Nearly a thousand souls moved like ants across ash, raising rough shelters. A few Valkyries braided a solid bastion from Aether, stone out of moonlight. Others seeded the ground with snares and hidden teeth, thorns against a rushing tide. Sigdrifa’s chest tightened first, then she breathed out; this was all that remained here, and Origin’s harvest felt like a scythe through wheat.
“These are the last Valkyries on the planet, Sigdrifa. How can you still be this optimistic?” Uroboros’s words fell like a candle guttering in wind.
She sighed, a leaf dropping into dark water. She’d once mapped many Valkyries onto a virtual Earth, stars marked on a glass sky. But most messages were last embers flaring before night. They were dying calls, asking her to shelter the weaker sisters.
“This is all that’s left? Are you joking with me?” Rage hit first, iron in her mouth, then Sigdrifa seized Uroboros’s collar. “I bled for this, and we saved barely a thousand?”
She didn’t care for humanity’s fate; the thought rang cold as ice. She’d gambled her life here to blunt Origin’s backlash, not for people, but to keep the Valkyries’ living flame from going out.
That vast Aether tree she birthed had been a canopy for the Aether-bearers, a great green hand over a storm. The difference between Valkyries and humans lay in that light; they sensed rain in a desert. Even in thin Aether, they grasped it, starlight chosen from billions.
Back at the Valkyrie Academy, ignoring the newest sprouts, there had been at least ten thousand ready blades. Now a glance here showed scarcely a thousand points of light. Under her shelter, Origin’s sickle had still reaped a field of lives.
Her fury burned like pitch, but Uroboros stayed calm as a still pond. She set down her twisting cube, and black mist drifted out like silk, easing Sigdrifa’s hands away.
Sigdrifa could be unreasonable, but they weren’t enemies tonight; they were oars in the same boat on a black river. Uroboros had chosen a shadowed corner, a curtain, and the others saw nothing.
Sigdrifa snorted, then let go, stone dropping from a fist. If Uroboros hadn’t wanted a hand on her collar, she’d have become smoke between fingers. If she’d let a wounded foe near with her guard up, she wouldn’t belong at this height.
“Can we talk calmly now?” Uroboros’s smile was a hairline on porcelain. She and Aphelia were two mirrors facing each other. Watching Sigdrifa stumble warmed her like a hidden pinprick of light; if Aphelia were here, she’d happily push it further.
“Hmph. So what now? A thousand Valkyries to revive a barren world, while the planet groans like ice about to crack. Do we sit and wait to die?”
Uroboros’s hidden smile deepened, veil of mist over her face as she toyed with the cube. Peace hung thin as frost; she chose not to shatter it.
“There’s no good way. Even if we rally and sail this flock into space, looking for a living world, even a mother-cradle, we lack the fuel for that sea. The Milky Way and the nearby fields are soaked by Origin’s backlash, waves that smashed coasts to shards. Conservatively, we’d cross at least four star systems before a habitable shore.”
She shook her head, numbers flickering like beads on a dark abacus. She’d rescued and counted both. Here, the sun and the moon took the lightest cuts, and Earth hadn’t cracked under their shifts.
From Aphelia’s touch with Origin, she’d gleaned its broken memories, glass swept by a storm. Many galaxies like the Milky Way had gone to dust in that recoil, and countless lives blew out with the shattering.
Crossing the void to find a home isn’t our problem, not for the three of us. Aphelia, Uroboros, and Sigdrifa could thread through stars like arrows. But how do you ferry a caravan across the sky?
Aphelia and Sigdrifa were deep wells, their strength a closed spring that fed itself. The others were cups brimming and spilling, born in thin Aether. Sensitive to the breeze, yes, but poor at trading breath with the world; recovery couldn’t be guaranteed.
So how do a thousand keep pace with Aphelia and Sigdrifa, with supplies for a trek four systems wide? It’s dragging a town across a desert; the mind would fray to ribbons.
“I’ll split the group with Aphelia. You handle support. We can hold for a while. If we move fast enough, we can…” Resolve sparked first, flint on steel, then her plan stepped out.
“Are you still the cold Sigdrifa? What changed you this much, to hope for smoke and call it rope?” Uroboros’s sigh misted like breath on glass.
She looked at Sigdrifa with a weary shrug, a wave hitting rock then falling back. The plan crumbled on one simple stone: these thousand Valkyries.
“You think they’re all like Violet? Don’t. Violet and her circle are the first ridge-line. You know the names better than me. The rest is the real hinge. If they all matched Violet, you might make it under your banner in time, but…”
At that turn, a shadow crossed Sigdrifa’s face like a cloud over sun. She knew the knot; not everyone stood at Violet’s height.
She spread Aether like rain across a field and felt uneven sprouts. A few neared Violet’s brightness, stars that punched through haze. They were maybe a hundred, a tenth at most.
The rest were the backbone, the beam and rope. Mid to weak, they could fight the previous horrors and touch space with tools, then drop back like divers. But a long voyage? That’s a mountain for sprinters; lungs would burn out.
Worse, almost half wore bandages like small white flags, frayed in wind.
Sigdrifa tasted the grit of it, then let the plan fall. If it were only the first tier, she and Aphelia could shoulder them and flee Earth. With half the flock wounded, wings wouldn’t cross an ocean of stars.
“Let it go. Wait for Aphelia, then we decide how to cut the knot. You came to work with her, not to trade deaths, right?”
“Who knows.” The words were stiff bark; the heart beneath said nothing.
Uroboros smiled without a sound, amused as a cat in shade. Seeing Sigdrifa drop the point, she set the almost-solved cube on the cockpit, one face missing like a tooth. Then she unspooled into black mist and slipped away.
“Go try, then, if you’re still Aphelia’s match,” she left behind like a glove thrown on stone.
Night fell like ink. Under the Valkyries’ hands, a passable camp rose, a ring of thorns against the dark. Inside crude Aether-built blocks, many leaned on each other like trees in wind, waiting for food to pass from palm to palm.
They were quiet as snow. Even with rations thin as paper, no one complained; the silence held like a vow.
They swallowed in small bites or pressed food into the hands of the badly wounded. Eyes lifted to a black well of sky. All around, it was still as a tomb, as if the road ahead had already lost its dawn.
