I was so close, Keiichi. I'm sorry.

Changing into her battle dress she continued, understanding now that this was no longer an ersatz vacation, not by any stretch of the imagination. Her orders left no room for interpretation now that the great beast had prevented her from reaching the temple. Despite the irresponsibility of recruiting the other goddesses in holding off the Ginnungagap, in a populated area no less, there still might have been a chance to seal it temporarily until its handlers could be summoned or a wing of the Valkyries could be gathered to dispatch it. But now, watching it draw itself into the world, she lost confidence. She knew this was in part to it's the horror in its face, but part was also due to the certainty that she would die, and that when the beast was through with her, it would go after Eric. At that point she would fail in her mission.

She stopped short, reassessing her priorities. Her present orders or her overall mission. Was this a test from Brunhilde? An extension of the insult? The orders themselves did not explicitly nullify the rest of the mission. She was still to protect the mortal from harm, so now she had to disobey to remain dutiful.

It was too late to pull back. The Ginnungagap attacked.

The hill mocked him, reminding him of his failure to develop an exercise regimen every time he had decided to start one. He had been too impatient, of course, or focused on the wrong goals, and now he felt the cost of it, his lungs hurting and legs throbbing. Somehow the pain of his effort even reached his teeth. Yet he could not stop. Rind had told him to run and he was determined to do it until she said to stop. And if she could not come back to tell him to stop…

No! She'll get back!

A distant crackling hiss sounded from somewhere down the hillside. Below it was a low drone.

Why was Cool Mint so afraid?

Perhaps it was because he was so focused on remaining in motion that a fragment of memory, an impression, broke free. It was another hill glimpsed between buildings. It had to do with angels, and their relationship to their host goddesses. It was not so much an image he saw, or a carefully placed word bubble where Atla might have thought a picture would not suffice. It was just an idea, but a powerful one.

It was why Eric stopped running. He knew it hadn't been Cool Mint's concern he had seen. Maybe it had been amplified through her, cleaned up, freed from pretense and discipline, but it hadn't been just her fear. He was as sure of that as he was sure Rind wasn't coming back, and as sure that the creature would end up catching him when it had at last killed Rind.

No sooner had he stopped and leaned against a tree to catch his breath did a bright mass streak overhead and slam into the hillside at a point that looked no more than a quarter of a mile away. It had not looked like an errant attack. It looked thrown. And it was still moving. Having impacted a relatively steep area, kicking up a cloud of dirt, it was now tumbling down, seemingly falling to pieces as it went, breaking in two. Running again Eric drew close enough to see more fragments coming away and drifting in the air after escaping the wake of the projectile. The came down in lazy zigzagging arcs, like leaves. Or feathers.

Now afraid beyond his ability to understand, Eric could move no faster. Between and throughout each desperate breath he heard himself uttering the same word over and over, and endless stream of insistent denial.

"Nononononono…"

He at last reached Rind and crashed to his knees.

"Shit. Oh shit."

The goddess looked terrible, her uniform tattered, bruises visible everywhere. That she was a goddess made things look worse than they would on a human. What cemented his conviction that she was seriously hurt was what lay near her. An angel with half a wing, blackened at the edges. They were not connected. Eric crawled over to the still form and saw that it was Cool Mint.

This is wrong. Bad, very bad. They shouldn't be apart. No. Not at all.

With only a second of hesitation he took the angel by the shoulders, falling on his butt when he overestimated her weight. Unconcerned about moving the injured who had just been hurled against a mountain, he pulled Cool Mint over and set her aside Rind. When nothing happened he looked for the end of her and, vaguely surprised to find that she had feet, took hold of her legs and maneuvered her and Rind around so that her feet were on the goddess' back. Again, nothing.

"Come on. People die from that. Not you. Not you!"

Yet he couldn't be sure they were alive. Leaning close he listened for Rind's breath unsure if a goddess even breathed. There was something, maybe, or just wishful thinking. Trying for a pulse yielded more promising results, faint, but certainly not his own. His heart was beating to quickly to account for what he felt in the goddess' neck.

Cool Mint's condition was harder to assess. And now there was no time. Without needing to look Eric knew something loomed behind him.

What could I have done anyway?

In a split second night was day, overwhelming, and loud. The world was washed out in blue-white light followed by an instant green afterimage, blinding Eric about as much as the thunder following the light deafened him. In the windstorm that followed it happened again and something shrieked behind and above him. And then twice more. With each blast, smaller than the first, he could begin to sense a direction. It was to the right, and whatever it was it seemed to be attacking the beast. The air grew still again.

With no temptation to look behind him at the monster he looked to the side instead. A woman moved toward him, nearer than he thought, her pace unhurried.

She was tall, clad in a deep red and black gown trimmed in gold that had a 'neckline' that plunged down past her navel long adornments that hung from each shoulder. Equally revealing was the slit up the front, revealing half of her inner thighs with each step. Wide bracelets adorned each wrist, and other ornaments were attached to her white hair, holding it up. There was a six-pointed star on her forehead and five-pointed ones on each cheek. She was striking, and the inappropriateness of Eric's response was not lost on him.

"Well which is more pathetic," she said, her tone almost soothing. "That a Valkyrie lies wounded and unconscious, protected by the mortal she was to protect, or that she was made to protect him in the first place?"

She came around Rind and stopped on the other side of Cool Mint from Eric. It occurred to him to ask who she was, but part of him already knew. That part was not being very forthcoming, however.

"This may be where you bow before me and thank me for saving your life."

"Help us. Please."

The woman rolled her eyes. "I just did."

"Are you with the Voice of Earth too?"

She giggled and looked offended at the same time.

"Hardly. I am the Daimakaicho, Hild. And you are at my service."

While she was speaking Eric got a good look into her eyes. He immediately wished he hadn't. Whatever he glimpsed there he couldn't define, but that nameless thing frightened him on the power of principle alone.

"Don't tell me that meddling ex-demon didn't tell you who I was."

Eric thought she meant Atla. "I don't want to remember." His eyes flicked downward at the angel, conscious of the fact that nothing was being done about her condition.

"Hmm? Oh this?" Hild nudged Cool Mint with her foot. "She'll die soon outside her host like this. It's a pity, really. There are none that can really support two. Sooner or later one's strength runs out. Or is taken."

"Can you help or not?"

"Oh really, you are a bother!" Hild said raising one hand to the sky.

Cringing, Eric realized her gaze was not on him but something behind him. Forcing himself not to turn he covered his ears as for all appearances a bolt of lighting struck Hild's upraised hand and then arced over his head. There was another resounding shriek from the still unseen beast before quiet was restored.

Lowering his hands, Eric looked up at her, expectant.

Hild sighed at him. "Really now! Assuming for a moment that I wanted to help, what makes you think I can?"

"Well... You're... I don't know."

She crossed her arms and leaned toward him. "There's a good reason that angel is lying there. Have you thought about that?"

Eric waited for her to continue. Hild, in turn, waited for him to say something.

"Oh for...! You're slower than Keiichi!" She lifted into the air a few feet and appeared to sit, reclining some. "She can't host two angels now. And with the hit she just took it would seem she could not keep the angel from being knocked free."

"We can't just—"

"We?"

"Well... can't... can't you host her?" It was the longest shot, and his intuition told him the suggestion was absurd.

Hild laughed, and glared. "Really it would be less cruel just to let her die. My soul would turn her faster than Belldandy's turned that devil."

A thick snap sounded in the back of his mind where chains of denial still held some information back. The knowledge welled up, settling like lead in his stomach. He knew who Hild was now. He knew what she had done.

"Dai...ma...kaicho Hild..." His voice was in a whisper.

Hild clapped her hands together! "Oh so you have heard of me!" The she dropped the act. "You grow dimmer by the minute. You're not worth my time." And then, as though Eric had somehow kept her there against her will her expression turned hard.

Trying not to look into Hild's eyes, Eric slowly positioned his body over Rind. Perhaps Cool Mint was lost, but the goddess was not.

Hild's eyes widened, more in cold mirth than surprise. "Oh and if I do decide to attack? What will you do then?"

Because he knew the answer was nothing, and because at that point he thought there was nothing he could say to appease her, he said, "Beg?"

In stages the Daimakaicho's features softened. "How chivalrous, demeaning yourself for a woman." Her gaze flickered to behind him for an instant before she slow rolled in the air and drifted down hover with her face inches from his.

With growing humiliation, Eric pulled back as far as he could, which was not very far at all.

"I think I've changed my mind. I like you after all, which is why I'm going to give you a few helpful hints."

"O... ok."

"Shut up. Now, one, the fact that the Ginnungagap is here is nothing personal. Someone down in hell knows if it were ever released on Earth that I'm about the only one who could deal with it. That someone thinks my attention can't be divided. Fool."

She drifted closer, her mouth near his cheek.

"Second, the Valkyrie will live. And so will the angel if you can find a suitable host. But seeing as the nearest one is about a 100 miles to the southeast, there's not much you can do."

Now her lips were near his ear, almost touching. Her bangs brushed against his forehead as she moved. Eric trembled.

"Third, don't look at itor you will know pain."

Then she was moving, up and away, turning to face the still quiet beast.

"Now somebody's been a bad dog, running away from home!"

Still not out of his line of sight, Eric could see electricity, or something like it, gathering around her arms. Hild noticed his attention and called down to him.

"Save your gratitude for the next time we meet."

Then she was looking away, moving out of sight. And it took every ounce of will not to turn and watch. As he turned his eyes back down to Rind and her severed angel he heard Hild call out behind him.

"Shame!"

Crackling and bellowing filled the air but he tuned it out. Focusing on Cool Mint he muttered to himself.

"A suitable host. Suitable host. What's suitable?"

The Earth trembled and the bellowing form the monster grew louder.

Don't look.

Always good advice, given to him by two deities no less—doubly hard to follow.

A fissure appeared ten feet to the right. Dim red light shone from it as though there were magma far below. Watching it, the light turned blue. Following the fissure back toward its source, the light was brighter, turning to white.

Don't look!

It was his mental voice, not echoes of Rind or Hild. But since when did he listen to the wiser instruction of his mind?

He saw the hole, a bright wound in the Earth, lightening flickering at some point above it. But no beast. He angled his head up and saw Hild, a cage of lightning, a large conical shape the size of a building. As he watched, the shape tilted forward and grew opaque.

DON'T LOOK!

Two sulfur-yellow clouds billowed into sight above a toothless maw. Entranced, Eric watched as the clouds began to clear revealing voids beyond.

The world went silent but there was still much to see. The monster becoming more visible, the lightning dancing silently, and Hild, turning away when confronted with the monster's face, her eyes first narrowed in disgust but then widening when she saw Eric looking up.

Eric felt himself drawn away until he was in a barren place, littered with jagged rocks and things, wood or bone maybe, somehow bleached by a light that was harsh and dim at the same time. There were light-years of emptiness in every direction. Somewhere, in another body, his body shook, his chest heaved, his head and neck vibrated, tears streamed. A burning breath later it happened again, and again, stomach cramping with effort to sustain the screams.

Hope dropped away while he stood helpless in the expanse. Loneliness engulfed. Still looking up he thought he saw Hild, the cold gaze he remembered now warm, passionate, and caring when compared against the void. He reached for the image of her, yearning for her company in the void, her condescension and sharp tongue forgotten, her warmth breath against his ear as she tried to prevent this suffering remembered.

In the other body his throat now burned with his stomach. Without warningitcame to meet him, or he to meet it, he could not tell which. Then he was whole again and the agony was more real, focused, and he doubled over in the dark, blind.