Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 17)

Jerica sighed and rubbed her face. That made this harder. More tempting. “…but they won’t let me see my family anymore?”

"Perhaps you may, but you will place Strithr's will before your own."

“That sounds…” lonely. Sad. Awful. “…isolating.”

"That is a price you will have to pay. You have options to weigh."

“Well what’s the point in being powerful if I’m just going to be miserable?” She was doubting herself again. “Can I at least meet Strithr before I have to decide if I wanna be their little bitch for the rest of my life?”

"They sleep," Them reminded her. The leaped down from the wardrobe. "Perhaps I may supplement."

Jerica tensed but resisted the urge to step backward. “What?”

They sat up straight and raised a paw. "Touch me."

She furrowed her brow, looking at Them suspiciously. But she reluctantly walked over towards them and reached out her left hand to touch their paw.

The bedroom dropped away from her, and Jerica was alone on a snowy battlefield. Blood had darkened the ground and bodies were strewn about, hundreds of them. They were dressed in traditional Northern battle garb, and surviving warriors moved between the bodies like ants, carrying them to the edge of the battlefield where other corpses were lain out on blankets.
The cries of the wounded echoed across the battlefield, and beside one stood two figures.

Jerica’s stomach clenched but she didn’t pull away, instead looking at the figures.

The first was the tall, spindly form that had been in the book--Haelar. Beside him was the form of Strithr, wrapped in their tattered cloak and displaying two faces--the grief-lined features of a mother and the noble face of a Northern warrior. They bent beside the dying man, whose mouth and lungs were filled with blood, and with one of their dozens of arms they touched a finger to his trembling lips. The man went still, and his breathing ceased. Then a faint mist formed above his body, glowing with a delicate light before taking the firm of the dead soldier. Haelar spread his cloak with one arm, and the soldier stepped into the folds.

Jerica watched the bizarre interaction in silence, feeling like she wasn’t meant to be there.

They moved on from the body in silence.
The scene changed, and suddenly Jerica was in the thick of another battlefield. Strithr stood atop one of the hills above the field, several eyes fixed on a single warrior. She was enormous, with bulging muscles and a grave face, and beside her fought a gargantuan mountain cat. She was using two battleaxes to cut a path through the others, occasionally sending an enemy flying off his feet with the force of her chopping. The god Froenig stood at Strithr's side, arms folded into his sleeves.

So… they were on the battlefield themselves? That was good. Not like Levin, hiding in his throne room too cowardly to see the mess he was creating. She continued to observe, trying to take everything in.