The Ever After

by Amanda Hocking

  But now a beast was emerging from it.

  It had a broad snout covered in iridescent evergreen scales and a mouth of jagged teeth. With emerald eyes and spiky protrusions all down its spine. It had no legs or wings, and yet it flew through the air, like a snake slithering through the clouds.

  It was the dragon known as a wyrm.

  Ragnall stared up as the beast circled over his head, casting a dark shadow over him. The wyrm was large enough that giant woolly elk would have only been a snack for it.

  The wyrm let out another crackling howl, then dive-bombed down from the sky. Ragnall was too stunned to do anything, even when the dragon bit into him. As the wyrm flew higher, chomping down on Ragnall’s body, blood dripped down, and his severed leg fell and landed on the bridge with a wet splat.

  63

  Crossing

  “This isn’t happening,” I said in a voice that was barely more than a breath. “This can’t be happening.”

  I blinked, but the wyrm still languidly hovered in the sky above me, gulping down what was left of Ragnall Jerrick.

  And something else was crawling through the waterfall.

  It had a long leathery neck protruding from a bony ginger-colored shell, and it had a mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth, like a gharial crocodile. The rest of the body was a primeval mash-up of a snail and a snapping turtle. It slithered along the ground at a horrifyingly fast pace, considering it was the size of a Tralla horse.

  I had seen enough of what was coming from Alfheim, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near the bridge when that thing decided to cross.

  I ran back around the mountainside, where everyone was still fighting around the temple. Many of them were bloodied and ragged, and a few of them lay in the dirt, unmoving.

  A group of Älvolk were still crouched behind the blazing red flames raging underneath the temple. They clawed through the dirt and ash, desperate to get any last drop of the blood pudding.

  But none of them had tried to cross yet—no one except Ragnall—and everyone else was focused on staying alive. Dagny climbed halfway up the stone remnants of a once-great tower, giving her a good vantage for shooting her arrows. Sumi was facing off against three thrimavolk herself, Alfie had backed another into a corner, and Pan was in a fistfight with a teenage Älvolk.

  They didn’t know about the dragon.

  “Run!” I shouted—screamed to be heard over the noise—as I ran toward the fighting. “You all need to run! There’s a dragon!”

  Most everyone kept fighting. Maybe they couldn’t hear me, like they hadn’t heard the monstrous roar. But Pan decked his opponent, knocking him out, and he looked at me in confusion.

  “There’s a bloody dragon!” I yelled as I reached him. “We have to run!”

  “What?” he asked as I gasped for breath.

  “The monsters are coming.” I blinked back the tears in my eyes. “I don’t know how we can stop them.”

  “We’ll…” Pan swallowed. “We have to try.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  The wyrm roared again—loud and close so everyone stopped and looked up as it rounded the peak. When it dove down toward us, everyone screamed and took off running, including Pan and me.

  We ran past the temple, and the wyrm swooped down, exhaling a plume of green flames. Pan dodged to the right, while I went left, but I was close enough that I felt the intense electrical heat crackling near my skin.

  I could see Pan getting swept away by the crowd in the opposite direction of me, but I didn’t want to push back against others running in panic, maybe pushing them into the mouth of the dragon. I ran toward the elk massacre in the stables, joining the others going for the entrance to the safety of the underground Älvolk city.

  But the wyrm doubled back and swooped around us, cutting off the path. It landed on the ground and slithered quickly on its belly, going over to inspect the bloody animal corpses.

  “Shit.” I stopped short, and I spied Eliana, standing near the wyrm’s long tail. She stood frozen, watching as it sniffed the corpses and burnt them with its breath.

  I jogged over and grabbed Eliana. She let out a surprised mewling sound and I threw her over my shoulder.

  “Over here!” Dagny shouted, and motioned for me to join her behind a tall stone wall.

  It had once been a building of some kind, but three of the walls had collapsed into a pile, now long overgrown with grass and weeds. A lone wall remained, and we hid behind it with our backs pressed against the stone.

  Along with Dagny, Elof and Jennet were crouched low. Dagny had a scrape across her arm and a bruise forming on her cheek, and all of them had wild-eyed shell shock, but they seemed otherwise okay.

  “Ragnall crossed the bridge, and all the monsters are getting through,” I said as I sat Eliana down. She slumped against the wall and sat down beside Elof.

  “Monsters?” Dagny asked. “You mean there’s more than a dragon?”

  “Yeah.” I leaned against the wall, and I flinched when the wyrm let out another crackling roar. “They’re going to eat the world.”

  “We have to contain them,” Elof said.

  “I am happy to do that, but do you have any suggestions on how we go about it?” Dagny asked.

  “The Älvolk are masters of the incantation,” he said, speaking more quickly as he went on. “And they’ve already proven they’re capable of channeling the Ögonen’s magick to create the most intense cloaking in the troll kingdom.” He looked around, his eyes resting grimly on the sheer mountainside across from us, his gaze traveling up toward the peak.

  But I didn’t follow his gaze. Instead, I peered around the wall, checking to make sure the wyrm was still occupied by the elk massacre. I couldn’t see the whole beast—just its long tail twisting in mud made of ash and blood.

  “I’m certain that, using the Älvolk’s own methods and tools here, we should be able to come up with some kind of psychokinetic cage,” Elof went on. “I don’t know how long it would hold—maybe not that long at all—but it would give us more time than we have now.”

  “What do you mean?” Dagny asked. “Time for what?”

  “Time to figure out how to get them back home, or kill them if we must,” Elof said. “Time to stop them before they eat the world, as Ulla put it.”

  A sounding horn let out a loud, oddly triumphant sound that broke the yelling and screaming, the chuffing of the dragon and the crackling of the flames.

  “Oh, alai,” I said. “What fresh hell is this?”

  This time Dagny poked her head around the corner, and she let out a gasp.

  “What?” I rushed over to join her, and looked around the wall to see troops marching into Áibmoráigi. They were decked out in uniforms of sage green, sky blue, crisp ivory, crimson red, and golden amber. The five tribes had all sent soldiers—real soldiers—and leading them into battle was Wendy, Queen of the Trylle.

  Only a few steps behind her was my friend Bryn Aven, but she’d forgone her usual crisp clean uniform signifying her elite rank in the Kanin guard. Instead she wore black slacks and a gray tank top, with arm and shin guards, but the scars down her arms were clearly visible.

  The wyrm roared again before taking to the air. It cast a dark shadow as it circled over us, and Bryn drew her sword as she stared up at it.

  64

  Calvary

  Bryn

  The days I had spent raising an army and traveling to the First City weren’t nearly enough to prepare me for a dragon flying overhead and spewing green fire into the air. I heard Tove Kroner curse under his breath, and his hands hung limply at his sides as he stared up at it.

  “I didn’t really think there would be fucking dragons,” he said.

  Someone screamed, and I gripped my sword tighter and snapped my attention back to the battlefield. Áibmoráigi was larger than Doldastam, and the ruins and vast empty spaces between crumbled buildings and rotting barns gave it a more sprawling and spread-out feeling. Like Doldastam, the city was
walled off—in this case by the sheer mountain to the south and the steep cliff to the north.

  The ruins provided a fair amount of coverage, but most everyone appeared to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The sight of a fire-breathing monster had sent everyone to chaos.

  A fire burned in green and yellow, but the largest blaze was set at the far northeastern end of Áibmoráigi, before the plateau ended. A tall gazebo with a teardrop-shaped roof of crimson-blue was engulfed in a red fire.

  That’s where everyone seemed to be coming from. A few of them seemed to be charging at us, ready to fight, but the rest were just running in terror.

  I shifted my stance—rolling my shoulder and flipping my sword—and I stepped toward them. I had no idea how to kill a dragon, but I sure as hell knew how to handle a guy in a red cloak running at me with a spear in one hand and a kasteren axe in the other.

  He grunted as he raised the stick, but I blocked it easily with my blade, and his spear snapped in two. He tried to come at me with the axe, and I ducked down, dodging out of the way. While crouched down, I grabbed the broken staff and used it to knock his legs out from under him.

  He cried out—something in a language I didn’t understand—as he fell back to the ground. I straightened up, and I saw the shadow darken his face—

  “Bryn! Look out!” Ulla shrieked at me from the cover of a nearby wall.

  I dove back out of the way in time to see the Älvolk I’d been fighting go up in a green burst of flames as the wyrm lit him up. I was still close enough that I could feel the heat singe the bottoms of my feet. The Älvolk’s screams died almost as soon as they started, so at least the death was quick.

  I scrambled back from the burning corpse as the wyrm flew on, lighting more of the city on fire. It was enough to darken the sky, the smoke creating a thick gray-green fog that settled over anything.

  Coughing, I got to my feet and looked up, watching the wyrm. My eyes were drawn back to the cages on the mountain. I had noticed them when we were first marching up to the plateau. Cages of stone and iron had been carved into the mountain face, making it look as if bird cages had somehow grown into rocky formations.

  Each one of them contained a sinewy Ögonen, standing with their long fingers wrapped around the bars, their eyes following the battle below.

  Despite the wyrm’s best efforts to burn the First City down to dust, the Älvolk and their warrior daughters kept coming back at us.

  But they weren’t the only ones. The smog was destroying the visibility, but I could see the odd, lumbering silhouettes of the other monsters that had followed the dragon here.

  I didn’t entirely understand what they were or where they came from. Ulla hadn’t exactly sounded certain when she’d called to ask for my help three days ago. But I had spent my entire life protecting the troll kingdoms, and I wasn’t about to stop now.

  Especially since my biological father was one of the ones that had helped create this mess. Indu Mattison had to be here somewhere, and I wondered dimly if I would recognize him from the few grainy photos Bekk Vallin had shown me.

  As I stalked across the battlefield—knocking out an overzealous tween Älvolk with the hilt of my sword—I heard rocks falling behind me. I turned around to see a spider the size of a small Siberian husky climbing down a pile of stone, but its spindly legs kept knocking rocks loose.

  Despite the unstable footing, it was horrifyingly fast, and I moved quickly to drive my sword through its thick abdomen. Viscous lime-colored blood oozed out onto the ground and the spider let out a high-pitched shriek as it died.

  I pulled the sword out and looked back to see a tall blonde with a bloodied lip arguing with a shorter girl, who had black hair coiled on her head and blue makeup smeared across her eyes.

  “Tuva, this is madness!” the blonde yelled at her.

  “I am the chieftain!” Tuva shot back at her, and she held her bardiche like a staff as she glowered up at the blonde. “We fight until all our fathers cross. And only then do we follow.”

  A spider jumped at her from behind, and with a flick of her wrist, she spun her pole weapon like a pinwheel around her body. She slipped it behind her back, and in a matter of seconds, she’d sliced through the arachnid.

  One of the Skojare guards that followed me here was nearby, fighting an Älvolk, and the blonde rushed over to assault him.

  I went to Tuva, intercepting her before she could join her comrades in attacking my ally. She immediately swung her weapon at me, and I blocked it with my sword. But she used enough force to knock me back on the ground. Tuva shouted at me in another language, but it definitely sounded like an angry slur.

  I kicked her hard in the abdomen, but my blade was wedged in her wooden pole, so it went with her. An abandoned kasteren axe was just to the left of me, and I rolled over to grab it.

  The dragon cried in the sky, and I looked up, searching the green fog for a shadow. Instead I caught sight of another monstrosity slithering toward me. It was bigger than my horse, Bloom, with skin like leather, a thick shell, and a long mouth of angry teeth.

  It was a murder snail, and it was coming right for me.

  I got to my feet, and Tuva stood on her bardiche to pull my sword free. For a moment, she wielded both weapons, and I stood a few feet away with the murder snail barreling toward us.

  She looked to it, then tossed me my sword. I chucked the axe at the monster, and it landed in the shell with a thwack.

  Tuva swung her weapons until the blade caught in the skin did not give easily. The creature whipped its long neck around, and Tuva barely got in another blow—chipping off a chunk of shell—before it bit her.

  She let out an agonized scream as the murder snail chomped into her arm. I could hear the teeth grinding against her bone.

  I grabbed the kasteren axe still stuck in the shell, using the handle to pull myself up. I straddled the muscular neck of the snail, and it finally released Tuva. Before it could snap back at me, I drove my sword through the top of the head with a wet squelching sound, and it fell dead.

  Tuva lay on the ground, convulsing, and her fresh bite wound dripped with red blood and frothy green venom.

  65

  Encamped

  Wendy

  This was not going as I had planned.

  Finn had come to me three days ago about the Älvolk threat, and I had prepared my army accordingly. I had hurried to get here, hoping if we arrived in Áibmoráigi soon enough, I could meet with the Älvolk leaders, and this could end in diplomacy instead of war.

  I had dressed for that occasion—an emerald military-style jacket with brass and jeweled buttons paired with pleated culottes—but my hopes for mediation left me feeling foolish as I ran across the battlefield. Yet I didn’t let that slow me down.

  I gave out orders as I moved, directing my guards and aides to get the base camp set up. We had a main camp at the mountain summit, but that would be too far and too treacherous a journey for our wounded. With a dragon lighting the First City on fire, injuries were a certainty.

  In my nine-year reign as Queen of the Trylle, I had unfortunately seen my kingdom through two wars. I had personally fought and killed in battle. But as I watched my friends and allies clash under the green fog of dragon breath, the ground already bloody and burning, I had never seen anything lay siege so quickly.

  It would kill us all if we didn’t find a way to stop it.

  “Wendy!” Loki, my husband the King, called for me.

  He was behind me, helping to hurriedly erect tents. The tarps were made of tanned Tralla hides, imbued with cloaking and protection, which the enchanters thought would help them withstand fire and minor assaults.

  I turned back to see him discarding his jacket and taking up a sledgehammer, presumably to pound the tent stakes into the ground. His hair was damp with sweat despite the chill in the air, and his dark honey-colored eyes were wide with worry.

  “If you must stay on this damned mountain, will you at least
go inside the shelter?” He motioned to the tent. “You can’t command if you’re burnt to a crisp.”

  He had a point, so I told him to stay safe, and I went into the tent to see that the others were already getting a makeshift medical station set up. Patrik Boden—the Markis Ansvarig I had spoken with many times when the Älvolk had held Finn’s foster daughter captive—seemed to be heading up the effort, along with a few Trylle healers.

  But wounded were already coming. Someone pulled in a Skojare soldier, his body half burnt and bloodied, crying out in pain. One of the Omte that joined my volunteer army—a lovely young woman with dark auburn hair and peach-colored scrubs—dropped to her knees beside him and immediately went to work.

  “What do you need?” I asked, since all the other available hands were busy constructing the medical tent and base camp.

  “Gloves and gauze to start,” she said. When she glanced up at me, her eyes widened in surprise. “You’re the Queen.”

  “And you’re the medical professional,” I said. “Tell me what you need.”

  “Gauze, scissors, and disinfectant swabs,” she said, and her focus immediately went back to the patient.

  I ran over to the trunks of equipment—helpfully labeled and carried up the mountainside by Vittra hobgoblins—and quickly gathered what she needed. When I returned, she’d moved the patient onto a cot and was injecting him with a painkiller in his unburnt arm.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she said as she pulled on the gloves I had brought her.

  “Call me Wendy,” I said, and I slid on my own pair of gloves so I could assist her.

  “I’m Rikky,” she replied with a quick smile. “Rikky Dysta.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, and went to work helping her.

  We got the soldier stabilized—as much as we could given the situation—and the sounds of the battle raged on outside. Swords clashing, fires crackling, monsters roaring, and trolls screaming … mostly screaming.