The Tempered Valkyrie

The sound of teeth gnawing on flesh grew louder as Mikaela regained consciousness. She couldn’t move her body, her arms and legs were held tightly together. Opening her eyes, she saw a giant bat-like creature gnawing into her shoulder as blood dripped down its chin and her arms.

The creature had enveloped her in its wings as it wrapped its long arms around her, binding Mikaela in one of the worst hugs she had experienced. She did not feel any pain, only the discomfort of intense pressure from the creatures' teeth against her muscles and bones. What bothered her the most was the chewing noises coming from the creature and the tearing of flesh.

As Mikaela held back her screams, the creature hadn’t noticed that she was awake since it was lost in the ecstasy of feeding on her. So, Mikaela could move her head around slightly to get an idea of where she was and what was happening. She and the creature were in some sort of forest clearing with the full moon shining high above. Besides the chewing sounds, she did not hear anything else around them.

Mikaela felt weak and tired, but she had to do something because she would be lying on the ground dead soon. Hoping the moonlight was enough, Mikaela closed her eyes and drew upon the light. Her senses started to waken, including her ability to feel pain. A sharp, intense heat grew from her shoulders and started to spread across her body.

It almost knocked her out as she continued gathering energy from the moon. When she felt that she had enough, Mikaela released the energy from her body and a burst of light enveloped her and the creature. 

Mikaela and the creature were flung to opposite sites of the forest clearing. The creature screamed as it fell to the ground in surprise and shock. Its wings were torn and its teeth had shattered from the force. Blood, most of which was probably Mikaelas, poured down its mouth onto its leathery body. 

Mikaela fell onto the ground and dislocated the shoulder that was missing large chunks of skin and muscle. In full command of her senses, she screamed aloud as the pain finally came to her. Fortunately, for both her and the creature, there was enough magic in the air that they started to heal fairly quickly. Mikaela saw her muscles mending and binding to each other as well as the tears and wounds on the creature's wing start to mend and heal.

No longer held by the creature, Mikaela got a better view of her surroundings. There was not much, just some shrubs, grass, and trees. No weapons, no solid cover, just her and the creature in the open. Mikaela ran into the forest to put some distance between her and the creature. With only a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, there was lots of tripping and getting scraped by branches and twigs. 

The forest was so quiet that even when running, Mikaela could hear the flapping of the bat creature’s wings cutting through the air as it rushed towards her. She arrived at a dense bunch of trees that afforded her some time. 

Her memory was foggy but, from what she could remember, she had been ordered to hunt down the creature before it became tempered. It would seem that she was too late to stop it and the tables had turned, so now she was its prey.

“Where are my stuff?” Mikaela was pretty sure she had come here armed and ready but everything was gone. A startling feeling hit Mikaela and she reached for her back. She felt two jagged stumps on her back where there should have been wings. As she touched it, the nerves flared with pain and she held back tears and a yelp.

The creature had done something to her, stripped her of her armor and wings. “No..no..no..” Mikaela tried to hold back her panic. A clipped valkyrie was worse than death....at least for her.

“Come out little birdie. Let's play a little more,” said the creature as it flew overhead, still looking for its prey. Every syllable of words that came out of its mouth caused Mikaela to feel dizzy and confused as if the words were laced with potent magic. 

Steadying her breathing and focusing her mind, Mikaela pulled in the ambient magic that surrounded the forest. She layered a sound buffer around herself to minimize the noise she was making and also hamper the creature's voice effect from muddling her mind again. Her own magic reserves were low but tempering needed a lot of magic so there must have been some sort of reservoir around here.

With a goal in mind, Mikaela dropped to her knees and tried to connect with the forest. “Come on…let me in,” she said as she tried to sync her magic with the forests. It felt draining and time-consuming but she managed to forge a connection. It was faint but it was enough. The link drew her into the forest roots and layers until she was flowing along the flow of magic. 

All the pain, discomfort, and tiredness faded away as she floated along with the magic. It would have been so easy to just let the waves take her and stay here forever, but she had to deal with the creature otherwise it would go to the nearest town and kill everyone. Instead of letting the flow take her wherever it wanted, she focused and grabbed onto it so that it would take her to the nearest reservoir of magic.

Yielding to Mikaela's command, the flow started moving her toward an old cabin and released her near it. The cabin was run down and probably hadn’t been in use for decades. The grass and shrubs were overgrown and had taken over the cabin as ivy and vines crept along the stone walls and into the broken windows.

As Mikaela moved closer to the cabin, she felt the pressure of intensely concentrated waves of magic hitting against her sound buffer. The reservoir was close, but she had to still find the exact location. The door to the cabin was gone, leaving a gaping opening that looked like something crashed through it.

Mikaela got to the entrance and entered the cabin. Given the dilapidated outside, the inside of the cabin was much the same as everything was in shambles and strewn across the floor. Dirt and dust accompanied grass and other vegetation as they took over the place. It was the skeleton sitting on some sort of rocking chair that drew Mikaela’s attention.

Vines and flowers had all but enveloped the skeleton and its chair and they seemed to pulse with energy as if alive. Focusing, Mikaela could see how densely packed with magic the skeleton was as it fed the vines and flowers around it, each not potent enough for even the most novice of magic users.

“This has to be it.” If there was any place to create that tempered bat creature this had to be it. Mikaela approached the skeleton and no sooner was she face to face with the skeleton did its bony arms grabbed at her face and released a horrendous screech. “FOUND YOU!” yelled a voice from the skeleton. 

A shockwave flung Mikaela backward and onto the broken debris in the cabin. She heard the screeching of the creature as it was getting closer to her so pulled as much magic as she could quickly and hid beside the entryway. 

The creature landed with a loud and heavy thud that shook the ground. Its large ears were twitching about and it was making clicking noises, probably hoping those enhanced bat senses would tell it where she was. In one of the creatures' hands was a deer that it held tightly, squeezing with each failed attempt at finding her.

The creature slammed the deer onto the ground and it landed with a smash that scattered blood and innards all around it. The creature bent its legs, unfurled its wings, and lunged its face into the now-dead deer. Into the corpse of the deer, the creature whispered dark sounds that sent chills up Mikaela's spine.

The blood around the creature started to glow a deep red and energy crackled around it as it raised its head off the ground. Its eyes held the same deep red glow and it released a loud screech towards the cabin. Mikaela raised a shield around herself as the screech tore brick from brick and shredded the cabin. 

No longer protected, Mikaela rose up from the ground and came face to face with the creature. It had used blood magic and death magic to increase its strength and magic beyond even that of a tempered being. 

Mikaela pulled all the magic she had into a spell of decay and destruction that ate the life out of everything around it, even her. She felt her body weaken and her blood boiled as the spell sapped everything around it. Before the spell could kill her, she launched it at the creature. 

As the decay spell flew from Mikaela, the creature covered itself in its wings as the spell hit it. The creature's wings melted away like candlewax next to a stove and revealed the bones and sinew of the creature's anatomy. Its face had melted a little bit as well and the disfigurement only added to its horror. 

Angry and in pain, the creature flew at Mikaela with alarming speed and hit her like a brick wall. Instead of allowing her to be flung back, the creature bit into her shoulder and flung her toward the direction of the skeleton in frustration. 

Mikaela’s body was broken beyond repair and she did not have long left, but this creature needed to die. With no options left and running out of time, Mikaela reached out to the skeleton and drank in its magic, her body becoming engorged with the same dark magic that tempered and twisted the creature in front of her.

Pain filled her entire body and mind as bones crunched and smashed into each other. Her skin felt on fire and thousands of little pores opened across her body and feathers sprouted from them. The stump on her back bled dark red blood that splashed across the cabin and coalesced into wings on her back. 

Where Mikaela once stood, there was now a harpy-like creature with dark red feathers covering her body and black wings that were almost too big to fit in the cabin. Her clothes had become golden armor that sang of magic and her hands and feet were talons as sharp as any sword she once had.

Tempered, twisted, and barely hanging on to consciousness, Mikaela launched herself towards the creature and flew both of them out of the cabin. She slammed the creature onto the ground and used her talons to tear apart what remained of its wings. The creature was not done yet as it pushed Mikaela off of it and shot beams of flames and acid at her, burning through its own reserves of magic.

The flames did not do much to Mikaela's armor, but the acid ate through it and singed her feathers. “I need to hurry, not long left,” Mikaela thought. Tempering destroys the mind and hers was nearing its limit. She flew into the air and pulled the wind into a tight spear above her, making it as dense as a diamond.

She threw the spear at the bat creature. As it soared through the air, the spear distorted the space around it and landed on the creature. It exploded into a tornado of wind that tore apart everything around it from the creature, and the cabin, to the forest trees, and left nothing untouched for a mile. 

It was finally over as the creature was shredded out of existence. But, Mikaela was not done yet as there was one tempered creature still left. She flew as high into the sky as she could manage. Above the clouds, the sun shone unhindered and was blindingly bright.

With the sun as her catalyst, Mikaela summoned a sphere of fire that burned as hot as the sun above her. With little time left, she let the sphere engulf her. The fire burned through her feathers and skin with such rapid speed that she barely had time to register any pain. So intense, and so hot, the fire that Mikaela was reduced to ash almost instantly. She hoped she had done her fellow valkyries proud.