Maya's shriek echoed throughout the entire forest. 

And you couldn’t blame her. 

No amount of fiction, no amount of reading, watching TV or games could have prepared her mind for the horrors of a real-life face of an undead. 

The undead’s face was rotten. Its one remaining eye was glassy and unfocused, with ooze dripping out from the other socket. 

Yellow teeth and a maggot-ridden tongue closed in on her ankle. She already had the creeps without the half-skeletal hand on her. Now she was beyond horrified. 

“Maya!” Val cried out and ran towards her, but stopped on what happened next. 

“PERISH, YOU SON OF A DRAUGR!” Maya was shouting at the top of her lungs, slamming the shield repeatedly against the zombie’s head. “Die! Die! DIE! AHHHHH!” 

Maya ended the poor zombie’s afterlife by driving the shield’s round but sharp edge against its decaying skull. 

Huffing audibly, with her chest rising up and down erratically, Maya gripped the shield hard in both hands. She slammed it into the zombie’s head one more time for good measure until it was mush. 

“What in Hel’s name was that thing? A zombie? Please tell me this isn’t true.” 

“Maya. Calm.” Val put up her hands placable and approached Maya slowly. “Breath. Slow. Draugr. Dead.” 

“So it was a draugr? An undead Viking warrior?” Maya huffed again and looked once more at the undead. Its eye stared back at her, and she kicked it away. “Seriously!?”

“There are more.” 

A dark whisper enveloped the forest. Green mist seeped out from the wet earth, falling over them like a blanket.

“I have a bad feeling about this—” Maya gasped as two more hands grabbed her ankles from either side. “I FJCKING KNEW IT! GET AWAY—” 

Her screams were caught in her throat from the emergence of three more draugr.

Two of them wore full-blown but worn-out armour—which was more of a mishmash of leather and chain mail than anything else. However, swords, axes, and shields were also part of their equipment. 

Albeit rusty, that was still too dangerous to deal with haphazardly. 

“Grruuuuurrrr,” one groaned into Maya’s ear, holding her in place. 

“The breath, though.” Maya gagged. 

“Don’t. Move,” warned Val, eyeing the two draugr approaching her. 

“Didn’t plan to, haha.” A laugh was all that Maya could manage. 

“Calm. Undead. Dangerous.” Val took a small step to the side. The draugr followed her. “I’ll. Deal. With. Them. Do. Not. Worry.” 

Call that a warrior’s confidence., but Val was not afraid in the slightest—unlike Maya, who was getting the hives from just the draugr’s touch. 

“Maybe this will be over in a jiffy,” mused Maya hopefully, observing Val with high confidence. “After all, she’s a Valkyrie, and those are zombies. They stand no chance against her—”

Slash. 

“What was that sound?” wondered Maya. “I didn’t like that.” 

Maya stared at the blood dripping to the ground and then at the gash running down Val’s arm. 

The draugr moved inhumanly fast, barely leaving any room for Val to dodge or block the attacks properly. 

They slashed at her, cutting at her pants and shirt. In one instance, they almost carved up her face like a pumpkin, sending strands of blond hair flying. 

“Val! What’s going on?” shouted Maya, struggling against the draugr’s grasp. “Wasn’t she a Valkyrie? She should be stronger than some undead.” 

“Sluggish,” Val gasped for air and dodged another sword strike. “Not. In. Form. Slow. Tired.” 

“Sluggish? Not in form?” wondered Maya. She knew Valkyries were supposed to be powerful supernatural beings, close to demigods or stronger. “But why was Val struggling so much?”

Something wasn’t making sense. 

“Slow.” Maya thought back to how she found Val. 

Val was wounded, with nothing on her except her ragged clothes. Her speaking patterns were impeded, and Maya thought this was due to her never having lived in the modern world. 

But then, Val was panting. Her movements were sluggish and sloppy. She was still agile on her feet and delivering solid hits to knock out teeth or an iron helmet, but that was it. 

“Val won't last long. I need to help her!”