The Book of Earth
2- Wingless
A conspiracy brewed in sacred torture of captured bliss sewn silent in treasure and the fiery lakes of hell was to take place as a daily phenomenon of treachery, among the great horrors of hell were minions, among them were the demons, of which one roamed the countryside of Hvamm to bear a message to a certain Valkyrie upon this tale, to which three of her sister approached her as she approached the rendezvous. The demon intended to only meet one who was not a Valkyrie in the forest, scared was the demon and it fought them by throwing branches, it broke boughs and bit spears and hurled them into the air. The Valkyrie tried to avoid dealing death, yet the demon avoided it by suicide, sending the demon directly to acrimonious hell, but not before wounding the Valkyrie messenger. She landed at the demon's burial grounds, as one who only used her magic to send the slain to Valhalla or Folkvangr, she knew neither what had happened nor how to send a body without soul, thus she mourned in solace. With smiles and laughter her sisters flew to the gods leaving her to walk home, careless and irreverent messengers of the wind.
The trees held the sky, the ashes came from the flippant wind, a cold night became a frigid darkness, and the black sky fell upon the leaves so heavily the pressure made them bleed red, but the pillars of life would ill hold upon the darkness from the earth. She roamed the woods of the black forest looking over a demon that was her pet named Illyrius. The soil would not drink the blood, the tears of the ice moon would soon shatter on the darkness and make the glittered stars, and the demon corpse would begin to decay. The Valkyrie flayed her pet and took the heart of steel and hid it, then took the flesh and peeled it, a fire of bones and carrion to cook the meat, and the sharp bones were put into makeshift strap made from the demon's clothes to pierce shadow lords and cloud lizards, daggers from ribs in the holes of a belt. She made campfire in the empty fields of night in the sparse forest in the endless plains.
The Valkyrie ate what she could of the slain demon, but it was little for nourishment, so in the darkness that forms simple humans, and where they make their guises and despise themselves until the sermon of Odin, her wings would be of no use impaled by the demon on the path she planned to take, so she cut her wings from her back. The black blood dripped unto the fertile soil and burned sleek holes through it to the dark star scape on the other side of the earth. Time quickly consumed the feathers, for without life they gave to the autumn effect and cracked behind the teeth. Next she tore the flesh of the demon before it became leather, tearing strips quite too large and eating them like the wolves of the mountains, down the gullet thoughtlessly. Next the muscle and sinew and bone, this was patience acceptable for it was better to be eaten solid and rough, it soon became hardened obsidian and ready to carry. She broke, crumbled and ate the dark powder far better nourishment than anything grown, while walking wearing the garb from the demon to protect her back, without shoes that Valkyrie do not have and demons are forged not to need. She walked step by step on loam, on dust, on leaves, on dirt, on clay, on twigs, on water, on blood, on sand, on ash, on magma, on beach, and on glass. 13 days in 13 steps, how long they felt, finally reaching the mountain, forged of burning tome and the blackened blood of demigods, she stands an altar washed in stardust, where water flowed down for the chattel and the cattle.
The demons of noon appeared from behind, above, before, and from the crags of the mountain, when the Valkyrie took her first step on the bitter cold granite. They were winged rats and bloody wolves from the dark cold hell below the sediment, the Valkyrie had not trespassed on the granite but made insult by walking with the sun above her, for beings in the worlds the hell below and the heavens above, their battle is for middle earth. The lead rat and lead wolf believed emphatic by their world that if breathers do not pray for the sun to leave, that it would burn the earth and scorn it until it dried to resemble hell and so demanded their traditions be honored.
Adlerad: "They are not ever relentless of cultures, that are not here nor there, I am Adlerad, and this Thorolf."
Thorolf: "You will kneel before this mountain and implore it; you will beg the sun to leave."
Adlerad: "It is in your best interest your eyes may not notice, there is no ocean."
Thorolf: "Not that will cool the tortures of the fire."
Valkyrie: "Remind me if I am not bowing before demons."
Adlerad: "You will appease the light bringer, and have not question!"
Valkyrie: "Can you not cool the soil with what lets from the bloody wolf?"
Thorolf: "This blood follows me where I am ravenous and soaks into my skin from my wounds of war and there is always war."
Valkyrie: "Do you not fly to the light bringer and ask it to leave?"
Adlerad: "Scoff, your wishes...one cannot fly to the stars...you will prey or you will become it."
The dusty rat stood on hind legs like a little winged geezer before the Valkyrie, on a pile of ashen soot that was falling from its wings, and the wolf behind the Valkyrie grey and dripping but just as foretold, drawing blood from the ground like thirsty desperate roots, sucking the silt and the dust from the rat's wings.
Adlerad: "Though his fangs do not savor my wishes...I will turn you to ice if you do not comply, so that you may thaw and give spring with the earth."
Valkyrie: "I am well enough to do as you bid, but I wish to do so yonder, on that plateau not hence but paces close."
Adlerad: "...very well...and I will watch, if be that you might stray..."
The Valkyrie spilled from her parcel a portion of her obsidian powder as she walked. The hungering wolf tread over it about to deceive her, the wandering blood merged with the blackened dust and was drawn into the ravenous beast, it began to slow and only felt tired, it began to woe only to have felt mired, it could not speak and began a transformation into an obsidian statue poisoned by hellish demonic death. When the rat demon noticed a great demonic furor began a transformation, the blood grew angry and Adlerad's muscles flared, its talons shined, it sweated a vile poison that burned like sulfuric acid on the stone. The Valkyrie grabbed the rat and forced it to the ground on its back, then stabbed it in the chest, again the throat, many times with the blade fashioned of the demon bone. She stood and held the rat over her head and drank its blood as if it were a wine sack. The shower of blood nourished, the scent of demon flourished, the subservient demonic wolves and winged rats came forth, the wolves retreated at the sight of their leader and his blood turned to stone, the rats chose to attack but stopped once they saw the Valkyrie hold the rat's heart without the acridity burning her skin, to her they were anent merely rats.
The journey continued for the Valkyrie up the mountain, through the jagged edges, to the top of a mountain covered in ice, the rock goblins gradually making their presence known when they are to realize that the Valkyrie is not human and has not faltered by the heights of the mountain. A time of passing is become paused by the interests of the stone warriors hide behind bridges asking questions whose questions if unanswered of thrice attempts are and were considered heinous trespass.
Myr: "You tell the tale, which from the vale, among our wit, you will not flit."
Valkyrie: "...the journey has been long, this is my only song."
The goblins were pleased that the Valkyrie knew and accepted their rhyming ways, despite the time to take and the words it spoke.
Myr: "Where you nary barely go, dare you very rarely know?"
Valkyrie: "...from afar, to the star..."
Myr: "Feckless person giving track, reckless worsen in that sack."
Valkyrie: "oh yes...god bless...fall becoming wary, all that I could carry."
The goblins wanted the sack of obsidian powder from the Valkyrie, and they were pleased to see it, their white eyes bright behind their dark grey skin for a prize they would surely use to make an evil dragon. When the Valkyrie gave the inquisitor the satchel the goblin became covetous, it licked its finger and dabbed the dust then took a taste, a smile of consideration adorned the Valkyrie and her silent patient vigil, then quietly and cautiously the others came to taste, all licking their fingers and tasting, sure to not be wasting. From the darkness of the evening within the shadows of the grey canyon a woman of the goblins approached, not alone encroached not dressed for war, to her the pouch was given in graceful motions in notions. They withdrew into the mountain abandoning the Valkyrie.
The Valkyrie walked over the mountain filled with caves where those with hearts of stone feasted on angels and raised terrible beasts with alchemy, of flesh and desiccated and petrified, a single feather would have revealed her without unbeknownst, the trees were fewer and far between at the heights of the climes of the environs. Tired where the air is thin, unwitting rock goblins sleeping who should be slain beneath the mountain for laziness in their darkness lured by the black ashes of the dead devil, at such haste and touching clouds, the mist is cold and collects on the ground and on her face. At the top of the mountain the endless darkness provides an immortal dawn, in the brisk morn the air shined the twilight of stone, the valley far would not catch the water until hied from the air averse to normal ground. The promise of Asgard deigns the Valkyrie to persist through the stone piled on stone in the greatness of the mountain, be hence the gods of light to dark and sound to stone of raven's wings midair, to where the breaking dawn rests at the top of the mountain before washing the land behind her with light. Hateful songs echo in the hearts of the humans caused by the Gjallarhorn, Hel communicates no parlor of ill repute nor prison condemnation but gathers the damned behind newly raised fortress walls, with a secret message from her spy Illyrius unsent, soon worlds were to collide and the Valkyrie would very much like to have her wings, but first imperatively needed find Thor among the mountains.