What Once Was, Part I

200 BC, Scandinavia

(What is now modern Göteborg, Sweden)

In the darkened night, I could hear the hooves of a steed galloping towards my home. Smooth and soothing as the sound was, treading through thick snowfall, my heart knew it could only mean one thing. I pressed my fingers hard into the flat stones I carried in my hands.

She has come for me.

The Valkyrie's pull was like no other; it was a tugging on the soul, one that cannot be ignored. I rose to my feet and slipped the stones into the deep pocket of my wolf-skin robe. Their power would do me no good now, and yet parting with them would be like parting with air. Without them, I would not breathe.

The horse whinnied from just beyond, and if I had listened intently there still would have been no sign or sound of someone dismounting the creature. The Valkyrie walked in, her movements so elegant it was if she were hovering above ground, and her ghostly eyes settled on mine.

"Völva," the Valkyrie said. She does not address me by name, but as the unnatural creature she was sent to deal with.

I mirrored her. "Valkyrie."

I knew she was on duty—ordered to come here, but still I searched for any form of sympathy she had left within her. Any issue of love for me that hadn't withered away when her life did. The wide spread hood now covered every feature of her face, but her lips. They remained unmoved in emotion.

"You know why I come here," she said. The words split through me like an axe.

"I do," I replied.

"So, you give yourself freely?" She stepped towards me, and I couldn't help but reel from her, terror stiffening my bones as I tried to move.

"I do, but…" My voice stammered and I realized I was about to do the worst thing in my life. To question a Valkyrie is to question your existence on this earth. "You loved me once, Eldridh. Do you have no mercy?"

She did not answer, and though I should have left it as is, and allowed her to take me to my death, but upon seeing her once more I could not shake my feelings for her. I needed her to remember, first.

It was a night not unlike tonight. Snow fell in great sheets above our heads and we snuggled beneath the same reindeer skin, wrapped up to our necks in wool. The full moon shone its light down on you, illuminating your golden curls and shadowing the most beautiful face I'd ever seen. We spoke of a life together, far from the crushes of war and hate—a life where we controlled our own destiny.

"Inga, no more," she said.

You took my hair into your hands and told me that it matched your first love, the vast dark nights, streaked with the white light of the allfather; that my eyes were the deep pools of ocean you once hoped to travel across. You told me that I was the only love you would ever know and you would never let me go, that your destiny laid within my heart.

"Please…" she begged, her human side dared to peek through the hardened surface. She turned her head from me, a waterfall of her blonde locks fell free from her white cloak.

We knew they would come for you. We prepared for it. You swore not to let them, that your place was with me; as a human. They came in darkness, and one day you were just…gone. No warning, no trace, no words of goodbye. And you did not return to me. I waited…oh allseeing father, how I waited for my love to return but she never came. Not even the oceans could have cried for you as I did.

"I protected you as long as I could," she said.

"Protection is not what I ask of you, Eldridh. I only ask that you remember what you once felt for me. I do not want you to forget."

"Forgetting you would be as if I had never existed at all. Do you have any idea what I risk by simply being here? " she asked, and finally turned back to me. Her bottom lip quivered beneath her teeth and tears strolled down her cheeks, dripping onto the length of her cloak.

"I understand you have no choice. I couldn't see my end without acknowledging what we had…what we have." I reached my hand out to her and she did what I had least expected. She took it in hers.

"I am not here to end your life, my love. I'm here to warn you. The elders seek your stones, they mean to harm you until you give them up. Surrender them to me and all this blood lust will pass."

"I fear how very wrong you are," I said and lift my hand to her cheek. She shied from my touch at first, but she could not resist for long; she never could. She leaned into my caress, and though her skin felt as cold as a corpse, the warmth of her past broke through. "My life ends if it is left in their hands. If this is what you wish then I gladly give myself to the father. Valhalla awaits and we shall meet again at Ragnarok, min kärlek."

"No," she said, grasping the hand that touched her. "Then you must run, and never return."

"You and I both know that is an impossibility. No one can run from the elders. They see and feel everything."

"They do not feel your stones, that is why they seek them. Use them to escape, Inga. You deserve a life away from this chaos, a family to love and care for, and to die with your skin worn from wisdom. Not at the hands of the Berserkers. I could not bare to see you endure such tortures."

"I cannot bare to be so close to you and not feel your lips upon mine. No amount of torture can be worse than that."

I pulled her face to mine, our lips brushed one another and our breathing synched. Although she had resisted, it had been Eldridh that sealed the kiss. Her tongue sought mine, and when they met they danced together. Heat flushed my entire body, but I feared moving too fast, worried that she would resist and leave. For all the troubles in our world, she was all I had ever cared about. To have her back…it felt like I was already at peace.

My hand moved from her cheek through her hair, removing the hood so that I could see her beautiful face once more. Her mouth stopped, as did her breathing as the cloth floated around her shoulders. A sharp point jabbed into the palm of my hand. I jumped, meaning to retract my touch but I had been too late. Her scream brought with a pain I had never experienced before. Impossibly sharp glass shards broke through her temples and sliced through my hand, severing my ring and pinky fingers clean off.

"Run," she breathed in my ear.

I stumbled back, holding the spot where my fingers had been just moments before, attempting not to faint or focus on the pain. But the sheer sight of her had taken the very breath from my lungs. The cloak had fallen to the ground entirely. Her long blonde curls lay across her chest, barely covering her bared breasts. Gold plated across the bottom of her body, wrapping around the pelvis and coating her skin down to her feet, which never touched the ground completely.

"Run!" Her voice was a high screech that rung inside the walls of my skull.

Quickly, I snatched the birch wood staff from the wall, a handful of bread, now soaked in my seeping blood, and before leaving my home forever I looked back at the girl I had once loved.

"Until Ragnarok, my love."

I left into the night, the snow covering my tracks behind.