‘Seeing what we were made of’ apparently consisted of seeing how much control Penny could exercise over the weapon that was her body and then seeing how well we could cooperate without tripping over one another. That proved to be easier said than done, especially the latter. For the first hour, I was constantly tripping over the length of the chain that connected Penny’s large demonic sword half with the smaller white angel wing blade.

The only good thing about that first hour of stumbling around and trying to get a feel for how my other half worked as a weapon was that Penny, or at least the Purity half of them, figured out that she was the one who controlled the white and silver flames that covered the angel blade. She also discovered that not only could she cover the chain in those flames if she wished, but she could also cover the demon blade that represented their Demon half. The flames didn’t hurt me at all, even when they coated the hilt as I used the weapon, but I still had no idea what that fire was.

Aunt Lin theorized that the flames could be some Divine version of hellfire, which the weapons that Demon’s physical form seemed to be based on could produce. As for me, constantly tripping over my own weapon, my aunt seemed to find the sight humorous and waited a whole hour before finally suggesting, “Have you thought of asking Penny to just make the chain shorter?”

“What?” I asked as I stared at her in disbelief. There was no way that would work; I didn’t think it was physically possible.

My thoughts must have shown on my face because my aunt sighed and shook her head as she explained, “Raven, Penny is a piece of your soul given physical form. She is a magical weapon that produces Divine flames, for fuck’s sake, do you really think shortening that damn chain isn’t possible with all of that? There was one Valkyrie in the village when I was growing up who had a chain whip with a bladed tip; her andivapn could make the chain longer or shorter at will.”

She did make a valid point. Honestly, when she said that Penny might be able to have some control over her body, I was hoping that meant that they would be able to move the chain and the smaller blade at the end at will. So far, though, they hadn’t been able to do any such thing; the only control that they had demonstrated was over the white and silver flames. It hadn’t even occurred to me that my aunt might be talking about changing something about their physical form rather than moving it.

“Can you try it, Penny?” I asked of my andivapn.

“Okay,” they both answered as one.

After having them talking in my head most of last night, I was starting to get a sense of when they were both of one mind and speaking as one, and when they were saying things individually as well. I was beginning to see slight differences in their personalities as well. Demon seemed a little more outgoing and eager to try new things, while Purity was more quiet, reserved, and eager to please, though both seemed to share my own feelings on a lot of things, especially when they were passengers in my body instead of in their weapon form.

I spent several minutes watching my andivapn as nothing happened, and I was about to tell them to give it up when a clinking sound came from the vicinity of Penny’s chain. Link by link, the chain of black metal appeared to be getting shorter, and I let out a small gasp of surprise. I watched quietly after that, though, not wanting to distract them, until finally, only four links remained between the larger demonic sword and the roughly hand-sized angel wing blade that was now dangling from where the chain attached to the pommel.

That seemed to be as short as the chain would get, but thankfully, it was enough so that the chain and the dangling smaller blade didn’t seem to be getting in my way too badly. I was thinking that I could probably get used to it, as the voice that I thought belonged to Demon said, “I think that’s the shortest I can make our chain.” Even though she didn’t ask if she did okay, like Purity did earlier when experimenting with the flames, I could still sense the need for approval in her voice. That seemed to be one of the many traits that both halves of Penny shared, but I guess that made sense since they were technically still a child.

“You did great,” I told her and felt a small nova of pride and happiness from her in response. “It seems like you control the chain part of your body, while your other half controls the flames. So, I guess that gives you both a task to work on…”

Both sides of Penny noticed the sudden halt in my train of thought and immediately asked in a worried tone, “What’s wrong?!”

“Nothing,” I quickly assured them. “I just realized that while you’re both Penny, I think we need something to call your two distinct halves, like a penny has one side that is heads and the other that is tails. It would make it easier when I need to set each of you a task, like now. I don’t really want to call you Demon and Purity either, since those are more descriptions than names.”

“I don’t mind being called Demon,” the demonic half of Penny answered, even as her other half insisted, “You already named us Penny, and we’re happy with that, so you can keep calling us whatever you want.”

From their tone and the emotions that I could feel from them, I could tell that they were indeed happy with the name I had given them, but it felt like they just didn’t want to ask for more. They were trying to make things easier for me; they didn’t want to cause me problems. The poor girls needed so much love.

“Well, I don’t want to call you by those descriptions,” I insisted. “I’m sure we can think of something similar that suits you both better. How about Demona and Angela? I mean, they’re not very creative, but…”

They didn’t seem to mind the lack of creativity as both halves of Penny immediately answered, “Yes!”

“Okay then, Demona, I’m going to need you to get used to how it feels to shrink and expand your chain. I might need you to do it quickly at some point. Angela, I want you to do the same thing with how fast you can move your flames to cover the whole weapon and pull them all back to only your blade. I want you both to work on that in your weapon form while I work with my aunt on other training until you both have it down, okay?”

Both of them quickly and enthusiastically answered in the affirmative, but we weren’t able to discuss it any further as I had to quickly raise the large demonic sword in my hand to frantically block the thrust of my aunt’s sword. I was fairly sure that she was holding back, and that she wasn’t using Oddrún’s ability to make her faster, but she was coming at me with lethal intensity as she said, “What did I tell all of you about staying focused during training?!”

I barely raised my blade in time to deflect hers. “Holy shit, you could have skewered me!” I snapped as I did so.

She didn’t stop, swinging her blade around for a slash at my side, which I again clumsily blocked, more due to adrenaline than any kind of skill. “Bladed weapons won’t hurt you; you know that!”

“But you’re using Oddrún right now, and we are vulnerable to magic and magic weapons!” I protested as I stumbled backward to avoid another slash.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing that you have that Demon regeneration then, isn’t it?” She was not letting up, and I was scrambling to block, dodge, or bat aside her attacks. She was supposed to be training me, not trying to kill me!

Aunt Lin continued relentlessly attacking me for almost two more hours, with only the occasional short breaks to allow me to catch my breath. It was indeed a good thing that I had my regeneration since I was constantly healing from some minor injury or another that she managed to dish out when I didn’t react quickly enough. To her credit, though, she never allowed herself to land any blows that would cause serious injuries.

Even those breaks weren’t really breaks since she spent the whole time telling me what I was doing wrong, or what I could be doing better. For example, during the first break, she went on about how, while my large weapon did give me an advantage in reach in a fight, as did being able to wield it as easily with one hand as two, I needed to be ready in case someone tried to get in close to take away that advantage. I have Demon claws, so I should be ready to use them if that happens.

Also, I needed to think about what to do if people tried to stay outside of my range as well, and that was where the chain and angel blade would come in. If I could use my sword one-handed, that meant that I had a hand free to use the other parts of my weapon. If I had Demona extend the chain to its full length, I could use it as a chain whip to slash at those out of sword range with the blade at the end, or even use the blade itself as a throwing weapon since it seemed to be designed for both options.

She also took the time to correct me on my stance, balance, and mobility. I needed to be ready to not only fight strong or durable opponents, but also highly mobile ones, and to anticipate their movements. She wasn’t even coming at me with half of her usual speed, or so she claimed, and that didn’t include using Oddrún’s ability. I might be naturally strong and flexible from practicing yoga, but my aunt felt that we sorely needed to work on my reaction time and reflexes.

Apparently, we needed to work on my stamina as well because I was ready to collapse when, after almost three hours, including my time experimenting with Penny, Aunt Lin finally said, “Well, I suppose that’s a good start for today.”

“What… the… hell… was that?” I huffed as I flopped very ungracefully onto the ground.

“That was training,” she responded with a raised eyebrow, not even breathing heavily. “We will be starting every morning with three hours of training with your andivapn, just like that. Valkyries learn to use our andivapn best through instinct and physical experience since we create them as the weapons that will best suit us, so that is how I will train you. When I see you making obvious mistakes, that your form is sloppy, or that you’re not thinking of something obvious, I will correct you. The other weapons I teach you to use will rely much more on proper form, drills, and repetition at first.”

“What other weapons?” I asked, breathing almost normally again.

“I’m so glad you asked,” my aunt said with a satisfied smirk, “because that is how we will be spending the rest of our mornings while we are training.”

Then she began pulling various weapons from what was surely some sort of bag of holding. There were three different types of swords, a really big axe, a glaive, a spiked mace, a similarly spiked flail, a simple spear, a shield, a bow, a crossbow, a couple of handguns, and what looked like an assault rifle. There were fourteen weapons in all, plus the shield, and the ranged weapons looked surprisingly modern and new. The melee weapons weren’t nearly as modern, and looked very similar to those that I had seen in my mother’s basement armory and in my Scandinavian Studies textbook

“That’s an… eclectic collection,” I said when she finally had them all set out in front of me, not quite sure what else to say. “I’ll be learning to use all of those?”

My aunt shrugged as she said, “They were things I either had spares of on hand or could procure on short notice. Yes, you will be learning to use all of them, though I don’t expect you to master them all, merely become competent enough to use them in a battle if needed, and in the case of the ranged weapons, be able to consistently hit your target. There may be times when you need to use weapons other than your andivapn, and these will be yours to keep once training is over, so make sure to take good care of them. We will work with two different weapons per day, until we’ve gone through them all, and then repeat the cycle.”

While my aunt started training me on the longsword and shield, followed by the modern compound bow, I left Penny summoned in her weapon form off to the side so that Demona and Angela could work on their own tasks. This training seemed to be much more structured than earlier, with Aunt Lin constantly correcting my stance, footing, posture, grip, and how I held my new tools of the trade. It seemed like every time I blocked one of her blows, made an attack of my own, or loosed an arrow that morning, she was making some sort of corrections, and I secretly wondered the whole time how I was even going to get proficient with the weapon in my hand, let alone all the others as well.

After we had lunch back on the Wings of the Sea, my aunt started immediately on my next lesson, and thankfully, I could mostly stay seated for this one. Things like aerial combat, combat tactics, battlefield awareness, using the terrain to one’s advantage were all what she called ‘advanced lessons’ so we wouldn’t be getting into those until I was at least somewhat proficient in using my andivapn and at least one other weapon in a fight. Hopefully, by that time, I would already be finished perfecting what she wanted to teach me now as well, because the use of teleportation would also be a big part of some of those advanced lessons, especially tactics.

“Okay, Raven,” she began, “there are two ways to travel through the Holy Plane without having your belongings and whatever you might happen to be carrying changed by the Mist. The more advanced of those is to use it as a slingshot point from one place to another, spending so little time in that plane that it doesn’t have time to affect your belongings. That takes a lot of practice because your entry to and exit from the Holy Plane need to be practically at the same time. We’ll be starting you off learning the other method first, which you can safely master here before risking another trip to the Holy Plane.”

I nodded to let her know that I was following along and asked, “Okay, so what do I have to do then?”

My aunt hummed thoughtfully for a moment before returning to lecture mode. “You’re going to learn to extend your aura to cover what you’re wearing and anything that you might be carrying, much like I did with our dinner last night. The Mist is alive in a way, and it has a sort of reverence for Divine elementals. It is not some fluke of genetics or our strong connection to the Divine alone that protects us from the Mist; it is the unique auras that we possess as Divine Elementals. The various types of Elementals all have special auras that connect us to our element far more than even the most powerful mages of the same elemental alignment could ever hope for. The Mist senses that connection because we are also connected to the Mist, which is, in a sense, the purest form of Divine magic.”

“That’s why we can influence the Mist, because of that connection?” I ventured.

“Yep. It senses that connection between us, sees us as a part of it, so it doesn’t change us and will let us guide it. My mother once told me that the Mist changes things because, in its instinctive way, it’s searching for perfection, but it already sees us as perfect. I’m not sure if I buy that, but I do believe that we are intrinsically connected in some way, and it senses that, so it leaves us alone. The Angels’ halos are actually created when they instinctively infuse their soul shard into their elemental aura to empower it, which was why I told you not to summon your halo before you were ready to make your andivapn,” she explained before asking, “Do you remember what your halo felt like?”

I nodded again, and she took that as reason to continue her explanation. “It’s still there, along the surface of your skin, and it extends naturally to things like your hair and fingernails. It’s just that your aura is no longer tinted with the energy of Penny’s soul shard. I want you to find it, get a good feel for it, and then try to stretch it beyond your skin to cover the clothes and other things that you’re wearing. You probably won’t master it today, or even this week, but you will learn to sense it and manipulate it to a small degree.”

“Okay, so how do I do that?” I pressed.

My aunt smiled as she told me, “You’re going to love this. You get to do more meditation.”

Well, shit. Why did it seem like all Valkyrie training methods always involved either meditation or trying to kill me in some way? This was going to take a while, and I did not find my aura that afternoon.

After a good two hours of meditating and getting nowhere on the task that I had been assigned, I could barely sit still when my aunt informed me what the next lesson in our new daily regimen would be. She was going to teach me to use magic! I may have made the mistake of referring to it as a wizarding lesson, which sadly earned me the lecture that I was now being forced to listen to.

“… and furthermore, this is real life, Raven, not some overrated novel or movie by a hack writer where all you need to do is wave a wand and say some magic words. There will be no wand waving or silly incantations in this lesson. Divine magic is all about discipline, self-awareness, and using the Light within you to affect the world around you.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied once she was finished, now thoroughly chastised. She didn’t manage to suck all the fun out of it, because I was still going to be learning magic, which was fucking cool, but I also got that learning magic was serious business.

She seemed to get that I was never going to make that mistake again, and nodded, her expression still deadly serious. “Good. At least for this lesson, you have your experience of manipulating the Mist and forming your andivapn to work from. You were impressive at handling the Mist, and while you may not have the raw power that your mother wielded, you showed some talent with control. That’s very good, because control and using what little power you do have creatively is usually something that takes a while to learn. You can still find the Light within you, Raven?”

“Yeah, it’s right where I left it,” I answered, probably a little more cheekily than I should have. I was excited, so sue me!

That unfortunately earned me another lecture, or maybe it was a lecture that she planned to give all along. Either way, that took another good chunk of fun out of it. I mean, I get that magic is serious business, but can’t it be fun too?

Aunt Lin assured me that it could, but it also needed to be wielded responsibly, especially Divine magic. Divine magic can do a lot of things that other magic can’t, as one of the primary elements. There were three major aspects to it: light, life, and creation, and the last one acted very much like the Mist if not properly controlled.

While the aspects combined could be used for things like light spells, illusions, wards, seals, healing spells, and a variety of other things, even using magic from other elements, Divine mages can also create or change things, just like the Mist does, and it’s easy to do accidentally if you’re not being careful. You could be trying to heal someone, but if you don’t know what you’re doing and aren’t concentrating on doing it exactly as you should, you could change that person in ways that nobody expects. Much like with the uncontrolled Mist, doing that could cause them serious issues or even kill them.

So yeah, less fun and more responsibility, but one can be disciplined and still have fun with magic, too. My aunt insisted on my learning proper discipline first, of course. She was teaching me a couple of spells to be done in a very specific way, and once I was more adept and had the discipline part down, she would teach me some fun stuff later.

As for the magic itself, it was deceptively easy at first, and a lot like when I was manipulating the Mist. I just needed to draw on the Light within me and use it to cast my spells. When said like that, it does sound easy, but I also needed to have a very clear idea in my mind of what exactly I was going to do, like when I made that copy of Sunny, details were extremely important. So, while I was starting to make progress on the light spell and the very basic warding spell that she was starting me off with, I was also getting a profound headache from all the focus that was required to get them exactly right with each cast. My aunt claimed that it would get easier with time.

“Umm… what are we doing out here, Aunt Lin? It’s already dark,” I asked as I looked around at the beach we had landed on after flying here from the Wings of the Sea. Honestly, I wasn’t certain that I wanted to know the answer to that question.

“Survival training, we will be having one of these lessons twice a week,” she announced. “Tonight, I’m going to teach you how to build a shelter, and we’ll sleep out here, but during these lessons, if you want to eat dinner, you will need to hunt and gather the food for it, as well as fresh water and firewood. If you want a fire to cook your meals, you’ll have to build it. I’ve got some flint and steel right here, and I’ll even show you how to do it the first time.”

“How generous,” I muttered.

Three hours later, this first survival lesson was not going well. We had built a lean-to on the beach, and I had gathered firewood, but it was the middle of winter, and even if there wasn’t any snow on the island, the wood was damp from recent rain, and food seemed to be scarce, or at least anything that I could identify as food. It also took forever for me to find the stream I had seen earlier from the air since my aunt had instituted a no-flying rule for this lesson. That, the dark and creepy woods, and the howling in the distance were not helping my mood.

Since I couldn’t fly or see very well in the dark, I was mostly stumbling around the woods, and any animals that might be out there and not hibernating were wise enough to run from all the noise I was making long before I could spot them. I had found four varieties of mushrooms before going off in search of water, but according to my aunt, they were all poisonous, and by the time I actually found the stream and filled some bottles with water, I was getting so hungry that my stomach was growling.

Wait a minute… that wasn’t my stomach. It was about the same time that I made that realization, that something collided with me, was trying to latch onto me, and I was sent sprawling into the stream with my attacker on top of me. Shit, there was more than one, and even if their teeth weren’t able to break my skin and hurt me, I was not in the mood for this shit, and Demona and Angela both screaming in panic inside my head wasn’t helping matters.

When I eventually returned to the beach with the filled bottles of water that I had originally left for, I was soaking wet, my clothes were torn and an equally wet mess, I had the water bottles that I had almost lost in the dark in my bag, and I was dragging a misshapen wolf corpse by the tail. “We’re having wolf for dinner,” I grumbled.

“I’ve had worse,” my aunt said with a tone that told me she was just shrugging it off. “Don’t they usually travel in packs?”

“Yeah, well, I probably would have had more, but the rest of the pack ran off after they realized I wasn’t edible, and I finished punching this one to death. Don’t wanna talk about it.” All that I wanted to do was get a nice warm fire started, dry myself and my ruined and wet clothes, and get some sweet vengeance and a full stomach by eating one of my attackers.

“Sure, it’s been a long day, Kiddo. I remember that my first day of training was exhausting, too. I tell you what, I’m feeling generous, so if you get the fire going, I’ll get that wolf ready for cooking, but just this once. She came over to take the corpse off my hand, handed me the flint and steel to start the fire, and then we both quietly got to work.

Of course, it was while I was bent over and trying to strike a spark, so I could get that fire that I so desperately desired going, that it started to rain. “One day, and I fucking hate this place already. I really hope that the rest of this training trip isn’t going to be like today.” I grumbled as I struggled to get a spark from the wet flint and steel.

From behind me, my aunt's voice cheerfully offered, “Nah, today I went easy on you so you could get your feet wet; the training will be much more intense for the rest of the trip.” I was afraid to find out whether she was joking or not.