A Measure of Compassion
By Amber Michelle
Notes: technically, I know Brahms's palace only appears for five minutes in the game. I decided to interpret that a little differently for story purposes. Written for Glance Reviver theme #5, 'For you, Lady Valkyrie.'
"I thought you said it would appear between sunset and nightfall," Mystina said, eyeing the starless sky. The cliff's edge was mere inches away from where she stood, but she'd always liked living dangerously. It'd gained appeal once she could no longer die - at least not by normal means. "So?"
Beside her, Lezard removed his glasses with a theatrical shrug and buffed the lenses with the tattered hem of his coat. "It could have meant sunrise."
She scowled. "I can still introduce my fist to your teeth."
"Aren't we a bit old for this, Mysty?" The glasses went back to their perch on his nose. "Our peers might start speculating as to our relationship if you persist."
Mystina tensed to hide the creeping shiver that sent along her spine. "Peers."
"A figure of speech," he replied loftily.
The wind picked up, and the eerie quiet of the mountainside was disturbed by a wave of sound she had no comparison for. Long ago, during the misty years before her trip to Flenceburg, someone had tried to tutor Mystina in music. She'd learned the different sounds that could be made with simple objects like wine bottles and jugs; the larger the vessel, the deeper the sound. What they heard was only the wind passing through the channel at their feet, magnified until it was unrecognizable. Part of her expected it to herald the arrival of Brahms and his castle, but the air remained empty when the moan died down.
She looked over the edge and tried to see the bottom of the chasm. There was water down there, a tributary of Villnore's great river that had cut through the rock they waited on over the eons, but it was hidden in the dusky gloom of the evening.
"If we wait around until sunrise, he'll figure it out," she said.
"What do you suggest we do, then?" For once, the comic lilt was absent from his voice.
Mystina looked over her shoulder. Arngrim sat sharpening his dagger beneath an overhang jutting from the steep slope of the mountain. The valkyrie huddled against his leg, wrapped in a thick blanket. Her frail shell always seemed to be cold; the night was balmy, yet she was shivering and unwilling to sit alone, though in that kind of condition, Mystina wouldn't want to be left on her own either.
The valkyrie never blinked, never looked away from Lezard for more than a few seconds. She hadn't slept. Mystina wondered if her body needed it, or if that weakness had been engineered out of the blueprint.
"I don't know." The admission burned, but they were in the same boat and they both knew it. She raised an eyebrow, glancing from Arngrim to their charge. He shrugged and bent over his task again. Mystina turned back to the void and tried to swallow her pride. "Does your stone have any input on how to get us inside?"
"Hmm." His expression was hidden in the deepening gloom. The last, dusky undertone of red on the horizon limned the wire frame of his glasses. "Interesting question."
Mystina rolled her eyes skyward. The velvety navy space was beginning to lighten in areas. They were close. "You have one minute. Maybe not even that."
Lezard muttered something she couldn't catch and strode forward. "Well if you're going to be that way about it."
"Wait, what are you--!" Her teeth snapped shut.
Instead of falling to his doom - an ending Mystina could have accepted in lieu of immediate entrance to this mysterious palace - he stopped at her exclamation and tapped his foot loudly. On thin air. "How fascinating."
Mystina prodded at the chasm with the toe of her shoe, and met something hard as rock, unevenly textured, like flagstone. It was solid when she took her first hesitant step. "You're kidding me." She glared at Lezard's back, and then at the sky. The Milky Way was almost out. "Arngrim, get over here! We're about to miss our window!"
They'd never met, and Brahms was already annoying her more than he ought to. Damn vampire lords and their fancy illusions.
...
...
They had been walking for thirty minutes when Mystina called for a stop, pressing the valkyrie-child's hand between her own. Lenneth's skin was ice cold, as if she had no circulation at all, and her nails a thin gray that didn't look healthy. She waited patiently in unblinking silence, eyes occasionally sliding sideways toward the front of their party.
"Don't tell me you're tired." Arngrim said, halting a few steps ahead.
Mystina dipped her head to breathe on their hands, and snuck a glance through her hair, following the valkyrie's gaze.
Lezard. She frowned. "She's freezing," Mystina muttered, shooting a glare at Arngrim. "You have a problem with that?" The valkyrie tugged at her hands, and frowned when she looked back down, shaking her head slowly. "What, you're not?"
Lenneth's lips pressed into a line, but she didn't so much as sigh.
What is her problem? Mystina tried not to mirror her expression. Not that it mattered; never one to hide her opinion, she'd just as soon let the valkyrie know how difficult she was being, if only the woman could talk back. One-sided arguments never went anywhere interesting. And even if she could respond normally, there'd be nothing satisfying about it - who liked cool indifference and disappointed sighs? That wouldn't warm anyone up.
She straightened and looked Arngrim over; he carried the bare necessities, if that. Sometimes she wondered about that armor of his, and what, exactly, it was meant to deflect when it left him so open. Her gaze turned to Lezard with distaste, and this time she didn't bother to hide it. "Give me your coat, Lezard."
He lifted an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?"
Mystina fisted a hand on her hip, considering her old classmate. Chivalry wasn't dead when it came to Lezard; it simply didn't exist. But if she'd judged him right-- "You heard me. We have nothing to cover her with," she said, motioning to herself and Arngrim.
Lezard heaved a put-upon sigh and unclasped his cloak. "The things I do for love..."
Spare me. She scowled, took the coat, and turned to Lenneth, who flinched away and examined it carefully before unwrapping her blanket and allowing herself to be helped into it. The poor thing was shivering and covered in goosebumps. Without the blanket, all she had was one of Mystina's short nightgowns for decency. Nothing else would fit in this shape, nor was her preferred wardrobe really appropriate for the goddess, regardless of her physical maturity.
The coat engulfed their charge, the hem almost to her knees, and the sleeves flopping over her hands, too long by several inches. But it was wool, and therefore warm. Her thin shoulders seemed to relax under the weight, though she still hugged the blanket tightly.
"You done?" Arngrim asked. "Last time we were here the place dropped out from under us. We can't afford to wait around."
"True." Lezard fiddled with his cloak. "The normal rules appear to be suspended, however. This palace is supposed to disappear when night falls, and yet it still stands."
"She must have already arrived..." Mystina gathered the valkyrie close when his attention shifted to them. The girl didn't resist.
"That's what we want, isn't it?" Arngrim started walking. "Let's get this over with."
"He's right," Lezard said. "We don't want Brahms to destroy the vessel before we can retrieve it."
"She isn't an object."
He favored her with a long look before appearing to concede the point and turning to follow Arngrim. The valkyrie was spared a glance, but his face gave no hint to his thoughts.
What, no 'You're right, Mystina, I was in the wrong'? Or even an 'Of course I know that, Mysty, you needn't condescend'? No, he gave her that look. The one she got the night before she died, and long before that when she told him flatly, with a stern thirteen-year-old face, that if he was going to be an idiot and break school rules, he could go ahead and get himself expelled, see if she cared!
She hadn't expected him to pull any of the stunts that he had after giving her those pitying glances. That was something Mystina intended to change this time.
Cold fingers brushed her knuckles and Mystina realized she'd been gripping the valkyrie's shoulder too tightly. She let go with a muttered apology. "Come on, we shouldn't let him out of our sight."
Lenneth nodded, mouth turned down gravely, and squeezed her hand.
...
...
The battle was depressingly simple, though Mystina wasn't going to complain, since it made her job that much easier. Whether it was their combined skill or mostly Brahms - she refused to think it could have been Lezard - they had the valkyrie's vessel. The palace hadn't disappeared. Above them, the crystal holding her sister glowed softly. The crystal they'd won from Hrist thrummed to the same beat, and the valkyrie-child seemed to take comfort in it when Mystina handed it to her, pulling it under the blanket to hug to her chest.
Time had been of the essence, but she had to look once they were assured Lenneth could stand the wait. Lezard followed, but for once she didn't mind. This was part of his theory, physical proof, moreso than their charge and the other half of her soul.
What place have you to say such things, you who hide behind Silmeria!
Part of her wanted to take it. They weren't the only ones who lost a valkyrie.
Her apartment at the Collegium was too small for three and a half people. She sentenced the men to sleep in the laboratory - Lezard because he deserved to freeze, Arngrim to make sure the pervert didn't sneak into her room while they were sleeping. She hadn't forgotten the evidence in his tower. The valkyrie was bundled up in a quilt with her crystal and propped against the headboard. Mystina stretched out beside her and tried to sleep. Even einherjar needed rest to maintain their energy levels, and the spell she'd discussed with Lezard wasn't a task to take on lightly. It could destroy both of them.
Mystina didn't want to die. Once was enough. But there were worse ways to go, less worthy causes to throw everything away for, and Hrist had shown her where 'serving the gods' belonged on that spectrum.
Was Arngrim really stupid enough to serve her in a former life? No way they'd catch her pandering to the black valkyrie.
Maybe Arngrim liked his women bitchy. That would explain a few things.
She fell asleep with the pulse of the crystal at her back, and the valkyrie's hand stroking through her hair. Maybe she could still sense them, even with an incomplete vessel, because her moods changed like quicksilver and it had only taken a few hours to realize she was responding to the dynamics within their group. Was it because she was so empty that she internalized these things? Did she still know them even now - really know them - like she had before the disaster in the mountain valley?
Maybe it was her fault that Mystina drifted into a dream of Lorenta's study they way it had looked before she became headmistress. It was her fault Mystina glared at her professor from a stiff-backed chair, thin as a rail as only a teenager could be, while Lorenta read her report on the incident below the south tower. It had been a warm spring day, and she was stifling in her uniform in spite of efforts to cool the room by opening the windows. Lace curtains drifted on a fitful sea breeze, so bright from reflecting the sunlight that her teacher was no more than a shadow if she stared at them long enough.
"This is all you have to say?" Lorenta asked, resting the paper on her desk. "You seem to have forgotten certain important details."
"Like? I told you, I didn't know what he was doing until it was too late." The woman raised her eyebrows, and Mystina slapped her hands down on the arms of her chair. "If you don't believe me, why did you call me in here? I have homework to do!"
"That is precisely why you're here," Lorenta said.
Mystina's lip curled. "Trying to get rid of me, too?"
Her teacher sighed and leaned back, pulling her reading glasses over her nose. "Mystina, I assigned you two together myself. I know you worked closely."
"Regretting it now?" she asked sweetly. "Didn't work out the way you wanted it to?"
"Young lady--"
"Don't you 'young-lady' me!" Mystina shouted, springing out of her chair. "This is your fault! You're the one who encouraged him, you're the one who looked the other way, and now you're punishing him because of your stupid rules, that even you don't keep--"
"That's enough!"
The icy crack of Lorenta's voice made her flinch, but Mystina held her ground. "No it isn't! Not when you're trying to blame me. I never wanted anything to do with him! If you want to know what happened then go crawling and ask him yourself!"
The facade of the kind, cheerful professor everyone loved had melted away. She'd always known the woman was a witch. Nobody could be that nice, that happy, and not have something to hide. Not when she had shelves of books on demons and the undead, and journals salvaged from Dipan. Not when her eyes narrowed and glittered like that, promising pain.
Mystina wished for a moment that she'd remained seated, sure she'd feel the bite of a ruler on her knuckles now that she'd stepped so far out of line. "You know exactly where he got that book," she said, refusing to fidget under the professor's stare. "I don't know when or how, and even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."
"Not even to save him from expulsion?"
That always was the million-gold question. And yet all she regretted, in the end, was the void he left afterward, that she couldn't cross no matter how hard she tried.
...
...
Alone, Mystina watched the valkyrie curl in on herself, sobbing into her knees like a child. She'd told the others to give them space, knowing they would be no help. Arngrim looked uncomfortable, like he'd never seen someone cry before. Lezard was unreadable again, though she could guess what was going through his mind, and none of it would improve the situation.
It was pathetic, really. Even Mystina knew how to offer support. But she also knew when to wait.
Lucian was dead. Lenneth herself had informed the rest of them almost a month ago, solemn but not grieved, at least in Mystina's memory. This pitiful display of emotion was so unlike the goddess that she wanted to blame it on the trauma of Hrist's awakening, but the lump in her own throat stilled the thought before it could make it through her lips and prove her as insensitive as her pervert classman. What did one say when a friend lost a loved one, anyway? There was no comfort.
You endure, Lorenta would have said. The pain will fade in time.
How do you know? she'd asked, sulking like the child she was.
We are destined to part from our loved ones, she responded, hatefully calm. You will find others to replace them. Parents give way to spouses, siblings to friends. Someday you will meet your equal. Lorenta tilted her head at the dormitory window, where that stupid boy was yelling for her to come out. Such challenges will spur you to greater heights.
How wrong she'd been.
Mystina knelt, touching the valkyrie's shoulder gently. There were no words - nothing to stem the tears but Lenneth's own will. Mystina offered a handkerchief, brushing the goddess's matted silver hair behind an ear, and vowed silently that they would have Odin's hide before the month was out. Some Father he was, repaying Lenneth's loyalty with pain and deception.
"Come on," she said, helping the valkyrie up. Arngrim waited a dozen yards away. Lezard was gone. "We have an appointment to keep in Asgard."