This begins when Valkyrie is 18 years old.
The girl sat, slumped against the wall. Her right leg was stretched out, hiding her left foot which rested under her knee and her eyes were closed. She was asleep but she didn't look peaceful. In fact she looked like she was having a nightmare. Really, the man watching her reflected, she was living one.
The door opened and, in the same second, the girl jumped up. She pressed herself against the wall and didn't move as the man moved closer to her. She had learnt not to move over the past few days because it would give him a reason to hurt her. She didn't know why she was there or where there was, or what would happen to her in the end. She just knew that he enjoyed hurting her and if she stayed quiet and didn't fight he would get bored more quickly. At first she had fought and tried to run but he found it funny to stop her. He ran the back of one gloved hand over her cheek in a cruel mockery of a caress and she shuddered, despite trying not to. Suddenly he backhanded her and she was thrown into the wall and collapsed. Slowly, so the girl could see as she pushed herself up, he pull off his glove. She closed her eyes in terror and he crouched next to her quivering form. Gently he touched her cheek and she screamed as pain coursed through her body, turning her brain to sludge. She couldn't think through the terrible burning, throbbing, stabbing, tearing, pulsing, aching, drumming, piercing pain. It writhed within her. Growing as the mage ordered it to and she continued to scream.
Valkyrie looked at the mountain of paperwork and sighed. Normally Skulduggery would do the paperwork but he insisted that she needed to learn how to do it. He was humming quite happily as he filled in form after form. "You're enjoying this aren't you?" She grumbled.
"No, I would much rather be on a case but it is necessary."
"I meant making me do paperwork."
"Oh, yes, I am rather."
"That's horrible, you know." She growled.
"It's not that bad. Think about it though. You'll be able to say that you…" Finding out just what she would be able to say was cut off by the phone ringing. Skulduggery picked it up. "Skulduggery Pleasant here." There were several seconds of silence. "I see. We'll be there in a few minutes." He put the phone down. "We have a case."
Valkyrie started to grin. "Does that mean no more paperwork?"
Skulduggery sighed. "Yes, Valkyrie, it does." He sounded resigned.
As quietly as possible Skulduggery opened the door. They saw the blood spatter on the wall instantly. Skulduggery pulled out his gun and Valkyrie summoned fire. He pushed the door open further and they saw the first body, or most of it anyway. They made their way past what was left of a torso and legs and a few steps later the head and towards the kitchen. In total they found three bodies of mages which were completely mangled. Valkyrie didn't think that she'd seen anything worse in all her years of working with the skeleton detective. But there was one clue. A large sign written across the walls in blood.
"She will pay"
They didn't know who 'she' was but they intended to find out. With surprisingly little digging they found that the three mages were siblings and one of them had a daughter who was 14 and she had disappeared. She was interested in necromancy and elemental magic but there weren't any reasons to hurt her or her family as far as they could see. With no other leads all they could do was wait.