Chapter 16 - Ymirskrod

The hardest part of getting prepared for the war is deciding what to do with Ruby. The march to Ymirskrod will take a little over a month. I am not comfortable leaving Ruby apart from me for that much time. We decide she gets to come with us. During the fighting, she will stay back with Lara and the rest of delegation who will surrender to Skald if we die.

Ruby is not satisfied with this plan.

“I wanna fight Jotnar!”

“You can fight Jotnar when you’re my age.”

Ruby breathes fire on me. I clamp my hand over her mouth.

“You better not die. I wouldn’t be able to even keep her contained without you,” Lara says.

“Don’t worry. Me and Pumar will come back alive and victorious. I swear it,” I say.

“That’s damn right!” Pumar says, slapping his hand on my shoulder.

The Marmothi are packing up supplies for the march, placing boxes and barrels in small carts that can be pulled through the caves. Almost the entire journey can be done underground.

“We’ve been mapping out the tunnels, preparing for this assault, for over one hundred years!” Pumar tells me.

Meanwhile, Emmett and some of the other council members are taking Sephtis up a maintenance elevator to the support beams on the roof to inscribe runes on them. In a month, all the Marmothi will evacuate the city. If it’s Skald who comes back instead of us, then Sephtis will collapse the cavern atop him. Otherwise, everyone can come back to their homes.

It’s a good plan. Spirits are high.

“We march!”

The Marmothi army is two-thousand strong. It would be too crowded to send that many people through the small tunnels, so we split into fifty different platoons of around forty people each, and each platoon takes a slightly different route through the underground maze. We will all reconvene in a month at Ymirskrod.

I am traveling with Pumar, Lara, and Ruby of course.

Lara is still quite distraught over the deaths of both Gorentus and Arvel.

“Make sure to kill that spider,” she says one night in the caves, curled up cuddling Ruby.

“Oh yes. This time, I will make sure of it,” Pumar says.

After a few days, there is a large earthquake, which is a bit scary while being in a cave, but the rest of the journey goes smoothly.

After a month of traveling, our platoon reconvenes with the others in a predetermined cave underneath the mountains of Ymirskrod. The scouts are saying that Skald is already in the process of readying his army. The surgeon must have gotten here before us.

We must attack immediately. It’s agonizing waiting for the rest of the army to arrive. When there is only one platoon that hasn’t shown up, Pumar makes the decision to move.

“We attack in one hour,” he announces to the army crowded in the cave. “We will emerge from a cave at the base of the sundered mountain. I will start off the assault by creating a landslide that collapses the mountain onto the castle. This will hopefully draw Skald out. I will then face him with Ayla’s assistance. Brog and Sergus’s platoons will keep the elites from interfering.”

The marmothi nod. There is nothing to say. Every soldier knows all of the details already. They’ve been planning an attack like this their whole lives. There is silence as we prepare ourselves and say our prayers. I make sure Ruby is safe with Lara, and then I head back to stand by Pumar’s side.

His voice booms.

“We fight for the survival of our friends and children! Do you know what that means, warriors? That means we fight to the last man standing! Do not retreat! Do not hesitate! Do not lose! Today we will achieve our dream of a hundred years! Today, we achieve victory!”

“Victory!” The crowd cheers.

“Charge!” Pumar roars.

We run out of the the cave, emerging into the light. From where we are standing, it looks like we are on an ordinary mountain, but Pumar explained the geography to me. The mountain is split down the middle, with Skald’s castle in between both sides.

We run up the slope, with Pumar in the front. He advances ahead of the army. In the distance, there is an army of Jotnar standing the valley. It’s the first time I’ve seen them. They look like humans, except they are ten times as large, have frosty blue skin, and big bushy black beards. There must be at least two hundred of them camping out in the valley. Some of them have noticed us coming out of the cave, and are pointing up at us.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting my whole life for this!” Pumar raises his sword, and the power of the earth flows towards him. All my hairs stand on end.

I grin. Sephtis’s plan to bury Skald was good and all, but Pumar had thought of it years ago. However in Pumar’s version, it’s Skald’s home that get’s collapsed.

“This is for Gorentus! For Arvel! For all the burrows you have destroyed!” Pumar stabs his sword into the mountain.

A bone-shaking crunch ripples through the ground, and a moment later, a colossal rift forms across the mountainside. With a deafening rumble, it slowly falls forward. A thunderous gust of dust-filled wind washes over us. The falling mountaintop hits the mountain on the other side, then it all crumbles, and drops down.

As the rumbling fades, my heart is pounding. I am now standing on a jagged cliff top, overlooking the devastation below. Colossal boulders are lying interspersed with enormous chunks of ice, some of which look to have been pieces of a castle, walls with crenellations.

I wonder, for a moment, if Skald is just dead.

“Did we win?” Brog asks.

Then, a hoarse, pained, and quiet voice washes over the world.

“Repair.”

The colossal boulders float into the air, corrupted threads of fate webbing throughout them. They begin to reassemble themselves, the castle chunks fitting together like puzzle pieces.

“Dear gods,” Pumar says.

“Come on!” I shout. “We should get inside before it repairs! Otherwise we’ll have to breach the castle’s defenses!”

“Men, charge! As fast as you can!” Pumar roars.

We run down the fresh cliff face, boulders slamming into place and glueing themselves in seamlessly all around us.

Moondrops!

I send moondrops into boulders and castle chunks, purifying them of the corrupted threads. They drop back down, disrupting the repair process. There are so many of them though, and I can’t possibly stop them all.

The castle reassembles around us, with large sections missing in random places as a result of my meddling. Only around a hundred of us make it inside in time. The rest of the army is presumably still outside the castle. They’ll have to make it in through the gaps I made.

Skald stands before us, along with his generals.

He is a monster, infested with corrupted threads of fate from head to toe. They pulse in his skin and in his eyes and mouth, they twist through his crippled arm and the snakes he has for hair, and they emerge from him in all directions, filling the room with their vile presence.

The king stands up from his throne. To his left stands the surgeon, and to his right stands a Jotunn mage carrying a staff with a monster skull on the end, the sorcerer known as Otis.

“Die,” Skald says, and the corrupted threads of fate stab towards our hearts.

Luminous Authority!

“Everyone close to me!” I shout.

My light keeps the threads at bay, but I can’t protect everyone. The Marmothi within ten or so paces from me survive, about thirty of them. All the other Marmothi in the chamber clutch their chests screaming as the threads of fate stop their hearts. They die in seconds.

Skald glares at me. “Kill her,” he commands.

The surgeon dashes towards me. Otis raises his staff. I send magic-cancelling moondrops at them both, staying close to Pumar.

Sergus gets in the surgeon’s way, clashing blades with the devil. “Kill the king!”

“We’ll handle the subordinates.” Brog raises his staff, and shoots a fireball at Otis. The Jotunn conjures a shield of runes, and Brog’s fireball dissipates.

“If you get too far from me, Skald can kill you!” I remind them.

“Move towards Skald together!” Pumar commands.

As a group, we advance forward, staying within my bubble of protective light. Then I see Sergus’s head roll on the floor. The surgeon has killed him.

“Sergus!” Yosh screams, charging the surgeon.

The young marmothi doesn’t stand a chance. Within a second, he’s lost an arm.

“Aaaah!” Pumar charges the surgeon, slashing at his throat. However, the surgeon just jumps outside of my sphere of protective influence, taunting Pumar with a come hither gesture.

Pumar doesn’t take the bait. He stays close.

I send magic cancelling moondrops at Otis. They puncture through his protective barrier spell, and then block him from casting.

“Get him, Brog!” I shout, continuously maintaining my rain of suppression.

Brog raises his staff, charging up a powerful spell, and unleashes a concentrated jet of flame that hits Otis in the stomach, charring a hole into his belly. The Jotunn mage roars with frustration and pain.

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“You,” Skald says, his gnarled face glaring at me from between the snakes of his hair.

Skald picks up his spear. It’s a huge adamantine weapon. Just the spearhead alone is larger than I am.

“Ayla, get ready,” Pumar says.

I nod, tightening my grip on my sword.

“Armor, speed, luck, power, POWER!” Scald hisses.

The corrupted threads tighten into Scald’s body even more, wrapping around and through him, wreathing him and swirling around him.

He charges at us, bringing his colossal spear down upon our little formation.

Lightning!

I dodge around his blow, charge my sword with moonlight, and slash at his neck.

My sword doesn’t even reach his skin. It’s like I’m cutting into cloth. The corrupted threads of fate are all emanating from his throat. There are too many of them to cut. They repel my blow.

“Die!” Scald says, spinning around to strike at me with his spear, and at the same moment, the threads of fate go for the hearts of all the Marmothi.

I’m not close to all of them anymore.

But there are only thirty of them left. I can do this.

Moondrops!

I feel my bond with them. I’ve lived with them, played with them, apologized for Ruby messing with them. They are my friends, and I won’t let them die.

I send a moondrop to every single remaining Marmothi, and the silver drops explode on impact into a mist of moonlight, driving back the murderous threads. Pumar cleaves through one of the surgeon’s arms, Otis’s sends out ice spears but Brog melts most of them, and I twist around Skald’s spear in a bolt of lightning.

I go for Skald’s one good eye.

My sword stabs deep, but I’m barely the size of his head. This won’t kill him, just blind him.

“No!” Scald roars, dropping his spear to swat at me, but I dodge his hand in a lighting bolt.

“He’s blinded! Get him Pumar!” I say.

Pumar dashes by Skald’s ankle, slashing through his tendon. The surgeon intercepts him before he can do the same to the other foot.

“Heal,” Skald says.

The gash in the back of his ankle closes, stitched together by ill fate. Hie eye regenerates purple instead of black, infested to the core with the corrupted threads.

That’s a problem. We can’t whittle him down slowly. We’ll need a single killing blow.

Pumar cuts off another of the surgeon’s arms. Then another. Then the surgeon throws a vial that explodes in a cloud of noxious mist, which I purify with my moonlight, but it gets him away from Pumar for a moment.

The surgeon pulls out a syringe, and stabs himself, injecting some red liquid into his own neck. Then he ignores Pumar, and comes for me.

He only has three arms, but he’s so much faster than before.

Lightning!

The surgeon keeps up with me, deflecting each of my blows with his knives, and then he stabs me in the side. My dress resists being cut, but just barely. The knife punctures in just a little bit, drawing blood. I struggle to purify the potent poison that starts flowing through my veins.

“Ayla!” Pumar shouts.

“You take Skald! I’ve got this!” I shout.

Then the surgeon attacks again, and he’s even faster. His drug must be taking some time to fully take effect. I am moving as fast as I can, using lightning for every movement, but he is moving twice as fast. It’s all I can do to make sure he doesn’t stab my head. He stabs into my dress over and over with poisoned knives, managing a deeper puncture each time.

The poison is so strong. At this rate I won’t be able to protect everyone, just because I’m running so much moonlight through myself. Am I going to die here?

No, I won’t allow it. My eyes focus to the limit, and everything slows down.

I can see him moving, see how I need to move, but I’m just not fast enough. Even moving within my lightning, it’s like the world is made of honey.

Time just is too slow.

So I push, and I push, and I push through.

Time Acceleration!

And suddenly it’s the surgeon who is moving through honey.

I cut off all his remaining limbs, then his head, and then I cut his body into a dozen little pieces.

I stop pushing the moon, and time comes crashing back.

There is a thunderous bang, the result of my motions in accelerated time. The surgeon’s pieces are blown away, and they splatter onto the castle walls.

Just as time resumes, Brog blasts Otis through the heart with a beam of fire. The Jotunn mage comes toppling down, an earthquake resulting from the impact.

Also, reinforcements have arrived, a group of Marmothi from our army are all charging into the throne room.

“It’s just Skald now!” I shout. “Pumar?”

Pumar is bleeding on the ground, his sword lying a few paces away. Skald has managed to strike him in the side with the tip of his spear.

“Pumar!” I flash to him in a lightning bolt. Then I accelerate time, conjure a thread, and make it stitch his wound closed.

When time resumes, Skald’s spear is coming down on us. I grab Pumar, and flash him to where his sword his lying. Skald’s spear smashes into the floor behind us.

Pumar grabs his weapon. “Let’s finish this,” he says.

I nod. “Together.”

We charge.

Pumar goes low and I go high. Scald swats at me like a fly, he stomps at Pumar like a mouse, but we’re faster than him, and we dodge again and again.

I cut open his eye again. Then I tear a gash in his ear, and slash through his cheek. I can’t hit his neck though, because the threads emanating form it are too dense. I can’t even get close. They just push me away.

The most I’m doing is annoying him, and stopping him from killing my friends, sending out moondrops whenever necessary.

Pumar leaps up and slashes through Skald’s belly. Then he dodges a spear strike and stabs his blade into Skald’s knee.

“Heal!” Skald roars, and all of his wounds close.

Around a couple hundred Marmothi are in the throne room now. They pepper Skald with a rain of arrows and boulders. Most of the projectiles are deflected by the corrupted threads, although every once in a while, a really good shot makes it through and hits him.

“Kill him, Pumar!”

“We believe in you Ayla!”

They cheer us on.

“Die!” Skald roars at them.

Time Acceleration!

I send a moondrop into every one of the Marmothi, protecting them from Skald’s power with the mist of moonlight that bursts around them, then I let time resume. Skald screams furiously.

“Oh? Does it feel unfair?” I taunt the giant.

He swats at me. I dodge and cut open his cheek.

As we continue fighting him, it becomes a battle of endurance. We can’t deal a lethal blow. Whenever he gets too wounded, he just heals.

We will lose at this rate. It’s only Skald, just one giant, but we can’t kill him.

“We need to hit him harder! I’m gonna try something!” I say.

“Get him good!” Pumar says.

Time Acceleration!

I accelerate time, and land on his head. I start hacking away at his skin with my sword until I can see his skull. The moon is getting heavier. I can’t do this forever. I slash into his skull repeatedly, trying to expose his brain, but I can’t carve my way through before the weight of the moon overwhelms me and time comes crashing back.

There is an explosion of blood and bone all around me, and Scald shrieks in pain.

“Woah! That looks like it hurt!” The army cheers. “Do it again! Just a bit more!”

“Heal!” Skald says. “Heal! Always heal! Always always heal!”

The wounds close.

Pumar slashes open Skald’s calf again, but then it closes immediately, stitched back together by corrupted threads of fate.

“Damn it!” Pumar says.

“Die!” Skald says.

Time Acceleration!

But I accelerated time to the limit just a moment ago. The moon is still too heavy. I can only maintain the accelerated time for a brief moment. I fire off as many moondrops as I can to protect the hundreds of Marmothi soldiers, but it’s not enough.

Time comes crashing back, and dozens of Marmothi die as Skald’s word stops their heart.

I’m getting exhausted. I don’t know how much I have left in me.

No. I will not stop, not until we win. I will keep fighting.

Pumar and I keep slashing at Skald, and he keeps trying to land a hit and crush one of us. With my ability to see the future, and Pumar’s ridiculous skills, he cannot hit either of us.

However, Pumar and I are getting weaker and weaker.

We fight him for what feels like hours. I can hear war waging outside, the Jotnar army clashing with the Marmothi outside the castle. In an odd twist of fate, the Jotnar are storming their own castle as the Marmothi defend it, while Pumar and I wage war with Skald.

It all hinges on our victory. The Jotnar hate Skald. He is a ruthless and petty king, who rules solely through power and fear. If we kill him, they will not wish to fight.

But if we die, he will slaughter all the Marmothi easily.

I realize now that Sephtis’s plan would never have worked. Skald would never have died from being merely crushed by rubble, and would he even consider the fake surrender?

No. This is the only way. We must find a way to win.

However, a deep exhaustion is seeping into me. Every movement is slower than the last, and my magic is coming out weaker and weaker. It’s the same for Pumar. He’s still fighting with the wound I stitched up, and it’s slowly bleeding through the stitches.

Skald is winning.

It’s night now. Moonlight is coming in through the gaps from the missing chunks of the caste.

I feel it shining upon me. Dodging Skald’s spear, I flash up to a big hole in the wall, desperately catching my breath.

Moon sister, have we truly come this far, only to fail?

The answer comes from within me.

“Pumar!” I shout.

He pauses, stumbles slightly, and catches himself before narrowly avoiding a blow. “What?”

“Bring him to his knees!”

Pumar nods. He takes a deep breath. I can tell he’s on his last legs now. This is it.

We either take him down now, or we die.

Pumar dashes to the wall, and kicks off of it. He shoots by both of Skald’s knees, and he slashes with his blade, simultaneously cutting deep into Skald’s kneecaps.

Skald roars in pain as he collapses, dropping his spear. His knees quickly heal, but for just a moment, he bends forward to catch his breath, his palms hit the ground.

From up high in the hole in the wall, I breathe the moonlight deeply, then drop down.

The source of Skald’s power is in his neck. I couldn’t cut through, I thought it was impossible, but so is moving time and fate, so was surviving everything I survived.

I put everything into my blade. Everything.

And in a single glorious moment, my two runes fit together just right.

For the first time ever, it feels like Luna wouldn’t laugh at me. This is magic, true magic, the way it was meant to be. All my other spells, Lunar Lightning, Moondrops, even Luminous Authority, have just been child’s play.

Mom, Luna, Ruby, look how far I’ve come.

Love flows through my blade, and a thread of fate connects down to the nape of Skald’s neck. Time flows inexorably forward, and instead of fighting against it, I put the weight of the moon into my weapon. My lightning is judgement, for the unforgivable sin of killing those that I love.

Skald, I pity you. Your whole existence has been suffering, hasn’t it? Time to let it end.

I give him what he deserves.

Celestial Mercy!

The corrupted threads evaporate in the thunderclap, and Wish cleaves through his neck. Despite my blade being shorter than his neck is thick, the slash carries forward, unstoppable. Then it splashes like harmless water against the floor.

I fall between the body and the head, utterly exhausted, but I somehow still manage to land on my feet. His body crashes down. The snakes of his hair hiss one last breath before they still.

I sheathe my sword and collapse in relief, beside a sharp bloody fragment of opaque crystal. Countless threads of fate are emanating from it, still corrupted. It must be Ymir’s heartshard, the source of Skald’s power.

“Ayla did it! She did it!” Pumar cries out in joy, collapsing to his knees.

The army cheers, but something still feels wrong.

“The heartshard, it’s still dirty,” I say weakly, and then I reach out and touch it.

It feels like pain and fury, like spite and hatred.

Almost on instinct, I push moonlight into it. I fill it with love instead.

The crystal becomes clear. Then it suddenly glows a brilliant white, and it zips into the sky, flying out through a hole in the wall. The shooting star travels west, far beyond the horizon.

And then I see her. She comes to me in the moonbeams, a thousand different beautiful faces and all of them are smiling. She’s in a dress of moonlight just like mine. She places her hands on my cheeks and gently kisses my forehead.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Then she’s gone.

I feel a deep sense of fulfillment that I don’t truly understand. It feels like something important has come back after being missing for so long.

“You’re welcome,” I whisper back.

The Marmothi pick me up and hug me. I am suddenly being thrown over the top of a crowd as they cheer for joy.

“Ayla! Ayla! Ayla!” They chant my name. It’s embarrassing.

“The slayer of the unspeakable!”

Even more embarrassing. It doesn’t even sound cool.

Then my heart suddenly stops in horror.

“Murderer! Kidnapper! You may have slayed my master, but you haven’t slayed me!”

Up in the air, Karalga has Ruby gripped in her claws.

“I took her again! Took her again! Watch and suffer! Watch and suffer!”

Then ruby dissolves into shadows. She reappears on Karalga’s back.

She raises her little fist, and it ignites in flames. “Ruby panch!”

Ruby smacks Karalga in the head. There is a nice little puff of flame, and Karalga chokes and sputters, her hair on fire. Ruby doesn’t let go, and chomps down on Karalga’s throat.

“Aak! Get it off me! Get it off me!”

Karalga flails around trying to escape from Ruby, and ends up falling onto the floor. Ruby tears Karalga’s throat out with her teeth, and then gives her another good Ruby punch.

Pumar gently removes Ruby from Karalga, and then cuts off the harpy’s head.

“I wanted to do it!” Ruby complains.

“Ruby,” I say, smiling.

“Ayla!” She runs to me, and gives me a big hug.

I hug her close. “Ruby, I’m so happy. We won!”