Run Away! Run Away!

That the garden faded to be replaced by a despairing landscape of ruined earth and gloom - well that came as no surprise to Caligari. She’d warned the others that Hela was full of deception. The Conies of Caerbannog made quick work of Hela’s discarded juvenile body as Caligari knew they would. It would not stop the queen, but one less body for her to inhabit was a small victory. And it was gratifying to see. Now that said body was reduced to little more than bone, those hares had reconvened to sweep the immediate ring around Garm and the Witch, feasting upon the rotting bodies clawing through the ground. And it was a good thing as Cali was unaccustomed to fighting alongside a Winter wolf. At every turn she and Garm seemed to bump into one another, hindering each others moves. In a moment of relative lull, Cali took the wolf’s giant head in her hands and looked him in the eyes.

“You are a great warrior, trained from welp to fight alongside your matronal master. I have no such discipline so I take this as my fault. But you must try harder to learn my moves and avoid unnecessary contact during battle. Our survival depends on it.” As Cali spoke a fleshy hand poked through the fetid earth and clutched at her ankle. She snapped her fingers at one of the Hares who hopped over and devoured the hand, throwing slivers of bone this way and that like a cuniculus carpenter at work. It was joined by three more hares and they began digging up the rest of the struggling draugr to render it dead, again. Vicious little beasties.

Garm growled and looked up to the sky. Cali’s eyes followed and grew wide. “Take cover! We cannot contend with the Valkyries and two dragons out in the open. Or at all.” Then Luna’s magic brought the throne room into view even if only for a moment. Was that a trick of the eye?

“Do it again, girl!” Cali shouted as she frantically waved her arms at the others to beckon them in close. “I cannot summon Hela to me; she is far too powerful, all the more because we are in her sovereign realm. But I may be able to call us to her now that Luna has established the location of the throne room.” Cali looked up at the sky again and cursed.

Cali grabbed the scruff of Garm’s neck and swung herself up onto his back - perhaps not the smoothest maneuver, but she made it with minimal scrambling at the end. Garm spun around to snap at the dead and Cali began constructing spheres of protection in eerie shades of green.

“If we’re doing this, we do it now. Everyone stay close or … bad things. Make the connection again, Luna!”