" Chapter One: The Dawn and the Dread

Heartbeat, heartbeat comes from Valhallan way,
To meet down in judgment, to ply its trade.
Two →swords← to join in worthy cross,
Actions to be rendered, one to be lost.

She did come now from ’yond northern slope,
A day of reckoning did she again once hope.
A devout meeting was her qwesterly bane,
To stay her hand was to go insane.

St. Kari of the Blade to meet her past,
A wicked enemy, peerless of match.
Rode Kari she her charger on down,
Past the Dead Land where Gaul sat crowned.

A killing job, yea, she desired to lastly kill,
To set things right so her heart might lie still.
Upon the mist and roaring plain,
She entered in, a soul uncontained.

A fierce wind in deed, and forever freed,
Enemies she annihilhates (’tis hur’ creed).
Her own advanced guard of a sort,
Multitudes to follow in her report.

Know this Valkyrie from on cold,
An ancient maiden soft and bold.
A warrior spirit from Ages past,
A fragmented mind like broken glass.

Solid in stature this eternal framed being,
Yet crippled within from internaled bleedings.
A sword saint so refined in the poetic art,
A noble character yet with a banshee’s heart.

Rhythmed horse now to the beats,
Kari emboldened amid the sleet.
Beyond the mountain she does come,
Unto southern fields wherein rules hot sun.

Far from that murderous Deadlands ground,
The land up swells; the dead still abound.
Traverses she those bygones of leprous civilizations
Those cities crumbled by the exhalted of oblivions.

Stark traces etched now bare in the land,
That are no more again, save dust in the hand.
A cool stream now in desert sans
(Does more good when one is damned).

Stopped she her mount to admire the flow,
A lovely stream with skeletons packed below.

Blue air whisps; dragon flied motion.
Flintsteel striking!!! Sparked of commotion.

Cold water chortles rushtish with tint,
Told of past carnage, it whetted her glint.
Fallen warriors, they are no more,
Swirls and eddies mark their discord.

Gurgled shouts slung and gathered,
Faces glazed while steel lathered.
Refreshing though it was to her mouth,
She smelled an air; she flared about.

Came up that ridge of loud, sanded hill,
Below a man and his half-score of kills.
Kari’s eyes waxed in smug contempt,
Possibilities ran deep with no repent . . .

On Kari, Valkyrie, Cold Steel Eternity Vol. II "

― Douglas Laurent