Tryg froze. His hands hung at his sides. His mouth babbled silent words his throat tried but could not express. His curiosity, his courage to know, dwindled. Withered like leaves in autumn.
Tryg clenched his fists, trying to rekindle the nearly extinguished bonfire that, until then, had burned in his chest and driven him forward. He took a step ahead and, clinging to the tiny hope still alive inside him, asked in a weak voice, almost inaudible:
"What... What do you mean?"
The ravens cawed.
"No more shall we say/
Our part is done/
If more than this you seek/
Then swift must be your run."
"No..." Another step, raising his weakened hand as if he wanted to reach something beyond his grasp. "What do you mean she got worse? What happened?"
"Young man, step back," Sinmara said.
But Tryg did not pay attention. He could not. Anger. Panic. His mind was far too busy torturing itself.
Another step. "Answer me..."
"Stop pestering us, boy/
Go and play your part/
Back to the maze you go—"
"Damn it, I need to know!" he shouted through his teeth, his chest finally burning again. "Tell me what happened to her!"
Another step. Just one more.
However, when he tried to continue, a powerful gust of mist and snow struck him square in the chest, driving the air from his lungs and pushing him back, though not far. He fell on his back beside Sinmara, who jumped aside so he would not hit her.
She exhaled. "I warned you."
Tryg sat up on the pale grass, breathing long gasps of air, bringing his senses under control. Then he lifted his eyes toward the Raven Tree and frowned. Now, there was a stranger there, slowly emerging from behind the trunk like an apparition.
A frail woman with dry red hair and gray, wrinkled skin. She was dressed in a worn bluish robe and wearing a bone mask similar to an elk skull, from which branching antlers sprouted. Hunched and fragile as she was, she leaned on a gnarled staff. The tips of the wood, like her fingers and her rags, were covered in ice.
A Revenant, he concluded, seeing how her body flickered constantly and randomly. She was different from the one he had faced, but she was definitely one.
Grinding his teeth, Tryg stood... and drew his dagger.
"Young man, control yourself," Sinmara said, her tone urgent. "You cannot defeat..."
He was no longer listening. He had already charged, his swift steps scattering white flakes wherever he passed. The small blade he held before him was not much, not even close to as strong as a good sword, much less a weapon like the legendary Mjölnir. But it was sharp enough to tear open a throat.
The Revenant screamed in her ancient language, incomprehensible and harsh, and drove the tip of her staff into the ground. Then she dragged it forward, sending a trail of ice spikes in his direction. Tryg, having already seen the shadows of the attack, jumped over it, rolled, and kept running.
He was boiling with rage, trembling with fear. Even so, his impulsiveness was not that of an idiot; he knew he had no means of defeating the witch... and he did not want to.
When he was close to reaching the Revenant, she cried out and expelled jets of freezing wind from her mouth in his direction. He saw his shadow becoming still, freezing, so he leapt aside and persisted with his momentum, reaching his true objective: the Raven Tree. A few birds from the flock had vanished, but most were still on the branches, laughing and watching the fight. Tryg grabbed the trunk and began to climb.
"You cannot reach us/
Fight and scream all you wish..."
He ignored the laughter and insults and merely climbed as quickly as he could.
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The head of his shadow was struck. Shrill cries rang out from below. Instinctively, he reacted, releasing the trunk and jumping away without even seeing what had attacked him. The Revenant...? No, it had not been her. However, as soon as he landed, she attacked, this time spitting a rain of freezing spikes.
Tryg dropped flat to the ground ahead of time, watching the projectiles pass above him, where his torso had been. Then he straightened and analyzed the battlefield. There were five more enemies now — scrawny beings with smooth faces, without memorable features, and brown, sap-slick bodies, as if they were made of vines. Their fingers were sharp and pointed, and their eyes and chests glowed with wild blue flames.
Apparently, that Revenant could summon allies as well. At least those monsters were simpler to deal with than Nightmares, since they did not attack from a distance. Tryg had already fought beings like them in the labyrinth, though those had been green, not blue — mad and insidious monsters that constantly tried to lurk in the shadows and grab him from behind.
That was not a problem. On the contrary, the new apparitions were a good thing. For if they were even slightly similar to the ones he had killed before, the monsters had magic inside them. And if they had magic...
Tryg forced his legs to their limit toward the five monsters. The one in front leapt, trying to grab him with its claws. Watching the shadows, Tryg drove the dagger into the enemy's smooth face, which, despite having no mouth, screamed sharply in pain, black blood running down its wooden forehead.
The other four jumped right after, all at the same time. He stepped back a few paces and, as soon as the four landed, returned closer to them. The Revenant swung her staff again, sending another trail of spikes toward him. The attack, however, struck some of the witch's allies, piercing their bodies from below. Tryg, on the other hand, dodged with a simple sideways run.
For a moment, he worried about the monsters' survival. Fortunately, two of them had survived and were now stuck on the ice stakes. Tryg needed only one. He advanced, reached both, and, from behind, decapitated one of them. The other wildly brandished its claws, trying to grab him, to tear his neck open. Tryg avoided the madness by merely tilting his head back and then seized one of the monster's arms and cut it off, pulling the dagger upward.
Another agonized scream. Without hesitation, he cut off the other arm as well, freeing himself from the danger of the monster's claws. The creature howled again, but its voice was growing weaker, life draining from it as its viscous vital fluid poured out and stained the white carpet below. Tryg grabbed its neck and, dragging its body, ran toward the Revenant.
The witch spat another rain of ice stalactites. Tryg wanted to use the torso he was holding as a shield, but he could not risk killing it. So he decided to take another risk.
Time slowed down. He analyzed the shadows of each of the many projectiles... and either skirted around them or deflected them with his dagger.
Tryg was able to avoid most of them. Two, however, struck him. One grazed his leg. The other pierced deep into the shoulder of the arm holding the dagger. He grunted, dropping the weapon from the violent impact. Even so, he did not stop.
He drove his hands into the cracks of the monster's torso and tore it in half, dark, viscous blood smearing his limbs. The blue flame, still alive, blazed in the air like a bonfire suddenly fed with oil.
Tryg threw the flaming pieces at the Revenant. He missed the first by a wide margin, but the second struck her directly. Her image, once trembling and unreal, became solid, and the witch fell onto her back in the snow.
Tryg mounted her, raised his closed fist, and delivered a vigorous punch to her mask. A roar thundered with the impact, waves of snow spreading around them. Her bone mask shattered as she groaned more unintelligible, painful words.
He raised his fist again. But he hesitated, and his arm froze in the air. Her face, twisted and aged, was not that of a monster... It was that of an ordinary old woman. Her eyes had a bizarre blue glow. But her appearance was still ordinary.
Tryg's conscience spoke louder. His mother's voice, present since the day he was born. Perhaps the witch was merely a person doing her job. Perhaps, just like the ravens, she had been enslaved and forced to fulfill a task she did not want.
He lowered his eyelids, clenching his jaw. He did not have the courage. How could he end a person's life? It was true that he had already killed undead such as the Einherjar warriors. But a human like him... A living person, who perhaps feared and desired as much as he did.
His hand fell. Tryg stood and stepped away, his expression heavy, but still determined. He turned toward the Raven Tree...
Then a roar shook the heavens. He arched his eyebrows, lifted his gaze... and, immediately after, ran for his life. In the next instant, a gigantic being landed between him and the witch, scattering snow and ice in every direction. Tryg was knocked down by the quake and hurled away by the shockwave, rolling across the grass. When he stopped, he rose to his feet once more, grunting. When the cold, misty dust settled, he finally saw what had struck the ground. Or rather, what had landed. He shuddered.
An enormous flying, reptilian creature, at least five times larger than Tryg. Its skin was made of pale, hard scales, as if they had been carved from the purest and strongest silver. Its skull was elongated and had two spiked, pointed horns, as well as a maw lined with rows of razor teeth, which definitely could crush even steel. Its wings were imposing and long enough to embrace an entire hill.
Tryg might not know the names of many monsters he had faced in the labyrinth. But he knew the name of that creature. One of the beasts most often depicted in the tales and ballads he had heard throughout his short life.
...A dragon...