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“If you are not a Valkyrie, to all gods, who are you?”

“My name is Cathy,” she said. “I’m your fiancée.”

Loki’s stinky feet, his betrothed?

If he could stand up and leave this madwoman, he would. But his head ached as though a drunken giant was stomping on it.

“I do not have a betrothed,” he said through gritted teeth. “Stop this nonsense.”

She pressed her lips together, then forced out a smile. “I see. If this is a parallel reality where you have a different name and wear some sort of medieval armor and”—she glanced helplessly at the mouth of the cave—“fight like a barbarian, I understand that you wouldn’t remember me.”

Then she turned to him, her eyes shining, almost sparkling. And with conviction, she said, “But I remember you.”

Andor let out a low growl. The female annoyed him with her strange words and confused him with her strange pink body… He looked down. It was not her skin. It was something resembling clothes. Why did she not wear a woman’s dress?

If anything, this resembled armor, although armor of cloth made little sense. Or maybe some sort of armor that looked like it was made of cloth. Maybe dwarfs had made this armor as unbreakable as Gleipnir, the chains that held the giant wolf Fenrir.

She was the reason the battle that was supposed to be an easy victory had turned into a complete defeat.

Ubba—

The memory flashed in his mind—Ubba falling dead, killed by the leader of the Anglo-Saxons.

Anger roared in Andor’s gut, mixed with the deepest sadness he had felt since Hvaldalen was burned. Since Svana…

It was this woman’s fault.

He sat upright. This time his head did not spin as much. Maybe his anger towards her gave him strength.

“You…it was all because of you. You appeared, and the Anglo-Saxons used our astonishment to attack… Where did you come from?”

Cathy blinked. “From Los Angeles, California.”

Insolent woman. Throwing those strange words at him again. “Because of you, we lost—”

Had they lost? Andor had to see.

“But Brad—” she began. He ignored her.

With great difficulty, and through raging pain, Andor moved on all fours and crawled towards the exit of the cave.

“Brad—I mean, Andor, wait—”

When he went outside, the sunlight hurt his eyes. He waited a moment, and when his vision returned, he crawled to look around the thicket blocking his view of the beach. The sight made his stomach drop.

Countless bodies covered the beach—the bodies of his warriors. Anglo-Saxon soldiers walked around piercing those who might still be alive and looking for their wounded. Ubba’s ships, including five of Andor’s own, were gone.

He tightened his fists, then turned to her. “You brought our defeat.”

She gasped. “I didn’t do anything! It’s not like I chose to teleport to the middle of a battle.”

Then her eyes widened as she looked behind him. Andor looked in that direction. An Anglo-Saxon was coming at them, his bloody sword glistening.

Andor reached to his belt for his sword but found empty air.

“Where is my sword?” he barked, looking around.

“There!” Cathy pointed to his left. A few steps away lay a dead Anglo-Saxon, and next to him, Dragon’s Trouble.