Chapter VI

I sneezed for the fifth time as I picked up yet another dusty book.

"Does your tribe ever use these?" I asked her.

"No." she scoffed. "Unless they broke too many bones to fight and too little to die." Her words were harsh, but there was something about her voice that made me think otherwise. Maybe it's like when something is so cold it actually starts feeling hot.

The title of the book read "Diseases - Vol III". I opened it and was greeted with the sight of yellow pages with unclear, yet legible writing. There was no contents page, so I sat down at a table and began scanning the text.

There was no one else in this so-called library, as you would expect in a tribe of warriors. This, however, rendered some of the books useless due to years of dust and mold, and some of the shelves were close to collapsing. There was a family of arctic foxes living in a burrow they made in one of the corners, and the smell of their decaying prey was slowly filling the whole room. To my surprise, I don't think Sejuani noticed the stench, or maybe she didn't mind it.

"What does it say?" she asked suddenly.

I looked over my shoulder at her towering figure behind me peering at the book from over my head. After a few moments, she lifted her eyes of the paper and locked them with mine, their icy blue enveloping me. It was really cold in Freljord, but for those few seconds, I stopped feeling it.

Shortly, she cleared her throat and fixed her gaze onto the ground. "So, what's it say?"

I moved my chair towards the edge of the table and pulled another into the space I had made, signalling for her to sit down next to me and she did so. I placed the book in between us.

"Here." I said.

She pushed it back towards me and shook her head, her eyes avoiding mine. "I can't read." She said bluntly.

I paused while I processed what she had said. As I looked at her, I noticed that she looked away and fiddled with her fingers under the table. Was she embarrassed?

I placed the book in between us again, took hold of one of her hands and placed it on the text.

"I'll teach you. You know, as payment for helping me." I smiled at her, and although she didn't smile back, she seemed pleased with the idea as she nodded.

"But that'll take time." she said. "Shyvana needs your help now. I can wait."

I chuckled. "It won't take time. You'll pick it up quickly, I'm sure. Just follow the text as I read it."

As I read out loud, my finger pointed at each word as I was saying it, until we had gotten through the whole book, missing the chapters that didn't sound promising for our search. Unfortunately, we found nothing about the diseases of a half-dragon.

I let out a sigh of frustration.

"That's alright." Said Sejuani. She pointed at the "III" on the cover. "You said that's three. There must be other book like this one. We just need to find them."

"It's getting late. This should be a job for tomorrow, we're both tired." I replied and she nodded.

Outside, we were greeted by Bristle with a Valor buried in his thick fur. I chuckled at the cute sight. Out of the corner of my eye, I also spotted Makechau, making himself a bed out of the fallen snow.

"Doesn't he have somewhere to sleep?" I asked Sejuani.

"He does." She replied. "He should live with his sister, but never does. I tell you, that man is so close to death and yet never actually dies."

I laughed. "Have you ever seen a dead devil?"

She looked at me and, for the first time since I arrived, a smile spread across her lips. It was a warm smile, which made as much sense as a snowman in the summer, but it suited her in a wonderful way.

"That reminds me," she said, her smile vanishing, "we need to find a place for you to sleep in. We rarely have guests staying with us, so technically no inns or anything of the sort, and I doubt my cynical people would accept a stranger..." she paused to think for a while. "There's only one bed in my hut, but I'm sure you'll prefer the floor rather than the snow outside."

"I would be grateful if you'd let me stay." I said, agreeing.

She and Bristle led me and Valor towards the center of the tribe to a hut decorated with skins of different beasts and various weapons. As Bristle remained outside in a form of shelter built specially for him, we were taken inside.

Sejuani hadn't lied, as there was truthfully only one bed which wasn't very wide, but thankfully she had spare blankets which I arranged into a relatively comfortable nest on the floor. We went to sleep without any dinner that night, as Sejuani had said hunting wasn't going well and something about how there's little life in the surrounding forests left.

However, my growling stomach wasn't the thing that worried me. I feared for everyone back at the Avarossan tribe and wondered if they were alright, but most of all, I feared for Shyvana, as if her whole life was solely in my hands.

No. I thought. It's not just me. The healer will help her. My eyes looked over at Sejuani's sleeping figure on the bed. And Sejuani. I know she'll help her, because I know she'll help me.

Valor and I huddled together in an attempt to banish the cold that stung our bones, but to no avail. We fell asleep in something that felt like a blanket of ice, alone in a room with a taciturn warrior, while our friends either battled a disease or horrific monsters.