The thing about Valkyries that Hudson would learn later from a very embarrassing Wikipedia binge conducted at 4 a.m... is that the mythology got almost everything wrong except the part about them choosing the worthy dead.
They did not ride winged horses. (They had wings. The horses were a translation error.)
They did not serve mead in golden cups. (They served mead, but in whatever was handy. Hilde's preferred vessel was a chipped ceramic mug from a gas station outside Scranton.)
They were not, strictly, virginal. (The Victorians had really gone to town on that one.)
And they did, in fact, have an instinct; ancient, pre-verbal, carved into their spiritual architecture long before the first Tower cracked open the sky, to recognize a warrior who had been cheated.
Cheated by fate. Cheated by circumstance. Cheated by a System that had, for reasons of its own, handed him a body that couldn't cash the checks his spirit was writing.
When Hilde had walked into the Drunken Hydra that night, she had not been looking for anything in particular. She had been looking for a drink, and possibly for someone to lose an arm-wrestling match to her, because she had been bored for eleven consecutive days and she had promised her therapist she wouldn't start any more bar fights this month.
Then she had seen Hudson Valentine, hunched over his beer, radiating the specific frequency of a man who had been told no too many times by a world that couldn't see him clearly.
And something in Hilde resonated with that.
Hudson, of course, didn't know any of this yet. Hudson just knew that he was suddenly on the inside of the booth, with a Valkyrie pressed warm against his left side, and that her arm had somehow ended up around his shoulders in a way that he could not imagine extricating himself from without causing a diplomatic incident.
"Now..." said Hilde, in a voice like someone settling in for story time. "...Tell me about this insufficient face."
Hudson told her.
It took a while. Hilde kept feeding him beer, and also occasionally feeding him fries from a basket she'd ordered without consulting him, and at some point Hudson realized that his cheek had found its way to her collarbone and she was not only not objecting, she was stroking his hair with the absent-minded thoroughness of a woman grooming a favored warhound.
"...and then the recruiter said my Strength stat was 'functionally decorative,'" Hudson was saying, "which I looked up later and I'm pretty sure it's not even a real term, I think he just..."
"Hudson."
"...made it up on the spot to..."
"Hudson."
"Yeah?"
Hilde tilted his chin up with two fingers. Her blue eyes were very close. The booth was very dim. The bar had, at some point in the last hour, emptied out around them.
"You are..." Hilde said, slowly, as if translating from a language she was still learning, "...a very sweet boy who has been very poorly appraised. I have decided I am going to fix this."
"Fix... fix the appraisal?"
"Fix you..." said Hilde. And she pulled his head gently, firmly and irrevocably, down against her chest.
---
Here is what Hudson would later remember, in order:
The warmth.
The smell; something like cedar and ozone and the specific sweetness of a thunderstorm half a mile away.
The fact that Hilde's ceremonial armor, up close, had little runic inscriptions along the edges that glowed very faintly gold.
The fact that she was humming. A lullaby, he thought, although not in any language he recognized. Something old. Something that made his chest feel strange in a way that wasn't entirely to do with the proximity of...
The System notification.
> [UNIQUE TRAIT ACTIVATED: Nurtured by the Divine Feminine]
Hudson froze.
He had possessed this Unique Trait for three years. Since his awakening. He had never, not once managed to activate it, because the System had refused, in increasingly pointed language, to tell him what the activation conditions actually were. The trait had sat on his character sheet like a broken appliance. He had stopped telling people about it. He had stopped thinking about it.
And now it was activating.
> [Donor Classification: Valkyrie, Veteran Tier]
> [Assessing compatibility…]
> [Assessing compatibility…]
> […Oh.]
> [Oh, Player. Oh no.]
*Oh no What!?* Hudson thought, very clearly, the fuck.
> [Player Hudson Valentine, please be advised that your Unique Trait activation requirements have now been confirmed.]
> [The System would like to formally apologize.]
> [The System would also like to note that it tried to warn you.]
> [Proceeding with stat transfer in 3…]
'Transfer of what...'
> […2…]
Hilde, Hudson thought, with a rising sense of doom, what are you...
> […1.]
Hilde's humming shifted into something slower. Something with words, maybe, though Hudson couldn't quite catch them. Her arms had come up around his shoulders, cradling, and there was a softness against his cheek that was... that was warm... and that was...
Oh.
Oh.
Her blouse was open. He did not remember the blouse being open. The blouse had been open for some time, possibly. The ceremonial armor was more of a harness than a breastplate, he was realizing, and it had been designed to...
A lump of fat fell out of her blouse, maybe intentionally? Then a bead of something sweet, golden and twitchy touched his lips.
It tasted, impossibly, like honey and starlight and the specific satisfaction of a debt being repaid.
Hudson, who had intended to pull back, did not pull back.
Hudson, who had intended to say something, anything, coherent, did not.
Hudson, who had come into this bar tonight as a C-rank nobody with a rejection letter and a decorative Strength stat, closed his eyes.
Sucked And drank.
---
The System notifications came in a cascade, one after another, like a slot machine hitting.
> [+1 Strength.]
> [+1 Strength.]
> [+2 Strength.]
> [+3 Constitution.]
> [+1 Wisdom.]
> [Skill Acquired: Warrior's Composure (F-Grade)]
> [Skill Acquired: Battle Hymn Recognition (F-Grade)]
> [Passive Acquired: Mild Frost Resistance]
> [+5 Constitution.]
> [+3 Strength.]
> [Stat Cap Reached: Further gains from this donor limited to 1 per session.]
> [Trait Subcategory Unlocked: Valkyrie-Nurtured.]
> […Player, the System wishes to note that these are very good numbers. The System does not understand how this is happening. The System is filing a complaint with itself.]
Hudson's entire character sheet, three years of stagnation, was rewriting itself.
Hilde hummed, almost into a moan.
And somewhere in the back of Hudson's overwhelmed, beer-fogged, increasingly non-functional mind, a small and entirely traitorous voice said:
'Oh. Oh, this is so going to ruin my life.'
---
Later, he woke up on a couch that was not his.
The apartment was large and strange and smelled of cedar. A window was open and somewhere below, a garbage truck was doing its thing, and somewhere above, a pigeon tooting. A kettle was whistling. Someone, in the kitchen, was singing softly in a language Hudson did not recognize.
His head did not hurt. This was, in itself, suspicious. Hudson had drunk four beers last night, minimum. His head should have been a war zone of a hangover.
Instead, he felt...
He sat up.
He felt good. He felt clear. He felt like someone had drained all the sludge out of his body overnight and refilled him with something lighter and faster and better.
With a trepidation usually reserved for stepping on bathroom scales, Hudson called up his character sheet.
> [STATUS PANEL:]
> PLAYER: Hudson Valentine
> Rank: C
> [STATS:]
> STR: 47 (↑ from 31)
> CON: 52 (↑ from 38)
> DEX: 29 (—)
> INT: 33 (—)
> WIS: 34 (↑ from 33)
> [SKILLS:]
> — Basic Swordsmanship (F)
> — Basic Evasion (F)
> — Warrior's Composure (F) [NEW]
> — Battle Hymn Recognition (F) [NEW]
> [PASSIVES:]
> — Mild Frost Resistance [NEW]
> [UNIQUE TRAIT:] Nurtured by the Divine Feminine [ACTIVE — Cooldown: 71h]
> SUBCATEGORIES UNLOCKED: Valkyrie-Nurtured (1/???)
---
Hudson stared at the numbers.
Hudson had not gained sixteen points of Strength in the entire three years since his awakening. Combined. Across all stats. He had gained sixteen points of Strength in one night.
"You're awake" said Hilde, from the kitchen doorway.
She was wearing a t-shirt and nothing else that Hudson could see from this angle, and holding two mugs of coffee, and smiling at him with the uncomplicated fondness of a woman who had solved a problem to her own satisfaction.
"I..." said Hudson.
"You slept well" Hilde observed. "Good. You needed it."
"I..." said Hudson.
"I must go to work in an hour. I am teaching a spear class to some very stupid B-rankers up at the Columbia training annex. But we have time for coffee. And perhaps..." she added, setting a mug down in front of him and leaning, unhurriedly, into his personal space, "...a small conversation about how often you would like to see me."
Hudson's phone, on the coffee table, buzzed.
He looked at it on reflex.
> Mark: hey. we need to talk. something's changed. i can feel it.
> Mark: hudson, pick up your phone.
> Mark: HUDSON.
> Mark: i don't know what you did last night but my trait just pinged something in the city that shouldn't exist in this timeline and it's pinging YOU. what did you DO.
Hudson looked up at Hilde.
Hilde raised an eyebrow.
"Friend of yours?"
"Childhood friend..." said Hudson, numbly. "He's. Uh. He has a thing."
"A thing,m .." said Hilde.
"He sees the future..." Hudson paused. "Sort of. He's done it before. He's doing it again. I'm not... Uh... it's complicated, I wasn't supposed to tell anyone, but I think the secret's kind of out now."
Hilde considered this. She sipped her coffee. She set the mug down.
"Hudson of Jersey City," she said.
"Yeah?"
"I think..." said Hilde, "that your life is about to become extremely interesting."
"Yeah..." said Hudson and he eyed the volumptous silhouette of her chest in that shirt.
Then he looked down at his character sheet. At the sixteen points of Strength. At the glowing subcategory counter that read Valkyrie-Nurtured (1/???). At the cooldown timer, ticking down, second by second, toward the next activation.
"Yeah..." he said again. "I'm starting to get that impression too."
Outside the window, somewhere over the Manhattan skyline, the first Tower of the day began to glow.