The Citadel courtyard seethed like a living nightmare. Rows upon rows of Draugr soldiers stood in perfect ranks, their crimson eyes glowing like malignant stars. Hulking constructs loomed at the rear, their armored plating clanking as they shifted in readiness. Above, skiffs hovered in slow formation, engines humming low, their searchlights sweeping across the courtyard.
Elin's breath clouded the frigid air. Her rifle was steady, but her hands trembled beneath the weight of what they faced. There were too many. Too many for even her precision to cut through. Too many for even Brynhild's stubborn fury. She felt the inevitability pressing down, cold as the snow underfoot.
But Brynhild wasn't made for despair.
Calmly, almost lazily, she dug into her tool bag and pulled out a small vial. The liquid inside shimmered unnaturally, shifting between molten orange and sickly green, like liquid fire trapped in glass. Elin's eyes widened.
"Brynhild," she hissed, "what the hell is that?"
Brynhild only grinned, her teeth white in the glow of Draugr searchlights. "Insurance."
She didn't hesitate. The cork popped with a snap, and she plunged the needle into her own neck.
The reaction was instant.
Her veins lit beneath her skin, glowing faintly as though magma coursed through her blood. Muscles bulged and tightened with unnatural vigor, her posture snapping straighter, heavier, more dangerous. Her gauntlet hummed to life, runes across its surface syncing to her new pulse rhythm. The air around her seemed to warp, vibrating faintly with the resonance of her surging strength.
Elin stared, horrified and awed all at once.
Brynhild rolled her neck, flexed her fingers inside the massive gauntlet, then smirked. "I was brought to Group 13 to break things."
The Draugr army began to advance, step by step, their crimson eyes filling the dark like an encroaching tide.
And Brynhild welcomed them.
The first wave of Draugr surged forward, metal claws scraping the frozen stones.
Brynhild roared and charged.
Her first punch met the chest of a Draugr drone and detonated with the force of a sledgehammer. Metal folded in on itself, sparks fountaining as the construct was launched backward into its comrades. She swung again, the gauntlet blazing like a comet, and three more collapsed in ruin.
Every strike was an explosion. The ground cracked beneath her feet. Shards of stone and splinters of metal scattered with each blow, turning the courtyard into a storm of debris.
Elin didn't waste a second. She dropped to one knee, rifle braced, scope flashing.
Crack. The round tore through the optic of a Draugr commander, dropping it before it could broadcast orders.
Crack. Another shot ripped through the power core of a drone mid-leap, sending it spiraling into the dirt.
Crack. A skittering construct at Brynhild's flank exploded in sparks before it could land a blow.
Brynhild was a whirlwind, a one-woman battering ram. She grabbed a drone by its throat, crushed it with a single flex of her gauntlet, then hurled the broken body into a squad rushing Elin.
"Keep up, sniper!" she bellowed, swinging her gauntlet in a brutal arc that tore through five Draugr at once.
"I am!" Elin snapped back, her rifle never pausing. Precision fire cut down targets that tried to flank Brynhild, every bullet a thread sewn into the chaos, keeping the storm from collapsing in on itself.
Together they moved like chaos embodied — brute force and surgical accuracy, destruction and precision in perfect, improbable tandem.
Brynhild smashed a hulking sentinel construct into the courtyard wall, the gauntlet's shockwave shattering its armor. Elin immediately put a round through its exposed core, finishing the job in a bloom of fire.
The courtyard became a blur: Brynhild roaring and tearing through the Draugr like a goddess of war, Elin weaving behind her, calm and lethal, every shot placed with purpose.
But the Draugr didn't fear. They didn't hesitate. For every one destroyed, more marched forward, their crimson eyes unblinking, their numbers endless.
And still, Brynhild laughed.
For every Draugr Brynhild smashed into twisted fragments, two more emerged from the shadows of the Citadel gates. They came like ants, endless, mechanical, their synchronized march shaking the frozen courtyard. Crimson eyes multiplied in the dark until the glow resembled a hellish constellation.
Brynhild roared and swung wide, her gauntlet tearing a path clean through half a dozen drones. Metal shrieked, sparks burst, fragments scattered like dry leaves. She whirled and brought her fist down on the head of a sentinel, splitting its chassis open with a crunch. Another lunged from behind, and she slammed an elbow backward, shattering its frame before it could clamp its claws around her neck.
For a heartbeat, it felt like she could fight forever.
Then the gates thundered.
The sound was not like the thin screech of drones but the rumble of something heavier. Hulking silhouettes began to emerge: the Draugr siege models. Towering over the rank-and-file, their massive frames bristled with weaponry — plasma lances, mounted cannons, rotary claws spinning like drills. The ground trembled under their march, snow scattering from the force of their steps.
Elin's breath caught. She fired again, and another drone fell, but her sharp eyes tracked the incoming juggernauts. She saw the endless tide forming, the inexhaustible wave of machines that no two rebels — no matter how fierce — could break.
"We can't win this!" she shouted, voice carrying over the metallic thunder. "They'll bury us under numbers!"
Brynhild froze for half a second, her gauntlet raised. Her grin — that wild, reckless grin that had carried them this far — faltered. Just slightly. Enough to betray the truth pressing into her bones. She could fight until her blood boiled and her muscles snapped, but the tide wouldn't stop. Not tonight.
For once, Brynhild said nothing.
Elin's eyes darted, desperate, scanning the courtyard for anything — any weakness in the Citadel's iron embrace. Then she saw it: to their right, part of the Citadel wall rose higher than the rest, its surface cracked and scorched. A watchtower, half-collapsed from some forgotten battle. The stone base still stood, though fractured, and the Draugr had reinforced other sectors instead, leaving this one neglected. Its jagged climbable structure reached just high enough to spill them beyond the wall.
She pointed. "That tower — if we reach it, we can get over the wall!"
Brynhild followed her gaze, and her smirk returned, savage as fire. "Good eye, princess. Let's make them regret leaving it standing."
Without hesitation, she pivoted and launched herself at the enemy ranks between them and the tower. Her gauntlet flared with surging light as she punched a path open, every strike detonating with shockwaves that sent drones tumbling like broken dolls.
"Stay behind me!" she barked.
But Elin wasn't content to follow blindly. Running close at her heels, she fired with deadly precision, her shots cutting down anything that tried to flank Brynhild. A drone leapt for Brynhild's unguarded side — Elin's bullet split its head in mid-air. Another raised a plasma rifle toward her back — Elin's sidearm barked, and it collapsed in sparks.
The two of them surged forward together: Brynhild the battering ram, Elin the scalpel cutting the threads around her.
Turrets swiveled overhead, beams of energy scorching the stones around them. Brynhild smashed her gauntlet into a fallen crate and flung it upward, shielding them as they ran beneath the barrage. Elin ducked and rolled, firing upward to blast out one turret's sensor eye. Sparks showered as the weapon spun aimlessly, firing wild into the night.
"Almost there!" Elin cried, heart hammering.
Brynhild slammed her fist into the ground, sending a shockwave that flung three drones back in pieces. Then she kicked through another squad, their armored frames buckling under her enhanced strength.
The tower loomed closer now, its cracked base jutting like broken teeth from the wall. But the Draugr weren't giving ground. Reinforcements surged in from the flanks, crimson eyes glimmering in endless rows.
"Keep moving!" Elin yelled, covering Brynhild with another perfect shot.
Together, battered but unbroken, they forced their way to the shadow of the tower — the last chance for escape.
The half-collapsed watchtower loomed above them, cracked stone promising salvation — if they could reach its heights before the Draugr tide consumed them.
But the machines swarmed tighter, their shrieks echoing through the frozen night.
Brynhild cracked her knuckles, gauntlet still glowing, grin stretching wide again. "Hope you're not afraid of heights."
Elin reloaded, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the climb. "Hope you're not afraid of dying."
The Draugr tide closed in.
And together, they made their stand at the tower's base.