It had been some time since Frost had first come to this place Lightbringer called home.
At first it had been uncomfortable, staying the place so similar to Lightbringer with burning and metallic scent. But after the pups had been born, he'd helped her move them out to the clearing with water and the bone colored tree with leaves the color of meat. There she'd been safe with them and able to let them nurse in peace away from the human noise and interference.
Lightbringer still returned to bring her Alpha offerings of meat: some of it from the forest and some of it from the two-legged dwelling. In what seemed the blink of an eye her pups were making their first tentative noises and taking their first tentative steps into the wider world. And seeing as Lightbringer was the only interaction they had with a wider world outside their mother bringing dead prey back to them, it was perhaps understandable that they grew attached to him.
The surprise to Frost was that the pup he connected best with was the runt with the strange coloring and the inability to speak. Frost hadn't given him as much milk as the others and yet that hadn't seemed to impede him from being the first to take his steps and the first to attempt to learn how to bite on both the wood and the meat Lightbringer brought back before any of his siblings. And as he grew, his size seemed to bely his initial status as the discernable runt.
But perhaps that was also because while the pup had been teething, he'd been the only one to get so rough as to draw and taste Lightbringer's blood.
She'd been concerned on the day all her pups were walking and decided they wanted to follow Lightbringer back to the dwelling of the two-legged ones to see where it was he kept disappearing back to. But she'd had to hunt that day and knew they would be safe with Lightbringer. He was pack: and thus he would let no harm he could prevent befall them.
When they returned practically saturated with the scent of the two-legs, there was nothing much she could do save continue to teach them hunting, grooming and coordination so that when they needed to hunt and attack and hide, they would be able to do so well enough to survive without the two-legs. Her kind had lived without them for as long as any could remember. That would not change anytime soon.
Time passed and more and more her pups remained in the dwelling of the two-legs. Only two of them stayed there on a semi-permanent basis, with the others most often returning with Lightbringer to see her or occasionally sneaking out to spend days of their own with her.
The ones who stayed most frequently tended to be the playful boy, the bold girl and the runt. They more than the other three learned the most of their ways and their blood. And more often than not Lightbringer was there learning alongside them. Sometimes he would race alongside them on the ground: his gait as sure and steady as their own. Sometimes he would take to the tops of the trees: the rustling of the leaves and the creak of the branches their only indication of his location in the late gloom when the ball of light was fading into the darkness.
The only other human they saw with him was the two-legged girl whose scent contained the same tang of power that Lightbringer's did. But hers chilled Frost because it also tasted of the cold that she'd crossed the frozen barrier to escape. If it hadn't been for Lightbringer's constant presence and her distinctly living smells, Frost would've had no hesitation at trying to kill her before she tried to kill them.
Her pups had never experienced the terror of the decay and the cold that sought to consume everything. That of all her pack only she had escaped from. And if she had her way they never would.
With time she'd warmed to Coldmaker, especially since her bold girl had seemed to enjoy her company so much. But it was still a war between her instincts of fight and recognition every time she reencountered the Coldmaker all over again. That had grown harder for a time when she encountered her making two-legged claws out of solid cold. But still she managed to work around it by generally never being around the girl for too long.
She found peace in being able to hunt alongside her pack, at being able to slumber beneath the face within the tree by the water, knowing that she was at last in a place where she was safe: where it was she that was the worst thing any had to fear. And so long as they did not interfere with her hunt or her pack they had nothing to fear from her.
It hadn't been until the middle of a hunt like any other that she encountered any two-legs that were not Lighbringer or Coldmaker. And when she did, she could not say that she was impressed. Many of them did not seem so threatening. Only one of them was adorned in the metal that made up the two-leg's claws that they wielded in their clever paws. There was another two that looked like Lightbringer: one with a muted expression that made it difficult to predict his intentions and another that smelled of her first boy.
Then there was the sharp smelling one. He who smelled of stink and sweat and something else that hurt her nose and made her hackles rise in anger at its offense to her senses. Lightbringer had wisely stepped between them to try and mute the scent somewhat. Though even when most of her senses now occupied by the familiarity of pack that was Lightbringer there was something about the fat stink that made her wish to drag him into the dirt and submit. But it was not to be. She and the rest of her pack had left them be to hunt their own prey. And for a time they'd done well. The pups had managed to take down an antlered thing together, alongside smaller dashers similar to themselves but different and one or two nervous long ears that still hadn't managed to learn that speed was no match for killer instinct.
But then had come the distress. It had rent the air like one of the two-leg's metal claws and had them all, including Lightbringer, rushing back to the two-legged dwelling place. As they'd reached the group of two-legs from earlier, she'd decided to go around since she didn't trust herself not to attack the fat stink in her worry. She moved swiftly through the familiar woods to another area of the dwelling that was pure hardened grey ground. She searched for a way through the obstruction, calling her own answering distress to the still howling pup, but was not able to find a way in.
Soon the light disappeared and darkness fell. She retreated to the grove with the tree face and the water, hoping that none of her pups had been hurt. Time passed and no one came. But on the third time of darkness falling after the first call of distress, she returned from a dark hunt to discover two figures within her clearing.
Upon closer look it appeared that Lighbringer had brought a sleeping boy with him.
The boy smelled vaguely like Lighbringer but also of the woods that she'd dwelt within. Her memory briefly flashed to the two-legs who dwelt beyond the frozen barrier that also smelt of the wood and the bark. Was he like them? Was that why he felt similar yet so much weaker than Lightbringer?
Lightbringer's eyes were grey as always but they were now hurt. They appeared to have red running around them as well. His voice was scratchy as he greeted her, his customary claw by his side as it always was. The young boy did not stir, not even when Lightbringer placed him tenderly upon the ground by the water.
All was silent within the grove. But that did not prevent Frost from feeling something build in the still air. She sat down on one part of the ground on the other side of the water from Lightbringer and the slumbering boy. She wondered why none of her pups were with him. If they were safe. If they were being kept from her. She continued to watch him as he approached the watching tree as a chastised pup might their elder.
Before her watchful gaze he knelt on his two legs before it and spoke to it. She could not understand the words he spoke to it, only that he was pleading, that he was asking. He was questioning as one who might wish not to leave the pack might. He cupped his clever paws together before him into a circle shape. Flickering light and heat filled it, dancing before the gaze of the faced tree. As he slowly raised it toward the face so that they were level with each other, Frost's ears couldn't help twitching in confusion at what she heard.
It was right there at the edge of her hearing. Whispers. Voices. Her ears kept flickering in a futile effort to track them as they appeared to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. The power that had built in the still air before was concentrating now. Building between the crackling heat and the tree. Frost felt her hackles begin to raise. If those two touched in the presence of Lightbringer, who knew what might become of them.
But they did not touch.
Instead, Lightbringer kept the heat firmly confined to his own clever paws as the whispering continued unabated. Soon the many whispers became one. The single sibilant voice echoed and reverberated through her fur like the gentle brush of the wind even as she still continued to try and failed to find where it was coming from. Rather than reassure her it made her more uneasy. What was Lightbringer doing that made such strange things make themselves known in her sanctuary of the grove?
Lightbringer slowly nodded his head once before moving back over to the unconscious boy. Removing the upper cover and the leg coverings on his paws but leaving the strange leg coverings that prevented his flesh from being exposed from middle to lower feet, Frost watched with a cocked head and confused eyes as he defurred the still sleeping boy entirely, his naked body pale and oddly fragile in the dark.
Very slowly, as though afraid that to move too suddenly would prove the death of the smaller boy, Lightbringer brought his unconscious form to the edge of the water. As he placed him on the water, he then slowly slid into the water lower legs first with almost n sound, only the crashes of ripples upon the sides of the ground surrounding the water barely disturbing the strange atmosphere that had been created.
Frost now noticed that he'd brought the metal claw in with him. He drew it across the open grip of one of his clever paws, causing Frost's sensitive nose to twitch at the release of further power into the air. He spoke something more as he slowly closed the grip of his bleeding clever paw before opening it again: resting it upon the slumbering head of the boy. The temperature was increasing now, the water beginning to have faint white wisps of heat form and leave it to linger in the air.
How was the water becoming heated she wondered? The answer was obviously Lightbringer but that still didn't explain how. Though the heat had increased, she didn't sense it as truly increasing everywhere, just above the water and where Lightbringer had brought the somehow still unresponsive boy. Frost was standing now: on all four of her legs in case something happened. But she was not truly ready to run yet. Lightbringer was a strange two-legged thing it was true. But he was also her pack. And he would help her deal with any danger that came the same as he had when he'd made her better after the antlered thing had failed to kill her.
In the face of the unknown she could trust him.
As the heat built some more, he let go of the slumbering child and came toward her. His still bleeding clever paw came toward Frost beseechingly: like one of her pups who'd injured themselves and wanted her help cleaning it. She obliged him. Lowing her head to lick the blood welling from the cut upon his paw, she tasted him for the first time since they'd met before that crackling heat so many darknesses ago. In this moment she at last knew why her runt had stuck so close by him after tasting his blood. It was one of the most exquisite things she'd had upon her tongue. All the flavor of a cooked animal and with that tang of power behind it, it gave her an energy and sense of power that she'd never felt before. She lowered her head further as his own head came next to hers.
He sounded so hurt in his voice as he spoke words to her. They were simple these words.
"I'm so sorry Frost."
She only had a moment to wonder what he was talking about before his injured paw was gripping her scruff and something sharp was being driven into her throat.
Panic welled within her.
Can't breathe. She thought as her life blood gurgled past the claw in her throat.
Can't speak. She thought as she quickly weakened enough to collapse to her belly before him in the water.
Can't move. She thought as her vision flickered in and out.
There was liquid in his eyes like she and her kind had when they needed to clear obstructions in them to see. Did he need to watch clearly as his pack died by his own paw?
Her blood joined the water, heat igniting where the two liquids met and snaked their way through the entirety of the pool.
She wanted to bite him. She wanted to struggle. She wanted to call for help. She wanted to whine. She wanted so many things in those moments as her spirit was drawn not into darkness but into the light dancing across the water and into the sleeping body that it surrounded.
Then the light climbed her life giving blood and entered her fading body.
Agony ripped through every bit of her fur, every point of her claws, every piece of her. She was burning and dying and unable to let out so much as a sigh as it all happened to her so rapidly. She could feel herself becoming cold remnants of the heat, feel her body fading even as her spirit flailed and she herself asked the only thing there was to wonder in all this.
Why?
A/N: Third of three new chapters. Hope you guys will let me know what you think and a special shout-out to Will o'the Wisp (the artist formerly known as Ghost in Winterfell), Lottiedot and jman007. My thanks to all of you guys for checking up and seeing how I was doing. Even though I may not have responded as I should have I appreciated the sentiment all the same. Here's to hoping things get a bit better in the keeping up with writing department from here on in. :)