Prometheus's Gift VI - Brynhildr

    "Huh."  Prometheus finished his Caesar.
    "Aye," said Zeus.  "They run things like it were some Tartarus damned business.  Substance is nothing.  Profit and control everything."
    "I must admit, they're doing something right, though."
    "Aye, but at what cost?  And if your gift does what we think it'll do, what makes you think the mortals will change their ways?  What of the many mortals that think and act like current management?  The greedy, the power-drunk, the monsters?  Imagine them with the powers of a god."  Zeus leaned closer.  "What makes you think they won't destroy us all in the end?"
    "We're all going to perish sooner or later, Zeus.  Ever since the mortals decreed we walk on a mortal earth circling a mortal sun that lights a mortal universe.  They don't need this gift to do away with us.  All they need to do is conquer their fear of the unknown and embrace their sciences."  Prometheus looked away then muttered:  "Perishing isn't such a horrible thought to some of us."
    "Aye," Zeus said, eyeing his whiskey.  He downed it in one gulp.  "But alas, not all of us feel the same way you do.  I, for one, want to live as long and as well as I can.  I want to best eternity with a sword in my hand and booze in my veins."  He put the glass down then frowned.  "You have no right to choose an end for any of us, Prometheus."
    "Oh I agree.  So I won't.  It's the mortals that have the right, it's the mortals that will ultimately decide all our fates.  And they will do so with or without any god's so called approval."
    Zeus looked back to the flatscreen.  His forgotten scion was no longer there but a movie: John Wayne, The Longest Day.  Maybe, it didn't matter, John was no god.  The movie was filled with guns and explosions and wanton death in every scene.  War staged as necessary and honourable, fine enough, there was plenty of that in the heady days slings and spears.  But he wasn't looking at war, war had taken a new form, lanced by terrifying machines and monsters he never dreamt of, it had become nothing but beggar's market selling slaughter to the masses.  The mortals were doing things beyond his ken.  Every god's ken.
    "Anyways," he said, turning back.  "So who's it abetting this foolishness?  Mercury?  Apollo?  How about Atlas?  That one's been well-nigh as pissed at me as you over the millennia."
    Prometheus drank then hiccuped another burp.  "I told you.  They are to remain anonymous."
    "Aye," Zeus said, sitting back.  "Aye.  Our wars are done.  I suppose it doesn't matter any more."
    Prometheus sipped, his judgment slipped with his will (just like it always did).   "Loki, if you must know.  There were others, but he was far and away the biggest help."
    "Loki?  Bah!  Sounds like that mortal contraption that hauls trains around."
    "Loki," said a strong feminine voice, "is to we what Prometheus be to you.  Both in and after a fashion, of course."
    They turned, startled.  Next to the table a woman, tall and solidly built, of high stature and even higher pride.  She was strikingly handsome in her buzz-cut and military uniform, beret tucked neatly between her arm and chest.  Her sun blue eyes radiated no mistake she was one of them.
    "Who," spat Zeus, "in Tartarus are you?"
    "Who in Hel indeed," she said, turning to Prometheus.
    "Hel."  Prometheus closed an eye, thinking.  "Hell.  Hel.  Yes.  You hail from the northern climes, yes?"
    "Yes."  Her eyes snapped forward and her heels clacked with practiced perfection.  "Captain Val Carey, 9th Division, stationed at Fort Gilgamesh, so far as the mortals are concerned.  To the races without death I am known as Brynhildr."
    "Ooh!" squeaked Prometheus, standing.  "So long I wished to meet you wonderful warrior women of the snows!"  He hugged her, she simply tensed and looked around awkwardly.  "And I must say," Prometheus stepped back, admiring, "that you fill out that uniform smashingly.  Chest and tush out, if only men could manage this with such awe.  Myself, put me in a tight and slinky red dress and I'll drive the boys-"
    "Bryn-a-what?" barked Zeus.  "Don't you frost hairs know what a Tartarus damned vowel is?"
    "My purpose," Brynhildr said, pushing space between her and Prometheus, "were it not obvious, lays with that."  She pointed to The Envelope.  After a moment she sat, posture perfect and placing the beret neatly on the table.  Unable to fight The Envelope's pull she ran two fingers across the glyphs, noting the frictionless heat and confirming its authenticity.  Done, she locked fingers then traded looks with Zeus and Prometheus.
    "Have a seat," Zeus sighed, leaning back.  "Aye.  Well-nigh an entire year without seeing a single immortal then suddenly I'm amid a swarm."  He smiled and looked off.  "Oh for bloody days of fear and loathing."
    "Now that it's presence be nigh," she went on, "of what they're saying there is no question."  She turned to Prometheus.  "There are oh so many questions."
    Zeus shuffled closer, jutting his eyebrows.  "So.  Every try a real god?  Something nice and hot and nothing like them shrivel dicked iceman of old?"
    "Only if," she responded, acrid, "you grow breasts and a vagina.  Honey."
    Zeus shuffled back, sighing and shaking his head.  He waved another round.
    "Girl!" squeaked Prometheus.  "Very freeing, isn't it?"
    "If you say so," she sighed.  Her sexual tastes had never been a secret, just a shallow glossing over by the mortal scribes and their voluble imaginations.  In fact it was quite fine in the gleaming times, it had only been in these last short decades one's personal business had become the business of others.  She drifted back to the wildlands of lore, the beasts and the crimson swords and the really, really good sex.  Hindarfjall, her lovers and so called saviour Siguror.  She spurned his advances, he boasted refusing to take her virginity.  He seemed to take far too much interest in her scents and silks and how they looked on him.  She never did unriddle that mystery.
    That that she cared.
    "Huh," Zeus snorted, looking around, irked at the rejection.  "I've always suspected that of you Amazons, with your earth toned voices and your solid sinew and your lust for a crimson battlefield.  How in Tartarus is it I'm suddenly the only one craving The Out to merge with The In?"
    "Most of the time," Prometheus muttered, slurping the last of his Caesar.
    Brynhildr raised an indignant chin.  "I am no Amazon."
    "It seems," Prometheus said, studying, "that you be forged on the same anvil, given your size and regal visage."
    "In appearance, perhaps," she said, annoyance dulled by the compliment.  "But we exist for a very different task, our purpose could not be more disparate."  She thought a moment.  "Wonderful fighters, I must admit.  On a battlefield neither god nor mortal could tell us apart."
    Valkyries and Amazons have met before, sometimes as allies, sometimes as something far less.  As good friend and fellow officer once related...