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I sank to my knees.
The darkness silenced them in my mind.
I couldn’t hear Ales or Logan anymore. All I could hear was my heartbeat.
All I felt was the pain, the emptiness of the void as I absorbed the final drops of dark aether into me.
When there was nothing left of the void, not even a whisper of shadows, I opened my eyes.
Logan and Ales stood over me; dark aether covered their faces, and ran down their arms, coating their armor in thick black venom. They both took the brunt of the blows to the shoulders, leaning into the Raiders. If I had dropped the shields, it would’ve killed us all.
“The void is closed,” I said through the connection to Ales and Logan.
I flipped my sword, slid past them both, and craned to check the cliffside.
The rift over Eir was gone. The sand and the sky radiated with the vibrant pinks and purples of the beginning of the setting suns.
Piles of ash scattered the sandy shore, but hundreds of Raiders still prowled the beach. Now they were trapped here on the sand, with no way to return to the Keresthat had sent them. The Keres could only create another aether back to their world, and I had a feeling they wouldn’t risk that to save a few hundred Raiders. Not if I could destroy that portal too.
They didn’t know I was too weak to barely lift my sword.
I swallowed as I saw the sheer number of them pressing into the tree line, surging around us.
There were too many.
Logan and Ales were fighting for every inch of the beach. Cri and Leo advanced to help, but for every two they killed, five more struck back. The two larger hoards had not reached Logan and Ales yet, but dozens had made it past the tree line.
I hoped the others were ready to meet them.
The mass of Raiders had been held to the coastline, but we wouldn’t be able to keep them back for very long. Their numbers were too great. I would soon not be able to shield them.
I could see the slaughter in front of me, the teeth of the Raiders sinking into us as they tore at our throats and fed the Keres our souls.
It can’t end this way.
I looked out to the ocean as the breeze whipped the bloodied hair from my face.
I was too weak to command the aether without Ales.
“Ales I need you,”I whispered through the connection as I tried to build the shields higher around the men.
“I’m yours, Valkyrie.” Ales’ words were confident, but I knew his strength was waning.
“Ales, I’m going to make last night look like warm-up, but I need your help.”
“Tell the others.”
“Fall back. Fall back to the tree line,”I surged through the connection to every Einherjar on the beach.
In an instant I knew why the Valkyrie had been drawn to Ales. He was more than a special Einherjar. He had something in him that made my aether feed from the element itself. Last night was pure magic, because of him. Instead of having to draw from Ales only, I was going to use him as the catalyst to turn the water into aether. I was going to create aether I didn’t possess because of Ales.
It wasn’t the Valkyrie that figured it out… it was Charlie. It had never been done before as far as the Valkyrie knew. That was why I hadn’t thought much of it last night, but when I woke up, I hadn’t been drained from wielding aether all night. I was charged to full freaking capacity this morning, and it was because of Ales.
Something inside Ales allowed the Valkyrie to generate aether. The creation of aether shouldn’t be possible. It could only be borrowed, draw from one being to another, never created from an element itself.
I dug my feet into the rosy sand and sprinted to meet the others. I focused on shielding every Einherjar as I deepened the connection to Ales. I needed him to do it again, whatever he did last night, but I couldn’t touch him. The Raiders were ten deep now between us. He was too far away. It had to be now. Before too many Raiders made it past the coastline.
“Ales… now.”
