Frozen Soul
"Angela, my armor's so cold I can't get the straps off. I think the snaps froze shut."
"Oh stop bawling, you lummox, we're almost to town anyway, we can find a nice fireplace for you to get your armor all toasty again."
Even with Angela's wind shield, the air in the snow fields around Elrand was bitingly cold. Duran and Riesz were dressed in the warmest clothing they could buy, and both wondered how Angela could survive the cold in her skimpy garments.
How is she not shivering? Thought Riesz as she watched Angela forge a way through the snow for them in just her little pointed toe-boots; red ribbons trailing in her wake. Even accounting for her residency here, this cold is entirely too bitter for her to be wearing such clothing. I wouldn't visit a bloody desert in that, much less the snowfields of the far north! And didn't the faerie tell us that it's been getting colder around here? She took another look at her friend of many months. There is nothing about her physically that I can see preventing the cold from affecting her.
She hurried a bit forward so that she was within earshot of the princess and asked,
"Angela, aren't you cold?"
Angela stood still for a few moments without answering; she was adjusting a few of the flows of Jinn's Mana to protect them all better from the wind. "I'm fine, Riesz, you should stick close to Duran for warmth." Riesz pulled a glove off of her hand and reached out to touch her friend's arm. She winced, Angela was freezing cold. "You're freezing!" The sorceress shrugged off Riesz's arm and began to tread through the snow again wordlessly, leaving the valkyrie to stare at her back as she herself continued through the snowfields.
"There aren't many of these left in the desert." Hawkeye said to Kevin as Carlie drank from the tiny pool of water before them greedily. "Navarre used to be a tropical rainforest, but you'd never know it." The ninja's eyes grew dark as he thought on that for a few moments, then he gently pulled Carlie away from the water. "Don't drink too much Carlie, you'll make yourself sick."
"But Carlie is thirsty!" yowled the tiny enchantress. Hawkeye was firm, however, and knelt to fill his set of water bottles from the trickle of fresh water.
"Mana made this place a desert?" Kevin asked.
"Not exactly. It's said that Dryad once had a dalliance with Salamander, and the result of their frolicking was the rainforests of Navarre. When Dryad left the fire spirit, he became sorrowful, and the forest became this." He spread his hands to encompass the whole of the arid desert. "But it's my home, and I love it."
And I'll be damned before I let Bigieu have it.
Kevin didn't say anything after that, but took his turn at the water thirstily. When water bottles were full and their thirsts sated, they headed out of the shelter of the oasis into the punishing afternoon sun of the desert.
She took his hand breathlessly and fled down the pathway from the tiny wizards who were assaulting them with great fists of hard, black ice. Like wind they ran down the hill, through snowdrifts and over them. Behind her, she was dimly aware of Riesz following in tow, but it was the struggle to make it herself that worried her. She had had no idea what the Subzeros would be like when Mana went out of control, they seemed almost mad. The wind howled, howled at her as she ran, railed at every sliver of skin left open to the cold by the thick coat she had bought in Elrand.
We just have to make it to the caves, that's all. Once we get to Undine, she'll protect us from the cold, I know she will. I've never felt cold like this before!
Tears leaked from their eyes and froze on their faces, their breath turned to frost as they exhaled. The air was so cold that it was difficult for them to take breath at all in the first place, and there seemed to be no end to the trail that they were taking to the Ice Cavern.
Duran wore a thick brown coat, lined on the inside with fleece, that he had purchased in Elrand. With the port closed because of the massive icebergs that floated in the harbor, the shopkeeper had been all too eager to sell them all suitable clothing, and at a reduced price. Angela herself wore a long, white dress with snow fox fur fringes at the neck, on the cuffs, and all about the hem of the bottom. It had surprised her to find out that the fur did an excellent job of keeping drafts from slipping down her back and up from the bottom, though it took some time to get accustomed to the weight. Over the dress she wore a snowy white mantle lined with the same fur as the dress. She had braided her long hair so that she could fit the hood over her head, and the braid dangled out through the front, swaying with every pace she ran. The valkyrie was dressed in the same man's winter garments as Duran, since she had been far too tall for any of the tiny women's clothing the shopkeeper had been carrying.
They had been traipsing around the Snowfields for hours by then, and it had grown dark before they knew it.
You'd never know it's spring in Forcena. Angela thought grimly. I know cold, and this isn't it. This is something else entirely. I think we might need a new scale to measure this.
They ran over the snow as lightly as they could, but it was deep, and getting deeper. Soon they were wading through it rather than running on it, and still the fat white flakes of frozen water fell from the dark sky. At some point along the way, Riesz took a foul step and fell into a drift of snow. Duran's lips were pressed to a thin, pale line as he helped her out of the snow, and they pressed on without rest.
There was no moon to guide their way, the storm clouds were far too thick, so Angela summoned Wisp to give them light. She felt swallowed up by the great darkness with only the tiny patch of light for refuge. It came to be midnight, and they still had not found shelter. Angela's reserves of energy were beginning to flag, and she could see that the other two were in even worse shape.
I wish the Faerie was here to tell us how close we were to Undine. Wait…
"Wisp?" Angela called out as they trudged along through the snow. Duran looked at her strangely but kept walking, his leather gloved hand tight around her own.
:Yeah, what?: asked the friendly Elemental.
"How close are we to Undine? Can you tell?"
The little spots of blackness that served the light spirit as eyes disappeared as he closed them, apparently reaching out to his cousin through the lines of Mana that connected them. :I can't, I'm sorry. The snowstorm is full of anger and sadness, both of them Undine's. I can't see her signature through all of this muck she calls water Mana, it's like trying to see through mud.: The dots reappeared, and Wisp somehow managed to convey piteous disappointment at not being able to fulfill Angela's request. The irony of a godling bearing that particular expression would have made Angela laugh had she possessed the energy. Instead, only a slight whimper escaped, and the cold wind snatched even that away from her.
The sun was hot and bright above their heads, and there seemed to be a total lack of breeze on the desert surface. Hawkeye judged it to be near to dusk, but that meant the sunlight burned down on their backs and made their sweat drool down between their shoulder blades. Carlie had taken up residence on Kevin's back, and was taking a nap as the two youths made their way across the desert.
I'm surprised we still have liquid in us to sweat at all. He thought as he squirmed to get his vest to absorb the latest driblet. I don't blame Carlie for wanting to hitch a ride with Kevin, I'd do it too if I could.
It was easier, much easier. Some of the pain still lingered, and he still flinched sometimes when Kevin got too close, but it was getting better. Hawkeye tried to get past the lupine features that reminded him so much of the other boy's kin, tried to see the kind boy beneath the dark skin and strange eyes.
"Hawk, are we almost there?" Kevin puffed. He readjusted his slumbering burden to a more comfortable position, and she did not even mumble in her sleep.
"I think so." Replied the ninja. "It's going to be dark soon, I'm hoping we can make it to the Valley of Flames before sundown."
Hoping. Never thought I would be doing that in my own homeland. Then, I never thought Jessica would react the way she did that night, either. A lot of things have been happening lately that I would never have expected.
Riesz's face popped into his mind at that moment, but he pushed the image away, trying not to imagine how she was faring at that moment. Probably freezing that pretty arse of hers off.
As it turned out, he was exactly right.
Damn that Hawk, he's probably all toasty and warm right now. Thought the valkyrie. It was still dark out, though she thought that the sun might have risen behind all of those ominous-looking black clouds. The wind is so unfriendly here, I miss the breeze from Rolante. It was always warm, even in winter. Not like this one. This wind seem almost angry. The snow never lets up, there's ice every three feet, and my toes are frozen.
In the midst of her rambling thoughts, she ran into Duran's broad back and stumbled. She opened her mouth to give him a tongue lashing, but when she looked at the reason he had stopped, her mouth slammed shut so fast she nearly bit her tongue.
Darkshine Knight!
A man was approaching, huge and looming. With the sputtering light of the sun from beyond the snowstorm, Riesz could just make out the hulking figure, and shuddered. Even at a distance, his presence was forbidding and dark. It had not been bright out before, but the shadows seemed to grow larger and more sinister with every step he took toward them. Riesz stepped up beside Duran to face him, and Angela came up on the Knight's other side.
"Hold!" Duran called out. "Who are you? What business do you have in the Snowfields?"
The other man just kept coming, silent but for the eerie clank that his armor made, so unlike any other metal that Riesz had ever heard. The sound formed a strange counterpoint to the howling of the wind, which did not cease to rage for silly humans.
"I said hold!" Duran shouted, this time much louder. Riesz was rather amazed at how well his voice carried over the wind, she wasn't sure if even she would be able to do it, with all of her training as a leader in battles. The knight took a threatening step forward, and the figure stopped abruptly. Before Duran could congratulate himself, though, the man dropped something large and metallic on the snow and turned, disappearing into the shadows. A voice came into their minds as he departed, weak and somehow familiar.
:Duran? Is that you, Duran? How I have missed you…:
Before Riesz could tell why it sounded so familiar, the Darkshine Knight was gone, and they had another problem on their hands.
"Machine Golems!" Angela cried out, and there they were, rolling out of the huge ball that the Darkshine Knight had dropped. There were three of them in all, great perversions of machinery shaped like men. They spun and whirred ominously, and Riesz fell back into her low fighting stance to meet them. She noticed that Angela did not chant any spells, and frowned for a few moments, but then launched into her strongest attack, the Vacuum Surge Spear. Muttering a request to Jinn to aid her, she swung her spear around violently before launching it into the air. A green wind launched itself up to meet the whirling spear and added its power to it. Great blades of wind launched from the twirling spear in waves, slashed down at her enemy. Just as the attack finished, and the spear returned to her hand, she heard Angela shout,
"No Riesz! You can't use magic on them!"
Riesz's brow furrowed, but she thought she understood when she caught sight of the great boulders of ice falling from the dark sky. She rolled to avoid the glaciers, only to slide into a bonfire and get the life singed out of her. When she thought it finished, a bolt of lightning dropped from the sky, and she only just dodged that as well. Duran popped up behind her and doused her with healing magic, but Riesz had learned her lesson, she would not fall so easily.
Dirty trick, that. Why do we have these powers if we can't bloody well use them?
But at least she could fight. Angela was hard-pressed to keep the golem that came after her at bay with that cane of hers. Fortunately, once one figured out the golems' weakness, it was relatively easy to dispatch them. The stupid machines tried to toss more fire and ice at them, but all three of Mana warriors were ready, and dodged the sluggish magic easily. It wasn't long before only Angela's was left, and she stopped suddenly. Since the golems were designed to acclimate themselves slowly to their opponent's attack patterns, Angela's stopped, confused for a few moments. Angela used that time to unload a spell on it.
"Thunderbolt!" A bolt of lightning, not unlike the one that had assaulted Riesz earlier, slammed down onto the golem's metallic form. With its protective armor dented and broken by repeated blows from the sorceress' staff, the thing exploded promptly when the lighting hit it, and the debris launched itself harmlessly against Angela's shielding. When the other girl drew herself up, Riesz grinned at her and gave her a thumbs up.
"Let's go." Was all the response she got, but she understood. They still needed to find Undine.
"Oh no…we're too late."
Angela placed a delicate, gloved hand against the cracked Mana Stone of Water, and began to cry. Duran collapsed to the floor, furious. "We come all the way through that fucking blizzard and for what? For a cracked stone and a crybaby water Elemental?"
:I heard that! You meanie!:
Riesz sighed. Seated atop the broken Stone was the Water Elemental, Undine. Tears rolled out of her big eyes in globules nearly as big as her head, the epitome of injured ego. "I never thought the Elementals were such an…eclectic bunch." She said, for lack of anything better to say.
:You're both just big meanies!: Undine cried, and she floated down from the Stone, sniffling.
"Yeah, that's it." Riesz commented drolly. Undine blew a raspberry at her. "Well, where do we go from here, magical girl?"
"I don't know." Angela replied through her tears. Duran snorted.
"Well I do, we go on. Hawk and the others must've gotten Salamander by now, we're nearly done. We're also supposed to pick them up from Sultan, so we should get going as soon as possible."
:The storm's stopped, now that I'm done sulking.: said the water spirit, in a tone much stronger than the one she had been using. :My apologies for my demeanor, being sealed inside a cave for several hundred years can do that to a body.: She raised a hand-fin above her head, and suddenly the cold fled them. Riesz did not feel warm, exactly, but she no longer felt the cold so bitterly. :You must go, you are the seeds the Goddess has sewn. We spirits can help you, but we are not beings of free will. You must walk where no others walk. You have warmed my frozen soul, let me see what other wonders you are capable of.:
Author's Note: Okay, so the ending is cheesy, and I stole the "ignoring the cold" thing from Robert Jordan. All in all, this chapter moves the plot forward, for once, and that's about all I can say about it. I hope you all enjoy, and you know I love hearing from you.