Chapter 2: Ice

The ship was headed to Indol for refuge. In the past, Indol had been known to take in refugees of the Aegis War and help with their relocation – at least that was, what they had heard. And there were not really many other places to turn.

Natalya hated Indol from the moment she first stepped foot on it. The clinical brightness, the cold ethereal buildings reaching for the skies as if they too wanted to escape the stuffy people roaming their halls. All that made her want to run and never come anywhere near here ever again, but there wasn't really anywhere else to go. There was no one left, just her. Even Mikhail was gone now. It was Indol or the depths of the Cloud Sea, and Natalya didn't quite like the idea of dying just yet. She'd made it this far. No one else had been this lucky. She owed it to them to keep going. Natalya promised herself that was going to live, no matter what. She may hate this place, but there wasn't really any reason to be afraid of Indol. After all, what could they possibly do to her that hadn't already been done to her? She'd lost her home, her family, and even her country had sunk beneath the Cloud Sea, never to be seen again, and now, even little Misha was gone. What else did she have to lose? What more did she have left that Indol could take from her?

She'd had no idea, back then, when she'd first come here. She'd thought she'd lost everything, that there was nothing she possibly had left to give. But the bastards at Indol had found a way to take even more. It took more than a couple monks to hold her down while she struggled.

"No! You can't do this!", she screamed, but the Indoline monk just smiled down at her with his leery smile, eyes hidden behind his strange glasses.

"Oh, but we can.", he sneered, before one of the guards knocked her unconscious.

When Natalya came to, she was cold and in pain. She would have thought she'd be used to the cold by now, but this was different. It wasn't the cold of an icy wind on her face. It felt more like she had gotten stuck in the middle of a frozen lake. The cold bit at every fibre of her being, but when Natalya opened her eyes, the room she was in was bright and dry and there was sunlight shining through the window. She could feel the warmth tickling her face, but it did not reach the cold biting her bones. She looked down at herself to see a bright blue perfectly round crystal stuck in her chest. So that was where the pain and cold were coming from! Natalya tried pulling at the gem, but it wouldn't move. It was embedded to deeply within her chest. Why was it so cold? What did they do to her? Slowly, the memories started trickling in, the Judician experiments at the refugee camp, the Praetorium, the Blade cores. Natalya shuddered at the crystal in her chest. A core crystal. She'd thought Indol couldn't take anymore from her, she had never thought they would be able to take her humanity.

"You are awake.", a chilling slimy voice sounded from behind her.

Natalya twisted around to see the Indoline monk stare at her through his creepy bronze glasses. It had been him. He had done this to her. And to that Blade that was now stuck inside her. Cold icy hatred rose in her chest. How could they?

Quite some time had passed, since the Praetorium had turned Natalya into a Blade Eater. She had started to get used to it, the pain was not as strong anymore, but the Ice-Blade's cold remained. Natalya would still wake up shivering every morning and no amount of clothes seemed to drive out the chill completely, though it wasn't like Indol cared enough to give her any additional clothing to what she'd been wearing when they forced the core crystal into her chest anyway, so there really was no way to tell.

The testing on her continued. They had tried to make her fight for them in the beginning, but Natalya had refused. Found herself "incapable" of summoning her Blade's weapon. So she was declared a failed experiment and locked away in a cell until such time as the Praetor decided she would be of use to him. But Natalya knew, sooner or later, she would be disposed of. Along with all the other refugees that shared her fate.

Natalya wasn't entirely sure what had happened to the consciousness of the Blade whose crystal they had used, or their body. She hoped the process had not completely erased them, but even if it hadn't, what was left surely wasn't a pleasant existence. But why would Indol care about something like that. They had never seen Blades as more than tools. They would never care about causing them pain or harm. Natalya on the other hand did care. And she vowed that she would make them pay. Natalya did not know how yet, but she would find a way! She had to.

Somehow she'd made it outside the walls of the Praetorium, but the guards were already looking for her and there was nowhere to run. She should have planned her escape more carefully. If she could not get off the Titan quickly, they would find her, and there was no way they would let her escape them a second time. She pulled the cloak tighter around her chest and made sure to not walk to hastily, to not seem in a hurry. Someone behind her yelled. Natalya turned and saw guards spilling into the square. No! She panicked and quickly ducked into the shadows of a side street – and collided headfirst with a person.

"Nat?"

She looked up and recognised Liam, her friend from the Mor Ardain mercenary group.

"What are you doing here?", his eyes dropped to the glowing crystal in her chest. "What the hell happened to you?"

"I'll explain later, can you get me out of here?"

"Sure.", Liam took off his coat. "Here, put this on, cover up that core crystal, before anybody asks any questions."

He led her out of the city. When they were off the Titan, Natalya told him her story.

"So you didn't find him after all?"

Natalya shook her head.

"Do you think he could still be out there somewhere?"

"He's ten, how could he have possibly survived all that?"

"You're barely thirteen, and you're still here."

"I had a lot training, and I got lucky."

"So what do you want to do now? We can't go back to the guild. After you left, Quinn got killed out on a mission. There was a lot of disagreement, about who would come after him, but in the end, Darragh came out on top. And well, just as we always expected, he turned out to be a nightmare."

"Whatever it is, I need to lie low, until I figure out a way to make Indol pay for what they did. Until then, it would be best, if they didn't find me."

"I have some friends in Gormott, we could probably lay low there for a while."

Things went moderately well for a while. Things started getting difficult, when Natalya's aging began to slow down and then stopped completely when her body reached her twenties.

"We could try to pass you off as my blade.", Liam suggested.

"No. People will expect me to fight with Blade weapons, and I am never ever going to touch those!"

"Why not?"

"Drivers are bad news. They destroyed my village; they killed my parents. Just think of what Darragh is like. All Drivers ever do is use their Blades for their own gain, with no regard for them or others. Those bastards at Indol were just the same. And the Blade they put inside me has never gotten any say in the matter. I'm not going to use them like everyone else has. I refuse to be anything like Indol!"

"Okay, okay, Nat, I get it. We'll be fine if we just keep moving, but I'm starting to get too old to be your older brother. I guess I'll be your father in the next town we go to."

"Thank you. You know you don't have to bother though, why do you keep going through so much trouble for me?"

Liam shrugged. "I don't have anyone left either and besides, don't you remember what I told you when you came to us all those years ago? Us child soldiers have to stick together."