"That's pathetic." Emma said, before she could stop herself.

Everyone got quiet and still at that. The berserker did, too, though his silence was punctuated by a menacing rage which had Emma choosing her next words very carefully.

"What, you're gonna just roll over and die because you made a few mistakes?" She pressed. "Pathetic."

Maybe not that carefully. Whoops. The berserker did not attack her, at least, but he was far from happy.

"A few mistakes?" He almost-choked, rage apparently denying him the power of clear speech. "You…." He inhaled, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing. Emma could see his pupils becoming pinpricks. Adrenaline, tunnel vision. Combat sight. "You have no idea of what I speak. I have killed my own comrades."

"Big fucking deal." Emma waved a hand. "I've met your other comrades, they're all assholes. You did everyone a favour by killing them."

He actually did leap to his feet at that, like a compressed spring suddenly loosed. Emma took a moment to admire the ridiculous strength he had, to be throwing such a large frame upwards in so slight a motion, and then found herself pressed back against the far wall, ready for him to come barrelling towards her.

But he didn't, just inhaled again and kept speaking.

"I am a wild animal in the skin of a man. A danger to everything around me. You are testing me, yes? Trying to see how well I control my temper. Well stop. It was never my temper that got people killed, it was the bloodlust. The taste of battle on my tongue and the need for more. I cannot control the monstrosity inside my heart, and so I shall leave myself locked away and bound so that others may control it for me."

"That's not control." Aexilica frowned.

"Confine it then." He corrected. "If it keeps me from killing, it is as good as anything else."

"Even if it keeps you from taking back your home?" Emma pressed.

His eyes didn't waver.

"My home is the land beneath the sky, the wind and the rain. I am berserker. I have foresworn all else."

Emma felt another stab of fury.

You want to feed me that horseshit? I killed thirty people to get to you you little fuck.

"Even if it means leaving your father unavenged and letting his killer rule the place he used to control?"

Emma knew it had been the perfect thing to say, and yet the sudden stiffness of the berserker almost had her regretting it. His body was exposed from the waist up, but it was clear he'd been kept in better condition than a lot of other prisoners. All the lean musculature that served him so well in combat was quickly sharp and jagged against his skin, epidermis tightening around it like it was trying to control the violence building beneath.

It failed.

"Say that again." The berserker told her, eyes distant now, mouth slightly agape. Emma had one moment to realise just how sharp his teeth were, then she found herself doing as he said.

"Your father is dead." She told him, slowly and cautiously. "High Priest Hagor killed him, I saw it happen myself. Barely survived the fight myself. I'm…Sorry you had to find out this way."

Her pitiful attempt at adding a bit of honey along with the bitter pill didn't seem to even catch his notice. The berserker was…

Well. Berserk. Trembling, lips peeling back to reveal a row of yellowish, too-long teeth. His jaw seemed to be chewing away at the air, and Emma saw veins as thick as her fingers protruding upwards in his neck. She would've taken another step back, were she not already pressed against a wall.

"Where is he?" The berserker asked, twitching, almost spasming. It was like he was being tazered, almost. Like he was burning from within. Emma actually struggled for words.

"I…He's…We don't know exactly, in the western wing somewhere." She actually gestured, as if that would help. The berserker didn't seem to notice.

"Fuck." He breathed, then continued, more loudly, "That fucking RAT!" The berserker spun, fist coming around like scything hurricane winds and smacking into the still-ajar door which had just been holding him. Emma winced at the sight of wood denting inwards under the blow, the entire thing shivering under his strength.

Could it have even held you if you hadn't let it? She wondered. It was impossible to answer.

"I am…" The berserker trembled, "I am…going to eat his FUCKING SKULL." The corridor actually seemed to shake at the sound of his voice, the volume actually making Emma's ears ache even from metres away. She fancied that she could see the air visibly moving in response to it.

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Eat his skull. It was almost funny, such threats weren't made in any but an idle way back on earth. There wasn't anything idle about this one. The berserker believed every word he was saying, and seemed to consider them a promise.

Well, good. Hagor getting his cranium bitten open would be very convenient for Emma's ends.

***

Aexilica was far from eager to throw herself back into the fighting, but then she'd never really had the luxury of considering her own enthusiasm as a relevant factor in what she did.

It was, of course, different now. Hope compared to no hope was…Well, that was no comparison at all. Earl Ragni's son—the not-idiot one—was every bit as deadly as she and Emma had been told, and then some. He hurled himself into the fighting with such ferocity and power that he actually reminded her more of the damned draugr than his own father had.

Apparently, the enemy were getting a similar impression. Because he scythed through half as many fighting men as he did trembling cowards. There was no mercy of course, he was a Sculd through and through. They didn't do mercy.

If nothing else, Aexilica was glad to see that from the other side now.

Hagor's forces had found the tables turned in more way than one, too. They'd been expanding throughout the various defences as a great number of tendrils, isolating and crushing many at once. This meant their numbers were almost as difused as Aexilica's own side, and with Ragni's son—she had to remind herself, his name was Herag—back and in action, there'd been a great new wave of support for them.

Better still, there was a great deal more unity.

Aexilica parried a berserker's swing and ceded ground, drawing him out into an over-extension which she punished by cutting all the big tendons of his wrist with a single stroke. His weapon fell from limp fingers, and his throat followed the arm's example before he could make another move.

She shoved the corpse before he could figure out what he was, and sent him slamming into another man—a karl—to send them both down to the ground. More came, always more. But now it wasn't just Aexilica bottlenecking them.

In fact, it wasn't even Aexilica doing the bulk of it.

Ahead, Herag tore through several men at a time like he was some great predatory thing chewing apart children. Blood flew through the air in rapid spurts, hitting the walls and splashing across them, hitting faces and blinding eyes. The violence of it was such that every hammer-blow seemed an explosion. And there were a lot being thrown.

Emma wasn't actually helping out, she was fighting an entirely separate battle elsewhere to keep Hagor from focusing purely on the disaster now befalling his forces here. That was fine with Aexilica, because they were already staring down at least two hundred men with maybe a fifth as many to aid them.

Another hammer-swing from Herag reduced that to about one hundred and ninety-nine.

They pushed on, actually taking ground now rather than losing it, and Aexilica saw some among the enemy were beginning to fall back. Not just to retreat or regroup, they were cutting and running. Panicked eyes, screams of terror. Many were coated in the blood of allies who'd died next to them, others nursing injuries which she suspected would never fully heal. A pang of sympathy hit her.

She crushed it. They'd not shown her any mercy when the rolls were reversed, and Aexilica wouldn't give up her chance to escape the position she'd been in before. It was her or them. That choice was no choice.

More fighting and killing, momentum building with every enemy cut down. Aexilica had almost come to expect that her own arm would do most of the work in every fight. She was responsible for less than one third of the enemy's casualties now. Between Herag and the other two-score warriors at her back they must have dispatched dozens before the opposing line finally broke and let them on.

It almost felt novel to see a corridor full of the enemy's backs, rather than snarling faces and raised weapons. Aexilica took a moment to just appreciate the sight of them fleeing, the sight of her victory.

Herag broke the moment, as he broke so many other things.

"IS THAT IT!?" The berserker cried, voice like rusted steel sliding through bloody meat. "GET BACK HERE YOU FUCKING COWARDS, I'LL EAT YOUR HEARTS!" He sprinted after them. Sprinted, with the vigour of a man who had spent the past minutes jogging rather than killing. Aexilica was stunned, and that surprise turned to outright disbelief when she realised the rest of their side was following.

Some great collective madness had washed over them all at once, and it didn't look like a single one of them had any issue with that at all. Aexilica took a second to consider her options. Just the one, there weren't that many to be considered.

She couldn't stop them, and if they were running into trouble Aexilica's presence would let as many of the idiots as possible run back out of it. This wasn't like before, there was a struggle to be had. So she had no choice but to struggle.

In that regard, Aexilica wasn't disappointed. If there was one thing her enemy had in abundance, it was things to make her struggle. They didn't just flee to nowhere, following the beaten foe led Herag's group to a new enemy position. This time they were dug in, and Aexilica was attacking. Everything advantageous about her old fights became inverted. Still, they surged on.

And those new disadvantages didn't last long, not once Herag threw himself into the enemy's barricades and just smashed them in half. It was like his body had forgotten how much it weighed, like the world thought his two hundred pound frame was ten, even fifty, times its actual mass. Like watching a boulder roll downhill and crash against the ranks of men before him.

The boulder turned into a whirlwind, into a ripping sandstorm, into a volley of thunderous lightning, into a flash-flood. Turned into death itself. More death swept after it, little drops of the stuff. Aexilica was nothing more than a wider puddle, but deep enough for the enemy to drown in. They seemed almost eager to do so, throwing themselves at her en masse. They must have known, by now, what she was capable of—Aexilica had heard enough stories of the enemy's heroes that she was certain any of the most capable fighters on her own side would be well reported among the other.

So these were brave men, then, for facing her the way they did. Probably not used to fighting her, probably not quite realising what sort of mess they were in, but brave all the same. Aexilica killed one brave man after another, and found herself occupied more by the counting and checking of numbers than the deeds she carried out.

At the end of the day, they were like monsters where it counted. In her way, coming for her life, standing between her and tomorrow. So she killed them all like monsters.

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