Erika’s reactions weren’t the best, neither the quickest nor the most comprehensive, but even she knew screaming was bad. The veteran delvers around her knew both that and how to triangulate the sound back to its source. Like one creature pushing off some abyssal rock in the depth of the sea, the miniature expedition unfolded like a flower and exploded into motion, pouring back towards the tunnel and the rimed room, the source of the screams.
Erika was at the back before they even started but Bjorn grabbed her shoulder and hauled her along for the first few steps before she understood what was going on and, after that, she just needed to run to keep up.
The delvers leapt down the slipper icy slope, tumbling and falling and springing back upright as they did so, over the guard posts, below the waist heigh barriers that had been set up in some forgotten age (and where probably ankle height on a jotun Erika managed to think even as her lungs began to burn), down the last widest ramp and across the strange circular exit platform and finally into the long dark corridor itself.
Strange shadows played on the walls as lanterns swung back and forth jarred by moving bodies and pumping limbs, boots rang on the cold tiles echoing over and over until it became a single noise. Erika found herself lagging behind further and further, the main pack of delvers moving on at breakneck speed, the only ones near here were the few wearing heavy armour or carrying the largest shields and even they were outpacing her bit by bit.
“Blow this for a game of soldiers.” Muttered Erika and reached inside herself, humming she coaxed Odium, forming the saga of a galdr, the living story of a spell, a tale of a monster becoming a man or was it a man becoming a monster? Who can say.
[Graft: Warg]
Erika felt her face shift and warp, her limbs elongate and twist into retrograde positions, luckily the strongest part of Grafting was that it keeps any positive traits of the original, a graft only ever results in a stronger creature. What that meant was that Erika didn’t become short and stupid, she kept the superior human height and brain, but also got to enjoy the much better warg speed.
Exploding into motion now Erika surged forwards through the dense pack of delvers, passing the heavies, then the shield bearers, then the great-weapons and finally running alongside Bjorn and his rangers.
Just in time as it turned out, Erika barely had a moment to nod at Bjorn and marvel in her speed before their mad dash finally reached the end of the strange arrival corridor and let them scatter into the rimed room.
Erika, speed forgotten, stopped dead in her tracks and stared.
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Chaos, panic, pandemonium, bedlam. Worse than the ambush, worse than the meridian, the caravan had bene attacked.
In the distant centre of the huge rimed room Erika could see fire and ash, plumes of smoke rising from burning wagons, their crude defensive circle of caravans was now ablaze, their barricades torn down, people fought or ran in disparate groups, darkness and fear doing the damage of a dozen armies as arrows flew in random arcs and spears stabbed for any approaching shadow.
It took Erika a moment to see what they were fighting, the darkness defeating even her new warg eyes, but her sense of smell was also enhanced and she recognised the tang of blood.
The wargs were back.
Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, moving slowly through their defences hacking through spears and cutting down delvers with heavy flint axes. From her distant vantage point Erika could see the fake cairn, the one that hid the tunnel down to the wargs, it had been smashed to pieces and in its place was a yawning hole from which wargs poured, steadily and slowly but with uncanny focus as they marched towards the flames.
Bjorn didn’t stop for a moment, with a bellowed “WITH ME!” he charged towards the flames the rest of the delvers on his heels. Around Erika the rangers slid to a halt and drew their bows in unison, despite the distance and the darkness they began to fire, not a volley of arrows but a wall, reach ranger timing their shot after whoever was stood on their right side so that at least one arrow was always in the air. They didn’t seem to be aiming for clean shots but instead to cover the retreating expeditionaries who were fleeing the burning wagons with wargs in lock step pursuit.
Bjorn, lit by the swinging lanterns of the delvers around him, charged into the mass of wargs. His axe almost buzzed through the air as he began to hack and break, a second later the rest of the charge slammed home bowling over the short creatures, scattering and skewering them in ignominious piles.
Erika wasn’t even sure if she would be needed, the elites who had returned with her carved their way through the warg lines, the rangers covering the non-combatants escape, Solvor was gathering the Silvermane agents and Erika saw her already dragging food and water away from the flames as Ranald rallied the delvers who had broken and fled, gathering them into shield walls and having them cover the charge.
It was a beautiful example of skill, the kind of skill Erika didn’t have, nothing to do with galdr and everything to do with experience.
Thinking like that is tempting the Norn’s however and at that moment Erika heard a panicked voice screaming from within the burning wagons. “Run RUN! They have a Gothi!”
A bolt of white lightning lit up the rimed room, striking faster than thought, only visible as a shadow burned into the eye by its passage. Bjorn was flung backwards, his armour glowing cherry red all along his left side, the two delvers behind him weren’t even that lucky, one was crumbled still and apparently whole except for the web of fractal black burned into his skin, the other had a molten hole drilled though her breastplate and carved into where her heart should have been.
Hobbling into view came a warg, small and twisted even for its kind, carrying a huge tome which blazed with rune light. As the battlefield seemed to hold its breath the warg shook the book, a huge thing made from finely worked silver plates, not the crude work of a warg, wafting away the smoke of an expended rune. Leafing to a new page it looked over at the reinforcements and white flashed in the darkness as it smiled.