"So you haven't left yet?" Walking out of a holistic portal with feathers of pure white falling down the trail, Helga stood tall before Asmodia.
Looking over the former demon lord's shoulder, she noticed an even bigger pile of valkyrie bodies than the one she'd seen on her previous visit. Reaching for the light blade on her hips, Helga started walking closer to Asmodia seated on the same table as before. Shifting her eyes back onto the demon, her teeth gritted shut in rage and a deep burrowing frown appeared on her forehead.
"You've gathered more valkyries I see," taking the blade made from the remains of a god, Helga was no longer willing to waste a speck of time. "I thought you could redeem yourself by walking the walk to the consciousness, but I suppose a demon like yourself has no remorse and thus no potential of the kind!"
Blinking her eye, Asmodia covered her pupils in a light film of a gooey dark membrane that protected her from the glaring light emitting out of the god-blade.
"They'll return to the realm of valkyries so why do you care if they die once or twice?" Masking her fear, Asmodia tried to buy some time with chatter.
"You think I was born yesterday?" Seeing right through her tricks, however, Helga clutched the blade tight and let her feathered helmet flutter as she flung herself toward Asmodia. "Die!"
In a flash, she swung her blade across the desk and cut through Asmodia's arm before her mind could even comprehend Helga's actions. Like a laser shot from an angel's eyes, the desk, the room, and her flesh were all burning restlessly at the area of the strike. Only when her arm fell to the ground did Amsodia finally notice what had happened.
"Fuck…" She muttered, blocking out the pain with her ability to turn hurt into strength.
Leaping away from the valkyrie queen, she heard the sound of the table collapsing, but with her eyes fixed on Helga she didn't pay it any mind. Instead, healing her arm from the mana she'd gathered from the blade, Asmodia made sure to stay prepared for whatever the queen was about to throw at her again.
"Time de-acceleration!" With a blink, the time within the confined space warped like a crushed carton.
Slowing everything down in a space looming between the physical and the metaphysical, she was striking a risky bargain. For if she lost control for a moment, they both would be forever stuck in a slower than average suspension of time.
"Etherios could slow down time as well, but that didn't stop him from falling," unfazed by the manipulation of time, Helga moved in a spiraling circle slowly inching closer to Asmodia.
"Etherios was moronic enough to betray the creator, what else can you expect from someone like him?" Asmodia added, still trying to bind the queen into a loop of dialogue.
"Again…" Moving the sword in front, Helga refused to engage in a conversion. "I don't care about what you think!"
Racing towards Asmodia, she swung her blade once more, but this time with the slowed time, and having expected the attack, Asmodia dodged by dissipating into a cloud of mist and appearing behind Helga's body. Kicking her armored waist, Asmodia thrust Helga forward while also getting enough momentum to push herself back at a safer distance.
For the brief moment she had while Helga recovered from the strike, the mistress of dark noticed the burning grooves on the walls left behind after each strike of the god-blade. It was almost as if the trajectory of the blade kept carrying the strike further no matter how many objects came in its path.
"You insolent rat!" Getting up from her knees, Helga glared at Asmodia from over her shoulder.
"I don't have time for this," not letting the queen recover any further, Asmodia pushed her hands further out before shutting her eyes for the briefest of moments. "Perfect clones: Helga, the queen of valkyries!"
Opening her eyes once more, she had turned into a perfect copy of her opponent with the same abilities and magic, but it came at the cost of losing her affinities for a short while. Reaching to her waist she drew out the clone of the god-blade and held it sternly directed at Helga.
"What do they say in the land of warriors again?" With a cheeky smile, Asmodia tried to drown her emotions by being her smug self for a moment. "Oh yeah, I remember…Come, and let's battle till the realms fall!"
"Youuu fooll!" Enraged by the mockery, Helga once again leaped forward, but this time despite the retardation of time, she vanished from before Asmodia, and let loose on a kick on her now armored back.
"Wh-Aghh?!" Sent flying forward, the mistress of darkness had no clue what had happened, and her confusion only grew when Helga appeared in front of her before her body stopped from the initial strike.
"Body acceleration! Lion's mane! Fortress strike!" Unleashing ability after ability in the smallest fraction of a second, the valkyrie unleashed yet another attack from the left hand which had suddenly turned into a giant fist of stone.
Hit right in the chest, Asmodia's armor was punctured inward and pieces of the iron cut deep into her skin. Finally thrashing at the back wall, she had a moment to breathe, but the moment she did so the shattered pieces of iron stabbed into her breasts.
"D-dammit!" She yelped, panting as low as she could to lessen the hurt.
"Now," moving closer to the mistress, Helga sheathed her sword. "Would you take the walk or do I-" Cutting herself off, Helga blinked in horror as the whole confinement room of purgatory began to shake. "What in the name of the lord is this?"
With utter shock, she looked around at the place trying to find some sort of reasoning to explain the phenomenon. Before long the ceiling began to crumble and collapse on the ground in bits and pieces.
"Move aside…" Warned a harrowing voice.
"Melicia?!" The both of them muttered in shock.
Tearing through the realm, the witch's nails slit reality in two. Peering down from the gap that she kept stretching, Melicia's blood eye squinted at the sight inside the trashed room. Met with two Helga's and no Asmodia, she was confounded a bit at first. Reaching down the gap, she laid a finger against the floor and began to flood the place with a pool of poison straining down the length of her hand.
"Give me Asmodia and the others may live," Melicia demanded.
"What in tarnation are you trying to pull?" Helga asked, her hand slipping back to her blade.
"Then you must be the valkyrie, and that," the moment Melicia's eye met with Asmodia, she undid the mask to show her true self. "Well then, let me reunite you with your child."
Although unaware of what exactly was transpiring in Atlas, Asmodia felt as though it was better to go along with Melicia for now, than to lag behind and be forced into the collective consciousness by the valkyrie.
"Whatever gets me out of here, I'm tired of this place anyways," Asmodia replied.
As she sprouted out her wings to avoid the blood poison, Helga turned to her ready to strike her off once again. But managing just in time to phase through her blade as a cloud of mist, Asmodia flew right over Melicia and loomed over her hand. Drawing her finger back, the witch brought her palm under the mistress's feet and started pulling her into the realm tear.
"Melicia! Don't you dare!" Helga warned, her eyes shot with rage.
Bearing her sword against the witch, she stomped her right foot forward and got ready to strike Asmodia off of her hand. To her shock, instead of pulling Asmodia away as quickly as possible, Melicia stopped altogether and posed her a question.
"Should I flood Valhalla with my blood, oh great valkyrie?" Peering at Helga with her singular dark eye oozing with blood, Melicia was not joking around. "If so, then go ahead and snatch her off her palm, I dare you."
Taken aback by the warning, Helga took a moment to weigh her options. Letting Melicia get away with Asmodia's soul would be a betrayal of her duty, but if she were to defy the witch and the land of valkyries was flooded, then wherever a valkyrie was reborn in the spring of life they'd be doomed for the same eventual fate.
Grunting at the witch, Helga knew that she truly only had one choice. One which she couldn't forgive herself for choosing.
"Go on then!" She yelled, sheathing her blade once more. "But remember, I'll come for you both sooner or later!"
"Until we meet again then, valkyrie," Melicia muttered with a gentle chuckle.
Drawing her hand in through the realm tear, she snatched Asmodia's soul from the cosmos' most deadly reaper. Left alone in purgatory, Helga swore to bring Asmodia back into this shambled place and force her into the furnace of cosmic consciousness.
'Until we meet again, huh? That snarky human!' More than anything the fact that a human witch snatched a soul from her clutches, utterly humiliated her. 'How long until you die, you monster?'
Having witnessed the whole saga of Melicia's life, even she couldn't fathom what was keeping her alive for eons. However, with nobody to answer her question, not even the creator, she opened up a holistic portal and got out of the place to ready her soldiers to hunt down Asmodia as soon as possible.
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