Chapter 65 – Halldis the Shadow Witch
Halldis screeched in rage as another arrow from one of Hannah’s three airborne bows let loose a shot that grazed her decaying flesh. Hannah spared a slight smile of satisfaction, thinking back on the brutal training she had been putting herself through.
In the weeks it took to prepare an army to rescue Jack, Hannah hadn’t been sitting around doing nothing. There was a contingent of battle-hardened Valkyrie to train with, as well as the queen herself. That meant opportunities for practice to hone her skills and learn a few new tricks along the way.
It wasn’t long before Hannah pushed her Focus mastery from Apprentice-High to Adept-Low. Crossing that barrier opened up a whole new world of improvements for her.
The Focus stat was a hard one to pin down in terms of what kind of skill upgrades to expect. At first glance, more points in the stat seemed to increase the senses, Hannah could read a book at a hundred yards away. In addition, her night vision had enhanced dramatically. There was little she couldn’t see, almost nothing she didn’t catch. She’d even found herself staring at people’s necks, counting their pulse rate and making note of the things that got their blood pumping. Her sense of hearing had also sharpened. She could be on the top floor of a building and pick up conversations taking place in the basement. Hannah could feel the subtle shift in the wind, the vibrations as people moved, which definitely gave her an edge in anticipating opponents’ next moves in hand to hand combat. Her stronger sense of smell, however, came with a downside. She could smell everything – the foul smell of the camp lavatories, acrid scents of flesh wounds, even if they were rapdily repaired by health potions - nothing smelled good anymore.
She could do all of these things and see noticeable improvements with every point she dropped into Focus. What she couldn’t do was use it all in tandem - yet. She had planned to rectify that little issue in repeated duels and training sessions with the Valkyrie. These skirmishes were never against just one of them – often she found herself fighting against three at a time. She had to truly push herself to keep up, and often even that wasn’t enough. They would assault her from every angle from both sky and earth. The valkyrie hounded her blind spots with constant unpredictable attacks.
As if that weren’t enough to stretch every muscle, every pain and skill threshold, , the queen had placed Hannah on an extremely difficult training regime of her own.
“You should have at least five bows in the air at once,” the queen chastised after their first duel. “I can just swat your bow out of the sky, and then what? If you have multiple bows, you have multiple angles of defense. I attack one bow? Shoot at me with the other four. I attack you? Shoot at me with your five bows. It’s quite simple, really,” the queen said with an elegant shoulder shrug.
It wasn’t quite simple. In fact, it was impossible. Hannah could simultaneously control two bows at once, and even that left her with splitting headaches and a bloody nose every single time. It was like trying to hold on to two separate thoughts at the same time, but she was determined to keep at it.
So for several weeks, that became Hannah’s life. She would go into battle against the Valkyrie, trying to manipulate two bows as she fought off attacks from every angle. So far, Hannah would have told you the whole two bow thing was a complete waste of time.
“I’m focusing on too many things at once. I can fight against the Valkyries, or I can practice manipulating more than one bow. I can’t do both.” Hannah said at dinner one night.
“Then don’t. Give up and die. I promise to bring you back as one of my Valkyrie. While it’s obvious you lack the constitution and drive of a capable warrior, I do think you’d make a lovely servant” the queen said blandly as she took delicate sips of her soup.
Hannah’s training now became fueled by pure spite. She wasn’t sure what annoyed her more. The fact that she was being manipulated by the queen, or the fact that it was working.
Hannah set to her training with an unbreakable will. There wasn’t a moment that didn’t pass by without her training. She could easily be spotted in the camp as the person with multiple bows floating above her head. At meals, washing up in the river, even using the latrine, she maintained those damn bows. She could even keep it up in her sleep for as long as her mana would last. She would wake up to a bow clonking her on the head as it fell from the sky, chug a mana potion and go back to sleep.
Finally, the redoubled commitment began to pay off. Her Focus Mastery bumped up to the level of Adept, and it was like opening her eyes to a whole new world.
Previously, she had to hyper focus on any given sense in order to use it to its full effectiveness. A drawback of that hyper focus was that it tended to tune everything else out. Now, though, it was like she could use her heightened senses in tandem with each other. Granted, not to the fullest of their ability, but she imagined that would come with further improvements to her mastery over the stat.
Hannah could feel the change in the winds as a Valkyrie prepared her dive bomb. She could hear the small exhalation of a Valkyrie creeping through the woods in a surprise attack. She could smell the wildflower, sweat, and river water of a Valkyrie perched in a tree, all three waiting to pounce on her in surprise. All these senses came together to paint a map of the battlefield in her mind’s eye. She avoided their trap with ease, delivering fatal counter attacks of her own.
Her second mastery improvement came quickly after the first. She pushed her [Bow-Link] skill to the level of adept as well. This significantly reduced the mana cost of maintaining a telepathic link to the bow, and lessened the mental strain. Now using one bow was like having a third limb that she’d had all of her life. Using two bows was slightly more complicated, but night and day in comparison to before she improved her mastery. She took to using a third bow just to shove it in the queen’s face. The woman took it in stride, a knowing smile on her face as Hannah revealed her trump card in another duel.
These two improvements combined made Hannah far more dangerous than she had ever been. Hannah was full of confidence as she exchanged blows with Halldis.
The three short bows took to the skies and fanned out in a triangular formation as she launched herself at the draugr witch.
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“Brynd, Sidis, go inform the queen that we have engaged in battle with the Shadow Witch Halldis and request immediate assistance. Everyone else, see these draugr are given a chance to redeem themselves,” Eyla said from behind Hannah as she charged at Halldis.
Hannah felt the two Valkyrie flap their wings and fly off into the night sky. She watched from the corner of her eye as several other Valkyrie spread out and began doing something with the draugr corpses that littered the ground. Eyla drew two swords and joined Hannah in her charge.
“I hope you have a plan, little sister.”
“Nothing beyond killing this bitch,” Hannah said as she flung herself into a somersault, narrowly avoiding a shadowy orb that Halldis threw at her.
“Come, my angels, let me consume you,” Halldis cackled, a manic grin on her face. She slammed a palm into the ground and drowned the world in shadow.
Hannah had been hoping for this. She fell into the shadowy AOE with ease as she stilled her breathing and steadied her heart, straining her senses for any sign of Halldis.
There. She thought, sending three arrows flying out from above and hitting something.
Halldis rewarded her with a pained screech.
“Your tricks won’t work twice!” Hannah heard Eyla declare as powerful winds picked up. Eyla flapped her wings, banishing the shadows in a powerful gust of wind.
Hannah looked around to spot Halldis, three arrows sticking out of her body. Hannah smiled and shot three more arrows at her.
The short bows were simple. They only had a [Magic Arrow] enchant that allowed Hannah to create her own arrows by supplying her own mana to the bow. Hannah used her charged shot to create small, impactful explosive shots.
Two more arrows ripped into Halldis and exploded. She caught the third arrow.
“That’s quite enough of that.” Halldis said matter of fact, tearing apart Hannah’s arrow with black shadow magic.
Hannah watched as Halldis morphed from a draugr into an ethereal shadow like a wraith. Tendrils of pitch black mana radiating off her in creepy tentacle fashion. Hannah braced herself for an attack. Instead, Halldis zipped past them at blazing speed and attacked a Valkyrie who was busy messing with the corpse of one of the dead draugr. She spun around the Valkyrie like a ghost, claws ripping and tearing the Valkyrie apart in a dozen places.
Eyla charged at her, but Halldis had already moved on, leaving nothing but a bloody, broken corpse. Hannah sent arrows to where she thought Halldis was going, cutting her off from attacking more of the Valkyrie, who had all stopped what they were doing and braced themselves for an attack. Halldis seemed nonplussed and instead returned her focus to Hannah.
Hannah sent arrows raining down from every direction. She even started weaving smaller versions of her [Rain of Destruction] ability until there were three small orbs hanging ominously in the air.
Anytime Halldis closed the distance, Hannah would place herself underneath the orb and release a charge shot from one of the bows, sending down a rain of explosive arrows.
Hannah pushed herself hard, and with the assistance of the Valkyries, they started to make ground. Halldis, it seemed, didn’t have very many attacks. Everyone was able to easily deflect or dodge any shadow bolts Halldis launched at them. The Valkyrie could simply banish the shadow aura. All she had left was her wraith like form, and while deadly, she was unable to get past Hannah, who had the battlefield completely under her control. Hannah was starting to wonder just how the hell these Valkyries got caught the first time.
Halldis’ movement was erratic, confusing, and at times jarring. But Hannah noticed a pattern to the way the woman moved. She had arrows lined up and sent flying as the woman darted back and forth across the battlefield fending off Valkyrie as they dive bombed in at her, only to trip and stumble across the ground as Hannah landed a perfectly timed shot at Halldis feet.
The draugr witch howled in pain, her wraith like form falling, revealing the old draugr woman with skin that hung off her bones like wet laundry. Several Valkyrie landed nearby, weapons ready as they closed in on her.
That’s when Hannah realized something was terribly wrong.
It came to her seconds too late. She replayed the entire battle in an instant, retracing Halldis’ movements in her mind’s eyes. They had been so strange and disjointed, impractical at times even. It bugged Hannah. It seemed too easy. Hannah had originally thought it the panicked movement of someone who had no battle experience. Then she realized what the pattern was. She was moving in a star formation.
“RUN!” Hannah yelled out as the Valkyrie approached Halldis, who was still howling in pain on the ground.
Halldis’ howling came to a stop as she snapped her fingers.
Black shadow energy shot up out of the ground and the three Valkyrie who had surrounded her fell to the ground, crying out in pain. Eyla was close by and flew in fast, slamming her swords into an invisible barrier that had sprung up.
Hannah stared at the giant pentagram on the ground. Halldis movements weren’t erratic. She was drawing some sort of a spell circle to ensnare the Valkyrie.
“I’m surprised anyone managed to notice.” Halldis cackled as Eyla continued to swing at the barrier. “Sadly, you were moments too late. The naivety to think you could kill me.” Halldis said, snapping her fingers again. The three Valkyries screaming grew louder, and a black ethereal energy began to radiate off their bodies, draining their very essence and turning them to dust. The black ethereal energy then wrapped itself around Halldis.
“Allow me to show you true power.” Halldis roared from inside a cocoon of shadowy energy that spun around her body.
Hannah and the remaining Valkyrie watched in terror as the energy dissipated. Halldis stepped forward, her hair no longer frayed and wiry, but black and silky spilling down over her shoulders. She was muscular, her skin pulled taut around her body. Two black leathery wings unfolded from her back and talon like claws replaced her hands. Several Valkyrie gasped and took to the skies in retreat. Eyla stumbled backwards next to Hannah.
“Sister, we must leave. Now.”
Both Eyla and Hannah turned to run, but shadow tendrils erupted from the ground and tripped them both. Hannah unleashed everything in her arsenal, sending arrows after arrow into both Halldis and the mana that bound them. They both fell to the ground, frantically pushing themselves backwards as Halldis approached, a menacing smile on her face.
Then her pitch black eyes went wide as saucers.
Halldis fell forward onto the ground, revealing Jack, who had two daggers buried in her back. He pushed off the back of her head, shoving it deeper into the ground as he ran towards Hannah.
“Runrunrunrunrunrunrun…” was the only thing she could make out as Jack blasted right past her.
Hannah traced back the direction he was running from. Onem was walking across the clearing. His giant black staff had two enormous scythe-like blades sticking out of either end. He didn’t look happy.
Eyla flew into the skies. Hannah turned and ran after Jack.