It was the middle of the night when Zym started convulsing, waking both Rayla and Callum with a start. They had settled down in the windshade of an ascending mountain flank, right where the longest part of the pass started in earnest.
"What's wrong with him?!", Rayla yelled, trying to see if there was something stuck in the little dragon's mouth, opening his eyes to check for bloodshot and testing the flexibility of his limbs.
Callum sneezed loudly, startling her further. "I don't know! What do we do?"
Zym's violent spasming subsided and after a moment of breathing heavily on the floor, he got up to shake himself, whining while his glance wandered between them.
Rayla cradled the little dragon and tried to calm him down.
"What could this mean?", she asked her boyfriend, worriedly.
Callum groaned, his voice saturated with fear. "I really hope this is just him having night terrors about bugs and not something happening to Ez."
Rayla nodded, then did a double take in his direction.
"Oh no, dummy, you look terrible!"
"Figures", he sniffled, "It was all going a bit too well, lately"
Rayla nodded sternly.
"We should use our last shadow hawk. Find out what's goin' on. This is really important."
"What if it's ju-ah?-", he sneezed, "what if it's just nightmares?"
His girlfriend shook her head. "We're gonna drive ourselves crazy with worry if we don't check."
It was true. The questions were already pelting Callum's mind, the assault only dulled by the feeling of wool stuffed in his head.
"Okay. We'll put together a letter for Amaya. Ugh! This is my second cold in a month!", he coughed with a rattle and dug in his pack for the medicine they had gotten in Larwein. The white pills had worked wonders the first time and he hoped it would be similar now.
"Not too surprisin'. I'm gonna go through the same thin' once I spend some more time in Katolis. There's so many diseases here you haven't picked up before."
Zym had recovered, enjoying her pets. Callum took two of the pills and rolled up in his bag, wracked by worry for his brother and the dragon.
He knew he should feel warm in the well-padded sleeping bag, but he still shivered miserably.
Rayla carefully swaddled Zym into a saddle blanket and went over to check on Callum.
"Are you cold in there?", she asked, concerned.
"Yeah. Feels like I'm lying outside."
He was hot to her touch, more so than usual. His skin was clammy and pale.
"You really caught it this time, dummy", she said sadly, petting his hair.
He harrumphed in answer, his teeth chattering.
She wrote a quick letter, detailing their situation, then read it out to him.
"Sorry Callum. You're gonna have to send it off to Amaya."
Her boyfriend wrestled himself from his sleeping bag, put on all his winter clothes and followed her outside into the freezing night.
He shook dramatically, drawing concerned glances from Rayla.
She handed him the bow and arrow and pointed him in the right direction.
"General Amaya!", he shouted, imagining her face. The arrow losened, described an arc, then fell to the ground.
"No!", Rayla's shock escaped her, loudly.
"What? Did I do it wrong?", Callum asked, sniffling.
She swallowed, hard.
This was going to be so very difficult.
"Love", she started, holding on to both his hands and giving him an empathetic glance, "I-I don't know how else to say this but- but, when this happens, there's three different reasons why it might. Either the person is warded, like I was, they're unreachable by air or -"
"Dead. She's dead, isn't she?", he completed her sentence, miserably.
"We don't know that. Try someone else."
She picked up the arrow while Callum sniffled.
"Commander Gren!", he shouted. The arrow flew off the sinew and fell to the ground.
"This is getting old fast", Callum said, close to tears.
"Try again!", Rayla said, now utterly alarmed.
"Corvus, Lord of Crows!"
Thwack.
"Again!"
"King Ezran!"
Thwack.
"Callum, try ag-"
The prince flung the bow into the falling snow and yelled, "They're all dead?!"
She held him while he cried, trying very hard not to well up herself.
"Is there anyone else you can think of? Helmond?"
"No guarantee he's still on our side or at the Breach, if they were killed. I could send it to the royals at the Twin Towers, but who knows how they feel about Ez or me right now!"
Rayla sighed, then very reluctantly said, "Claudia?"
Callum looked at her, consumed with hopelessness. "I guess we can try. I'm not sure how helpful it'll be. They're probably miles away from the border and we'll just have to hope that her conscience is as good as Ez told us."
A tiny voice popped into his thoughts.
'You still really hope she's going to be redeeming herself, don't you?'
The feeling connected to this voice made him feel… guilt?
What for?
He couldn't quite tell under all the stress that was pelting him at the moment.
The prince added a message to the letter's flipside to make it clearer to Claudia, then he picked up the bow and loosened the arrow, worried beyond description as to whether it would fly.
"Claudia!"
Mercifully, the arrow became self-propelled quickly, racing westward.
Callum watched it escape their view, then collapsed into Rayla's reacting arms.
"I don't want to do this anymore!", he cried, flailing in her grip, "I'm finished! Done! I want to go home!"
After taking a deep breath, he screamed, his voice cracking, "EZRAN!"
He struggled and screamed agonized insults at the world while she dragged him back into the tent, tucking him into his sleeping bag where he curled up and cried. Ever so often, he would get wracked by sobbing coughs.
Rayla rummaged in her saddle bag and brought out the Auxilia sunfire device that had come in one of the templar's saddle bags. She'd been conserving its power, opting to make actual bonfires instead.
Judging from the state of the primal gem powering it, it would be good for quite a few uses.
She pressed on the gem, shaving off a tiny sliver which dissolved in the channels of the device like magma. The sandstone device immediately heated up to fire-like temperatures.
The tent quickly became too hot for Rayla's taste.
Callum still shook.