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Kai.
She allowed herself one deep breath of relief before gathering the remaining spears Nightmare carried in her arms.
With her horse grounded, and her own wing-bearing shoulders injured, she had to find another way to take out the jötunn’s remaining eyes. That was the plan.
As powerful as Kai’s dragon form was, as large as he was, the largest of all dragons, he was still only half the size of the ancient god. A primordial being made of the earth, sea and heavens themselves.
It was why the entire Æsir hesitated to take on the jötnar, why they could only tolerate the older gods and coexist in fragile truce. Until the prophesized end of worlds when they would have no choice.
In the face of such untamed power, Kai needed all the help he could get.
The bronze dragon and the Frost Giant circled each other like an arctic wolf cub facing off against a full-grown polar bear. It was not an evenly matched battle by any stretch of the imagination.
Eir raced as fast as she could to the nearest rocky hill. She needed elevation to reach her target and secure her aim.
Slinging the long spears in her cross-back holster, gritting her teeth at the throbbing soreness in her shoulders, she climbed up the jagged, sharp slope with her bare hands, dirt caking her fingernails, bloodied where she tore them.
Below, the jötunn was getting his second wind, blinded eyes and impaled foot notwithstanding. He still had three eyes, one in front and two in back. Still had four thick arms whose boulder-sized fists he slammed down upon the ground along with the spiked club he wielded in rapid succession.
For a creature of his heft and size, Kai moved lightning fast, jerking his body to and fro, just enough to avoid the hits. Meanwhile, he lunged with his thorned tail, stabbing like a scorpion, swinging it like a ball and chain at the giant’s ankles. He’d extended his tough, hard-shelled wings as well, using them to deflect hits from the giant’s club like shields.
He smashed the longest spike of his tail into bone and sinew, making the jötunn howl. Then, he elongated his neck as a massive glow moved from his belly up his chest and into his gullet—
As he unleashed a continuous torrent of orange-red flames at the wound he created.
The giant staggered off balance but didn’t fall. He swung the club with two arms and brought it down with a resounding crash that made the very ground jump and crack.
Kai didn’t have time to move away from this strike, so he unfurled his metallic wings and used them to shield his body.
He looked impenetrable to Eir. But even so, the force of the club pushed him into the ground, the earth cratering beneath him as he took the hit, a web of cracks radiating from the epicenter beneath his body.
He didn’t make a sound, but Eir could swear she heard the crack.
The Frost Giant had broken through his outer armor, or at least weakened it. Kai couldn’t take another direct hit like this.
Eir stood finally on top of the cliff, shoulder-height with the jötunn as he reared back for another attack, all four arms spinning to gain momentum.
She took a spear in each hand and leapt into a running start. Her shoulders screamed with protest but she ignored the pain.
The cliff wasn’t close enough for her aim to be true. And since she wasn’t going to wait for her target to come to her, she was going to go to him. And if she didn’t have anything to break her fall as she leapt off the cliff, so be it. She only prayed that her spears would hit their mark.
One after the other, she let her weapons fly, practically wrenching her own arms from their sockets with the force of her throw.
Theyzingedthrough the air unerringly, striking dead center into two of the eyes on the back of the jötunn’s head.
Reflexively, the monster arched his back, his arms folding behind to cover his rear eyes, jolting them away mid-strike, giving Kai time to move out of range.
And Eir fell like a dead weight to the hard ground below—
Until a strong arm wrapped around her waist and forcibly broke her momentum, swinging her onto the back of a flying horse.
“Mist!”
The Valkyrie turned in profile and bared her teeth in a tight grin.
“You couldn’t wait to start without us, eh?” her sister shouted over the whistling wind.
Eir shrugged behind her, holding onto her seat with only the clasp of her thighs around the horse’s flanks.
