by Renée Jaggér
They went over the tactics they would employ. It was impossible to plan for everything, but it helped that most of the people present had experience in battle.
Everyone agreed that Bailey and Fenris, as deities who were orders of magnitude stronger than the rest of them, would be on the front lines, acting as the artillery and doing as much damage to the dark elves as they could.
The witches and wizards would offer both offensive and defensive support, while the Weres would be divided between bodyguards for the casters and highly mobile search-and-destroy teams who could pursue and eliminate small bands of elves who tried to flee or reposition themselves for better archery. The Were teams would return to the main group before they could be cut off and encircled by other swarms of the enemy.
The core group departed the house, bringing along their hangers-on from the front yard, with everyone gathering out back, where there was more room. Fenris opened an unusually wide portal, big enough for three people to pass through at once, and Bailey gave the troops one final, brief pep talk.
“Keep in mind,” she announced, “this is no cakewalk, and pretending like it is won’t do us any good. We will be in danger. Fenris and I had to retreat, but we didn’t know what to expect. Now we do, and having you people with us will make a world of difference. I’ve met most of you, and I trust you. I couldn’t possibly ask for better backup. We can do this.”
Four or five people made encouraging comments, and others pumped fists in the air.
Fenris turned to them before leading the way through the gate. “Remember, we cannot defeat all of them, but we can divide them, pick off many of their best troops, and most importantly, engage and eliminate their king. He must be our main target.” He turned to the shimmering violet surface and concluded with, “Follow me,” before stepping in.
Bailey was right behind him, and Roland behind her. The dozens of Weres and witches filed in next, the whole group spinning through the astral channels in an instant before emerging into the red waste of the alfar’s home plane.
At first glance, the werewitch grasped that they’d come to a different point than the one she and Fenris had visited earlier since the elven army had advanced beyond that. The skyline and lay of the land, though similar, were not identical.
She also grasped that they had about ten seconds before the thousands-strong horde came within closing distance of combat. The entire ground for what looked like a square mile was covered with black-armored, white-haired forms.
Someone behind her exclaimed, “Holy living fuck!”
Bailey raised her right arm. “Shields up! Everyone fall into position like we said!”
She and Fenris stormed forth, leaving the rest of the group behind while Roland and the other witches conjured protective barriers around them. And not a second too soon since the elves immediately began firing arrows from their black bows.
Fenris incinerated the projectiles that came toward him, and Bailey swatted others aside. The remaining ones were trapped in or clattered off of the large amalgamated shield surrounding their allies.
Then the alfar shouted in unison, their battle cry a single hissing voice that was like a sandstorm or a torrent of water, and they charged with drawn and waving swords.
In the back of her mind, Bailey admired the creatures’ bravery since the ones out front had to know what was in store for them—namely, the wrath of two gods.
She and Fenris hurled waves, bolts, storms, and vortices of arcane and elemental force at the army’s vanguard. Colored light flashed, air crackled, and dust and rock formed clouds as the entire front line of the advancing horde was lost to sight and then to existence. Hundreds of alfar died at once.
But they were only a fraction of the whole, which Bailey estimated numbered between twelve to fifteen thousand. She doubted this was the entire dark elf force; they likely had multiple other brigades, divisions, and legions elsewhere.
The alfar host split down the middle and continued their charge at flanking angles toward the two deities and the small expeditionary group behind them. By now, the witches had begun tossing offensive magic at their foes, picking off many, while most of the Weres had shifted in preparation for melee combat.
Bailey mixed elemental attacks with advancing barrier waves, forcing elves backward while destroying them or hurling large numbers of them into the sky. Fenris had shifted into a giant lupine monster again, and he stomped, thrashed, devoured, and breathed out storms of fire and ice. Noise and chaos were everywhere.
Will Waldsbach led four of his pack fighters in wolf form on a rapid hunter-destroyer mission against a squad of elven archers who’d taken position on a nearby ridge and were launching arrows at the human forces in a continuous wave of suppressing fire. They moved fast, nimbly dodging when half the alfar changed their attentions to trying to shoot them. Hairy quadrupedal bodies feinted, leaped, and twisted through the air, bounding up the ridge.
One wolf took an arrow in the shoulder and yelped, though his early pounce brought down the archer who’d wounded him. The other four piled into the remaining eight elves, knocking some down and biting the legs and clawing the faces of others. In ten seconds, it was over. The snipers lay dead.
As the five lycanthropes hurried back toward the main group, though, the one who’d been injured lagged badly behind. The others slowed their pace to protect him.
Dante was closest to the Were quintet and noticed what was happening. “Oh, crap,” he breathed, seeing two dozen alfar swordsmen advancing down a nearby slope toward the group.
He threw out his hand and conjured a wall of arcane shield-matter a couple of yards in front of the elves. They crashed into it, stumbling and disoriented, and it took them a moment to grasp what had happened and go around the translucent wall’s edges. By then, Will and his followers had covered enough distance to reach the safety of the main force.
Will shifted back to human form. “Healer! We need someone with healing magic experience!” he shouted.
Roland had been busy blocking arrows and casting exploding fireballs toward groups of elves who tried to sneak around Bailey and Fenris, but, sighing, he paused and ran back to the South Cliff alpha, instantly taking in what had happened and infusing the wounded lycanthrope with curative energy.
“There,” the wizard reassured him. “You won’t be able to fight or run at full potential, but that ought to take care of most of the pain and stop it from getting any worse. Be careful.”
He turned back to the main battle, his hands raised and ready.
Bailey and Fenris unleashed artillery-level blasts of arcane plasma, channeling the heat, force, and sonic disturbance away from their allies. The landscape for half a mile flattened, and alfar died by the dozens.
The two deities stood front and center in the brief respite-space they’d purchased, while smoke rose, arrows rained down, and bodies dropped around them.
The wolf-father turned to the girl. “We must find their king. Gormyr is his name. Challenge him, defeat him, and take his power! That will neutralize the horde and put us in a better position to confront the next threat.”
Bailey inhaled. “Noted.” She was of two minds, and it felt strange to her. She knew without any doubt that what Fenris had asked of her would further his own nefarious plans. And yet, it was also the best and smartest thing to do right now. Whatever the bigger picture might hold, she and all her friends would be swamped and killed if they did not find a way to win the battle within a matter of minutes, half an hour at the absolute most.
And retreating would only allow the elves to continue their march toward Asgard and Earth. It was not an option.
She raised a hand, conjuring a beacon of light that blazed above her head, and bellowed, “Onward!”
Chapter Seven
Bailey’s makeshift army had torn through most of the alfar division, killing a third of its members and dividing the rest in half. The front portion of their host had retreated into a collection of caves and tunnels, while th
e remainder of them had fled, at first. Then they’d looped around to harry the mortal forces from behind with arrows and sporadic ambushes from the rocks.
One witch and one werewolf had died. Neither was anyone Bailey knew well, but she had to force herself to stay focused on the all-important task at hand: to plunge ahead and defeat the horde at its source.
Fenris gestured at the nearest large cave mouth. “There. That should lead to the underground system where Gormyr dwells. I can sense him; he’s not far. Of course, we can expect that he’ll be well protected.”
A platoon of archers and swordsmen had appeared ahead, before the dark entrance that the were-god had indicated.
“Yeah,” Bailey remarked, “no shit. I’m getting tired of these assholes already, truth be told.” She launched a multi-forked lightning bolt at the group, which destroyed some of their arrows and killed or paralyzed them all. Her forward group of wolves finished off the ones who still lived.
At the same instant, though, more elves popped out of a cluster of boulders behind them, sending arrows through a narrow gap in their shields while warriors with blades assaulted the sides of their formation, trying to overwhelm the witches.
When Bailey turned back, her friends had defeated about half of them, but the ambushers were so well mingled with her people that she could not attack all of them at once. She prayed that Roland, Dante, Charlene, and Will knew what they were doing. Meanwhile, the werewitch telekinetically grabbed two elves and dashed them into the nearest rock wall at a good hundred or so miles per hour. Their bodies crumpled, and they did not move again.
The group fought free of the ambush, though another Were and one witch had taken wounds.
Bailey swept her arm over her head. “Into the tunnel! Weres on the outside, witches on the inside. We can finish this right away if we get to their king!”
She allowed Fenris to spearhead the way into the cave. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she could trust him with such an important duty; but he clearly had more knowledge of the alfar realm than she did. And his plans called for the two of them to seem to be on the same side until the bitter end of the process. For the time being, she had to play along and hope the hour of his betrayal was still in the future.
Behind Fenris, four Weres piled in, then Bailey went, with Roland and a handful of other witches right behind her. The remainder of the casters followed, with the rest of the Weres bringing up the rear. The witches kept them shielded and also cast spells of gentle illumination to make the rocky tunnels navigable for themselves. The lycanthropes had little trouble seeing in the dark.
Dozens of elves chased them into the corridor from the surface. The rearward casters destroyed them or delayed them with walls of fire or ice or bolts of arcane plasma, and the Weres in the utmost back ripped apart the ones who got too close.
Other combatants came at them from side tunnels. Fenris had led them into a labyrinth, a honeycombed network of subterranean passages, which likely acted as a military base for the entire main force of the alfar’s army. Bailey threw sheets and columns of supercharged static electricity down any tunnel where something moved toward them. It would be enough to paralyze or kill any elves it struck without damaging the structural integrity of the corridor.
Fenris led them through winding masses of blackish-red stone, and the tunnel widened enough for Bailey and the wolf-father to fight side by side in front, though the girl continued to divide her attention between that which lay ahead and that which chased them.
One of their wounded Weres slipped outside a faltering shield, and sword-wielding elves converged on him to finish him off. Snarling, Bailey detonated a flaming explosion that obliterated the alfar swordsmen, but too late to save the wolf.
Their path led into a vast, airy, sprawling cavern, across a makeshift bridge of rock that spanned a black chasm below. Other paths between other openings crossed the walls of the pit, and here dark elf archers had taken position to snipe at them.
“Goddammit!” Roland exclaimed. “Can’t things get easier instead of harder for once?” He raised strong, towering shields on both sides of the path, and their arrows ricocheted off to plummet into the void below.
The elves trailing behind them launched bolts of their own over and through the middle of the path. One grazed Roland’s arm and the wizard faltered, his left-hand shield dissipating.
Bailey spun toward him as another volley of arrows came across the chasm. “No!” She deflected them, barely, then seized telekinetic control of the very rock of the cavern wall, bringing it down on the archers, crushing them and destroying the path. The ruins of both tumbled into the darkness.
She turned to the other side, where another group of bowmen was approaching from a closer, broader tunnel. The girl dislodged more stone within the corridor’s walls and slammed both halves together, closing the passage off and reducing the alfar within to paste.
Then they ran ahead, reentering an enclosed area and clashing with a squad of swordsmen. Bailey pulled free her blade, noting the way Fenris looked at it curiously, and the two of them cut down the warriors in seconds.
Not far beyond lay an archway, beyond which was another dome-like cavern, albeit one which seemed to have a solid floor. Forty elves burst out, firing a volley of arrows before charging with their scimitars.
The wolf-father blocked the projectiles while Bailey used her sword to throw a wave of freezing gas into the front lines of the platoon, killing the first dozen and leaving their ice-statue corpses to obstruct the ones behind.
Fenris gestured at the space ahead with a big, clenching hand. “This is not Gormyr’s main throne room, but I strongly suspect he’s here. It’s a forward command center, which will allow him to stay close to his troops while on this side of their realm but remain in a secure location at the same time. Move!”
“Gotcha,” Bailey replied, throwing a percussive shockwave into a cluster of guards who streamed out of the archway toward them. The frozen ones shattered and the others staggered into the walls. “There’s got to be something important here if they’re fighting to defend it so goddamn hard.”
They plunged into the warriors who remained standing, blasting them into the cave walls or cutting them down, bulling their way into the chamber beyond. At once, they found themselves facing down two dozen elves who could only be an elite honor guard.
Bailey paused for a brief instant. The new adversaries wore shining golden armor and deep purple robes, and they carried glaive-like bladed staffs as well as short swords at their sides. Something about the way the armor glowed faintly suggested that it offered the wearers significant protection against magic. She couldn’t be sure, but the hunch was strong.
Fenris barked, “Plunge through! We’ll handle them.”
Bailey threw a net of crackling lightning at the praetorians, but it did no more than spark against their helmets, pauldrons, and breastplates and momentarily slow them. “Shit,” she muttered, then dashed forward, surrounding herself with a battering ram’s worth of arcane shield.
She struck one of the elite guards head-on. His glaive glanced off her shield, and he was thrown off-balance to clatter aside. Another tried to stab her from the side and she ducked the blow, driving her sword deep into his armpit before ripping it free.
Then she was past them, as Fenris and her friends engaged the others. She ran forward on a broad open stone floor toward an elevated platform where a distinctive figure sat on a small, portable throne.
He did not look much different from the others, though he was taller than most, with a bearing that was less feral and more aloof and haughty. His long silver hair was tied into a braid that fell behind his shoulders, and a slim black crown encircled his brow. The gold-hued armor he wore was similar to that of his bodyguards, though limited to leg greaves, shoulder pauldrons, and a vest of scales, rather than full heavy plate. He wore a black cape and a scimitar at his side that was slightly longer and more finely-decorated than that of the average warrior.
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He looked down his nose at the girl. “You. So soon.”
Behind Bailey, the struggle against the elite guards had reached a stalemate, and Fenris shoved his way past the rest of them to stand at the werewitch’s elbow and point up the dais at the monarch.
The two men locked eyes. Gormyr’s smirk faded when Fenris spoke.
“Your reign is over,” the wolf-god boomed. “You have broken the non-aggression pact we had made, foully betraying us by moving your entire army toward the boundaries that lead to Asgard and Earth. Our realms will be spared the surging numbers of your blood-maddened people, and you will cease to live.”
The pompous elven face fell in deep dismay. Bailey noticed that the ruler was not looking at her but staring at Fenris.
Holding her bright sword in two hands, the girl held it up and aimed the point toward the elf’s face. “Gormyr, King of the Dark Alfar, I, Bailey Nordin, hereby challenge you to single combat for control of your army.”
He turned his face back to her and spread his bony hands. “I know of you, Bailey Nordin, and I had expected us to meet, although not as soon as this. Treachery must be afoot.”
He allowed the bitterness of his last statement to hang in the air for a moment before resuming his spiel.
“But it makes no difference, just as it is unimportant that you are officially a goddess. For you are a neophyte, an amateur, barely able to control your powers, whereas I am heir to eons upon eons of elite training as both a swordsman and a sorcerer. And furthermore, woman-child, your death is inevitable, for it is written into the prophecies that underlie our current situation. You cannot fight Fate. You can only fight me...and fail.”
