"She sounds like a treat," Bryn muttered as her focus darted to every angle an attack could come.
Maude was about to agree when the woods grew silent.
Their group stilled as the hair on the back of Maude's neck stood on end. She glanced at Herrick, who gave her a small nod— he felt the shift, too. He unsheathed his sword, the action rippling through their group until they all stood ready for an unknown threat. The sliding of metal against the leather of the sheaths was the only sound in the previously lively forest as their group backed into a circle, each angle protected from an unseen enemy.
Dahlia, who had unsheathed two daggers made of the same black metal as Aeric's axes from only the gods knew where, sucked in a sharp breath. Trying to find what the Elven had spotted, Maude looked up to the canopy of dark green to find another paper dahlia flower floating through the break in the leaves.
With one slender arm, Dahlia coaxed the note to her on an invisible wind. As soon as her fingers wrapped around the update from Baldr, there was a crack of a broken branch that split the air.
Over the healer's shoulder, Maude read the note from their spy.
Watch the shadows
Any response or warning died on Maude's tongue as all Hel broke loose. From seemingly thin air, humanoid blurs of shadow burst from between the trees with their weapons drawn.
Shouts of battle echoed from the blurred soldiers that sprinted toward them. It seemed Baldr's warning came too late.
Maude let out a battle cry at the same time as her companions, their blades raised as they charged toward an unseen opponent.
All sound died in her ears as she clashed with a shadow, their ringing steel and blows to her body as real as anything, only she couldn't make out their faces in the shades that surrounded them. Broad daylight had turned to the darkest of nights in the blink of an eye, their efforts to fight off their surprise attack seemingly useless.
A bloody cloud of ruby hung heavy in the water that clung to the Kingdom of Rivers atmosphere as they fought off the hidden enemies. She became rage and death with every blow of theleifrHelasword that she had belted to her waist since leaving Hilgafell. Every swing, every stab, Maude lusted for more.
Instead of the burn of her muscles, she grew colder with each kill. Ice formed in her veins with every soldier cut down. She had carved a path through the darkness, leaving her friends in the center to defend themselves as she became lost to the bloodlust that could only belong to the dark goddess Hela. She didn't care— she only wanted to bring more souls to her master.
It wasn't until Maude landed a blow on one of her opponents, their crimson blood staining her blade, that they became visible as she staggered to the edge of the fighting. It was enough to stop her blind rage and make her focus on what was in front of her. A Flame Soldier fell to her knees in front of her, her pale hair mixing with the ruby beading of her blood that spilled from her opened throat. A girl no older than twenty years old lay dead in front of Maude.
All at once, her blood lust left her as a shell of who she was.
Eydis.
The girl looked like Eydis. Her silken, silver blonde hair. Her delicate features. Her face twisted from the fight she was in until it had frozen that way in death.
Maude looked down at the blade in her hand—the stickiness of the cooling blood on her hands, the carved runes that were now filled with the life of the soldiers who fought for someone because they thought they had no other choice.
In the still chaos of the fight at hand— for the first time in her life— Maude regret the death blow she had dealt in the name of self-preservation.
Behind her, she could feel another soldier sneaking up on her while she was distracted, but she redirected her shadows to wrap themselves around the would-be assassin and hang them from the trees above them. From above her, they hissed profanities and swung their blade at her without purchase in hopes she would clumsily step near them.
An idea sprang to the front of her mind as she turned to confront the next assailant in her wake.
All around her, her friends and other Elven battled against shadowed blurs that were Flame Soldiers. She watched as Bryn was coated with blood as she stabbed a soldier through their plated armor, the arc of red carving across her raging face in a way that made her look every inch the trained killer she was.
Next to her, Herrick and Hakon fought side by side as brothers against two soldiers whose faces were hidden by shadows, but their movements were vicious as they fought against.
Dahlia was holding her own with the twin blades she wielded; all cuts and slices she made easily healed by the right person but grounding when struck with her Elven speed.
The image in front of her grew impossibly still as she sheathed her blade— the metal begging her for more blood, which she ignored— and lifted her palms to face the blurs of Flame Soldiers they fought.
Closing her eyes, Maude breathed the heavy air into her lungs as she reached for that thread of darkness inside of her. When she exhaled, she guided the shadows that had gathered around her ankles toward the feet of the unsuspecting Flame Soldiers. As they wrapped around their ankles, she saw how the fright stiffened their movements.
One could feel invincible when their features could not be identified. These soldiers hadn't counted on her ability to twist the very shadows that protected their anonymity.
Arm held out in front of her, Maude kept her palm open as she gathered the threads of shadows that connected her to each assailant until every single one glowed with the life they possessed. She opened her eyes, and with one sharp pull toward her midsection, each Flame Soldier they had been fighting was lifted to hang on the tree branches by their ankles.
As suddenly as the bloodshed had started, the forest was still again.
Across from her, in the small opening of trees they'd been ambushed in, her friends stared at her, their expressions displaying mixed emotions about the power she was wielding. She couldn't think about that now, though, as she could feel hergalderstarting to strain, the air in her lungs growing thinner.
