Chương 111: Chapter 107 - After-Battle Cleansing

"Hey." Someone was gently rocking the wing cocoon.

"Havoc." The voice was careful and quiet. It wasn't Passion or Suffering. Chelsea stayed tucked inside the tight wrap Celeste had made for her, breathing through the ache in her chest while the world waited on the other side of her wings. After a moment, she released the tuck enough to peek out. Freedom was crouched beside her with one hand still resting on Chelsea's wing.

"Freedom?" she said quietly.

"Yeah." Freedom kept her voice low.

"We're heading out now. Best to shrink down your turtle." Chelsea nodded slowly.

"Ok." She pulled the wings away from herself and sat up. Her body felt hollow and heavy at the same time. The simple shirt and shorts Celeste had put on her were clean, but Chelsea could still feel the memory of blood on her skin. She stood carefully and walked to the edge of Bradford's shell. Then she stepped off. She did not bother slowing the fall with her wings. The ground rushed up, and she hit it barefoot. Her rings must have given her enough constitution or strength to handle it.

Chelsea hadn't cared one way or the other. She walked to Bradford's leg, placed her hand against him, and leaned her forehead into his warm, steady presence.

"Thank you for being here Bradford. Back in the pouch you go." Bradford shrank instantly to the size of an apple. High above, three blood-soaked towels drifted down from where his shell had been, landing in the grass several yards away. Chelsea watched them fall with dull, distant attention. Freedom stepped closer and held out a teleportation card.

"Here, I grabbed you a card." Chelsea took it.

"Thanks." She wanted to go home. Not Valhalla. She wanted to soak in her own bath and curl against Ivy until the smell of blood stopped existing. Coming to Valhalla had been a mistake. She had learned how to poke a stick at people better, but the tradeoff was not worth it. Not this. She picked up Bradford and touched her nose gently to his little one before placing him safely in her pouch. When she looked around, the other ten women were silently watching her from inside a magic circle.

Chelsea knew what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to walk to them. She was supposed to join them and return to Valhalla. Freya would be waiting there. Freya, who knew what Havoc meant better than anyone. Freya, who had sent her anyway. The sound of the first man's jaw snapping as she ripped it away played through her head. Chelsea began to cry silently. Her feet started forward. She had killed before. She had killed men with her bare hands. Today, she had massacred thousands.

Most of them had probably been innocent men drafted into a war they wanted no part in. She stepped into the circle, and Freedom joined behind her. Something in Chelsea felt gone. She feared it would never come back. When they arrived in the Hall of Valkyr, Chelsea walked silently up the stairs. No one stopped her. The hall felt too large, and every step sounded too loud. She looked toward Freya's room. Fresh tears filled her eyes. How could a best friend be all right with sending her off to do that?

Freya knew what it meant to be Havoc. She knew better than anyone. Yet she had let Chelsea go anyway. Chelsea turned away and opened the door to her own room. Inside, everything was exactly where she had left it. Bradford's aquarium waited on the desk. The servicer stood quietly in Ivy's robe. The room was soft and pink. It never felt less like hers. She closed the door behind her. Then she removed everything. Her clothes first. Then her rings. Her amulet. Finally, her earrings. She didn't care anymore.

She wanted something familiar. She approached the tapestry against the wall and picked up Looty, clutching her to her chest. Chelsea then walked directly to her servicer and, through gasping sobs, asked it for a hug. Passion It was customary for all parties involved in the battle to bathe in the communal bath afterward, washing away whatever bad karma and dishonor had attached itself to the battlefield. Tonight, the custom felt different. The bath was warm. The stone room was full of steam.

Armor, weapons, and bloodied clothing had been left outside in their usual places, but none of the usual ease had followed the Valkyr into the water. No one stretched out comfortably. The water moved only when someone shifted too much to stay still. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. They had all witnessed something they could not explain. Even Suffering was shaken. She had been through countless battles with Havocs present.

She had seen the bloodrage take over before. She had seen Havocs laugh, scream, and lose the line between themselves and the battlefield. Whatever she had seen today had left her staring into the water with her knees drawn up and her hands curled tightly against them.

"Are we not supposed to talk about what happened?" Absolutes asked in her deep voice. No one answered. Passion sat with her back against the side of the bath, her arms resting on the stone behind her. She had washed the blood from her own skin already, but the smell of the battlefield still felt trapped in her nose. She kept seeing Chelsea skipping between bodies. She kept hearing the bright, eager way she had asked how she had done. It was finally Deceit who spoke.

"Passion, when we went to collect Havoc, that night in the bath at her house. You told us we fucked up by collecting her. I think… You might have been right." Again, no one spoke. Passion did not know what answer she could have given even if she wanted to. The words settled over the bath and stayed there. She had said it that night because Chelsea had been kind, strange, and too young in too many ways for the Hall they had brought her to.

She had said it because the little demon had looked terrified and polite while surrounded by women who had already decided what she was supposed to become. Now they knew. The door to the bathroom cracked open. Every head turned. All but Havoc were accounted for. Chelsea was not expected to join them. Surely, she wanted to be alone. After what happened on Bradford's shell, Passion had assumed she would not see Chelsea again until morning at the earliest. A tall figure entered instead.

The figure was taller than Chelsea by far, broad with divine presence and carrying a silence that made every Valkyr in the bath straighten. A collective breath pulled through the room when they realized who had entered. Freya was among them. She removed her weapon first. Then her clothes. Her boots. Finally, to everyone but Passion's surprise, her helmet. Her hair was indeed the beautiful black Passion had seen that night at Chelsea's manor.

Her body was perfection, powerful without losing any sense of control or grace. Every line of muscle looked deliberate. Every movement made the room feel smaller. She stepped into the bath in the empty spot. This was Passion's first time seeing the goddess's full face without the distance, and it was terrifying. Freya's presence made Passion feel small and insignificant. Her eyes were an ever-shifting black and white that glowed through the steam. Truth bowed her head.

"Lady patron," Truth said.

"It is an honor to have you join us for our post-battle bath." Freya remained silent. She had never joined them for one before. At least, not one Passion had ever been present for. Passion stared into the face of the being in front of her and could not understand how Chelsea had the courage to say even a single word to her. Passion had only said a handful of words to her patron goddess in all her years as a Valkyr. Then the unthinkable happened. Freya sighed. Passion almost forgot to breathe. Freya could sigh.

Chelsea never really said what they talked about when she visited that room. Just that they talked. Passion had imagined this. This was a dream come true. All except for the sigh. It wasn't built from exhaustion.

"Who wants to tell me what happened?" The whole bath stopped moving. No one breathed. She spoke. Their goddess had spoken. Passion's mind could not settle around what she was supposed to do with that. The others looked just as frozen. Suffering was the first to manage an answer, though she trembled as she spoke.

"I w-went to wake H-Havoc from her nap on the turtle."

"Tortoise. Continue." Freya corrected. Passion stared. Had Freya just made a Chelsea joke? No. That could not be it. She was truly correcting Suffering in her ignorance of what the animal was. That had to be it. Suffering swallowed and continued.

"The highs had given clearance to unleash her. So I woke her. She used an ability I have only seen one other Havoc conjure. It was decades ago but the new Havoc's was…" Suffering shook her head, unable to explain it properly.

"She laid one side of the army out in only a few minutes. That's when she jumped down into the battle."

"I know of the ability, continue," Freya said. Law took over, her posture rigid even seated in the water.

"My Lady," Law said.

"She began by only killing one or two. That's when her bloodlust took over. She killed everyone in her path at that point. Everyone. She would take breaks to feast on them."

"Y-yeah," Justice said.

"I watched her rip a man in half and eat whatever she found inside. Then, another's tongue." Justice looked down at the water.

"Then she cracked open a man's pelvis and ate his testicles. She laughed and talked to herself the whole time. Like really talked to herself. She killed most of both armies before going back to eat more." The bath stayed quiet after that. Steam curled around Freya's shoulders. The goddess did not interrupt. Virtue spoke next.

"Her little pouch she always carries, it has to be completely full of various human remains." She rubbed at her face and took a couple of long deep breaths.

"I get that she eats human but…" Virtue shook her head.

"She disrespected their bodies as if they were livestock. It was so hard to watch." Passion looked down at the bathwater. For once, she did not have a defense ready. Chelsea had been happy when she returned from the field. Proud. Excited. Covered in blood and asking how she had done. Then the pleasure had broken, and the girl beneath it had collapsed so completely that Passion could still hear her screaming apologies. The others had watched Havoc. A couple of the girls looked Passion's way. She took a deep breath.

Speaking about the battle should have been the harder thing. The battlefield was still too fresh in her mind, and Chelsea's laughter still clung to parts of it Passion did not want to revisit. Somehow, speaking directly in front of Freya felt worse. The goddess sat in the bath with that impossible stillness, waiting for an answer, and Passion could feel every eye in the room shift toward her.

"The bloodlust wore off and she wasn't Havoc anymore. She became Chelsea. The sweet little demon girl who just watched herself kill what she deemed as innocent people. Not just killed them, but…" Passion gestured toward Justice and Virtue.

"I see," Freya replied. She stood and exited the bath. Water ran from everyone else when they moved. It clung to skin and hair and armor marks. Freya stepped out completely dry. The water never seemed to have touched her at all. She did not speak another word. The door closed behind her, and the entire bath released a collective breath.

"Passion. What the fuck is going on?" Deceit asked.

"What is Havoc to make Freya speak?"

"None of her secrets have anything to do with that," Passion said. Virtue leaned forward, her earlier unease still written across her face.

"We all know she supposedly talks to Freya," Virtue said.

"What do they talk about?"

"I don't know," Passion said, staring into the water in front of her. That was the truth. Chelsea did not tell her much about what happened in Freya's room. Then she remembered one thing.

"Back at the manor." She looked up at Suffering.

"Remember when I said I saw them talking?" Suffering nodded and looked at Deceit, who was also nodding.

"You didn't tell us what you heard." The others in the bath had gone still again. Every Valkyr present watched Passion now, waiting for the answer.

"It wasn't so much that was said. Freya was crying and Havoc was comforting her." Everyone in the bath started talking at once. Voices overlapped. The bathwater stirred as several of them shifted at the same time. Passion spoke over them.

"I know Havoc's voice inside and out. She wasn't the one crying. It was Freya. She said something about eight hundred years. That's all I could make out through her cries." The tub became silent again. They had just gone through a life and death battle. They had witnessed an army broken and Havoc unleashed in a way none of them could forget. Somehow, no one was interested in talking about that now. Once again, all attention had fallen on the strange demon girl.......

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