Chapter 17 | Ravinica

Chapter 17

Ravinica

MY HEART QUICKLY PLUMMETED to my boots when I saw the next line of attackers after Grim, Magnus, and Sven.

Arne Gornhodr rushed into the melee. Beside him were five or six ragtag men and women, most of whom I didn't recognize, but two I did: Dieter and Frida of the Lepers Who Leapt.

No! I thought morosely at seeing Arne. The others don't know what he's done!

I couldn't concentrate on that aspect for longer than a blink before the wall of furred muscle rammed into the Huscarl's back line.

Grim's giant paws swung, violently eviscerating a man and sending his bowels to the ground in a steaming heap. He kept rushing past the dying, stunned Huscarl and barreled into the next, ramming his head and crushing a helmet and the skull beneath it.

Atop Grim, Magnus' hands waved in a flurry, Shaping runes and sending a bevy of shadow-soldiers to do his bidding. The wispy cloaks of blackness wrapped around the Huscarls and disoriented them, making them spin in circles as they thrust and slashed at intangible foes.

Sven weaved in and out of the fray, striking with expert precision as he hopped from one enemy to the next. First it was a sweep of his claws, taking out a man's legs from under him as he fought a shadow. Then the wolf shifter launched himself onto the body of a woman, raked her bloody across the face, and left her a screaming, gurgling pulp on the ground. Only once Sven was done chewing her face off did he turn his bloody jaws to the next opponents.

Arne cast spurts of crystal-blue ice at the Huscarls, battering them with blow after blow on their shields and armor, forcing them into defensive postures. His face looked worse for wear, bruised and slightly misshapen from what appeared to be a terrible beating, and it made my hackles rise for some reason.

Hm. Maybe the others do know what he did, and that's the result?

For some reason, in a way I would never admit, seeing the iceshaper's beautiful features marred made me angry.

Around Arne, the Lepers Who Leapt fought like the soldiers they were trained to be. Taught by the academy, then discarded.

I imagined they had waited ages for this moment of retribution.

Frida and Dieter fought fast and smart. Dieter wielded a heavy morningstar and dented more than a few helmets and punctured more than a few breastplates with the spiky ends of the ball at the top of his weapon.

Frida, I curiously noted, did not aim for mortal blows. She fought to incapacitate—hamstringing a man with a dagger, then quickly dashing to the next to get behind him and throw him to the ground.

It was Grim who finished the job, stomping on the fallen soldier's head and crushing it like a watermelon filled with bone and brain. It sent Frida skittering back with a yell.

Corym and I watched with bated breath as the mayhem unfolded in front of us, down the hill.

The battle had understandably turned away from us, to focus on the new additions that were wreaking havoc on the Huscarls.

The twelve who had chased us were quickly being cut down, and I felt a resurgence of hope in my bones.

Then a second swarm of Huscarls barged in from the east, the right, and charged around trees to join the melee. This group mostly wielded spears, with expert cruelty.

The battle quickly shifted once more, throwing everything into chaos as the sharp scent of blood, steel, and ripped flesh carried on the wind uphill to my nose.

"Let's dance, lunis'ai ," Corym said to me. He started downhill before I could reply. The elf glided down the waterlogged soil—still shimmering wet from my spell—like a skier sluicing a snowbank.

When he reached the halfway point of the decline, he launched himself into the air, sword poised and glinting moon off its silver steel. His hair glistened in the light as he seemed to go weightless, in slow motion, in the air.

Then he landed with a violent crash onto the back of a turned-about Huscarl and shoved his blade overhand through the man's shoulder, down to his heart. The Huscarl went rigid, immediately dead, and crumpled to the ground with the elf standing over him.

Corym pushed himself off the body. I could only blink in amazement, slightly nauseous at the intense brutality and ferocity of the fight before me.

No one here was sparring lightly or seeking to disarm or capture, except Frida. Everyone was fucking dying or killing.

The two sides were playing for keeps.

I watched in stupefaction as two Lepers fell a few seconds apart, skewered by spears, clutching their bodies as they winced and groaned and went still on the forest floor.

The new dozen Huscarls, who had managed to redouble their efforts and expertly engage our flank, stomped over the dead bodies and kept pushing the line. They reinforced their dying comrades and put a wrench in the gears of the brawl.

Dieter barely managed to spin around the side of one lunging Huscarl, who came in from the east. The pepper-haired Leper slid down the haft of the soldier's spear and back-swung his morningstar into the man's head in a slap of flying teeth, blood, and metal helmet fragments.

I snapped to my senses, ripped to the ruthlessness as Corym dislodged his blade from his dead enemy's blood-spewing shoulder. He moved onto the next foe, slinging blood off his magical blade as he moved.

Another gang of four straggling Huscarls charged in from the south—the way Grim and the others had come.

As they barreled through the trees toward our back flank, my heart stuttered in my chest. I found myself running downhill, and nearly called out Arne's name since he was the closest to the new wave of Huscarls.

The iceshaper felt them at the last second and spun around, already Shaping runes with his loose blue tunic billowing. His arms stretched wide and he pushed his spell toward the quartet.

A blanket of thick ice congealed into existence, stretching from a far-left tree to a far-right tree, creating a six-foot glacial wall that impeded the enemy's path.

The Huscarls on the other side of the ice barrier shouted in muted, muffled voices. I heard their weapons chipping away at the sudden ice block, but for now they had been removed from the fight.

Battle-sense came over me. Even with the assistance of my mates and friends, this looked like a tight fight. We were still outnumbered. I had to do something.

But when my eyes met the dark amber orbs of Grim in his bear form, everything changed.

I stuttered to a stop, gasping as the bear locked gazes with me across the bloody battlefield, through heaps of fighting and dying people.

The amber flecks in his eyes turned dark crimson.

And suddenly Grim Kollbjorn was on his hind legs, bellowing with a guttural roar that shook the bones of everyone fighting.

Magnus was flung off his back as Grim went on two legs, the bloodrender rolling to a stop a few feet away. He had to crawl to get away from the stomping bear, who had abruptly become unmanageable. Untethered.

Fuck , I thought, in a still moment of clarity. He's lost it. Seeing me after so long has made him . . .

Grim's earth-shattering roar brought all attention to him. A spear came in and thrust into his belly, marring the white fur red.

Grim snapped the spear in half like a twig, then clapped his paws together and flattened the Huscarl's head and helmet. Swaying, the man dropped.

Another soldier came in, trying to bring down the monolithic bear shifter.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Magnus slicing into his own bicep with a knife. He carved himself up, drew his blood, and then the blue tattoos swirling along his body moved in cyclical motions and shimmered silver. He had suddenly become a coruscating devil, more than half his body lighting up like a bright ornament.

The bloodrender Shaped and coagulated his dripping blood into a swirling maelstrom. The red gore spun around him as he screamed, and when he charged at the Huscarls attacking Grim, he was wielding a sword made from blood itself.

Magnus swung the bloodsword and decapitated a Huscarl before she could get to Grim.

The bear swung, nearly colliding with a swerving Sven in his wolf form, and nailed another Huscarl.

Corym barged into the soldiers attacking our flank and moved like the wind itself, his silver blade a blur as he ruined his human foes.

Arne picked up a spear fallen on the ground, spun it, and moved to the crackling ice wall he'd created. With a flick of his wrist, a circle the size of a fist melted from the block, showing a grimacing face on the other side.

Arne stabbed the spear through the hole, through the man's mouth and out the back of his neck. When he pulled the spear back through the wall, he Shaped again and reinforced the melted hole like it was a fucking pipe patch, leaving the other three Huscarls beating at the wall on the other side.

Grim moved in a flurry toward me.

Hesitating, awestruck, I watched as the giant bear charged, fighting off countless Huscarls and taking bloody hits at the same time, but ignoring all of them.

I saw a soldier coming in to skewer Grim from the side, unbeknownst to the bear.

I led the man with my eyes. Cocking back my arm, I launched my hatchet at the last second.

The axe flew through the air end-over-end and planted into the Huscarl's shoulder, sending him flying onto his back with a grunt.

Magnus was over him a second later, dragging his bloodsword through the man's body and displacing his torso from his legs.

I was gobsmacked at Magnus' shimmering strength, as if he'd reinforced his blood into steel, crafting it into a formidable weapon of pure magic and life-force.

Grim shifted into his human form and didn't get much smaller. Naked now, bleeding from half a dozen points across his skin, he bared his teeth at anyone next to him.

A Huscarl came in swinging an axe overhead.

Grim caught the smaller man's blow by the wrist with flexing, veiny muscles, stopping the soldier cold. With the Huscarl's eyes widening in fear, Grim lunged and tore into the man's neck with his teeth—his human teeth.

He ripped out veins and a geyser of blood splashed across his face. He stole the man's axe and kicked him away, then swung wildly with the huge two-handed weapon.

Arms, legs, and cock flailing, Grim created a wide berth of emptiness around him. No one wanted to get close to the maniacal berserker, lost for the first time I'd witnessed in his pure battle-rage.

All because of seeing me.

Magnus got near and Grim swung at him too, sending the bloodrender skittering back. Bloodsword or not, Grim was too fucking imposing to stand toe-to-toe with.

"Allies, bear!" Magnus shouted in a hoarse voice. "We're allies!"

Grim heard nothing. I could imagine the only thing in his mind was the rampaging pulse of blood in his ears and a red curtain of death.

I had come close to that same feeling before, so I could relate . . . but it was nothing like this . My protective bear shifter showed his true colors then—the honest ferociousness of his cursed state.

Sven got too close, thinking him an ally, and was kicked in the side and launched through the air with a wolfish yip.

He landed on his side and melded into his human form, coughing before rising to his knees.

I ran up to him, both of us weaponless.

"He's fucking lost to us, the damn idiot," Sven growled, eyes not moving from the berserker.

Two Huscarls sadly fell into the path of Grim's rage.

One of them attacked, found his hands missing and spraying blood everywhere with his sword on the ground, and the second Huscarl spun away to flee.

In two strides Grim caught up to him, buried the axehead in his back, and sent him to a bloody welcome in Valhalla.

The creek, the hill, the forest—all of it was littered with bodies. The fight was coming to a close for everyone except Grim Kollbjorn, who kept wailing and roaring.

A handful of Lepers Who Leapt had died. Two dozen Huscarls lay in heaps, body parts dismembered and scattered across the green and muddying up the riverwater brown. Dieter was crouched, holding an arm that bled at his hands. Frida stood over him protectively with her hands on his shoulders.

Sven and Arne watched Grim with bemusement as he stormed toward them. With wide eyes they scattered left and right. The bear could hear the shouting on the other side of the ice wall—the Huscarls not understanding they had lost, and would be better off fleeing this mayhem.

In two vicious hacks, Grim cracked through the thick ice and the wall shattered.

Behind it, three Huscarls stood at the feet of a dead soldier with a hole in his mouth and neck. They stared at Grim's huge, naked, bloody form in a daze, utterly shocked.

Grim slammed his axe into the chest of the first man. The other two watched as their friend spluttered red bubbles.

They turned and fled.

Grim reached back over his head with the axe and tossed the huge weapon overhand.

When it landed in the back of one of the men and sent him sprawling to the ground, the last remaining Huscarl woman started bawling. She kept running.

Part of me hoped she would make it out of Grim's deathstroke. I clenched my hands in fists, feeling pity deep in my stomach. Bile rose up inside me.

"This is who he is, little menace," Sven said from my left.

Magnus was on my right, his shirtless torso no longer brightened with angelic rune markings.

"Why are you here?" I asked Sven with a scowl. My body went tense at the sight of the naked wolf shifter and his movie-star good looks. Even post-battle, his slicked hair seemed perfectly in place, with only a single sharp strand hanging over his forehead.

It was deliciously disgusting.

On my other side, Magnus said, "The same reason all of us are here, silvermoon. For you."

I gulped and looked at him with a much different expression than my bully. "Magnus . . ."

I recoiled when I heard the guttural scream from the last remaining Huscarl.

Grim had caught up with her.

In the distance, down a thin path, the nude bear shifter stomped and strangled and mangled the woman to death with his bare hands. There was no stopping him. No mercy given.

It was utterly gruesome—much like this whole debacle had become—and I had to turn away into Magnus' arms once I heard the sharp snap of her neck.

"It's okay," Magnus said, hugging me tightly. "It's over."

I didn't believe him. But gods did smelling that scent of candlesmoke and leather from his body reignite something lost and torrid inside me.

I took a huge whiff of the intoxicating smell, which calmed me, before looking over my shoulder.

Grim stalked toward our group. Covered head to toe in blood. Everyone went on pins and needles, drawing their weapons, scattering in a semi-circle around him.

His eyes were still deep red. His stacked muscles bulged, making him an absolute unit, with veins distended and turgid. His huge swinging cock was growing thicker and swollen by the second, all the blood in his body going everywhere but his brain, it seemed.

This was Grim at his worst, his most devastating. My silent, stoic protector, lost in a daze of bloodlust he couldn't control. For all the carnage he'd just wrought, all the death, I felt sadness and pity for the man.

This wasn't who Grim Kollbjorn wanted to be. This was the Mr. Hyde to his Dr. Jekyll. The monster unleashed.

And I had unleashed it.

I stepped forward from the grasp of Magnus Feldraug.

"Silvermoon, no!" he called out.

"Don't be foolish, girl," Sven snarled.

I held my hands palms-out toward Grim, well aware he could snap me in half if he wanted. "Hey, big boy. It's me. It's me. Your little sneak."

His tense, afflicted face mellowed, like someone coming out of a coma. He blinked, and the third time he did it, his red eyes had gotten that orange-amber hue back.

"Ravinica?" he croaked.

All around us were dead bodies, or people well on their way. Groaning, crying, bleeding. Not an intimate moment to be had, surely, and Grim realized it swiftly enough.

"What . . . have I done?" he asked.

"It wasn't you," I lied for him. It was only a half-lie: Part of it was him. Not all of it.

Slowly creeping up to him, my hands landed under his arms. I wrapped his broad body in a hug, hyperaware of the massive slab pressing against my middle.

I didn't care. He obviously didn't, either. The blood engorging his entire body settled soon enough, and then he seemed to be melting into my arms . . .

Until I heard a growl above me, rumbling deep from his chest. The massive body I held tightly went taut with alarm.

I looked up, saw his eyes were focused over my shoulder, and glanced back.

A gasp ripped from my throat. "Shit."

Corym E'tar stood at the base of the hill, alone, with his feet in the bloody river. His prominent ears and platinum hair shone in the moon's rays, highlighting what he was.

The elf extended his glistening silver sword in a fighter's stance as all eyes turned to him.