Chris Evans - Ashes of a Black Frost

Konowa remembered the brindos as vicious-looking, armor-plated beasts that would just as soon trample you, but he kept it to himself. Rallie had even named one of them Baby. “If they had any sense, they would have headed south and away from this,” he said, looking around at the snowstorm. “I hear there’s nothing but grassland to the far south once you get through the desert.”

“I do hope you’re right, Major,” Rallie said, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. “They deserve a better fate than to perish here.”

“Don’t we all,” Konowa replied.

The wind blew between them piling up a drift of snow on the wooden bench. Konowa absently pulled a hand out of his robes and brushed at the snow and began tracing out stick figures.

“I believe she’s alive,” Rallie said.

Konowa looked up from the snow. Visyna .

His heart didn’t beat faster as much as it beat stronger, deeper, at the thought of her. He’d done his best not to think about her, focusing instead on the task at hand. The regiment came first. It had to. The lives, and the souls, of each and every soldier depended on him. Who knew what horrors would jump out of the darkness next? Still, if Private Feylan could see a future beyond this, maybe he could, too.

Images of burning trees and exhilarating fear still raced through him, but thinking about Visyna brought memories of her power. He stared out at nothing as he remembered how she infuriated him in the quiet way she held her hurt, aggravated when she raged back at him, and cut when her eyes judged him and found him wanting. But when she smiled. . He realized he was grinning and brought his hand up to his mouth to cough.

“Do you sense something?” he asked.

Rallie stared at him for several seconds before responding. “Not exactly, but nonetheless I believe it to be true. I certainly hope it to be the case, and hope is a power unto itself. It should not be taken lightly.”

“And the others?” Konowa asked, thinking of his parents, his soldiers, and his four-legged friend, Jir.

“I don’t know,” Rallie said. “I thought it best to get them out of the way when I sealed them in one of the tunnels. Perhaps I made a mistake in sending them that way, but at the time it seemed the proper thing to do.”

Konowa reached out and patted Rallie’s arm. As soon as he did it he tensed, expecting frost fire or something worse to happen, but nothing did. “You did what you thought was best. That’s all we can ever do. I’m sure they’ll appear again.”

The chuckle from Rallie caught Konowa off guard.

“I said something amusing?” Konowa asked.

Rallie snapped the reins and the camels brayed in response. “My dear Major, I do believe you’re starting to get the gist of this hope thing after all.”

A single transformed sarka har continued to trudge after the column, its pace slowed by the increased weight of several layers of dragon scale bark. Snow and ice started to accumulate in its branches, weighing it down further. It paused and shook itself, keeping the form of a soldier though it wasn’t sure what that was. It knew, however, that this shape would allow it to continue moving, and that need burned brighter than all others.

It sensed a vibration in the wind. It stopped and raised its branches, opening its leaves to better feel the disturbance. Two objects were approaching it at great speed. It saw no reason to defend itself, however. These were more sarka har . It lowered its branches and began trudging forward again, aware that the objects were now only yards away and closing fast.

Thick branches grabbed the sarka har on either side and lifted it high into the night sky. In its short, violent life the sarka har had never been out of touch with the earth. If it had had a mouth, it would have screamed. Then the other two sarka har let go. The tree plummeted to the earth, twisting and turning end over end as it fell. It smacked into the ground with a thunderous crack. Its trunk snapped in two, its branches broke and thick, brown ichor leaked from a thousand fractures.

The two sarka har landed and approached the fallen tree, tucking in their wooden wings as they did so. Unlike their brethren, these sarka har had transformed into the shape of the dragons the eggs had meant to hatch. Instead of many small leaves they had grown green-brown skins that stretched between branches forming large wings. They had no heads, but where a jaw would be a branch jutted out lined with ten-inch thorns as thick as an elf’s wrist.

Looming over the dying tree, each took turns slashing down with their spiked branch, tearing the stricken sarka har to bits. They grabbed its trunk and pulled, ripping it in half, and then half again. With each cut and tear more of the brown ichor flowed. As it pooled, the two trees moved to stand in it, absorbing the liquid through the remnants of their root system.

As they drank, they grew stronger. The scalelike bark covering their trunks thickened and took on a metallic sheen. More thorns sprouted along the leading edge of their wings.

When all the ichor had been absorbed, the two sarka har unfurled their wings and flapped them a few times. With each up and down movement their pace grew faster and more powerful. With a final pump the two trees leaped into the air and disappeared into the night heading due west.

“Are we there yet?” Private Scolfelton Erinmoss asked. Scolly wasn’t bright, but what he lacked in intelligence he made up for in perseverance. “It’s just that it seems that we should be there by now, shouldn’t we?”

No one answered, leaving the question to chase the darkness beyond the light of their lanterns until it could no longer be heard. Boots scuffed over a thin skiff of sand on the tunnel floor in a mindless rhythm, filling the air with a rasping pulse.

The elves led by Private Kritton marched in front and behind the small band of human soldiers with Visyna. Though there was barely room to walk two abreast, Chayii Red Owl stayed at Visyna’s side. Visyna opened and closed her mouth a couple of times to speak, but each time words failed her. Chayii’s jaw continually clenched and unclenched and sweat beaded on her brow.

“Soon?” Scolly asked again.

Visyna cocked her head to the side then caught herself. She had instinctively listened for Yimt to bellow another anatomically unlikely occurrence involving a unicorn’s spleen, Scolly’s mother in the moonlight, and quite improbably something to do with cabbage. The realization that Yimt wouldn’t be answering added to the darkness.

“No, Scolly, not yet,” Visyna said, a tightness in her chest catching her breath. Visions of the dwarf falling to the floor in the library refused to go away. Anger was still in the future. Right now it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other. She had no idea where they were going or how long they’d been walking. She was beyond tired to the point of feeling light-headed with weakness. She shook the grit from her sandals as she walked, wishing she owned a pair of boots. Her thin cotton leggings and blouse were not designed for a desert environment.

Visyna recognized the beginnings of a downward spiral and tried to find something positive to think about. The caustic feel of the ancient magic in the library was gone, but even then she had little energy left to try and pull power from the air around them. And even if she could, what then? They were heavily outnumbered, the soldiers were stripped of their weapons, and the tunnel was narrow and stretched on far beyond her sight. A fight in here would be a bloody mess with little chance of succeeding. Maybe, she wondered, they were already dead. Kritton couldn’t let them live, could he?