“And when I heard there was a fight to be had,” another voice said, “I followed.”

From between two other shelves, Helga emerged, with Erdrodr on her heels. The older ice giant was just as Alice had last seen her, but Erdrodr had donned battle gear similar to her mother’s, and carried a two-handed ax.

“We were at the fire-sprite village,” Erdrodr said, “talking about trade. Then Isaac turned up.”

Isaac squeezed through last of all, the edges of his coat scorched from his passage through the heat of the portal chamber. He sighed with relief at the sight of Alice. “I wasn’t sure we’d made it in time.”

“Just in time.” Alice turned back to face the Ouroborean, who had paused to assess these new arrivals. “You told them the plan?”

“Keep it off of you,” Flicker said.

“It doesn’t look so dangerous,” Helga said, unshipping first one massive ax, then another. She gave them a twirl between her fingers.

“It doesn’t look like much of anything,” Erdrodr said. “Not even worth sketching.”

“You think this gives you a chance?” The Ouroborean’s laugh was like a screech of radio noise. It approached, and Alice and her friends sprang forward to meet it.

Helga took the lead, shouting a war cry, her enormous strides outdistancing the others. She skidded to a halt just in front of the Ouroborean, planting her heel and letting her momentum pull her into a spin, putting all the force behind the swing of one of her massive axes. It caught the Ouroborean just below the shoulder, slicing entirely through its arm and biting deep into its torso. The severed limb fell away, evaporating like black mist before it hit the ground.

The Ouroborean brought its other arm around, a roundhouse blow aimed at Helga, only to find Erdrodr intercepting it with an overhead swing of her own ax. This one cut the creature’s other arm off at the elbow, leaving it to flail hopelessly with the stump. Flicker and Actinia circled behind her, spears at the ready, while Michael and Jen went around in the other direction.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Sister Alice?” Dex said.

“No,” Alice said, and darted forward, dodging Helga’s oversized feet.

Dex stayed by her side as she closed in, their heads only reaching the Ouroborean’s waist. She put her arms around one of its legs, holding her own wrist, squeezing with all of Spike’s strength to keep herself in place. Then she closed her eyes, and looked at it the way she’d looked at her own spells while Writing.

Down, down, down—