4️

Two days, it took us forty-eight hours to clock upon the glacial mass. Castle and the baby slowed us down, with occasional injuries and food breaks it delayed our plan by a day. But none of us complained, secretly relaxed that we got to rest without having to cast an excuse ourselves. Castle didn't mind, she did what she had to. I fully believed that she hadn't considered herself a part of our team yet.

Dorin took the lead, always. Mapping the safest route and silently making sure we fared once he leaves us to do so.

I felt quite useless in the situation. I -in fact was useless. So I carried Atticus, the little one snuggled against my bust, his skin still healthy, despite ours exercised to its limits by the dry wind.

He lifts his pecan eyes and stared at me confused. I smiled at him cheerfully, he was focused elsewhere when I took him from Castle. He conceivably didn't realize the change of touch. Until now.

My hair was tied in a braid under my thick hood, and with the cushion of clothes I donned, there wasn't a need to bandage my frame into a flat one. Not that I had one worthy of flaunting. But neither were they discreet.

"How many zypen did you dose him with? He looks pretty cozy" I throw the question around for castle, forgetting to turn back for an answer. She pinches at my sleeve and replied when I sheepishly muttered an apology.

"None"

I laughed at the joke.

"We won't scold you if you took more for him. It's his stomach I am worried about"

She grounds me with her gaze, she doesn't make skits.

Dorin was far ahead to listen or too preoccupied to eavesdrop on us. Removing one of my gloves I feel for the child's tongue. They were normal. Unlike us whose temperature fevered with every breath we take. A side effect of the remedy.

He wasn't dosed.

"But how is he survi-

"The cold is forbidden from wounding a pure soul, such as a child" I stare at her in shock and awe. Annoyed with how she seemed to know of it.

"How do you know all of this? Are you a spy?"

"A spy that shared the same soil as you both? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one" I laugh, pulling out a notebook simultaneously switching Atticus to the side.

"I am, perhaps it's what I am implying. I want to trust you- but your silence Is giving me enough reasons not to" I tug at my hood to not reveal her how expectant I was.

"My Father used to work for an Armin"

With steel in my steps I stop, turning away from her- I take few sips of oxygen to hold it in. She runs to the front and hastily looks at me. We stood in the mountain steep, so she towered over me. For the moment.

"He snooped around when he was left alone, he knew of the banishment way before many did. It's how he managed to gather his fortune earlier than others could"

She took a step back with guilty when I don't respond.

He knew,

It is the word I play with as I pass her, leaving her to her wonders. She possibly doesn't even comprehend what was our situation was like outside her princess fort. Her father kept it to himself, so he could build his kingdom of ice and ruins. He rules the misery of ivyaki because he didn't kept the information to himself.

I walk, it's what I do. Trek, drag, heave, dose my blood with zypen and feel it caress my nerves into a drug-like tenderness, then warmth. For how long I tire my body, I don't anticipate until-

-Until I feel eyes on me, it was Dorin- he stood by a mass of onyx scatter. He steps back with a stagger- Castle halts beside me with a gasp, it's when I believe it. The scatter, they were not things.

One...two...three

I shouldn't be doing this, counting.

Four...five...

I should be sick, angry, defeated.

Six....seven...

I know them, why weren't they gone beyond conception.

Eight...nine...

Why are these mountains so vile, why have them preserved like trophies?!

Ten.

Ten in a mile, I drown alone and cease wishing for a hand to hold and a light to shine. The dead ones were fools like us. Or are we a fool like them?

"Three," I say when we were out of a range, behind us the grave of them stayed. Their souls in heaven, guarded and safe. I pray.

To who?

Is there someone who listens?

"What?" Dorin asks threading lightly, we haven't spoken in an hour- the sun lowered on the horizon. With the toll of deaths, we know where we stood. On its peak-in the mouth of prey. And we have no time to waste- night or day. Storm or fire. We can't stop-

"Three bodies less till I've in the count- it could be possible they-

"-are alive, escaped successfully?" it's when I saw the deadness and drought in Dorin's eyes. He was giving up as if waiting for the mountain to devour him. Us all.

Crouching with a knee to the ground I twist out a chunk of snow, letting my fingers spread them flat on my palms as I remember what I know of this peak.

The glaze, a gate binded by the powerful sorcerers, a ground that touched sky loitered with wolves so loyal that they prey on traitors fear and poison their heart when you look into their emerald eyes. Monsters lurk in shadow and shadow in light.

While us mortals sway in between, they are eternally doomed here to guide a kingdom and they do it with vanity.

I touch the patch beside a lone tree, I rest my palm upon a print of their paw. But before I search for their history or future, a low cackling of jaws reaches me. I stare at the dried bushes, Dorin took a step back in caution all while shielding Castle and Atticus.

"Timo" he speaks in a soft alarm for me.

It was mental how I can't seem to move or seize my marbles away from the beautiful creature that walks out from its hide. Its white fur seem to caress the wind itself as it stood under the silver moon and greying night- it was a mystical creature that seem to know what to do. Kill us with pleasure.

"Listen, get away from there" I could hear the sizzle of the knife being released. But the wolf, she tosses on single look at Dorin and a pack of them stroll out from shades. This time I do listen, I twist my weapon out.

And then it pounced on me.

The ring of its teeth against the blade of my knife blinds me for a moment, if I was shocked then, I was triggered now. I've trained for this moment with Dorin for years, with her mother governing every aspect of our moves, antics, and law of surprises in a fight. If castles father was a slave to a warrior. Dorin's mother was one herself.

An Armin born. Betrayed by the kingdom she served. A son with gift similar to her but yet no means to it.

I see Dorin jab his dagger into the guts of a grey-black wolf, another one reached for his shoulder. Castle shot with her gun while holding onto Atticus by her hip. While I- I rolled into a steep and ran as she came after me. Her orifices diluted with hunger for blood, I ran blindly towards a hillside. A scream rips through me as I trip on a rock, my body rolls across the slope into a bed of water.

The brutal water filled my mouth as I tear through the surface gasping for air, my bulky branched cloak weighed a human itself. I cry in pain as a hot sting grips my ankles, it tugs me into the depths of water as the wolf stood watching the scene unfold, its teeth bare for flesh. I look down to see a swirl of shadow ink the water, It kept forming into a mold of monster and dissolved with a ripple of water. It only shaped stronger with waves.

Touching me, hurting me as i fight for air.

My insides were on fire and my skin impaled, it was too cold to even be alive for this long. I try to plunge my knife into the shadow and it echoes a laugh, its hands reach my throat. It chokes me until I couldn't hold my strength any longer. I sob looking into the sick orbs of a monster, a genderless creature with claws and golden fangs, with scales and spikes that made up its skin. It must terrify me, but I was thankful.

Obliged that it was ending something or someone like me who doesn't have a future in the world of vile.

I am too naive for this.

But then something changes, in them. In its features. Like a curious alien, it touched my hair and cheek, poured its slited reptile like gaze into mine. And soon I could breathe,

I was breathing underwater, coughing out furious bubbles as I do so. And then I realize that I couldn't just breathe, I could also hear it. It's screech- the laughs that I thought were words. I understand them. Though I shouldn't. I haven't heard a language like this before.

"It's you"

It hissed circling around me like a snake,

"Its you he awaits"

For the moment I close my eyes, feel it's whisper in my heart and mind.

'Is it a scar? Is it a touch? Is it you? What earns you your life? What does he yearn with you, oh the one who sit above the highborns"

A whimper drips from me, when I get asked-

'Who are you?'

I can't think who I am. I shake my head in plea. The water though not lethal but still cold fills my mouth.

'What are you?'

It was louder. A cry of resentment as I claw fruitlessly at the dark entity.

'What does he want from you?'

It blurred, the viciousness that surrounded me. My heart slowed and my thoughts reasoned into a sleep. I was falling into a state of unconsciousness when it disappeared.

The touch, the hold. The arms and shackles around me, it dropped and recklessly somehow I found enough strength in my arm to lurch my soaked self up to the ground. I yanked my numbing body into the seam of moisture and dirt.

The wolf still stood in the place where she was, but she doesn't move from there. Hurt me or dribble with appetite. With the side of my face to the ground my breath shallows as I stare at her,

My vision blurs again.

She watched me for a silent moment,

I drift on and off.

She raised her neck to the sky,

It got dark.

I heard her call.

So...:)