Chapter 4
The first thing Bo saw, when she walked downstairs the next morning, was Kenzi braiding Dagny's hair on the couch. The Russian girl seemed to have a very hard time keeping her eyes open while doing that, while Dagny had her head leaning against the pillows with sleepy hums.
The Succubus couldn't help but smiled at them. As she moved her eyes to the kitchen, she met Tamsin's light eyes.
The Valkyrie had her hair tied in a loose bun, a few locks lazily curling along the contour of her cheeks. After having greeted Bo with a smirk she went back flipping pancakes.
Bo sat down beside the dining table, pulling her kimono to cover her overly exposed cleavage before grabbing a plate for herself. Resting her chin on her left hand. she intently watched Tamsin cooking.
"I assume that those two-" the Valkyrie murmured without moving her eyes away from the pan, "-will probably skip breakfast today."
Bo took a look at Kenzi and Dagny, and chuckled when she saw that they both had collapsed into the couch again. "It appears so," she commented, before turning back.
Tamsin forked three pancakes into Bo's plate, and the brunette mouthed a "thank you" to her before grabbing the syrup bottle.
Bo poured some syrup on one side of her plate, and wrapped a pancake into a tight roll. After dipping one end of the roll into the thick, sweet liquid, she shoved it into her mouth, bit the syrup covered end off and let out a soft sigh. "I thought you'd forget how to make these delicious pancakes after ten years of absence," she slurred.
Tamsin snorted before she sat down with a plateful of pancakes for herself. She leaned back towards the fridge and opened it to get a butter stick. After opening one end of the wrap with the teeth of her fork, she smeared a thick layer of butter directly on her pancakes. "I would have added chocolate chips if you actually had-"
"Over there," Bo interrupted her as she pointed at a door down the hallway a few feet behind the fridge. "I think we have a few bags of chocolate chips in the pantry, unless Kenzi used all of them."
"Since when do we have a pantry..." Tamsin frowned. She immediately rolled her eyes and murmured, "right, new shack, with pantry, sure."
"Yeah, we have a pantry now," Bo said, before she stood up and got herself a cup of coffee. "So what's your plan for today?"
Tamsin drizzled some syrup on top of her pancakes and inhaled half of her plate. Then she paused, drank some coffee, before she answered, "I'm gonna go talk to Acacia first. See if she knows anything about this...coming back after rising shit. Then...I guess I'm gonna hit the store and get clothes and...pretty much everything. Also need to check out the lots to see if there's any deal on a used vehicle…."
"Are you meeting Acacia in Valhalla?" Bo asked as she got herself an apple from the fruit bowl in the middle of the kitchen counter.
"Yeah," Tamsin nodded and beckoned at the apple in Bo's hand.
The brunette shook her head with a chuckle, and tossed the fruit to Tamsin, before getting another one for herself. "Do you want me to go with you?" She offered.
"You don't have to." Tamsin shrugged, taking a bite from the apple. "I mean...don't you need to bring home some bacon?"
"Not today," Bo replied, shaking her head. "With so many mysteries, I think my PI work can wait."
"Okay, then we'll take your car," Tamsin replied. She stopped chewing when she saw the weird smile on Bo's face. "What?" She murmured.
The brunette slightly tilted her head to the couch, making Tamsin eventually notice that Dagny somehow woke up during their conversation. The young girl was staring at them curiously with an anticipation burning in her eyes.
"Well, Dagny has heard of a lot of stories about Valhalla, but she has never been there," Bo explained to Tamsin, "so why don't we take her with us?"
"Sure," Tamsin replied as she looked down at her plate. "If she wants to come."
"I'll go change," Dagny immediately said and rushed upstairs in haste.
Bo tapped her hand on the steering wheel and snorted at the red light which seemed to have been on forever. She took a glance at the two other women sitting in the back seat through the rear view mirror while biting her chuckles back.
In the back seat, Dagny was looking at her cell phone once every thirty seconds despite having no incoming or outgoing activities of any kind. Tamsin, on the other hand, kept pulling her seat belt as if it annoyed her.
Bo cleared her throat loudly, and the Valkyrie sighed in defeat. She swallowed and hesitantly turned to Dagny and asked, "so...how's school going?"
"G-great," Dagny blurted with a sudden jolt of her head. She grippd her phone tightly and turned to Tamsin, nervously licking her lips. "It's going great, like...great."
"Do they teach...like...what do they teach in school these days?"
"A lot of stuff, like..." Dagny mumbled. After a long pause, she finally added, "...math."
"Math is great," Tamsin replied, giving herself a mental eyeroll. Math is great? Really?
Dagny could only manage a nod. She repeatedly twirled the string of charms that was attached to her phone around her index finger. She had finally decided to say something else, but before she did, her phone rang.
"It's Mama Kenzi!" She announced, feeling a little relieved though a part of her really wanted to continue the conversation with Tamsin.
"Oh, cool, you should probably get that," Tamsin said immediately.
Dagny nodded, before she answered the call. "Yeah we are on our way to Valhalla...no we are not there yet...I'm not sure, I'll text you later...okay...okay...no problemo. I'll make sure to get those...Love ya too...bye."
"She wants something?" Bo asked.
"Yeah, some scented candles and bubble bath."
"We'll stop by the store later. Your Mama Tamsin needs stuff too," Bo told her with a soft voice.
"Right." Dagny murmured. She played with her charms for a while, before she eventually gathered enough courage to ask Tamsin, "so...is Valhalla really like...a hotel?"
Tamsin raised her eyebrows. "Did Kenzi tell you that?"
The young girl nodded. "She said she stayed in a room and had all these amazing stuff sent to her."
"Well...it does look like one of those hotels that would charge you for 500$ per night, but...it's really a place for afterlife. There are elevators connecting it to other afterworlds. The reception desk will determine if a soul belongs to Valhalla. If they do, they'll stay there."
"What if they don't belong there?"
"Then they'll be sent to where they belong," Tamsin said.
"What else is there? I mean...what other afterworlds do we have?"
Tamsin pondered that question, trying to figure out the easiest way to explain without omitting any important details. "There are a lot of them," she started. "Some of them have multiple names, but...I guess you could consider any afterworld one of the three types. Those for the heroes, for the sinned, or for those who falls in between."
"Valhalla's type one, for the heroes," Dagny immediately said.
"That's right. Valhalla's for heroes," Tamsin nodded with a smile on her face.
"So...when I grow up I'd be bringing the souls of the chosen slains to Valhalla?"
"Yes," Tamsin blurted. Then she corrected herself, "well, if you are a Valkyrie, yes."
"That's like...a no-brainer, right?" Dagny pointed at herself. "I mean, obviously I will be a Valkyrie, right?"
"You are very likely to be a Valkyrie," Tamsin corrected her, "but having a Valkyrie birth mother doesn't guarantee you to be one. Have you...ummm...experienced your power yet?"
Dagny shook her head, a little upset. "No…."
"Tamsin," Bo interrupted their conversation. "Technically he's only 10 years old. It's probably gonna take a while."
Tamsin rolled her eyes at Bo's reflection in the rear view mirror while mumbling some curse in Old Norse, and the brunette laughed while taking a sharp turn into an alley.
Bo parked her car on the side of the road, and said, "here we are."
Dagny got out of the car excitedly, but was confused by the rundown alley she was in. She looked around, searching for the Gate of Valhalla, but she only saw rusty trash cans, graffiti covered walls and abandoned buildings.
"Is it just me or…?" She murmured, looking at Bo and Tamsin.
"Allow me," Tamsin said, standing in front of wall where some red patterns together with a few lines of Fae language were painted.
"I navnet til sjelene brakt frem til Valhalla, la portene apenbarer seg. Avslor! Avslor! Avslor!" She chanted in a loud voice with her eyes suddenly sinking into dark shadows.
"What's she saying?" Dagny whispered to Bo.
"Some...Valkyrie talk, I guess?" The Succubus replied in a whisper too.
When Tamsin's chant stopped, the wall faded away right after, revealing a huge metal gate. Behind the gate, there was a statue of a male Viking warrior sitting, and he was covered in snow and frost. He had a sword in his hand, as if he was guarding the place even after his death.
"Wow," Dagny exclaimed, feeling thrilled. "You gotta teach me how to do that one day," she said as she punched Tamsin's arm playfully. Then she cleared her throat immediately and looked away, feeling a little embarrassed.
"Come on, kid," Tamsin told her before she entered the gate.
The main hall of Valhalla was full of people. Thousands of maids and servants buzzed around, while groups of souls either heading to the reception desk on the second floor or wandering about.
When Tamsin, Bo and Dagny arrived at the front desk, they saw Acacia standing there talking to a few people in maid suits.
The elder Fae spotted Bo first with the corner of her eyes. She huffed out a light laugh as she turned to Bo and said, "if this is not the famous unaligned Succubus, I-"
She stopped abruptly when she saw Tamsin. She stared at the blonde for a long time, before she eventually closed her mouth. She tried for a few times, but failed to come up with anything to say to any of them, so she let her jaw drop again.
"Acacia, it's me, Tamsin," Tamsin introduced herself to the elder Fae.
"Of course...you are?" Acacia murmured hesitantly, still gaping at the blonde.
"Yep, I sure am," Tamsin nodded.
"Didn't you...rise," Acacia said as she examined Tamsin closely. "Or did I get the wrong intel?"
"I wouldn't say your intel was wrong," Tamsin replied, "but maybe it's time to update it. I rose, but then I came back."
"You rose and you came back?" Acacia repeated, her eyebrows raised, as if that was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard in her entire lifetime.
"It looks that way" was Tamsin's reply. She dodged to the side, just in time to let several souls go through. "That's why I'm here. Kinda want to know how this could possibly happen."
"I have some questions for you too," Bo said, "about my father."
"Sure," Acacia rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't be a typical day for me, if I don't get to entertain two goons, would it?"
Dagny couldn't help but chuckle, and the elder Fae's piercing glance fell on her immediately.
"Is this…?" Acacia asked as she looked back at Tamsin.
"Yeah, she's my daughter, Dagny," Tamsin introduced as she dragged Dagny over to her side. Once again, she found what she had just said beyond awkward, because she really had a hard time connecting the young girl in front of her to the tiny baby she had given birth to.
"Lucky you," Acacia commented, and none of them knew whether it was a sarcasm or something that was all sincere.
"So, can we talk?"
"Of course. Let's head to my office, shall we?" Acacia proposed as she turned around and raised her left forearm.
Out of nowhere, a fluttering image of an opened wooden door appeared behind her forearm, and she walked in.
"Come on," Tamsin told Dagny in a low voice, and pushed her into the door first.
After everyone entered her office, Acacia lazily waved her hand at the image of the main hall to make it disappear. She sat down behind a big desk, and offered the other three the hide covered slat stool across the room.
They all sat down, and Acacia grinned at Dagny, who uncomfortably squirmed on the stool.
"Is my stool too hard for your spoiled butt?" She teased, faking a low, serious voice.
"No, of course not, Ma'am," Dagny immediately answered and stopped moving. She pulled the hem of her clothes and straightened her body. Her reaction made Acacia laugh.
"So...let's see," the elder Fae started, looking at Tamsin. "You rose but then you come back. Tell me, how is it possible?"
"That's actually the question I want to ask you," Tamsin replied. "For all my lives, I've been told that if a Valkyrie dies in her last life, it's called rising, because she'd rise into a place where she'll be offered a peaceful eternity, a place that's far, far away from this painful, miserable world. I was never..I've never heard of anything like a Valkyrie could come back after her rising."
"Because there is no such thing," Acacia told her. "Rising is the end of a Valkyrie's life. There's no coming back. In fact, I can't really believe that I'm actually sitting here talking to you, Tamsin. You shouldn't be back."
"Well, here I am," Tamsin threw her hands into the air. "How could it happen?"
"If you hadn't given birth in your last life, I would have argued that you didn't actually rise, but, oh well, I don't think I can really argue with that, can I? " the elder Fae pointed at Dagny.
"So...you haven't heard of anything like this, huh?" Bo asked.
Acacia shook her head. "Not in any of my many life times," she said firmly.
After pausing for a very long time, she stood up and walked to the whiteboard on the side. "Since we have a junior here, I don't suppose she has learned anything about the concept of-let's go through some basics of the afterworlds stuff, shall we?" She suggested as she picked up a marker and pulled off the cap.
She waited for a nod from the other three women, before she drew a big circle on the board. "Alright," she murmured and drew a small abstract of a tree inside the circle, with a rectangle as its trunk and a few strokes as its roots and branches. She drew several small circles on each end of the strokes, and one in the middle of the trunk.
She turned around, pointing at the circle in the middle of the rectangle. "This is the world of living. You may call it Earth, or Midgard. When a living person dies, they go to-" she pointed at the bottom row of circles, "here, or-" she pointed at the top row, "here."
"Underworld, or heaven," Tamsin explained to Dagny in a low voice, air quoting the word "heaven".
"Exactly," Acacia said. "If you are a hero, a good person, or a chosen one, you go up." She pointed at all the circles on the top. "Heaven, Elysium, Valhalla, whatever. If you are an average person, who has done some wrongs as well as a few good deeds, you go down, into the regular underworld. Hell, if you will."
After getting a nod from Dagny, she drew a few circles under the bottom row and continued, "if you are a sinner, a bad person, or someone to be punished, you go beneath the hell level. Niflhel, Tartarus, whichever you prefer to call it."
"Okay, I get it, different levels of hell," Bo said impatiently, "but what does this have anything to do with her coming back?"
Acacia clicked her tongue. "Well..." she hummed as she drew a contour inside the big circle to enclose the tree and all the small circles. "Souls can travel back and forth between these worlds. You may find it ridiculous if I tell you that a soul can come back from Hell to Earth, but it's entirely possible and in fact, happens more than you think."
Then, she filled the space between the big circle and the contour she had just drawn with a lot of short dashes, and continued, "but outside these worlds, we have this whole massive space, which is really another dimension."
"Okay..." Bo murmured, nodding.
"This dimension is very different from the others because...things in there are of a different form. When a soul travels there, it's transformed and the process of the transformation is irreversible, which means if you go there, you'll stay there and you never get to come back, for example, if you-"
"-rise," Tamsin interrupted her, and Acacia gave her a nod.
"So...what you are saying is...when a Valkyrie rises, her soul goes into another dimension and gets transformed into something different, but there's no way to transform this something different back to her again?"
"Correct," Acacia said.
"But, for me...somehow I did get transformed back?" Tamsin murmured, frowning.
"Well, I don't really know what happened to you, but yeah, since you are sitting here asking me questions, I'd say somehow you came back from a dimension that shouldn't have allowed you to do so in the first place," Acacia concluded.
"How could something impossible like this have happened?" Tamsin pursued.
Acacia pursed her lips and started to pace back and forth along the wall. After a long time, she finally answered, "as we all know, matter can not be destroyed, and that includes a Valkyrie's soul too. When you rose, your soul was turned into another form of matter, or energy. It didn't perish. It was just changed, so technically, if-"
She paused when she noticed that Dagny seemed to be a little bored. "Ya okay there, kiddo?"
Dagny immediately nodded. Then she cleared her throat and said, "this is so sciency...I was just...I was wondering if I could maybe...check out Valhalla while you guys are-"
Bo chuckled, and Tamsin rolled her eyes. Acacia shook her head, but immediately let out a light laugh. She snapped her fingers to open the passageway to the main hall.
A moment later, a maid-look woman came in, waiting to take orders.
"Give the kid a tour, Gwen," Acacia commanded. "Just don't let her out of your sight, okay?"
"Yes, Mistress," the woman replied. Then she smiled at Dagny and took her back to the main hall.
"Alright, kid's gone. Where were we? Right, another form of energy," Acacia turned back to Bo and Tamsin. "I can't really explain how you came back, Tamsin, because to my knowledge, it's just not possible, but I suppose if there's someone, or something, who is capable of reversing the transformation process, you could be brought back."
"You think someone brought me back?" Tamsin asked. She huffed out a light laugh and fisted her hands in reflex, "that's...ridiculous. You don't happen to know who could do that, do you?"
"Do I look like I know? I imagine it's gotta be something powerful," Acacia said.
"Powerful like Hades?" Tamsin had finally gotten the question out of her chest.
Acacia froze at that name. "Why would you think that?"
Tamsin clenched her lips, and Bo admitted, "let's just say that...there are signs that...we think that he might be still alive and is now back."
To her surprise, Acacia didn't act like she was shocked. The elder Fae just frowned at her and pondered for a while.
"Well, I guess I shouldn't say that I'm surprised," she eventually murmured. "He's a tough, sly son of a bitch."
She turned Tamsin and added, "bringing you back, though, I'm not so sure. Why would he? He could have saved you, had he wanted to."
"Does he ever need a reason for his sick, pathetic plans?" Tamsin forced the words through her gritted teeth. Bo immediately took her hand in hers to calm her down.
"I think it's time for me to contact those two working undercover in Tartarus," Acacia announced. "If you would excuse me."
Dagny bounced back and forth between everything she saw in the main hall, with Gwen following her closely.
"Whoa, Miss, please don't touch that," the maid stopped her from holding a beautiful bouquet that was on a corner table in the hallway. "It can not be touched by the hand of a living, Miss. It'll perish if you do, and ordering new ones takes an awful long time."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Dagny apologized as she withdrew her hands immediately. She spun herself around in the hallway as she looked at all the paintings hanging on the walls. Then, she noticed a group of people checking in at the front desk. "Are they heroes? Do they belong here?"
"I suppose so. Not sure if they belong here, though, but if they do, we'll make sure that they have fun here," Gwen answered her a little absentmindedly since she was too busy making sure everything was in order.
"Do they stay in separate rooms, or all together in a big one?"
"That would depend on their preference and the availability of our rooms."
"What if Valhalla runs out of rooms? Where do they go then?"
"Valhalla would never run out of rooms, Miss," Gwen replied, finding Dagny's questions unbelievably stupid and boring.
"Do they-oh my Gods!" Dagny suddenly exclaimed when she spotted a woman in a samurai suit at the other side of the main hall. "Isn't that...Hangaku Gozen?!" She said excitedly as she eyed that woman.
"Miss Hangaku is an honored guest here," Gwen explained nonchalantly.
"Can I go talk to her? I'm such a big fan!" Dagny babbled as she dashed to the samurai.
"Miss, you can not-" Gwen tried to grab the young girl, but was interrupted by a receptionist who came to her with an urgent matter. She had to deal with that first, and when she turned back, she found that she had lost sight of Dagny.
Dagny exhausted all the Japanese she had learned from playing games and all sorts of weird body language trying to show her admiration to the heroine, but Hangaku just smiled at her politely and told her that she had learned to speak English during her stay in Valhalla.
Feeling both embarrassed and thrilled, Dagny could hardly speak. She stood there with her skin flushed and her muscles tight while grinning at the heroine sillily. The other woman kindly hugged her and gave her a kiss on her cheek, before she left.
"This place is amazing!" Dagny told herself as she wandered aimless along the flow of the crowd. She was too happy to notice that she had lost Gwen.
After a while, she had finally realized that she entered a whole new floor of Valhalla, so she decided to find her way back to the front desk first.
However, she underestimated the complexity of the place, and eventually found herself lost on a floor under maintainance.
The carpet that had been covering the hallway was now ripped off and rolled to the side. Fresh paint was all over the doors and the walls. Some of the guest rooms were made into temporary storage units and filled with old furniture and items.
After hitting another dead end, Dagny had finally decided to ask someone for directions, but she couldn't find anyone around the area.
She tried to read a map that was hanging on the wall, but stripes of paint had covered most of the drawings and she couldn't even tell where she was.
A sudden, loud phone ringing coming from behind spooked her. She turned around and found out that it was coming from a room all the way down the corridor she was in.
"Ummm...helloooo? There's a phone ringing," she called, hoping that someone would come over and picked it up, then send her back to the main hall, but nobody came.
She walked down the hallway and took a peek through the half opened door. The room was full of retired furniture. Among some stained glass shards on the floor, there was an old phone ringing with a light on it flashing blue.
"Hello? Someone's calling...I think," Dagny called again, but got no answer.
Or...maybe I could take it and then call the front desk? She thought and entered the room.
She pushed the glass pieces away with her foot, and bent over to pick up the phone. "Hey, sorry, I was just-"
A series of muffled sobs interrupted her. It sounded like a woman who was weeping in pain, and that made the young girl frown. "Hello?"
The woman on the phone paused for a while. Dagny could hear her breathing unevenly while holding in her sobs, like she feared that anyone would hear her and hurt her. "Can I...ummm, help you?"
The woman mumbled something, too incoherent for Dagny to understand. "Is everything okay, Ma'am?" She asked again.
"Help me," the woman finally breathed.
"Ummm...let me go get someone who can help, okay?" Dagny told her, about to run out, but the other woman stopped her.
"No, please don't," the woman whispered with muffled whimpers. "If he finds out, he'll…."
"He'll what?" Dagny frowned.
"Please," the woman begged. "You can't tell anyone about this."
"Okay, I won't, I promise," Dagny immediately replied. "Are you sure you don't-I mean, I can go get some help."
"No," the woman refused again. Then she paused a little, before she said,"please forget about this, okay? I can't let my daughter-he's here. I must go."
"Who? Who's here? Is everything okay?" Dagny asked, but the call seemed to have already ended.
She thought she'd dial back and find out what was going on, but she heard Gwen calling her name outside looking for her.
She shook her head and shoved the phone under a broken recliner, before she walked out the door.
"There she is," the maid said loudly with a relieved look on her face. Bo and Tamsin were behind her.
Tamsin banged the side of her fist into a "Do Not Enter" sign at the entrance of the hallway as she raised her eyebrows at the young girl. "Didn't you see this, hmmm?"
"I was just...looking for you guys," Dagny murmured.
"Well, you found us. Let's go," Tamsin told her. "We have a lot things to do."
"K," the young girl nodded. She took a glance at the room with the phone, before she followed Bo and Tamsin to the exit with her heart burdened a little by the call she had just picked up.
A/N: I copied the chant for opening the gate to Valhalla directly from the script. I think it means "in the name of the souls I bring forth to Valhalla, may the gate reveal itself", or at least something like that :)
