Warning: graphic violence ahead.
Freya looked around: the room she was in was undoubtedly her own. She stared, amazed, at her old belongings: they were lovingly arranged as if she had never left.
"What in Reis's name is this place..?" she wondered, taking a book off a wooden shelf. It contained a selection of tales about brave knights rescuing beautiful princesses. She chuckled, remembering how much all those damsels in distress annoyed her as a child: she would stubbornly refuse to be anything else than a valiant dragoon whenever she played with other kids, a trait that tended to intimidate most of them and to exasperate the rest, especially when the game had nothing to do with slaying giant reptiles.
A silver glint caught her eye. She recoiled in shock when she realized that it was the reflection of light on her grandfather's spear head, a priceless relic that he had given her on his deathbed. It was mounted on the wall as it had been for years before her departure for the military academy.
"No way..." she said, approaching the blade to give it a closer look. To her utter astonishment, it seemed to be the real deal. She remembered how much she had wanted it as a kid. Grandpa Kain was so proud about her being that much into dragoon culture that he had promised to leave her his weapon when she was ready to wield it.
"I hope you are still proud of me..." she whispered, touching the blade with two fingers.
"More than ever!"
"Huh?!" she uttered as she quickly turned around.
"Hello there, Freya! It's been far too long!" her grandfather boisterously greeted her, having seemingly materialized in the middle of the room. He started walking towards her, his arms outstretched and a big grin on his face, "C'mere, give your grandpa a big hug!"
"No... no, you can't be here!" Freya stammered, ripping the spear head out of its mounting and pointing it at the apparition, "Back off, impostor!" she barked, furious and terrified at the same time.
The robust burmecian blinked twice and burst into laughter, weirding her out. He was a hulking mountain of muscle with a savage, partially braided mane and a large potbelly that he loved to joke about when he was drunk.
"You truly are the spitting image of your mom, kiddo!" Kain exclaimed, "Speaking of which, she's waiting for you outside!"
"Wait, what? Mother is..? I mean..!" Freya stammered, rubbing her eyes. Kain was definitely still there when she opened them again. She then tried something more drastic: using her blade, she slightly cut the palm of her hand, drawing a little blood. "What in the name of..?!" she squeaked when the wound magically closed itself, not even leaving a scar behind.
Grandpa Crescent let out another hearty laugh, confusing her even more than she already was.
"You done fooling around, kid? You can't get permanently hurt in Fólkvangr! That's the fun part of this place!" he loudly asserted, prompting his grandchild to stare at him in utter shock.
"What did you just say?" she asked, suddenly feeling lightheaded.
"Exactly what you heard! Welcome to the Field of Warriors, little one!" he answered, "Now, will you give poor old gramps a hug? You can't imagine how much I've missed you!"
"The Fólkvangr..? Am I..?" she wondered, barely able to form any coherent thought after being told by her long dead grandfather that she was essentially in the fabled burmecian afterlife. "Is any of this real? Can I trust you?" she inquired, knowing full well how useless those questions were in her current situation.
"Yes and bloody yes!" he exclaimed, "If you don't believe me, ask me something only I would know!"
Freya stared at the weapon in her hand. She took a deep breath, unsure about what she was going to do if he answered correctly.
"Alright, then... what did you whisper in my ear the day you gave me this?" the dragoon asked him.
"Hah! That's an easy one!" he chuckled, "I told you that as long as you had the blade you'd never fight alone! I even went as far as to ask Lady Reis to have it appear to you in Memoria after you lost it! That woman is a total sweetheart, if you ask me!"
"Do you mean... that's why it was there?" Freya asked, her eyes welling up, "You've been watching over me all this time?"
"Of course, kiddo! Did you really think I would abandon you over something as trivial as losing a piece of metal?" he said with the warmest smile she had seen in decades. Freya silently approached him with a growing smile. Despite her now being in her early forties, the man still dwarfed her in size and he lost no time to put that difference into use by lifting her in a bone-crushing embrace, loudly laughing the whole time.
"Hah! My noble, powerful Freya! I'm so glad to see you again!" the giant exclaimed, gently putting his grandchild back on the ground, "Your mother awaits, what do you say we go meet her, eh?"
"Sure... lead the way grandpa." she happily answered.
The Crescents traversed the wooden hallways of the house like they used to do decades ago. Despite all the nostalgic bliss, Freya was quite aware of how unnatural that place was: it seemed to be frozen in time a decade before the Mist War, judging by the presence of objects and furniture that weren't there anymore when she came back home as a teenager. She theorized that Fólkvangr was a state of the soul rather than an actual, defined location, reflecting the happiest memories of its inhabitants like a rose-colored mirror; a kind of magic not much unlike the one that had birthed Memoria. That, or she was being lured into an ambush by a plain old illusion that sadistically preyed upon her desire to see her loved ones again... but why bother with that level of detail if she was already trapped there with no obvious way out?
Kain stopped in front of a double door and turned around to face Freya, grinning widely.
"Even here, momma Frigg still tends to her stupid pink trees all day long. Wanna give her a good scare?" the giant proposed her.
"Is it even possible to surprise mother? I mean, I have good hearing but she is an outright monster..." the dragoon replied, smirking.
"We will never know if we don't try!" Kain answered, winking at her. He then shushed her and slowly opened the gate leading to the garden.
Freya covered her mouth to avoid letting out a loud gasp: her late mother was pruning the same old cherry tree that they used to have. One thing was being told that Frigg was there and another, completely different one, was seeing her, more beautiful than ever under the golden sunlight.
Kain put a finger to his lips and took Freya's hand, they then started silently walking towards the seemingly oblivious woman.
"You know I can hear you, Kain..." Frigg said, turning around, "You're way too noisy, even when you..."
Her scissors fell off her hand, firmly embedding themselves into the ground.
"Freya..?" she asked, her lower lip trembling so much that she could barely talk.
"Mother!" her daughter shouted, closing the distance between them with the fastest sprint she had ever performed.
"Ah!" Frigg yelped as Freya accidentally tackled her to the ground. Both women laughed as they nuzzled each other for the first time in almost thirty years.
"Oh, mother... I'm so glad that you made it to Fólkvangr!" Freya said, wiping her tears off her eyes, "I've mourned you for so long... praying for your souls to reach the glorious Field! Oh! Where's father? I want to see him too!"
Frigg's warm smile slowly evaporated.
"Darling, I..." she stammered.
"What's wrong, mother?" Freya inquired, unable at first to understand the sudden change in her mood. Her mother gasped for air once, her eyes turning red, "Mother... where's father?" the dragoon asked, her jaw starting to tremble.
"I... failed him." Frigg muttered, stroking her daughter's hair.
"What do you mean..? Wait, no... no..." Freya exclaimed, the awful truth dawning on her.
"I'm sorry, kid..." Kain said, approaching them. "He passed away before the ritual was complete..."
Fragments of the past started flooding Freya's mind like a tidal wave: her disastrous attempts at learning music from her father, the time he taught her how to dance, his sudden illness and the letter she found when she came back to an empty home as a dragoon.
She sat up in complete silence, numb, absent, lost. A freezing cold grew inside her, turning her blood into ice and her heart into stone. She gave her own Dragon's Crest a scornful, bitter stare. For the first time in her life, she found the idea of eternal life repulsive: rotten to the core was this so-called paradise that let murderers like her in and doomed kind souls like her father's to oblivion. She would have embraced annihilation in a heartbeat if that could bring him back, but she knew full well that there was nothing left to save once one disolved into the Crystal.
"I'm sorry..." Frigg muttered, sitting up alongside her daughter.
"It's not your fault, mother... you even gave your own life trying to save his soul." Freya answered without even looking at her. She took a nearby fallen leaf and gazed at it for a moment before crushing it, "It's this awful place's fault... he deserved eternity more than any dragon slayer..."
"Shhh..! Father Berlioz is listening and he sure does loathe blasphemy..." Frigg worriedly whispered.
"The nerve of him, spying on us like that, forcing us to kill... I'm starting to think that returning to the Crystal ain't such a bleak fate after all..." Freya growled, the beast within her stirring once again. Her mother could have sworn that white, vaporous fumes emanated from her daughter's skin like steam before she took a deep breath, making them vanish.
A swirling, unnatural storm started forming above the house. Heavy rain began falling as the tempest grew more and more violent.
"Damnit, kid! You've really pissed him off!" Kain said, staring into the dark vortex.
The Allfather was furious.
"Father Berlioz, please give us more time... she doesn't know what she's say..!" Frigg begged, but he did not listen to her.
Before anyone could react, a blinding pillar of light obliterated the cherry tree, causing a deafening explosion that sent the three burmecians flying. They hit the walls of the house and then fell to the floor with a loud thud.
"Mother... grandfather... are you alright?!" Freya asked, rising to her feet.
"You should worry about yourself, rat!"
Like a lion, the burmecian god of war and death leaped out of the smoke cloud left behind by the lightning strike, charging straight at Freya spear in hand.
"Plate armor... how dishonorable..." she thought, realizing that she would have to work hard to even touch him. Her reflexes, honed through decades of fighting, allowed her to dodge his first attack: a direct thrust to the neck. She trapped his spear under her right arm and stepped into hand-to-hand range, her Dragon's Crest shining brightly.
"Eat this!" she shouted as the power of the mark flowed through her arm and into her fist. The dragon souls seemed to love the idea of hurting Berlioz, because they went all out, turning her punch into a mystical battering ram.
The warlike deity grunted as the dragoon's knuckles sank into his visor, destroying it. Freya ducked under his blind counterattack and quickly followed up with a fierce elbow to the gut that made the house tremble. She then tried exploiting the opening to disarm him, but Berlioz was having none of it: he bashed his armored head into her skull like a mace and then lifted her off the ground with an uppercut capable of piercing an airship's hull. In a fraction of a second, he grabbed her by the ankle and violently spun, throwing her like a rag doll against the burning cherry tree. Freya screamed in agony: a broken branch had impaled her on impact, pinning her to the trunk. She desperately struggled to free herself, but the blinding pain prevented her from channeling the Crest's power and pleading with the gods for strength was out of the question.
"Pray to me, rat! Beg for your life!" Berlioz howled as he closed in for the kill, ripping his ruined visor off his helmet to reveal two burning coals, shining from the depths of a pitch black abyss.
"Hands off my daughter, you coward!" Frigg screamed, landing on the god's back and frantically plunging a short knife into his neck. Completely unfazed by the attack, Berlioz grabbed her by the collar and smashed her into the ground with so much force that the floor cracked beneath her. Despite being still dizzy, the seasoned dragoon managed to roll sideways just in time to avoid a killing spear thrust.
"You've got some nerve, hag." the Allfather snarled, throwing in Frigg's direction a devastating barrage of punches, kicks and stabs. The badly battered burmecian managed to dodge most of them before getting stunned by a terrible blow to the face. Berlioz used the opening to run her through with his polearm.
"Hnnrrgghhh..!" grunted the dragoon, almost drowning in her own blood, but she was absolutely not going down without a fight. "Mother Reis, give me the strength to protect my family!" she prayed. She then spat on Berlioz's eyes, distracting him long enough to slip a green-glowing right hook through his guard, tearing off a piece of his helmet with her fist.
"Nice punch, Frigg!" Kain shouted, smashing an iron garden chair against Berlioz's head, knocking him back and forcing him to release his weapon, "You're messing with the wrong family, motherfucker!" the giant yelled as he charged towards his adversary, trying to take the fight to the ground.
The god roared, outraged by Reis helping mere mortals fend him off. He then kneed Kain in the jaw, lifting him off the ground as if the old dragoon was a feather pillow, and then he kicked him in the belly, sending him hurtling across the garden. Blinded by rage, Berlioz used his tremendous speed to dash past him while he was still mid-air and smashed him over the head with both fists before he reached the wall, burying him face-first into the ground.
"Kain!" Frigg yelled, her joints no longer able to support her body. She fell to her knees as the Destroyer walked towards her, his killing intent fueling his blazing glare.
"Beg for forgiveness, rat, and I might spare your soul." the Allfather snarled, gripping the spear shaft still sticking out of her chest.
The sight of Berlioz toying with her mortally wounded mother made something snap inside Freya's mind. The monster, chained deep within her, stirred and thrashed, breaking its bindings and crawling towards the surface like fire rising through a chimney.
"Die..." she wheezed, an ethereal haze dancing around her.
Berlioz shifted his attention to the youngest burmecian. Under his shredded helmet he cracked a crazed grin.
"Would you look at that, woman... looks like our little squabble has awakened the beast!" he joyfully exclaimed, ripping his spear from Frigg's body in one swift motion. She fell to the ground gasping for air, the hole in her chest magically sealing itself.
"Die... die... die... die..." Freya repeated, her flesh turning into burning white steel. The branch that held her prisoner burst into flames and disintegrated, releasing her tranced form from the tree.
"DIE!" she roared, launching a savage flurry of energy javelins towards Berlioz.
"Child's play!" he guffawed, twirling his weapon like a whirlwind to deflect the blinding bolts of light. When the dust settled, he realized that she had disappeared without him noticing. "Above..!" he thought, looking skyward just in time to see Freya dive-bombing him with a lance made of raw spiritual power. He blocked the attack with his spear's shaft, the sheer force of the impact fracturing the ground beneath him.
"That's more like it!" he exclaimed, burning eyes glaring at her through their interlocked weapons. He then launched her upwards with a swing of his polearm. Freya didn't even bother landing, effortlessly remaining airborne like a fiery goddess of death. Berlioz smirked at the sight and assumed a battle stance.
"Come, child! Your trial begins now!" he roared.