Chapter 197

Two weeks later

Valkyrie's POV

They'd been at the Sect for thirty-four days.

Over a month.

No news.

No updates.

And the Ritual still hadn't taken place.

Valkyrie sighed. Over a month and she was getting impatient.

"I don't care how long it takes, Valkyrie, we cannot do the Ritual until you are ready, so we keep working until you are," Solomon said sternly.

"How will you even know when I'm ready? There isn't a tape measure of exactly how good at this or that I have to be, and I could easily pretend to have good mental health, so what does it really matter? What are you waiting for?"

"We are going to wait for your magic and mind to mature," he said, eyes narrowing at her from across the table. "And if you think I can't tell when you're lying to me about your mental health you are very wrong. I've been alive long enough to know what that looks like."

She rolled her eyes. "How are you going to wait for my magic to mature? Seriously?"

"A sign of mature magic is when the sorcerer has opened all the connective pieces and is at least vaguely proficient at them," Solomon explained.

"And how will you know I've unlocked all these added extras?"

He shrugged. "I can't be sure. But we need to open as many as possible or you very well could die during the Ritual. Would you like to try it and see what happens right now?"

Valkyrie paused. "I mean…"

"No, Valkyrie. Just keep your head down and keep working. That's all any of us can do right now."

Valkyrie grumbled and ate her bean and beef stew. This dish was a significant improvement on most of the other food and she was enjoying it. Someone must have noticed her finally finish an entire meal without gagging and brought her seconds without her even having to get up. She wasn't sure if she should have been glad someone was concerned enough to be making sure she was taken care of or creeped out that someone was obviously watching her eat.

Later that afternoon, Valkyrie found herself pulling her body back into a seated position, releasing the hold she had on her magic. Helena had been teaching her to meditate for the last week, drawing on Valkyrie's past, and short lived, experience of meditating with Skulduggery back when she was twelve and wanted to be just like him right down to how he spent his off-time. It was meant to help with her anxiety and persistent migraines, but she didn't quite have it down. It was not too hard to grasp, as Helena was a kind and patient teacher that helped her to get into a meditative state, but some things took time to be actually competent at. She'd never been good at turning her brain off.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she said again, looking at Helena. She was a beautiful woman, youthful with large eyes. Valkyrie found herself wondering yet again how someone so sweet and kind could be in the same league as the late Irish Necromancers she was more used to. "I mean, I can relax but if I go too deep I can't focus on my magic, and if I wake up enough to focus on the magic, I'm not meditating."

"I know it's difficult," Helena replied, "but it may be another way to follow your magic. And it's a break from talking about the past."

Valkyrie grunted.

"Let's try again." Helena closed her eyes.

Valkyrie breathed deeply and settled back, clearing her mind as much as she could and focusing on her breathing. She listened as Helena told her to feel her body and how it moved, instructed her to release the tension in each little muscle starting with her toes and working up to her head. She was told to feel how only her brain was left, pulsing and working, and Helena's voice was distant as she told Valkyrie to let as much of it go as she could. Valkyrie did that, powerless except to obey Helena. Helena told her to feel her magic, the energy it flicked through her nerves, and to release that.

It flowed out of her mind, giving her an otherworldly experience. She felt herself breath slowly and shallowly, but other than that she didn't feel herself at all. She felt the room. Felt each nook and cranny of the dirt walls, felt Helena's presence in front of her, felt… felt someone walk into the room.

Shocked, Valkyrie opened her eyes without meaning to.

She screamed.

"I can't see you!" She said, jumping to her feet. Helena, or where she should be, had been replaced by an orange blob of light, and the person that had come in had been too. She took a moment to steady herself and breath. "I – you're – you're not you anymore. I can't see you."

"What do you mean?" Solomon asked. He was the second orange light.

"I don't know. The room's darker than it was and you two are these bright orange lights," she said in forced calm.

"Breathe deeply Valkyrie," Solomon instructed. "Release it. This is just another area of your magic, that's all."

Valkyrie sighed, feeling the pounding rush into her head as she released her panicked hold, and when it was gone, pain took its place. "My headache's back. But the light's gone."

Solomon nodded as Valkyrie lowered herself to her knees and breathed deeply through the intense and sudden pain. She should have been used to it after their hours of work only to reduce her to a painful mess, but it still caught her breath. "I have an idea."

"Not now," Valkyrie breathed. "My head."

They took a long break, letting Valkyrie rest the whole night before meeting back up first thing in the morning after breakfast in the same work room to continue to the conversation.

That made it day thirty-five.

"I want you to try and do the same thing again," Solomon said.

"No way. When I did it yesterday my headache was so bad I threw up two times in the night. No way am I trying again," Valkyrie said with a glare. "I still have a small headache."

"Ah, but I have a theory," he smirked in a very Skulduggery-esk way. Valkyrie rolled her eyes and indicated to continue. "I believe that your headaches are being brought on not just by pain, but also by an overstore of magic. Usually when a person learns a magic, they learn from a young age and work on it up to their Surge. Essentially, they have the background knowledge to path the way to an easy, gradual build-up of skill and power. What you have experienced is a very sudden drop in magic which was replaced by this new magic. It filled the gap so suddenly you couldn't even use it for a while. It is connected to you at a raw, emotional level in a way most peoples are not. So as it had built up to the same power it naturally should be for someone as strong as yourself in a post-Surge way, you have none of the previous knowledge or teachings to use this magic and it's now trying to break out."

"So you think my magic is like a physical pressure trying to escape?" Valkyrie asked.

"I do. Perhaps metaphysical is a better description, but the science of what magic is aside, I think that we've been going about this slightly wrong. We've been trying to get you to learn new skills as if this is a new, normal magic as a child would. Trying to teach you how to explore your magic and how to push yourself. But really, your magic already is mature. You just don't have any of that prior knowledge to access these new branches."

Valkyrie thought about it with narrow eyes as Helena and Norma started looking excited. "So… I have mature magic? Like I need for the Ritual?"

"I think so. But you don't know what that magic is, how to use it or what it can do," he said certainly. "We need your mind and body to play catch up and work it out."

"I have some of it down. The flying and zapping and whatever weird eye thing happened," she said slowly.

"You have a very small idea of what you can do. I have a better idea of how to push you now. I was thinking last night, for instance, of how you can have a physical appearance of magic. In order to fly, the magic is around your legs. It is physically there, moving your body. When you shoot targets, it is a physical thing. Those aren't two separate things; they are two different uses for the same piece of magic. The amount of power you use, and the way you direct it, is the difference."

"I think I understand," Valkyrie frowned.

"Try to see the orange light again."

Valkyrie sighed, scared of the pain but knowing it wasn't a real choice. She held her breath and imagined how it had felt, how it had looked and after a few grunts and lip bites, a filter flicked into position and the three adults in front of her were suddenly orange orbs. "I've done it. I see the lights."

"Are you in pain?"

She thought for a moment. "A little. Right here in my head," she said, pointing to the pressure on the left side of her brain. "But it's not like before. It's the same as my headache when I woke up."

"I think that when you suddenly found this side of your magic it caused a release, and this put you in a great deal of pain. Now that it has released its pressure, so to speak, it shouldn't do it again. Try turning it off."

Valkyrie was able to do it almost immediately this time. "Did it. What am I even seeing though? Like, I get that the physical magic thing is all connected together as the same thing used differently, but how is this eye thing connected?"

"I think it's some Sensitive magic," Solomon stated.

"Really? I haven't seen any visions."

"Not all Sensitive's see the future, do they? I believe that the physical side is you using magic, and the psychic side is you seeing magic," he said.

There was a lengthy pause. "You think," Norma said, beginning to pace, "that Valkyrie's Pure Magic is able to tap into more than one area of normal, Adept magic?"

"Yes and no," he said, watching Norma move. "I think that Valkyrie doesn't have Pure Magic at all, or else Pure Magic isn't what we think it is. Obviously we know Valkyrie is a powerful individual that was at one time up for consideration as the Death Bringer. She had the same level of Necromancer powers people far, far older and experienced possessed, and she did that as a fifteen year old. That is just one example of her power levels. During training you have also seen how she is able to continuously use her magic without tiring the way an average person would, or even one that was considered fairly magically powerful. Valkyrie's only real issue is tiring her body, not her magic. So, she has a large store of it. But is that Pure Magic being an unending, raw supply, or is it just how Valkyrie is? I am starting to think it is just Valkyrie. No Pure Magic influences."

"We can't know if her supply was affected Pure Magic to begin with, so that doesn't mean anything," Helena said quickly.

"I know it doesn't by itself. Our entire idea of Pure Magic is simply that it is an energy. Pure, unfiltered, untouched magic straight from whatever plain of existence it comes from. I don't think that's what Valkyrie has. I think her natural, large supply of magic made us think it could be her magic, but really, it isn't."

"So what are you saying?" Norma frowned.

"I think that Valkyrie is something similar," he said, pacing in Norma's place. Valkyrie chose to sit so she could take in all the information. "I think it is a new, different and an entirely unheard of branch of magic. I think there is a potential for her to be an Adept, or else this is a third, new type of magic. Potentially something like witches or Warlocks are born with but that she only unlocked later in life. I don't think that part matters entirely. Putting together her psychic and physical magical ability, I think she has an underlying ability to tap into any type of magic, in a small way."

"And what does that mean?" Norma asked.

"I'm not sure. But I think that if she is able to apply her physical magic in such a varied and controlled way, she should be able to do it with her psychic magic."

"What does that make her?" Helena asked. "If not someone with Pure Magic?"

Solomon paused. "I think it's too early to know that. But I think this is a sure theory that holds a lot of merit, and more than a few possibilities for Valkyrie. We need to explore them." He came over to Valkyrie. "If I am correct, I do believe the magic itself may be as pure as a creature of this planet can cope to use, but I don't think it is legitimate Pure Magic. Just something very close. This may be a better version of it in terms of practicality in real life, if such a thing as Pure Magic even exists. We need to explore your psychic side, Valkyrie. And when we've achieved that, we find the sweet point where the physical and psychic meet in the middle. That, I think, is where we'll find the true answers to what your magic is."


ValkyrieP: I feel awful, I'm sorry!

Remus Crux: You get off on the panic and confusion and you know it. If it wasn't full of angst and pain you wouldn't care nearly as much! :P