Something felt wrong before they reached the ravine.

Ragnar could not name it exactly. The terrain looked the same as his scouts had described, the approach was clear, and the men around him were moving without issue. But a feeling had been sitting at the back of his neck for the last quarter mile and he had been a soldier long enough to know better than to ignore it. He slowed his pace slightly and scanned the ridgelines above.

He saw nothing.

He had just opened his mouth to signal a halt when the arrows came down.

Ragnar was already jumping into action before the full scale of the ambush even registered in his mind.

The rebels had chosen their battlefield well.

His horse turned sharply beneath him as rebels surged into the ravine from both ends. Arrows continued raining from the ridgelines overhead and Ragnar used his shadows to create a sort of protective barrier for himself and his soldiers, shielding them from the onslaught.

"Push forward." Ragnar ordered, still holding up the barrier.

His riders obeyed immediately.

The formation tightened around him as they drove toward.

He held the barrier above them as they moved, feeding more shadow into it, keeping it dense and wide enough to cover the full group. Arrows continued to fall. But holding a barrier that large and that solid while moving cost him and he knew he could not sustain it indefinitely.

Another volley of arrows came down but the barrier held. Ragnar winced from the strain. Each arrow that hit the shield was like an assault on his senses.

They couldn’t remain like this forever. The infantry was closing in on them and something had to be done about them before they attacked. This had to stop.

More shadows spilled from him, surging outward in every direction. The nearest rebels faltered, caught in the mass of roiling darkness.

The shadows hit them a heartbeat later, brutally slaughtering every rebel in its path. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

This broke their formation and Ragnar drove his horse straight into the opening.

His shadows were like sharp cutlasses, cleaving through rebel after rebel.

The backswing opened another man’s throat. One tried to grab the reins of his horse. Shadows seized the rebel’s arm and twisted. The crack of bone was audible even through the fighting.

More arrows continued falling but the barrier kept deflecting it.

For a brief moment, Ragnar looked toward the ridgeline. The infantry were a threat but the archers above were the biggest problem he and his soldiers had right them. His main priority was to get himself and his soldiers out of this situation safely and he couldn’t do that while arrows were still raining down on them.

He attacked the archers without a second thought. Darkness erupted outward from him in a wide wave and raced up both walls of the ravine.

Archers who had been calmly firing moments earlier suddenly found shadows wrapping around their ankles. Several were dragged screaming from the edge.

Others retreated to avoid getting caught.

That was enough to buy his soldiers a moment of reprieve. But it didn’t last long.

The infantry hit his riders again.

The battle dissolved into close fighting. Horses crashed into men. Men stabbed upward at riders.

Ragnar killed continuously. His sword thrust through one man’s chest then slashed across another’s face.

A shadow spike drove through a third before he reached one of Ragnar’s wounded soldiers. Everywhere he looked his men were fighting well.

Everywhere he looked men were dying.

The barrier he had over his soldiers wavered. An arrow punched through Ragnar’s left arm and a few seconds later, he was hit again and pain tore through his side.

Ragnar ignored it, focusing on the chaos around him.

Remin, Gerard’s second in command, led the charge from the northern end, urging his men forward. From the southern end another group pushed in just as quickly. Ragnar let the barrier thin slightly and redirected his shadows outward, driving them forward in two hard streams at the advancing groups. The shadows hit the front lines with brutal force, scattering men sideways and throwing others off their feet.

It slowed both sides but it did not stop them.

There were too many. Remin kept pushing closer, driving his men through the chaos, stepping over the ones who fell. The southern column reorganized swiftly. Ragnar’s soldiers engaged them head on and fought well, but they were still outnumbered. He had a few men already. The archers above had shifted position and were finding angles around his barrier, picking at the edges of his formation.

Then a sudden torrent of fire came from above, a massive wave of it that rolled over the people above in one continuous rush. The archers did not have time to react. The ones the fire reached directly were gone in seconds. The ones that managed to evade the flames scattered and ran along the path trying to get to safety. But shadows came for them before they got far, thin fast tendrils that moved with purpose, finding each man and ripping them apart like they were made of paper. It was methodical and was over very quickly.

Then Morana came down into the ravine.

She dropped from above with her wings pulled in and hit the floor hard, landing between Ragnar’s soldiers and Remin’s advancing group. Her wings came out to full span the moment she landed. Her eyes were pure obsidian.

Then she opened her hands and the fire rushed forward in a wide torrent, ramming into the front of Remin’s advancing group and moving fast through the packed rebel formation behind it. The screaming started immediately. In a frenzy, the men at the back of the column frantically tried to turn but pushed out the way they came in and found the ones behind them doing the same.

Soon, the whole northern end of the ravine turned to chaos. The group on the other end faltered at the sight of it and Ragnar drove his shadows into them hard while they were hesitating, and his soldiers pushed forward into the gap it created.