The Red Summer Sun
Jack's breathing was labored as he wove his way between the trees of a forest somewhere in northern Austria. He didn't remember the name, and at the moment he didn't care to; he could hear the shouts of the summer spirits behind him, farther back than they'd been a few minutes ago but still way too close for comfort.
What were they even doing here, anyway? The spring equinox had been a couple of weeks ago; there was still time for a snowfall or two. Primrose and her cohorts had no business coming this far north this early in the year. Not that it made much difference in Jack's situation, anyway. They'd come here, they'd seen him, and if they caught him… Jack didn't even want to consider it.
Jack didn't know why the summer spirits hated him the way they did. Sure, they were summer spirits and he was a winter sprite, but all he did was his job. He paved the way for Winter, which paved the way for Spring, which paved the way for Summer, which faded into Fall, then back to Winter, and the cycle kept going on and on. Jack had certainly never tried to encroach on their season, despite the fact that Primrose and her partner Amaryllis had tried to persuade the Fall seasonals to delay the coming of winter more than once. And if that didn't work (it usually didn't, the Fall seasonals may have been quiet compared to the Summer crowd, but they were damned stubborn), they would go looking for Jack and proceed to hunt him down and beat him senseless. Jack never bothered trying to fight back; there were half a dozen in Primrose's gang, and they were all older and stronger than he was.
And by the sound of it, they were currently gaining on him.
"Frost! When I catch you I am going to make you regret making me work this hard!" Primrose shouted.
Definitely gaining, and by the sound of it in a very foul mood. Meaning it would be all the worse for Jack when they caught him. Jack bit his lip to hold in a sob; he wouldn't be able to keep this up for much longer. It had been over an hour already, his feet were cut and bleeding from pushing off the roughened bark of the trees, his legs were sore from propelling him every which way, and the mental strain of mapping out complex escape routes wasn't helping things. Jack needed to find a place to hide, and he needed it now.
The Wind, who was barely able to reach him in trees this dense, blew slightly to the left. Jack didn't question it and turned in the direction his friend had indicated, heart practically leaping out of his chest when he heard a branch crack close behind him.
"Got you now, Frosty!" Amaryllis taunted, sounding like he was barely thirty feet behind Jack.
Jack tore through a tangle of branches, spitting several twigs out of his mouth once he was on the other side. His face was stinging with innumerable tiny cuts, but he forgot the pain immediately when he saw a small hole at the base of a large pine tree. It would be a tight fit, and there were a lot of prickly-looking bushes in front of it, but a few thorns were preferable to whatever the summer sprites had planned for him.
Jack dove through the opening, biting back a cry as the thorns snagged at his clothes, dragging him to a halt. He dug his fingers into the ground and pulled, ignoring the pain as several of the longer thorns raked over his skin. Once he'd wormed his way inside the tiny hole, he turned around as quickly as he could and snatched his staff in the nick of time.
Primrose came barreling through the same gap in the branches Jack had come through, strawberry colored hair a tangled mess of twigs and leaves. Scratches littered her face and the skin exposed by her torn brown leggings and green tunic. Her emerald eyes were wild, with a menacing glint to them.
Brown-haired Amaryllis was right behind her, the other three members of the gang shoving their way through the branches close behind him.
"Where the heck did he go?" Primrose snarled, scanning the clearing with a glare that could have curdled new milk.
Jack squeezed his eyes shut, pressing himself further back into his hiding place despite the numerous thorns poking his back and legs.
Make them go away, he thought fervently. I don't care how, just please, please, make them go away.
Then, barely a second later, he felt every single one of his hairs stand on end. Jack's eyes snapped open as the iron taste of blood spread over his tongue, and less than a second later his nose was assaulted by the sickly sweet scent of rot. For what seemed the barest moment, and at the same time a length of days, sound roared in his ears; clashing steel, the ring of battle cries.
And then he realized all the noise wasn't just in his head; the summer sprites seemed to be arguing with each other. Cracking open his eyes he was greeted by the sight of Primrose shoving Amaryllis and Amaryllis, incensed, pushing back.
"You were at the front of the line!" he was shouting.
"You were the one yelling so loud I couldn't hear anything!"
"You were both yelling so loud nobody would've heard a redwood tree falling right next to 'em! No wonder ya couldn't tell where he went!" That was Leiron, Amaryllis's brother.
Amaryllis and Primrose immediately turned their glares on him.
Then amber-haired Freesia stepped in. "Oh, come on, guys. You've gotta admit you were being kinda pathetic, all that yelling and strutting and 'I'm-oh-so better than you, I'm gonna catch the little frost sprite first' crap! You're both so full of yourselves I don't know why we even bother hanging around you half the time!"
That did it. With a furious yell Primrose tackled Freesia, taking them both to the ground, where they proceeded to roll around, scratching and punching at each other's faces and chests and yanking viciously at each other's hair. Amaryllis, meanwhile, leaped at his brother and sent them both flying into Lilac, who kicked the siblings away with an angry yell.
Jack, for his part, could only gape at the free-for-all that had erupted in front of him. The summer spirits were the most mean-tempered ones he'd met and they argued frequently, but he'd never seen them actually fight like this before. It was somewhat amusing, though, when an irate Lilac grabbed the still-scuffling Leiron and Amaryllis and threw them both through the thickest bit of pine needles she could find. The boys' response was to begin throwing pinecones. Very sharp pinecones, and they were throwing them rather hard. Their aim was also not that good; while one of the prickly projectiles did hit Lilac in the chest, the rest of them went wide and landed near the tumbling forms of Primrose and Freesia, who promptly rolled on them.
Jack had to bite his hand to keep from laughing at the summer sprites' surprised exclamations of pain. The look of shocked indignation on Primrose's face! Oh, he'd never forget it!
With angry cries, all three female sprites leaped after the boys, who decided the best strategy at the moment was a rapid advance in the opposite direction. Jack snickered as quietly as he could manage as he listened to the sounds of his former pursuers crashing through branches, shrieking promises of vengeance at each other.
As the sounds grew fainter, Jack grimaced and smacked his lips. The taste of blood in his mouth had faded, but it was definitely still there and he couldn't figure out why. He couldn't feel any cuts, and his lips weren't bleeding…
The sound of pine needles crackling on the other side of the clearing had Jack quickly turning his head to face that direction. Barely a second later he was pressing himself to the ground and pushing himself as far back into his hiding place as he could go, eyes wide, breathing ragged with terror.
Stepping out of the shadows was the largest horse he'd ever seen. Its hooves were steel silver; the coat and mane were a shade of red that reminded Jack unpleasantly of freshly spilled blood when they caught the dappled sunlight at the right angle. Its eyes seemed to be lit from within by an orange flame, and when it champed at its bit, Jack could see that its teeth, rather than being flat, were sharper than any knife he'd ever seen.
The rider was no less intimidating. He was clad head-to-toe in plate armor colored nearly identically to his horse. A helmet with a visor and flowing red plume concealed his face, and a gigantic longsword hung in a sheath at his waist. Looking closer, Jack felt another thrill of horror when he saw that the fingertips of the armored gloves the horseman wore had been fashioned into claws.
The rider brought his horse to a stop in the middle of the clearing. Then, to Jack's surprise, he reached up and removed his helmet. It was further to his surprise when Jack realized the he was in fact a she, with ebony black hair that reached just past her shoulders, turning from black to a bright crimson at the tips. She shot a contemptuous look in the direction the fighting spirits had gone.
"Summer sprites," she scoffed, tucking her helmet under her arm. Her horse snorted in apparent agreement, pawing at the ground and champing viciously at his bit. His rider reached forward and gently stroked his neck, which seemed to calm him slightly.
Then the woman's gaze moved to Jack's hiding place and the winter spirit's breath froze in his throat. A slight frown tugged at the woman's mouth. Sensing the shift of his rider's attention, the horse turned his head and, apparently catching a whiff if Jack's scent, snorted and began tossing his head.
"You can come out now. I know you're there and I know you can see me," the woman said.
Jack was too frightened to respond.
The woman lifted the reins in one hand and nudged the horse's side with an armored boot. The horse immediately turned to face the bush Jack was hiding under, snorting and pawing the ground, straining against the bit.
"You can come out on your own, or I can send my horse in after you," the woman said. She smiled and, though the expression was amused, there was something drop-dead frightening about it. "I won't hurt you, but I can't make any promises about him."
Deciding he did not want to become closely acquainted with those teeth, Jack slowly pulled himself out of his hiding place, poking the crook of his staff out ahead of him in case the horse decided to attack the first thing that moved.
It didn't , thankfully, and Jack was able to push himself up on shaking legs, but he found himself unable to meet the rider's eyes. Instead he stared at the ground near the horse's hooves, shaking and instinctively clutching his staff closer to his body. He tensed when he heard the creak of leather, and flinched visibly when the woman dismounted. Jack glanced up in alarm, backing away a step when the woman took a step toward him. Her sharp brown eyes met his gaze, and she slowly raised her hands in a placating gesture.
"Calm down; I'm not going to hurt you," she said quietly.
The horse snorted furiously behind her and stomped a hoof. The woman turned around to glare at him.
"No."
Though not spoken loudly, the command-and threat- in her voice was clear. The horse's ears drooped and he lowered his head slightly. Satisfied that the horse wouldn't be any trouble, the woman turned her attention back to Jack.
"What is your name, spirit?" she asked, taking another slow step toward him.
"J-Jack," Jack managed to stutter. "Jack Frost."
The woman's eyebrows climbed her forehead, and a moment later she sighed.
"Suppose I should have expected that," she muttered, more to herself than anything. Jack blinked in confusion.
"Wait… do you know Ants'nel?" he asked, grip on his staff loosening just slightly.
The woman smiled. Thankfully it was nowhere near as terrifying as it had been before. "Yes. He told me about you."
"Oh. Umm…, he never mentioned you." This was surprising, now that Jack thought about it. Ants'nel had told him he didn't associate with many spirits, but he knew a decent number of beings and got on fairly well with most of the ones he did associate with. Not mentioning this woman… Jack couldn't imagine someone this frightening simply slipping someone's mind.
As though reading his thoughts, the woman smiled. "I've known him for a very long time; we're close friends." Then she grinned. "And believe me, he doesn't find me anywhere close to intimidating."
Jack's jaw nearly dropped in disbelief. "Are you joking?"
The woman laughed. "You just haven't seen him mad yet." Behind her, the horse snorted and tossed his head in apparent agreement. Jack, despite himself, grinned.
Then the woman reached out and gently traced a particularly deep cut in Jack's right cheek. Jack, who hadn't even notice she'd gotten so close, flinched back, grin falling and bringing his staff up just slightly. The woman pulled her hand back, and Jack felt a shiver run down his spine at the sight of her clawed gauntlets.
"Did the summer sprites do that to you?" she asked, keeping her voice quiet and pitched low.
"N..no," Jack said. "I cut myself on a tree branch when I was running away from them."
"Why didn't you stand up to them?"
"I can't!" Jack shouted; he wasn't entirely sure where this strange ache in his chest had come from, but it was making his eyes sting. "There's five of them and one of me! And they're all older and so much stronger than I am! Do you have any idea what they would've done to me if they'd caught me?"
The woman, to Jack's utter disbelief, chuckled. The horse was even more vocal, snorting, pawing at the ground and shaking his head in the most disapproving attitude Jack had ever seen a horse pull off.
"The summer spirits are all bluster. A few good blows and they'll fold like dried-up leaves," the woman said.
"B…but before you got here they were fighting! Primrose and Freesia were trying to rip each other apart!"
This time she outright laughed. "You call that kitten-tussle fighting? The worst they were doing was slapping cheeks and pulling hair. If they went up against someone who actually knew what they were doing, they'd be in no end of trouble."
"I guess," Jack said, half to himself as he looked at the ground.
"I could teach you."
Jack's head snapped up as he stared at the woman. Apparently the horse was just as shocked as he was; the red steed was staring at his mistress like he didn't know the figure standing in front of him. Taking notice, the woman smacked him lightly on the nose. "Oh, hush up! He's one of ours, you wouldn't be able to trample him anyway."
"Would he?" Jack asked, edging nervously away from the horse when it glared at him.
"That or rip you to shreds; he prefers trampling people first, though," the woman said as she moved toward the center of the clearing.
"You coming?" she called over her shoulder when Jack didn't follow.
Jack didn't answer, staring at the horse who now was arching his neck and… Jack could swear it was smirking at him.
That is, until his rider returned and smacked him on the neck. Hard. The horse whinnied indignantly and stepped sideways, glaring reproachfully at his rider. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared back. After a few tense seconds, the horse's ears drooped and he lowered his head to the ground.
"That's better. I'll find some fresh corpses for you to stampede over later," the woman said. The horse raised his head, ears pricked, staring hopefully at his rider.
Jack probably would have laughed at the way the horse seemed to be saying Promise? if he wasn't so unnerved about the woman's statement. Did… did she say… corpses?!
"Are you coming, Jack?" the woman called from the center of the clearing.
"Umm… yeah," Jack said. Giving the horse (which was at this point ignoring him) a wide berth, he walked slowly over to the massive armored figure.
"What's your name, if you don't mind me asking?" Jack said, as politely as he could manage.
The woman's face split in a savage grin that instantly made the much smaller sprite want to fly like all get out to the opposite side of the planet. "You can call me Valka. Now, what I'm going to show you are some basic fighting forms and locks you can use…,"
While his mistress was instructing the little winter spirit, the red steed ambled around the edge of the clearing. Upon finding a bunch of purple primroses left by the summer spirits, the horse raised his head and snorted as though personally affronted.
Attack one of ours, will you?
He then proceeded to mercilessly stomp the flowers into the dirt.