Frostbite
3
Voices
"Do you remember that night? Blood under moons. A Warrior could shed tears over how beautiful that whole exchange really was. She could see the irony, the complex working of fate to bring people together like that. People who spent their lives training and preparing to die over the course of maybe ten minutes in some woodland glade. Isn't that as horrible as it is beautiful?" Reslo asked.
"It's…" Cynder curled in on herself in the nesting, her eyelids straining. "…it's all I've known, and that sage knew it."
Cynder's eyes shot open.
The icy cave chamber, the howl of the mountainous wind outside.
The silent huffs of a male voice sobbing.
"…Reslo?" Cynder asked aloud, tiredly turning over on the rocks and blinking sleep from her eyes. She saw Darkshade, he had his back turned to her, his black wings were slouched on either side of his body, and his tail curled across the ground behind him like a wilted root.
The drake's spined back hopped in tune with silent, muffled grunts. He was hanging over Reslo's nesting. Cynder couldn't see her past him.
Snorting, now fully awake, the Terror of the Skies slipped off the rocks and lithely crossed the chamber.
"Darkshade, Reslo," Cynder called over, drawing by Darkshade's side with impatience. "pick yourselves up, and be ready for a breakfast-less morning. We're searching the caves for another-"
Cynder's mouth stopped working mid-sentence. Darkshade had his snout buried in Reslo's ribs, right beside the bloody shoulder she'd had. Reslo herself looked… she looked like stone.
The deep pink in her scales had turned to pale gray. Her face had aged overnight, and her eyes were softly closed. The dragoness' wings were vestigial, dead weights draped like wilted flower petals on the cave floor, and her tail was loosely laid over the rear brim of the nest.
Darkshade sobbed louder and rocked her back and forth slowly, like he was trying to lull an infant hatchling in a crib-nest to sleep. Reslo limply nudged with each push.
Cynder blinked idly and held a paw under Reslo's snout.
Nothing, no air.
Now she understood. The blood loss, the cold…
"Get up, footman." She said plainly. "If you value your own hide, work for it and do not end up like her. You must stand."
Truly, Cynder was intrigued to witness the first real emotion she'd seen on Darkshade's face, even if he was covering it up in Reslo's skinny body. The Night Drake was unreachable. He just kept rocking the cold corpse, and he would not stand.
"Get up." She hissed, bringing her tailblade around. "Or I'll skin you alive."
Darkshade howled and clenched the body tighter.
Clicking her tongue, Cynder gazed at the archway pensively. This complicated things. Darkshade had demonstrated some form of obvious attachment to Reslo, but up until now, she had never had any kind of direct confirmation besides her own suspicions.
Was it a true loss that Reslo was gone? Yes. But she had served honorably, and felled her fair share of foes. Her death was… undeserved, and pitiful, but there had been nothing her or Darkshade could've done. Cynder could only reknit flesh and bone. She knew little else in the realm of healing, and that lack of knowledge had led to Reslo's demise.
Cynder was so used to death, that even the end of what she might dare say was a distant acquaintance did little to her. Her primary concern was getting out of the glacial caves. Without Reslo, and with Darkshade incapacitated, that made things extremely more difficult.
"She must have passed in the night." Cynder muttered, backing away, staring at Reslo's very still face. She paused suddenly, looking back at her sleeping spot.
….If Reslo had died in her sleep, then who had she been talking to?
Cynder tested the air again, blinking.
No more copper at least.
But decay.
She looked down at Reslo and Darkshade, snorting. She then looked back at the arch to the chamber.
Behind her, nothing. From the arch…
Decay.
"We need to leave." She said. "If we persist in this chamber, whatever is down here with us will entrap and destroy us. Get up, or I am leaving without you."
Darkshade shivered, and his sobs went quiet. He started nuzzling his face into Reslo, like she was still alive, and merely asleep. Cynder felt her chest tighten before she quickly stomped the feeling to dust.
Who could be jealous of a body?
"I can't leave her." Darkshade whispered, snot and drool matting his snout and dripping. "I won't leave her."
"Whatever it is you believed the two of you had, it is now kaput, and baseless." Cynder growled. "Nothing you say or do will bring her back, and I know inside of you, your little Nightkin genes are screaming for the desperation to carry on. Your primal need for survival is still in there, and you're allowing your emotions to cloud it. She's dead, Darkshade. Move on."
Darkshade gaped as more drool slithered out of his mouth. Now he was running circles with his paws over Reslo's cold shoulders. He probably hadn't even heard her.
Cynder scowled and swept around to start moving for the arch. The intersection from yesterday was still there obviously, still dusted with snow, gray morning sunbeams streaming in from the little slit in the ceiling above.
"She was sterile." Darkshade said behind her.
Cynder paused and looked inside the chamber over her wing.
Darkshade was on his haunches, no longer touching the body, just staring at it as reams of tears flowed down his black, scaly cheeks.
"I couldn't give her a clutch."
The Cloud Ripper watched for a moment, rolling her tongue around as she drank the information down like it was a bulge of grotesque slime.
"She couldn't give herself a clutch." She answered. "Any blame shifted unto you was unwarranted. I knew Reslo as a skilled combatant and loyal servant of the Dark Army. I knew her not for her personal life. Evidently, if what you say is true, then I was missing out on little." Cynder raised a brow. "Does that help you detach at all so we can leave?"
"…How can you do this?" Darkshade looked at her. Cynder felt her scales bristle when she saw the shift in his facial features. Reslo's death had actually shifted his appearance right in front of her eyes. He looked… well, almost as dead as she was. "How can you just ignore this and walk away? S-She served you. I served you."
"You still serve." Cynder corrected with a hiss. "And by that right as your lordess, I determine when it is fit for your life to be expended."
"You have no soul." Darkshade flat up told her, pointing a talon. "You died, and I am looking at the walking dead."
"My wing twitches when wyrms annoy me. You're annoying me, Darkshade." Reslo said.
….-
Darkshade leapt ten feet away, his cyan eyes glowing and wide, his jaw loose and hanging. He had reared on his hind legs and was sputtering in silence. Cynder was facing the inside of the chamber again in an instant, her wings preened, her blades bared. She tested the air.
Decay.
Reslo's body was still the same as it had been, unmoved, cold, eyes closed and appearing to be at uneasy rest.
Cynder waited for something else to happen. When nothing did, she darted her gaze over to Darkshade, who had a fresh batch of tears rolling down his snout.
The drake started to pulse with silent heaves as he folded on the floor and covered himself with his wings. A strangled cry left him.
"I knew it." Cynder muttered, bustling across the chamber towards him. "It's well hidden, and it's so old that it blends with the stone harboring it, but I still knew it. I smelled it last night, I smell it now. It was foolish of me to think that resting was an option in such a place."
She kicked pebbles at Darkshade when she got close.
"Get up, damn you." She snapped, looking around quickly. "We aren't alone in these caves. Whatever it is, it has been here with us and we haven't even noticed this whole time."
"B-But, Reslo-" Darkshade sobbed. Cynder groaned and glanced at the arch. The smell was more powerful now, the smell of rot.
"Leave her." Cynder's voice echoed.
"-I-I can't…" Darkshade mewled.
"Get up now!" Cynder gripped him by the scruff of his scaly neck, and hauled the bulky drake across the floor towards the arch. "Ancestors cocks…"
She hadn't spoken that time.
In the flurry of motion, she was able to effectively remove Darkshade before he bogged her down further. She gave Reslo's cold body a final glance before she and the drake vanished around the bend, never to see her again.
[❄️]
Cynder led them down a capillary diverting off the intersection chamber. It was encrusted with ice all around, and it spiraled in a direction that appeared to be going deeper into the mountain. Cynder took it anyway. They had no other ways to go.
Every shadow in this place had suddenly been turned malicious, and even though Cynder's eyes could pierce darkness like it was day, she avoided them like environmental hazards.
Darkshade was silent the entire trek, his gaze was either locked on the way they had come or his own paws. His sobbing had ceased, and the only indication of his presence were the silent pads of his feet on the cold ground. Cynder led the way, twisting and turning, growing ever increasingly frustrated as time wore on.
"These caverns have to wind hundreds of miles throughout the whole mountain." She mumbled. "Any one of these ways could lead to a dead end."
These were probably air-pocket veins, created from glaciers moving in the frozen snowy valleys that had once been fjords dividing many of the cliffs. The ice being pushed against the immovable mountain flanks caused massive craculature formations to develop. These tunnels were no different than taking a hard candy, smashing it, and observing all the tiny crevices between the pieces in one's palm.
But one of them had to lead to a fissure they could fly out of.
"…What will happen to her?" Darkshade quietly asked.
She'll freeze, become hard as stone, and will be an eternal landmark for any other inhabitants who may have the misfortune to pass through this network of tunnels.
Cynder grumbled, thinking the truth unproductive for what she needed him to do, which was to keep his head on at least somewhat.
"It does not matter." She muttered. "Keep watching our rear."
"Yes." Darkshade had been doing nothing but, imagining Reslo's body back there, caught in a sort of shock, like he couldn't comprehend what was happening.
"…When you said you couldn't sire her hatchlings," Cynder started, earning Darkshade's attention. "she was infertile…"
"She blamed herself for it." Darkshade said so quietly that Cynder struggled to hear him. "We had been trying for over four months. One night, Reslo visited an herbalist, by Darklight, a-and…. and the herbalist ran tests… s-she…"
"She took out her frustrations out on you." Cynder turned around a jagged corner, minding a glittering array of sharp icicles jingling on the hallway roof over their horns with menace.
"R-Reslo stopped seeing me… she left our lair without telling me…" Darkshade shivered. "She pretended that I was not her mate, and she shunned me. It's been that way for the last year. Every time I tried, and tried… she'd just…"
"Darkshade, don't leave me down here, please…" –Reslo's voice echoed down the tunnel behind them.
Darkshade gasped and stood rigid, his eyes fixated on the way they had come.
"Reslo!" He cried.
"No." Cynder doubled back, hanging over his shoulder. "It is using mimicry. That isn't Reslo you're hearing. Whatever it is, it is trying to misdirect you."
"Reslo! I-I'm coming back! Hold on!"
"No! Darkshade-!" He twisted from her grip with a feral snarl, the drake wrenching between her powerful paws and scrabbling on the floor. "Darkshade, it isn't Reslo!"
"Darkshade, please…. Help me-~!" Reslo sobbed.
"I'm coming!" Darkshade screamed, bounding down the tunnel.
Cynder was quicker than him on the wing and by foot. She collided with him from behind, trying to grapple and wrestle the Night Dragon to the ground. Darkshade fought her like he never would have in his right mind. He paddled his rear paws against Cynder's belly plates, trying to hook his talons in her so he could tear her scaled flesh.
"Darkshade- it's magic! It isn't real-!" Cynder shouted. Darkshade spun onto his back and kicked her in the face, sending her reeling in a loop onto her haunches.
"Reslo! I'm coming! I'm coming back for you!" Darkshade scrabbled to his feet and sprinted down the cavity way, his black wings kicking.
Cynder shook off the pain invading her snout and stood, running after him with her tail swiping behind her.
"Darkshade!" She called. "Darkshade…."
Cynder screeched to a halt. She had backtracked to an intersection chamber. There were eight other capillary arches that each led to separate tunnels. Darkshade's voice became distant as his bellows rebounded through the ice.
Soon, Cynder could hear nothing but the howl of the winter draft breathing down the whole tunnel network. Heaving, she glanced at each archway, and moaned in torment when a brief flash of panic stabbed into her chest.
Control.
Breathe.
Cynder sneered and preened her wing blades. She looked around the arches one last time.
"Damn it."
-Then she ran back down the tunnel, and didn't look back.
[❄️]
"Mistress…! I found Reslo…! She's alive!"
-It had started using Darkshade's voice after about the second hour. Cynder had mostly been able to tune it out as she wandered the glacial caves.
"Mistress, me and Reslo are here! We found a way out! It's here! Come to us, my lady…!"
"You aren't either of those Nightkin." Cynder mumbled, pausing at the foot of a rocky, snow-capped plateau. The antechamber surrounding her was the size of a castle. Strange arboreal light reflected off the colossal stalactites made of ice hanging from the dark ceiling above. The chamber was cut in half by a bottomless, black crag. Cynder flexed her wings and glided to the other plateau across the drop without effort.
Cynder folded her wings and glanced back the way she had come. The tunnel entrance seemed darker than it had been before, on the other side of the crag.
"Why are you running?" Echoed a voice she didn't recognize. It came out of the arch and rang around the whole cavity.
Cynder sneered and examined her side of the crag.
A ramped tunnel, leading upwards over there.
She started walking.
"…Cynder~…" Sang a light, female voice. "….Please come back. You don't understand."
Cynder growled and passed through the ice-crusted arch. She had to dig her talons into the ramp to keep from slipping back down. She peered past her tail halfway up, white eyes daggering as she searched for anything moving in the darkness.
She would've been less intimidated if she had actually seen something. Instead, the female voice from before rang out softly from the direction she was headed.
"You bitch." It snapped. Cynder yipped and lost her grip on the surface. She created white, dusty skids as she slid down a few feet, before her talons hooked and she jolted to a stop, panting, her limbs spread out like a frightened cat's. "You've been feeling me since you came here…"
The voice had turned male, again, one she did not recognize.
She gnashed her fangs and clawed her way to the top with difficulty, finally surmounting the ramp and crawling up on a rocky platform at the summit.
"Much changes outside this pyramid. It is a cell. You only get echoes of what happens beyond."
"You shall receive nothing from me." Cynder whispered, gliding down to a lower steppe below. This chamber was ridged with multiple levels, eventually blooming at the very bottom in a snow-covered trench that burrowed through a massive, reflective, aqua wall of ice overtaking the north.
"Do you know how deep these tunnels run?"
Cynder growled, reaching the bottom, and starting down the trench, her pads squeaking against the cold ice.
"They run Red."
Cynder paused when the voice barked, its last word rebounding down the whole trench. The dragoness ground her teeth. She could hear herself, the light crunching, whispering in the air for how silent it had become.
"I know of someone who runs red." She said aloud. "Books, little parts so many overlook… mention something about… it."
The voice did not come back.
"Hmmph." She snorted, and kept walking. "Fuck you too."
[❄️]