#mmmm angst

First off, she has to make physical contact, usually with the head of a person, in order to absorb the soul of a person she wants. Since she’s actually absorbing them and they’re literally becoming part of her, she’s somewhat particular about who she absorbs. She won’t do it to any random person she’s fighting, but one of her current projects (bordering on an obsession) is collecting and absorbing the souls of everyone who ever mattered to her, based on the idea that she can then keep them safe and she’ll never lose them.

Now, her not losing them isn’t necessarily true. Essentially how it works is that once their soul is fused with Valkyrie’s and their body dies, they start our existing as an entirely separate personality with separate memories and experiences, and Valkyrie can essentially summon them into real life to talk to them (or she can just communicate with them mentally, Darquesse style). However, as years pass, the secondary personality (whoever Valkyrie absorbed) slowly begins to fully mesh with her soul, going from having to ask about certain experiences to being able to flip through those experiences to Valkyrie remembering those experiences as if she lived them. The aspects of them that Valkyrie can summon also then slowly become more distant or faint over time, although they never fade completely. At the end, they are completely meshed with Valkyrie and all of their personality, memories, experiences, and so on are now entirely hers to own and implement. She doesn’t love this inevitable stage, but she’s basically accepted it as the price to pay for never losing someone she loves.

One big thing I should note for this, because it’s important, is that she refuses to do it without the person’s consent, only exception being if they’re actively dying. She has the offer open to a lot of people for her to absorb their souls (most of them in Roarhaven) and it’s very much a point of moral and personal debate for them. Dexter Vex is an absolute disaster, and he’s definitely considered this offer the most. Saracen is pretty much what’s keeping him sane.

Another thing I should probably mention is that Valkyrie could theoretically do this to anyone, dead or alive, but it’s much less complicated to absorb people who are alive (their souls are easier to get ahold of, easier to transport, etc). A huge part of her project is finding a way to get ahold of the souls of those she’s lost or those she feels deserved better so that they can become a part of her forever. These are people like Gordon, Stephanie, Carol, Sanguine, Finbar, Cassandra, Kenspeckle, possibly mr. Bliss, and so on. She’s definitely gotten to a few of them already, but finding out exactly where they are and then getting their souls to join with hers takes a lot of effort, and so the work goes slowly. Her current focus is on Stephanie, which would give Steph the chance to become at least somewhat active and autonomous again.

Skulduggery doesn’t actually mind her bizarre fixation with finding and absorbing souls, and he’s willing to assist her with the process and stops her from going even more insane over the experience overflow that she gets. He’s arrogant and doesn’t really see himself as somebody who will ever be absorbed, but rather someone who will stay by her side but separate from her forever, acting as something real when everything else around Valkyrie is simply an aspect of her many personalities given form.

So…yeah. That’s one of Valkyrie’s many powers. Another power that works similarly but isn’t the same is that she can absorb power from extremely powerful beings and then spread that power around to her followers (which is a very overpowered ability when you regularly get into fights with the Faceless Ones).