Prologue
Everything is cloudy for Tamsin as she stirs from unconsciousness. Like a thick curtain of fog hanging between her and desperate balance, the pieces of what she feels come together too slowly. Her eyes are so heavy as she attempts to open them slightly. A small panic is brewing within as she tries to remember the events leading to up to this black out, but nothing comes to mind. Where ever she is now, Tamsin knows it's under intense light. Bright beams peak through the thin slits of her eye lids. It doesn't feel warm and comforting like the rays of the sun, in fact, her body feels eerily chilled, basking in an unsettling coldness and her defiant muscles want to stay frozen.
Mustering as much strength as possible, Tamsin plants both palms on the ground and pushes up, rising to her knees and it's a terrible cry her body makes over the little effort exerted. Something isn't right, she knows this almost immediately. She's never felt this weak in her life. Then again, maybe she has, but it's never preceded a happy ending.
Why do I feel this way?
Sitting on the balls of her feet, she rests her arms on her thighs. Her neck is sore, and Tamsin is unsure of why as she stretches it from side to side, and finally craning it forward to rest on her collarbone as she doesn't have much more energy to spare. Tamsin does eventually open her eyes, but not for long. There's a pure white light surrounding and it burns to a cringing point. It feels like painful blindness, and for a moment the warrior considers if she's lost all vision. An immeasurable amount of time passes before adjustment.
The clarity she expects upon opening the shutters is far from granted, and Tamsin can't imagine where she might be or how she had come to such a place. An infinite void of white encompasses all and Tamsin isn't sure if the floor holding her weak body up is really even there. The chill is beginning to work it's way to the bone and the panic follows on it's coattails. This has happened several times before, waking up in a strange place without knowing how she had gotten there. Some nights of heavy drinking brought Tamsin to rouse in foreign beds, park benches, and sometimes in the alley's next to the very bar she stumbled out of hours ago.
This situation is entirely different. The place she finds herself in this moment cannot be anywhere near an earthly realm. Tamsin's diluted mind tries so hard to put the pieces of the puzzle together. There are things she does remember, but they are vague. Little flashes of memories. Lauren looking at her in utter disappointment. Another flash and it's Kenzi now tressed in curls dawning a white bathrobe, backing away from Tamsin in what could only be in terror. Another flash and it's Bo's transformed blue eyes burning holes into her own. Tamsin can see the whites of Bo's teeth formed into a snarl, the succubus standing dangerously close. None of this makes any sense though.
Where the hell am I?
Tamsin wonders and wills to recollect, but her focus is turned away. It's then she feels the ache, dull and simple, residing in her chest and had gone unnoticed until now. A hand reaches through the silk blouse over the area of her heart, checking and feeling for a wound that isn't there. The tips of her confused fingers fall upon nothing but smooth and unbroken skin that thumps over an erratic heartbeat.
I must be dreaming.
"This is no dream my child," came a low and resonating voice that startled Tamsin. But where had it come from? Her ears pricked and eyes scanned the vastness for another soul in her company, fearful and perplexed if that previous thought was even spoken aloud. The bitter cold had hit her then, like a tidal wave that stole her breath away and Tamsin could do nothing to control her body's quaking.
"What is this place?" Tamsin asked aloud with the intention of boldness, but she shivered with every syllable, hating the fault in her weakened foundation. It wasn't like her to be so unnerved, at least on the outside, but this place had a resentfully stripping effect that made Tamsin feel weak and bare. She waited for that voice to speak again, her body like a wound spring in anticipation. The last ounce of hope she held dangled by a thin wire over cliff where nothing but doom and demise awaited in the valley below.
"You are in a medium of misery, midst eternal damnation and true salvation," it said, louder and closer. So close that Tamsin could feel the words prickling needles and raising hairs against the back of her neck.
"You, fallen warrior, washed, wicked, and wishful. Once great maiden, magnificent and mirthful. Be mindful as chooser is to be chosen, as you were an infant in the hands of Odin, again warrior, you are small, but devoid of sin, you are not. Will you fall from his loving fingers as you have fallen from his grace? Or will you acknowledge the tests to come and make passage to his heart? I am the necessary balance of rightful victory and praise, but the left hand of my scales tips and bends, I promise. I prey on your darkest fears and faults in great hopes that you may conquer them all."
"Who are you?" Tamsin croaked instead of shouting like she had meant to. This thing's cryptic words brought her to no cathartic conclusions except for anger. Always a straight forward woman in search of straight forward answers with a strong distaste for these riddles and too impatient to unravel them.
"I am The Judge of all beings created by Gods, and you Valkyrie, stand trial."
"What?" Tamsin found herself gasping in disbelief. More than anything, she wanted those words to be unspoken, to be untrue. She wanted her heart to stop beating with such a driving force inside of her chest. She wanted to be anywhere but here.
Tamsin had tried to rise to her feet, but her damned body wouldn't let her and gave out before the halfway mark. Any words of protest wanted to speak aloud were fleeting along with energy, dying in her mouth with a metallic aftertaste. Tamsin falls forward onto her shaking hands and she curses the body that was so strongly disappointing her right now. The dismay is followed by another hated sentiment of helplessness coupled with despair.
Something else registered as Tamsin clutched her tightening chest with a different focus. That once dull and annoying ache had thrived very much so, to a vicious pain teetering over the edge of unbearable. It spiked suddenly and Tamsin could not control the roar that had gathered within. Boiling hot and erupting a cry of pain and anguish, escaping her body with such ferocity. She found no relief in it's expulsion. The howl resonated through the infinite white surrounding before bouncing back and haunting echos in Tamsin's ears.
There was an uncomfortable warmth growing from the area of her bosom covered by her hand. Through the heavy contrast in temperatures, Tamsin could feel the heat trickle down her abdomen. Bringing to view the thick layers of crimson that coated her palm and snaked down her forearm, Tamsin hitched a much needed breath. So horrified she was, casting her eyes downward and seeing the shroud expanding too quickly, soaking through the silk of her white blouse. A deadly red that blossomed so violently. Tamsin's hand quickly shot back with a thump against her chest in a futile attempt to staunch the bleeding, to be a dam against the angry river of blood that was flowing so rapidly.
No! This is not happening!
She would tell herself this, again and again. A blatant lie short lived and fading along with the beating of her heart and the strength it took to hold the hand covering it. The rhythm slowing into longer intervals before the limb trying to protect it just simply fell away.
I cant be...
Tamsin began to drift, her body so heavy, her eyes finding it a burden to remain open. She blinked slowly, finding a calm behind the lids in the short moments, like the pain eased just so with every flutter. And then it was gone, like it was never really there. Gradually the light faded, circling the edges of her vision with a darkness that crept menacingly. A morbidly conflicted sunset from day to night approaching, wishing to swallow her whole. Tamsin can do nothing but sink into it, unsure if resistance would keep her from slipping away.
I wont...
The cold floor was like snow against her cheek, and the once abundant warmth in her chest descends to match the frost. A small reminder of where she was and the unwanted fate she was to meet soon. She keeps her eyes open as long as possible, a protest against the pitch that desired to consume. Tamsin holds on to anything and everything, like she naturally does whenever the end approaches. Her fingers dig into the ground that is there and then again, it really isn't, but she feels like it might fall away if she lets go.
In the lack of light, Tamsin only thinks of what bears the most weight upon her soul, if she even has one to carry such. She wonders if she will again have the glimpse of, what must have been happiness, it must be as true as the sun shines or so she wants to believe. Whether it be the falseness of her imagination, Tamsin chances it anyway.
She is numb and lost and losing herself in the steady haze of this void. The darkness seeps though the cracks of the wall her mind has built in a last defense and Tamsin is there alone patching the tears that are opening into wider breaks under the pressure. She protects the sanctuary of her one and only thought threatened to be washed away into the nothingness as she stands before the shadowy wave that draws closer.
What Tamsin holds to be sacred, that last light in her lost soul that once shimmered with hope, it flickers wearily now in the final stretch, succumbing much like she is. More than anything, she wants it back.
She thinks of a different kind of salvation in the arms of another, and her failure before to recognize the harmony of it's embrace. Tamsin wants to be there now, far away from this frigid hopelessness. She thinks of all the words that she refused to say because they endangered her desperate stoicism, because they made her appear to be vulnerable and human. Fearfulness of this kind of exposure seemed so trivial now as Tamsin awaited her certain downfall. She revels in what little memories left to recollect and she regrets the expressions halted mid breath, frozen on her tongue, abandoned and unexpressed.
She thinks of her before it happens, before everything is dark and she can think no more.