Next chapter is on the 6th of June.
"What do you mean?" Kurogane asks, peering over the girl's shoulder as she turns back to address the spot she had earlier.
"How do we free the children?" She asks and then falls quiet, attentive to something that only she seems to hear.
"The rest of the kids, they're in here," Kurogane says, "they're trying to dig out the princess' feather." He steps back and then tries punching the wall. There's a thunk as something hits the floor on the other side of the wall, heavy.
The man shakes his fist, rubbing it gingerly with his other hand.
"Seems like that won't work this time." He says as Fai steps closer to look into the hole, Sakura standing aside, still wrapt in something invisible for another moment before she nods.
"Thank you, Emeraude-hime." The princess says, bowing. Kurogane's gaze drifts slightly to the left as she does, tracking something and nodding in what looks to be satisfaction.
"What did she say?" The man asks as Fai calls me over to look in the whole, stepping a good distance away himself and smiling thinly.
I walk over and stretch up just enough to line up the two ends of the hole.
On the other side is a beautiful pillar of ice stretching from the ceiling, easily twice Fai's height, to the floor, anchored between them by a spread of ice which seems to have flowed from the feather itself to cover both the ceiling and the ground. The middle reflects some strange light which seems to have no source and is thin where in the middle, growing thinner as the children chp away at the pillar with blunt rocks, looking like they've been taken from the wall in their effort to climb into the space. To reach so high they've built rough steps of ice, cut from the pillar itself, some of it is marred with traces of blood and dirt though the children look thankfully unharmed if as unwell as the ones in the room we're currently in. They are focused on their task and after a brief glance from one of them they pay me no mind.
"You mean- you couldn't see her?" Sakura asks.
"Not well and no sound," Kurogane says, "what did she say?"
I try to work a stone free from the wall. The mortar crumbles away easily and the rock shifts, grating a little as I try to pull it out.
"She says that it might not take much- it might be enough to get them somewhere warm and safe, get them back to their families. They'll follow my feather too- that's what they've been made to look for." The princess summarises as I finally free the block and it drops to the floor with a crash, my fingers slipping on it.
"So if we can just get into here we can get the children out?" I ask, clearing my throat as I start working at the next stone, an equally solid feeling gathering in my chest as I think about the children being apart from their families for so long. I try to push it aside, focusing on what I can do, on the give of the stone under my hands.
"Ah- yes." Sakura says.
Kurogane's hand comes from my left, between Fai and I move a little as he starts to help too, pulling rocks from the wall with far more ease than I.
"Hmm, I think I'll leave you both to that," Fai hums, "Sakura-chan, shall we try to get some of these children out here upstairs and out of the way?" He asks. As he walks away the itching sensation eases a little and I breathe just a little easier.
The girl makes an affirmative noise.
With the two of us working at the wall it takes far less time than it probably would have with just me.
We slip into a strange rhythm with the clattering of the children as they hammer at the pillar of ice just on the other side of the wall, quiet except for the clash of stone against stone, stone against ice and the noises of exertion from all of us.
Even in this cold I work up an uncomfortable sweat which only makes me feel more clammy and cold as it seeps into my clothes and is trapped there.
Eventually we manage to make a hole big enough for me to climb through and I clamber through, pushing some stone onto the floor on the other side, the children comparatively safely clustered around the ice pillar though they look blankly to the crashing of the rocks as they hit the ice below. I start to pull at the bricks loosened by our work on the other side and little by little the hole continues to grow until, our breath fogging the air, Kurogane manages to crawl through the gap so that we can both stand looking at the towering structure in the middle of the room.
In the recesses of the room pathways lead off and upwards, behind walls of ice and piles of stone.
"I guess we just have to get that out now." Kurogane says, voice gruff as he shivers.
I can only presume he's talking about the feather.
"It seems so." I say, squatting to pick through the rocks we've disturbed and looking for a particularly sharp or pointed few. I pass one to Kurogane who grunts in appreciation. He mounts only a few of the ice steps, having a height advantage over the children as he joins them in their efforts.
For a moment they all stop and stare, nothing in their eyes.
The stone bites deep into the ice and it cracks, shards splintering and spraying slightly.
The children watch, the small focus they do have stolen for a moment before they go back to their work.
I help too, glad for my boots on the ice stairs as I climb them, standing a few steps lower than the children as I raise my stone and dig the shaper end into the ice as hard as I can.
The ice chips, a thin layer slipping from the rest to the floor where it shatters.
With a grunt I drive the rock into the pillar again.
Eventually we manage to thin the ice enough that the children start to chip away at the bottom and top of the section holding the feather. It takes little time for us to work it free and Kurogane makes the final blow.
The ice shatters around it, and it falls, hitting the floor with a thud, shedding ice and cracking open slightly.
Kurogane is quick to scoop it up and he sighs tiredly but gladly.
"Up?" He asks, breathing heavily.
"Yeah." I nod in agreement, dropping the stone I'd been holding and rubbing my hands together.
I take the torch, placed near the doorway of the other room in an old bracket, and hold it for Kurogane.
He emerges from the other side, children swarming out behind him, eyes all fixated on the sliver of ice he holds to his chest, feather caught in it still.
"Let's just get this over with." He says and I nod again, very much wanting that too, to be out of such a cold world and to get these children back to their families.
With relief I lead the way upwards, into the dark again, steps appearing below my feet as I move, forcing myself to go as fast as possible.
I feel energy flood through me as the top of the tunnel seems to lighten and laugh raggedly, not turning my eyes from it as I pick up speed.
"Not much further now." I call back to Kurogane, breath misting in the light of the torch as I do.
Fai greets us at the top, holding a torch and smiling. My relief at being above the ground is enough that it overwhelms the discomfort for being so close.
He shuffles all of us into the room with the horses, thankfully still here, a fire, now strong and the other children. He barricades the doorway again as Kurogane and I migrate to the fire.
The children's eyes are like magnets on the feather and they cluster around the two of us as we shed layers so they can dry a little, covered in melted ice, and we can warm up again.
"Do you want this?" Kurogane asks Sakura, a short distance away. He holds up her feather in offering.
The princess stares at it a moment, hands against her chest. She seems almost afraid in some strange way.
"I-" she begins, eyes unwavering, "not yet- I don't want it before I know the children are safe with their parents so I can't take it yet. I can't fall asleep yet." The girl says, shaking her head. She looks to Fai.
"Could you keep hold of it?" She asks, hands still close to her, like she could push the feather away.
The mage nods, grinning just the same as he always does.
"Of course, Sakura-chan." He says.
The blonde worms his way through the crowd of children and takes the ice in his hand, palm refracted throughout it. The feather almost blends in with his pale skin. He doesn't flinch holding it and tucks it into a pocket on the inside of his fur-lined coat.
Kurogane instantly turns his hands to the fire, fingers red as he warms them.
We are all quiet, the children unnaturally so, some of them shivering violently as they cluster around the fire, tear-tracks on their faces and some still crying as Sakura tries to soothe them, keeping a wide berth of Fai and her feather, and others following Fai, staring at him blankly.
"Twenty-one," Fai announces at some point. A horse snorts and Kurogane huffs in question.
"That was how many children were missing, right?" he says, "because that's how many are here now." He continues.
Silence falls again and I try to remember.
"I think so." I say, feeling more confident as I do, I venture a smile, "that's good then."
Sakura nods in agreement, still keeping her distance from him.
"I think it was too." She says, letting a particularly small child settle into her lap.
"One of us should be on the other side of the lake to let the kid know where we are." Kurogane says eventually, pulling on the outer layers he'd set hanging over the fire.
"I can go." Fai says, smiling, standing from one of the chairs they've dragged in. As he does the children who had been sitting around his feet stare upwards and he chuckles, pulling the mostly melted block of ice with the feather just beginning to protrude at the top from his pocket. He holds it to Kurogane again, above the childrens' heads.
"You'll have to take this back for a while though." He says.
The warrior accepts the ice, wrapping his cloak around it so that it doesn't come into contact with his skin.
"Careful," He says, "we don't know how close the doctor and the kid are."
The mage grins.
"How fatherly of Kuro-puu, looking out for us," he teases, quickly deconstructing part of the barricade to slip through before the other man can throw something at him, "I'll see you soon." He says cheerily, footsteps echoing and the sound getting quieter and quieter.
A child sniffs, holding onto the leg of one of the horses who is watching them closely, very, very still.
What feels like hours later in the silence of our exhaustion and uncertainty there come footsteps, running.
We all look to the barricade.
"Shall I go?" I murmur, looking at Kurogane. He nods once, finger to his lips.
I nod and slip through the same gap that Fai had, quickly going through the hall which leads closest to the steps going down. I follow into the next, retracing the steps we'd taken with the children, and then left three times until I could turn around the corner. I hear laughter, footsteps so much louder, ragged breath, a gunshot.
I press my face close to the edge, glance around it.
Kyle is running straight this way, straight for the stairs.
I do nothing.
I watch him pass.
The man disappears into the darkness, not thinking to look.
I put my arm out for Syaoran, Mokona, the people following him, there are only three.
They stop, hesitant.
"Wait- we already found the children." I say, trying to keep my voice down, enough that Kyle won't hear it hopefully.
Syaoran starts.
"Already?" He says, eyebrows raised as Mokona hops into my arms.
"Yes," I say, looking to the villagers, guns not pointing at me but still held firmly and feeling fear catch my words in my throat. My brain replays the gunshot in my head.
"We got here earlier and came inside to get warm because we found a way across the water- the children are safe- we're trying to warm them up. I can take you to them." I say, words coming out in a rush as I hold up my hands, Mokona scrambling onto my shoulder, next to my neck, and hiding in my hair.
"Take us to them now." Says one of the men, pushing to the front, past Syaoran. His gun is pointed at the ground and I just hope it stays that way.
"Yes, please follow." Comes out my mouth unbidden and I hold my breath, gesturing for them to follow as I take the path back to the room I'd just been in.
When I reach the room the furniture has been pulled away and there is a small crowd of people scooping up children who are still fixated on the feather in Kurogane's hands. Fai is there and he grins.
"Ah- I'm glad that you didn't have to chase him all the way down. It's a very long set of stairs." He says.
I'm so relieved for more people to be here that I feel like I could kiss him despite the discomfort his proximity would give.
The men who had chased after Kyle pass me, no longer caring, and one of them clutches tightly to a child who blinks in surprise and then starts to cry loudly.
The castle shakes beneath us and silence reigns for a second as everyone looks down worriedly.
"We should leave quickly." Kurogane says, looking in the direction of the stairs. A few people near him nod and I let myself be swept up as people load children onto horses and hold them to themselves and then start walking to the entrance.
The sky is just beginning to lighten as we reach the other side of the river.
The castle is trembling more now, visible in the dying moonlight and the first rays of sun as birds and bats scatter from it, shrieking into the early morning.
We watch as the building comes tumbling down, Kyle nowhere to be seen. Something in the water clicks and it rushes faster somehow, sweeping away the groaning rocks which fall into it as the castle shakes itself apart, rending until it is nothing but rubble, snow and a thin line of smoke.
The smoke stops.
Children cry. One person is sent to ride back to the village and tell people what happened and it quickly becomes everybody, children crowded onto horses and carried by the few parents and aunts and uncles who had come tonight on Grosum's request to find the children and the one who had taken them away for good. Some of the older ones walk, spell seemingly broken by the collapse they witnessed, task ended, blank eyed and withdrawn.
The one who rides ahead takes his son, glassy eyed and holding close to him, dirty and cold and hungry but finally, finally closer to home. His father promises to come back with as many horses as he can get.
We watch him disappear as we all take a slower speed.
The sun is rising, steady and clean and warm.
More than anything I look forwards to getting inside and getting warm again.
As we all go, villagers catching companionably, trying to involve our tired party in their celebration, overjoyed by finding their children who have been missing for so long, there is mention of a meal, a proper celebration, a welcoming home, some kind of reward, apologies for their suspicion.
"Where will you go next?" Is asked of me and I shrug, shivering a little despite the gentle warmth of the sun through the barren trees.
"Somewhere far away I'm sure. Hopefully somewhere warmer." I say.
It amuses the man I'm talking to. I don't remember his name or whatever else we've said.