Page 43 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 43

Corym

I CRASHED THROUGH THE wall of draug with my blades singing, silver longsword decapitating a slow-moving creature while my sunstone dagger shone brilliantly and cauterized the wound closed.

The elven camp was in disarray, hundreds of my kinfolk in battle with an army of undead.

My eyes scanned the bloody sight, watching as my brethren cut down the draug, soon becoming overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies. It seemed this pack of undead had come from the western gate, rather than being raised from the tombs of Vikingrune Academy itself.

A woman shouted inside a tent, and I recognized the voice. I charged in with my swords drawn, yelling, “Deitryce!”

My sister was flanked by draug—these ones had popped up from the ground within the confines of the tent itself, outside the view of other elves outside.

Deitryce was unarmed, bloodied across her forehead and cheek. She had pushed herself up against the edge of her cot, circling her wrists as she tried to cast spells at the enemy.

“Brother!” she yelled when she saw me standing flabbergasted in the opening of her tent.

While the battle scorched the ground with magic and screams of fighting elves outside the tarp of the tent, I lunged at the nearest draug, my instincts taking over.

A draug launched at her and I shouldered it hard in the back, sending it sprawling forward. The second draug came at Deitryce from the right—

She was forced to cut off her spell casting to duck under its swinging claw.

My eyes trailed across the ground, following her eyes, where I spotted her sword on the ground.

With a quick flip and kick of my leg, I sent it skittering between the legs of the draug.

Deitryce swooped it up from the ground and spun in one fluid motion, lodging the blade into the spine of the creature.

It toppled, seizing on her bed.

The second one was on its feet again, and we worked to quickly dispatch it with blurring blades cutting into its ragged, toughened flesh, past its peeling armor.

Once we severed the connection of its lower spine, I stared hard into my sister’s golden eyes, noticing the heave of her chest as she breathed shallowly. “You’re hurt,” I said, reaching out to run a hand across the nasty gash in her forehead.

She shoved my hand aside, angrily flaring her nostrils.

Apparently I’d be getting no thanks for aiding her.

Then I noticed something else in her eyes, getting lost in the golden plains—fear. “What is it, Deitryce?”

“The Runesphere, Corym. It’s gone!”

My stomach plummeted. “No.”

She nodded profusely, waving her hand in the air as her hand tightened on the hilt of her sword. “I felt unusually exhausted after my mid-afternoon meal with my company. Promptly fell asleep once I got in here.” Her eyes flashed wider. “I think our food may have been poisoned.”

“Runeshapings can also cause such an affliction.”

She worked her mouth over, losing her mind. “Oh brother,” she sighed, finally coming to her senses. “I fear you may have been right.”

“For once,” I added with a wry smile, catching her off-guard. “Come, sister. We’ll find the Runesphere together.”

Choking back a sound, she nodded fiercely.

We charged out into the clearing together, to meet our enemies head-on. The Ljosalfar would never back down or surrender to such twisted, evil magic.

The darkness permeating through these poor creatures’ bodies was alarming—nothing I’d ever seen before. My kinfolk had never seen it either, judging by the fearful, cautious way they fought the gangly, uncoordinated draug.

“Aim for their lower spines, soldiers!” I commanded the nearest fighters. “It severs the connection with their legs, their movement. Even if it doesn’t kill them, it stops them in their tracks!”

The soldiers saluted, nodding with sweat and blood covering their faces. “Yes varus , Company-Prince!” one of them yelled, and then staked off with his four comrades to continue the fight.

I tore through the ranks with my sister, grinding deeper into the throng of draug, unfrightened of their abilities. I knew our strength was superior, our tenacity greater than anything these undead fiends could drum up.

When I charged at a draug with my weapons raised, arrows flew into its forehead, throat, and chest with deadly accuracy, forcing the creature to stumble back.

Snapping a look over my shoulder, I noticed the Skogalfar had joined the battle. They were expert archers and hunters, sending volley after volley into the melee without striking a single Ljosalfar.

Jhaeros led them, speaking in the guttural dialect of our tongue, shooting from atop a hill in Tyr Meadow with a raised spear. Bodies were piled near his feet, though I couldn’t tell if they were wood elves or draug.

For a split second of recognition, I realized this was the first time the Ljosalfar and Skogalfar had fought together since I’d been alive. It had likely been hundreds of years since an alliance such as this had existed, and it brought a grim, proud smile to my face.

Who ever thought the humans in Midgard would be responsible for bringing these two ailing cousins together? You’ve done it, Ravinica, without even knowing it.

My heart hurt to think of Ravinica, so I charged zealously into a battle with three draug overwhelming a single gold-armored soldier.

I went to my knee and sliced into the first draug’s back. The second was taken in the throat by arrows, lit up like a pincushion and forced onto its back, where my sister slammed her heel down on its throat. The third ghoul raged and spewed black filth on my comrade, spilling bile onto his hands and making him wince. Deitryce and I were quick to come in and tackle the monster together, saving our frightened brethren.

In my peripheral, I caught an ethereal figure fending off five draug at once, dancing a song of death that was unrivaled. They moved with expert precision, shirking strength for sheer speed, twin blades spinning and twirling and scything draug down where they stood.

The Maltor never stopped moving . Even as they thrust, cut, and slashed in blurs of golden steel, with their silver-bright hair illuminated in the moonlight, Vaalnath kept a grim almost-smirk on their beautiful, androgynous face.

Just as I was beginning to notice a thinning of the draug horde—fending off the first wave of enemies and leaving piles of dismembered body parts and bload-soaked grass in our wake—Vaalnath called out to the elves in a glorious, baritone boom.

“Jotnar!”

Our ragged company swung to see where they pointed at the southern gate, where the explosion from a few minutes ago had come from.

And there stood a giant . It must have been one of the five jotnar we’d seen in Delf’avernin out west. Even from half a mile away, through the swirling smoke, fire, and gloom, I could make out its size. It towered over humans, swinging a ridiculous club the length of a man.

That’s where I need to be, for my mates!

I spun and charged in that direction, behind the order of Maltor Vaalnath.

If the Runesphere was here, it could wait. We would find it. The lives of the men I loved—Grim, Arne, Magnus, and hopefully Sven if he made it out of Fort Woden—could not wait.

And so I ran, a few paces behind my sister and my liege—

Until a black circle opened up under me, stealing me from reality.

I plunged into icy darkness, a tug of coolness spreading through my limbs before I blinked and found myself no longer charging for the southern gate.

No, I was surrounded by a sea of gently swaying grass, far from the battle and the cries and clash of it, flanked by silence and fallen bodies.

A midnight face stared at me ten feet away with a rictus grin, eyes burning red as blood. Dual black blades of shadow lifted from his hands.

“Hail, Corym Vaalnath-Taramore E’tar. Shall we continue our bout?”

I ground my teeth together, frustrated at this intrusion—not being able to get to my friends. “Gresh’kellen,” I seethed, bending my knees. “When will you learn?”

He charged at me in a single stride, silent and deadly, legs nearly fully extended behind him as he gracefully galloped across the grass.

Our blades met in a spark of darkness and light, energy fluttering around us with every crash of our magic steel.

We fell into our dance—our preordained battle of wills that had lasted for decades.

Gresh’kellen scored two quick cuts across my arms in successive maneuvers that blurred so fast I missed them until I felt the ache of my flesh opening, blood spilling.

I answered back with a cut to his leg, spinning into him even as he drew back his blade from the second wound.

I ducked, he feinted, I swung, he reeled.

Our movements were so mirrored, so accurate, it was like we could have been brothers if we’d been born under different circumstances.

I chalked his first two hits off to distraction, and the fact my mind was elsewhere on Ravinica and her mates. Then I locked in, baring my teeth in a snarl and losing my composure.

He grinned at my anger, and I knew it was his ploy—that he would win the battle of ages if I let him get inside my head with that grim, wicked smile.

My hair whipped around my face as I pivoted from a double strike aimed at my chest—

He was already swinging to the side, without needing to look where I’d be, because I couldn’t have been anywhere else. The spirits wouldn’t allow it.

One misstep would cost either of us our lives. Our blades came within a hair’s breadth with every strike—rarely clashing together. Instead, our swords whooshed and displaced the air around us, until our dance was nearly silent.

No voices, no sounds, no breathing. Only decades of earned hatred and memories, silent actions and betrayals, as his Dokkalfar kin had warred with mine for so long in Alfheim.

And always, there had been us. Two preeminent fighters of our respective people, dueling for the fates.

His sword struck my hip, tearing my light tunic and drawing more blood. I was nicked in half a dozen places already, and he only showed half as many from my attacks.

I slumped back on my back heel—

He charged headlong, eager to put an end to me.

I crouched and lunged at the last second, my slump a feint to draw him toward me.

My blade came within an inch of his waist, a split second from opening his belly, as he hopped out of the way.

Spinning, I cocked my left arm back, parrying his sword with my right at the same time as I leapt backward.

I saw a moment’s hesitation on his thin silver brow—

Then my forge-bright dagger whipped through the sky as I launched it at him end-over-end.

His eyes never left its sharp, whistling tip, and he batted the dagger from the sky—

As I ran at him behind the thrown dagger, my silver steel in both hands, reflecting bright moonlight off the edge with a purposeful shift of my wrist—

Temporarily blinding him.

He let out the first sounds of frustration, the first sounds since the duel began—a growl of dismay—and abandoned his foundation, dashing to the side so quickly he nearly seemed to teleport.

He caught the backhand of my sword as I fell to a knee, sparks flying from both of his blades.

Gresh’kellen went for a riposte while I was vulnerable in front of him, taking the space where he’d been standing a heartbeat before, sliding on my knees.

His sword came down in an executioner’s strike meant to behead me—

I lifted my sword over my shoulders and neck without looking, eyes to the ground, twirling the blade in an instant to meet steel on steel.

His sword curved over mine with a ringing in my forearms, the edge digging into my back—

As I swooped the sunstone dagger off the ground at the same time with my free hand, launching to my feet and twirling into his body.

His off-hand sword stabbed into my chest—

As I shoved the dagger into his forehead.

We stayed there for a moment, pain and shock and a strange sense of sorrow and regret filtering through me. Gresh’kellen’s eyes were wide, blinking, even as my dagger jabbed four inches into his skull.

I glanced down to see his sword had likewise sunk the same length into my chest.

Difference was, his missed my heart by a mere inch.

Mine didn’t miss.

Gresh’kellen toppled back wordlessly. Already stripes of sunlight were spreading across his face from the magic of my dagger, joining his purple veins to protrude his skin.

The dark elf’s eyes stayed open, staring up at the moon, sightless.

I stumbled back, breathing heavily. Coughed, spitting up blood, and wiped an errant strand of red drool from my chin with my forearm.

The pain inside me was so fierce it numbed everything.

I looked down and noticed Gresh’kellen’s sword was still sticking out of my chest, yet no hand remained on the hilt. Blood seeped down my back, joining with a few other cuts to create a network of red rivers. And that wasn’t accounting for the half-dozen nicks and shallow cuts along my legs and arms—some deeper than others.

Dizziness made me falter.

I took a step away, still staring down at his body, as if I expected my nemesis to rise from death in the moment, commanded by the same magic that controlled the draug.

Yet Gresh’kellen remained unmoving.

“That’s that, then,” I croaked aloud.

And then fell backward as oblivion consumed me.