Chapter 29 | Ravinica

Chapter 29

Ravinica

WE MADE A MAD DASH for the Niflbog, our stealthy shuffling thrown aside for churning legs. The pain torturing my insides slowly subsided as we grew closer to the cave in the swamp, or else I simply got used to it. It was difficult to tell.

We only took one swift break as we ran for over an hour, to chew down some bread and drink from a chilly river that had thawed.

Our pace was similar to how Corym and I had left Lady Elayina’s home last time we were there, when we spotted fire-smoke on the horizon, only to wander into the Huscarl attack on his elven encampment. I felt the same sense of dread now, though I couldn’t explain why it bothered me so much. Or why Corym and I felt it at all.

As we ran, no one speaking, only panting, a flash of words over the past few days rolled through my mind.

Magnus: “Darker than the white of the snow. They moved like blurs.”

Arne: “Darkness itself.”

And finally, the clue that made me more fearful than any other—what Frida Gorndeen had told Jhaeros of the Skogalfar: “I came to the wrong place.”

She had meant Alfheim. Which meant she had wanted to travel somewhere out of Midgard, just not the home of the Ljosalfar.

The stew of disparaging thoughts swam in my head as our boots suctioned on the swampy turf, kicking up peat. The night was cold and gloomy, the snow had stopped falling.

When we burst through the gangly trees, evading the stamped path for the swamp, we slowed our charge, weapons coming out. I drew my spear, Grim took his battle-axe from his back, and Sven rasped a sword from his hip. Magnus still had his wood-cutting hatchet from Alfheim, though I had no idea where he’d gotten it from. Arne’s sword was thin like him, lightweight, easy to maneuver. Hersir Kelvar unleashed two black-bladed daggers spinning in his palms.

Our faces were distant, fierce, awaiting whatever stood through the distant murkiness of the bog’s mist ahead.

If anything stood there at all.

We approached, sliding our feet through the ankle-high mud to get to Elayina’s cave, bending our knees to creep forward. Gliding through the muck rather than sloshing it around, so we could hide our ambush.

And there, as the thick fog started to thin, I squinted and saw a dark figure. Facing the cave, back to us.

I glanced over at my hidden mates, eyes widening in recognition before earning a nod from Magnus and Kelvar.

Those two swept off to the right, while Grim and Sven instinctively slunk to the left. Corym and Arne stayed with me at the front, the elementalist already Shaping the air to draw a coat of crystals over his palm; the elf drawing his shining silver steel.

We were thirty feet away, drawing closer, almost close enough to recognize the person’s features if he turned to us.

And then another figure showed, off to his right. Speaking a language I didn’t understand—similar to Corym’s Elvish but altogether different and harsher at the same time.

A third figure sprouted up through the mist, and then a fourth, fifth, sixth—another handful of them were whittling away at the cave entrance, smacking it with steely weapons that glowed with purple and black energy. They attacked a barrier warding them off at the mouth of the cave, tinged blue and puffy, slightly spherical—clearly keeping these invaders from getting into Lady Elayina’s sanctuary.

Fuck. There’s nearly a dozen of them.

And what were they ?

One of the grim marauders straightened, body going taut, forcing me, Arne, and Corym to stop twenty feet away and crouch in the fog. We held our breath, the bloody heartbeat in my ears beating a steady tune.

His hair was unnatural in its sheer whiteness, with streaks of dirty black running through it. He wore it long, to his shoulders, with a small bun clasped at the top of his skull. His armor was pitch-dark, black studs swallowing up any of the moonlight that might pierce through the mist.

This was not a man I recognized, yet I knew exactly what he was. He turned to our fog-patch and revealed a face just as black as his armor, with reddish eyes cutting through the mist, staring straight at me.

Yet it was the ears, of course, that confirmed my awful suspicions: long, tapered, pointed.

“ Dokkalfar ,” Corym hissed in a furious tone.

Dark elf.

I took one breath. Time seemed to stop.

Four of the Dokkalfar spun away from the barrier at the guttural command of their comrade, to face the mist and the Vikingruners who slunk toward them. The men and women looked uniform, lean and mean, with their white hair, blood-red eyes, and elegantly cruel weapons and armor.

Time resumed as my breath exhaled.

A roar split the night, a white flash to my left—

Grim Kollbjorn roaring out of the mist in his bear form, while wolf-shaped Sven danced beside him and howled.

“Fuck!” I cried out, realizing they were taking it upon themselves to jump the gun and ambush the ambushers.

To the right, the mist lit up crimson and violet, energy tossed into the air.

Magnus flew out of the fog, his cloak billowing behind him, blood running from his fingertips. In one hand he held his hatchet, and in the other he swung a blade of his own coagulated gore. The bloodrender’s tattoos poking through his cuffs and collar glowed blue with runic power, and he bared his teeth.

Kelvar dashed behind him, low to the ground, and straight-up disappeared as a few Dokkalfar turned to face him, leaving them confused and glancing around fruitlessly.

Arne launched icicles in his palm toward the elves staright ahead, running forward, not waiting for any call-to-arms.

I took one breathless glance at Corym’s beautiful face, silver-bright in the moonlight, and we nodded to each other.

Then we charged.

And chaos followed.

The hissing of the Dokkalfar language carried on the wind as they coordinated their defense. We had caught them flatfooted, but they were too skilled a warrior race to let themselves be surrounded or overpowered.

Plus, there were more of them than us.

Very quickly, things took a bad turn—

Elves dashed out of the way of Grim and Sven’s charge, moving like shadows, almost as if they blipped in and out of existence. They sidestepped and swung their blades at Grim’s haunches, opening gashes of red. Sven scored a claw down the front of one elf’s armor, but only chiseled it with a nails-on-chalkboard sound that grated my ears.

Magical firebombs were tossed into the fray by Arne, switching from his ice that harmlessly shattered when it hit the first dark-elven breastplate.

The long-haired one at the front with the samurai bun noticed Corym before anyone else. The two faced off—Ljosalfar to Dokkalfar—a standoff for the ages.

While Corym was preoccupied to my immediate right, Arne to my left, I zoned in and got tunnel vision as I stared ahead at my closest foe. She was too fast for me to see, moving in the unnatural gait Corym had shown me during training.

Luckily, I was privy to Corym’s graceful movements and tactics, and this elf didn’t deviate too much from that stance.

I stabbed my spear high, keeping my distance. She ducked low, bobbing as I tipped the spearhead in a circle and lunged on my front foot. When I finished the jerky movements, I angled down to try and take her feet out from under her—

And the bitch jumped onto my spear like a bedeviled ballerina, balancing there.

I gasped, eyes widening as her light weight sagged me forward, stumbling—

She roundhouse-kicked me in the side of the face, sending a firework of bright white ringing through my skull.

I stumbled to the side as she hopped down.

Still teetering, disoriented, I blinked and tried to right myself. Already in front of me, she bared white teeth in her midnight face, cocking her arm back to plunge a curved blade through my belly.

Smoke exploded in front of her face, which gave me the moment I needed to gain my footing and shake the daze out of my brain. Furrowing my brow, I attacked again, desperate and defensive.

The woman got out of the smoke cloud with a backstep, avoiding my attack.

Hands curled around her shoulders, black-gloved fingers like two spiders reaching down. She hissed and spun with a vicious elbow—

But no one was there.

Hersir Kelvar emerged from her shadow in front of me , now behind her, and he stabbed one of his daggers through the small of her back and up her spine.

The dark elf went rigid, spasming as her blade dropped to the mud and blood spewed from her mouth in a waterfall.

The dark elf having a sword-duel with Corym howled in rage, like he’d felt the woman’s death, and pressed his attack harder on my Ljosalfar mate.

I gasped at Kelvar’s martial dominance—his effectiveness on the field by using patches of darkness in the moonlight to shadowwalk. He gave me no encouragement—didn’t even look at me—as he darted off after saving my life, vanishing back into the mist.

When I saw him reappear next, it was to put a hand on one of the elves fighting Grim and Sven, placing his palm on the back of the Dokkalfar’s neck and causing him to scream in apparent, invisible agony.

The dark elf dropped his sword to put both hands to the sides of his head, Kelvar’s mindshaping stealing his memories and invoking true terror inside him.

By the time he was recovered, Sven latched dripping jaws onto his crotch, and the elf’s howl turned high-pitched. Grim finished him off with a great paw-swipe across the face, dragging gushing, bloody claw marks through his flesh.

Another dark elf approached me. To my right, Corym took a spinning blade across the calf, growling, and returned a slice in kind to his skilled opponent. Those two moved like ghostly storms, their blades blurring and clanging, brightening the sky with sparks. My elf’s silver steel glowed bright, while the dark elf’s blade shimmered with smoky blackness.

Magnus fought two elves by himself, somehow holding his own. With his amplified bloodrending, he moved as swiftly as the dark elves, which seemed impossible.

He hadn’t Shaped himself for strength, opting for speed—genius since he could tell we were fighting a deceptively quick race.

Still, I charged through the darkness toward him, to give my man assistance.

A cry broke the night behind me, and it took everything inside not to look over, not to get distracted.

One of the dark elves nailed Magnus’ hatchet, flinging him sideways. He managed to stay holding the axe, and with his other hand he swung his bloodblade to keep the enemies at bay.

The splashy, liquefied bloodsword angled around the dark elf’s parrying blade when they made contact—flowing through it and then slicing into the elf’s side.

Just as quickly as that one backed up in pain, the other advanced on Magnus and caught him in the wrist, sending his hatchet spinning to the ground.

I was there a second later, vaulting my spear in an overhand stab that the dark elf anticipated at the last second and ducked so my spearhead sailed over his shoulder.

Magnus’ eyes went wide and he also ducked to avoid getting skewered.

Fuck, I can’t get sloppy! I reined in my anger. Grabbed the haft of my spear further up the barrel, and went on an offensive onslaught in my usual style—quick jabs, whipping the tail-end of my spear around for extra attacks.

It kept the dark elf on his heels, pumping backward.

The first one Magnus had injured joined the fray, blade spinning wildly, catching my eye.

Magnus defended me with his bloodblade, making the gore solid and sturdy to parry the attack that would have sunk into my shoulder.

Then we were fighting side-to-side, pressing the attack—

“Brother, no!”

I gasped at the sound of the voice, coming from behind us where the squeal had erupted moments before.

Instinctively, my eyes darted left, away from my prey.

It was all the dark elves needed to leap back, into the mist and out of my range.

I scowled, cursing myself and my stupidity.

Magnus grabbed the lapel of my coat and dragged his face to mine—blooded, neck veins popping, wild eyes glowing white from his bloodrending. “Come, silvermoon! We must fight them together, or we fail!”

I gulped and followed after him toward the center of the melee.

Where Arne fought. Fighting like I’d never seen from him—blade slashing, stabbing, body spinning, icicles and close-quarters fire-shells launching from his other hand, creating an aura of fire and ice around him.

He finished his spin, keeping the elves back—

And his spitting image suddenly stood in front of him, mere feet away near Elayina’s barrier at the cave mouth.

Frida.

She raised her hands. One was wrapped around a sword, the other a shield.

The fighting raged around them as Arne froze in shock.

On our way over, Magnus and I got blasted by purplish dark magic tossed at our feet. We went sprawling, crying out, and Magnus shielded me with his body.

Arne’s ragged voice: “Why, sister?!”

Her voice was hysterical, high, hoarse. “Don’t you see, brother? The dark elves promise us the Runesphere from the light elves!”

“You believe them?!”

Dokkalfar descended on me and Magnus. My focus switched from the siblings to the dark faces in front of us.

A shadowy figure appeared at the last second, shielding our prone bodies, daggers blurring. Kelvar the Whisperer suddenly stood over us and beat back the dark elf advance with quick parries and strikes.

Frida shouted for all to hear. “The Lepers can finally have the magic we’ve been denied—the magic Vikingrune Academy and everyone else thinks we’re unworthy of!”

Arne’s voice was heartsick. “You’ve gone mad , Frida! Allying with Dokkalfar!”

Of course , I thought briskly, getting to my feet along with Magnus. Sven and Grim in their animal forms surrounded us, stamping their paws into the snow to hold their ground and protect us from any attacks.

Corym was still in his duel with the Dokkalfar leader, both of them tiring and yelling. Kelvar was off butchering the fucking mist.

I recalled Arne’s words when he’d first told me about Elayina, on the cusp of his betrayal to me. He had known I was curious about the Lepers Who Leapt. He had preyed on that, saying he was leading me to them so “likeminded people” could talk, since my magic was dormant back then.

“Well, she’s not exactly a Leper,” he’d said. “But she’s treated like one. The Lepers revere her. People go to her for help.”

Frida knew Lady Elayina the same way Arne did. The siblings had both been Lepers once. Frida “revered” the bog-seer . . . and now betrayed her like she betrayed me, leading the dark elves right to her.

I didn’t know what Frida was promising them . Why the Dokkalfar were in Midgard, or why they had slaughtered Huscarls and nearly killed Magnus to get here. Obviously Lady Elayina had something to do with it. Maybe they plan to use her as a hostage against the Ljosalfar?

Elayina had barricaded herself in her tree-cave and called out for help to “likeminded people”—in other words, elf-descendants like me and Corym.

It was starting to make sense. It always comes back to the Runesphere, doesn’t it? Stealing it from Alfheim, whether that’s the Lepers, the Dokkalfar, or Vikingruners.

I stared angrily at Frida in the mist, the blonde-haired, bright-eyed girl standing a few feet in front of Elayina’s cave barrier as she gesticulated and cried out to the heavens.

What kind of cursed deal did you strike with them, you silly, foolish woman?

My mates were beside me, with the exception of Corym, who still dueled their leader, and Arne, who stood in front of Frida, slack-jawed and baffled.

The dark elves were regrouping.

I noticed a few cuts on our side, but nothing we couldn’t withstand. We would be ready for a second wave, but so would the dark elves, no longer being flatfooted or caught unawares.

Frida reached her hand out, beaming like a madwoman. “Join me, brother, and we can—”

The shimmering barrier at the mouth of the cave behind her exploded , expanding outward in a hissing wave of energy.

The sheer power knocked everyone down, the crackling strike cascading out in an alluvial fan of raw magic.

Dark elves face-planted, thrown forward into the mud. My group lost our feet, bulldozed and landing on our backs.

I cleared my head, groaning, and looked down my body—

As a murky figure flew out of the cave entrance, bioluminescent fungi and bugs fluttering around her.

Lady Elayina landed in the mouth of the cave. She raised her arms, platinum hair floating in the sky behind her head. Tendrils of green vines and rotted tree branches snaked around her body, moving and slithering, as she cycled her arms in a clockwise motion.

The vines shot out—

Dark elves gasped, one of them rolled out of the way. Another was too slow, the vine circling around his ankles and gripping tight. He screamed—

And Elayina flicked her wrist. The vine squeezed, constricted, launched the elf into the side of the cave behind her, like Tarzan gone wrong, colliding from a vine swing.

The crash was deafening, the boulders and flying rocks sending a plume of dirt and grime onto the battlefield. The elf was embedded at least five feet into the rock face. Elayina’s sanctuary groaned as if it was about to cave in.

“Fuck,” Frida hissed, getting to her feet and dashing away. “Retreat! The bog-crone is in the theater!”

Blotchy, muddy footsteps followed from every direction. Dokkalfar jolted to their feet and ran off, scampering into the mists to fight another day.

My shallow breath came out weak. I turned to the final fight, the last blades clashing—

Just as the man-bun Dokkalfar kicked Corym in the stomach—sending him stumbling back—and whirred away like a smoke-bomb, vanishing into the fog.

Quietness fell over the muddy, bloody stage.

My shoulders slumped, dizziness taking its toll. My mates closed in around me. I walked toward Arne, on his back, closer to Lady Elayina than any of us. He was still flabbergasted and looked lost, the poor boy.

When my eyes lifted from him, I found the ancient half-elven seer staring at us with a frown on her wrinkled, weathered face.

The vines, fungi, and tendrils of green wrapped around her body slowly slithered off, revealing her skinny, gaunt form underneath.

She seemed to shimmer with great and terrible power as she stood straight. Her treacherous strength scared me with its arcane notes, its vigor, so primeval and raw—an elder force from an archaic time.

Our eyes met. Hers widened in recognition.

And then she collapsed in the mud.