– T A Y A H –

I didn't bother with the crash of power around that crumbling room. I darted across it at a speed I hadn't tested before. I tackled Anselle through the black tangles of power and took us both through the crumbling wall over the edge.

We free fell until I felt a surge. A dark ring materialise below us and swallow us before we met the ground. The world flashed briefly before we were spat out in a market square. Anselle hit me square in the jaw with the dark relic taking me off my feet.

I rolled onto the balls of my feet with a snarl. My fire came with it and lit my cloak.

The dark immortal grinned a hideous thing and bowed in a leer.

"How far you've come, dear Tayah!" She cackled.

"I'm not here for the conversation." I growled, quickly flinging an inferno at her. She took it into the shield and slid across the cobble from the force. She tilted her head in surprise and wrapped more smoke and vines of ethereal power around her. Then flicked her wrist up with a smile.

Stone shards came flying to meet me in rapid attack. I rolled away, barely avoiding the stone going through me. The shield caught another at my back and I drew my blades looking as two immortals now prowled before me. They both mimicked her dark smirk. She raised a hand to begin the dance of death but my demi-god had other ideas.

A crash of white lightning struck the centre of the courtyard making us all cast a hand over our eyes. When it faded, a being more powerful than any of us rose in her shimmering glory, blonde hair held high and whipping in the wind.

Anselle no longer smiled.

"Must you always ruin my games!" Anselle screeched across the dark square.

Kára responded by drawing purple vines of dangerous energy into her arms. The arms that now glowed gold from her own relic.

"Release Revna." She said quietly.

Anselle laughed bitterly, her eyes still lost in black vines of darkness. "She needs no release. She was more than happy to surrender the relic once she understood how little regard for the mortals I had!"

I glanced at Revna who waited in silent command. Waiting for the moment when power would dance across the stone until an immortal died tonight.

"Then you would have no problem letting me find that out for myself." Kára grit out. The gauntlets glowed brighter in response. I could practically taste her power from here and I was sure as shit Anselle could too.

But something was unsettling me. A gut wrenching feeling that told me this played into her hands the entire time.

"All that cavalier bravado Valkyrie..." Anselle mocked as she strolled leisurely closer. "Yet your weaknesses are so clear to me."

Kára clenched her fists. "Last chance." She whispered over the winter air. The thunder rumbled above in agreement.

"Very well, immortal dog!" She called suddenly splaying her hands wide. "You have me at my own game. Here is your prize." She growled, a portal fuzed under her feet before either of us could react and she vanished.

"NO!"

I looked to my immortal's shout of despair in confusion. But only for a moment when I realised too late that she had materialised behind me and captured my neck in the same undead control that had taken two experienced Valkyries before me. The only painful difference was that I was completely aware of my surroundings. The God's power ran through me and took a hold of me while I was powerless to will it otherwise.

I raised my hand at her and released a larger stream of fire than I had ever managed alone. My entire soul shuddered at the sight. Kára took it into a gleaming gauntlet before sending it out towards Anselle in another hand. But now Revna joined the fight with spears and shards of stone.

I wanted to melt my own bones. Do something to stop my body from betraying me like this. I couldn't live with the consequences. 

Kára danced above on bright steps of power before coming down harshly on Revna with a purple fist of lightning cracking past her rock of defence. It exploded in small pieces and sent her into a house. My hands palmed the blades at my hips again without permission and ran at her. I wanted to scream at her to run. To leave this fight. Save herself from three immortals.

She met my eyes with so much conflict it made me want to end myself there and then.

The damandium sang out in the night as my fire joined the blades and lit her face. She clenched her jaw and parried them before dancing back defensively. I heard Anselle's cackle behind but couldn't focus on anything but the careful defence of my immortal. Every swipe checked and measured. While my body was used relentlessly. Jabbing. Throwing flame into her. Kicking.

"I know you hear me." She murmured over the blades. Those bright silver eyes were never so beautiful. "This is not your fault–"

"Just kill her!" Anselle cackled.

Kára ignored her and stopped my arm that tried to sink a blade into her head. She caught my other dagger too and held my body that was out of control. She watched my eyes that no doubt had nothing but black in them.

"I do not blame you, Tayah." She whispered.

"Enough of this." The heathen snarled behind me. It was the only thing I heard before Revna's power came flying through the ground in shards. Anselle's joined it in dark vines of shadow. It was that distraction. It took Kára's energy to stop each attack from killing us both. To turn her attention away from herself. To protect me.

That moment. All the time she needed to move my body. My arm. That thrust a damandium dagger through her heart.

The realm became a clouded blur. An impossibility. 

She dropped to her knees before me with blood dribbling down her perfect lips. The light suddenly disappearing from her perfect eyes. My body snapped back to me in a rage that I had never experienced. Not since the beach. Before the very man that had murdered my family.

My hand dropped the blade.

Anselle's power was nothing to me anymore. I wrapped a vortex of flame around us viciously. Growing impossibly hot save for the space where Kára now kneeled watching me with an unreadable expression. A dying expression. It ripped my soul away.

I wrapped her in my arms as the world around us burned. I cared not what they did on the other side of it. I instead thought of a very specific space. A familiar place. One I never should have left. Reality flashed and warped in a beacon of colour and light. Everything and nothing. Timelessness and no time at all. We crashed onto the cool marble floor of her home. 

Valhalla. 

I rolled over grabbing her shoulders and pulled her up to meet my eyes. But nothing stared back in her own. She couldn't be. She wasn't–

"Kára." I growled.

I shook her hard. Her head moved lifelessly to the side. I stared at her unmoving face. At her eyes that wouldn't meet mine. The eyes that weren't silver. They were grey.

"KÁRA!" I screamed, unable to stop the tears trailing my face. Nothing.

"You're not–you can't die–I know you–CAN'T!" I grabbed her jaw and held her face close to mine. There was nothing of the unbreakable demi-god in those features. Nothing.

I shook my head. "You're not dead." I murmured, in a chant. I'd lose myself if I accepted any of it. So I wouldn't. "You're not dead."

"I know you see me. Odin." I whispered. "I know you do."

The god came to me. Silently and watching. As if summoned. I glared up at the black folds of towering ethereal power.

"Save. Her." I growled.

The god watched me silently. I lost the tattered of my control and sent a ball of fire through the god with a scream. "Don't just fucking stand there do something!"

"I feel your despair daughter. Endlessly." The voices finally spoke. My breathing was ragged like an animal. I'm sure I looked nothing like myself. "But her fate has become entwined with your partnership."

"That's not a gods damned answer." I murmured brokenly. 

"You cannot see it, I know. Her purpose was to change your fate. Prevent your death, Tayah Ashrive. It seems that fate has claimed the life it was denied." The voices were too calm.

"You. You cannot think for a moment. That her life should be traded for my own." I snarled. "I'm not worth what she is."

"My daughters are of equal value–"

"STOP IT! Stop your timeless bullshit and make something matter. What is it? An immortal for an immortal?" I laughed humourlessly. "You already know I would make the trade."

I looked down at her unmoving body and another piece of me died again. And again. I wasn't sure there was much left of me now at all. But the black cloak of smoke and shadow was making a calculation. A decision. I could feel it.

"You wish for a different outcome daughter, yet you are not willing to pay the price."

"Out. With it." I spoke low. In a voice I no longer knew.

"You wish me to undo what was done? You wish to unwind the time that has flowed. That means your timelines can no longer coexist. I send this moment back in the realm and it is done. You do not return to her and you go somewhere she will never find you. Is that. What you wish Tayah Ashrive?" The god demanded in slow voices.

But the answer had never been so clear to me. As I stared down at those beautiful eyes that looked above–unmoving. Never to see life again. I knew so easily what my answer was. I think Odin truly did too.

"A thousand times yes." 

The god watched us for a beat more. The decision final in the air. The promise in it. Then the robed arms lifted and time bent around us. I watched my body repeat the moves of despair. Of anger. Watched myself draw back over my demi-god's unmoving body.

Watched my portal reopen and send us back through the portal of the immortal and mortal realm. The horror of her final moment was played back to me in agonising clarity. Until the dagger was ripped out of her heart. My hand dragged the damandium back and the deed was undone. Her pure star-like eyes met mine and they were alive again. The tears were streaming down my face freely. But I couldn't reach out to her.

Time was held in the air once again.

Her beautiful face was frozen inches from my own. But I was powerless to move. Odin materialised beside me. He watched his daughter.

"She will come looking for you." The voices said simply. Watching the fearful face my demi-god held frozen in time. "The battle will be to keep her from achieving that. Your fates are tied to nothing but an end now, Tayah Ashrive. If you seek her out one of you will suffer. Know this. Let it keep you away on the mortal realm."

"I will. You keep her alive. I will stay." I grit out past the salt streaming down my face. Still frozen in a part of time that hadn't happened yet.

I stared at the towering robes of blackness as they formed a portal at her feet. Then an arm was cast my way and glowed in blue power. Another portal morphed before me. The god nodded.

"It is time. Step forth. I will return my Stormbringer to Valhalla."

My body was released and I sagged from the force of power around me. I took one more look at her. Stood in all her perfection. Her stunning face that held only concern for me. When it should have been for herself. It should never have been for me.

"Did you know?" I found myself asking.

The god was silent. I thought the time would end around us but the voices gave me my answer.

"Would it have changed your choices?" The voices said simply. "Knowing you were both doomed?"

I stared at her again. No words were necessary. The moments I had with her. The invaluable moments lying under the stars. Under the forests. In her arms. The god knew all along. But knew I valued what time I could get.

"There is no more time, immortal." The voices told me.

I clenched my fist and nodded, not taking my eyes off her. The heartbreak was ripping a hole through me that I never got an explanation to her. Never a goodbye that would make sense.

"You'll explain to her?" I demanded, finally watching the god again.

"As much as the situation allows." The voices confirmed. It would have to be enough. I started noticing small shifts around us. Fires slowly coming back to moving life, birds scattering, my immortal's eyes moving ever so slightly–

"Go now!" The god commanded.

I watched those eyes as long as I could before I stepped through the portal to an unknown land. An unknown location. A place where she wasn't.

But now she would live.