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"I am," Herrick argued as he glanced over his shoulder at his brother.

In his periphery, a dagger wreathed in shadow cut through the air until it landed between the eyes of a soldier who had snuck up on Herrick again.

"You are not," Dahlia agreed, retrieving her dagger on a gust of wind she controlled. "It seems like the battle is going in our favor right now, and if you lose your head, that will change."

"We'll find her again, Herrick," Bryn said through heavy breaths as she closed her hand into a fist, sucking the air out of a Flame Soldiers lungs before slamming her axe down on their breast plate, shattering their ribs as they suffocated. "But we have to survive this first."

He didn't deign to respond to any of their comments. They knew they were right; he didn't have to tell them that. Instead, he brought his watergalderto his fingertips, the ice in his heart freezing thegalderas soon as it touched the open air. With great effort, Herrick redirected his thoughts back to the fight and threw out his arms, sending waves of ice arrows out to the surrounding Flame Soldiers.

They tried to melt the ice, but his fury was too strong; it fed hisgalderfaster and faster as power swelled through him. The ice buried themselves into chests, throats, any limb they could get to before threads of frost spread from them, freezing the soldiers into solid ice sculptures that his soldiers then hacked away.

With one powerful kick through a shieldmaiden-turned-ice, they exploded into pieces. Herrick blasted through more and more waves of Helvig's army. Men and women alike, if they had the Flame runes on their black uniforms, they were as good as dead to him.

He'd cut the bonds he'd placed over himself, allowing himself to feeleverything, and it fueled hisgalderto an intoxicating rate. He'd burn out eventually, but he didn't care. He descended into that bloodlust that hovered over him at every turn in his life and let himself drown in his enemy's deaths.

Somewhere along the way, as the hours ticked by, Herrick had lost his shirt in the chaos of the fight. Bare-chested and open to any attack, he barreled through soldiers like a man possessed by the god of war himself.

Herrick felt invincible; he could keep going for hours. This endless stream of energy couldn't have been his alone with the amount ofgalderhe was using, but every time he reached for it, there was more to use. Across the skirmishes, Herrick met Hakon's eye— he could see the exhaustion lining him already. Bryn was close to him; her fire was appearing more sporadically than before. Dahlia seemed okay, but she became distracted the closer they got to where Helvig and Baldr were stationed behind the lines. But they would keep fighting as long as they had to, even to death.

The world seemed to quiet as a choice was set out before him: keep fighting or retreat?

At the start, the fight had been somewhat in their favor. Now, they struggled.

Before the night had fallen yesterday, he'd had his retreat plan spread through the camp in the event that this battle would not end favorably for them. The River Soldiers under his command knew where to go and how to get there if Veter were to fall.

Already, families were being evacuated from the camps. His parents were rounding up the citizens of Veter and its neighboring villages and having them escape through underground tunnels that had been dug out in case the city ever needed to vacate quickly. It seemed his mother's paranoia and her father's before her worked in their favor today.

Struggling with what to do, Herrick seemed to back up in the safety of his soldiers, who still fought with the ferocity he knew they all possessed. Shieldmaidens who would not go quietly into death shouted their rage when they killed their opponents, even as they were soft-spoken and gentle in their day-to-day lives. Men who had known nothing but peace and the yield of farming the earth wore twisted expressions as they wielded swords and axes instead of scythes and shovels.

If they wanted the chance to fight again, Herrick needed to call for the retreat.

He grabbed the closest sergeant to him, his fingers twisting in his uniform. "Pull back."

"Sir?"

"Pull. Back. Follow the escape plan, now!"

He let go of the man, knowing his orders would be followed and moved on to the next sergeant closest to him: a shieldmaiden whose yellow braids were soaked red at the tips from the bloodletting. He repeated his order to her as he clawed his way back up to the front lines. When he reached Hakon's side, the look in his eye must have tipped off his brother what he had ordered.

They would stay at the front until their soldiers had time to flee. If they were to fight again, if they were to take Helvig down with the help of the Elven armies, he would need his River Soldiers to survive this.

Bryn came up to his other side, the approval on her face grim. Dahlia mirrored her thoughts, her black hair pinned behind round ears, throwing him off for a moment.

Looking at his friends, the ones he was more than proud to fight side by side with, Herrick said, "Let Tyr guide us to glory in battle."

Without another word, they surged forward to hold off the Flame Army until their people could escape. He only hoped they all had enough strength to make it out alive on the other side.

Dahlia tried to control her breathing as she cut through soldier after soldier that planted themselves in front of her.

Hergalderwas straining as she struggled to maintain her glamour as well as fight with the elements that flowed in her blood. Around her, the Elven soldiers Aeric had sent with them fought with a grace that could never be glamoured away. Now and then, they stepped in to save her from a blow that might have killed her as she stopped to heal a Rivers Soldier who had fallen.

There was no time to explain her ability to heal so quickly to the men and women she saved; they simply sprung up to their feet with a nod of thanks in her direction before they dove back into the slaughtering. These humans were so resilient in the face of a world-altering battle. If they lost, their very freedoms would be challenged. And yet, they continued to fight. Every step, every swing of their axe, was a cry of defiance against injustice and corruption.

They would never stop fighting for their freedom, their families, and their kingdom.

Now, Dahlia understood why the Kolbeck brothers were so stubborn in their fight against Helvig. The people in the Kingdom of Rivers were some of the toughest she had ever had the privilege of fighting beside. It was her honor to be their ally, even if they did not know her true nature.

That stubbornness might also very well be the reason for their failure. They kept battering against a growing, impenetrable wall of Flame Soldiers who inched closer and closer to the perimeter they set up to protect their camp.