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Henry smiled to himself, finished the meal before him, then tidied up. He went looking for Sigrid and spotted her in the formal living room with her mother and roughly a dozen Valkyries who stuck around after the party. He sent her a quick questioning look and saw her shake her head, indicating it wasn’t a good time, so he nodded and slipped away before Hilda could scowl at him.
He’d noticed that Talia wasn’t present, nor were her twin enforcers Tove and Tore. The brutish Revna and her rude sidekick Kari were also missing. Off on Valkyrie business, no doubt.
The kids were split into two groups, the ones inside playing in the front sitting room and the ones outside playing in the snow.
He was headed for the back door when he met Meixiu returning from the basement. “Henry! Good morning!” she said, tilting her face up to him for a kiss.
He caressed her lips with his, then grinned at her. “It’s no longer morning. Sorry for missing breakfast.”
“Did you get some food?” Meixiu asked, gesturing to the kitchen.
“Yes, Tish made me a plate. It was delicious!” he said, and she nodded.
“Could you open a Magic Door between the cave and the dining room so the Valkyries can move the table back to where it belongs?” She drew him into the dining room to face the French Doors again.
He looked at the glass panes and hesitated. Being aware that these vast alien minds were turning their attention toward him made him less than eager to see them. “Uh, are the doors to the cave open or closed at the moment?” he asked, thinking to delay the process just a little.
“Oh! I will close them!” Meixiu exclaimed and rushed away. She returned in seconds, and he suppressed the sigh as he’d forgotten how quick she was.
He touched the door and linked it to the ones in the cave. Once more, the glass panes flashed black, and for less than a moment, hardly enough time for it to register, something looked back. Then the glass showed Sandy and Dayshia walking towards them, and Henry jumped from the tension.
The two ladies in the corridor squeaked in fright, and Henry pulled the doors open. “Sorry about that.”
Dayshia put her hands on her hips. “You should be! Scaring us half to death like that! I’m of a mind not to kiss you!”
Sandy snorted. “Right.” She skipped forward and pressed her lips to Henry’s before Dayshia could respond.
The dark beauty approached Henry and threw Sandy a scowl. “You could play along with my teasing once in a while.”
“And miss out on a kiss from Henry? Dream on,” Sandy scoffed.
Dayshia raised an eyebrow at Henry. He smiled at her, and she rolled her eyes, gesturing for him to bring his face down to hers. They kissed tenderly, and he felt her melt a little. When he pulled back, her eyes fluttered open, a gesture that looked far more dramatic due to her long, feathered lashes.
“Okay, that was worth it,” she sighed.
Sandy chuckled as she hooked an arm through her bestie’s and pulled her away, the two now heading for the door to the vestibule.
Meixiu kissed his cheek in thanks and skipped away to let the Valkyrie know they were up.
The first thing he needed to do was add a control mechanism to the rift inside him.
He’d discovered the previous night that the flow of magic from it was almost negligible on Eden, the source of the magic. He should have better luck adding a control mechanism to the rift while there, with no internal pressure.
Henry entered the cavern and walked to the hidden passage for the doors to Eden. He removed the forcefield and activated the portal before stepping through to the other world.
The weather was perfect, and he found a nice rock to sit on by the entrance as he prepared to work.
As he’d mentioned to Marisa, he was thinking of a closing mechanism like a hydraulic door to a vault. He closed his eyes and envisioned how it might be constructed. After a few minutes of reviewing the design, he discarded it as it was too complex and bulky.
Another idea came to his mind. A camera lens aperture! Two rings, one stationary and one that spins, with interlaced blades sandwiched between them. The wide end of the blades would be fixed to the stationary ring and pivot there, controlled by pins in the blades that ran along channels in the moving ring. This turning ring would open and close the blades as the pins followed the channels. The aperture wouldn’t close completely, as some pressure should be allowed to flow. He estimated it would be roughly ten percent of the maximum pressure. Opening the aperture fully would release all the pressure and allow the energy to flow freely.
He fussed with the design, making prototypes to test how many blades he needed to give more granular control. Testing took place by stepping through the doors into the hall in the cave.
Too few blades opened the aperture too quickly and gave him less control. Too many blades made them too weak to hold back the pressure, and they broke. Everything was made from Wild Magic, but even this energy seemed to have engineering limitations. He settled on eight blades and finalized his design, recording it in his memory. He built a new one and affixed it inside himself over the rift. He was ready for a production test. He stood up from the rock again to go back through the doors.
A slight air pressure change was his only warning before the Ribbon creature slammed into him, pinning him to the rock face next to the open doors.
Henry was only winded and dazed as the monster didn’t have a tremendous amount of mass, but when he saw the creature’s jaws snap open to take a bite out of him, without thinking, he did the craziest thing.
He stepped into its mouth and grabbed its two largest fangs in his hands.
Now, he was preventing the beast from biting down, but its jaws were its most powerful muscles. It took everything Henry had to hang on as it twisted and thrashed, trying to shake him free.
Before he was bashed against the cliffside again, Henry pushed upwards with his arms and down with his legs in a sudden effort. The bottom jaw broke with a series of rapid, sharp cracks.
The creature renewed its efforts to free itself from Henry’s grip, but now its lower jaw was dangling free. He was able to step back out of its mouth and pull its head down, shoving its upper jaw into the soft ground. He threw his weight onto its head and released his death grip on the fangs.
“FUCK!”
Henry hissed in agony as his hands were badly cut by the sharp edges of its teeth. He struggled to remain on top of the beast’s head while the rest of its body slammed into the ground, the cliff face, and against Henry to pry itself free.
Henry put his bloody fists together and slammed them down on top of the monster’s head with all his Satyr strength as he roared. It took three mighty blows to crack its skull, and the fourth drove the bones into its brain.
The shock sent it into death spasms, and Henry was thrown clear, but he rolled to his hooves and faced it as its shaking pulled its teeth from the ground. He prepared himself to attack it, but its tremors quickly diminished, and it stopped moving.
Henry leaned back against the door jamb and caught his breath. He twitched as someone stepped through and stopped. It was Hilda. She was staring at the dead monster and glanced skyward.
He walked over to the massive head resting on its side now.
“There won’t be another one in the neighborhood for at least two hours. Killing a big one sends a message to the others to piss off for a bit.” He took a closer look at the corpse. “This is definitely one of the biggest I’ve seen.”
“Were you hunting?” Hilda asked him incredulously.
“What? No! I was… working on something, and I got distracted. I forgot to ask the twins to clear the area first. It caught me by surprise.” He frowned as he realized it might have just bitten his head off if it had any real intelligence. He’d been extremely lucky. He looked at his slashed hands and launched his healing spell on them. He swayed slightly as the pain was intense but took a deep breath when they were whole once more.
She scowled at him, but her expression was troubled.
“What? Why are you so angry with me?” he barked in frustration.
Hilda moved into his personal space, and he had to stop himself from triggering his shield to knock her back.
“You are my daughter’s mate, you gave her a beautiful and strong daughter, but you are a terrible fighter! I just watched you step into its mouth! Never do that! You carry no weapons, but you’d probably hurt yourself with them if you did! I expected to see you die, but then you killed it… with your bare hands!”
“You saw me in trouble and didn’t try to help me?” Henry yelled angrily.
She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Valkyries don’t steal battles from other Valkyries or their mates! It’s the way of Valkyries!” she yelled back.
“God dammit, I’m getting sick of hearing that same excuse!” he shouted in her face.
She was red-faced and breathing hard, but so was he. He tried to pull his mind back from the urge to beat some sense into her as he knew she would welcome the rematch.
“You were angry with me last night. What was that about?” he snapped as his adrenaline surged.
“You had no gift for the child-children!” she corrected as she saw him preparing to explode over her repeatedly denying his son.
He stared at her in confusion, then sighed. “A Valkyrie thing, no doubt,” he muttered. “Nobody tells me anything!” he complained as he turned to the dead ribbon creature. He grabbed the largest fang and yanked it from the skull with a loud, wet pop. Then he rolled the beast over and repeated the actions with the other fang. He handed them to Hilda on his bloody palms as she stared at the deep cuts on his fingers. The teeth were deadly sharp.This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.
“For my children, to be made into weapons they may use to defend themselves against whatever they face in the future. Is this a worthy gift?” he asked.
Hilda nodded as she watched him heal his hands once more. She caught the tightening of his eye muscles as he rode out the pain. She carefully lifted the heavy blades by their roots. “I-I will have a master artisan make them suitable weapons from these. These have tremendous value… in my culture.”
He nodded stiffly then a thought came to him. “What did you come down here to say?”
“It doesn’t matter, now,” she responded as her eyes admired the deadly blades she carried.
Henry turned back to the corpse. “I’d better dispose of this. I don’t want others to come to feed on it so close to the door.”
He made Hilda step back away from it, then opened a tear above a lava field, and it rolled through to fall into the magma. He closed the tear, catching the tail end of Hilda’s frown.