Ice Master kept to himself, but was livid in his silent way. Izo and him had arrived at the meet up point in the rugged ice mountains ten days ago, and yet Master Haru and Apprentice Airi had yet to arrive. Ice Master had assumed they would have been the late ones because Izo was slow going on the running. They had arrived three days later than they were supposed to, which meant that Haru and Airi were two weeks late.
"Where are they?" Ice Master said under his frosty breath.
The mountains were frigid and snow covered, but beyond visible breath, it harmed neither of them not. Izo actually thought it enjoyable to be in weather so cold. It seemed to seep into his blood and make him flourish.
"I don't know, master," Izo said, answering even though he did not need to. "Perhaps Airi struggles to run long distance as well?"
"Airi? No," Izo shook his head. "Ocean demons like her are hardy, be they slim and laithe. She is a tiny thing, but she'll drown any demon who dismissing her. The cold might be hard on her though... Haru is slower than she is. Almost as slow as you. He's a bulky beast of an ice demon." Ice Master gritted his teeth. "You'll like them when you meet them."
That ended the conversation for hours, but Ice Master's temper needed burning off. Izo learned early on he enjoyed burning it off with training. Izo had thought himself strong, but he could hardly be compared to Ice Master. He had a long way to go to be as strong as him. It was akin to climbing one of the mountains that surrounded them. It did not hurt him to keep trying.
Izo could hardly stand by the time it was over at Ice Master's call. He was busy healing himself from his seat on the ground when Ice Master knelt down beside him.
"Where did you learn your healing ability?" he asked point blank.
Izo parsed his words, not sure if Father would want Ice Master to know the answer. "From my father's ancestors."
Ice Master frowned in thought. "The wind demon warriors?"
"Could be," Izo replied. "The queen is a talented healer. She is the one who healed my father's hand back upon his wrist."
Ice Master shuddered, but not from cold. "That was a nasty wound. He better count her a saint for doing that for him."
Izo kept his face neutral, but he desired to smile at the thought. Ice Master had never met the queen, otherwise he may think less of her. "Indeed."
"You healed his crippled back though," Ice Master said allowed. "Along with your mother's friend, Yukina."
Izo kept his mouth closed tight for fear of giving away anything he should not. "Yukina trained me," he said, dodging the word 'aunt.' "Along with another healer named Asa."
"Did you inherit anything else from your father?" Ice Master asked. "Telepathy perhaps?"
Izo shook his head. "My father didn't inherit that ability, nor was he born with it. He had his Jagan Eye implanted. It comes from that." The thought of Father made him slightly melancholy. He and Ice Master had traveled too far away from Sister's castle for Father to communicate with him. He missed it in his dreams.
Ice Master sighed. "What about tracking? Did he teach you tracking? I've heard he has a talent for that. That he can track someone just by their energy markers or whatever it is. I've heard him likened to a blood hound with it before."
Izo shook his head. "I don't know it. I don't know how to sense any markers or the like. Father tried to teach us, my sister and I, but it was a talent that could not be taught." Izo let himself have a soft chuckle at that thought. Father had been frustrated with them, but Mother had soothed him, convincing him that they did not need to know how to do everything to be capable fighters.
"Does that ability come from his Jagan Eye, too?" Ice Master asked.
Izo thought it over. "No," he shook his head. "Father once said he could do it before he got that. That's why he thought we could learn it, too." He smiled, shaking his head. "Nope."
"What about from your mother and her wind dragon?" Ice Master asked in turn. "She can fly with it. You can fly as well. I saw you in the tournament do it. Tomorrow morning, can you fly us over head and scout about for Haru and Airi?" His voice was gravitas with his request.
Izo nodded, "I can." He thought about it. "With you though, I wouldn't be able to fly as far or as fast with my ice dragon."
Ice Master stood up, shuffling the snow by his feet. He looked up at the setting sun. "I wish I had thought of this sooner. But it's too late now in the day for you to scout. Early in the morning, I want you up in the sky, looking all around for them. They might have gotten caught up in a snowstorm or avalanche while traversing a mountain pass."
Izo nodded in agreement.
The next morning came in a rush of a good sleep. The clouds were high up in the sky like giant puff balls, and the sun was bright enough close to the ground. It took Ice Master some convincing to let him take a bag of food and water with him so he would not have to land back at their camp to search.
Izo summoned up his ice dragon, mounting it anew. Ice Master once more explained to him what both Haru and Airi looked like, to ensure Izo would know them when he spotted them.
Izo flew up in a rush to the sky, circling around and around throughout it, trying to spy signs of anyone, anywhere. The air's chill could have killed a full blooded human, but for him, it was thrilling. He felt alive in it. He flew higher up for the joy of it, even though he could not see as well up there.
He sailed the sky for hours, so far away now he could no longer see Ice Master from this distance. The clouds that surrounded him where white as pure snow, but there was a large, immense gray one floating high in the sky above him. A cloud that gray, almost black, harolded an impending snowstorm, but it was impossible high up for a storm cloud. Izo looked up at the cloud, feeling the temptation to fly up higher to inspect it more carefully. It seemed to call to him like he was a homesick angel, yet he remembered his duty. He kept his eyes as trained as he could upon the ground, searching out the lost shinobu master and apprentice as Ice Master had charged him to.
He was not looking up, but rather down when a figure clad in light teal and lavender sailed passed him in the sky. Izo gasped at the sight of the figure plummeting toward the ground at such speed. They did not shout or scream or cry out, but fell head first from what seemed like the heavens.
After a second's worth of shock, Izo spurned his ice dragon down, chasing the figure down, racing to reach them before the ground did. His ears popped painfully at how far and fast he fell. His eyes watered at the assault of the wind as he flew. He could hardly see the figure beyond a blur when he got there, but his ice dragon could. His dragon snatched the figure up in his jaws hard enough to hold, but not hard enough to harm. Once it had the figure, it stopped the nose dive abruptly, turning to fly parallel to the ground instead. It slowed them to a halt, hovering in the warmer air.
Izo rubbed and blinked his eyes in tandem to popping his ears to get them used to the new air pressure around them. He winced at the pain of it.
'Take us down,' he told his ice dragon. 'Back to Master Touya, please. He'll know what to do.' Izo himself had no idea what to do next. He hoped Ice Master would have an inkling about what to do with a pseudo angel that fell from the sky. Izo could hardly see the figure from his spot on his dragon's back, but he could wait until they were upon the ground.
'As you wish,' ice dragon replied frankly.
They began a slow glide down towards the ground. That was when Izo heard static crackling behind him. He turned to see behind them a large, net with red sparks coming towards them at an alarming speed.
"Dive!" Izo shouted in panic, feeling no desire to be capture by that net.
The dive was all in vain after five seconds when the net encased them. His ice dragon roared in pain, as the red sparks danced around him. Izo summoned it away beneath his shoulders as he could handle the heat that came off the net as it wrapped around him and the figure, bringing them against his front. The figure's tangled and dirty teal hair got into his face. He turned his head away, noticing like an afterthought that it was the exact same color of his. The figure's back was too him, but they shook and panted breathily, be it from pain or something else.
He looked up, seeing them be pulled at an alarming speed towards the looming dark gray cloud. Whatever the figure had jumped for, Izo did not think he wanted to know. He patted his left hand down to the knife sheathed at his hip. He tugged it out, twisting his wrist to get it out. He cut at the net, trying to free them from it. Once free, they could fall beyond its reach and fly away.
"Help me," he ordered the figure, hoping they would pull at the net in time with his cutting to get them out before they reached the gray cloud above.
The figure turned their head towards his voice, face invisible by a wall of hair. The figure's hand shot down to the hole he had made, clumsily pulling at the ropes. Izo did not have to look up to notice the sky was growing darker above them.
They got the hole big enough, so he shoved the figure towards it while clinging to their wrist, that way he would fall along with them. They fell through the hole they made, but did not fall as someone grabbed him by his shirt collar and hauled them up over the grey cloud's snowy precipice.
Izo was yanked back away from the figure and shoved down to the ground. The figure made no sound, but reached for him while two other figures held them, no her, back.
He got a look at the figure. She had a tattered lavender and sky blue kimono on. Her teal hair was tangled. She was unhealthily bony, expect for her stomach was round and large. Her face was pale and dirty. Her mouth moved in haste, but only breathy sound echoed out.
The two figures who held her were women who were much more well kept. Their teal hair was clean and their faces hardened, but pristine. They wore similar kimonos, but it pale green and pale blue, almost white.
Izo rose up, planning to charge the women and get the figure free and to jump with her once more. Whoever the two other women were, they were not their friends.
He felt a harsh blow slam into the back of his head. His vision flash black as he was knocked down to his knees. He shoved his hands up to the air, shouting, "I yield, I yield!" to the unseen assailant. His voice sounded airy and deep to his own ringing ears.
"A man. He deserves death, lest he tells others of his vile kind how to find us. Throw him back into the sky to die," the woman on the left said.
A hand came to his braid, yanking his head back as an ice cold blade came to rest next to his throat. "Are you mad?!" the woman's voice next to his ear sounded. Her voice was full of contempt. "He rescued her from her jump with that beast he was riding. We throw him, and he will survive to fly off."
"Knock him out first, so then he can't summon his beast," the woman on the right suggested, even as the figure in the middle still fought feebly to get away from the two women holding her by the arms. She shook her head and mouthed 'no,' over and over again.
The woman on the left looked down at the figure and then over to Izo. "What are you to her?" she asked suspiciously. "Why were you in the sky where she jumped? When she jumped?"
Izo's eyes locked on the figure's. She was terrified of these three women. 'Please,' she might have mouthed. He had no practice with lip reading.
The hand around his braid gave his hair a painful yank. "Answer her question," the harsh voice demanded.
The figure turned her head towards the woman on the right. Her lips moved over three words, but Izo could not make them out with her head turned.
The woman on the right gasped in shock. She turned to face Izo and the woman next to him. "Kotone says he's the father."
"What?" the woman next to Izo exclaimed. "So you're the monster that dared come to our island." He was shoved backwards down onto his back. The woman stood over him, seeing that she was older, but even more vicious than the other women holding the figure. "And to force yourself upon one of us." The dagger in her hand looked ready to come down and stab and him in the chest. "She failed to fight you off, so now you dare to return."
Izo shook his head, inching back away from the older woman looming over him. "I swear I didn't-"
"Liar!" the older woman screamed down at him in a frenzy. "All men are vile, monstrous creatures. We left you lot to the world centuries ago, and yet you had the audacity to come here and then come back!" She stepped over to him, and stomped down on him between his legs. He cried out, eyes watering in response to the pain. "You came back, so you can stay. And when your son is born, you can die with Kotone and him together."
Izo shook his head, trying to grasp what was happening. He rose up, going to defend himself. The older woman knelt down in front of him, striking her hand across the side of his neck.
He half felt himself sink down to the ground beneath him, vision tunneling into black. He could have sworn he heard someone loose an airy scream.