“I died?” Leona wondered.
“Everyone has,” Muninn told her. “The final act of the dark elves was the final act for all.”
“It did just as the light elves suspected,” Huginn said. “Opening the scepters wasn’t the answer.”
“And that’s why the darklings were helping them,” Leona said. She remembered all of the darklings working in tandem to help the elves. All of the harbingers of darkness infecting those innocent people to help open the scepters. It had seemed odd to Leona at first, why would they do something that would end their existence. But it hadn’t ended them . . . it had saved them.
The raven twins stopped short and turned to look at her with askance.
“I couldn’t figure out why the darklings were so eager to help the elves,” Leona said. “Why would they help if it was going to end in their destruction?”
Huginn smiled without humor. “I hadn’t considered that angle.”
“They knew it would bring Ragnarok,” Muninn said. “They were helping to bring the end.”
Huginn shook her head. “That doesn’t matter now,” she said. “What does matter is we get away from the Void before the ship arrives.”
“What ship?” Leona asked. But she could hear it now. From the fire, blotted out by the mist and other confused figures that were forming from it, she could hear the creak and groans of old wood under stress of movement. Fire snapped and wood moaned, and if the sound was accurate, it was closer than Leona would like. Her hands shook. War. How was she ever going to fight in a war? What was she supposed to do?
“Better not to find out,” Muninn said, cutting into her trail of thought. She gripped Leona by the arm and started moving her away from the edge.
“Where are we going?” Leona asked.
“Can’t you feel her?” Huginn wondered.
“Who?” Leona asked.
“Abagail . . . the All Father.”
Leona didn’t say anything, but the raven twins weren’t waiting for her to answer. They pulled her along with them, and she felt in her mind for anything out of the ordinary. If the ravens could feel her sister’s mind, it wasn’t a gift that Leona shared.
A choke, and then a round of violent coughs sounded in the mist before Abagail. The sound was harsher than that of the creaking and moaning of old wood behind her, and so it earned her attention. Through the rising fog, Abagail could see dark shapes forming. She reached for Skye’s hand and found it welcoming and warm.
Peace flooded through her with the connection to the elf. But it was largely unnecessary. A form emerged from the fog and promptly fell to his knees.
Rorick.
He was clutching at his throat, gagging as if something were lodged within it. His face was pale, his dark-blond beard scraggly with more than a little gray across the chin. Abagail didn’t remember him being gray, and a momentary thought flitted through her mind that he was too young to be going gray. His hair was lank and a strange mix of light brown and blond. He coughed past whatever was lodged in his throat, and took a gasping breath.
Behind him a dark elf formed from the bloody mist, a curved blade in his grayish hand. His eyes were black, his hair silver and billowing around his shoulders. He looked like all the other dark elves she’d seen—dark gray skin, dark eyes, silver hair. His mouth frowned as he stepped forward, a confused look on his face.
Rorick lunged to the side, away from the dark elf. His hands and feet scrambled at the ground, putting more distance between the elf and himself.
“Rorick!” Abagail cried, pulling her hand free of Skye’s. She felt her wyrd sweep through her, filling her with a warm, angry buzz. Why did Rorick always have that effect on her. His presence appealed to the dark side of her wyrd, where Skye brought out the light in her. The wyrd gathered in her palm, the skin undulating into a glowing silver eye. She pointed it at the dark elf as he gained his bearing, and she let loose a silver stream of light that took the dark elf through the face.
He crumbled to ash, his body sifting to the grass in wisps of what he once was. As his crumbled form drifted to the land, he became fog once more, only to be absorbed into the land.
“What was that?” Skye asked. “Where are these people coming from?”
People were stepping from the fog all around them. Some light elves with golden hair, sunny skin, bright eyes, and golden, glowing scepters upon their backs. Humans stumbled from the mist, gazing around them, the incredulous looks they cast to their neighbors were unmistakable. Murmured conversation broke out around them, but Abagail couldn’t pick out specific words.
She went to her knees beside Rorick, who finally focused cloudy blue eyes upon her. His skin grew in color, flushed to a healthy, ruddy glow, but his eyes remained glazed over, as if in death.
“I’m not dead?” he wondered.
Abagail frowned. “Were you dead?” Her hands began to shake, and she felt the comforting presence of Skye at her back. His normal calming presence on her had no affect when she thought of her best friend as having been dead.
“I thought so,” he said, rubbing at his neck. Abagail looked closer, and there she saw a thin trace of an angry, red scar.
“What happened to you?” Abagail wondered. There was no time to answer, though, because just then the sound of creaking wood grew louder, and shouts sounded near the edge of Eget Row. Abagail turned toward the excitement. Enough of the fog had cleared for her to see flames licking at the edges of Eget Row, glowing waves of fire lapping at the edge of the land. Upon the flames, there was a boat like none she’d ever seen before.
Great sails of leathered skin snapped in the hot wind that blew in from the lake of fire. The boat was made of bones, that much she could tell. Bones that had blackened in the heat at the base of the ship. As her gaze followed the lines of bones that comprised the ship, she saw how they changed from black at the bottom, yellow in the center, and finally white at the top. Here and there she could see that the bones were bound by woven locks of graying, greasy hair that smoldered in the flames that bore it to the land of Eget Row.
In a great swell of flame and a hideous moan that rent the air, the boat smashed against the shore. The strands of hair snapped, and bones showered outward, littering the ground all around them. Skye stepped before Abagail, sheltering her from the shower of bones. The debris landed around them with soft thumps. To either side, the figures that had melted out of the fog shouted out, and fled.
Abagail stepped around Skye to see a line of light elves before them, sun scepters in their hands. The scepters glowed, their ends unfurling like a flower in the sun, revealing a crystal at the base of the flower. The crystals blazed golden, and then beams of sunlight shot from the scepters, lighting the edge of Eget Row, and the dust-strewn void with sunny relief.
The first dead moans reached Abagail’s ears.
“Hilda’s army,” Abagail breathed. They were coming . . . the undead army from the Otherworld. Over shoulders and through gaps between elves, Abagail could see the figures of the dead lumbering closer to the elves. The elves retreated a step for every shambling step the dead took. An unearthly moan gargled from within their throats. Still the dead came. For every one the elves cut down, more poured from the ruins of the ship.
“We need to get you out of here,” Rorick said, gripping Abagail’s arm. She allowed him to steer her away, and then she was running behind him, Skye beside her. The elf had his own sun scepter in his hands, his eyes tracking the way behind them. But when the attack came, it wasn’t from behind him.
All around them, the littered bones clacked together. The three of them stopped, unsure what was happening.
“This can’t be good,” Skye said.
“Keep going!” Rorick commanded as bones slipped across the ground, drawn to one another. She knew what was happening. She’d fought a similar army in Muspelheim and then again just before she came to Eget Row. These were skeletons, and they were harder to kill than the undead. As they ran, Abagail made a point of kicking
bones apart that were binding together. Their running slowed as the fog grew thicker before them. And then there were shapes within the fog all around them. There was no sound save the clacking of bones. When the first of the shapes emerged from the fog, it was a skeleton.
Its mouth opened wide in a silent war scream. It held a large bone over its head, and brought it down at Rorick. He dodged out of the way, aiming a kick at the skeletons midsection. When his boot connected, the skeleton fell in a crumble of bones. He wasn’t dead, however, his bones started clacking once more, as he began forming back together.
“Abagail, a little help,” Rorick said.
Golden light flared, and Abagail jumped, realizing moments later that it was Skye, shooting sunlight from his scepter into the fog. She saw shadows of skeletons burst apart, and then the clacking of them growing together once more.
Before she could call her wyrd, however, her head reeled and she stumbled to the side.
Thoughts cascaded into her mind, thoughts that weren’t her own. She could taste blood in her mouth, a memory of raw meat, the sensation of wind in her wings. “I’ve found her. She’s right here,” a voice said that wasn’t her own. “Can you feel her?”
Another collision happened with her mind, and Abagail slumped to the ground. She felt memories slither over her brain. Memories of ravens, of black feathers, of great feasts in a glowing white hall. “Yes, I’ve found her. All Father, we are coming. Meet us at the edge of Elivigar!”
“Abagail?” Rorick asked, helping her to stand. “What happened?”
“We have to get to Elivigar. Huginn and Muninn will meet us there,” she said, coming shakily to her feet, her untainted hand clasped in Rorick’s.
“How do you know?” Skye asked, blasting his golden light into the fog, taking out another skeleton—or maybe it was the same one he kept bursting apart that reformed.
“I just do,” she said.
“Where is it?” Rorick asked.
Abagail started to shrug, but suddenly she knew. The All Father’s presence was in her mind, and it showed her. To her left there was a sandy bay where the pristine, blue waters of Elivigar mixed with the toxic black waters of darkling wyrd to lap against the banks.
“That way,” she pointed.
Rorick nodded. He bent low, tearing a large bone away from the ground where it was inching closer to a nearly formed skeleton. He kicked the skull away, and motioned for Abagail and Skye to follow him.
Skye nodded, backing away from the onslaught of skeletons, keeping them at bay with bursts of light. Rorick cleared a way before them, his new leg-bone-made-weapon striking out here and there, taking the skeletons through the center, scattering as many bones as he could, and then kicking away those that fell in their path.
Soon there were too many skeletons, and their progression slowed to a stop. Abagail drew her sword, and took up a position with Rorick to her back on one side, Skye on the other. The skeletons slowed, staring at the group with cocked heads.
A motion rose in the back, and skeletons turned to look behind them. Through the fog, Abagail could see a giant of a shadow shambling around. She couldn’t make out more of its features, other than it was huge. The skeletons backed away from it, giving ample room. Abagail watched it draw closer. More of its shape became apparent—a twisted horror of a monster with odd angles and sharp protrusions.
She swallowed hard, and called her wyrd to her. If she could stand any chance against this monster, she would need her wyrd.
Finally, the fog parted, and before her stood a construct of bone that her mind could barely understand. It had four legs that carried it closer, three arms, two on one side holding large bone clubs, and one on the other, holding a shield constructed of what looked like rib cages. Upon its shoulders rested four spines and four heads, all glowing with blue power of death wyrd—the darkest of darkling wyrd.
The skeleton beast raised its head to the sky and trumpeted a laugh at the Ever After.
The army of skeletons descended on Skye and Rorick, as if drawing strength and courage from the shambling horror. Sounds of combat behind her alerted Abagail to the melee Skye and Rorick were engaged in. Their arms and backs pressing against her, jostling her a bit.
She shifted her sword to her left hand, and took aim with her right. She felt the golden light of the Waking Eye slither down her arm, and her palm opened like a giant eyelid. Golden light bathed the ground around her, and while the beast laughed, she took aim at one of its heads.
Light flared, and one head flipped away from its neck, spinning away into the thick fog and out of sight.
“Guys, we’ve got a problem,” Abagail said.
They didn’t answer. They already had their own problem. She couldn’t leave their backs unprotected, but she also couldn’t fight the lumbering shape of the skeletal beast. It was easily three times her height. One stroke of the giant club, and they would all be history.
The beast growled at her, blue wyrd puffing out of its multiple nostrils, its four legs spreading into a battle stance.
She closed her eyes for the barest moment, sending up a prayer . . . to who? She wondered. Who was she praying to if she was the All Father. She supplicated to the other presence in her mind, the one that had told her the way to Elivigar. She felt the presence slip over her mind, and then she was raising her right hand above her head. Her eyes opened, but she could only see out of one. The other eye saw nothing . . . only darkness.
Golden light cascaded from her hand as the skeletal beast brought the club down at her. At any moment Abagail expected to be crushed into the ground, but when the bone met the golden light flaring from her hand, it bounced back, the reverberation sending the beast stumbling.
“We can’t hold them much longer!” Skye called. “My scepter is running low.”
She could hear him now hacking with his sword as well as with the resonating sound of the glass scepter striking bone.
A bright flash of silver light to their left sent a blinding flare through the fog. Abagail cast her arm up before her face, and when the light receded, the fog was gone, and there was only a pile of motionless bones around them.
A woman, clad in a lavender gown, stepped over the bones. Her feet were bare, her skin a creamy complexion. Hair so light it was almost white, shimmered silver in the white light of the Ever After. She smiled at them, her mouth a pink bow. On the top of her head rested ivory antlers, and between the points of the horns hung the silver orb of a moon.
“All Father,” she whispered, going to one knee before them. “You’ve returned.”
The ravens had their ebony blades drawn, the edges shone in the light of the Ever After and the tempered onyx whorled with shadows. Leona clutched the hammer in her right hand, but no matter how tight she held it, there was no denying that they were trapped.
The ship had come, and the line of elves had taken fire, but they hadn’t been able to hold all of the dead back, and they’d managed to split through the ranks of elves and their golden blasts of sunlight. Leona and the twins had taken that time to flee, seeking the banks of Elivigar, where she was told they’d meet with Abagail. But now she wasn’t sure if they would truly make it there. The ravens knew the way, and the quickest way to Elivigar. Leona had to trust their experience, and for the first time in a long time, she allowed herself to follow.
Leona had been wondering if someone who’d died in one of the nine worlds, to be reborn of mist in Eget Row, could truly die once more. But she’d seen far too many elves fall to the tearing hands and rotten, gnashing teeth of the undead to wonder any longer. If they killed her here, where would she go?
She pushed the thought away and hefted her hammer.
“Ready?” Leona asked.
“For what?” Huginn wondered, not breaking her stare from the animated corpses shambling their way through the blood slicked grass.
Leona didn’t answer, instead she charged, her hammer held aloft, her mouth open in a battle cry. Her hammer sank into the first
of the coming dead, and its head exploded with the force. The undead quivered, and then slumped to the ground where its body dissolved into ash, and then vanished into the earth.
The ravens kept time with her, side-by-side they surged into the line of dead. Their swords slashed out to either side, shadows taking heads from dead shoulders, where the corpses would fall, dissolve, and then be claimed by Eget Row. The sisters cried out, their battle cries the horse, chilling caw of ravens come to feed. Their swords a flurry of nightmares made in steel. Their cloaks of feathers fluttered around them, giving them a liquid appearance, as if they weren’t fully physical, but yet made out of shadows that roamed the lands and claimed their dead.
Leona pressed forward, her hammer coming down time and again, bashing a way before them, clearing the way for their triangle offense to pierce through the dead army. Oddly, she didn’t tire. It was a fight like she’d never faced before, but still there was strength in her arm as if every swing was her first.
There was another presence in her mind, as if another consciousness shifted under the surface of her thoughts. It spoke to her of light, and of fire, and she let it speak.
“Fulgur,” it whispered to her. With the word, the hammer in her hand shook, a tingle traveled up her arm. When she brought it down on the next corpse, Leona was certain that a spark of light flashed from the hammer.
She gasped, and pulled the hammer back, staring at it. That’s all it took for a rusty sword to bight into her left arm. Leona cried out, smashing the hammer up into the head of the corpse. The head shuttled into the sky, and came crashing down several paces away.
“Fulgur!” The voice insisted.
Another smashed head, and another glance of a spark at the connection.
She could feel the numbing whisper up her arm from the connection with the hammer. She glanced at it for the briefest moment, and then held the hammer aloft.
“Fulgur!” She yelled.
A rumble of thunder answered her. Lightning seared the air, lanced down to the hammer where it danced over the surface and then refracted off the steel, showering down around them in smaller tendrils of electricity. It danced over the undead, and they shivered and shook with the power of the lightning. Their bodies smoked, and the corpses in the immediate vicinity crumbled to ash under the abuse they’d taken from the lightning.
Twilight of the Gods (The Harbingers of Light Book 7) Page 2