"Defense formation, now!" Shouted Queen Thyra as a veil of water surrounded her shield.

The three Northmen that remained by her side repeated her gesture. Their water-veiled shields formed a thick water wall. They faced the Barghest, an eerie Dark Spirit with the shape of a colossal fire hound.

[https://i.imgur.com/TqLEcKE.png]

"La cazzata (crap!)," faltered Verano as he looked back and sought an escape route. Hagen, the treacherous raider from the Eastern Tribe of the North Sea, had blocked the valley's exit and locked Thyra and her captives with the Barghest. The slaves stood defenseless behind her and her men.

"Brace yourselves!" Shouted Thyra as the evil Spirit dove its head against the ground and breathed a carpet of fire at her direction. The flames flooded the entire valley as if the Barghest had breathed a fiery river. Yet the Northmen's shield wall absorbed the fire that reached them and formed a safe circle behind them where the slaves hid.

"The wall is melting?" Faltered an older slave with his eyes narrowed at the ice wall that Hagen had raised. The Barghest's river of flames melted holes in the ice. "Hurry up, look," shouted the slave with a wide smile squeezing his wrinkled face, "to the holes, you dumb dimwits! Freedom!"

"Freedom!" Shouted the dozen slaves that the Northmen had brought. 

A smile sprouted from Verano's face as he followed the other slaves towards the pierced ice wall.

"The Spirit is attacking again!" Shouted a Northman by Thyra's side as the Barghest rose its head from the ground, rose a claw over its head and pummeled the boiling mud ahead of the shield wall.

The ground quaked with the impact. A mountain of mud sprung off the scorching earth and buried the Northmen's formation. Flames burned inside the Barghest's jaw denouncing that another river of flames was about to finish Thyra and her men.

"We can't--" Verano's legs weighed as he was about to leave through a hole in Hagen's ice wall. He had his eyes turned towards Thyra as she staggered outside of the boiling mud. "I can't just leave them there."

"Sucks to be you, Verano!" Laughed the older slave as he ran through Verano and crossed the hole in the melted wall.

The Northwoman pushed her body off the mud that covered the Northmen. She pulled an axe off her waist. Thyra glanced at her men as they struggled to leave the mud and rose her voice towards them:

"I-I'-I'll stall the Barghest, hurry up!”

"Maybe I should go,” faltered Verano, “she seems to be doing well on her own.” He frowned towards the scar that his adoptive father, the Duke Arnaud de Sforza, had left in his right hand. The man's words echoed in his head:

"This scar. It happened when I almost died to protect someone who would not, even in a million years, do the same for me."

"I mean, he's got a point," reminisced Verano, "Thyra did try to kill me three times already," the boy scratched his chin while the Northwoman swung her axe at the Barghest face. "And I think Marzia would agree with father. And Arnaud would scream at me asking why I'm even considering helping Thyra. Yes," Verano coughed, "I'm sick and I think I should just leave..." he turned his head towards the melting ice wall. Yet his heart tightened as he heard her scream while she fought the Barghest, "Argh, who am I trying to fool? I'm too stupid to do the smart thing--"

He turned around and Thyra's body flew into his. The Barghest had sent her and the Northmen flying.

Her armor crushed Verano's chest as he caught her.

"Någon blev skadad? (Anyone hurt?)" Thyra asked her men as she stood up and shoved the dirt off her armor.

"M-Me." Replied Verano.

"N-No one, Queen," replied a Northman as he stood while using his axe as a cane. 

"Good. Listen," she covered her injuries with the right hand. The Barghest walked towards them, "fighting a Spirit is futile. We must find a way to escape before it spills fla--"

The Dark Spirit dove its head against the ground.

“Skit! (Crap!)” Cursed Thyra.

"Listen to me, please, argh--" Verano rose from the ground. "The Spirit left a hole when it sprung out of the earth. Maybe we can jump over it and escape through there. But we must go fast--"

Thyra bended water around her right arm. She pummeled the ground and her water-veiled fist opened a hole with a punch.

"Get in, now!" Ordered the Northwoman as she entered the hole. 

"Or do that," faltered Verano, "it also works--"

The Barghest breathed a cloud of fire towards them.

Verano gritted his teeth towards the wall of flames about to consume him. He stretched his arms down and ignited a flame that propelled his lighter body of a slave over the fire blast. He hovered over the earth that the Berghast had scorched.

"No, it can't be--" His confidence collapsed as he noticed that the Northmen did not have the same luck. They failed to escape and the flames consumed them.

"Harald, Jän, Odär..." Faltered Thyra as she rose her eyesight over the hole. Tears filled her eyes as she saw her companions die. "I’m--" She frowned. "I’m to blame for this."

Verano's flames that kept him floating faltered. He felt his heart beating faster and his breath left him.

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"Argh--" Bemoaned Verano as the pain in his chest led him to collapse. His body mauled the ground as he coughed blood. "Damn it," he rose his head from the ground and faced the Dark Spirit fiery glare. The Barghest walked towards him and shook the earth with its steps. He could not lift himself off the ground and escape. "H-Help," he glanced towards Thyra as she sobbed in her hole, "please!"

 Thyra ignored his plea. Water surrounded her right fist as she prepared to pummel the ground.

"The Barghest had to escape from somewhere," she told herself, "there has to be something under this valley. I'll survive and avenge you three," she glanced towards her men. "Hagen will pay."

"Do something! For Heaven's sake!" Screamed Verano as he crawled away from the Barghest. Yet his shoulder touched a boulder.

The Dark Spirit rose its claws over its head and prepared to tear Verano in half. The boy's only hope was Thyra.

"P-Please, Thyra," he leaned towards her as his scarred fist tightened, “my sister's waiting for me."

The Barghest rose its claw over its head and cast a shadow around Verano. He closed his eyes as the claw approached his chest.

"W-Water?" Verano awakened and saw that Thyra held the Spirit's claw with her water-veiled arm. 

"You're..." He faltered as his smile darkened the shadows that engulfed him. "You're helping me!"

"You assume too much, Fire Knight, argh--" Thyra blushed as she struggled against the Dark Spirit's strength. The ground beneath her feet fractured. The monster glared at her with its fiery eyes and flames cooked inside its mouth. "I must do this!" She gritted her teeth as the dense veil of water engulfing her right arm exploded like a water bomb.

The explosion pierced through the valley's ground. An unconscious Thyra, the Barghest and Verano fell into a stream that flowed underground. 

The Northwoman lost her consciousness. All that she felt was the cold current of the river and the immense pain consuming her left arm.

"I got you, argh," she heard Verano's voice as he dragged her out of the water. The Sun bathed her body with warmth and as the sunset approached, the boy ignited a fireplace to keep her warm.

Verano sat by a tree and faced the Full Moon hovering over his head. The Northern Lights roamed the heavens and gave him peace.

"O Divine Guardian," Verano sang a hymn from his home. "Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal...”

"Shut up!" Shouted Thyra.

"Y-You're awake!" Grinned Verano as he leaned to look at her face.

"No, I'm asleep," she groaned, "Can't you see?"

"That's a relief. For a moment there, I thought that--"

"W-Where is my armor?" She sat on the ground and covered her chest with the right arm. Her eyes searched her surroundings yet she could not find half her clothes. "Where is my bloody armor, you creep?"

"Calm down."

"I'm not bloody calming down, I want my damn armor!" She shouted at his face. "What did you do with it, you creep?"

"I can't give to you, it is all wet now--"

She pummeled his cheek. Verano rolled on the ground with both hands on his wound.

"W-What was that for?" He snorted.

"You can't undress a woman like this, your filthy fire scum!"

"S-S-Sorry, argh--" He sat on the ground. "Maybe I should've let you freeze to death. But I really felt in debt after what you've done for me," he spoke naively, "I was even considering hugging you while you were unconscious so that the cold wind would not batter you as much."

"How noble."

"Yes, I'm a Fire Knight, so..." He blushed. "I must always help someone who is in distress, no matter who it is. Preferably if it is a Penitent, but we are taught to be magnanimous even when it comes to heathens and--"

"I want to kill you so much that I can't even fit in words..."

Verano only blinked at her. He could not find the reason why she was mad with him. He understood little of women. He treated Marzia not differently from how he dealt with his male friends. The woman continued:

"But that will have to wait, argh--" She held her injured arm. "I can't move it. That technique that I've used bends too much water in one place. It hurts my arm even more when the water erupts."

"W-Where are we?" Asked Verano as his eyes hovered around his surroundings. Spirits lightened the darkness in the forest. Walls of tall trees surrounded him.

"I have no idea."

"But you come from here, aren't you?"

"That doesn't mean anything. Can you tell every damn place where you live just by sight?"

"Yes, I can," he grinned, "My sister Marzia, Arnaud and I have seen it all. Even where we couldn’t go--"

"Just forget it," she snorted, "I need to find a way to come back to Edïm and stop Hagen's coup. But I'm not gonna get anywhere with a moribund slave by my side and a broken arm..."

"Maybe I could help?" Faltered Verano. "I'm the Avatar. At least they say I am."

"What is an Avatar?" She rolled her eyes.

"Sorry, White Wolf--" He corrected himself. The Fire Peoples and the North Sea Tribes had different interpretations of the same myth. "The point is," he leaned towards her, "the priest says I can learn how to bend Water. If you can teach me, I can use water to mend your wounds and help you defeat Hagen. Then you can let my people go back home. Is it a deal--"

She rose her axe from her waist and swung the weapon's blade against a tree trunk that stood only one thumb away from Verano's head. He swallowed dry.

"Let's just make something clear that even you'll understand," she explained with a vein pumping on her forehead. "I'm not a friend of yours and I'll never be. It doesn't matter what you think or what the mystics from my tribe say that you are; to me you're only a slave who has my family's blood on his hands."

"There is no other way; you have to work with me--"

"Let me finish!" She silenced him with a shout. "You are not a Waterbender. You are not a Northman! It doesn’t matter if you can bend Water, you are not worthy! I'd rather die and see my tribe fall into Hagen's claws than desecrate my name by being a teacher to the murderer of my brother."

"Thyra, you help me help you and you won't have to see me ever again--"

"Who are you to call me by the name?" She smacked him. "You're a slave freed by fate and nothing else."

"Argh," he massaged his wound, “please Thyra, listen to me. Your pride will just take you straight to the sea." He referred to how the Tribes of the North Sea buried their dead.

"Then I shall have a warrior's death, argh--" She lifted herself off the ground and wandered the forest.

Verano followed her as he looked for a way to convince the stubborn woman to teach him. The same Moon that hovered over their hands brought light to the outskirts of Edïm, from where Hagen observed the battered Western Water Tribe.

"Poor Edïm," he bit a green apple, "poor Western Water Tribe. So battered by generations of lost mothers and fathers in the pestilential war for Alba. Finally you'll have a leader who can make things right." He smiled as he contemplated the reflection of the Moon upon his salmon-shaped ring.

"Chief, it's been confirmed," a fat Northman kneeled before him. "We outnumber Thyra's men 3 to 1. Your fears were confirmed true, heh: her warriors are not loyal enough to die for her claim. We can sack this tribe unopposed for three weeks or so. Most of her warriors are shores far too distant to come and help her."

"Excellent, Svän," remarked Hagen, "but I'm not looking for wealth here."

"Why? There's a lot of undefended gold down there, chief."

"Raiding is not everything, my innocent Svan," explained Hagen, "the times are changing. The Fire Knights are building feuds with thicker walls and stronger ballistae. They are getting used to our strategies. We now have to sail much farther than before in order to raid with ease. In addition, the places that still ignore the threat of the Northmen are being reduced to ashes one by one. Fortunes won't buy the survival of our people forever.

"I dunno if I care about survival of anything, chief. I just came for the fortunes..."

"Let me explain to you in an easier way, Svän," Hagen threw his apple away, "I don't want to die as a raider. I want to be a King. And this," he rose his axe towards Edïm. "This shall be the cradle of my Kingdom.”