Page 82 of Alien Viking's Plunder

But she couldn’t stop now. She clutched her spear as she jumped over a wide trench with fire burning in it.

The chamber was round, and the fire trench ran around the circumference of it. In the middle was a pedestal holding up a big patch of pure darkness. Aretha, hands bound behind her back, was standing on the other side of the room.

A woman in a long robe was lying on the floor, looking dead.

Gornt was next to a heap of black spikes and stalks and teeth and claws on the floor that Josie couldn’t figure out. The silver chain was in his hand. He was holding its gemstone up to the darkness in the middle or the room, as if he was charging it.

“Stay cool, Aretha,” Josie said tightly. “I’m not here alone.” The room resonated with the sound of the battle outside the chamber.

“I thought we’d gotten rid of you,” Gornt said with his flat voice. “Didn’t I see you burn? Oh, you have new Marks, I see. I hope you enjoyed them. You won’t have them for long.”

Josie stayed tense. “Why not just give up, Gornt? Bragr will only banish you to a comfortable place.” She knew it was no use, but her sense of fairness told her to try.

The former earl cackled joylessly. “It would be a strange thing to give up this close to total victory! This place has the power I need to conquer… well,everything.” He took his hand off the strange darkness on the pedestal. “Behold! Gardr is the most special planet in the universe. And yet nobody has used the power properly! Straum is more than a sun. It’s a source of magic! But we only use its magic for going on pointless raids and to travel around the lands in comfort. That’s all. Such ridiculous weakness of thought, of ambition! But when I was only earl of Hjalmarheim, I discovered that it was possible to raise the dead.”

He bent down and touched the gemstone on his chain to the strange heap on the floor. Immediately a jolt went through it, and it gave off a piercing groan.

“Likethat,” Gornt said, straightening up. “Only the power of the oracle crystal is strong enough to raisethatparticular corpse. The Ice Caves are useful, of course. But their power is different, less clean. Down here, the crystal filters and purifies the magic that Straum sends us. It makes it stronger and cleaner. It’s the kind of magic that’s unique. It’s the kind of power that will let me conquer it all. OnlyIunderstand how powerful Straum really is. With its power behind me, I will rule the galaxy!”

Josie didn’t move. “I’m sure this is all very interesting. But Bragr is here now, and there’s no way he’ll let you get away with this.”

The alien monster seemed to expand and change its position, creaking and rumbling like some kind of machine. It was all spikes and claws and tentacles, and it was impossible to see what kind of shape it really had.

“Getting away? Oh, that will be no problem forme,” Gornt said. “When I’m finished here, not before. If that traitor you mention is here now, so much the better. He is already dead to me. I might as well make him dead for everyone else, too. And then,” he held the chain up, showing the black gemstone in the middle, “why not make his remains my servant?”

The alien monster was growing fast until it filled a quarter of the room. It was clearly related to the three monsters that Bragr and Craxon were fighting, but it was much bigger and looked infinitely more dangerous.

“At least let Aretha go,” Josie said, backing away from the creature as her skin crept. “She’s done you no harm.”

Gornt glanced at his captive. “I need a female to look into the crystal for me when this small disturbance has been dealt with. Or do you volunteer? Two are better than one.”

The monster was moving, stretching its tentacles out towards Josie.

“He can control it with his mind,” Aretha said urgently. “I saw it happen with those other monsters. But first he has to learn to control it. This is your chance!”

Josie changed her grip on Tornado and swung it at a tentacle that came too close. The edge of the spear connected and sliced two inches off the tip of the tentacle.

The alien withdrew and started oozing across the floor towards the door, waving venom-dripping spikes.

“Watch out, Bragr!” Josie yelled. “There’s another one!”

25

- Bragr -

The three spiked alien skrymtir were nearly impossible to fight. Whenever Bragr or Prince Craxon would cut off a spike, the skrymt would throw itself at them with abandon, spinning around like crazy and forcing them to defend themselves instead of attacking. They were both bleeding in several places, having been pierced by the spikes and ripped by the claws. And they were exhausted from the battle, unable to strike as hard or as fast as when the fight began.

Even worse was the difficulty of destroying them — all three were still fighting hard, despite each being pierced dozens of times in all spots of their bodies.

Bragr was more worried about Josie. He could hear Gornt talk in the oracle room, and he was desperate to get in there and protect her. But the three skrymtir had pushed him and Craxon into a corner.

When the much bigger alien skrymt came out from the oracle room, he knew they would struggle to get out alive.

“That’s not looking good,” Prince Craxon said, his voice strained as he hacked at two skrymtir at the same time. “If that one is as resilient as these…”

He didn’t need to finish his sentence. If that monster was as hard to kill as the three others, then they would lose. It was that simple.

“Your Highness,” Bragr said as he thrust his blade clean through a skrymt without it having much of an effect, “this is not your fight. Get away while you can! I shall cover your retreat.”

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