Then the grove cleared, and we stood before a wide metal dais. On top of the dais stood a tree made of rhodium colored bark. It was stripped of leaves, and its branches stretched out to the ceiling of the massive room as if it was saying a thousand prayers.
In front of the tree crouched a giant black metal throne decorated with sculptures and etchings of ravens. A man in an extensive suit of armor sat upon the throne, and his sharp features looked like a masculine version of Madalena. His hair was long, thick, and gray. His face was cleanly shaven, but dozens of scars decorated his cheeks, neck, and forehead. The man’s armor was crafted like the same suit that Madalena’s crew wore. It was etched with silvery designs of ravens, feathers, and skulls. He grasped a long spear in his left hand, and his right hand rested on the head of a massive wolf. The creature had to weigh a good hundred and fifty kilograms, and the beast fixed his yellow eyes on me with the same intensity the broad-shouldered man in the throne did.
Four other figures occupied the dais. They were women wearing armor similar to the four who escorted Madalena and me, but these women had different hair color. One was a redhead with short hair, another had braided black hair, a third had a darker blonde mane that fell down almost to her feet, and the last one had brown hair styled similar to Madalena. This woman actually looked a bit like the woman who submitted to me, but I couldn’t tell if she was Madalena’s mother or sister. These people didn’t seem to have any hint of age on their faces.
“My king,” the Prime Valkyrie said as she nodded to her father.
I didn’t know if I should nod, or bow, or kneel to the man. Madalena didn’t give me any clue, so I just followed her example, and nodded to him.
King Tanal Vaish’s cold eyes turned from me and regarded his daughter. They narrowed a bit as he said a few words in the language I didn’t understand. His voice was deep, but it was hard to get a good feel for how big the man was given his thick armor and sitting position on the throne above me.
“Speak English, so Adam will understand,” Madalena said, and her father’s face seemed to harden even more.
“He is not one of us,” the king said, and the wolf at his side actually growled at me a bit.
“I have submitted to him, and given him our name, as is my right as Prime Valkyrie,” Madalena said. Her words were a perfect blend of strength and calm.
“I am still king, Daughter. Unless you wish to kill me and take my throne over this weakling.”
“No. I do not wish to kill you and take your throne, Father. Adam saved my life and the lives of my crew. My fleet was attacked at--”
“I know about your recent failure, Daughter,” the man spat. “You will want a new one, I suspect, but I find it hard to give you such a bounty when you submit to a man I know nothing about.”
“He has killed one of the Draugr, and he was chosen by a Shadow Eagle.” Madalena gestured to me with her left hand. “He was sent to me by Odin.”
“You speak with Odin now, Daughter?” King Vaish sneered.
“I am Prime Valkyrie. If the All Father speaks to anyone, it will be me. I am pleased with my submission to Adam. Our unity will make our people stronger.”
“No,” the king said. “It will not. Maidens, kill this man.” He gestured to the blonde women who stood around Madalena and me, and they all pulled out their swords with a freakishly fast movement.
But I already had my finger on my shotgun trigger.
Chapter 2
The blonde warrior women came at me from all four of my corners. Madalena was standing to my right, and I half expected her to attack me as well, so I threw myself to the left as I pointed my shotgun at the women at my ten o’clock.
My weapon sang, and the woman’s pretty face exploded with the force of my big ass slug. I twisted in the air so I could aim at the woman coming toward me from my seven o’clock. I was half a moment too late though, and her sword connected with my chest armor. I half expected the blade to pierce my flesh and rip my heart into pieces, but her blade skipped across my plates. The woman looked surprised for half a moment, but then my shotgun barked a second time. The slug hit her in the chest, and she flew through the air as if she was a rubber ball someone just drop kicked. Her flight trajectory made me think that my shot hadn’t penetrated her armor, but a shotgun slug to the chest armor would still feel like getting punched by a maglev train, and I guessed she wouldn’t be using her sword for at least another half minute.
I rolled on the metal ground and sprung to my feet as I twisted toward the other two women. I expected them to be within striking distance, but Madalena was standing above their prone bodies. She carried each of the women’s swords in her hands, but I didn’t see any blood on the ground. Had the Prime Valkyrie disarmed and knocked them unconscious in the time it took me to fire my shotgun twice?
“Enough!” Madalena shouted to her father. “I have submitted to Adam and do not wish to fight with my spear sisters. Call them off!”
King Vaish raised his hand from the wolf’s head to point at me, and I felt the air part behind me. I tried to jump to the side, but the point of a sword erupted from one of the seams in my chestplate. It was the woman I’d just fucking shot. In the last few seconds, she’d somehow recovered from my slug and stabbed me in the back. She must have found a small seam in the back armor to drive her point through.
The blade had pierced my heart and lung. My mouth filled with blood as agony ripped through my chest.
“Nooooo!” Madalena shouted as she stepped behind me. I saw her blades flash like a lightning strike, and the woman’s blonde head made a wet sound as it fell onto the metal ground beside me.
Then there was silence in the room. Except for the sound of my heart struggling to beat with a blade through it.
“It is for the best, Daughter.” King Vaish’s voice sounded far away from me. As if he was yelling at me from across the entire fortress. “He is not one of us. He is weak and not suited for you or our clan. Not even worth the trouble of a rite of passage.”
“Give him medical attention,” I heard Madalena say, and I felt her hand grab my arm. I was kneeling for some reason, and blood was pouring out of my mouth.
The beast screamed. He wanted to take control, he wanted to kill this man.
He wanted to kill everything.
“No, Daughter. He will die in moments. Let him go. Then I will give you another fleet and you can search for Dance to the Dirge. We will forget about your mistake and focus on our task at hand.”
The monster coiled in my stomach and tore against my willpower with his claws.
“He has killed a Draugr,” Madalena said. “He is an honorable man, who saved my life, and the lives of my crew. Odin will not be pleased with you.”
“I speak with Odin, you do not, Daughter. Stand away from the dying man so that Freki may feed.”
“No. You will not set your dog upon him,” Madalena growled.
“You would defy me?” The king’s voice matched her growl.
“I would have thought you would grant me--”
“I grant you nothing. You serve me until--”
“Fuck. You!” I interrupted King Vaish’s sentence. The pain in my chest now filled my body, and the beast in my stomach screamed to be unleashed.
I didn’t need him.
The women I loved were captured by slavers. My ship was in the hands of a bunch of assholes. I was stuck in this far solar system, and no closer to helping my friends than I was a few days ago. I had saved Madalena and her crew, only to be rewarded by a sword through the back. These people talked of honor and submitting, but their king was just a piece of shit only interested in controlling his daughter.
My own rage was enough. My vision narrowed so that it felt like I was staring down a long tunnel at King Vaish. I stood, and the agony in my chest swelled along with my insanity.
“Eh?” The man’s steel eyes opened a bit with surprise as I stood.
“Fuck. You.” I held out my shotgun in both hands and
slammed it into my chest. The side of the weapon hammered on the tip of the sword protruding from my armor with enough force to spring it out of my back. I felt my chest, lungs, and throat filled with blood, and I spat a mouthful of crimson out on the metal floor.
Then I turned the barrel of my weapon toward the arrogant king and pulled the trigger.
My arms were shaking from the agony, and my vision was a bit fuzzy, but my first slug still caught him in the face. I expected his head to explode into a red mist, but his skull had turned to metal a fraction of an instant before my shot hit him. His head snapped back from the impact of the massive solid slug, but there was no blood.
I kept pulling the trigger.
Slugs slammed into his face, chest, arms, and stomach. They dented the black throne he sat on and tore away the raven decorations. The shots seemed to do no damage to the king’s armor, though, but the impact of my shots was keeping him pinned down on his throne.
My next drum was filled with armor piercing ammo.
The wolf at the man’s side charged at me just as my drum ran out of ammo, but I clocked it on the side of the skull with my shotgun when it leapt for my throat. It spun away with a yelp of pain, and then I ejected the empty drum while I reached for the one holding armor piercing shells. They were the last ones I had for my shotgun, but I figured there would be no better time to use it than the present.
I may have been on death’s door, and my tiger might have been screaming to take over, but I’d reloaded my shotgun tens of thousands of times. The weapon was ready to fire the armor piercing rounds before the four women standing beside the king’s throne had begun to draw their own pistols.
“Wait!” Madalena shouted as she stood in front of me. Her arms were stretched out to her side, and the tip of my weapon pressed against her back.
“Get out of the way!” I growled as the tiger threatened to take over again.
I let my weapon lower as I reached for Madalena’s shoulder, but then I heard laughter and paused when my hand touched her.
King Tanal Vaish was the one laughing.
“Ha!” He gasped as he brought his hand down on the armrest of his ruined throne. “Hold, women.” The four guards at his side held their weapons out in a tense battle stance, but they didn’t shoot at Madalena.
No one spoke while the king continued to laugh, and I felt a cold chill began to descend my body. It came from my chest, filled my stomach, and coiled around my legs. I might have shivered, but the anger in my mind and soul was still too hot.
The beast wanted to take control and kill this man. He wanted to bite his face off and fuck his women, but the human part of my soul wanted to kill this fucker more than the beast.
It wanted payback at a level that the monster in my soul couldn’t understand.
I pushed against Madalena’s shoulder, but the woman didn’t move, so I pivoted around her. Then I raised my shotgun with the intent of filling the laughing asshole with hot armor piercing shells.
“I have changed my mind,” the armored figure on the throne said as I aimed my shotgun at his face again. I didn’t give two shits about his words though, I was already squeezing the trigger, and I prayed the expensive shotgun slugs would cut through his fancy armor like butter.
Madalena pushed her arm against my weapon, and my trio of shots sprayed over the top of the king’s head. The four women on the dais ducked slightly to avoid the slugs, but their aim didn’t waiver from me. The Prime Valkyrie made a quick movement with her hands, flicked her fingers across my armored wrist, and then spun the heavy shotgun out of my grip. Her movement was unbelievably fast, and I wasn’t able to get a fourth trigger pull completed.
“Take him to the healers,” the king said in between laughs. “I like him.”
“You will reconsid--”
“He will need to perform the rites of passage,” Madalena’s father interrupted her. “Tonight, so take him to the healers. It’s been a long time since someone got this close to killing me. If he lives through the rite, I will let you have him as your plaything.”
“Which rite of passage?” Madalena asked as she grabbed my right arm. I was in mid-reach for the revolver strapped to my chest, and their voices sounded as if they were under two meters of water.
“Odin,” he replied, and the four women on the dais turned to face him. They actually looked surprised, and my tunnel vision danced between each of them.
“No,” Madalena seethed.
“Daughter, you can argue with me, or you can take your man to the healer. I am fine with him dying on the floor of my throne room.”
“He’ll die when you hang him from Yggdra--”
“You are questioning my benevolence. He survived Astrid’s sword through his heart. Perhaps he will survive Odin’s rite. Now begone from my sight, Daughter.”
The beast roared again, and I felt my body chill. Then my vision focused, and my heart beat angrily against my ribs as warmth filled my chest. I coughed up what felt like a liter of blood on the metal ground, but then my blood ran hot through my body.
It seemed like I had shifted, but I hadn’t.
I knew my heart had healed, but I didn’t know how it could have happened that quickly without shifting. My left lung still felt like it wasn’t repaired and I coughed out another bucket of blood when Madalena pulled me away.
“You have angered me, Father,” I heard her say, but her father only laughed as we walked through the trees. He was still laughing when we reached the doors.
“How are you still alive?” she asked me after she barked orders to the guards in the corridor outside the throne room.
I opened my mouth to reply, but I just coughed up blood again. The chill had retreated from my body, and the anger was starting to fade from my mind. How in the hell was I still alive? I should have died within a few seconds of the sword piercing my heart.
Someone spoke behind me, and three pairs of hands grabbed my body. I growled and tried to break free of their grip, but they pulled me back on a stretcher, and Madalena started to pry the pieces of my armor.
“Hold still, my lord,” she growled at me when I tried to push someone’s hands away.
“What is--” I tried to ask, but my words only produced another cough of blood. Then I sucked in air and gasped as oxygen raced through my once collapsed lung.
Madalena finished pulling off my chest armor pieces, and then she said something I couldn’t understand to a woman who stepped around my stretcher. The new woman had short auburn hair, and she wore white robes with red trim. The ceiling started to shift, and I realized that I was being carried through the hallways of the glass and brick castle.
“His heart and lung were cut by a sword blade,” Madalena said.
“How long ago?”
“A minute or two,” Madalena replied.
“Are you certain?” the other woman asked with some confusion. “He is conscious and breathing. His eyes look alert.”
“Yes. I saw it. His suit is covered with blood, and--”
“He is not bleeding.” The auburn-haired woman barked out an order, and the stretcher stopped suddenly.
“I’m fine,” I said as I tried to sit up.
“Do not move, my lord,” Madalena said as her hands pushed down on my shoulder. She was really strong, and I found it easier to lie back than to fight her.
“Don’t cut open my suit,” I said to the white robed woman as she bent over me with a knife.
“Hold still,” Madalena said as her grip tightened on my shoulder. “Alva must inspect the cut.”
“I don’t have a lot of-- ah fuck,” I sighed when he woman’s knife sliced open the tight fabric at my chest. We had a little over thirty boxes of flight suits on Persephone, but I seemed to be ruining one every day or two, and the suits were the only way I could attach the armor plates to my body.
I doubted Elaka Nota would let me swing by their base on Trappist - 1e and buy a few hundred more.
“Blood, but no wound,” the woman sa
id as her fingers touched the skin over my heart.
“I saw the blade,” Madalena said as her eyes narrowed.
“I heal fast,” I said. “I don’t need medical care. I’ll be--”
“No,” she cut me off and turned to Alva. “Perform your diagnostics here.”
“We should take him to my medical chamber. Then I can--”
“Do it now.”
“Yes, Prime Valkyrie,” the other woman said hastily. She rested her palm on my chest, closed her eyes, and began to chant.
“Madalena, I am fine. I don’t need her to--”
Alva opened her eyes, and they glowed white like two cyan-neon light bulbs. Then her hand started to glow with the same color light, and I felt an intense heat spread from her fingers. The sensation sank into my chest and seemed to pool around my heart and lungs.
Alva spoke in the unknown language, and Madalena replied with short words. Alva said something else as she shook her head, and the other woman frowned slightly. Then Madalena crossed her arms, and her cold eyes gazed into mine.
“Can you stand, my lord?” she asked without any sort of emotion.
“Yeah,” I said, but then I coughed, and a bit of blood dribbled out of my mouth. The two women looked at each other, and Alva’s alien glow faded from her eyes.
I pushed my arms against the side of the stretcher and swung my feet out toward the ground. My boot touched the floor, and I felt a bit of pain in my chest when I stood. It was just a slight pinch, but then I was fine.
Madalena and Alva exchanged a few more words, and then the Prime Valkyrie studied me carefully.
“I said I am fine,” I said as I looked at the two women. Two of the heavily armored guards had been pulling on the stretcher, but I couldn’t see their expressions past their power armor helmets. Not that it mattered, neither Alva nor Madalena’s face showed any emotion
“So, you are,” the warrior woman said. She glanced at my chest, then down to the bloody armor pieces she held in her hand before she looked into my eyes.
Alva said something in their language, and Madalena nodded at her.
Prime Valkyrie: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 6) Page 3