My Valkyrie

Maya was like a deer in the headlights of an approaching car—although this was not a car. It was her old friend, the undead zombie warrior she so dreadfully missed. 

It groaned in greeting and shambled inside Maya's clean apartment. Muddy and worn leather boots smudged loudly on the stone-tiled floor and closed the door behind it.

With another wild groan, the Draugr straightened its back and towered over Maya. The undead was tall. With its height, it scraped the ceiling with its iron helmet. Tangles over tangles of dry and frizzy black hair cascaded down from its helmet and over his shoulders.

Yellow teeth showed under his rotting beard, ridden with carious and other periodontal diseases. Any strong-willed person would have hurled out their breakfast already.

It trudged closer to Maya, cracking the floor underneath its heavy boots. Maya could barely move from the shock. The Draugr lifted its axe.

Maya screamed.

"Groooooaaaaar!" 

The Draugr hacked its axe at Maya. She dug her head out of the way. Panic gripped her and the mirror behind her shattered into a thousand pieces.

Thankfully, she wore house shoes. Otherwise, she would have gotten a shard lodged in her foot like she did as a child.

"What are you doing at my home!?" Maya exclaimed in outrage at having her apartment demolished. The Draugr turned its head at Maya. Just its freakish and fouling head.

What Maya didn't expect next was hearing it talk.

"Where's. The Armament. Of. Power?" The voice was deep, and strained, almost as if you put wood and glass pearls through the blender. But the voice was far more sinister than any exploding blender could manage.

Backed into a corner of her corridor, Maya had only two ways to run. 

First was the kitchen, which meant diving underneath the axe, which was not something she was looking forward to. 

And the second option: her bathroom. 

"Where?" Rumbled the undead. A rotten tooth fell from its mouth.

Maya chose the latter. She dove inside her bathroom and locked the frosted glass door behind her. She leaned against it for a breather, mentally steadying herself. 

Wait a sec. The gears in Maya's brain turned. I have a glass door… and that thing has a—

Maya jumped out of the way right before the axe could split her head in half. The door shattered, sparkling her and the bathroom with shards. She scrubbed her hand and knee on the floor. 

"Cursed— argh! OH, that hurt!" Maya cried out and bit her lip. "I told my parents replacing the hardwood doors with glass doors was a horrible idea. Doesn't matter how much natural light it provides." 

Maya had seconds before the Draugr would burst through the door entirely. She hid in the second section of the bathroom and closed the second glass door she had in there—that one, on the other hand, was on her. 

She liked the extra light in her bathroom. 

"Think, Maya, think." Maya tapped her forehead with her fist. "I'm stuck on the second floor with a rotting undead after me! No problem, nooooo."

Her eyes darted to her window. She looked three stories down. "I could jump out of the window and hope I don't break my leg… again—" 

Maya shrieked when she heard more glass shattering. The Draugr was almost through but tried to open the rest with the handle. Thank goodness its brains are as rotten as its body.

Backing away, Maya opened the window. She gulped. "There's no way I can make it without breaking my leg… I wish Val were here."

Maya paced around. The Draugr almost figured out how a door works. She then remembered the old, unwashed sheets she put away in the cabin beside her. 

Immediately, she raided the cabin and tied the sheets into an impromptu rope, almost dropping it when the Draugr's startled her with its rumbling. 

She clutched onto the rope for dear life as she carefully roped herself down right before the Draugr barrelled through the second door. 

Thank you, brother, for dragging me into all our shenanigans. Maya reminisced fondly about the countless times they had snuck out of the house and taught her all the required skills. 

Until Maya noticed a tug.

The Draugr was pulling on the rope of bedsheets. 

Maya had only two viable options left, again. A) face the Draugr and die, or B) jump and maybe not die. 

Neither was great, but Maya was almost down anyway—and she doubtlessly didn't want to face the Draugr's noxious breath. 

"Not like I'll break my leg like last time," she muttered under her breath and let go.

—ˋˏ✦ˎˊ—

Hooray, I did not break my leg! Celebrated Maya while her brain blew into a party horn.

Instead, she merely sprained it as she fell with a loud thud against the grassy and unmaintained ground. 

Didn't hurt at all, Maya groaned as she expelled all the air from her chest and rolled onto her back. She looked up to see the Draugr disappointingly examining the rope like an old fisher who had no luck hooking something. 

"Better luck next time, Rotty!" Maya laughed but stopped when the Draugr headed back inside her apartment, probably to resume the chase. 

"OH shoot!" Maya gathered herself up and headed to the nearby lake. She knew there were barely any neighbours around at ‌this time of day—mostly stay-at-home parents. Maya couldn't pull them into this madness. Or explain why she wore nothing but her nightgown.

That would make for quite an awkward confrontation.

The tall oak trees of the nearby forest greeted her when she arrived at the site where she found Val's shield, and right where the previous Draugr attack happened. Possibly not the best place to be, but Maya was out of options. 

Her eyes darted left and right. The Draugr was not here yet. She sighed in relief and brushed back her coils from her sweating forehead. "That's the most amount of running I've done since January. I'm spent." 

Resting her hands on her knees, Maya noticed the sounds of rustling, which was accompanied by a loud, undead groan. "Oh, come on, I need a break!" Maya resumed running with audible sobbing. 

Hiding behind a tree, Maya retrieved her phone, which she had tucked securely in her chest.

Her first thought was to call Val, but she had no phone. She opted for the next best thing: Austin. 

"Come on, come on, pick up!" 

The phone rang, trying to connect to the other party. A few seconds went by, but for Maya, it felt like minutes when she was exposed to danger.

"Pick up your DAMN phone!" 

"Ghostbusters, watcha want?"

"This is not the time for jokes, Austin!" 

Snark laughter followed from his end. "There's always time for a joke, lol. What do you need? You hate making phone calls." 

Maya grumbled, "I know, but this is serious. Listen, I need your help. I'm alone in the woods with nothing on me but my nightgown and I need-" 

Her phone beeped. The line was dead as Austin had ended the call. She immediately phoned him again. 

"What the heck!?" she shouted. "Why?" 

"Listen, Maya, I know you want to try out a relationship since you never went on a date-" 

"Ouch, that hurt." 

"But I ain't providing this kind of service-" 

"Stop spouting nonsense! I'm in serious need of help—AAAH!" 

"Maya? Maya!?" Austin now panicked. "Hey, what's going on? I'm sorry for the joke. Talk to me." 

Maya couldn't pick up the phone. She dropped it when the Draugr felled the tree she was hiding behind with its axe. 

Wide-eyed, she stared at the Draugr and heard Austin's amplified voice—she must have accidentally hit her phone on loud before she dropped it. 

"Austin! I'm getting attacked by a Draugr!" She dodged with a loud yelp as the Draugr lashed out at her. "I'm running away into the nearby forest. Please help!" 

The Draugr crushed her phone under his boot. His imposing body towered before her like a rotting, grey tree.

Maya gulped uneasily, hoping her last message went through. "There's no way you'll let me go, huh?" 

The Draugr roared. 

"I take it as a no."

Maya hobbled through the woods again with her sprained leg and only one house shoe on, the other was lost somewhere on her run. 

The Draugr was blissfully slower, trudging after her through the muddy terrain.

Panting, feet aching, Maya avoided the Draugr's assault the best she could as it uprooted everything in its path. Soon it would deforest the entire place. 

Or not, since the next turn Maya took ended up in an ambush with two more Draugr. They seized her, grabbing her by her arms like last time. 

"Can we please not do this?" Maya begged, trying to wiggle her way out both physically and otherwise. "I have a paper to edit and stuff to read. Can we reschedule? I'm a bit pressed lately." 

The Draugr returned her pleading with a bored groan. They were utterly unimpressed by her schedule. 

Maya rolled her eyes at her failed attempt and noticed a shadow vault between the trees, then slipped under the shadow of the Draugr. 

"Where is it, woman?" A voice, deep and nerve-wracking to the core, echoed from the shadows. It instilled the question into Maya's head, singeing her brain with cold needles to compel an answer. "The shield's gone, where's the—" 

"Listen, I don't know what you're looking for exactly," said Maya, stunning shadow-controlled Draugr, who didn't expect to be interrupted. "We're minding our own business at my home… which you attacked!" Maya stomped with indignation. "How do you expect me to explain this to the authorities?"

The shadow remained silent. The Draugr blinked several times with what eyelids remained, trying to wrap its head around Maya's boldness. 

It snatched Maya by the jaw. "Where is—"

The heads of the Draugr gonked like church bells as a shield hurtled through the air and clanked against their helmets with the precision of a flying frisbee.

Disintegrating into dust, the Draugr who held onto Maya disappeared. Val caught her in her fall and caught her shield—looking like the heroine Maya imagined her to be. 

"Are. You. Alright?" wheezed Val, sounding winded. In her arms, Maya could hear her frantic breathing and beating heart. "Saw. The." Val gasped loudly. "Damage. Ran. To find. You-" 

"Woah, hold on." Maya slipped out of Val's embrace just in time to catch her as the Valkyrie dropped to her knees, wheezing and coughing harshly. This is bad. Really bad.

Val clutched at her chest, her breathing shallow and laboured. "Hard to... breathe." Her amber eyes flicked to the half-disintegrated, tall Draugr crawling on the ground, clinging stubbornly to its cursed existence. With a trembling effort, she tried to rise. "Need. To. Finish. It—"

"Leave it," urged Maya, looping Val's arm over her shoulder to steady her. "You're in no shape for this. Let's just get out of here."

—ˋˏ✦ˎˊ—

How far did Maya make it with one shoe on and an asthmatic Valkyrie at her side while chased by the undead? You guessed it. 

Not. Far.

More Draugr emerged from the familiar woods, their rotting forms shuffling closer. Though slow and clumsy, their sheer numbers and persistence closed the gap between them. The Draugr were barely an arm's length away, their outstretched claws grasping at thin air.

Maya pushed forward, her breath coming in sharp, uneven gasps. Val leaned heavily on her, each step a struggle. Neither of them had the strength to fight—Val, barely able to stand, and Maya, who never fought anyone other than the bullies back in school. Their pace was faltering, and escape was slipping further out of reach.

I don't need to be special to fight, thought Maya. She glimpsed at the shield hanging from Val's arm. The idea that came to her mind was both bold and stupid. A perfect combination for a reckless endeavour. 

"Val, I have an idea, but I need your help." Maya felt horrible for asking. Val struggled to breathe and not stumble over her own feet, yet Maya wanted her to do more. "I need you to put some distance between us and them."

Val's blond hair fell over her pale brown and sweat-drenched face, but she pulled Maya closer. "Hold. Tight," she gasped before leaping into the air. 

The jump wasn't particularly far or high, but they put some distance between them and the Draugr. They crash-landed into the bushes with a rough thud. Mid-air, Val twisted her body instinctively, shielding Maya from the brunt of the impact. 

She hit the ground hard, a pained grunt escaping her lips as she absorbed the force of the landing. Maya lay atop her, momentarily dazed but unharmed, thanks to Val's protective reflexes.

Looking grey and gasping, Val could barely move anymore. 

"Maya," she coughed for air. "Are… you safe—"

Maya unstrapped the shield from Val's arm. Her eyes widened. "What. Are. You… Doing?" 

"Helping you." Maya yanked the shield free. "Sorry," she smiled, "I'll be back."

She ran with the shield in hand.

Clasping it against her chest, Maya tried to syphon some of its strength to her. Sadly, it didn't quite work like that, but merely holding it gave her some. 

I need to do this quickly and get back to her. How hard can it be to fight off some Draugr, anyway…

Maya's laughter evaporated as soon as she spotted the first Draugr. Gritting her teeth, she picked up speed and charged, slamming into it shield-first. The force sent the creature hurtling into the nearby lake, but the momentum carried Maya forward as well. 

She skidded across the ground, the shield beneath her acting like a sled. Her chaotic slide knocked off a pair of Draugr from their feet, but her ride came to an abrupt halt when the tall Draugr planted its foot firmly against the shield, pinning her in place. 

Maya looked up, heart pounding, as the undead loomed over her, its glowing eyes staring down menacingly.

"Hey there," Maya replied meekly. "Can we talk, please?" she asked the Draugr, batting her eyes innocently. It snatched her up by the neck like a kitten. "Oww, oww, oww, watch out for the hair!" 

"Gruuuurgh," the Draugr breathed out a toxic green fume into Maya's face. The shadow's voice echoed again. "Useless, woman. Will death make you tremble?" 

Her eyes widened when the Draugr levelled its axe to her neck. Maya squirmed in its hold and kicked barefooted against its chest, but couldn't pry herself free. 

In her mind, Maya was already dead. She had hoped to take out at least one of the Draugr but watched the one she knocked away return unharmed, yet drenched and a plastic bag covering its rotten face. 

Oh my hubris, muttered Maya. I thought I could take on at least one. 

Her last sliver of hope was that at least Val could make it out and recover on her own, without Maya running straight to her death. She closed her eyes, unable to look any further.

"Timber!" 

Someone yelled. Roots snapped from the ground, and Maya landed with her butt against the ground. She hissed and saw the tall Draugr pinned down by a large oak tree with the rest crushed for good.

One small Draugr managed to dodge it. However, it didn't come far as Val put it into a deadlock, lifting it from its feet and choking the living dead out of him. 

The veins on Val's muscular arms bulged. Her veins glowed brightly as she popped the head from his body, sending it flying into the sky before Val collapsed to her knees, panting. 

Maya stumbled to her, holding the Valkyrie's face in her hands. "Val, talk to me. Are you alright?" She put her ear against Val's chest, listening to her breathing. 

A pained wheezing was all she could make out. Val took Maya's hand in hers. "Home. Safe. For us." 

Maya nodded, biting her lower lip, unable to suppress a tear. "Of course, let's get home."