The Merry Maids of Pwnzor--A Valkyrie's Tale

With the rustling of a thousand tiny wings, the forest awoke as the faerie-folk sifted through the leaves, bedewing every flower and spiderweb as they passed. A shaft of sunlight struck Winnie's closed eyes, and she looked up. A roof of boughs was over her head, her backside damp from dew. She remembered falling asleep to the murmer of crickets as fireflies had glinted among the tree trunks. Enormous fireflies. That trailed foxfire of silvery green and blue as they sang their ethereal hymns that named every star and tree, every flower and stone.

She sat up with a growing dread as her pulse quickened and her breathing became slightly faster. This was not the same forest. Or was it? She looked down, and saw she was wearing the same flowing robes with a gold-clasped girdle that she had been wearing before she had awoken in her room in BattleOn. Her heart was pounding now. She remembered BattleOn, but it seemed more and more like a dream every minute. THIS was real. That HAD been real. Where was she? Which had been her? She swallowed down the panic that made a moan tremble in her throat. Which was real?

"Both", a tiny voice whispered.
Winnie went cold and rigid with shock. That voice was not hers. Danger brought clarity. She closed her eyes still seated on the cool moss, and gathered the energy of life from around her, as glowing blue-purple strands in her mind. Her loose sleeves slid down her bare arms as she raised her hands in the air and focused a web of healing energy between them. Then she flung them outward. If there was any living sentient nearby, the web would touch them and she would know who/what was there. If not, that meant it was not living...or that she was losing her mind.

She immediately knew she had found life, but it was not the warm glow she was accustomed to. The touch of life in her web was the trembling jitter that the spider feels when a fly is caught. A voice as clear as a silver bell came from a fountain of fern and iris nearby.
"Halp!"
In her mind's eye, she could see the lines were somehow wrapped around a blue-green spark! Thoughts came rushing: so bright, so much life, but in such a small being! She couldn't imagine what it could be. It was caught in her web! Had she done that? What could be trapped by life itself?!
When she opened her eyes, another shock: she could still see her energy web! It looked blue-white instead of purple. What was going on?

"Release me, I pray, O great one!" The silvery voice sang, in a truly heartbreaking voice. The sound of it went straight to the heart like a well-aimed arrow.Winnie's wide eyes began to well up with tears, despite her caution. She did not want to hurt it, whatever it was--it sounded so sweet and delicate and vulnerable!
"I don't know why you are trapped, but I want answers first!" she replied ina trembling voice.
"Come out where I can see you!"
She rolled to her knees, twisting the long robes around her calves, and looked about the glade of trees.
There was no reply. She gulped, and the thought that she might be killing this delicate, beautiful creature made her heart miss a beat. Closing her eyes, she could still see the little bundle of life, bright as ever. She wasn't sure how, but as if it were a fish on a line, Winnie's mind tugged on the skein of purple energy, and the thing came toward her. Opening her eyes, she saw the ferns rustle as something slipped through their fronds. There it was! The blue-whiteness wrapped what seemed to be a pocket of air, until it came closer. Winnie could see it was a tiny, winged, person-shaped thing! It somehow changed, chameleon-like, to match whatever was behind it, so that at first it seemed the little being was made of crystal, or water.
"You need not entrap the faerie-folk, kind Mistress! I am of no consequence, and could not harm your greatness, even if I wished to! I beseech you, release me from this eldritch entanglement!" The voice quavered so sweetly and piteously that without another thought, Winnie waved her hand, dispelling the web.

Its laughter sparkled through the air with a thousand multicolored twinkles, falling in a shower around Winnie. She could not see the creature anymore, nor did her inner sight reveal its whereabouts.
"Fool Outlander!"
The heartbreakingly sweet voice now sneered with venomous scorn.
"No mere faerie have you to contend with! I have breathed the air of Asgard for more than two millenia!"
The green glow flared bright.
"The wrath of a Pixie will be the last sight you behold!"

A series of stuttering flashes exploded in front of Winnie's eyes, blinding and disorienting her. If she had been standing, she would have stumbled, for she could no longer sense which way was up. As it was, she fell forward onto her hands. The creature's shrill laughter mocked her as it circled her. Blinking rapidly with disbelief, Winnie could not tell the difference whether her eyes were open or shut, and it was very frightening. She took a deep breath and told herself to think like a Paladin. She could heal blindness, to a limited degree. Besides, she didn't think she would need to see to bring this enemy down. It's own pride would likely do that, in the end.

Sitting back to kneel, she pulled inward, drawing energy from around her into a protecting purple cocoon. Suddenly she could see the glowing green of the Pixie flaring through the bubble of light. It hung like a yellow-green star to her right, and seemed to be gathering light to itself as well; a swelling star that glared with a certain malevolence: it was preparing to make the final blow. Again following an instinctive impulse, she readied herself. The Pixie swooped upwards like a falcon, and dove towards her. Just as the tiny fey comet was about to hit, Winnie squeezed somehow. The purple bubble turned inside out in an instant, leaving her outside, and the Pixie trapped within. A silent flash glared from the bubble, bright even through Winnie's closed eyelids. The cocoon held strong.

A despairing wail keened through the glade as Winnie opened her eyes. Her vision pulsed black and green with her heartbeat, and all shapes were still shadowy suggestions, but even now things were becoming clearer as she squinted. She shut her eyes again. The Pixie buzzed in its trap like a hornet in a jar; flashing darts of green and yellow light stabbed at the walls of its prison, to no effect. A final storm of lightning-like flashes erupted inside. Without another sound, the little shape inside dropped like a stone to the ground and was still. Then a faint voice, trembling with frailty, spoke in a heartrending wail of sorrow, once again bringing unbidden tears to Winnie's eyes.

"Alas! I am cut off from the land of the living! Even now the cold earth drains away what is left of me!"
*gasp*
Winnie gritted her teeth against the almost-irresistible longing to free the delicate creature. She remembered her training, and breathed deeply and evenly as she held the cocoon firmly with her mind, even now feeding it new tendrils of healing energy.
"O! Fenaerielle and Temnith, Celedniath and Cooter, no longer shall we get bombed on lotus nectar--"
"Cooter? Get bombed?" Winnie snorted incredulously.
"--alas! Nor shall we sing the "Dirty Dryads" song under Asgard's diamond-studded cloak of velvet of night!"
*whimper*
Winnie peeked over. Oops, nope, it wasn't done yet.
"Farewell, sweet earth and sky Farewell green bough and pure brook!"
*cough*
"I go to nourish Yggdrasil's root!"
*sigh*.......................................................
"And now..."
Winnie rolled her eyes.
*wheeze*
"I...I...f-forgive y-you..."
*wheeze*
"big...meanie...Pixie...hating...type...person!...aahhhhhhh!"

Winnie's eyes again rolled heavenward at the Pixie's overblown histrionics. The little glow inside was as steady as one of Warlic's light-globes, yet it lay still for quite some time. The birds tentatively resumed their singing in the trees above. Finally, as Winnie figured it would, the little figure sprang upright, and a very indelicate howl tore through the peace of the glade.

"YEEEEAAAAARRRRRGH! FINE! YOU'VE GOT ME! I CAN'T GET OUT!" It actually sounded a little panicky now. Winnie knew the bargaining would begin soon. Then perhaps she could find out what was going on without someone interrupting the flow of the story again. Because she really hated that. Like when people took what was happening to a character and assumed they could just take over in order to "fix" all the protagonist's problems. Oh yeah. That was annoying.

A tiny sound like two beetles bashing heads interrupted her reverie. A tiny light sparked as the Pixie snapped its fingers. She could see it, she realized with relief. That little trick had almost cost her.
"Come on, come on! I don't want this to last all day, so whaddaya want?! A pretty pony? Hair that doesn't look like a hobo's? How about some nice ruby slippers? No? Then what!?"
Winnie looked at the Pixie like a cat at a canary. "I'll ask the questions around here, tinkerbell." she purred.
Her grin was as sharp and cold as a shark's.

OOC *This is mine. No touchy. Do whatever you want in Battleon, but leave Asgard alone for now until I get the background up and running. ~Pooks*

A distraught Kayleen burst into Yulgar's Inn, surprising her breakfasting friends. They had barely time to notice her tear-stained face and the disarray in which her hair and clothes were before she cried out, "Has anyone seen Winnie?" The nigh-musical sound of hundreds of voices replying in the negative answered her, and she screamed in anguish. "Where could she have gone, where could she be?"

Juliana stepped over to put a consoling hand on her friend's back. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Why do you want to see Winnie?"

Kayleen sobbed. "I... I told her I'd gone over, told her I'd turned evil again. We argued. She was so, so disappointed. I gave her all night to cool off, gave myself the time too, and three hours ago I decided I'd waited long enough. I tried to find her again. I wanted to talk to her, tell her why I'd gone over, and do whatever it took to make things right. But I can't find her, and I can't sense her anywhere. I used all the usual spells, plus a few I came up with on the spot, and then I poked around in all three major cities--that's why it took me three hours--and there's no trace of her." She gulped. "Winnie, Winnie, Winnie, where have you gone?" A trickle of Kayleen's magic flowed out with those words to search for Winnie. Juliana added a pulse of golden power to augment her friend's now-flagging strength.

"You've been looking for three hours, Kayz," Juliana informed the half-dragon sympathetically. "There's a lot of us here. Maybe we could work together?" She glanced over at her huge number of friends. Almost all of them contributed something to the magic, in fact, it was all of them save for those who weren't sure how it was done. For twenty seconds they waited, as their magic washed over the entire planet, a corona around Lore of a spell that sought Winniefred Brave.

"Nothing," sobbed the dragon-girl as the twenty seconds ended and their brobdingnagian spell petered out. She was so changed from the infuriated monster who had invaded the Inn--had it really been only a few days before?--and carried off Drakath that none who didn't know otherwise would believe that they were the same person. "She's not here, she's not anywhere in the whole world."

"Hmm," was Juliana's only response. She had pulled out a simple dagger of pure diamond out of her bag and stared at it indecisively. Her face turned grim, like she had made up her mind but wasn't happy about her choice. "I really didn't want to do this, but we have to know. One way or another, we have to know what happened to Winnie."

"What? Four hundred-odd heroes just cast a spell to scour the planet for Winnie, and we turned up nothing. What're you going to do alone that could do us one better?" asked Kivosk, one of the newer Regulars and a lifelong friend of Juliana's little brother.

In reply, she gritted her teeth and stretched out her left hand in front of her, palm up. "I'm going to wake my own blood," she warned. "The ceremony is probably going to be very frightening, and definitely very messy. You might want to stand back unless you don't mind getting covered in great globs of glowing gunk." Then she brought the crystalline dagger down, slashing a bloody trail across her own wrist, and screamed in pain.

Several of her friends rushed forward to help her, but Juliana shook her head to warn them back. Through gritted teeth, she gasped, "I call the power... of the blood... of the fallen. I have given my life... in the service of the powers of good..." As she spoke, the brilliant red blood that spilled from her arm and pooled on the floor began to glow a deep, mysterious, ghostly blue. Now everyone else understood what she had meant by "great globs of glowing gunk." Though her arm was spattered with dark gore and her skin was even paler than usual by now, Juliana kept speaking. "This blood... spilled once and again... is the source of my power... and the sustaining of my life... renewed. I call this power... as a fallen hero..." She closed her eyes and her entire body flashed blue. When she reopened her eyes, they were blue and swirling with power. The same image appeared in each of their minds: Lore as it looked from outer space. The image swiftly showed every bit of the planet and registered as Winnie-negative. This was repeated with a larger space, increasing and increasing, until it showed something entirely outside anything they had ever imagined. A huge expanse of white--they couldn't comprehend what it really was--but it registered Winnie-positive. Juliana sighed, and the image faded to mist that slowly dispersed. When they could all see properly again, she was binding her left arm with a long strip of linen that she had produced from, well, somewhere.

"Well?" inquired Kayleen. "What did we just see?"

Juliana sighed again. She tucked the trailing end of the bandage into its folds with an expert hand, her entire forearm now being covered with white linen, and studied her handiwork for a long moment. "Well, the good news is that we now know precisely where Winnie is. The bad news is that it's not anywhere we want her to be. I'm sorry, Kay, but she's dead. Again."

"How?" Kayleen couldn't wrap her mind around it. To lose Winnie again, particularly right after falling out with her...

"I'd like to know that too," the healer admitted. "But I have no idea. In fact, we never even figured out how she came back to life in the first place..."

Nammie stepped forward and cleared her throat. "I know how she came back," she told her friends. "I did it. I brewed a resurrection potion I'd found the recipe for in a really old book, and at first I thought it didn't work. But then Winnie reappeared in the middle of everything, which made it obvious that it had worked after all."

Juliana frowned. "Oh, dear. This means... you can't have known. They didn't put it in the really old books, but there's, well, a problem with those kinds of things. There are rules, you see. Unless you have special permission to get tangled up in the forces of Life and Death, any such attempt will be... incomplete. Either you end up with a monster, or with a real live person who dies again within the week. Your good intentions combined with Winnie's own powers precluded the monster option, so this is the result."

"Um..." Nammie was at a loss for words, casting desperately about for something, anything, to say. "How do you know all this stuff, anyway?"

The young healer smiled, a strange glint coming into her purple eyes. "I have that special permission, though there are enough strings attached that I can't use it to save Winnie. The rules are unbelievably strict. Perhaps that's even a good thing, though it's very hard on us. I suspect it's the only reason we haven't had an apocalypse in the past decade, so I don't like to complain too much."

"So that's what we can't do to save Winnie," Kayleen clarified glumly. "What can we do?"

Juliana grinned outright. "Invent a new way?"

"My name is not Tinkerbell, honored mistress!" the Pixie said, in a voice of chipped ice. "I shall hardly tell you my Truename, but you may call me--" the Pixie's voice dwindled to a mosquito's hum.
A wave of dizziness enveloped Winnie, and a roaring filled her ears. She thought she was going to pass out, but then the sensation was gone, as quickly as it came.
"Whoa..." Winnie said weakly. The Pixie looked up at her with a blank expression of surprise as she raised her hand to her head.
"Welcome back, mistress," it said carefully. "I expect you will be in Asgard a bit longer this time."
It was then that Winnie realized that, instead of the clear, fresh cool of morning, the air had turned warm, and the slanting light of evening filtered through the trees.
"Despite your friends finding you so quickly," the sprite continued, "they will not be able to come to your aid without the help of the Aesgir." The musical laugh of the creature filled the golden air.
"We have all the time in the world."

The sound of rapid strides came from the hall outside, and was quickly followed by a sharp banging on the doors of the chamber. Magnhildr Freysdottr, Warchieftess of the Valkyrie, did not look up from the floor, where she sat among furs and cushions.
"Enter, daughter." she said calmly, despite the unseemly banging. She didn't understand why, but she was sure she would know soon enough. The meaning of what she looked at on the floor, however...that needed more attention than she could spare for--
The heavy doors swung open and banged against the stops as a tall blonde woman strode through them.
"Battlesinger Aerindiss bids me to tell you: the healer's friends have found her!" Magnhildr looked up sharply.
"Impossible!" she snapped.
"She asks that you come with all haste to the Oracle's Aerie!"
"Don't be foolish, child!" She said sternly. The young woman fell silent.
She paused and took in the girl: The battlemaiden before her had gone rigid at the rebuke, and stood with an intense look on her face as she stared at the floor. She had obviously run the entire way, but was not even winded--and she shouldn't be--although a few wisps of blonde hair had come loose. She was armed--as she should be--and stood ready and alert; moreover, she held her tongue. All as it should be. Not panicked. Certainly not hysterical or addled. Magnhildr sighed. The maiden was looking more than a trifle alarmed. Which probably reflected the state of the one who had sent her.
"The Battlesinger sent you herself?" she inquired sharply.
A single curt nod was the answer.
"And she herself spoke what you said to me?"
Another nod. The Chieftess thought quickly: if this were true, then the Lore heroes were moving more quickly than expected after the healer's latest disappearance. Which it meant they were working together. At last!
She rose to her feet in a smooth motion, flipping the baldric over her shoulder with practiced ease, so that her broadsword's scabbard slapped into it's place between her shoulderblades.
"Forgive my rebuke, sword-daughter. Let us not keep mistress Aerindiss waiting!"
She had slipped her other arm through the straps of her buckler to grab her fur cloak, which she has cast over her shoulders in the same motion. She spun towards the door, armed and ready for whatever would come. Whether she rises from sleep or bath, table or winecup, a Valkyrie must be ready to fight by the time she stands up. Her eyes fell on what she had been looking at before the summons had come. Now it began to make sense, after all. As the women walked quickly to the door, the oracle-bones cast upon the floor scattered, like teeth from a kicked skull. In the minds of the two women who had seen the runes, however, the symbols of The Wheel, The Sword, Chaos and Death would not be so easily dispelled.

Juliana first tried enchanting the mirror in room 42 to let us get to Winnie, through the looking glass. Fail.
"I don't get it." Vamp said, looking at the mirror. "We said the spell, we see ourselves, we can't get through."
"I don't think that the mirror is the right kind." Kayleen said, taking it off the wall and dropping it out the window.
"Hey!" Said a voice from below, whom apparently the mirror had hit.
"Sorry!" Juliana said, running downstairs. It was her job as the town healer to heal injuries, and, it seemed there was a rather large one down 2 stories.
"Do you think that Winnie's dissappearance may have to do with Kayleen's moodyness?" Pooky asked nammie.
"I guess. They were close..." Nammie whispered back.
"I know. Look what happe-" Pooky was cut off by a large column of flame hurling between her and Nammie.
"I HEARD THAT!" Kayleen said, shooting them a glare. She opened her wings wide.
"Sorry! I couldn't help but notice that Since Winnie was stolen you've been different!" Nammie said, backing off.
"She has a point, Kayleen." Vamp admitted, still a bit scared that in a second he may be crispy.
"I suppose your right.." Kayleen said, "But we have to find her soon."
"Were doing our best." Vamp said, smiling. "Your not going to burn us, right? Becuase if you did then you'd probobly never find her, becuase there are more than 500 of us..."
"I'll keep the fire inside.." Kayleen said, walking downstairs, sulking.
Juliana then returned with Kaotic. "Sorry, Kayleen, you need to watch where you- Hey, where's Kayleen?"
"She went downstairs." Pooky informed her, sighing. "She's been moody since Winnie got taken."
"Well, I'll try to help her. Meanwhile Kao's got an idea!"
"Yes, all you have to do is..."