Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, all openings in the face bleeding as his face became pale and drawn, his cheekbones hollowed out, his eyes bulging and bloodshot—fear flashed like lightning in my body. In my brain Seppo was safe, he was kind, he couldn’t harm me. Now with his bloody, emaciated body and the fire in his eyes, he was like a demon straight out of Hel.

The bird lay its head down and used its wings to cover its face from the infernal noise, and Seppo began his charge. Quickly at first, but the toll of his power was taking from him too, and as he rose in pitch, the skin of his arms began to split open in vertical cuts. Blood ran down and darkened his clothing before he was halfway there. The tiny wounds we all received—scratches and stings and regular wear and tear—opened all over his body like blood eyes, weeping with rage.

Lydian and I exchanged a look, and we nodded toward each other as he bolted forward to grab Seppo and throw him out of the way, breaking his magic whistle. The cuts on his arms didn’t close up, though the blood on Seppo’s face continued to trickle to a stop while the freshly opened wounds slowly returned to their normal forms. He turned his rage onto his savior.

“Why did you do that?” he shouted. “I was about to kill it!”

“You were about to kill yourself,” Lydian said.

As if to prove his point, Seppo suddenly gasped and fell to his knees, coughing up blood as he did so. Lydian grabbed the back of his hood and hauled him over to where Rosamund lay, and with a growl on his lips, he told him to stay right there. The growl probably wasn’t needed as Seppo could barely keep his eyes open and blood still fell from the orifices in his face.

Which left the fight to me and Lydian. For once, fighting together to help each other instead of kill each other. Somewhere, the gods were laughing at the irony of me defending my most-hated enemy.

I managed to get an arrow in one of Fjalar’s eyes. Remembering what my father taught me. Breathe, nock your arrow, breathe, draw back your bowstring, breathe, catch sight of your target, then release as you expel the air inside of you. The arrow soared true and landed the hit, but either it wasn’t sharp enough or wasn’t deep enough because the beast still lived, and the arrow only made a superficial wound.

Again and again I shot until I realized I was running low on arrows in my own quiver and soon would have to switch to Soren’s. Some of the arrows stuck out of Fjalar in an awkward angle, but mostly they only mildly bothered him, as he shook off most of the projectiles with little to no care.