I had often wondered to myself; why did the Lotus seem so concerned about the welfare of her warriors and their warframes? They would reform relatively quickly… Was it genuine concern for her troops or perhaps some sort of motherly bond – assuming she was actually female and not some sort of AI? I know the truth now, it only pretended to care. It only really cared about the Tenno, if a warframe was lost, so what? It would reform. The warframes were expendable. I was expendable.
Chapter 11: Valkyr
I was faced with a choice; I could unravel my own mysteries by tracking down the data vaults my brother had given me the coordinates to… OR I could join the others in trying to track down the kidnapped warframe. I could only choose one. If I waited too long then the data vaults would be reorganized as they were every few months to prevent structured data theft, but if I didn't go after that majestic blue warframe with the energy claws then she would most likely end up as part of a Zanuka Proxy.
The scan I had taken had confirmed it; the proxies we fought had in fact contained warframe components and technology. There were currently no theories on what happened to the Tenno who had been used to make the proxy when the proxy was killed. Did they reform as a Tenno somewhere else? Did they just vanish into the void? Or did they retain consciousness through their components while the proxies decomposed? None of those were particularly preferable…
On the other hand, my brother was obviously in trouble and had gone to great lengths to amass the coordinates of almost 1000 data vaults… and since I could not contact him it was entirely possible I might not see him again for quite some time. If I missed the data rotations, then I would go mad from the curiosity before I saw him again!
Still, I had a duty to my 'sister'. I may not actually be a Tenno, but that didn't mean I shouldn't live by the Tenno code of honor…
I quickly messaged Loki, asking if he had found anything yet. The reply was a brief one; "No."
Well, I could wait around doing nothing… or I could start hunting data vaults myself – perhaps I'd even find the data on the Zanuka Project's headquarters.
I entered the first set of coordinates and watched the world turn to a blur.
As it happened, spying was not much different to rescuing. I had to use most of the same skills, the difference being that I had to do it three times and then I could just run for the evacuation rather than having to haul a hostage with me safely. Only one vault per area contained the data I was targeting but I stole the contents of all of the vaults in order to justify keeping the data from one – and to disguise my true purpose from the Lotus, who was undoubtedly watching. I had ordered Ordis to stream the data from the vaults we were targeting to my ship data-banks instead of the Lotus. She probably wouldn't be too happy, but if what my brother said was true… that was assuming he was actually my brother – he seemed genuine, but anyone could be a good liar, and I couldn't see his face or his mind.
Beta was grumbling throughout the entire mission, until we found a kubrow den. That was when the inside of my head exploded with jubilant cries of "Oh look at the little widdle puppy" and suchlike. Had the aforementioned 'puppy' not been about 2 meters long and armed with a set of razor sharp teeth and a strong desire to decorate them with my blood; I might've found it cute too…
As was, I had to shoot it several times just to make it let go, and then several more times to finally kill it. The kubrow apparently had thick leathery skin that was basically natural bio-armor… I was not very keen on them, and quite surprised that the psychotic lunatic had a soft spot for them. I had heard Isaac talking about getting one –as it seemed it was traditional for Tenno to have a faithful companion – but I had yet to see any that weren't feral.
I decided to carry out one more mission, and then another, and another. I barely even noticed the passage of time until I realized that it was getting dark in this sector of Earth. I had almost forgotten that they had a day/night cycle that occurred every standard rotation. Sun in the day and moon in the night, which meant I should be able to see the moon... I couldn't. A clear sky and no visible moon? Irrelevant, I had a mission and was running an absurd amount of spy missions. Cephalon Cordylon was probably going to love me and hate me at the same time for this. I was now approaching the 52nd targeted data vault… Sheesh, that was a lot.
Time blurred as I murdered and stole my way through vault after vault after vault… My Excalibur warframe was beginning to get stained with blood and so it now looked like my lower half was actually painted red. During the night this was not a problem, but there were many more vaults that were situated on planets that didn't currently have a night cycle… I was going to have to get it cleaned. Ugh…
I had finally cleared the last targeted data vault on Earth, my warframe was literally stained red and dark brown from all of the blood and oil I had practically waded through to get this done. I still felt no physical fatigue, but mentally I could feel myself tiring. I needed to meditate. I stepped into the airlock of my Liset and practically dropped into the interior as the ship blasted out of the atmosphere. I lay down on the foundry and ordered Ordis to clean my warframe so that I could go out looking presentable after my meditation. But just as I was about to drop into the gentle embrace of the trance I heard a voice:
"Alpha, Beta? I've found a lead on the Zanuka Project from the data you've recovered."
"Ordis, stop the cleaning process. I can't hear myself think!" I call telepathically to the irritating cehpalon.
"What?" I reply to the Lotus blearily, forcing myself back out of semi-awareness as the cacophony fades.
"The grineer vaults you sent me the data from, there is some surveillance data on the zanuka project and a little bit of intel on the project's founder; a man by the name of Alad V."
"Do you have the location of the headquarters?!" I half demand telepathically.
"No. I only have some coordinates and a few scraps of data. But your efforts have been noted. Get some rest because I may need to deploy all four of you at short notice, I won't lose a single Tenno if I can do anything about it!" She sounds almost passionate.
"I understand" With that I lay down again and entered meditation.
I was awakened by Ordis informing me that Loki was trying to hail me telepathically and he sounded 'very excited'. I stood up and stretched, feeling much more refreshed, before noticing that I was still stained with blood. I had forgotten to command Ordis to resume the cleaning process after I finished talking to the Lotus. I considered yelling at him, but decided to save my temper for this Alad V person… he deserved it.
I approached the navigation console and opened a channel to Loki who, as Ordis had said, was excitedly telling the others about the data he'd found. He hadn't found the location of the Zanuka Project's facilities, he'd done better. Alad V had taken a personal interest in the captured warframe and had had it taken to one of his citadels for his personal inspection – that didn't sound good. The good news was that the data on his citadel was barely hidden at all because, like with most Corpus cities, it was a colossal trading hub as well as a manufacturing and training complex. Which meant that it was fairly easy to locate it and with a bit of meddling acquire some of the schematics. It also meant that it was a prime target for enemies of the Corpus…
"Lotus?" I queried as I opened a channel to her conscious
"Yes Alpha?"
"Alad V's citadel will be quite well protected, will it not?"
"Yes… is that a problem?"
"Not in and of itself, but if he were to learn of our arrival could he potentially relocate the captured tenno?"
"He has the means to yes, but there's nothing we can do about that."
"What if we could… do something?"
"IF there were anything we could do I would authorize it, but since there is not…"
"So I have your permission to act?"
"That depends on what you intend to do. Would you care to enlighten me?"
"It's a surprise."
"Alpha, tell me."
"Lotus, could you just trust me on this one? I don't think you'll like it, but it will make our jobs a lot easier and drastically increase our chances of success…"
"Alpha…"
"Please? Just this once?
I can almost hear the buzzing of the Lotus' mind as she tried to figure out my intentions. After a significant pause she replies:
"Very well then, if it will in fact increase your chances of success."
"Thank you Lotus." I add in a more respectful tone. I understand how difficult it would be for me to trust a soldier with a general's job if I were in her place.
Several hours later all four of our ships are in orbit around the Themisto sector, moving just beyond the range of its sensory network. I haven't told anyone what I did, and I am somewhat curious to see how it goes down… The Lotus will probably disapprove, but will eventually see the twisted logic behind it. The others… they might not for quite some time.
"Alpha, what are we waiting for?" comes Antonio's impatient question over the shared channel.
"Patience, it's almost ready. Do you have the plans?"
"We do." Comes the chorus of impatient voices. "Although… what exactly is the 'distraction' marked on here? How do you intend to cause such a massive distraction from here anyway? And how would that stop the Corpus from moving the Valkyr?" Isaac sounds understandably dubious, but before I have to explain I see them. Just on time.
The twelve Grineer galleons come into range of all of our sensors almost simultaneously, and seconds later the Corpus' sensors pick them up as well. That's when the panic starts.
As we watch the galleons spread out and begin to encircle the citadel, blasting apart a few insignificant trade ships as they do. That's when the main force arrives. Having waited for the vanguard to clear the skies of any immediate threats the main force now punches into the atmosphere, the sky is suddenly filled with the sinister dark green ships, each easily two or three kilometers long and bristling with weapons. From my viewport I can see boarding craft and Ogmas flying in formation as the city below panics.
"Let's move" I say triumphantly into the channel "the Grineer have orders not to fire on us, and for now we will not fire on them. We have two objectives; Rescue the Valkyr and kill Alad V. No more and no less. If we are lucky then both will be close together."
"Understood" comes the half-amused agreement from the other three – perhaps they will adjust to this idea faster than I thought…
"You do realise the Lotus is going to kill you for this, don't you?" quips Antonio as our Lisets turn in unison and speed towards the citadel's landing pads.
Even as we land, I can see it has worked. Grineer boarding pods are impacting all over the citadel, fires are already beginning to spread and the Corpus security is being slaughtered before they can organize any meaningful resistance. We don't even slow down, simply running through the burning and fractured corridors towards the objective. Occasionally a crewman will sprint across at a junction ahead of us – running towards the other side of the citadel that is currently being assaulted by literally millions of the clone soldiers – but we pay them no heed. We have our mission, and all of us are quite keen on increasing the number of active Tenno. If that means starting a war early, so be it.
I had talked to General Ruk in great length about why he wanted this sector so badly, on a planet controlled by his enemy. In essence, what he wanted was a beachhead to allow him to stage a full planetary assault, it was as much for morale as for tactical benefit. In theory, most Grineer ships could perform a full orbit of the gas giant in only a few hours, but in practice it was much easier to fly through the atmosphere since the enormous gas clouds rendered long range sensors useless – excellent for pillaging unsuspecting trade ships and small Corpus cities, and for getting a large force close to a target and striking before they could react. Also brilliant for morale. It was also quite interesting how readily he had agreed to work alongside the Tenno on this venture, sure he wouldn't want to work against the Tenno. But I had made it quite clear that we would be focusing on our own objectives rather than assisting the invasion, and while we might lend a hand afterwards he should not expect any assistance on the citadel. I suspected that this too, was for morale of the troops. Knowing that the most dangerous entities in the known universe were allied with you had a tendency to encourage people, even if they weren't strictly allied so much as loosely neutral…
I had made note somewhat earlier that there had been some sort of disagreement between General Sargus Ruk and Alad V over something else on Mars, something in the Gravidus sector. For now, it wasn't my problem, but if I could start a war on Jupiter rather than Mars, not only would less civilians be at risk but I could also potentially dart in and take a look at what was happening in the Gravidus sector while the two factions massacred each other here.
The Grineer had numbers, and the Corpus had technology – this meant that any conflict would inevitably take time. When you factored in the Grineer attitude of "Send them in, we have more soldiers anyway" and the Corpus attitude of "Clean everything up, there mustn't be a single survivor hiding anywhere" you only accentuated the time of conflict. The Grineer had enough troops to hit every city in the atmosphere simultaneously if they so wished, but the Corpus only had a few specialized 'hunter teams' with deep gene scanning devices to allow them to hunt stray enemy soldiers (who all had the same genetic structure due to being clones). That meant that the Corpus would not undertake any form of counter offensive until every city had been checked and cleared, which would take a long time. This would give the Grineer time to recover, and then when the Corpus inevitably counter attacked there would be a repeat of the situation elsewhere. The Grineer would swarm everything, and then the Corpus would check everything – captured outposts, their own cities, civilian areas and basically everything – for Grineer survivors before attacking again. Assuming they won. If they lost, the Grineer would blockade an area and build it up while waiting for more reinforcements to arrive from around the system meaning there would be a stalemate in which The Company was losing profits. A sure way to provoke a counter attack. If the Grineer could successfully fortify an area and receive reinforcement they would push on into Corpus territory, not relenting until they had captured their objective or lost too many troops to hold the current fortifications.
The war between the two factions had been about to start anyway, due to the disagreement over this mess on Mars… I had simply accelerated the process and directed it to the least populated area with the most potential benefit. The Lotus probably would still give me an earfull for this though…
We were now approaching the target area of the citadel, which was deeper within the city on a low hanging section, that meant lots of windows and lots of defense turrets. Thankfully no-one was creative enough to order them to target the four running Tenno who were, for some parts of the run, painfully exposed to enemy fire. It had always fascinated me how some people built downwards as well as upwards, in my mind you had a base and you built up from that, getting narrower near the top. In actual fact many cultures had found that you could build down from the 'base' as well. The Corpus were another example of this, as the whole of this section of the city seemed to be hanging – which bearing in mind that the city was effectively hovering due to some very large engines – gave the impression that these sections could fall off at any time.
This didn't seem to bother the others though, so we ran on. We were now beginning to encounter some residual security who had not moved to help defend – probably because of what this area contained. They didn't survive long enough to even cry out. This part of the city dealt with 'Orokin Recycling' which consisted of stealing artifacts from the first empire and attempting to reverse engineer them to help The Company. The Corpus cult worshiped profit and Orokin technology, to have Orokin technology around massively increased morale because the soldiers could see that the legends were true and were being used to hep them in combat. This led to an interesting sight, as every now and then we would pass a room with a prime weapon or something hanging suspended in an anti-gravity field and surrounded by prayer mats. I was half tempted to pop in and pick up another weapon, but that would have to wait till the way back. I still had my Vectis Prime and that would be plenty enough for now… The others had no prime weapons though, and I could see them getting distracted by the research labs containing the assorted primes.
Finally, we were at our destination; Lab 72. The door was fairly plain on the outside, but as soon as we passed through it – slowing as we did so – we saw how mistaken we'd been. The inside of the door was reinforced with the finest Orokin alloy, as were the walls and there were no windows. We had all slowed to a walk now, uneasily gripping our favoured weapons... there was something about this place… and it made us all uneasy.
I led the way, silently to the nearest door and, after a second, punched it in with one swift strike. The reinforcement on the inside acted against it. The pattern of bars was designed to stop things getting out, any force applied to the door from the inside would brace the bars against safe-holds in the walls and ceiling, effectively sealing the door to any force less than a missile impact. From the outside though, this made the door surprisingly vulnerable, meaning that I struck it much harder than I needed to and overbalanced – almost falling into the room. I immediately stepped back, attempting to regain my balance, as the others rushed in around me with their weapons raised. It had been four days since the blue Valkyr had been captured, we had been recovering for almost two days – except Loki who had visited every Corpus data vault he could find in an attempt to find the information on her whereabouts. Then I had spent the best part of a day hunting data vaults myself, and another 20 something hours meditating to recover from the intense activity. I personally did not have high hopes for the Valkyr's survival, but it was our duty to locate her warframe so that if she could not reform on her own then she could be taken to a machine which could force her to reform – albeit very painfully. Being 'dead' had strange effects on Tenno, few of them positive, but it was a fairly temporary state of affairs. From what I'd heard from Isaac it was also a very unpleasant state of affairs because you were stuck in a sort of limbo, The Orokin had designed the warframes to preserve the Tenno within and when they died the warframes effectively trapped the essence of the user, allowing them to be resuscitated with void energy. Unfortunately, that meant that the Tenno's conscious was trapped for a potentially infinite time in an immobile body, at least until it was rescued or built up sufficient void energy for a revive.
As it happened; I was wrong.
We were walking into the room, which was dark for some reason or other, when I heard something. It was a whimper, and it immediately reminded me of a wounded kubrow, but somewhere distant. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and continued into the shadowy lab…
The whimper came again; it wasn't so kubrow-like after all… but then what was it? It sounded muffled, like it was an animal with a bite harness… A kavat perhaps?
Finally, my warframe's inbuilt computer decided it couldn't see well enough anymore and turned on my helmet torches. And None of us liked what the torches illuminated;
The table in front of us looked like something from a medieval torture chamber, sure it had energy constraints and advanced technology, but it was brutally primitive nonetheless… And that's when we noticed, it wasn't actually red. That was blood, lots of it. Ghastly.
I was about to turn away when the blood moved. An odd shaped object raised itself a little, and then slumped back into the red ooze. I immediately strode over to it, even as the others called to me to stop. Whatever it was, it had been trapped here, and by the look of things it had also been tortured. If I released it, it could help us fight the Corpus, perhaps it could even tell us where the Valkyr was…
It raised its head again, now I could see that actually it wasn't a pool of blood so much as a level of blood that was almost covering something beneath, something human looking – probably female!
If this was a human, then the poor thing had probably broken beyond all hope of repair. Humans after all, could easily be broken both psychologically and physically… and bearing in mind the pitiful whimpers this one was making it was likely that it had suffered both. I raised my heat sword to its throat, ready to slice it and end the poor thing's suffering – assuming that this would somehow kill it despite the it having survived the colossal blood loss – when I heard it.
"Do it" the telepathic whisper was barely audible, even with my senses on high alert. But it was enough for me to flinch back; this was no human! This was a Tenno!
After only a second of shocked hesitation, I whirled the blade down and cut through the torture table's power supply. The shower of sparks barely even registered as I raised my hand and the healing nanites poured out over the wounded Tenno. This was the Valkyr, I was certain of it!
I heard a sigh of relief followed come from the Tenno, and then a soft moan of some sort. It was not a happy moan, but it was a life sign none the less. Loki found the lights, but Isaac had beckoned for him not to turn them on just yet – they could easily daze both myself and the Valkyr who were in the darker part of the room. And the last thing we needed was for two Tenno to be dazed should an assault team come in to check why the room was being damaged.
That's when we heard them; footsteps! Great...
I finished healing the Valkyr and then gently pushed her back down, and manually turning off my helmet torch I slid into the shadows, as the other three had already done. A Corpus executive entered the room, and looked around. He, like many of his peers, was adorned with strange linear tattoos on his face. In this case he had two lines coming down his cheeks from below his eyes, almost like construction lines – which is probably what they were intended to resemble – and was wearing some sort of collar. He was accompanied by only one proxy, a four legged Zanuka variant like the ones we had encountered four days previously. This one was a sort of blue-green in colour and looked slightly different, but it was obvious that it had warframe components too. They would both have to die.
We waited for them to step further into the room, but just as I was about to signal for the others to strike; things went wrong.
The now-free Valkyr sprung from the table showering the room with blood, and tackled the executive to the floor, drawing her energy claws and viciously assaulting his shielding. We immediately focused on the proxy, knowing how much trouble they could be. I fired two shots in rapid succession – expecting to remove a limb, but it barely even made a mark on the proxy's shield! All four of us focused our fire on the head, to absolutely no avail! I threw an energy restore to the Valkyr without taking my eye off the Zanuka.
The proxy, hesitated for a moment, torn between helping its master or attacking us and that moment was enough. Isaac swung his Galatine at the Zanuka's head, which was apparently the best way to kill them as he'd found out last time before being riddled with plasma.
It bounced off! The shielding barely noticed the damage, and then the proxy turned to me. I drew my exalted blade and in a single dash I crossed the room, leaving the floor in molten tatters as energy wave after energy wave collided with the Zanuka. I knocked it back, but my efforts did no harm either. It was about to open fire on me when the executive screamed. The proxy immediately abandoned me and leapt to his aid, barging into the enraged Valkyr – who was still losing a lot of blood – and knocking her off while simultaneously giving off a cloud of healing nanites. That's when Antonio shot it.
The arc of the synapse would normally have done less damage than either of our attacks, but somehow the arc caught the nanites. The ensuing spitting explosion filled the air with smoke and began to melt the floor before it stopped. The proxy collapsed, punctuating the abrupt silence as we all considered the healing nanites within our own arms… and how dangerous they could be. Everyone stared at the collapsed proxy, then at Antonio, then back at the proxy and the executive who was rising to his feet alongside it with a shocked expression on his face. Then the Valkyr pounced on him and he descended in the midst of a cloud of his own flying blood and her screams of rage.
We stared, it wasn't polite, but having never actually seen anything recover so fast – not even when using healing nanites – we were amazed at the rate with which the Valkyr healed her own wounds by inflicting them on others. Bearing in mind that 'others' in this case referred to the Corpus executive with the surprisingly durable proxy, no-one minded.
After almost a minute of intense slashing and screaming – vocal screaming that is – the Valkyr finally calmed down... a bit. She stepped back from the bloody mess on the floor that used to be the Corpus executive, and strode towards us. I saw Antonio back away, but I held my ground. She remembered us, right?
She stopped in front of me, still dripping blood, and bowed.
"Thank you, brother" she sounded much calmer, an abrupt change from the screaming frenzy she had been barely seconds ago. It was unnerving…
"You're welcome." I stammered, "I am sorry we could not get here earlier…"
"It is no problem. Alad V is dead, and I am free. Do you have any other objectives or can we go?" she's speaking very formally, which is making me more worried. Is she annoyed at us? Or is this just how she normally is? Does she not trust us, or not respect us for our earlier failure?
"Alad V is dead?"
"Yes. That executive was him. He is no more"
"That is good news, I was worried that we would have to fight more invincible proxies…" interjects Antonio.
"You will not. That was the only one with such shielding. It was his pet." I can hear the anger returning to her voice, and it is disconcerting to say the least.
"How do you know?" Isaac asks.
"Simple. That one has my components. He has only captured one Valkyr, and he used my parts to make… that."
That's when it finally sinks in; not only is it's 'skin' the same colour it also has the same ability! When she got energy she became almost invincible last time as well. Perhaps that's what this proxy was using as well… If that technology got into mass production…
"We should destroy it." I say "If the Corpus have even the slightest chance of recovering that technology they will become unstoppable!" It occurs to me that she might want to try and recover her components, but now is not the time. There's an invasion going on, and we are in the headquarters of the Zanuka project. The likelihood of us not having been noticed after all the screaming and gunfire is very low.
"I agree." She says, much to my surprise. And with that said, she turns and draws her energy claws, picking up the whole proxy with surprising ease. This time she runs her claws over the chassis millimeter by millimeter, slowly melting the whole proxy into a puddle of molten metal that drips down her leg and onto the floor. After almost a minute she reaches the point where she's only holding two feet, which she puts on the table and proceeds to melt away as well. Then she turns to me and says;
"Lead the way. We should leave"
She seems impressively calm, bearing in mind that she just melted her only chance of regaining her previous appearance rather than this rugged looking underskin, which had to have been quite taxing…
We turn and, as a group, head towards the labs. There is no hurry to get to extraction, and Valkyr needs weapons, and everyone else is lusting after those primes as well… there is some pillaging to do. After all, it is 'for the Lotus' because it inconveniences our enemies, so there's no harm in it, right?
The prime weapons seem to cheer her up, especially once she finds a pair of Venka Prime, and slots them onto her wrists. The entire team moves as one, emptying each lab in turn of its weapons. Some we will use, but most we will save for other Tenno who join us in future. It's better that the Grineer don't get their hands on too many… so we walk to extraction carrying, dragging and kicking ahead of us a disproportionately large number of gilded golden weapons along the silent corridors.
Once we've loaded the first batch onto our ships, we return for a second batch, and then a third. The fighting is still intense on the other side of the citadel and occasionally a stray shell or missile impacts on something important looking near us, but we are sheltered from any debris by being on the underside of the city. We eventually put all of the prime weapons into the ships - agreeing to share them equally once we get out of here - and leave, heading off at a slow pace, before turning the ships around to watch as the Grineer forces finally rout the Corpus resistance and pursue them to the edge of the furthest point of the city. There they dig in, as a galleon rounds the corner and the surviving Corpus disappear in a cloud of blood and burning debris as it opens fire…
A good day all in all. A friend gained and an enemy lost. Now just to hope that Valkyr is actually coping as well as she seems to be, which is unlikely. She's resting in the back of my ship, as she has no Liset, and at some point I will have to talk to her about such things… but for now I just watch as the Corpus are eliminated, and the sun sets over a city of greed. The sun will be gone in a few minutes, due to the speed of Jupiter's orbit, but that doesn't bother me. For now; it is beautiful, and that is all I ask of it. Life is good.
The Grineer team smashed into the room with the kind of vigor possessed only by a group of hyperactive sociopaths out to cause trouble, but finding nothing of interest they were about to leave when one of them noticed something. He beckoned to his teammates, grunting "Look ovargh dere." The Team moved towards the object. It was a collar of some sort, covered in blood, credits and what appeared to be the pieces of an intestine... It was currently reforming.
Knowing little of such things one of the lancers kicked it once or twice, and receiving no response proceeded to lead the team out of the room to where he thought something more breakable would be found. None of the marines heard the weak chuckle that emanated from the collar, and none of them saw the soft golden glow on its base as a conscious was resuscitated using the unnaturally high residual void energy that was found in all of Alad V's citadels...
End of Chapter 11
Author's note:
I have always wondered what exactly triggered the Corpus-Grineer war, because while the lore mostly attributes it to the Gravidus Dilemma there was conflict before that and there were other causes. I like to think that, like many actual wars it would have begun due to diplomacy breaking down and then a chain of progressively worsening events that ended in the Gravidus Dilemma, which would have been the final straw rather than the first sign of disagreement.
As always, I would appreciate any feedback on the writing and the content. I am still looking to improve.
And for those of you who are worried: this is not the end of the story, in fact, this is only the beginning. It gets better (or worse, depending on your point of view) from here on in.
I will also be trying to explore Valkyr's mental state a little more, but not being an expert in such things I will ask for forgiveness in advance for any inaccuracies – of which there will likely be a few.
