AN: OMG! Is this... yes it is! Another update! And you didnt have to wait three to four months for it! The sky must be imploding in on itself. Enjoy before your little heads are crushed in the resulting colapse of the universe!
Firefly In Ice
Chapter Six
"You are late, my son."
"Forgive me Father."
"Why do you present yourself so far into the evening when you knew full well what your Mother was planning?"
"I… It slipped my mind, Father, I meant no disrespect."
"Yet it seems far too convenient that you forgot this night, out of all of them, does it not?"
"Father, you appear to be suggesting that I am avoiding my duties."
"Yes, Atemu, that is what I was suggesting. And regarding that, it is why I am going to speak to you tonight."
"But Father - "
"Silence! The King is speaking. Now listen to me son, I will not have you committing such acts against the glory of our royal blood."
"Su-such… acts, Father?"
"Yes Atemu, your little nightly walks are becoming common knowledge among the subjects. Such uncouth behaviour, I will not stand for it!"
"They are only walks, Father, I enjoy the night, and they help me to relax."
"Nonsense! What have you to be stressed about?"
"Well h - "
"Never mind, my point is that it appears to the citizens that you are seen skulking so often at night that the rumour of a fling with a commoner has spread. A romantic affair! I hope, for your sake Atemu, that these rumours are false."
----
Yami raised his sword, blocked, parried, slashed, barely even having time to check that the goblin had fallen before he was forced to block another blow. They were coming thick and fast, the world was a blur of faces and bodies and flashing steel, of roars and bellows and clashing weapons like thunder.
Another goblin fell before his sword and he was given a moment to glance around, the battle was fierce but there was already an end in sight, they had almost broken through their ranks that blocked off the path to freedom, his companions were injured and exhausted but not one of them had been slain that he could see.
His sensory magic flared warningly and he half turned on the spot, thrusting his blade forward and through the abdomen of the goblin who had his sword raised ready finish him, it froze in the shock of being stabbed, pain forcing the air out of it as the tip of the blade broke through the other side of its body. With a grunt Yami pulled his sword out of it and kicked it to the ground where it could die nice and painfully.
Yami backed a little closer to the other elves as they concentrated their force on one point of the goblin line, seeing Malik at the head of the almost-arrow formation with that frighteningly less-then-sane gleam to his pale eyes. He glanced behind him, expecting to see the human cowering there and was shocked into action when all he found was another goblin lunging towards him. It's short sword slipped passed his defences, distracted as he was by finding no human there, and the sharp edge came level with his hip, tearing through the material just below the protective mithril and jutting up underneath it into his side.
Yami gritted his teeth as searing pain momentarily blinded him, staggering backwards as the goblin pulled it's sword out and angled a slash towards his neck. In a desperate move Yami gestured with his fingers and thrust his palm forward, the goblin screamed as frigid air froze the moisture in its eyes, robbing it permanently of vision, it dropped its weapon as it's hands flew up to cover its eyes. Gripping the rough hilt of his sword Yami took his chance and separated it's head from its shoulders.
Gasping and clutching his side Yami staggered into the centre of their ranks for a moment to recuperate, he had no doubt that he would be almost safe there for a short time. He removed his hand from its death grip on his side and was not shocked to find it and his clothes covered in blood. Lifting the material and then the mithril he cursed his own lack of vigilance, had the goblin hit anywhere else on his torso he would have been unharmed, but somehow (luck most likely) the other's blade had angled itself so it glanced off his belt buckle and up under the armours hem.
Where it easily pierced the soft flesh underneath.
Yami winced at the sight of it, it wasn't large but it was deep, a clean slice in his side that bled freely. It hurt terribly and the pain was making him light headed.
"Sire?"
Yami looked up, seeing Era rushing over to him with a tiny bowl in her hand and a smooth pebble covered in white goo in the other. There hadn't been enough weapons for everyone; she had apparently volunteered herself as a battlefield nurse, she always had carried medicinal goods with her. She reached him and dropped to her knees so she was eye level with his wound.
"What can you do with it?" he asked, standing was beginning to become an effort now he had stopped momentum.
She gestured to the small pumice bowl, "I can only numb it I'm afraid, your highness, these crushed snow flowers should slow the bleeding and provide protection from infection until we can reach the city. But you must be careful, even though you wont be able to feel the pain of it you still need to remember its there. Fighting with it and ignoring it could – "
"Just hurry up and do it woman!" He snapped harshly, pain making him irritable and eager to get his attention back in the battle. There was worry nibbling his heart. He kept looking, searching even with enhanced vision, but the human boy was nowhere to be found. Where was that little imp? Hissing as the cool cream-like substance met his wound he turned his gaze instead to finding Malik, a distraction from the strange numb sensation spreading from where there was once burning pain.
Finding the other busy shouting orders to the Elite, Yami called his name to gain his attention, shouting: "The boy!" Malik frowned, not understanding what the prince meant; Yami growled and yelled, "Where is the boy?"
The commander's eyes widened and he glanced frantically around the battlefield as he made his way over to Yami's side. Era stood, having finished attending to the wound, and pulled the prince's mithril carefully back down to cover it.
"I thought he was with you, Sire?" Malik spoke as he reached them, keeping a sharp eye out for any goblins that may break through the protective circle of elves around them.
"So did I." Yami growled, "Apparently humans are even worse at following orders then I thought."
"It is good the demon is no longer with us," Era piped up with a haughty tone, "He would give us nothing but trouble and feed us nothing but lies."
"I've had quite enough of your crackpot demon theories, Era, go attend someone else and get out of my hair!" Yami snapped out the order with a sharp glare, and watched with satisfaction as she scuttled away. Chastised but mumbling under her breath. It was easier to stand now, the pain had vanished entirely, all that was left was the obscure sensation of feeling absolutely nothing around the right side of his waist, but that didn't mean he was any less irritable.
"Your Highness, the boy, he could be…" Malik trailed off, death was a strange thing to elves, a hardy race that held on to life with greater vigour that any other race alive today.
"He's alive." Yami said with strong conviction, "I would have seen his body by now otherwise. But where?"
"Can we not evoke the tracking spell? His trail must be here somewhere."
Yami shook his head, growing angered with his own sense of helplessness, he hated vulnerability, he had grown up with power and knew how to use it. Yet all that power could still not find one small boy in amongst all this blood and death. "There are too many other things happening," he said after a moment, "the imprint of everyone's fighting, and the goblin's deaths will have overpowered everything else recent."
Malik sighed sadly, "They must have gotten to him. Taken him back underground when we were distracted. Shame, the kid was beginning to grow on me."
Yami bristled, for some reason Malik's words plucked a cord that made him angry. At least he thought it was anger. It felt like anger, almost.
Something steel clicked into place inside him.
He began forward, "I'm going to find him."
Malik took a minute to register what had been said, when he finally did he had to lunge to grab the prince's arm and pull him back into relative safety. "Whoa, Sir, you can't just go marching back into those tunnels with this going on."
Yami sent him his best death glare; angered that Malik would dare to restrain him, "You cannot tell me what I can and cannot do, Malik! The fact that the goblins are distracted by fighting us gives me the perfect cover to re-enter."
Malik gave another sigh and tightened his grip on the prince, who narrowed his eyes resentfully, Malik had no doubt he'd be in trouble for this later but keeping Yami alive was the top priority now. "Look, I want to rescue the boy too. The poor thing doesn't have a chance against them and thinking about that makes me want to charge straight back in there, but it wouldn't accomplish anything, Sir. He is human, his life is short, and our home is too cold for him, better to end it sooner then let his suffering continue. We cannot go back for him without giving ourselves a death sentence, you said so yourself, we have to leave him. The loss of him pales in comparison to the lives of the many."
Yami was outraged, not only was Malik telling him how to order his troops and restraining him as he did so, he was also telling him how to organise his priorities. The fact that Malik was right just made the whole situation worse. He knew he shouldn't go back in there, he knew that the boy was as good as gone, he understood that the lives of the elves were more important, and he knew how important his own life was to the people.
But stubbornly he refused to give up. Malik's reasoning just managed to rile him up and right now he was hell bent on doing the opposite of what the commander recommended.
He ripped his arm out of Malik's grip and with a scathing comment turned back to his first destination, ready to charge straight in with magic and blades blazing.
But didn't get a chance to get any further then that when his heart stopped in horror of what he was seeing.
Out of the tunnel entrance the goblin's reinforcements were pouring into the battle. A thick stream of soldiers, that seemed to never end, hundreds and hundreds of them all with malicious grinning faces and drawn swords.
He heard the elves around him falter as one by one they saw what he was wishing he couldn't. A pause, like the calm before the storm, dread entering their hearts with a plague of hopelessness.
And then they came upon them like a wave of force, swarming around them like giant hornets, and noise came back full force to Yami's ears. The screaming and the chaos. Those elves that hadn't been given swords to fight with managed to salvage their own weapons from the dead goblins and it was no longer a fight for freedom, it was a fight to the death. Endurance. How long would it be until the last elf standing was hacked down.
"Fight!" Yami yelled over the noise so all his soldiers would hear, "Focus on getting through, we can still manage it, keep fighting!"
Could they still manage it?
He honestly didn't know.
The situation was more hopeless then it had ever been. Then any situation he had ever been in before. But he had to keep them going. He refused to die.
Focusing only on his sword Yami plunged head first into the bloodbath, infusing his movements and the blade itself with his magic. Making its edge sharper, keener, making himself swift and fluid, almost untouchable.
But the longer he fought the more he could feel exhaustion begin to pull at him. It didn't matter how many he killed, another three replaced each fallen. An endless cycle that was slowly spelling his demise.
And just as everything seemed hopeless something happened that could be nothing less then a miracle sent from above.
The goblins suddenly started retreating, screeching in terror and scattering, fighting to get back underground. Yami stood, bewildered with the others for a good moment before he understood why.
An unbearable wave of heat and a great golden flickering light from behind made him spin around. He took several hurried steps backwards at the unbelievable sight that met his wide eyes.
Just before them was a giant wall of fire. Feeding frantically off the dry heather below their feet and advancing at a frightening pace. It was unnatural. Completely unnatural. Not red and yellow and flickering like all the fire he'd seen before, but bright gold and dancing and breathing and leaping like some wild animal.
"Retreat!" he heard Malik bellow from somewhere near him. And he understood as well as all the others that this was their final chance to escape. The goblins had gone, retreated to safety, now it was their turn.
Yami managed to turn his back on the hypnotising sight and burst into action, running with the rest of them down the path that had finally cleared of all but the corpses of goblins. Fuelled with new adrenaline he soon found himself ahead and leading them all to safety, reaching the end of the dry vegetation that was feeding this fire and stopping a few meters after it. Where they would be safe.
Yami turned again to watch as the golden roaring fire met the end of its run and gazed at the thick smoke blanketing the clear sky. The inferno would be visible for miles and miles; he doubted that Father would wonder where he had vanished to now. As the other elves paused to rest, using the fire as cover to recuperate for the journey home, Yami thought he saw something in the middle of that raging inferno.
His eyes snapped to it and he saw a vague shape, a figure, flicker for a moment before vanishing. There was someone there. And it wasn't a goblin.
Before he knew what he was doing he was racing back towards the now dying flames, ignoring the cry he recognised as Malik's shouting his name and questioning what he thought he was doing.
Pounding up the sloping path Yami managed to doge in between the harsher flames and find his way past them and onto a narrow, dark path that curved around the mountain as a ridge. Hearing footsteps behind him he understood that Malik had followed, a glance told him that a member of the Elite had come too. Not wanting to be stopped Yami sprinted along the path, realising that this dangerous ridge lead back to where they had started but managing to avoid the fire. He didn't know what he was doing but he knew that the person that had started that fire had helped them, intentionally or not, and he wanted to find out who.
"My Prince! Wait!"
Yami cursed Malik's insistence, his loud shouting would alert whoever it was that they were coming and he had hoped to surprise them.
Yami thundered to a stop as he reached a small plateau. Quickly scanning the area with enhanced vision and seeing nothing out of the ordinary apart from the fire over a ridge to his left, he closed his eyes and brought forth his sensory magic, allowing the sensations of wispy coloured trails of emotion to become visible in his minds eye.
Someone had definitely been here. Or something. He had never felt anything like the traces he was picking up.
At this point Malik and the Elite member managed to catch up with him, Hideki gasped, "Your Highness, please! While we still – "
But Yami wasn't interested in listening to his bumbling, he eyes snapped open, still holding onto the magic he spoke, "Someone was here."
There was silence as the other two processed this statement and evoked their own magic to check, Malik spoke thoughtfully: "The fire must have started somehow. Those weren't natural flames."
But Hideki had been too worked up by the night's events to be overly bothered about how a fire had started, "Natural or not we must move out! Get back to the city before the goblins realise the fire has died and come to finish us off!"
Yami heightened his magical sense, calling on the mountain itself to aid him, he frowned at what was revealed to him, he spoke with blunt conviction: "Someone is still here."
Malik stepped up level to him, becoming just as curious as Yami about this aura, "This trail," the commander muttered with his eyes closed, "I've never felt anything like it."
Yami had now managed to pinpoint the source of the aura that was driving his senses haywire, behind a large rock stood before them.
He walked swiftly towards it, preparing himself for a possible fight. But his feet stopped when that same bright gold glow shone out from behind the stone, the light flickering as if whoever it was had lit another large fire.
Not understanding what was happening and eager to alleviate himself from such confusion Yami surged forwards, stretching out a hand to lay against the rock for when he swung round it to surprise the other…
When that same golden fire suddenly erupted from its hiding place.
Yami wasn't even given the chance to react before it had barrelled past him, knocking him back by the sheer force of the heat it was radiating. He span round to watch its progress, a strange winged beast of fire. He could see nothing other then its shape, all other details were utterly obscured by the flames surrounding its body. Malik and Hideki had reacted immediately and were conjuring up long thin shards of ice, spears, to try and end its flat out dash towards the cliff edge.
Yami saw how close one of the spears came to skewering the creature and was forced to react, couldn't Malik and Hideki see that this was the only reason the goblins had retreated? Without its influence, intentional or not, they would either be dead or still fighting for their lives.
He dashed forward, a swift order for them to cease-fire had them confused, but he was already running after the rapidly speeding away fireball. He forced magic into his legs, allowing himself to move even faster, and found himself closing in on it just as it reached the cliff edge. It crouched ready to spring, wings flaring, Yami lunged forward, reaching out a hand to grasp its long tail.
But burning pain forced him back as if it were a physical impact. The fire that was surrounding its body had prevented him from being able to touch its tail and stop it.
He clutched his burnt hand in the other, forcing open his eyes that were swimming in the tears brought on unwillingly by the burn, and glancing up to see the burning creature vanishing into the air. Its golden glow like a beacon in the night sky. Flames creating trails of light as it flapped its huge wings. The prince could only watch it as it grew smaller and further away.
Malik rushed up to him, gaze fixed on the retreating figure, "What in all the Realms was that!?"
Yami didn't answer; he could have sworn that for a second he had seen a flash of purple gazing back at him in amongst the flames as it flew away.
They continued to watch it grow smaller in the sky, now like a star, until the flames suddenly flickered and died. Leaving nothing but a scorched mountain side as evidence of what they had seen.
-----
"Atemu. Your silence angers me. Tell me, is such an atrocity true?"
"No Father. I would never willingly stoop so low."
"Those are pleasing words. However, I believe further precautions must be taken to erase the people's growing suspicion of such a heinous activity."
"What? Precautions? I think that would be unnecessary, Fa –"
"From this night on, you are forbidden from leaving the palace at night unless pre-approved by your Mother or myself."
"But… no! Father you can't!"
"Why can I not? You are my only son, Atemu, I will not let our crown be tarnished by your reckless whims."
"For – for how long is this curfew going to hold?"
"The people have long memories, Prince."
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AN: Short chapter - only 3,600 words or something close - but since this chapter and the one after have gone through major remodeling it was nessisary. Unfortunatly it means you have to wait longer for the romance - but some hot stuff is coming so bare with me!
I've also had the coolest plot twist-thingy idea ever for later so I'm really looking forward to writing that. In fact I might do it now...
Review Please! (and the next chapter will be up in two weeks time if you do! And that is, at last, a promise I can keep.)