Ice & Swords & Dragons, Oh My!
Storm Tide Chapter 26
26
The Battle Plain
“Ah!” Isdra hit the ground hard after falling into the blackness of wherever she’d been transported. The sudden change of environment felt hellishly reminiscent of her banishment. Several other yells and curses close by let her know she wasn’t alone this time around.
“Isdra!”
Karr’s voice cut through the freezing cold that blasted her from every direction. His shadow appeared above her. He crouched down at her feet as her eyes adjusted to the dark. No light shone from anywhere around. Gusting winds buffeted the new space, adding their chaos to the sounds of other bodies hitting the snow packed earth. Isdra let out a pained lungful of air.
“Are you well?” Karr leaned toward her. She could see his golden brows crinkling with concern under a wash of gray moonlight. Snow frosted his beard and skin.
She nodded, blinking through a squall of flying snow. His hands wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her off the ground. They were in the middle of nowhere. High, snow-covered hills rose all around. Overhead, the sky undulated, flashing blue, green, and purple in the solstice dance of the aurora borealis. A brilliant spectacle, yet beneath it all the air crackled with menace. Something bad was about to happen.
“Where in the hell?!” The words blasted through the night. One of Gunter’s “seers”—Anthony—appeared some distance away. “Trent!” He called. “You there, man?”
“Over here,” the other seer appeared out of the shadows in the opposite direction from his friend. Isdra’s eyes snapped between the two of them, noticing right away that Fritz’s book was no longer in Trent’s hands.
“The book! Where is it?” She yelled over the wind’s howling. As her eyes adjusted fully to the dark, their surroundings came into full view. Massive dips and rises in the terrain made every move they made treacherous. Frozen crags and waterfalls cut into the landscape. Crystal ice curled in thick, rolling layers amid blue, gray, and black swells of earth. Somewhere nearby, sounds from the ocean made its forbidding presence known. By day, the sights here would be stunning, majestic, just like the rest of this fascinating isle. At night, in sub-degree temperatures, though, it was a death trap. Where in the hell were they? To quote Anthony. Furthermore, how had they gotten here?
“I have the book.”
Gunter’s low voice cut through the storm. He stepped up behind them, the leather tome in his hand.
Isdra tensed, every muscle in her body set to lunge for it, but Karr beat her to it. In a single step, he met Gunter face to face, teeth bared in a snarl. The sight he made sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the freezing weather. He looked every inch the fearsome warrior of legend.
“What did you do to us?” Karr growled.
Gunter didn’t flinch.
“Shit. It’s way too cold out for this crap. Tell me why we came here again, Trent?” Anthony muttered, brushing snow off his silver coat.
“Och, ye might’ve warned me, Gunter.” Flannigan walked out of the shadows next. “Given me a chance to grab me jacket, at the very least.”
Gunter chuckled, a rumbling sound the frozen ground seemed to emulate.
“We both know you don’t need it.”
Flannigan scowled at him, his beard already collecting snow. He gave an annoyed grunt, then a flash of fiery light surrounded his torso for an instant. It happened so quick, Isdra would have missed it if she had blinked. After that, the Irishman wore a dark winter coat and hat. Gunter smirked, shaking his head as if such things were a normal occurrence.
A sudden wave of darkness passed over them. Everyone looked up at the sky as the dragon shifters swooped through the air. Flying against the wind, they shifted into their human forms in the blink of an eye before landing on their feet in the snow. The ground rocked subtly as they settled at the edge of a frozen waterfall not fifty feet away.
As soon as the shifters touched down, Isdra felt the craziest sensation come over her. A ripple of energy chased up her spine. Her head became light to the point it made her dizzy, while her limbs went leaden. She crumpled into Karr.
“Selkie?” He caught her against him, his gruff voice barely registering. All her markings blazed on her skin. She blinked, her Selkie eyes taking over again, the same way they had when she’d first walked into Flannigan’s. This time, she couldn’t force them to normalize. “What is it?”
“Uh, everybody…”
Anthony’s voice rose above the wind. Everyone looked at the seer. He held both of his gloved hands to his head as though trying to ward off a headache.
“Anthony?” Trent rushed to his side. Anthony gave a slow shake of his head, his eyes closed for the longest time. Then, suddenly, he looked up at Trent.
“Remember the dream I told you about the other night? The one with the dark shadow that took over everything and had all the weird stuff at the end we couldn’t make any sense of?”
Trent stared back at his friend. “I remember.”
Anthony held up a shaky hand, pointing past all of them. “It wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t a shadow.”
Everyone stared at the seer. Everyone except the shifters… and Isdra. Her selkie eyes pierced through the darkness beyond the falls.
“Uhh… everybody?” Isdra parroted Anthony. She stood there slack jawed, staring into the distance. Beyond the drop off of the frozen waterfall, a winding black shadow rose from out of nowhere. Within the darkness, two green crescent moons glowed in sinister symmetry, uncommon to any geological wonder.
Everyone froze. They all watched in horror as the inky cloud grew solid, taking on a shape that harmless air had no business taking. Again, she mimicked Anthony and pointed.
“Run!!” she screamed.
The crescent moons flashed, widening into a pair of gigantic eyes. Isdra’s feet started moving backward before her brain ordered them to. The vision at the edge of the cliff grew and grew. Black scales materialized on the specter. In length and girth, it expanded, huge reptilian muscles pushing forth under silvery black and blue skin. Sheets of snow-filled wind gusted across the plain as, before their eyes, a monster filled the sky. The green, purple, and blue flashes of the northern lights echoed each frantic beat of Isdra’s heart as she ran backwards.. Her back slammed into something hard. In an instant, Karr’s arms wrapped around her like ropes.
“Get behind me!” He shouted.
She didn’t hesitate. Not even for the tiny voice in her subconscious yammering that she shouldn’t rely on him for her safety. Every muscle in Karr’s body braced, his eyes staring at the monster he’d met in battle once before, the very same monster that had cost him so much.
Right at that moment, Draknar, for it could be no other creature, shot up into the sky, a blazing black streak against the light show above the cliffs. Isdra’s stomach dropped. Everyone else must have had the same experience, because they all ran for the icy hillside.
“Our arriving here brought the beast, but where is the sword?” Gunter spoke close behind them. Isdra glanced over her shoulder to find him staring at the creature looming in the air.
“I got your sword.”
A man’s voice, in an oddly joking tone considering the situation, cut through the chaos. Everyone whipped around to see three figures standing on the hill opposite them. From out of nowhere, the man… creature… whatever he was, in the long, red and black coat, had materialized. Alongside him, with their crazy, fire-filled eyes, stood his male and female companions. Isdra felt Karr’s growl before she heard it. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a wolf-like snarl before he stomped forward at them.
“Give it to me!”
The man smirked. His figure shimmered in the blowing snow, his face shifting between orange-red scales and tanned skin before settling on his human form. Giving his head a shake, he shifted, his hand slipping toward the front of his coat. Before he had a chance to reach inside it, something flashed underneath the dark red and black. It flew out of his coat toward Karr.
“The sword!” Isdra couldn’t believe her eyes. The weapon of legend sliced end-over-end, its gray hilt sliding easily into Karr’s outstretched hand. He gripped it easily, the metal melding into his palm beneath the green stone on its pommel.
“HA! Hahaha, at last!!”
The Viking’s roar of triumph ripped through the storm. He howled up at the northern sky, haloed in the glow of that elusive piece of honed crystal. He looked like a god, like Thor with Mjölnir or Heimdall with Höfuð. The blade truly belonged to one man and one man only.
Not one second after that triumphant moment, a lash of fire lit the ice where they stood. Everyone scrambled back.
“Draknar,” Karr growled, holding his ground.
Isdra swore he sounded pleased. She didn’t have the same bravery in her bones. On instinct, she pulled at his shoulder, urging him back. He shook her off and charged forward. Another line of fire flew from the beast’s mouth, hitting the ground where he’d just stood. Draknar loomed high in the air, gnashing at the wind, whipping its massive tail. In the next horrifying instant, it snapped its long body up in a lightning arc, only to dive back down. Shrieking with ancient fury, it set to feast on the blood of its enemy.
“What is this?!” Isdra heard Gunter yell. He stood the furthest ahead of any of them besides Karr. His words caused Isdra to blink at the scene in her periphery. For the first time, she realized that the fire-eyed couple and their sword stealing friend had somehow flanked her. After that, everything happened in a furious fog.
Gunter’s dragon shifters took to the air, changing forms in the blink of an eye. He twisted, watching as they sped through the sky overhead. A look of surprise, then fury filled his face when they fell into formation with Draknar, and flew straight toward Karr!
Excerpt from Storm Tide, Tides of Atlantis Book 4. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved
For more Karr & Isdra and the rest of the gang, you can read Storm Tide in its entirety here.