Jericho smiled. “So, both of you hitched a ride with a Berserker to get here? Is that the only way in from Purgatory?”
“Basically, yes,” Myst replied. “Though obviously neither of us knew it until it was too late, we also cannot leave. Not without the Berserkers, and none will take us. Whoever is calling the shots in this place—this ‘HQ’—they’ve got a tight lid on every portal in and out.”
As we exchanged experiences about how we had each come here, it soon became obvious that unexpected accidents had triggered these unexpected arrivals into the fake Shade. Regine seemed sad as she sat on the black, hard ground, crossing her legs and staring into the small fire Jericho had lit for warmth.
“I worried about you,” she said to Myst. “Following in your footsteps, I ended up fighting Baldur. He was an absolute nightmare to deal with, but he knew he’d never beat me, so he chose to slip through to this place in a bid to get rid of me.”
Myst chuckled. “The idiot thought it would be enough to be rid of you…”
“Right?” Regine snorted a laugh. “So, here I am. What now?”
“There’s a lot we don’t know about this place,” Myst said. “But the one certainty I do have is that Hrista is here. I can feel her sometimes, like warmth flowing through me and filling my spirit to the brim. I just can’t seem to find her.”
Regine gave me a curious look. “And what’s up with Mr. Soul Manipulator here?”
“I call it glamoring,” I replied, smiling. I still had some misgivings regarding the origin of my power, but I kept them to myself. “It’s a newly discovered ability.”
“Well, don’t try it again with any of us,” Regine warned. “It could get you killed. Our spirits are supercharged raw energy. Trying to manipulate one of us, Valkyrie and Berserkers alike, would be like swallowing an entire sun.”
I offered a slight nod. “Yeah, I noticed. There weren’t many options at the time, though. It sucks to feel useless.”
“You’re not useless,” Myst replied, motioning around us. “These creatures have clearly chosen you as their leader. You have the clarity and the drive required to survive this. Personally, I don’t see what good you’ll do if you kill yourself trying to ‘glamor’ a Berserker. Haldor’s shadow hounds cannot be killed, either. They’re former Berserkers, spiritually destroyed when their Aesirs were obliterated. Torrhen sees through everything, magic and non-magic alike. He can even see into your soul or hear your thoughts if he has the time and the tranquility for such a task. And you’ve already seen what Brandon can do with his twin blades.”
Her words filled me with pride. It felt surprisingly good to receive her validation more than anyone else’s, likely because of what she was and where she’d come from. It also added an extra kick in my step, filling me with the energy I needed to keep forging ahead until we prevailed.
“So, what, we just roll over and let them kill us?” Dafne muttered, crossing her arms.
“No. We outsmart them,” Regine replied. “The Berserkers can be defeated. They can be contained. They can be disabled. That’s the most you’re going to get. Besides, they’re just enforcers here. They don’t call the shots. They’re not HQ.”
“How do you know?” Astra asked.
Myst was just as curious. “I’d like to know, as well. We don’t yet know who HQ really is.”
“Have you ever seen a Berserker who didn’t take credit or brag about something? Especially a project as huge as this?” Regine replied with a cool grin. She shifted her focus back to me. “Truth be told, Berserkers aren’t natural leaders. Few have such a gift, and none are here. Our Valkyrie mother, for example, Edda… well, we call her mother, but we’re not actually family, obviously. Anyway, with Edda… boy, you can feel her from miles away. The spiritual power in her is titanic. The same can be said about Bodil, the Berserkers’ father. I feel nothing like that here. Only our dark brothers.”
“And Hrista,” Myst said, and her sister nodded slowly.
“And Hrista…”
The air thickened, icy tendrils making their way up my back. My skin pricked and stretched over tense muscles as the Valkyries’ gaze darkened, looking at something right behind me. I turned around to see Brandon entering the cave, both swords resting in the crossed scabbards on his broad back. He owed us a few answers, and Astra was the first to hold him to account. “We need to talk,” she said.
“You’re colluding with this two-faced snake?” Regine cut in, her lips twisted with disgust.
“Hey, I’m not a Valkyrie’s best friend, but cut me some slack here,” Brandon shot back as he raised his hands in a defensive gesture. There was tension between them. Myst had shown a degree of sympathy toward him, but Regine was still green in this place. She clearly didn’t know the details of his involvement. Unless she’d figured it out on her own and simply disliked him. “It’s been a long day, and I’m looking at an eternity as one of Haldor’s shadow hounds,” Brandon added. The reminder made me feel bad for him. Even sympathetic. I couldn’t hold certain decisions against him, and I could tell from the expressions around me that I wasn’t the only one thinking this.
“What?” Regine gasped, her eyes suddenly round and white with shock.
Myst exhaled sharply. “Yeah, things happened so fast, I didn’t have a chance to explain…”
“My brothers have Hammer,” Brandon said. “I never wanted to come here in the first place, so don’t treat me like an enemy.”
The darkness flared off him like tiny black tendrils of smoke. Astra couldn’t take her eyes off him, and she clearly had trouble finding her words in his presence. Weirdly enough, we both seemed drawn to creatures we understood little about, but at least in Astra’s case it was clear Brandon had a
