As she approached the ground, Bellaria couldn’t properly control her body due to the fatigue the recent events had put on it, making her fall to the floor. She stayed there, recovering from everything, until she heard steps coming her way and got up.

“Welcome back Bellaria”- Said a man as he got closer.

“Hello, Alistair”

Alistair was a man with dark skin and a short haircut, with a receding hairline that showed his age, that wore a purple suit with the jacket open, a white shirt and black shoes with golden engravings.

“How did it go?”

“It was a success”- Said Bellaria, showing the Devil’s Pick and avoiding everything that could trigger more precise questions about the events. But Alistair was an observant man.

“Are you sure?”- Said Alistair when he noticed the wounds on her flesh, especially the burns of her face and neck- “You’re not lying to me, aren’t you?”

The valkyrie grunted, knowing how futile it was to hide something from him now. After a gesture of his hand, pressing her to talk alongside his facial expressions, she began to speak as her pride was damaged with every word.

“The plan did not go as well as I expected”- Bellaria couldn’t look to the man in the brown eyes as she talked- “The Metal Fuckers turned out to be more dangerous and resourceful than I thought, with their leader hurting me, but I managed to dispatch them and get to the trio’s bus, where I tried several times to get The Pick without trouble. Then, those thugs made a whole on the Silver Mountains’ tunnel and a monster came in, when I, once again, tried to gain The Pick, but they did not trust me and ended up taking it by force after we escaped from the creature”

When she finished, Alistair remained silent for a few seconds, organizing the information in his brain.

“So, you’re telling me that we payed a group of bikers with valkyrian gold and gave them a demon heart to locate The Pick, and when you appear to save those three and gain their confidence, you get bested and leave the heart there, in the hands of a new enemy. And if that wasn’t enough, you couldn’t even discover if they had another Remain in their possession, rushing everything to bring just one”

The man spoke softly, simply exposing the things that happened, and remained in silent after he had finished. Suddenly, he slapped Bellaria in the face with his right harm as hard as he could, leaving the woman in disbelief and with the red mark he had left.

“You dare!?”- Said the valkyrie furiously.

“Yes, I do!”- Said Alistair rising his voice- “You have failed miserably and yet you think that you deserve respect!”

“I am a valkyrie!”

“You are a broken thing! Both in the inside…”- Said the man as he grabbed her prosthetic hand- “…and the outside!”

“No, I…”

“Yes!”- Alistair took his time to calm himself and continued in a lower tone, but not less angry- “You came here promising that you’d be useful, and you let your pride get always in your way. What do you even want to accomplish?”

“Same as the rest. I want Belzerax to return”

“But why? I want him to be back because he’s perfectly capable of uniting everyone under is rule. He’s the leader the world needs.

Bellaria remained silent, thinking about what the demon meant to her, about how she adored him.

“He’s my hero”- She said.

“I hope that will be more than enough motivation to avoid any more disappointment”- Said Alistair as he turned his back and went back from where he came- “I still believe that you can be useful to our goals, nonetheless you’ve managed to bring a Remain”

Bellaria stood where she was for a whole minute until she began to move to her quarters, thinking about the actions that led her to the present. She remembered the very beginning, when she was a child and stumbled upon his music on the valkyries’ library, which held knowledge from both enemies and allies, and she felt a connection, deep in her heart. She learnt everything she could about him, and then from him, choosing a guitar as her first instrument and improving her ability as she mirrored her idol, but she had to hide it, making it feel as the investigation of a powerful villain instead. As she grew up, it was harder to keep her secret, until eventually the similarities between her abilities and that of the demon were too obvious to not notice, which prompted a decision, to abandon her hero or to be exiled. She admired his strength, how he rose from his humble origins to the top and the conviction he always showed in his objectives and ideals. She just couldn’t abandon him.

She chose exile and, as her tradition ordered, her left hand was cut, so she wouldn’t become a menace to her people. She was abandoned in the human world, forbidden to return to Valhalla, and roamed the land searching for the fabled followers of Belzerax, until she met Alistair, who sought her as soon as she heard rumours about the valkyrie and offered her to join him and the others that worked towards the demon’s return, to which she accepted without doubts. She was given a prothesis to substitute her lost arm, better than the original, and used the power of music to change her body, growing a pair of horns in honour to Belzerax and turning the feathers of her wings into sharp steel, completely refusing her culture.

She wanted to bring back her hero, to meet him, but that wasn’t the only motive. She desired the power to return to her birthplace and conquer it, to destroy her obsolete tradition and making sure that the next generations would be free from it and wouldn’t exist for the sole purpose of fighting for other’s beliefs. She was close to her goal, they only needed two more Remains to restore Belzerax’s power.