Chapter 38 Aura #2
Crystal scoffs, urging Aura away from the main gates and toward the walls facing the North Sea channel. “He was not present during the city’s construction.”
Aura chuckles to herself, recalling the plan to infiltrate the town. Crystal nodded patiently as Calder meticulously laid out their steps.
“Why did you not correct him?” the Princess asks as they slip under one of the sentry towers, which extends out enough for them to slide flat against the wall.
“He didn’t need to know our specifics. Besides, I think any change to his manicured plan would have shattered his frigid heart.
” Crystal adds dismissively, her back pressed against the stone as she strikes the individual blocks with her fist. “The Jarl who built Sannhet was paranoid of his shadow and had hidden entries built into the exterior wall.”
At the next stone block that she strikes, the sound of grinding fills the air, raising Aura’s heart rate at the thought of being caught. A section of the wall opens inward, revealing a door built into it.
“You are full of surprises.” Aura slips into a chilly, pitch-black chamber.
When Crystal joins her, the thick door shuts behind them, bathing the women in momentary darkness before a faint orange glow emanates from the wyvern’s palm, as if flames fit her hand like a glove.
Aura gazes at her own palm and can still only create a small, bouncing fireball with a curly cue. The seidr looks much more adorable than it has any right to.
Crystal glances over, and her brow raises. “Is the flame sentient?” The fire squeaks in response. “Yes, it is. Interesting.”
Aura follows as they weave through the corridor concealed in the walls until stopping beside the outline of a door. Light illuminates the grate at their feet.
Crystal holds a finger to her lips, then whispers. “Use the hunter abilities, guide your senses. Merge your seidr with your instincts. Listen for movement outside the wall. Can you feel the presence of another person?”
Aura closes her eyes, feeling her senses heighten.
The power is unbelievable!
The seidr flowing through her blood whispers to her, granting her a sense of control over her environment.
This must be what a predator feels when hunting its prey.
She hears a rat scurry further down the hidden passageway. Somewhere nearby, a person inhales, their nose sniffling slightly due to congestion.
“Someone is out there,” Aura whispers.
“Open your eyes, guide your seidr to find their heat source. How many bodies can you sense?”
Aura squints as the seidr seems to cut off all her other functions while she focuses on the golden ambiance coloring around two figures. Adult men, by the looks of them. She relays the situation to Crystal.
“Perfection, darling. The ability will eventually become second nature for you.” Crystal nods in approval.
Aura places one hand on the outline of the door leading into the corridor and the other on the handle of her father’s axe, but Crystal shakes her head.
“Channel your mental hooking seidr. Push them into insanity. There are more ways to deal with enemies than to smash them with an axe.”
Aura hesitates, recalling the power wielded against her father during his imprisonment by Thrain and the restless nights it continues to cause him. She pushes it from her mind, creaking open the door and catching sight of one of the soldiers.
The mental hooking ability allows one to conjure a specific scene in someone’s mind. Crystal has advised using simple pain or pleasure points when wielding this seidr instead of the complex scenarios her father suffered.
Aura focuses on fire, burning, and death.
The soldier shrieks, collapsing to his knees. His hands clench in his hair as he rocks back and forth. His violent reaction causes the other soldier to drop his shield and spear to help his companion.
Using the distraction, Aura slits the throat of the unaffected guard with her father’s axe before embedding the blade into the one trembling from her vision.
Crystal steps through the hidden door into the castle hallway. “Messier than I prefer, but you did well.” She checks their pulses to confirm they are dead.
“There is one rule to follow using elemental seidr: Never berserk.” She holds her finger up to quiet Aura’s question. “Your father handles it well. A man that angry can harness the seidr flawlessly. You, darling, are channeling every seidr available on the continent. Berserking will blind you.”
They weave through the corridors of what Aura learns to be the central keep. Crystal guides her around each corner, utilizing their combined hunter abilities, a power she discovered is gifted from Treland and governed by Freyr.
By the time they emerge into the Great Hall, blood coats Aura’s new Astrian armor as if she has bathed in it.
“In our next encounter,” Crystal flicks a hunk of Sumpland Hold soldier off her cuirass, “try not withdrawing the axe.”
Aura sheaths her father’s blade sheepishly. “Old habits die hard.”
They both glance around the cathedral-ceilinged room, where vividly embroidered drapes hang from the wooden-beamed rafters and enormous tapestries cover much of the stone walls. A coat of arms featuring an eagle surrounded by heraldic roses hangs above the massive stone hearth.
Once they are in the center of the room, the doors along each wall burst open as a battalion of troops wearing the Sumpland Hold emblem charge inside with their weapons drawn.
Instinctively, the witches land back to back as they follow the movements of the soldiers surrounding them.
In all of his pudgy glory, Jarl Odo saunters inside as if he owns the place. His sausage fingers rub together as he examines them like his next meal.
“What do you know? The Wicked Wyvern herself deems to grace us peasants with her presence. And, of course, I see Princess Aura taking time away from servicing the Iss Drengr.”
Crystal’s shoulders shudder with amusement at her back. “Jarl Odo, do you really believe taking on two witches will end well for you?”
“Witches… plural?” His beady gaze holds a new hunger as he assesses Aura. “I’m not sure I’d want to give that seidr up to Lavinia.”
Aura chuckles at his ignorance, her hands igniting the flames of her fire elemental.
His smile widens at her display of power.
“You are a feisty little thing. Now, I see why the Jarl of Kaldrgataness is reluctant to share you.” In mock defeat, he throws up his hands.
“I have no choice, ladies. You surrender peacefully, or I shall be forced to bring you to our Queen in chains.” He laughs while gesturing around the room. “You are outnumbered, after all.”
Crystal grips Aura’s wrist, “Recall my one rule of battling with elementals. No berserking. You cannot allow anger to be your sole emotion.”
Dammit.
“Fine.” Aura’s mind swirls with the different abilities at her command. The sheer depths of her seidr pulse with something stronger than adrenaline. It is a faint humming, as if every witch before her stands at her back, offering silent support.
This feeling is intoxicating.
Crystal doesn’t wait and encircles herself and Aura with a ring of ice. The soldiers near her seidr slip and fall on the frost.
Aura tosses two fireballs into the crowd, enjoying how the flames have a nasty habit of spreading swiftly among the exposed fabric of their tunics.
“It is two women! Charge them!” Odo commands the warriors as he slips away from the fighting. His forces exchange uneasy glances as Aura and Crystal leap in opposite directions across the ice.
The witches could easily end this with a swipe of their hands, but playing with these fishermen-turned-soldiers was too excellent an opportunity to test Aura’s powers.
The Princess uses her premonition abilities to sense the movements of the men nearest her should she attack with the wind.
Sensing a potential backfire, she pulls the fire from the hearth, enveloping the three closest. Their shrieks of agony pierce the room before their charred bodies crumble to the floor.
Those nearby edge away from the scene with shaky hands, clutching their swords and spears.
Aura smirks and experiments with the necromantic elemental that served her several greats-grandmother, the Necromancer Queen of Timber, quite well.
The three bodies stumble to life, forcing several of the soldiers to abandon their duty and flee from the Great Hall.
Laughter flows from her lips as the power rushes through her blood, propelling her onward. Fire and frost combine, leaving some of her attackers flame-roasted while others would rival Calder’s icy terror.
As they decimate Odo’s men, Aura approaches a massive brute three times her size. Her reanimated corpses descend upon him, holding him still as she kicks his chest, sending him crashing to the floor. Standing over top, she feels the call of the berserker at her fingertips.
Crystal said no. She warns her seidr, which pushes against her heart, urging her to embrace the fury.
A glance at the room reveals only a few soldiers left alive.
It cannot hurt. She smirks to herself.
The crimson gaze overtakes her, and she throws herself at the man like a feral animal, scratching at his face and ripping out his throat with her teeth.
The wrath that courses through her veins is like none other.
Whirling around, she unleashes a roaring blast of fire that consumes the remaining bodies and incinerates the heraldry on the walls.
“Blasted, Aura!” Crystal curses, forced to throw up a frost shield until the flames disperse. “What did I say?!” She scolds with her hands on her hips.
Aura releases the berserker, feeling her seidr level out more swiftly than ever. She has never had this much control over that ability. Even her father had little discipline over it.
“We killed them all, didn’t we?” She gives the Wicked Wyvern a toothy grin.
“Ah, yes, we did.” Crystal strides over to a blackened Odo, plastered against the stone wall. Aura’s last blast of flames must have torched him.
“Well,” Crystal sighs, kicking him in the shin and crumbling his charred leg to the floor, “you get to explain to your man what you did.”
As if summoned by their realization, Calder, Edmund, and Argnier rush inside, followed closely by a towering, older woman whom she assumes is Jarl Clementia.
They all freeze as they stroll inside. A widening smirk develops on Edmund's face, while Clementia’s jaw drops.
“What in Briny’s balls is that rancid stench?” Argnier waves his hand through the air as if he can fan it away.
Crystal nudges Aura forward. “The first witch on the continent since the end of the Halvgud Rebellion.”
Calder smiles widely, clutching each side of her face. “You make me so proud, beautiful girl!”
Aura glances at Odo, feeling her cheeks burn at his statement. “Yeah…thanks, Calder…”
“Where’s that bloated seal, Odo?” Argnier sniffs one of the fallen soldiers whom Crystal had strangled with a decorative plant.
“Yes, Aura, where is Odo?” Crystal crosses her arms.
Aura’s head droops slightly with shame as everyone follows the Wicked Wyvern’s gaze to what remains of the Sumpland Hold Jarl.
“Ah, that would be the aroma that makes me want to hurl the contents of my stomach.” Argnier curls his lip.
Edmund’s nose is close to the burnt skin, as if inspecting an ugly painting. “Didn’t we order this one raw?”
Calder wipes his hand across his face. “You had two rules, Aura. Only two!”
Aura kicks the stone floor with her boot. “You know how war gets. You get wrapped up in the moment and…” She forces herself to look at Odo, his face holding a ghastly look of surprise, and she doesn’t finish her thought.
“I think he makes a splendid new addition to my Great Hall.” Clementia interrupts, her presence far more imposing than Aura imagined.
Calder’s ire quickly wipes away to a smirk. He pulls Aura to his chest and kisses her forehead.
“What rule did you learn?” Crystal nudges Aura.
Aura observes the room, feeling like she could climb a mountain or fly to the moon.
“That my seidr has good instincts.” She winks at Crystal, who scowls with a smile.