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All around Herrick, the sounds of dying men pierced his hearing. Blood splattered with every step he took, some of it his and some of it from those he cut down. None of it mattered— he searched for all-black uniforms, and when one got in his way, he eviscerated them.

It felt good to let his body move like this again with his battle axe in his hands.

He was nimble with a sword, but the two-handed axe was where his skill shone.

He painted his enemies ruby, the canvas of their lives his to destroy with just a swing of his axe.

He became an artist, one whose work would be recognized for centuries to come.

With each life Herrick ended, he sent up a word of prayer to Odin that their soul be welcomed into Valhalla.

They stood for hatred, but they were warriors who deserved to dine with the gods for their bravery if the Allfather would deem it so.

Or maybe they would be denied entrance to the gilded halls of warriors—regardless, Herrick swung his axe with a vigor that fueled his rage.

This was something he and Maude shared: a mutual respect for the ending of a warrior's life in the way only warriors could pass on to Valhalla. They had to die fighting— it was their way.

His chest caved in as he thought of Maude.

She should be at his side, should be watching his back as he tore through Flame Soldier formation.

What he had never expected to feel after the sorrow had left him was the pounding in his ears and the dryness in his throat as he took out his disbelief on the Flame Soldiers. She had left him again .

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Herrick knew that it wasn't fair to be angry with Maude about this. She had no control; Hela had taken over entirely. He knew that if she had been in control of herself, she would be cutting through lines of soldiers just like he was.

But that didn't change the fact that he felt entirely alone on this battlefield.

In his moment of distraction, he saw Hakon's sword cut in front of him to open the belly of a soldier who had been charging for Herrick.

Their swords were pillars of flame that their River Soldiers had found easy enough to extinguish with their water, but for those with earth, they had to smother the fire by flinging rocks or dirt at the fires.

Herrick threw out his hand as a column of water wrapped around a soldier's throat before he froze it and yanked hard. The fighter's neck snapped with a vicious crack that satisfied something dark in his soul.

"You have to focus, brother," Hakon shouted as he slashed his sword down at another soldier who had stepped up to take the previous one's place. They just kept multiplying.

"I am," Herrick argued as he glanced over his shoulder at his brother.

In his periphery, a dagger wreathed in shadow cut through the air until it landed between the eyes of a soldier who had snuck up on Herrick again.

"You are not," Dahlia agreed, retrieving her dagger on a gust of wind she controlled. "It seems like the battle is going in our favor right now, and if you lose your head, that will change."

"We'll find her again, Herrick," Bryn said through heavy breaths as she closed her hand into a fist, sucking the air out of a Flame Soldiers lungs before slamming her axe down on their breast plate, shattering their ribs as they suffocated. "But we have to survive this first."

He didn't deign to respond to any of their comments.

They knew they were right; he didn't have to tell them that.

Instead, he brought his water galder to his fingertips, the ice in his heart freezing the galder as soon as it touched the open air.

With great effort, Herrick redirected his thoughts back to the fight and threw out his arms, sending waves of ice arrows out to the surrounding Flame Soldiers .

They tried to melt the ice, but his fury was too strong; it fed his galder faster and faster as power swelled through him.

The ice buried themselves into chests, throats, any limb they could get to before threads of frost spread from them, freezing the soldiers into solid ice sculptures that his soldiers then hacked away.

With one powerful kick through a shieldmaiden-turned-ice, they exploded into pieces. Herrick blasted through more and more waves of Helvig's army. Men and women alike, if they had the Flame runes on their black uniforms, they were as good as dead to him.

He'd cut the bonds he'd placed over himself, allowing himself to feel everything , and it fueled his galder to an intoxicating rate.

He'd burn out eventually, but he didn't care.

He descended into that bloodlust that hovered over him at every turn in his life and let himself drown in his enemy's deaths.

Somewhere along the way, as the hours ticked by, Herrick had lost his shirt in the chaos of the fight. Bare-chested and open to any attack, he barreled through soldiers like a man possessed by the god of war himself.

Herrick felt invincible; he could keep going for hours.

This endless stream of energy couldn't have been his alone with the amount of galder he was using, but every time he reached for it, there was more to use.

Across the skirmishes, Herrick met Hakon's eye— he could see the exhaustion lining him already.

Bryn was close to him; her fire was appearing more sporadically than before.

Dahlia seemed okay, but she became distracted the closer they got to where Helvig and Baldr were stationed behind the lines.

But they would keep fighting as long as they had to, even to death.

The world seemed to quiet as a choice was set out before him: keep fighting or retreat?

At the start, the fight had been somewhat in their favor. Now, they struggled.

Before the night had fallen yesterday, he'd had his retreat plan spread through the camp in the event that this battle would not end favorably for them. The River Soldiers under his command knew where to go and how to get there if Veter were to fall .

Already, families were being evacuated from the camps.

His parents were rounding up the citizens of Veter and its neighboring villages and having them escape through underground tunnels that had been dug out in case the city ever needed to vacate quickly.

It seemed his mother's paranoia and her father's before her worked in their favor today.

Struggling with what to do, Herrick seemed to back up in the safety of his soldiers, who still fought with the ferocity he knew they all possessed.

Shieldmaidens who would not go quietly into death shouted their rage when they killed their opponents, even as they were soft-spoken and gentle in their day-to-day lives.

Men who had known nothing but peace and the yield of farming the earth wore twisted expressions as they wielded swords and axes instead of scythes and shovels.

If they wanted the chance to fight again, Herrick needed to call for the retreat.

He grabbed the closest sergeant to him, his fingers twisting in his uniform. "Pull back."

"Sir?"

"Pull. Back. Follow the escape plan, now!"

He let go of the man, knowing his orders would be followed and moved on to the next sergeant closest to him: a shieldmaiden whose yellow braids were soaked red at the tips from the bloodletting.

He repeated his order to her as he clawed his way back up to the front lines.

When he reached Hakon's side, the look in his eye must have tipped off his brother what he had ordered.

They would stay at the front until their soldiers had time to flee. If they were to fight again, if they were to take Helvig down with the help of the Elven armies, he would need his River Soldiers to survive this.

Bryn came up to his other side, the approval on her face grim. Dahlia mirrored her thoughts, her black hair pinned behind round ears, throwing him off for a moment.

Looking at his friends, the ones he was more than proud to fight side by side with, Herrick said, "Let Tyr guide us to glory in battle."

Without another word, they surged forward to hold off the Flame Army until their people could escape. He only hoped they all had enough strength to make it out alive on the other side.

Dahlia tried to control her breathing as she cut through soldier after soldier that planted themselves in front of her.

Her galder was straining as she struggled to maintain her glamour as well as fight with the elements that flowed in her blood.

Around her, the Elven soldiers Aeric had sent with them fought with a grace that could never be glamoured away.

Now and then, they stepped in to save her from a blow that might have killed her as she stopped to heal a Rivers Soldier who had fallen.

There was no time to explain her ability to heal so quickly to the men and women she saved; they simply sprung up to their feet with a nod of thanks in her direction before they dove back into the slaughtering.

These humans were so resilient in the face of a world-altering battle.

If they lost, their very freedoms would be challenged.

And yet, they continued to fight. Every step, every swing of their axe, was a cry of defiance against injustice and corruption.

They would never stop fighting for their freedom, their families, and their kingdom.

Now, Dahlia understood why the Kolbeck brothers were so stubborn in their fight against Helvig. The people in the Kingdom of Rivers were some of the toughest she had ever had the privilege of fighting beside. It was her honor to be their ally, even if they did not know her true nature.

That stubbornness might also very well be the reason for their failure. They kept battering against a growing, impenetrable wall of Flame Soldiers who inched closer and closer to the perimeter they set up to protect their camp.

Exhaustion was starting to ache in her bones as the fight continued well into the afternoon.

She had tried to limit which types of galder she used as she fought but eventually concluded that no one was paying close enough attention to her to notice she was wielding shadow and light galder as well as the four elements .

Ahead of her, Herrick grabbed one of his soldiers by the tunic and shouted instructions in their ear before releasing them and turning to a shieldmaiden drenched in death.

The first soldier turned back as soon as Herrick released him and started barking orders at the soldiers around him.

As one, they turned and sprinted back for the camp.

The shieldmaiden copied the first soldier's actions, her soldiers turning from the battle as well.

Wave after wave, groups of Rivers Soldiers escaped the bloodshed.

Herrick had called a retreat. They were losing.

At her far right, Bryn continued to cut into the Flame Soldiers, who seemed to multiply every time she blinked.

At her left, Hakon hovered nearby. He had not left her periphery the entire time they fought the Flame Army, and she was grateful for it.

They seemed to keep finding each other, their souls searching for the similar vibrations of their beings without realizing it.

A deep navy, almost violet cord glowed between them, tying them together in ways Dahlia did not yet understand.

Just as that thread between her and the Rivers Heir pulsed, a silver and lilac one that was wrapped around the navy and violet cord seemed to shudder gently as they entwined with each other, fusing to become a gorgeous multicolored entity that brought tears to Dahlia's eyes even if she didn't understand why yet.

She followed the silver cord through the crowd until her eyes met silver irises. They watched her with an intensity that made heat curl low in her belly even as she slid her dagger across the carotid of a Flame Soldier who thought to catch her unawares.

From where she stood, Dahlia could see that Baldr was working hard at diverting the Flame Soldiers from attacking them.

He was using his gift of sleight of hand to fight Rivers Soldiers: dealing harmless blows while behind his back, he was sending his soldiers flying in opposite directions of the fighting and setting ablaze certain Flame Soldiers who were enjoying the bloodshed a bit too much.

Just like she had taught him.

She started to grin as she became lost in him for a moment, her heart swelling painfully because of how much she missed him when her shoulder began to burn.

Separated from her body, Dahlia looked down at herself and watched as a blade wreathed in flames aimed to cut through her.

She turned at the last second, but she was too late.

The blade cut through her leather armor, the fabric melting into the wound as she screamed.

She locked eyes with Baldr again, but his wrathful focus was on a soldier next to her as he yanked him away from her with shadows she did not know he possessed.

Shadows ? She thought to herself as a thin but strong arm wrapped around her waist, holding her weight. He shouldn't be able to wield shadows .

Dahlia's last thoughts were of the galder that her beloved Baldr had wielded to save her from certain death as Bryn carried her to safety.

Darkness overwhelmed her as a realization dawned on her, a familiarity she couldn't identify before that plagued her, suddenly making perfect sense.

It was lost to the blackness of her subconscious before her eyes could roll to the back of her head.