Eskil rushed to Aerion faster than I would’ve thought possible, propping her up before she hit the ground. I only noticed it after the fact, but he’d crushed three ice warriors along the way, leaving a trail of shards behind him.

Like he was handling fragile glass, he hoisted Aerion onto his shoulder, patting her back as he whispered something I couldn’t hear.

It made me sick. My body felt like it was on fire. All I saw was Eskil. Not the warriors. Not our predicament.

Who the hell did he think he was? What gave the pretentious fuck the right to treat Aerion like that? Because he was big? Because he was a Champion? I hated people like him. Throwing around their authority, like they were the best thing since sliced bread. Cover be damned—if I had to show Eskil I was a Champion to get him to listen, I’d do it. I’d fucking do it. I was overcome by an overwhelming urge to see this asshole lying in a pool of his own blood.

I froze. What the hell was I just thinking? Was I willing to kill Eskil because he was an ass? This wasn’t like me. It was because he treated Aerion like a possession, I realized. It had to be… But was that all?

“I can’t hold them any longer!” Richard shouted, breaking me out of my thoughts. Like a bursting dam, the ice warriors that had been previously indisposed rushed forward, forcing me to defend.

One after another, they swarmed us, and every second became a fight for our lives. I just barely managed to recover Aurora, which had clattered onto the ground nearby, before I was surrounded.

Eskil bellowed a roar as he swung his enormous ax with one hand. Even one-handed, he bisected a half-dozen enemies in a single swing.

I wasn’t nearly as proficient. A perfectly timed slash with both [Light of the Fearless] and [Shadow of the Fearless] active generally killed an ice warrior in one hit. Most times, I wasn’t so lucky, and it often took two or three.

I fought my way to Richard’s position as quickly as I could. I didn’t need a status screen to know he was low on Essence, and he’d already taken several nicks, but the injury to my left shoulder throbbed harder the longer I fought, despite prioritizing my right. I gritted my teeth and pushed through it.

The situation improved once we reunited. I kept the pressure off us both while he recovered, and it wasn’t long before he started contributing again, shattering hearts and easing the pressure on me.

Which put us back to the situation we’d been in just moments prior. Not losing, but not winning, either.

“We’ve got to do something!” Richard shouted from behind me.

I snuck a glance at Eskil, fighting nearby. He was preoccupied… If I managed to get close, I could distract him. If only I got him to slip up… Some irrational part of me was still seethed with the urge to just let the ice warriors have their way with him... but logic prevailed.

Eskil was our ticket out of here. As much as I'd loved to see him knocked down a peg, allowing him to die was as good as signing my own death sentence. Not to mention Richard’s and Aerion’s.

“Link up with Eskil!” I said as I dodged a thrust aimed for my abdomen. “I hate it, but we’ll be safer together.”

“Right, then!” Richard extended a hand, and squeezed his fist. The hearts of every zombie in a line from us to Eskil burst, forming a passageway of fallen bodies. “Go!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. Breaking off from my current fight, I grabbed Richard, threw him over my shoulder, and bolted to Eskil. Part of me wanted to keep running. To run right up to him… And run him through with my blade.

The calmer side of my brain prevailed, and I let Richard down once we’d gotten close. But not too close. With Eskil’s fighting style, being near him was actually a danger. As the ten-foot-wide perimeter around him suggested. Not even the zombie warriors dared close within his striking range.

Eskil laughed merrily upon seeing us. “Well met. You must be Einherjar, yes! Come, together, we shall take them by the hundreds!”

“We’ll die if we don’t come up with a plan, friend,” Richard said. Good, the more he talked to Eskil, the less I risked provoking him. “We need to find a way out of this bloody maze.”

Eskil swung his ax, taking out another three Warriors who moved in to attack. “Escape?” he asked, looking at Richard like he’d grown a third eye. “Why?”

“Why?” Richard asked incredulously. “Because we can’t win! They’re infinite, Eskil. Do you know what that means? They’ll keep coming!”

“Good!” Eskil thundered as he hacked apart another enemy. “Let them come! What better way to test our mettle than combat against an unending horde? Shall we take count? I lost track after five hundred, but I will happily start over!”

“He’s… insane,” I heard Richard mutter under his breath.

Amen, brother. Then again, considering how Eskil’s strikes deftly corralled his foes, causing them to bunch up, trip over themselves, made me wonder. He didn’t have a single wound on his body. For all his bluster and ego, he fought smart. Devilishly smart, in fact.

But that was Eskil.

“Richard and I will die if we stay here,” I said, in between dodging a spear and striking back, shattering the warrior’s ice armor and penetrating his chest.

“And who might you be? A fellow warrior, Chosen of Odin?” Eskil asked, turning his gaze to me for the first time.

“I'm uh... her porter. And her bodyguard. But yes, I am a warrior.”

Eskil looked at me with an expression of such unbridled disgust, it actually made me wonder if he was looking at me, or some unseen enemy. I looked around. Nope, that look that said he’d rather stare at a pile of fresh shit? Directed at me.

“Tell me, little porter, who are you to question an Einjerhar’s words, hmm? What great feats have you performed to earn my respect? Let me tell you now. Einherjar do not die. We are immortal. Should I fall, I shall rise again at dawn, ready to fight evermore.”

“That’s… Uh… Okay, then…” I said, mentally reconfiguring my understanding of Eskil’s sanity. He wasn’t just a battle-crazed maniac. He was a battle-crazed maniac who thought he was invincible.

My anger subsided considerably with that realization. God-like skills or not, I had a strong feeling Eskil would not live very long, a thought that utterly delighted me.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

It didn’t fix our immediate problem, though.

“Lead us out,” I said, smashing the pommel of my sword into the armored head of another warrior. The thing about ice was it was terrible against blunt force damage, and the warrior’s skull promptly cracked. “Every moment wasted is another innocent life lost.”

“Do not talk back to me, thrall,” Eskil barked. “I see your master has failed to train you well. I’ve a mind to cut your tongue.”

What an infuriating bastard. This little shit wasn’t worth my time.

I turned to my friend. “Richard? Can you tell him?”

“He’s right, Eskil. Every moment we waste, the more peril we put Basecrest in.”

“Bah,” Eskil scoffed. “Why concern yourself with the lessers?”

“Pardon?” Richard asked. “Lessers?”

“Is that not what they are? Commoners. Lessers incapable of wielding an ax. Is it not their duty to serve as stepping stones for us Champions? They will rejoice for the honor.”

That Eskil fully believed his words blew my mind. We were all humans from the same planet, and yet, his morals and values differed so drastically from our modern sensibilities that he might as well have been an alien. Were all humans like this back then?

“What drivel is this?” Richard spat. “What kind of sick fiend are you?”

“Fiend? Fiend? You dare insult me, weakling? Champion though you may be, I could break your neck with a thought!”

“Newsflash, mate,” Richard seethed. “Not everything’s about killing, you know? Sometimes being a decent human being is more important. Might give that a shot sometime.”

“Hey! Both of you,” I yelled. “Now is not the time for this. We need to get out of here.”

Richard deflated. “You’re right. I apologize, Greg. Eskil, will you lead us out?”

Eskil shrugged as he crushed an ice warrior that was unfortunate enough to venture his way. “If you wish to flee, then so be it. Eskil, son of Magnus, shall be the one to bring you to salvation. For Odin!” He said, pumping his ax to the sky.

“For, er, yes. For Odin, I suppose,” Richard said, meekly raising a fist.

Mine, too, raised, and I almost gave into temptation. I didn’t know if it was my Order stat or something else, but in a feat of extreme discipline, I somehow restrained myself.

I very nearly raised my fist and cried, ‘For Fenrir!’

----------------------------------------

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Richard said about ten minutes later when we arrived at the maze’s exit.

“Seconded,” I said, resting a hand on the elf’s shoulder. The solution to the maze had been a right, followed by a left, and then another right. That was it.

It only took us ten minutes because we had to fight through an endless horde of zombies. If it’d been much longer, I couldn’t imagine how long it would have taken. This maze was vast. That Eskil had solved it must have been through sheer dumb luck. The very idea of Eskil using some strategy or plan was fundamentally impossible to imagine.

All that time, Eskil Magnusson carried the still-unconscious Aerion on his shoulders, and with me bringing up the rear, I got to watch him the whole way. I really hoped she’d wake up already and smack the Viking across the face.

Unfortunately, she showed no signs of waking. Sometimes she was out for only a few minutes… I didn’t know what caused the variability.

“You know, in my culture, women choose their partners,” I said during a lull in the fighting.

“As far as I know, Vikings honor a woman’s right to refuse,” Richard said. “Isn’t that right, Eskil?”

“She is a Shieldmaiden. A warrior at heart like me. She will desire me.”

I rolled my eyes. “And if she doesn’t?”

“Then I will simply have to convince her of my worth. A simple enough task,” Eskil sneered, “considering her present company. But I am fair and just. If you desire her, you need only challenge me to single combat.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “Aerion’s a grown woman. She can choose her partner just fine. No barbaric duels required.”

Eskil scoffed.

I had a feeling Eskil wasn’t the sort of person who ever gave up. This could be a problem, but it was a problem for the future. Right now, we had another, far more pressing concern.

When we broke through the tight confines of the maze into the vast, circular area directly beneath the dungeon core, we were just three fighters. And while the zombies from the corridors remained behind for some inexplicable reason, what faced us was no less intimidating. In fact, it was far, far worse.

Five hundred yards ahead… was an army. Unlike the mobs from before, they were organized, spread out in a vast line. And in front of them were beings mounted on horse-back.

Commanders. The same Uruk-hai/Predator hybrids we’d fought outside. Except they, like their horses, were made of ice. Their eyes glowed with impossibly bright blue flames that were visible even from here, and it only took a single glance to know. They were strong. Beyond strong. Each and every one of them.

And then there was their leader. One glance at the horseback mounted Ice Commander, and I knew. The serpent we’d fought earlier wouldn’t hold a candle to him. There was an… aura that surrounded him. Something intangible. Invisible. But clearly there.

And when he turned his head towards us…

We hadn’t escaped. We hadn’t won. We’d just bought ourselves more time. Traded a coyote for a lion. Traded zombies for White Walker elites.

“Look at them! There must be hundreds of the heathens!” Eskil breathed, seemingly oblivious to the commander’s presence. He stared at the enemy with what looked like a mix of ravenous hunger and glee.

“Five thousand, actually,” I said in the most smug voice I knew. Partly to break free of whatever influence that commander was having on my brain. Partly to rub it in.

I couldn’t believe how off Eskil was. It was patently obvious they numbered more than a thousand just looking at them.

“How do you know, thrall?” Eskil barked.

Instead of correcting the ape about my social status—you can’t really argue with animals—I gave him a breakdown of my assessment. “Five battalions, each fifty soldiers wide and twenty deep. One thousand per regiment. Five battalions. Five thousand.” I met Eskil’s gaze. “Or is that too much math for you, oh Mighty Champion?”

Well, that was dumb. My self control slips for an instant and look what happens. The last thing we needed was a fight between us. I was about to bite the bullet and apologize, when Eskil responded with words I wouldn’t have guessed.

“What does it matter if they number in the hundreds or the thousands? We will end them all in the name of Odin!”

I gave Richard a glance. It really did seem like Eskil couldn’t count.

Then again, Vikings were raiders, operating in small parties that landed their longships on the coast of what is now England, to rape and pillage. Vikings didn’t really fight organized armies until—!?

An all-consuming force reverberated within my chest. Shaking me like the bass at a raucous concert.

It wasn’t a roar. It was… Something else. Something more complex. Because within those reverberations was a voice. One that I felt, rather than heard.

“What’s it saying?” Richard gasped, falling to his knees.

Through sheer force of will, I managed to stay on my feet, as did Eskil. If this were any other time, I'd have been thrilled to see the Viking humbled like this. Now, though, all I felt was terror. Absolute, unrelenting, terror.

Our eyes fixated on the leader as if under some curse. He stared back at us, boring holes into our very souls. He was barely even visible from this distance, and yet, it felt like he was right there. A regal, almost kingly presence of ice, sitting atop his frozen horse. He put the Ice Serpent to shame.

“You doom us with your presence,” he said, his gravelly voice weathered, commanding, and wise. “For our lives… For our children… We will end you, and you shall rise again, being of flesh. As one of us.”

“Well,” Richard said through gritted teeth. “Reckon we found the lord of this dungeon.”

Fuck. This was gonna end up being even worse than season eight, wasn't it?