Chapter 15 | Ravinica

Chapter 15

Ravinica

THERE WAS SO MUCH TO unpack from Lady Elayina's words, I didn't know where to start. My head ached from everything she'd shared—trying to parse which bits were important and which were rubbish.

I didn't know if she was a wise old bog-crone, as speculated, or if she was a woman mad from delirium and too long spent living in a damned tree.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to do any unpacking or thinking.

When Corym and I exited the seer's cave, the elf took a few steps forward before freezing and plastering his gaze to the sky in the distance.

"Has the Ancient One addled my mind, or do you see that also, lunis'ai ?" he asked, pointing over the treetops of Delaveer Forest.

I had so many questions to ask him.

They all died on my lips when I walked up to see where he was pointing, and squinted.

My squint flipped, eyes widening. "That looks like—"

"Smoke," Corym grunted.

I nodded. It swirled in thick, black columns, blotting out sections of the moon.

We exchanged a worried glance.

"Corym," I said, speaking aloud what we both saw. "It looks like it's coming from . . ."

His lips firmed into a menacing visage that scared me. His wheatfield eyes darkened to burnished gold. "The tragedy. . ." he muttered under his breath, trailing off.

Then he dashed into the swampy route in front of us, all but sprinting as he found his footing. "Come on!" he yelled.

I gasped and the world blurred by as I pumped my legs and took off running.

Grief hit me in the chest, weighing down my heart as I recalled Lady Elayina's grim tidings. The tragedy of the serpent's shadow. Elayina said she was staying in Midgard, "To oversee the tragedy that will soon fall. To make sense of it all." That must be what Corym is muttering about!

An ominous sensation joined my grief and pain. I didn't like what this looked like, not one bit. All I could do was put my nose down, chase after Corym, and hope I didn't misstep and fall into the peat bog.

We were hours from his camp if walking. Now, the energy was frenetic. We would make it in a quarter the time.

I just prayed we'd make it in time to stop whatever was happening there.

Black smoke spiraled up in inky tendrils through the canopies as we approached the camp. Corym started calling out names desperately, his voice rising through the trees that whirred by as we ran.

I was panting and heaving, running the entire length of the trek back to keep pace with Corym, who never seemed to tire.

My eyes swiveled left to right, looking for any signs of danger, while my heart slammed against my ribs.

I had no weapon. The elves hadn't allowed me even a hairbrush while I remained their prisoner. They didn't trust me.

Now I felt helpless.

I'm not helpless though, am I? Magic is coursing through my veins, finally.

I dug deep to find the reservoir that had evaded me for so many years. A thrum of intensity rolled up my spine, lighting my blood afire.

We saw the first body as we got closer to the camp.

It was an elf, dressed in the robed garb of a commoner—not one of the fighters who had been sent as a vanguard scouting troop. He was carrying a bucket, water spilled out of it, soiling the ground dark.

"No!" Corym wailed, and my heart squeezed tight at the visceral pain in his voice.

A few steps further, past the river where the man had died with arrows in his body like a pincushion, we found the next one—this corpse a woman.

Corym drew his curved blade from his back and spun it in a circle.

The woman carried a small handaxe on her waist, used for chopping wood. I bent down and scooped it up before calling out for Corym.

He spun, nodded when he saw the axe in my hand and the deadly look on my face, and said, "Stay close, lunis'ai . I don't know what treachery awaits us."

Past the bending river, we crossed over a hill. On the other side of the hill, the smoke was worse—thick, black plumes of it, wrenching up into the sky, sucking out all the oxygen.

The camp was on fire. At least half the structures were ablaze, their leathery hide tarps making fine kindling.

Elves ran wild through camp. Some fought, some fled. I noted at least four soldiers with their golden armor, fighting back their enemy as they weaved through camp like sentinels of death in the night.

The first thing I noticed from the enemy was the black shield and white dragonhead emblem embedded on the shoulders of their armor, the dark cloaks whipping in the wind as they wielded their spears, swords, and axes.

Vikingrune Academy Huscarls.

I gnashed my teeth together and sprinted toward the closest ones. Corym ran off, around the crowd, heading for the back of the camp. I veered, wondering where he was going.

The fight was moving away from us, toward the back end of camp.

I passed two more corpses.

Logaithn, Corym's right-hand man, fended off three Huscarls. He moved like a blur, amazing in combat.

Yet the Huscarls were trained well. They had learned from the mistakes of getting flat-footed by these beautiful warriors near the creek. They fought with mad abandon.

They kept Logaithn on his toes, moving to surround him, putting his back against a flaming tent.

Runes were cast. Magic flew through the air, the sharp tang of the stench of fire and ice stinging my nostrils.

I Shaped and called ice from the depths of Niflheim. Tossing the icicles at the backs of one of the Huscarls, I drew his attention away from Logaithn, toward me.

The Huscarl was shocked to see me—a half-elf—fighting for the elves. It gave me a moment to draw in close.

But then he was moving away, southward with the others—toward the largest congregation of enemies.

There must have been thirty of the bastards here, in this invasion. They swarmed Corym's right-hand man.

Logaithn swung, dismembered a Huscarl's arm from his body, and left him screaming and writhing in pain, spurting blood as he fell to the ground to clutch at his vacated limb.

Two others closed in and stabbed Logaithn, managing to slow his twirling dance of death with his two blades.

The elf looked at me, determination and grit in his eyes as he staggered—

And an axe fell from behind him and beheaded the elven soldier.

I screamed, pulled back, and ran off toward Corym before I could see the aftermath of that head flying through the air and thudding to the ground.

"Deitryce!" Corym called to his sister, who was not in my view amid the high torches of the blazing tents.

Huscarls were starting to notice me, converging from every direction as I ran with my tiny hatchet.

"Fuck!" I yelled.

"It's the bog-blood, over there!" one of them called out, drawing more attention to my silver, black-streaked hair.

"Grab her!" yelled another.

I avoided the hands of one man who came barreling out of a tent that still stood, hands at his unclasped belt. Behind him in the tent, I noted the wailing of an elven woman inside, trying to pull her clothes back on.

Bastards!

When his hands reached for me, I chopped the axe down and took his left hand off at the wrist.

The man howled, stumbled, spraying blood.

I kept moving toward Corym, who was a flash of silver and gold.

In the distance, at the back of camp under an open-faced awning, Deitryce stood with two of the elders and a few other members of the sixteen Ljosalfar who had come here. The third elder was dead on the ground in front of them, arrows sticking up out of his back.

The elves stood in a box-like formation, back-to-back in the squat, open-faced longhouse, and waited for Corym to get to them at a sprint.

Behind them, or rather around them, the air shimmered like a mirage in the desert. I noticed a sphere of magical energy surrounding them, staying, blipping in and out of existence.

My mouth fell open as I got closer to Corym, now less than twenty paces away.

"Brother!" Deitryce yelled at him as he rounded a squat wooden structure on fire. Her arm stretched out and she made a come-hither motion with her fingers, trying to draw him closer—though she didn't move from her spot.

I realized what was happening.

They're in the portal, waiting for Corym before they activate it!

"Come on! Faster!" Deitryce cried out.

Corym glanced behind him. He saw me . . .

And stuttered to a slower pace. Behind me, over my shoulder, was the army of Huscarl invaders pillaging their way through camp. Chasing me and the elven leader.

Our eyes locked. Corym's went wide with disbelief, sadness, and hurt.

Then he locked his jaw and grabbed his sword tighter. He made it to Deitryce.

"Go!" he said, and pushed her hand away.

"What?!" she cried out. "We must retreat to Alfheim!"

"Tell the others what has happened here," Corym yelled at her. " GO , sister!"

"I'm not leaving without you!"

Corym made a quick gesture with his hands.

The portal rippled, and then closed in front of Deitryce like a thin, watery film.

"NO!" she wailed.

Within seconds, just as I got ten paces from Corym and the congregated elves, the portal vanished into thin air.

With it, the Ljosalfar elves of Alfheim were gone.

But not Corym E'tar.

He spun around, twirled his blade, and faced me head-on.

I made it to him. "Corym! Why did you do that?!" My face was plastered with sweat and blood.

He gave me no answer. He simply looked over my shoulder.

Then he grabbed my hand and yanked me toward him.

"Come on, lunis'ai ! We'll find no solace here. We must make for the woods!"

I nodded dumbly.

As he pulled me along, I got my bearings and ran on my own. We pushed through trees, out of camp, and into Delaveer, running blindly. Trying to escape our would-be captors and executioners.

With a bit of space away from the moment, the camp, I realized why Corym had pushed his sister into the portal, and why he was still here in Midgard.

He had stayed because of me.