– T A Y A H –

I had been waiting for a sign. A warning. Something to burn in my chest and tell me when that god would find me. It made me flinch from sounds. Draw blades on non threats. Burn power into my hands near the one I lived for the most.

My valkyrie's words and actions had been soothing. A nice patch to a wound that was growing.

All my skill hadn't prepared me for the night it found me. The gods never warn anyone.

The room was warm, too warm and heated by a fireplace as we all slept in the baker's loft. Maybe that had roused this. Maybe heat drew to heat. But when my dreams found me they were nothing of my own. I tossed onto my side as sweat trailed my face.

The realm was unfamiliar and old. Ancient power.

I walked alone, across crystalline steps that rose before a mountain shrouded in clouds. I shrugged the snow off my shoulders. Then I noticed it was not snow but ash.

The winds blew an air too hot for snow around me. The mountain, not a mountain but a volcano. A source of fire so hot it could reforge the mountains themselves. And a whisper in the air, not faint but loud. Beside me and around me. Urging me onto the pinnacle.

There was no where else to go. The clouds devoured the steps behind me and revealed the only way ahead. The thin pathway to the top of power. Every step became easier not harder. The voice going more sure, more intelligible.

I dragged in a hot breath that tasted like smoke and strength.

Then I reached the top. The platform was open and revealed the ring of rock circling the smoking crater within. The heat hit me instantly. An orange-red glow beat below me like a heart.

"Here she stands." A voice rumbled around me and within me.

I spun on my heel, drawing for damandium I didn't have here. A chuckle shook my bones and sat heavy on my shoulders.

"No form for you to regard, daughter." The low drawl echoed.

I found the glowing heat below in smoke and stared it in its entirety.

"What is this..." I whispered, watching the crater like it would explode out at me in a blink.

"Your future." It answered simply, glowing brighter. I felt every inch of the flame bound power in my being. "Your existence is the manifestation of a long lost power, dear daughter. And I am so very glad to be in your presence at last."

I shuddered at the feeling of the heat wrapping itself around my body both in protection and incredible power. I stepped back from the lip and steadied my hands.

"I don't want it. This is not my own–"

"Do not crumble at such things, Tayah Ashrive..." It resounded around me. "What you have within you is not limited to what Odin dictates. Your fear lies in the power because the entity wielding it in Valhalla is a valueless liar and a manipulator."

I shut my eyes and tried to push the feel and presence of the god away entirely. The enticing lure of it all and rip myself out of this nightmare.

That chuckle sounded again but it was almost a sigh.

"You waste your breath. I know who it is that lacks value in the realms."

"Is that I? Tayah Ashrive... Are you certain you hold all the truths?"

"I am certain you will do whatever you can in your climb to reach your power once more." I stated emotionless. But feeling so much more than my voice portrayed.

The orange glow shifted and brightened until a rich red splash of lava lashed up and made me fall back in surprise. A laugh echo around me again and I stared with wide eyes as the lava surged high above me in heat and power. It is not true power. Thoughts. Illusions. Manipulation–

The rich red hit the crystalline platform before me until it hardened into a scorching lump of magma. The pile of molten rock glowed and shifted. Until a shape emerged beneath it. More bright red rivers spilled off it like a sword escaping the forge.

A hunched over figure remained.

I stared frozen in place as it rose slowly. A being seemingly made from dark, glowing metal. The figure of an armoured burning man.

"It is my understanding that mortals and immortals need to see in order to believe." It rumbled, from a burning source within.

I dragged myself back on my hands.

"You are only real inside my head–you will die here too." I grit out, trying desperately to call myself away.

The armoured head shook before me and rolled the molten metal shoulders.

Ares.

"I fear he has poisoned everything he has touched already." The god returned, drawing up a burning hand and tightening a fist. Reality around us shifted and changed in a flash. I was suddenly staring at a familiar sight. The prism bridge of Valhalla. The place where immortals descend to the mortal realm.

"At least you understand this much." It echoed, gesturing around us. "Let us see how much else you can understand, daughter."

Valkyries materialised into being on the bridge. Suddenly and powerfully. I tried to jump away as one passed straight through me and fought another with thunder burning in her hands. A war between Valkyries not gods...

"What is this? What trick are you playing now?" I seethed, staring in horror as demi-gods destroyed each other with bursts of elementals.

"Patience. This part should catch your attention..."

Without delay I watched a goddess herself drop from the skies. Stormbringer. A bright purple bolt of lightning ripped from her hands and destroyed three other Valkyries to dust. I stared in growing anger and something else... How dare this god use her to get to me like this? To try and warp her as the villain in Ares own twisted narrative.

"You are wasting your time!" I growled above the growing carnage. "None of this sways my view of you–this further proves what a coward you are!"

"Oh daughter, I am many things. But not a coward. I stood before the remaining gods who could not defend themselves when he turned his Valkyries upon us all." Ares spoke softly but powerfully all at once. "I stood while my name was dragged through the Underworld as the usurper and could do nothing as he poisoned the rest with his Pool of Recollection."

"The Pool of Recollection recovers memories it does not taint them!"

"Yes daughter! It recovers and it annihilates. Why is it do you think that every Valkyrie starts anew? You are the only exception. The only immortal that held her own. Did you think that was also a coincidence?"

I stumbled back through the fighters feeling dizzy. Ares would do anything to sway my views. To distort the truth and if I couldn't hold onto what was true we would all be doomed. I turned and dodged the raging images around me and ran.

The god appeared between fighters and walked casually towards me. I ripped flames into my hands and tore it through the god. Another chuckle.

"Your dreams are the one place I can give you truths, daughter. You cannot ignore it forever."

"I can damn well try!" I snarled, whirling and letting my fire–his fire–explode into a ball at the figure once more.

"Your Stormbringer once fought for me. With us. She was the first to lose her memories because of her power–"

"You're lying!" I roared, slamming a palm to my fist and letting a ring of fire explode out of me in a whirl wind of flame and chaos. Hotter than anything I threw at my enemies.

The realm went quiet around me until only a lone figure stood on the prism bridge. 

Her. Kára. She walked alone. So many fallen around her.

"Please." She whispered, dropping to a knee. "Odin–please stop this. You can end it."

A towering cloak of darkness smoked before her. 

"Yes daughter I can. But there can only be one to restore balance. One to hold the power of the gods just as the Valkyries hold each of us in them."

"We do not need to destroy to rebuild!" She insisted with tired desperation. It made me want to run to her and hold her as she kneeled before a god with her armour cracked and nothing but tired pain all over her beautiful face.

The cloaked shadow of the god turned to her faster than a blink. Smoke and shadow leering over her making her appear so much smaller. For the first time I felt a cold shudder at the sight.

"Give yourself to me." It murmured in many voices. "And I shall end it."

She stilled before the god and dipped her head to her hands below her. Then she ripped the shimmering helmet away the same way she had when she had first found me that day in the fields. Stepping before the mortals that could have ended her. Fighting for those who could no longer defend themselves.

"I do this. You honour your word. You keep the Valkyries from destruction. We rebuild once more." Her voice cracked. I could tell for a heart breaking moment, she was not even sure she believed it. But her choices were to fight the god and lose everything or join one and chance salvaging something.

"I will." The god spoke in many voiced promise.

I shook my head trying to run to her to hold her or drag her away from this nightmare that felt too much like a distant memory. But she vanished between my fingers only to appear meters away before that blue shimmering pool. That body of water that could take and give so much.

She stepped with the god down those steps as Ares and I watched.

As her memories were wiped and her new identity would be given. One that the god of dark shadow and promises controlled.

"Are you starting to see now, daughter?" Ares murmured near me in the dark, cavernous room.

I shook my head feeling my chest close in on me. Feeling suffocated.

"Please stop–just stop–" I rasped, watching Kára reemerge blankly. New and reborn.

The reality around us vanished and I was once more on that volcano edge standing in front of the "power mad" god. Ares.

"You are a convincing liar..." I murmured in a daze.

The god grunted almost in a human snort. "I think you are starting to convince yourself of that." It noted, tucking arms behind him. "But I foresaw this too. Which is exactly why I will share with you something the one you love endlessly, will recognise. Something that was not taken."

I gripped my fists and blinked quickly. I didn't want this. I didn't want to hear it. The temptations and the lies. But most of all because some deep, faraway part of me knew that a slither of the gods words were not lies.

"Before the war. When Stormbringer fought for me, she roamed the mortal realm freely. She built a place many centuries ago that still exists with relics and artefacts of the past. There you will see. There you will find the truths that have been kept from you, Tayah Ashrive. And perhaps there you will see why I need you to be my champion–why all the gods do." He finished in a distant echo that reverberated through my bones.

The lava exploded behind him before I could find my words. My thoughts or meaning.

An image of the ream flashed from up high... As if an eagle soared above the continents. It went past Zanos, past Vex, to familiarity, to Uccella... No, no, no it cannot–the image sailed over Vayleron and Ravensbrooke like familiar slaps to the face. Then it landed on a hilltop. One that was burned into my memory. One that lay in my dreams. My hilltop. The one that crested before my village. Where my family had burned.

The forest appeared below it. The tree line gave way to boulders. An opening. A tunnel that went far down... One that would have been missed by mortals but found if you were looking.

"She can't have known..." I whispered, dropping to my knees. Thinking of the slaughter that was to come to that village all that time later.

"She knew nothing of you then. You were birthed near this sacred space. My original. One of equal power to her. One that called to the same energy signature. One that will restore what was lost for so long." He murmured so near. "I saw your destiny differently, daughter. I saw you destroy Odin's champion and restore the gods. But perhaps you are the one being that can convince her of the true past. Perhaps you can alter the future war without repeating history. I favour the belief that one can alter the stars."

The image vanished and the volcano roared.

It devoured the armoured form completely and washed it in heat and power. The volcano shuddered under my feet and cracked. I tried to run. To lunge away from the hellish waves of heat opening up below me. But before I could scream the ground fell away beneath me.

I was consumed.