[h1][center][color=6ecff6]Svanhild[/color][/center][/h1]
When Svanhild called for order, for information, it was the black-clad witch who answered first. [color=6ecff6][i]Perhaps not so deranged as she seems, that one.[/i][/color] A shame that she couldn't have brought better news: her first few words confirmed all of the frost giant's direst fears. [color=6ecff6][i]Damn it all! Not ten minutes in and we're already discovered—did that abomination drop us here on purpose, knowing this would happen?[/i][/color]

It didn't matter. She had to keep her head in the moment, and navigate through this as she always did. [color=6ecff6][i]The forest would offer us cover and slow their pursuit, but there's no guarantee they wouldn't run us down before we reached the treeline. What's more, if word of our presence gets back to Sulfrey, we'll be hunted all the way to the capital...[/i][/color]

[color=6ecff6]"...We stand our ground,"[/color] the giantess finally declared. It helped that the pyromancer had raised up some form of cover, enough to guard against archers and buy the group a little time. [color=6ecff6]"Ogre, you're with me. We'll break their advance, trap them together—the rest of you can flank them then, and unleash Hell upon them all. Do not let [i]any of them[/i] escape."[/color] Routing the enemy would not be enough: they had to end this immediately, and with overwhelming force. If anyone on her side showed mercy, if any of them even [i]hesitated[/i] long enough to let an enemy slip through their fingers, it could end up spelling doom for them all.

[color=6ecff6][i]With this lot, though? That may be the one thing I'll never have to worry about.[/i][/color]

No time for further thought. A rallying cry tore through the air, accompanied by a flash of light that forced Svanhild to shield her face with one hand. Even as she squinted against the light, however, her other arm moved with unerring precision, turning her sword-point earthward her lips muttered words in a long-forgotten language.

Blue ice erupted outward from either side of her blade, and within heartbeats crystallized into the form of a massive tower shield. Taller than Svanhild herself, wide enough for three grown humans to hide behind side-by-side, and with long spikes on its lower edge that the frost giant now drove into the earth with all her formidable strength.

[color=6ecff6]"Steady—!"[/color]

And then the enemy was upon them. A roiling mass of flesh and steel and noise and death, led by a mountainous mass of teeth and scales that failed to swerve at the last moment as its rider took a dagger to the eye, that failed to stop itself before it crashed head-on into Svanhild's frozen barricade and sent cracks spiderwebbing across the shield, as the giantess roared her lungs out and dug powerful toes deep into the soil and [i]held[/i], held her ground for all that she was worth, held just long and hard enough to bring the wyvern to a full halt and leave it momentarily stunned while the horses behind it stumbled or reared away from a massive and unexpected obstacle, and she wanted to scream out [color=6ecff6][i]NOW[/i][/color], to tell all those mad bastards she'd been stuck with that [i]this was their chance[/i], before the damn beast recovered and tore into them all. But her breath was all spent, her efforts wholly focused on checking the monster's advance, and in that moment she could only pray to all her ancestors that they would somehow manage not to fuck this up.