that I couldn’t so much as provide first aid. In the end, I couldn’t give anything but burdens to the only person who meant something in my life. I couldn’t give her anything but my suffering.

  My dear sister… do not cry for me. I have been reckless—more reckless than you—and it is my consequence to face. Please…

  [ SHUT UP! THIS ISN’T FAIR! ] She groaned with the effort of holding me, and her own body was starting to slip over the edge.

  Please… live happily.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured at her before I used the st dregs of my strength to push her falling body onto solid ground, unching myself into the abyss in the process. “Jeg elsker deg.” I closed my eyes, and the darkness swallowed even the faint light peeking through my eyelids. And yet, no matter how long I fell, I could still hear her scream. I could still see the look of anguish on her face as she reached out for my falling body. I could still see the tears she had shed.

  And then I felt nothing at all.