Page 130 of The Last Valkyrie

Chapter 41

Magnus

THE DRAUG WERE UPONus. My fellow “kin,” if it was to be believed, though I shared no resemblance to these fetid, macabre excuses for life.

I dragged my bloodblade across a throat, spilling black goop down its front, and the thing kept coming. It wheezed and clawed at me with blackened nails, its face leathery and drooping with old, waxen skin.

Gritting my teeth, I glanced at my allies—all of us in desperate melee within the halls of Fort Woden.

Grim, Arne, and Corym felt bad for leaving Sven behind to fend against his father, yet I had no compunction. Feelingbadfor the wolf shifter wasn’t in my purview. I knew he could handle his own.

Now we were being swarmed by the stinking monsters as they attacked us within the walls of Vikingrune Academy itself. Inside the very structure that had withstood the tests of time for a thousand years.

Arne barricaded two entrances to the wide room with sheets of ice. Flakes puffed out and cracks formed in the edifices of the barriers from draug attacking on the other side. Their numbers appeared vast, given the muffled sounds of moaning and hissing.

Corym eviscerated a wight next to me, nearly sliding on its hanging innards, and stabbed his sun-colored knife into its side. The bright energy of the dagger seared the creature’s flesh,illuminating its bruised skin and sending spider-webs of light through its body.

“More of that!” I urged him, seeing how harshly the knife affected the elf’s opponent.

With a grunt, Corym nodded, stepped beside me, and swung his two weapons at the next attacker.

One of the ice shields fell in a crash of crystal to my right, and three more draug limped into the fray.

Grim awaited them on his haunches, and the first poor bastard got a paw swipe across the face that sent it flying ten feet into a wall. When the creature stood on wobbly legs, its head was backwards, neck completely twisted.

The other two lunged at Grim and cut red marks across his white fur. The polar bear bellowed, shaking the walls around us and a metal chandelier above us.

“Grim!” Arne wailed, rushing over to pump a fireball into the enemy with a wave of quickly Shaped runes. The draug’s head ignited like a pumpkin, making him a hazard as he walked blindly around as a human torch. A second later, fire and smoke sizzled as Arne wrapped its head in a block of ice.

The thing collapsed from the weight of its overwrought, icy skull, and I slammed my foot down on it, crushing bone, ice shards, and brain in a mix of disgusting soup.

Unfathomably, the thing started to get back on its feet—headless, soundless—until Corym finished it with a well-placed strike to its lower spine. Seizing, the draug dropped and didn’t get back up. It twitched for a few seconds before dealth welcomed it back into its cool embrace.

We continued to fight in close quarters, trying not to hit each other, but the going was tough and we were getting sloppy and desperate. We’d already passed three dead cadets on the way here, their bodies half-eaten and dessicated by the treacherous undead monsters.

“Where to?!” Arne asked frantically, his eyes on me. When I gave him a confused look, he added, “You’ve been here before, Magnus. Think!”

He was right. I vaguely recognized this hall as one of the ones I ran down when I escaped my blood-leeching tests. Iwasthe only one who had been here before, and memories started to crawl back to me.

“Think faster!” Corym urged, kicking away an oozing, wet-looking draug.

I chopped it up with my bloodblade, solidifying the red gore before cutting into its spine like my elven comrade had done.

At least we’d figured out a way to finally kill these things after our first encounter with them in Delaveer Forest. But that didn’t make it easier to get to their backs, with them crowding so close in the room.

Noticing one of the barricaded hallways was now vacant—the ice shield broken down, the three draug marching into combat—I flicked my shield in that direction. “There! Follow me!”

Pushing past an undead monster with half its face missing, I hurried to the dark, narrow hall. The thundering footsteps of Grim and my mates behind me bounced off the walls, with the plodding, slower steps of the draug not far behind.

We came to another fork—a bookcase at the end of the hall with two passages going left and right. I tried to recall anything I could from my frantic escape from the laboratory.

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