"Vanagloria." A muffled voice came from behind the door, followed by two knocks.
"Awww… come on…" Vanagloria mumbled
She felt like garbage right now.
Not because she slept badly, actually it was quite the opposite.
She'd spent her whole life sleeping in a bag on the floor, finally sleeping on a comfy bed was absolutely euphoric.
Vanagloria didn't even know if she could get up if this person wanted her too.
She felt so tired and helpless. The bed had basically trapped her in the best possible way.
Although the light of her ceiling lamp was annoying. The orphanage always kept their lights on, for safety reasons, so Vanagloria never really slept in the dark.
She watched the door for a few more seconds, waiting for it to open.
Relief filled her body as she heard footsteps quickly go down the stairs.
Probably for the best, she was a complete mess.
Her hair was everywhere and full of knots, a strand even got stuck in her mouth.
Salazar was laying behind her with her head perched up towards the door. The little dragon was leaning against her back as Vanagloria big spooned one of the many giant comfy pillows on the bed.
She hadn't organized any of her stuff, her backpack was laid up against a dresser, the only other piece of furniture in the room.
It was a very small room, but it was kinda nice. She liked how it made her feel condensed and secure, she didn't need much more space anyways. This was definitely the smallest room out of the handful that were upstairs.
But she liked it, it was nice having this room all to herself for once.
"Hey, I gotta come in." She heard from the other side of the door.
After a few seconds of Vanagloria trying to process the sentence, it started creaking open.
Martyr's head popped out of the doorway, immediately making direct eye contact with her.
"Woah, woah, woah!" Vanagloria started scrambling to get up which scared the hell out of Salazar.
Martyr slipped his head back out into the hallway and closed the door.
"Sorry, Blair would've come to get you, but she was too tired I guess."
"I-It's fine." Vanagloria said quietly with a hand on her heart, it beating like crazy.
It really wasn't fine. "What the fuck was Blair thinking?"
"I didn't want to wake you up but you have visitors." He said as Salazar scratched the door, whimpering cause she couldn't see Martyr.
Vanagloria put her hands over her face, she was getting light headed, so many things were overwhelming her at the moment.
"O-Okay, I'll be out soon."
After a few minutes of getting dressed and brushing her hair out, Vanagloria opened the door and let Salazar scramble out.
The whelp started sniffing his leg, getting his attention so she could be carried by him.
Martyr had quickly become Salazar's favorite person. Vanagloria didn't really know why him specifically but it was very obvious. Her one theory was because he was naturally more warm than everyone else, but other than that she couldn't think of anything else.
"Sorry again." Martyr laughed a little as he hoisted Salazar up and put her in a one armed hug. "I thought you were like, listening to music or something and you couldn't hear me. I didn't realize you weren't up yet"
"No it's okay." Vanagloria said, not able to make eye contact with him.
"No… I gotta be more confident." She thought, lifting her back up a little, pushing through her drowsiness.
"I mean, are the visitor's important?" She asked, looking up at him, right back into his brown eyes.
Martyr was giving her a cute smile, like her messy, thrown-together look wasn't bothering him. He just looked happy to see her. It just made her wish they were closer, she wanted to get to a point where she could just hug him for support, and not have to worry about any of her dumb commitment issues. She wished he knew all of the mayhem that went on in her head, so he would know why she was like he was.
"I just wanna kiss him." Vanagloria thought as he told her who was visiting.
Maybe she was putting too much on him. Maybe she was too much to handle.
"Wait… sorry what did you say?" Vanagloria asked, realizing her mind had completely blown over what he was telling her.
"The knights, the uh air knights that were here before the trail. Today's Tuesday which is I guess when we scheduled them to come over." Martyr said, not caring to repeat.
"Come on... I just wanna have a break." Vanagloria stopped walking for a second to rub her forehead in frustration
"I think Styrmir just wants you up there for a few hours. I don't think he could make you stay for much longer than that anyways with the way the cloud travels." Martyr started jogging down the stairs, which Vanagloria soon followed.
"I hope so."
Vanagloria ran down, the living room revealing itself as its roof rose as her descent continued.
Blair looked up from her couch in the corner with eyes that could only say "help."
The two knights were practically surrounding her. Belmont, the nerdier one, was sitting on a couch next to her, while Bartholowmew, the frat gym reject, was sitting on a couch to the other side, leaning on the couch's arm rest, getting closer than Blair looked comfortable with.
"If only they knew she was a lesbian." Vanagloria thought.
Blair might've even told them by now, but they might've just dismissed it. It happened more often than one would think.
The third knight was nowhere to be seen.
"Hey, I got her!" Martyr yelled down, making the knight's heads whip around towards them.
"Get up, Barth. That's our sign to roll out." Belmont said as he shot up from the couch, dusting off his specless chest plate that was clearly too big for him.
Bartholomew looked extremely disappointed as he eyed Vanagloria, like she was taking away precious time with Blair.
"You're late." Belmont said to Vanagloria as she descended down her final step.
He had his head held high, completely avoiding any sort of eye contact with Vanagloria. His dramatic dismissive nature was sudden and surprising, but not very convincing.
"Well you guys didn't give me a time of day to meet up with you." Vanagloria felt a small amount of annoyance creeping into her bones.
"It doesn't matter. Let's just get out of here before Styrmir starts getting angry." Bartholomew opened the front door sluggishly, Belmont following behind him regally.
"Wait, can I grab some stuff before we go?" Vanagloria said, realizing the only thing she had done to get ready was get dressed.
"No, you don't need anything. I'm pretty sure Styrmir only wants you up here for a few hours." Bartholomew interrupted Belmont before he could even own his mouth.
"O-Oh, mmk." Vanagloria jogged out of the door.
"Wait! Can I come?" Blair ran over to them, her sparkly hair flying behind her.
Martyr gripped the top of the doorframe, using it to lean out of the doorframe. His other hand was holding a very sad and confused Salazar. "Yeah, is it alright if I come too…"
"No."
Belmont's sudden response seemed to catch Martyr off guard, causing him to blink a few times while he processed what happened.
"Wh…"
"Styrmir only wants to train Vanagloria." Belmont talked over Martyr, staring back at him with wide eyes.
"Okay?" Martyr looked confused, then whispered something to Blair who looked similarly confused.
"Bro! Let's go! What the fu… no one cares about you trying to be tough. Literally no one. Let's go." Bartholomew started raising his voice back at his teammate in frustration.
Belmont obnoxiously mumbled something under his breath as he walked by his fellow knight. It was loud enough so everyone could tell he was muttering to himself, but incoherent enough that you couldn't understand him.
Bartholomew held back from saying anything but clearly got very frustrated, his face turning more and more red as the three of them started walking towards the cave exit.
"Bye Gloria!" Blair yelled, making Vanagloria turn around.
"Have fun." Martyr said, shrugging back at her. She had no clue what… it was probably about the knights. Nevermind.
"Good luck!" Vanagloria shouted back at them, to Martyr's visible confusion.
She turned back around and jogged back up to the air knights.
It was weird to think she would one day be working among them. Hopefully being their boss.
Little did Styrmir know, Vanagloria was trying to snatch his crown. He was gonna end up training the person who will bring an end to his reign as the air champion.
"Maybe not anytime soon… but soon enough." Vanagloria thought to herself, her walk becoming noticeably more chipper from her happy, scheming thoughts.
She had to stop her body language, because it clearly did not match the mood of the tired Bartholomew and the sulking Belmont.
Vanagloria tried to stop as much water as she could as she walked through the waterfall once more, although she still got an uncomfortable amount of water on her clothes.
Thankfully she had some swishy running gear on, the type of stuff she usually wore for fighting. It wasn't the worst thing to get wet.
What really suprise her was how it was completely dark out, it was almost impossible to see even three feet in front of her. The difference between early morning in the cave, as opposed to the real outside was crazy.
"What time is it?" She asked, trying to find where the knights were in the darkness.
"Five." Bartholomew said as he poured light element into his hand.
Vanagloria watched as Belmont did the same, both of them doing it effortlessly.
"I wish I could do that." Vanagloria thought to herself.
She wanted to ask them, but she also didn't want them to know she was behind on her powers. Especially these two.
Vanagloria was just starting to get the hang of her lightning powers, and she could barely use her air powers. She didn't even have access to fire or light.
"Alright, earth girl, have you figured out how to bolt yet? If so, can you bolt up to that cloud?" Bartholomew asked Vanagloria with a weird tone like he was reading off a script.
"Uh…" Vanagloria tilted her head up to the cloud above them. She could actually see it in the darkness, which was surprising.
It was massive, easily the biggest cloud she had ever seen. The fact that it was even visible from that far away was mind-blowing. It was lit up in a few different places, revealing itself in the night sky.
This was undoubtedly the cloud that held the two capitals of the air region, Heaven.
"I don't know, I don't think I've ever bolted that high before."
Even that one floating island she bolted onto wasn't even half that height, and she still barely made it then.
"Aight then, hold on." Bartholomew extended out a hand. Thankfully it didn't seem like there were any bad intentions despite Vanagloria's expectations. He just seemed as burnt out as usual.
Surprisingly Belmont grabbed his other hand. It didn't look like he wanted to, but he did it so naturally despite Bartholomew just insulting him. Like this was typical for them.
"Come on, we gotta go!" Bartholomew yelled with a lot of frustration towards Vanagloria.
"Uh… yep." She quickly grabbed his hand after zoning out again.
'BOOOOOOM'
Next thing Vanagloria knew, she was soaring through the edge of the massive cloud, pillowy air shoving back down on her, slowing her ascent.
'Poof'
Vanagloria flew up above the cloud to the sight of a small grassy floating island resting on the cloud.
Before she could even comprehend where she was, she landed on an unusually soft but familiar ground.
Letting go of Bartholomew's hand, Vanagloria put her hands onto the nearest tree and used it to stop herself from falling over.
"Are you sure you've bolted before?" Bartholomew said with a judgemental attitude.
"Yeah, of course I have." Vanagloria started getting a little offended. She knew what she was doing, in fact she probably could do it better than this asshole.
"…Okay." He said, starting to walk away.
Vanagloria stood up and regained her balance.
The cloud felt so weird to stand on. She could feel the grass and dirt beneath her feet like normal, but it felt like the cloud was a small tide on a beach. It would rise up to her knees, then fall back down to her ankles.
She was completely light-headed right now, her empty stomach yelling at her.
Looking around, she was completely amazed at everything. All of the buildings of the air region were super regal, most of them a spotless silver or white. It looked exactly how the magazines showed them to be, but so much more real.
But instead of all the buildings being tall, square and thin like in the lift capital, the buildings of the air capital were short and round. Each building had a round roof and pillars supporting them. They were all spread out leaving no room for sketchy alleyways removing the compact and claustrophobic feelings of a typical city.
Even the trees were large, with complex branch patterns. Each one glowing green in the dark of night like bioluminescent street lights.
This looked like true royalty.
And it was.
Vanagloria was on the edge of Asgard. The north air capital of Borealis, opposite to Olympus, the southern air capital of Australis.
In fact, she could very clearly also see Olympus from where she was.
All it took was a quick 90 degree glance upward.
The southern capital was covering the entire sky, It looked like it could fall down on Asgard at any moment. But she knew that the gravity that city was experiencing was much different than the one they were feeling.
Olympus was experiencing the gravity of Australis.
Vanagloria couldn't see the split in gravity in the sky but she wished she could. It was almost scary being able to see the tops of buildings when she looked up.
She could even make out people sitting out on their porches or walking through the green island poking out of the cloud, all of them completely upside down.
The disorientation was not helping her stomach.
Not to mention the actual island of Australis was much closer than Vanagloria was used too, the lights of small cities and towns were so much more defined when she was that much closer.
"I wouldn't look up if I were you." Belmont said, standing right next to her. Like, RIGHT next to her.
"Wow thanks, that's very welcoming." Vanagloria said as she backed away, using all her willpower to not sound sarcastic.
It was gonna be impossible for her to take these guys seriously as teammates. They were way too annoying and goofy to be knights.
"So, where are we going? In here?" Vanagloria asked her fellow lightning users, pointing up to a building in the center of the capital.
"No."
The building was massive and extremely long. It was clearly the town hall of the city…
"Wait a second… is that what I think it is?" Vanagloria jogged over to a stone step engraved into the first patch of green grass coming out of the cloud.
The stone slab was the first of a giant staircase leading up to the building sitting at the peak of the small smooth green mountain.
It was taking everything she had not to burst out in excitement.
"Yup. That's Valhalla." Bartholomew said.
"Home to the hall of fame."
"H-Holy crap." Vanagloria said as she marveled at the mythical building.
Valhalla was a one colossal hall, golden statues of the most legendary heroes lined the walls. Every hero, every famous champion, every 'god' as earth would call them, their legacy's were all lined up here for the public to see.
Thick pillars held up the whole thing and served as the walls, exposing the insides to the outside world. One giant white triangle of a roof stretched over the entire building and way looked like one giant brick served as the floor. A two short staircases stretched across the front and back of the brick respectively so people could actually access the museum. All of this was placed on this crazy big foundation that seeped into the cloud itself. It was kinda weird.
"Hey, get back here, the public can't see us. We've gotta go around the outskirts. Plus we've gotta meet up with Styrmir, stop side tracking!" Bartholomew yell-whispered, motioning her to come back to the side of the building.
"Okay, sorry." Vanagloria took one last good look at the hall and wrote she walked back over to the knights. There weren't even any people walking around in the dark early hours but she didn't feel like arguing.
"Valhalla is exclusively used as a museum… and occasionally parties. We train at Valaskjalf." Belmont corrected.
"Oh, the castle of Asgard?"
"Yeah. Styrmir should be over there waiting for us right now." Bartholomew said, walking down the side of Valhalla.
Vanagloria followed but couldn't help but peak over at Valhalla every once in a while.
It was too far away to make out any of the statues inside but she knew they were there.
She felt like she already knew the building inside and out from the amount of times she had seen it on tv.
Statues of old heroes like Hephaestus, The Dogda, Zagreus, Nephthys and even Vega's great-great-great-great grandmother Artemis.
She felt like she could picture the statue of Thor, standing as one of the highest and having one of the brightest and colorful shades of gold. Asgard's most famous hero always had his tiny hammer held up high, almost scraping the ceiling. His statue always had uncanny resemblance to the ancient stories and movies she always loved watching.
"And now I've got the same powers he does. This can't be real." She couldn't help smiling from how lucky she had gotten.
But her joy was soon interrupted.
"Hey girl! Get back over here."
Vanagloria snapped out of her thoughts and back over to the voice.
The two of them were hugging the tide of clouds coming up along the island, far from any buildings.
"Put these on. We can't have people recognizing you. Styrmir could get into big trouble if the other champions find out Styrmir is bringing you up here." Bartholomew handed her some shades and a brightly blue baseball cap.
"O-Oh… yeah I guess that makes sense." Vanagloria said.
The fact that people couldn't recognize her made sense, she didn't want to draw attention. But what did Styrmir have to worry about? Plus people weren't even around, it's five o'clock in the morning, no one is even up.
"He's a champion, who is he getting in trouble with?" She questioned in her mind as she brushed her hair back to put the cap on.
"Okay, I'm all set." Vanagloria felt cool, but not like an undercover celebrity kind of cool, she felt like a rich tomboy girl at a football game type of cool.
"Then let's go!" Bartholowmew said once again, making over dramatic hand gestures to get her to follow him.
"Calm down, jeez." She said, jogging over to him.
She hated being rushed. Or even just being bossed around like this, especially by guys like these two.
Whatever, she was gonna be her boss soon anyways.
A giant fountain caught her eye on the way.
The dual gods of Heaven, Zephyrus and Eurus were carved as statues on top of the fountain. The air region's current gods were what Vanagloria believed to be Ethiopian dragons; they both had a set of front legs and a pair of wings. It was kind of weird looking because the wings are already front limbs and the legs are right underneath them on their serpent like body. The fountain was practically its own statue of them, but with water going through it.
After what felt like them walking around half the city, they finally made it to their destination.
About 200 meters from her was an extremely tall staircase leading to the air castle, Valaskjalf.
It was impossibly tall, towering over everything else in the capital. Nothing even came close.
The tallest house Vanagloria had seen must've only been three stories high and the staircase itself was taller than that.
The actual base of the castle sat upon a part of the giant cloud that extended out from the rest of the island.
Valaskjalf itself was very thin and extremely spiky. All of the roofs that came up from it were sharp triangles, no flat squares or round domes. Not to mention it looked very asymmetrical and all over the place, columns most likely containing spiral staircases were placed everywhere, all of them different heights.
It looked kind of like what a stereotypical spooky Halloween type of castle looked like in structure, but had the bright silver and gold to keep it looking somewhat royal.
But the coolest thing about it was that it connected to the castle of Olympus, Aether.
The tallest column of the tower simply continued up into the sky and eventually led to the upside down castle of the capital right above her.
Aether looked extremely similar to Valaskjalf, the only real differences were how these components were randomly sorted.
As the group of them walked up to the very first step, the knights stopped.
"Now we wait." Belmont said with a content smile, like he had just completed a chore for his parents.
"Mmk."
The two knights just kind of stood there, awkwardly looking up at the castle because they had nothing better to do.
Vanagloria felt kind of awkward herself, standing right out in the open. Sunglasses and a cap didn't feel like a good enough disguise for people to not assume that it was her.
Although she really had only been on TV once, it's not like people were studying her face. Hopefully not.
"Ahem."
Before Vanagloria could even register the cough, the two knights had already shot around, terrified.
Standing behind them was the 7 foot tall Styrmir, looking down at Vanagloria with his crazy gold eyes that were giving off the same murderous energy that they were when they first met. He was also fully clad in his silver and gold armor for whatever reason, just like his two knights.
Those two both had their hand on their forehead in the typical salute, despite neither of them looking formal enough to be taken seriously.
"Uh, hey. It's been a bit." Vanagloria said, not entirely sure what to say.
"Indeed. Thank you, Bartholomew and Belmont. Your job is done, I will take Gloria from here."