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It would’ve been a pretty standard day for her. Killing people here, killing people there, getting killed herself, waking up, doing other stuff until she went to sleep and repeated it all.
It was a Tuesday too, free for all fighting, the best kind. No stupid wyrms to mess things up, no seige warfare where she got hit by missles or killed by stupid hyperactive diseases.
No, today was just good old fighting, dodging falling bodies and flying axes and hoping her knives would find their mark somewhere in another einherji’s throat, or at least an important artery.
It was kind of awkward when they took a while to die and were just looking up at you all betrayed and in agony.
Unfortunately her moronic hallmates, her so-called “shield brothers” had gotten themselves killed already. Halfborn took an axe straight to the dick and she just ended it quickly for him because his squealing was uncomfortable to be around and T.J. decided to try and charge a legion of Thor’s children from Floor 35 and fell unlucky from being fried with lightning.
That looked like it hurt. Poor T.J.
So she was all alone, just standing behind a tree a few minutes after T.J. died, trying to gauge where she could make the most effect, when she realised she’d been spotted.
Now, she wasn’t hiding. There was a difference. She was being strategic, clever, all that. If she was a coward, she would’ve just left. Or never arrived. Or just not in Valhalla at all. They were “Odin’s chosen warriors” after all. Except her hallmates. They were just Odin’s chosen idiots.
The fucker with the eyepatch and the axe was there. Mallory hated him. He talked too much and was just so smarmy and annoying and thought he was so much better than anyone just because his mom was Frigg. What an arsehole.
“Keen!” Oh great he’d spotted her, “How’s it going?”
“Shut the fuck up, let’s just get this over with.” She drew her knives but even they weren’t much compared to the entire group of sheep with Eyepatch and their purposefully deadly weapons.
“Let’s-” He was suddenly cut off by a sparking flying hammer to the head, bursting his skull open in a way which was almost artistic, if it wasn’t plain disgusting.
Mallory couldn’t see far enough down the hill to see who had killed him but Eyepatch’s group could and did, since they all turned tail up to her and started running away. And chasing after them, at the bottom of the hill, holding a matching sparking hammer, in full armour and already bloodied, was the woman, the legend herself: Gunilla.
She gulped and took up a fighting stance, ready to meet her. If anyone was taking her down today, it would be the most beautiful and most terrifying woman Mallory had ever met.
Gunilla didn’t look interested in fighting her though. She went for the stragglers, people who were running away from her, just not fast enough. When she reached her, she stopped clean in front of her.
“Well? Aren’t you going to help me kill them? They were going to kill you.” She was so tall, Mallory had to crane her neck to see her face properly. The sparking and lightning had gone but in her icy blue eyes, there were still tinges of it firing away, like synapses in a brain.
“Oh! Of course, uh, let’s- let’s go.”
“Come on.” Gunilla grabbed her wrist, despite Mallory’s complaining and lifted her off the ground and onto her back, charging right to where the rest of the einherjar were hiding or trying to escape.
The problem was, this hill had a bottleneck entrance into this basin, where there was a lake. Outside of battle, it was probably very beautiful, but at the moment, there were too many corpses, or soon to be corpses, lying around, for Mallory to appreciate it properly. “Lemme down!” She kicked Gunilla’s back and was dropped onto the ground immediately.
“You’re welcome for the lift.”
“Thanks? Now can we please deal with them.” She pointed at them, trying to find another exit. There wasn’t one. She’d discovered that the hard way when she and her hallmates got chased in there, about five years ago and ended up drowning because of it, pushed in by some dickhead from floor 29.
“My pleasure, you stop them escaping, I deal with them?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Mallory felt herself blush from Gunilla’s rare grin, probably matching her hair.
She marched off, cornering a few quickly while the worst of them jumped into the lake, trying to escape her by water since her armour would probably drown her before she caught them.
Mallory grimaced. That was a poor mistake to make.
As soon as all the einherjar on land were dealt with, bloodily and bodily, Gunilla set her sights on the lake.
She left her post at the bottleneck and joined Gunilla at the edge, who was looking at the water, almost gleefully. “So, you’re going to do your zappy thing and kill them?”
“Yes. It’s gonna be fun.”
“I like your style.” She cocked her head to the side, “But why do I never actually see you out here so often. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen you on the battlefield.”
“Huh,” Gunilla looked up. At her. Like, right at her. “I’m just busy. Lotta paperwork with the Valkyries and the thanes and all that. Figured I deserve a break. And I’m looking for a new sparring partner, I don’t want to feel like I’m getting out of practice, you know?” She flexed her biceps and Mallory couldn’t resist it. She just touched it, only for a second.
“Sorry! Sorry. I-”
“It’s fine. You fight good though. What you doing next Saturday?”
“You want me to spar with you?”
“If you want to.” She looked… nervous?
“Course I do.” She finally tore her gaze away from Gunilla’s face, to the einherjar trying to escape the lake now, furiously swimming to the side now that they were apparently distracted. “You wanna deal with them now?”
“With pleasure.” She focused for a few seconds and her hammer started sparking away and she slammed it down on the water, being careful to let go in enough time, just in case and both her and Mallory took a steady step back.
Once it was over, they were both still standing there, looking at Gunilla’s hammer, which was sitting in the shallow part albeit, covered in water, still sparking away.
“So how are we getting that back?”
“I may have not thought this far through.”
“Seriously-” She was lucky she was cute.