“Thayen, focus on helping your dragon friends,” Brandon said as he circled our cluster with both swords out. He hacked and slashed at each of the Berserkers who dared get close enough. “We’ll handle these Purgatory fiends.”
Myst nodded in agreement. “Use the rest of your clips and thin that crowd. Jericho and Dafne will soon be overwhelmed otherwise.”
I could already see what she was talking about. The woods trembled as the sea of clones tightened around the clearing. Dafne spat her blue flames that turned to ice, raising frosted walls against the incoming foes. Jericho took flight and circled above, casting fire down on the doppelgangers. The redwoods burned, too, and it hurt me until I remembered that this place wasn’t real. It had to be destroyed. I couldn’t see any other way out of this awfulness.
Thayen turned his pulverizer weapon on a bunch of clones who’d managed to climb Dafne’s ice walls. Poof! Poof! And they were gone, vanished in puffs of shimmering gray ashes. One of the Berserkers got too close for comfort, but Myst was there to slash her shiny sword at him, causing light to dance across the grass. It hit the Berserker in the shoulder, and he cried out, moving back as he cursed under his breath.
“Come on, give it your best shot!” Regine snarled somewhere to my left. Myst was an elegant and ruthless fighter. Her blows were heavy and determined. In a clear contrast, Regine was like a firecracker. Light-footed and fast, she never stayed in one spot for too long. She bolted across the clearing so many times, it left some of the Berserkers standing in irritated confusion.
Brandon was quick to capitalize on that hesitation, driving his twin swords through their backs. Like Myst and Regine, he couldn’t kill Berserkers—the creatures of Purgatory could not kill one another—but we needed them disabled or slowed down, at least, or else they would certainly kill the rest of us.
I focused the pink light into my hands, opening the palms toward Torrhen. He stood about twenty feet away, smiling calmly. “You’ll get tired soon enough,” he said. If there was one thing I was grateful for, it was Haldor’s absence. His shadow hounds would have been too much to bear. I wondered if I could find out where they had taken him.
“You know, you’re pretty pathetic to let a Valkyrie boss you around like that,” I replied. The light poured into my ankles and feet, learning to spread over the grass like Hrista’s liquid darkness. The more I focused, the more I dared to imagine I could do with my power. I held back a smile and focused on the light. It trickled across the flowers and the green blades of grass, hurrying toward Torrhen.
His blue eye twinkled. “Hrista is more than a Valkyrie now, little girl.” He brought out an axe, a monstrous thing with a deep black blade that was three feet wide. I dry-swallowed at the sight of it. He brought the axe down with a grunt, hitting the precise spot where my liquid light had met the darkness, and begun to push it back. As soon as the blade came down, it launched a powerful pulse that smacked into me with the force of a tidal wave.
I heard myself cry out as I flew backward. Brandon moved like a shadow, catching me in his arms. The impact knocked the air from my lungs for a second, my pink glow fading. Torrhen was right. I was already getting tired. I’d put plenty of energy into Regine’s sword, plus the light I’d expelled against the Berserkers to stop them from reaching me. “Are you okay?” Brandon asked, his gaze wandering all over me, checking for obvious injuries.
“Yes.” I nodded briefly, gripping his shoulders for support. For the first time, I had a full understanding of how broad the Berserkers were. Metal covered both biceps, but I caught glimpses of his muscles stretching, taut and firmly contoured, as he raised his arms and reached for the sheathed swords on his back.
“Stay close and use your light wisely,” he said. “You can’t run out too soon. It’s the only thing holding these monsters back.”
It saddened me a little to hear him refer to his brothers as monsters. Unfortunately, he was speaking the truth. The Berserkers in Hrista’s service were determined to kill us. They didn’t value life or the Order that had made them. They had gotten involved in something truly heinous, and there was no excuse for their terrible behavior. Darkness flashed past us. Something big and black grabbed Brandon and pulled him away from me.
I let out a soft whimper and held up my hands, pushing light from both hands and aiming at the violent clash of shadows. It hit them hard and bright, and the Berserkers were equally affected. Brandon shrugged it off quickly, but the other one needed another moment to pull himself together. I knew I’d hurt an ally too, but I couldn’t allow anyone to take Brandon down permanently. Fortunately for me, he’d seen it coming.
He came down on the Berserker hard and without mercy. Both blades pierced the guy’s throat, and he hissed from the pain, the shadows running off him, revealing his paled skin and blackened veins as they dissipated. That was the effect of a dark stab, I realized. There was so much I didn’t fully understand about their light and dark powers, about their weapons and their magic.
I only knew we couldn’t let them take us.
Myst and Regine amplified their blows against the Berserkers, while Torrhen continued to follow me around, never attacking unless I hit first. It
