Bad Blood

This is Valhalla, Little Warrior... Here there's pain. Here there's hell. Don't stay here for me...

Right from the dawn of civilisation, war had wrought ruin on those fools who put their faith in love. It stole soldiers from sweethearts, warriors from wives, and it ensured that grief burgeoned; a putrid, swelling pustule that ate away everything good about love, like some necrotising bacteria on wounded flesh. It turned joy to despair, and corrupted hope until only thoughts of vengeance remained.

I knew that.

I'd felt it before; the suffocating weight on my chest which came from knowing the sun had winked out and plunged me into a world of darkness, ice, and hopelessness. Fenrir's maw had devoured all the sunlight from my world, and that understanding stole my breath, just as it had in the past, until my lungs burned against the bands of horror and grief that constricted around them.

Conn had died.

My mind rebelled against the notion and fire erupted around my hands again, magic skittering over my skin and crackling in the air around me, but there was no one left to fight. We'd let them go. It didn't matter that I'd slaughtered many of them, or that soot and ash still stained my skin from the rain of fire I'd brought down on our enemies. It wasn't enough. Not considering what they'd stolen from my cohort... What Fenrir had stolen from me.

How could I survive this? How could I do this again?