The Mercenary's Valkyrie: Book One

Voice Of An Immortal

Searing light burned my vision.

I floated weightless before my feet touched solid ground. But it was unalike any ground I knew. It was a strange colourless form with shapes of impossible detail carved into it. It shone like crystal. I looked up.

Giant pillars of it floated everywhere. They were not structured to anything though. This world was an impossibility.

A voice echoed through the vast expanse of it all. It emanated from the source of brightness. Pure, undiluted light and a single voice but a voice of many all at once.

"You sully your valour." It states as if coming from everywhere all at once. It had such sureness and knowledge laced within it. I resisted an impulse to kneel at the sound. I bowed to no one.

"You know not of the true gods. How could you bow in ignorance?" It stated, seeing through my mind like the colourless ground beneath my feet.

"And who might you be!" I called back. My irritation began to boil at this pretentious being. "Clearly nothing other than a folly of my imagination inside a dream." I dismissed.

Thunder suddenly cracked viscously around me and I flinched. I could feel the very charge from the hairs on my arms. I had never had such a visceral dream before. A dark and unearthly chuckle echoed around the growing clouds.

"Tayah Ashrive, daughter and first born of the great, Karn Ashrive." It said mockingly.

"Do not speak of my family!" I spat towards the darkening cloud.

Thunder cracked again along with a cackle.

"Yes! Rage Karn's daughter!" It boomed. "You are not from warrior's blood! You have but worthless blood!" It thundered happily. My anger grew to the point of shattering my skull. Never such raw emotions have been filled in my dreams.

"Such mundane lives your ancestors lived. No honour. No restraint. No ambition–" It continued on drowning out my thoughts and relentlessly throwing flaws at me. I tried to turn but I was paralysed in place as if compelled to listen to the voice dismiss me as worthless.

"Not until you, Tayah." It finished. I froze and a splash of confusion dripped through me through the rage. "You broke the very mould I set for you. It was beautiful." The voice all but growled.

"You must have talent for speaking relentlessly in riddles." I gritted out through my teeth.

"Allow me to enlighten your mortal mind." It told me in a sultry whisper.

Suddenly I watched from above as my younger self fought and scrapped and clashed blades. The vision flashed through at an impossible rate. Mercenaries. Assassins. Soldiers. All dying at my hand. My ability and skill with blades, knives, bows and many other weapons flashed by my eyes in a bloody montage.

"Enough!" I shouted. I could no longer take this meaningless history of my darkness.

"Not darkness." The voice spoke again. "Undiluted immortality."

"I do not understand. I do not understand any of this madness!" I shouted casting my arms outwards.

"When you face death at the edge of a blade, when each enemy falls by the swing of your sword, you become immortal. As I say, Tayah Ashrive, you broke the mould I set for you and you strove for something far greater than mere follies of mortality."

Thunder and bolts of purple lightning crashed around me.

"You know not now but you shall soon. The fates call you to the Underworld but I cannot allow a daughter of mine to be cast to such an inferior realm." The lightning struck much closer still and I flinched away. "All will be clear soon my pure heart. For warriors are forever immortal." It whispered.

I opened my mouth but the words were trapped. Lightning crashed into me in a burning flash of white and I flew upright in the darkness gasping in real air and grabbing at my chest where lightning had burned through me not a moment ago.

Truly I had lost my mind in that dream. Such a place and such a voice... It was the stuff of a young child's imaginings... A place only whispered about in the old stories.

Valhalla.