In the chaotic half broken depths of her wagon Erika tried to climb to her feet, even prying herself upright using a broken board as a lever.
It didn’t work, she felt as weak as a kitten, her blood had been… hurt? Or something like it by the speed, that was new. Erika managed to grin as she wiped the blood from her chin, if she survived this there was a sages-saga in this for her at the next Althing, like when Aasveig Ylvasdottir had discovered that the higher one went the less one could breathe... They still no idea how that worked.
Erika found herself giggling slightly, that… wasn't good right?
Gritting her teeth and hauling as hard as she could Erika shot upright, the board breaking under her weight as she spun, stumbled, stood, toppled, and landed on the floor outside of her caravan. The once cheerful lacquering had broken and peeled, the interior was a bloody mess and the droogs were gone but even that paled before where she was.
Erika had seen a few feasting halls in her day, temples to the surviving Aesir and even the conclave meetings of Vitki, but this place wasn't a half, it was a cavern. A huge roughhewn stone room, the ceiling was practically unworked hung with thousands of stalactites and glittering with constellations of geodes and below it a vast and trackless expanse of perfect flagstones, each as clean as the dinner plates in a jarl’s hall and rimed lightly with frost, just enough to crunch under her boots as Erika walked forwards.
There was no light apart from the few surviving torches on the wagons and the only smell was ice and flame as embers chewed at carelessly spilled fur and flax. Erika stumbled back and across the room, towards the two merrily blazing carts which she simply stood and stared at for a moment.
She didn’t have a spell to put them out and frankly the heat was nice, besides she deserved a break.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Looking around the wagons, the wagons which had been flying, the wagons which were laid out perfectly in a near ordered grid in this vast dark room Erika let her mind run wild for a moment
What was that? How… what… picked up two dozen wagons and hundreds of delvers, that had to be… 80 Vaett at least? Even a jotun couldn’t lift that much. And whatever had caught them was invisible! A creature? A spell?! What had…
Amidst the crackling and, Erika admitted, the occasional traumatised groan from the expeditionaries which frankly she didn’t feel up to dealing with now, she could hear something, a rhythmic crunching… like boots walking across on the frost towards her.
Erika stumbled around in a loose circle, just barely keeping her balance. She saw two men had clambered out of one of the wagons nearby, one was helping drag the other… no just dragging him… he was rather short, the expedition didn’t have any dwarves did it… and those… teeth…
Erika lifted a finger, sighted along its length, and blast the damn Warg right in the face with an acid arrow, it died screaming letting go of the partially eaten corpse it had pulled from the caravan. The scream echoed and worse, was joined, in the darkness others responded to the call.
“UP!” Howled Erika, hobbling forwards and starting to hammer her fists on anything she could find. “EVEYRONE, WARGS! WARGS! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”
A few groans greeted her proclamation, someone stumbled out of their caravan’s door and threw up at their feet. A few thunderarms were raised, waving back and forth like a drunken sailor, someone drew a longbow and managed to fumble the arrow, a string of stinging curses followed as the string slash their forearm.
Erika was on her own it seemed.
She could run of course, this hall was big, plenty of places to hide and she had some rations in her cloak’s pockets and… why was she even lying like that?
Erika laughed a bitter laugh, even when she had nothing, even when hunger burned like fire inside her and the world seemed ready to crush her, she had had one virtue she was proud of, her loyalty.
Erika wasn't loyal to these idiots of course, but to her mother, if she ran she wouldn’t get paid and her mother would be humiliated, no reagents, no components, the jarls would mock her for years.
Swirling her cloak of office back Erika stood up and rolled up her forearms, the traditional pose of a vitki about to lay down some Hel. In the distant the chittering got louder but Erika just smiled, she had her convictions, she had her place, let them try to take it!