Tor opened his eyes slowly, he was disoriented and his vision was blurry. He blinked repeatedly to clear his vision and felt pain, pain everywhere. He looked around and noticed he was surrounded by rubble and blood. He glanced to his side and saw Sgt. Pierce and his brain felt as if it short circuited.
He quickly regained his composure and realized he was back in a combat zone from his previous life.
"But wait, he thought, was it a previous life or were the past years some sort of fever dream, or coma?"
His thoughts were swirling when he realized that he didn't have time to decide. Pierce was unconcious but breathing, hurt but alive. Enemies were moving on their position just like they had the last time he had experienced this moment. His adrenaline started pumping as he readied himself for the fight, then came something else.
Tor, or was is Sgt. Shepherd now?, felt like his whole body was slammed with an invisible force. Suddenly he found himself looking at his own body, still standing ready to fight. Then he heard the all too familiar laughter, it was both maniacal and joyful some how. He heard it build into a primal roar as his body started moving on it's own.
He had been looking at the back of his body this whole time, through sheer will power he moved his consciousness to face his body and saw the look of insane joy and uncontrollable rage on what was once his face. He observed as his body rampaged through his enemies, howling and roaring as well as laughing hysterically, blood and viscera of all sorts flying around and turning the walls into a macabre Pollock painting.
There was no fear, no thought, only joy and rage, then his body stopped. It turned abruptly and looked into,what could only be described as, the eyes of his conciousness. The blood soaked abomination in front of him seemed to smile even wider as he reach out toward the conciousness.
Tor could feel himself starting to merge with his body and the, at first, comfortable sensation changed to panic, it was as if his mind was slowly becoming more savage and terrifying, he fought back against the merging and screamed with desperation. He closed is eyes with the strain as he continued screaming when all of a sudden the pull was gone.
Tor opened his eyes to find his father shaking him as his mother and sisters stood by. He was startled and soon realised his environment. He was lying in his bed tangled in blankets and sweating profusely. The screams he was letting out during his battle with the bloody demon had been really coming out of his mouth during this nightmare.
"Tor, are you alright? What's happening?" asked Erik.
"It was just a nightmare, a very real nightmare." said Tor. "I'm ok now", he continued, "It just felt like I was there."
After things calmed down and everyone left his room Tor had some time to sit and think about the nightmare and events of his past. He was all too familiar with the violent side of himself, he had made very effective use of it in his past life.
He began to recall all the situations in his life where he had used violence and he realized that excessive force was his go to problem solving skill. He couldn't even accurately recall the number of lives he had taken as Francis Shepherd and the variations of that name.
This troubled him a bit, he had always been told that people remembered every life they took. They would see their faces and knew their names if they were privy to them. Tor could only think of a few, the ring leaders of his attempted assassination and the murder of Grace specifically.
He felt like killing should have had more of an impact on him but it never had. The lives of the people he killed meant nothing to him. For the first time in his two lives he sat and psycho analyzed himself and was mildly disturbed.
He knew he felt emotions, he had loved Grace deeply, his parents as well. He felt joy and pain, fear at times, rage, hatred, even sadness. This gave him some comfort, knowing he wasn't a true sociopath.
However, he knew he had to have sociopathic traits, or maybe psychopathic. Killing should not come so easily to anyone otherwise.
He had always had the ability to turn his emotions off, so to speak. To set aside any hesitation and get the job done. The more he thought about it the more he realized that, though it had served him well, there was a monster inside of him that he had little control over.
Tor sighed as he thought of all this before pushing the thoughts to the back of his mind. It was only an hour or so before daylight and the start of his training. He sat cross legged on his bed and began channeling seidr.
Over the course of the last few months he had grown stronger and stronger. His ability to wield seidr had increased by leaps and bounds, especially after he had improved upon his breathing technique and body strengthening routine.
Erik had been making him focus more on combat training than his shamanistic or healing training. He had realized early on what he was doing but he found that he enjoyed the separate training equally.
He had also been going to meet with Asha at least once a week. She had been trying to help him reconcile the parts of him battling for superiority in his mind. It was a difficult and slow process.
Just as he was wrapping up his combat training with his father, there was a commotion at the front gate of his city. The guards blew the horn to signal alarm. This was something that had never happened in Tor's life here.
Erik reacted immediately, with his position he was required to respond to the situation.
"Stay here Tor, Erik commanded. " I will take care of this."
Tor began to speak but went quiet when he saw the look on his father's face. Though he had no intention of staying put, he would not argue.
Shortly after Erik left Tor moved quickly to follow him at a distance. The horn sounded a second time signaling alarm. Erik's movements quickened and so did Tor's in response.
Upon arriving at the gate Tor spotted his father and mother, as well as his sisters and grandfather. They were in formation along with all the best warriors from the city.
Outside the city gates there was a large enemy force in the distance, headed directly for their city. It was not the imperium as they had assumed but potentially even worse.
The enemy contingent was from the kingdom of Soddenheim. They were a barbaric and vile people. If they could even be called people.
They were the marriage of primitive man and some form of dark magic merging them into an abomination that sought only blood and wealth and to satisfy their carnal desires.
People referred to them as "Mogs" since they had been transmogrified into what they are. They were obscenely muscular and had dirty grey skin. Their noses were little more than two slits for nostrils and their eyes all a similar shade of yellow. They covered themselves with scars and war paint and pierced their skin with bone needles to increase their fierce appearance. They filed their teeth to sharp points and some even slit the sides of their mouths wider or removed their lips to strike fear into anyone who saw them. They growled and snarled, shouting war cries as they approached.
All of their efforts however, fell on deaf ears and blind eyes when it came the the Einherjar. The warriors stood calm and ready showing no signs of fear or intimidation. If anything they seemed excited and focused.
Tor had learned about Soddenheim and its inhabitants in several books his grandfather had given him. He knew that it wasn't actually a kingdom so much as it was a desert wasteland with a number of loosely cooperative tribes kept in check by the chieftain in the central city.
The chieftain was the strongest warrior of all the tribes and earned his place by killing the previous chieftain as had the one before him and so on. This was the tradition among all the tribes.
They didn't speak any of the common tongue or any other recognized language, as a result what they called themselves and their "kingdom" was a mystery. The names Soddenheim and "Mogs" meant nothing to them.
Dwelling in a desert there were very few resources the Mogs had access to and only so many women for them to satisfy their baser desires. They sent out large raiding parties the size of small armies to gather everything they lacked.
They killed any man on sight and did far worse to the women and children. The children were taken to their priestess in the central city to be given a concoction that turned them into mindless Mog slaves where as the women suffered an even worse fate.
One of these raiding parties was what now approached the gates. The city of Tor's rebirth, called Ravenholm, was a heavily fortified city. Though the ways of the Einherjar had changed, they never forgot their history and had built up defenses to rival any on the continent.
As the raiding party came even closer their cries became louder signaling the warriors of the Einherjar to make their final preparations as the gates slowly rose to allow them to meet the Mogs head on.
What ensued was violent and surprisingly one sided clash.
Tor could barely believe his eyes seeing his people in action. The speed and ease at which they were dispatching the mogs was impressive to say the least. Sword, axe and spear moved powerfully yet fluidly from all the warriors. Seidr flew through the air or surrounded the warriors respectively.
However, if the Mogs could experience fear, they weren't showing it. They kept rushing the Einherjar in, what appeared to Tor to be, a suicidal charge.
His people had dealt with these raiding parties before, though it had been several years before Tor's birth since the last. Everything appeared to be going as expected.
The Mogs had initially outnumbered the Einherjar but after an hour of battle the numbers were reversed. However, the Mogs refused to retreat. This was different than their previous raids. Though their intelligence was questionable at best, even Mogs knew when to give up. At least they had in the past.
The lopsided battle continued with the Einherjar slaughtering the Mogs. They rotated out the front line fighters to give them time to rest and be healed by the Shaman stationed in the rear.
Tor's grandfather was here.He was the main shaman of the village but had trained others gifted in healing to assist in battles like this. Tor was once again surprised at his efficiency and abilities. In between healing minor injuries he would cast seidr spells at the Mogs to help thin their numbers.
Up to this point the Einherjar had not lost a single warrior, while the Mogs fell in droves. The injuries sustained by Tor's people would have been life threatening, if not fatal, to the people in his former life. The constitution and vitality of the Einherjar was unmatched. Accompanied with the healing abilities, that the Mogs did not seem to posses, made them appear almost invincible in this battle.
The attackers numbers continued to dwindle while the Einherjar made the final push to completely eliminate them, down to the last fighter.
Suddenly there was a shift in the wind that was felt by all the warriors. A dark energy began to converge in the forest beyond the battlefield. A loud animalistic howl resounded through the air as Mogs began to pour out of the treeline like a wave.