Tomasz Writes Things

Søren feels that temples should be calm, with a gentle chill. And this is certainly calm, even with every pew packed, everyone a mote of serenity. But there is no escaping the ubiquitous humidity.

Squeezing into the back row, a briefing document floats past his memory. “Await contact.” He grumbles to himself, taking in the chapel and its other occupants. While the pews and floor suffer from this place’s pervasive greyness, a set of stained glass panels fill it with colour. Around the alter, he supposes, are their so-called gods, clad in starscape robes.

From the dais, clothed in coloured light, the priest extols their virtue. Søren ignores him.

Along the walls, legends frozen in glass. Dragons in red, knights in blue. The verdant greens of a promised afterlife-

Another figure pushes through the doors, clutching a duffle bag.

Søren groans inwardly.

He sits down next to him, and Søren leans over, whispering under the sermon, “You must be Rasmus.”

“I am him. You must be Søren, to whom I am entrusted.”

Leaning back Søren takes him in, a medium height unscarred man. Patina of unkempt stubble under close-cropped hair. But he sees further, picking out his thin frame, and skin unblemished with frost-scars.

“Just how much night ice-trekking have you actually done?”

The wide eyes tell him everything.

“They say the gods will provide.” Rasmus squeaks.

“Each to your own.” Søren shrugs. Nodding at Rasmus’s bag, “That’s it?”

“Everything. You have boots right? And a coat?”

“The team’s-”

Søren stops himself.

The priest, in his glittering robe, glides down the aisle.

Past them.

The hymns Søren ignored die, their music subsumed into the standing crowd’s growing murmur. He grabs Rasmus’s arm as they are swept out, slinging the bag onto his own broader shoulders.

Camouflaged by the crowd, he slips his hand inside, pawing through the bag’s contents. Soft cloth, the hard plastic of a book reader, the sudden sharp edge of a beneficent Solar sigil.

And the unyielding smoothness of a set of hard drives, such small things he thinks. Even above the suffocating throng Søren hears his heart’s nervous flutter. Has their absence been discovered? To the eyes of every guard, are they looking? Questions he cannot hold back.

The human tide pulls them to a plaza. Rasmus takes a last look around the revitalised market, the deafening murmur of a hundred conversations, the food’s oily smell squatting in his nostrils, on his tongue. The faded marks of devotion.

He looks at Søren. “Let us not delay then. This place has been… testing.”

Søren nods and they allow the waves of people to waft them across the plaza. To the gate. To the scrutinising eyes that watch it.

Søren waves his card at the guard-hutch again. “Cooling tower inspection.” he says confidently, gesturing at Rasmus. And waits for the forgery to fail.

“We’ll be back in by nightfall.” Rasmus adds plaintively.

“If you ain’t, we got till Spring to look for ya.” the guard chuckles nastily at the uninsulated Rasmus.

Outside, Rasmus hugs his arms, ice crunching under his boots, holding fast as the rest of him trembles. The cold already leaching up his legs, white-hot wires threading their way up, leaving prickling numbness behind.

Ahead, white under the city lights, the crater rim looms over Rasmus, the sky haloing it with the orange of dying sunlight.

Climbing, treading in Søren’s footprints, clouds of his breath-vapour drifting past, the aches begin. A dull, red hot pain seeping into his thighs, ice-sharpened breaths, the taste of metal in his teeth.

They crest the sheltering crater rim with dusk and silence around them, illuminated only by the fading floodlight glow from behind them, spoiling the emerging stars. Søren walks, Rasmus skids down on wobbling legs, looking out to the desolate horizon, across the ice-sheet expanse they call the White.

A muffled snigger drags his attention back to watch a glove emerge from the ice, then throw open a dark scar. Rasmus blinks and sees again, edges now visible, the picture changed and impossible to recapture, the camouflage broken.

Casting the concealing cover aside, Elle emerges, a shroud of snow cascading away, to grip Rasmus’s arm.

“Elle. You must be Rasmus.”

“Indeed.” Rasmus says though his teeth’s typewriter chatter.

Elle sighs at Søren, before pushing a steaming up into Rasmus’s bone-pale hands before kneeling, pushing Rasmus’s numb feet into crampon wrapped boots.

“Thank you.” Rasmus says, the warmth spilling through him, slowing his shaking as Søren wraps him in a proper coat. Then a grey speckled camouflage robe. Elle nods and returns to her look out.

Hauling a pack on, Rasmus’s chest screams tight for a moment, then settles down as the weight spreads out, mingling with creeping warmth. Burdened with the tools of survival; food, pills, lantern fuel. And the tools of desperation, bandages, flares, needles.

More dusty snow falls away as Elle slides back down from her vantage point.

“Movement already.”

“Ready?” Søren tries a comforting smile, “Feeling warmer I hope.”

His breath spilling clouds around them, “I am ready to go home.” Rasmus says wistfully.

He takes a final look, at the concrete domes, concrete nunataks erupting from the ice sheet. The clouds of vapour, drifting off the heat-exchangers, their peaks blackening red as the horizon steals the last light, waft into the sky.

Together, plunge onwards, leaving the horizon to swallow that place.

Wrapped in night, the ice feebly lit by brilliant stars, they press onwards followed by crunch of sled and boot and screaming wind.

With their bodies occupied and the path flat, the mind wanders, forging shadows into stalking nightmares. In their paranoia, the wind hides a hunter-drone buzz, their breathing the crunch of boots behind. But, when they turn, their eyes give no relief, with everything dark except the stars.

An epoch later, grey twilight gives way gives way to a radiant-red dawn. The featureless east horizon gives no obstacle, letting the endless White be cast in dazzling crimson.

Finally, Søren calls a halt. Too worn for further words, he and Elle pitch the tent in the lee of a snow-dune. Rasmus watches, motionless, petrified by the aches bubbling through him.

The tent is small, sweaty and dark, even with the harsh daylight seeping through the cracks. They cannot lie down without touching each other. The eternal winter tries its best to keep the smell out of the air with every gust buffeting the canvas.

Grinning evilly at Rasmus, Elle announces supper as she scoops powdery snow into a saucepan.

She flicks a switch on its side and a few minutes later, unwraps a handful of powdery bars, crushing them into the clear, vaporous, water. Quickly, it emits an alarmingly organic smell and congeals into something not entirely unlike porridge. Each taking a fat spoonful of the slop, they pass the warm pot around.

They watch as Rasmus takes his first spoonful. It is hot, meaty, even as his teeth crunch their way through the alarming grit. He manages to swallow, but can still hear the grinding through his jaw.

“How much of this… soup do I have to eat?” Rasmus grimaces.

“About four thousand calories worth.” Søren says cheerfully as he places a radio in the centre of their circle. “It’s an acquired taste.” He adds apologetically.

“-ith the low pressure system continuing sout-”

“Søren.” Elle begins plaintively. “Can we have something that isn’t the weather?”

“What’s wrong with the weather?”

“You’ve come all this way to help me.” says Rasmus, softly intruding. “I could tell us a story to pass the time. I feel it’s the least I could do.”

“Do you know the Knights of Spring?” interjects Elle.

“I rather like that one. I hope even the remarkably godless Søren can’t object. After all, are we not also knights on a lengthy journey?… Hopefully not as doomed as they were.” says Rasmus.

“We’ll be fine.” Grumbles Søren.

And so Rasmus begins,

“It began at a tournament, all the knights competing among the meadows that were, under the eye of all the Gods.

But then… the very ground opened and a grey pall seeped out. The field veiled, none saw as the Dragon of the Deep emerged. And only once it lifted, did all wail that Spring was gone, stolen they screamed.

At first, Father Sol was angry. So great was his rage, that rivers boiled and fields burned. His first victim was Keeper, branded and banished.

As he calmed, none did spy the first flakes of ice. With Spring lost, he returned to his knights and called for volunteers. Three being the ordained number he did call for the tournament to continue, so that the best may be chosen.

Gripen, with his dark hair and broad body, winner of the bouts was the first chosen. All said this was wise, for none had bested him. As prize and aid, he was gifted his spear, wrapped in silver.

Orn, who had won the climb by taking the form of a bird was second. Half wept for his coming absence, half cheered. He departed laden with gifts and keepsakes.”

“None of which would help.” Giggles Elle.

“But was also given a sword, a curved blade of glass. Which certainly did.”

“And finally, Moren, silver-haired Moren, second in all and carrier of the gods’ greatest gift was third. For her a compass, so that she would always find her way back to them.

Crossing the monolith fields, their trials had only begun.”

A squawking watch shakes them from their dreamward drifting.

“Eight hours to dusk.” Søren announces.

“Goodnight.” Elle yawns as they shuffle together. Huddled in a pile, wrapped around each other, sleep takes Søren and Elle together.

Awkwardly, unfamiliar Rasmus wriggles away as his turgid dreams drag him asleep.

Søren wakes with the dregs of the evening drowning in the oncoming night. His open eyes lock with Elle’s.

“Resist needling Rasmus. We have to live with him.” Elle whispers. “For a bit at least.”

“I like it when the people around me have a firm grip on what’s real.”

Elle rolls her eyes. “He’ll be fine. And he’s better than the weather.”

“He’ll be in for a shock then. No priests to think for him out here.”

Apart, Rasmus sleeps in dreamless depths of total exhaustion.

***

Awake now, still burdened by exhaustion, they pack quickly, surrounded by the calm dusk’s silence, and trudge onwards, letting the starlit flurries erase their tracks.

Soon, the horizon a feeble red, they turn off the road, away from its flashing marker posts and into the corridors of an ice maze, meshed pressure ridges petrified into a violent labyrinth by long still tides. As if the sea once here had frozen in an instant of storm.

The horizon vanishes, stars above them, not around. Rasmus finds it too easy to imagine their pursuers behind every boulder, concealed in the stolen sightlines.

Trudging on, talking is pointless. The uneven ground steals too much focus. The wind too irregular, switching from scream to silence at every twist in the path. His only landmark are wispy tendrils of cloud looming above, and sometimes ahead, seemingly untouched by the wind.

Then Elle’s shout stabs through the intruding roar.

“Drone!”

Immediately, the tarpaulin is dragged from Elle’s pack, Søren wrenching open its white and grey-speckled fabric while she hammers the stakes in heartbeat fast then drags Rasmus under as Søren franticly smothers the tarp with snow.

Underneath, on his back in total darkness, Rasmus listens to his running heart, their slowing pants, and the inescapable whispers of wind.

A bead of water drops on his cheek, a hammer blow of cold, itching as it creeps across his skin, leaving a trail of phantom needle wounds.

His heart begins to slow. The cold seeps through his back. Sudden stiffness nibbles up and down his legs.

Another drip punches his cheek. Aches now battle across his shoulders.

All he can do is stare at the blank tarp, chained in this hiding spot by the eyes surely hunt them.

All he can do is wait. Mind blank and racing. To peak, assuage their terror, would only guarantee detection. Idly, he feels his gloved finger dig into the snow. Hearing, feeling the creaking scrape.

Ravenous for any sensation, his universe narrows around this single action, something to displace the terror. Anything.

Scrape.

Scrape.

A deep growling snore startles him back. How can you sleep in this? He rages silently, screaming at Søren in the privacy of his mind. They’re looking for us… me and you’re sleeping?

Scrape.

Stab.

Snore.

How long now? It could have been an hour. Or ten minutes. Or a week?

Scrape.

Scrape.

His legs are numb now. Sensation spirited away by the creeping cold.

Snore.

Scrape.

Scrape.

He stops. Fingers long numb, new pain shooting its white hot wire up from the nail. A curious, cold dampness inside the glove. A sensation at least. Anything to keep the hunters his mind conjures at bay.

His thoughts fall inwards, the warmth of song and the hope of prayer softer than the ice. Here, he can speak without suffering side-eye or silence, “Hear me Storm, and cast those hunters astray. Hear me and guide us with your breath. Please.”

Eyes closed, his view is unchanged.

A quiet beep, magnified by the silence wrenches him from his dreamless stupor. The darkness has gone, Elle’s face feebly illuminated by the tablet across her knees a beacon to his eyes.

“All clear.” She yawns, her stretching hands leaving a greasy, itching trace across Rasmus’s hair.

Søren rips the tarp up, daylight flooding in, overwhelming him. The sky, the glowing ice all bright, forcing his eyes closed.

Rasmus tries to stand, but his stiff legs give way, the snow rushing back to embrace him. He flushes hot under the judgement they’ve surely made, their faces harsher when seen through eyelid slits.

Then Søren’s hands haul him up, hold him immovably he scrabbles. And finds purchase.

His rested legs scream in their stiffness as they walk on. With each long step, the sun rises, then falls from its apex.

The sky fades from dark blue to dark alone, sinking sun igniting the horizon ablaze, a ring of cloud-fire hidden by the encasing ice walls.

Dusk’s light changes nothing. Just new shadows, pools of utter darkness out of which any fear-dreamed creature could leap.

Those wisps he saw before, his only reference point, grow as they plunge on. Not into some billowing column, but into static strands of cloud, serenely hovering over some centre of this labyrinth. Transformed into a glowing ember by the sunset, it lights the maze with flickering false-firelight.

“I thought it was camp.” Muses Rasmus.

“You’ll like it.” Replies Søren.

Another twist as the brightest stars emerge, and the undulating corridor opens, revealing a cloud-hung oasis beyond. Strands of vapor spiral off a perfect circle of motionless water. Around them, the ice-ridges loom, frozen claws constricting this spot of serenity.

Looking deeper, Rasmus spies black shards, knife-thin monoliths lurking beneath. Naked under metres of utterly clear water.

Behind him, Søren murmurs, “It always looks so tempting.”

“Go on then.” Elle chuckles. “Have your lovely warm bath.”

Rasmus dips his mug in and drinks. The water stabs his teeth, scrapes down his throat. He can only splutter against the burning cold.

“It’s warmer in the depths. A bit anyway.” Søren says, pushing a genuinely steaming mug into his hands.

Huddled around his mug, “What is it down there?” He coughs, his breath invisible as his tongue thaws.

“Something from your sinful Old World. Nice and warm though, whatever it is.”

“Could it be the monolith fields my knights passed?”

“If they were ever real. I wouldn’t look for direction in something you make up.”

“Maybe inspiration instead? Can my stories not carry the spirit of what came before, and remind us what it was to walk amidst these mysteries?”

“I can’t see how they’d do that when your gods are so integral to anything?

“Oh hush.” Elle interjects. “I like this story. You can complain about it when, and this is important, Søren, we’re not stuck in a tent for three weeks.”

Once more inside, huddled around the lantern’s light, they devour the grainy gruel as Rasmus speaks.

“With no footprints to follow, they first sought the Oracle’s sanctum, a garden buried beneath a great cliff, a place of safety even today.

Yet, when the knights came to the gates they found them barred against all comers! But not locked for Moren, who did speak to the metal in its own tongue.

Gripen kneeled before the Oracle only to be met with a ravening scream, that their quest was folly, that they must turn back now to survive the oncoming winter without Spring to stop it.

But Moren’s eyes saw more than darkness. To her, strange threads bound Oracle, moving their mouth and rationing their breath. Calling from within, Moren brought forth a fire upon her palm, burning the strings, lighting the cavern with the death of those sorcerous chains…

And within those shadows, dark glass glitters in the dancing, dying shadows, revealing eater-beasts, their unholy carapace scaring under the burning string taught around their limbs.

Unburdened by thought or mercy, they leapt upon the knights as the ruse collapsed.

And lo! Did their glass skin shatter from Gripen’s blows. Did Moren’s fire melt, boil and sunder! And did Orn’s blade seek those weak-spots.

In moments the beasts were erased and Oracle’s liberated tongue spoke with force. Sending them not across the mountains but through them, to find the Dragon in the centre of its gilded web.

As they leave, Oracles spoke a final time, to leave a snake amidst their thoughts, that one amongst them will turn from the Gods’ cause.”

“Isn’t the garden on our way?” Elle asks.

Rasmus looks up from the steaming mug he cradles.

“It’s just off the planned path. We’ll be taking the next pass.” Says Søren.

“And we’re not stopping for hot food and a shower?” Exasperates Elle.

“Anyone could be hiding in that crowd.” Søren pauses. “It’s just one less risk.”

“Afraid of what Søren? That they’ll sniff us out? I’ve always wanted to see the gardens there, it’s not out of our way and we can have proper food and a shower before we cross the Red.”

“I’d… quite like to go as well.” Rasmus manages. “It would mean a lot to me.”

“Alright. Fine.” Søren sighs dramatically. “Just don’t complain when the pass is steeper than the one I chose.”

“Søren. Going inside won’t kill you.” Elle sighs. “Neither will being around other people.”

Søren leans back, closing his eyes, “Other people are overrated.”

As the conversation flags, Rasmus retreats into his sleeping bag. Away from his guides. He dreams of a thousand eyes in the ice, all watching while a maw of think black dagger teeth opens around him.

A deep groan reverberates from the ice below and he gasps awake, phantom teeth fading millimetres from his neck. Chasing the phantom, he rips out of the tent, only to see weak stars vanishing as Father Sol’s uncaring light begins its daily journey.

Panting, he sits by the pool, under slow hairs of cloud, and stares into the depths. To the dark blades beneath, not to his sleeping companions behind. Not their shared warmth he cannot join. Held back by chains of his own forging he cannot unwrap and a bitter taste he cannot banish.

For a moment, gifted from the rising sun, the oasis glitters brilliant, illumination plunging into the depths of the pool, revealing motionless depths and orderly shapes.

From it he tries to draw a measure of strength. A gift he tells himself, for it is Storm’s will to shelter as to destroy. For the warming of the ice, a caged measure of Spring can only be divine.

He tells himself again, just in case.

Behind him, the creak of snow under boot.

“I don’t know.”

Rasmus blinks, shocked back to icy reality.

“What it is.” Says Søren, now beside him, watching the reflective moment fade, and the depths be engulfed once again by shadow.

Something snarls behind Rasmus’s teeth. Biting it back, “How are you not curious?” he wails, “How are you not haunted by this wonder?”

Søren sighs, “I’m curious about the little things. The feel of the ice under my boots. The tracks that weren’t here yesterday… Mysteries are better pondered from the warm. Not when we’re five hundred grams from starvation.”

“Is that it? Don’t you think we should try to rise above mere survival?”

“Yes.” Søren says flatly. “But not now.” Leaving Rasmus gazing down.

***

The maze is no different under the morning sun. The same glittering ice. The same crumpled walls. Soon, the oasis’s vapor wisps vanish.

The sun is overhead when they emerge, back onto the plateau. Ahead, veiled in blue haze and the sparkle of dancing snow, mountains loom.  Except for the boulder-field behind them, the horizon is thin and infinite.

Without thinking Rasmus speaks to the greying sky, “Oh, mighty Storm. Take our tracks with your voice. Hide us with your cloak. Guide your faithful to the promised lands. Take us upon your omniscient Eye…”

Internally, Søren sighs. Again. Well, it’s better than him whinging all the way. Marginally.

After another moment, Elle interrupts, “Er… Rasmus? Isn’t praying for a storm a bad idea?”

Søren flicks the radio on. Muting the argument he imagines impending.

“-arning for, Repeat, Storm Warning for-”

As one, they halt, staring at Rasmus, through his goggles and into his wide eyes.

“It’ll hide our tracks?” Rasmus says, a fresh breeze nosing around their legs.

“The breeze was already enough.” Says Elle. “Now the White will swallow us.”

Rope is drawn out, and they march on, strung together.

“Surely it’ll ground the drones? Rasmus tries again.

A hazy, muffled Elle replies, “That’ll be oh so helpful while we wander till bloody Spring.”

Within minutes, the world around him vanishes. His only perception the rope forwards and back, with harsh grey light all around, the sky and ground share a monochromatic glow, eating everything, even his shadow.

“Aren’t we going to stop?” Rasmus shouts over the wind.

Feeling hot barbs rising though his chest, Søren shouts, “Your storm, my schedule!”

It does not take long for talking to be useless, Storm’s incensed roar stealing even the mightiest of shouts, leaving Rasmus alone to think a frantic string of silent apologies, to have invoked Storm’s breath so casually. Dragged on in their snare of guide-ropes, guided not by faith, but in Søren’s instruments. Rather than deserving gods.

As the invisible sun sets, the whole world, the ground, the sky, loses its glow. From a veil of white, to grey then total black from which anything could spring. Rasmus’s mind soon spawns ever more twisted eater-beasts, all ready to strike. All mere meters away.

Suddenly, something looms out, haloed by hideous backlight.

Another moment and it has arms, legs. Maybe a face.

The figure turns, and Søren’s face emerges, transmuted into a thing of bottomless crevasses and glowing peaks under his lantern’s feeble starlight.

Words still useless, they pitch the tent in silence as the wind screams between them.

Inside, it is dank cold. Breath and sweat condensing on the canvas, rivulets running until they drip, the frigid water landing like cold iron on their greasy scalps.

“Back home… we… we burned things so Storm would drink their ashes…” Rasmus stutters under the other’s laser glare.

“If you wish to reduce your burden. Or spot anything I’ve brought in excess.” Søren says with the flat grumble of tank treads. “Then feel free to burn it… And then pray your life is never in its hands.”

Elle steps in, “Our friends, the lovable knights, where were they?”

“Away from Oracle’s grotto, the great mountains rose above the wilting plains.

I’m not enormously looking forward to them.”

Søren raises a bushy eyebrow at this.

“Anyway, they bore Oracle’s wisdom and sought not their apex, but their roots. Finding their way into the Old Roads.

Descending, it was neither map nor wisdom they needed, but Gripen’s mighty strength, for they found ruin among those roots, the spirits’ cursing a Dragon’s passage..

Through rubble and rescue, they passed through the deep lands until they were away, and alone under the mountains

There, they heard a song, first muffled then clear as they pressed on.

A song they had heard before… sung as dirge at the start of this matter. A chant of Spring.

They emerged, finally, onto a bridge, crossing a great crack with darkness around, ahead, behind and below. The road warm in the sulphurous air seeping up.

Except… in the darkness before them, a figure in her robe of sky and crown of glass glowed.

Stepping closer, their lantern pushing the shadows back, chains, chains of metal and emptiness, wrapped around her, were exposed.

Gripen lunged, clamping his great hands upon the chains to tear them from the stone itself.

The chains in his palm, his fingers passed through Spring’s robe as if it were naught but smoke, heralded with a great and booming laugh from the abyss below.

As the image faded, new chains leaped up, snaking around his feet, his fists. For every one he snapped two would rise, from new cracks in the bridge. New tremors about their boots.

Jumping up, Orn took the skin, of a winged and feathered body as the bridge’s metal bones at last broke.

Moren was safe, clinging to a mighty scaled foot.

But Gripen… Gripen was dragged down, bound in cursed chains.

Diving into the fuming depths, Orn grabbed him, yet he was not free. Moren, clinging on, dragged the holy spear from Gripen’s back and stabbed its silver blade at those shimmering dark links.

Long moments later, his bindings broken, they soared up, landed exhausted on the far side. Orn shed his form and cursed the depths.

Pressing on, Gripen shouted a final challenge into the abyss, daring the Dragon to step beyond its cowardice.

With the Dragon having taken a different path home, the way was clear and soon they emerged into the sun’s warm embrace, and the cooling air.”

Exhaustion stills their tongues and they curl up, Rasmus huddling alone to face his dreams.

Soon shaken from turgid sleep, he can only listen to the incessant roar outside. His sleeping mind filling in the whispers, of foolishness and irreverence.

Crawling past their sleeping bodies, he opens the tent a slither. Immediately, Wind’s freezing hands are upon them, seeking their due.

Shaking, Rasmus casts his unlit flares out with what mote of strength he can muster. It vanishes, swallowed by the perfect darkness.

Crawling back, sleep’s barbs drag him back down.

***

Awake again, the silence, broken by small, human grunts as sleep loosens its shackles.

Outside, the sky is a perfect, brilliant blue, the ground a radiant white, painfully bright.

From the ice-haze, blinking lights become marker poles, standing guard to a line of well etched ice.

“The road!” Elle laughs. “Where better to hide our tracks.”

Rasmus cannot but smile under his balaclava. Relief mixing with bone deep ache; that liminal space of the White is over, they have reached an edge and are reminded that they are not alone! Even with his insidious exhaustion reminding him that this day is not yet over.

The ground tilts upwards. Ice becomes rock and scree. No less treacherous.

There, wedged under a sheer cliff as the ground shifts from ice to grey gravel and red dust, lies the Oracle’s temple. Once a lonely station against the mountain, bubbles of grey concrete clinging to grey stone. Now a great spreading of tents have amassed around it, a technicolour smattering amidst the solar arrays’ glitter.

Beside the hazard striped entrance, stands a blue-robed doorkeeper, spear in hand. Even though the party ahead bows deeply to them, Søren keenly imagines the boredom in their eye.

Then it is their turn.

“Hail, pilgrims. What do you seek within?”

Søren opens his mouth, but Rasmus speaks first, “Guidance for what lies ahead.”

The doorkeeper smiles slightly and looks Søren in the eyes, “but what are you here for?”

“A warm bed.” He replies flatly.

“That and more, rangers.” The doorkeeper says, gesturing at the open door. “I bid you welcome. Come out of the cold and sit at our hearth.”

***

Within, the monstrous cold’s grip lessens, only to be replaced by clutches of cloying humidity. Smothered in the greasy stink of unwashed humanity and fried food they descend, fleeting scent-motes of damp soil and pollen are a relief.

Elle sneezes.

They come out overlooking a grand waiting area. Although Søren thinks pig pen might be a better word. The hubbub is immense, pedlars’ cries, pilgrims’ chants all crushed together into a zealous, untuned cacophony.

Looking at the crowd, Søren petulantly mumbles “Do we take a numbered ticket?” as they clatter down the stairs, the metal’s ring subsumed and lost by the din.

They push into the crowd, Søren’s clammy hand tight on Rasmus’s shoulder, his other clenched against his pistol. He knows not to whom the crowd’s eyes belong, every jostle hides an imagination-conjured knife.

Within, they pass stalls thrusting their wares at them. Inscribed ribbons, sparkling as their thread frays are thrust into his face. A prayer book in exchange for his cloak. A dried flower for his pistol, a live one for his radio.

Away from the traders and scammers, the rest is people, sitting, not dense, just everywhere. Each footfall brushes skin or cloak. Sometimes skidding on something fallen, sometimes the yelp of trodden toes.

At the other edge, the crowd gives way to stuttering ventilation fans and ill-lit alleys. Stage doors for those behind the magic, and, finally, an empty table of stamped metal. Rasmus collapses on the bench still strapped to his pack.

Elle’s nose flares. “Bug Buns!” she announces, uncovers her laser-rifle and dives back into the crowd. As she burrows away, Søren examines the throng, picking out the pilgrims and the conmen, the faithful and the feigning. Who is watching him? Who is carefully averting their eyes?

A moment later, his suspicion half-sated, he sits beside Rasmus, still facing the crowd. Sweat and itch creep around his thighs.

“Living up to your divine expectations?”

“Not quite what I imagined. I suppose I should have expected this but I’m sure the sanctuary itself will be calmer. And besides, I think it’s rather beautiful in its own way.”

Søren raises a thick eyebrow.

“Look at all the station-flags they sport. All the colours at the edge of the world. But, I would say the world has come with us. Brought here by your ill-advised Oracle.”

“Few from the north though. I recognise no faces.”

“True. One can’t expect such a journey from godless heathens.” Rasmus says a mite more playfully.

The crowd begins to part, the blunt nose of a laser-rifle protruding.  Søren’s hand leaps to his pistol, arm tense, muscle memory on a hair-trigger. The human din fades and it is just his thoughts, where will their head appear?  Who is in the line of fire? More treacherously, can he care?

The gap widens. A flash of bronze hair…

And Elle is revealed, poking the last blockading pilgrim aside with her gun. Søren breaths, his hand relaxing but not leaving. Her other hand precariously bears a tray steaming with promise.

“Careful with that” he says as the beating foundry of his heart winds down.

“Paranoid old man. Now eat!” Elle announces, placing the tray between them. A pile of smooth white buns, three mugs of ambiguous soup and a haphazard pile of reasonably green salad.

The soup vanishes quickly but Søren takes his time with the rest, revelling in the sheer crisp texture of the salad, a marvellous sensation after weeks on gritty rations. The buns are soft with a filling of sweetly spiced meat.

“Ho there good rangers!”

Still slowly chewing his bun, Søren looks up with murder in his eyes and thoughts.

A large man with a larger beard, a fluorescent green jacket and an expression of alarming joviality pushes towards them.

Søren swallows, flavours fading, already missed.

“Can I help you?” he says flatly.

“I’ve fifty first time pilgrims heading south tomorrow.” He looms over the table. “Storms are likely so some expert accompaniment would be welcome.” He pauses, watching them watch him. “You’d be compensated.”

Elle slides aside, watching for whoever might hide behind this person.

“We have an assignment.” Søren replies, “I’m sorry.” He adds as an afterthought.

“The pilgrims paid well.”

“We have an assignment.” Søren repeats, feeling his muscles tighten, already seeing who might spring out during this distraction.

Behind him, the crowd ripples. Then parts.

“I’ve fifty lives. I thought you lot had a-”

Elle’s taut arm slackens, slipping from her holster.

A priest emerges, robed in blue and silver-thread. Around them, the background hum dims for the reverent and the eavesdroppers.

“You are intruding on the honourable captain. Please return to your party.”

He turns his glare, “I’m just asking-”

“There is peace in the sanctuary.” The priest says flatly. Turning to Søren, “Oracle will see you now. Please come with me.”

The crowd parts around them. Hands reach out to brush the priest’s cloak.

“So… what did we do to skip the queue?”

“Oracle dreamed of you. They dreamed a delay unwise.”

“Have they indee-”

“We are deeply honoured.” Rasmus says, cutting off Søren’s mutter.

And down they go. Past heavy curtains, the human stink and din begins to fade. Sweat and mechanic hum fade, becoming pungent earth and water rush.

“Each may ask one question. I suggest you consider it.”

Further down, concrete becomes worn stone, treacherously smooth in the humidity, the air like thin soup.

They push through a final curtain. The veil parts and artificial light abandons them to the total darkness.

***

Their eyes adjust, luminous moss on the ceiling growing brighter, its living starlight casting this place in soft shadows. Silhouetted in blackest black against this meagre light, vines hang motionless into mirror-still pools.

The only sounds are of water, insect hum and the crunch of the gravel path. All muted, swallowed up by the hungry serenity here.

Colourless plants, flowers by scent alone, attended by moths. One lands on Søren’s hand. Big, hairy. Iron threads of panic force their way up Søren’s arm, his skin recoiling from its alien fur, as he tries to brush it off.

“Try not to disturb Spring’s most ardent worshipers.” Rasmus whispers.

At the heart, a meadow of the luminescent moss under a ring of short stools. On the furthest sits a robed figure. Their face shrouded, their veil glitters in the moss-light, a new constellation of gems and silver thread. They wear the pristine night sky itself.

Søren cannot help but note the shrouded face, all the better to hide analytical eyes and convenient earpiece.

“Sit and hear.” The priest decrees.

With neither hesitation nor thought, Rasmus sits, hands clasped, knuckles white. Elle follows, her head desperately twisting around, trying to absorb every fragment of this tenebrous majesty.

Søren stands, ignoring the outraged stare he is sure burns behind his neck.

“Ask” the hooded Oracle commands. It is a harsh voice, certainty is its only intonation.

A machine perhaps. Søren wonders. Carefully directed by some distant cunning.

Rasmus speaks first, “Oh Holy Oracle, what wisdom can you provide for the path ahead?”

“When a leaf flies before you, have faith in the dark.”

Elle speaks next, “What is the monolith field we passed?”

“The sleeping spines of an engine forgotten.” Elle frowns.

Smirking, Søren is last, “Where is my friend, Fingers?”

“Upon the furthest shore.”

The final answer spoken, and velvet silence fills the air, even the moths have stopped.

“It is time to go.” The priest says softly.

On the path away, even Søren cannot resist looking behind, fearful that this garden might fade from memory. Burdened by that thought, crunching gravel becomes ringing stone then muted metal. Then they pass through the veiling curtains and step into the real world. The clamour and scent an oncoming wall, the lights blinding.

Aside, the priest murmurs to them, “Oracle has whispered of your quest. Our quarters are open.”

***

They leave the pilgrim populated stage for its wings. Lead into calmer passages and dispelled magic, where fine stitched robes hang from hooks or lie crumpled in heaps. Past messy barracks and through a chattering canteen. All suffused with idle chatter, machinery’s life granting hum and distant song.

“Come out from the cold and into our home.” The priest smiles warmly, “Sleep well and Storm favour you.” Before disappearing, back to his act.

Later, they lounge on stiff metal benches. Revel in wilted vegetables and bland stew.

For this chapter, Rasmus has an audience, the canteen around them hushed for his words. For Søren, sitting, fidgeting, under their prickly, itching stares the quiet bearing down on him.

“Beyond the mountains, glittering spires emerged, sprawled across the plain. But it was a gilded beauty, made angular and sharp under Father Sol’s revealing light.

Along the road jammed with motionless machines, they passed crude tents of those terrified by the taste of winter in the air. Desperate hands reached out, and soon only Gripen’s blessing was left to give.

“A pity you can’t eat hope.” Søren mutters.

 “Then the wall, barring the desperate from the decadent. The gateway, guarded by the infinite eyes of a thinking machine asked each in turn, ‘What would you bring to our city?’.

Gripen shouted first, that he was the finest warrior of these lands. But the machine replied that they had war-machines enough, and required nothing fettered by human precepts.

Orn went next, for surely they had need of diplomats, but told  they had dread aplenty, and ample means to manufacture more.

Moren didn’t bother to boast but spoke instead a mechanic cant, its strange syllables seduced the warden, and opened the gate.

And so they slipped  through, only to be blinded by the opulence within.” Rasmus finishes with a grin.

The shower is a tight, stainless steel affair. Inside, Søren luxuriates under a deluge of scalding water. As he washes his filth away, thoughts, buzz about his mind. He tries to push the memories aside, swat the doubts they birth, focus on heat and scrubbing hands. But Oracle’s words are not so easily drowned.

Sleeping alone on a soft bed, Søren twitches out, half waking in panic before sleep’s barbs and heavy blanket pull him back down.

***

They emerge back into the familiar grasp of freezing air to see dawnlight casting the clouds radiant pink. Once more their breath hangs before them, before the precious warmth is snatched away.

Bade farewell, laden with water, they trudge through the valley, mountains constrict the sky with every step.

It is Rasmus who breaks the wind-less silence, “They looked into your soul and future and spoke it. Surely you contend that something amazing happened, even if it was not divine.”

Søren shrugs, “Platitudes can come from anyone and mean anything. I’m sure the oracle’s carefully picked words can fit many futures. And besides…” He pauses, not bothering to smother the smirk creeping across his face. “Fingers is dead.”

“You… tried to deceive the Oracle? And then took what they said literally?”

“You can’t hide in metaphor either.” Søren says gleefully, “His body was totally evaporated. No waiting even in the catacombs.”

“Please tell me you at least appreciated the garden?”

Søren shrugs, “I suppose it was quite pretty.”

Shock hammers up Rasmus’s ribcage, bleeds from his eyeballs. Anger’s magmatic bile creeping up this throat. “I was almost understanding that you might not see the divine, but if you cannot even see beauty then you are damned beyond my words! No wonder providence has no room in your bleak soul!” 

“Many things survived. It doesn’t make your pretty garden special!”

Its survival is providence, an oasis of life lost to this world! So condemn me if I wish to find the hand of a higher power in it, to believe beauty is in this world for a reason!

“I’ve found many strange things buried, some wonderous, some, yes, even beautiful. Some of them, I didn’t understand, but they were not divine. Ignorance does not make divinity! Whoever speaks out of that oracle’s mouth must be in it for the power given how you slavishly you interpret its advice so that any success must be theirs, not earned by your own hands!”

“It is written that in every journey, the Gods hide a test. Mine is clear now but you should fear yours.”

Søren shrugs, not bothering to speak.

Another hour, silence and valley constricting around them, sheer cliffs crushing in. The path thrashing its winding way between boulders, around suddenly spotted crevices.

Eventually, the way opens, and gone is the ice, that endless White. Before them slumps a city’s pitted corpse, caged by a ring of mountains. Spines of concrete and bones of steel feebly shine under the high sun, occluded by a miasma of dull red dust.

No charnel stink finds its way to them, neither hint of ash nor hell. Not when the new wind rips all sensation away, its captive dust flensing the skin, clawing at the eyes.

They scurry to the first plausible shelter, a lost hulk’s lee, polished to scarred glinting. Its half-buried tracks the only hint of lost purpose. At this meagre shelter, the wind abates only for a new scream. An alarm shriek from Søren’s belt.

Instantly, Søren’s muscle memory takes charge. He tosses Rasmus a respirator before his hands pull it on. The gelled o-ring clings to his face, the straps clenching his skull like some over-eager mollusc.

An ancient instructor bellows from memory, working his way down the checklist. Filter. Battery. Fans. Headset. Radio.

Søren breaths. Tension and memory slipping from his body. The scents of gel, plastic and filter carbon assault his nose.

Looking over, Rasmus holds the mask to his face, but his spare fingers tug ineffectually at the buckles behind his head.

“Erm… How do-”

Batting Rasmus’s hand away, Søren pulls it tight, digging welts into his scalp.

“Some warning would be nice.” the earpiece delivering Elle’s voice straight into Søren’s ears.

“I had forgotten the wind.”

“How?”

“We forget the cold. Or how city folk forget the sky.”

A moment of thoughtful silence.

“Should we turn his radio on?”

“I’m appreciating the quiet.” shrugs Søren.

“And miss his storytelling?”

As Rasmus drinks in the view, his bloodshot eyes peering out from the mask. “So the… curse is real.” He mutters, scratching at the red welts in his head.

“There is no curse.” Søren says flatly. “Just things forgotten.”

“Søren… er… You’re sure this is a shortcut?”

 “Unless your infallible divine wisdom has a better name for cutting two weeks to three days.”

Down and down, they march to the Geiger counter’s rhythm, pushing though the jet engine gale. The city grows, then surrounds and constrains them. Boundless horizon and dust-veiled mountains shifting to walls and ruin.

Through the scab-cracked streets, past tracked engines squatting in the rubble, a new endlessness curls around their minds, every junction passed is another turn in the labyrinth, another chance to wander these roads forever, and join those human shadows, scorched into the walls.

Shadows, yet no people. The wind, dancing through door, window and building corpse is the only vital force to move this city.

Do not strain to hear the wind, less you hear its whispers too.

***

Elle watches the dead city go past, listening to the crunch of sharp dust beneath her boots.

And then, amidst the muted greys, she spots something pink, its smudge of washed-out colour radiant in this drab urban corpse.

Pausing, she levers a crumbling slab aside, the wind scouring the grit away. From its nook at the bottom, trapped between rubble and road, she pulls it out. Holding its soft fur, her thumb idly brushes down the tufts, its surviving black bead eye watching her masked face.

It must have been vibrant once, even with its colour hidden from the wind that now animates its limbs with a facsimile of life. Elle has no name for the creature it imitates, but she looks up from its faded smile and fancies the ghosts pressing in. The mask-muted wind becoming forgotten words.

She looks up, gazing at a family of flash shadows etched in stone. Then down again, back to its soft smile and missing eye.

For a time, she is still, mind silent with thought. Then, kneeling before the smallest shadow, she entombs it once more.

***

Ahead, Søren has stopped.

Before them, slumped in the road, an eater-beast lies. Shards of its carapace glitter from the road’s cracks. It is a mass of black glass, as if obsidian could have lived.

He creeps closer. Boots suddenly soft against the ancient road. He steps over a tapering needle-leg and slowly, heart not disturbing his aim, pushes his rifle into its motionless maw.

Glass crunches behind him, a beast it must be his fear decrees. He spins, rifle raised and trigger tense.

“Not a good supper option.” He mutters, forcing his arms down.

“Yet you said there was no curse.” Rasmus says with a trembling voice. “I keep expecting more than silence from these streets.”

“They’re just animals.” Søren states.

“Tell me how that lives. With glass instead of flesh. How can you doubt the Gods when demons are abroad?”

Elle steps between them, glaring at Søren.

Ignoring her, “I’ve fooled them plenty of times. And they die when I shoot them. So I feel safe calling them animals however they work.” Søren pauses for a moment, “Besides, if your gods are so powerful why haven’t they removed them, nothing to eat out here but us.”

“Then this be a test. Did Oracle not warn us?” Rasmus says, “But I’m glad you are so confident in besting the Abyss’s servants.”

They look up as Elle shouts “Shelter ahead!”, gesturing at a harsh green flag, luminous against the rusty sky.

“Pointless arguments at the door please.” She mutters as they regroup and move on, pulled now by a nearby end.

***

Across the flag marked threshold, the roaring wind is vanquished. Instead, cunning gusts creep through the cracked wall, sneaking into joints and folds, freezing the tender skin beneath while the rest drowns in clinging sweat.

They trudge up the stairs, metal singing under their boots, exhaustion’s barbed hooks sinking deeper.

Up and up.

Then, the wall gives way and the city lies below them. Red dust-stained roads. Dry beds and open craters. They do not linger, exposed again to the wind’s urgent testament. Let the ghosts worry about what the wind carries they think.

Finally, they reach a stout door bolted to the ruin. Inside, great windows welcome dusk’s feeble light. In the centre, a lamp hangs, its cable taped to bare metal.

Søren flicks the switch and slams the door. Bulwarked against the wind, a new whir then roar seizes their ears as fans spin up. The ever-present hanging dust, glittering in the dusk swirls around them then vanishes into the vent.

The air clear, they peel their masks off. The stink of plastic and carbon replaced with the dull stench of metal, with hints of ash. The lingering smell of sweat, however, is not so easily cleansed.

Warmth creeps its way back in, revealing itches gnawing away at sweaty skin. Water is measured then drunk, a thimbleful of soothing for their throat as aches blossom in their ribs.

Elle leans into Søren’s ear. Ribs bound tight in the iron of nebulous fear. “What do we do if there are more of them? Nail one and the rest will hear.”

“I know” Søren says over his rhythm of stir, sizzle and stink. Nudging the damp paste towards edibility.

“And you said this path would be easier” Rasmus says pointedly.

“I said quicker.”

With naught but a starless night without, Rasmus continues his tale, as they force down nutritious gloop with only a few drops of water.

“It was a city of gleaming spires, yet under its skin they saw the crushed and the forgotten, starving amidst heaps of rotting food. But those sights were stolen as the snake of enchantment coiled around them, snared in the gilded web so that the Dragon could pluck them into the centre unresisted.

Orn was trapped first, snared revellers’ siren song, it was not long until he danced to their hymns, the beat blocking the hungry without.

Moren was next, seduced by the words creeping from a great lecture under wilting trees. Where the forbidden was known and the divine doubted.

Then Gripen passed a temple and saw perfect images and radiant window-scenes in resplendent praise of the Gods. Enthralled, he stepped inside, caught in music, blinded by the beauty of the psalms. Then he heard the words, instead of praising the Gods, they merely praised themselves.

First to Orn. Who Gripen found among a throng hanging on his every word.

Then to Moren, he had to dredge out, fighting the chains sinking her into faithlessness’s suffocating mud.

As Gripen dragged back their duty, he found himself watching the new glint in Moren’s eyes. The spark of the unholy as yet unfaded as they made their way to the palace and the Dragon within.”

Huddled in robes and with each other, even as noises seep through the filter’s groan, exhaustion drags them down to where the ghosts cry and the wind talks.

They snap awake at dawn’s light. The dead city’s screams echoing through their fading dreams.

***

Outside, the new dawn has changed nothing, again illuminating spirals of dust, still trapped in their aimless commute. Trekking onwards, they walk in a viaduct’s cracked shadow, hidden from the roiling sky, pathing around curtains of drooping rails.

Elle’s gaze flows along, scuttling across the endless scoured concrete they pass, lingering on cracks, taking in the motes of colour hiding within. Sometimes a larger fragment, a curve or line, but nothing whole.

Behind a mauled tank, a shadow twitches. Elle freezes.

Motionless, her vision and mind focus down. Bewitched by her imagination, she watches the shadow grow spindly legs as grey sunlight shimmers across glassy carapace. The deepest shade, her mind fills in as ravenous maw. Above even the wind, she hears her heart race.

Yet it has not moved. A certain swaying of leg, but without pounce.

Her fevered mind searches itself, lessons, lectures and stories. Søren’s calm voice speaks from the pulpit of memory.

It’s still there.

Slowly, with unshaking hands held taught by irons of fear, she raises her laser rifle. Through the sights her world narrows further. Lessons become dissections.

It’s still there.

Another gust, a spray of dust, and a scrap of black cloth sails out from the shadow, iridescent for a moment as it twists on the wind.

The illusion collapses. She breathes deep, lungs straining against her mask’s filter, a terrible itch worming its way across the face seal as her awareness expands. The city, Søren and Rasmus, ghosts and all return to her.

Ahead, they have stopped, weapons at hand. She looks into Søren’s grey eyes. Then past. To every shadow, every spot of darkness.

“I thought… I thought…”

She forces another breath through that suffocating filter.

“Movement.” She shakes herself. “Just a scrap of cloth.”

Søren shakes his head, hugging her tight. “You should be in front with those eyes.”

“But… what if I jump at everything?”

“Better the long stone way, than the short ice.” Søren quotes.

Onwards they go, but closer now. Hands held a heartbeat closer to the trigger.

From Rasmus, whispered prayers seep through the radio, beseeching Storm and Sky, litanies for fear and beast, doing nothing to slow his heart or darting gaze.

“This is a tomb.” Rasmus says. “I don’t think we’re welcome amidst the spirits nor their bones.”

“I’ve never found any bones.” Søren shrugs. “Besides, you were fine in blizzards.”

“The White’s wind didn’t carry a thousand final breaths.” Rasmus retorts.

At its mention, a new gust noses around their boots, tails of suspended dust behind.

“Nothing good comes of listening to the wind. Its words won’t kill you but chasing them will.”

“This is more than a wind, Søren.” Rasmus takes a wheezing, gulping breath through his respirator.

More gusts join in, brown haze suffusing into the air around them.

“Rasmus may have a point, Søren.” Elle says soothingly “Would you not follow a wind which carried cries of help?”

“We don’t need another religion.” Søren scoffs. “Wind forecasts a storm, and the dead are ash or ice, nothing more.”

Then sudden, smothering silence.

The gusts have fled and everything is still. Motes of rust and glass hang in the air around them, a private galaxy of dancing stars glitter around them, slowly extinguished as the light fails.

Søren grabs Rasmus’s hand and starts to run. Dragging him through the dimming world.

Running, indistinct shapes loom out of the dust storm. Most are bare hints of ruins’ shadow. The rest are immediate: scoured wrecks landmark enough for the next few paces.

On and on, eyes and ears useless, radio a roaring hiss, their only sense their hands and feet. The needle-itching sweat on their brows. The fragments scraping between heel and sole.

And the hot crush of their hands in another.

Then another hulk, polished silver, grey treads unwound emerges from the dust.

Hoisting himself two meters high, a mountain in the slippery dust, Søren gropes at the machine, gloved hand pawing at its waxen features.

Then a handle.

To the scream of metal and muscle, he hauls on it, the hinges’ shriek unheard.

The hatch clangs open, unlit by the vanishing sun, he sees nothing in its tenebrous bowels.

But it will do, he thinks as he hauls them up, across and in.

Above, the hatch groans shut with sarcophagus finality.

For a moment, a crushing heartbeat, the darkness around them is total. The wind’s hunting howl muted, the only sensation is the boiling cold of the dead metal, seeping through their clothes to burn their skin.

Then there is light, Elle holding an electric lamp.

Behind her, and extra face grins back white bone dancing with the lamp’s swing.

Rasmus yelps.

Another heartbeat.

Elle lunges away.

Søren draws first, casting a brilliant green dot on the interloper. It quests about, orbiting head and neck.

Another beat and his swaying dot is duplicated.

Then everything is still. Arms held as muscles scream. Choking on their own breath in strangling masks. The walls crushingly small as distance shrinks, this mummified intruder closer and closer.

Heartbeats hammer past.

And all remains still.

Except for the fairy-flicker of the laser-sights.

Almost as motionless, Elle raises the lantern. Fathomless pools of darkness become empty eye sockets. Jutting tombstone teeth turn from maw to mouth, frozen in a rictus grin.

Edging closer, Søren’s laser passes through the skull, emerging behind, orbiting a pock-mark dent in the wall.

His knee nudges a pistol, still clenched in desiccated hand.

“Probably dead.” Elle says, one hand holstering her gun, the other keeping the lantern aloft.

Søren nudges the body, the head lolling spinelessly as it slowly topples over.

Crushing focus melts back into exhaustion, dragging down arms and slumping shoulders.

“We could go-” Elle stops suddenly. For a moment, the storm’s song seeps back in, played on cracks, surfaces and echoes.

“No.” Søren says, his eyes flickering over the corpse.

“Extra audience for our story time then. I bet e’s a good listener.” Elle

“At least they’re unlikely to interrupt me.” Rasmus’s words hang in the air. “Where did we get to?”

“Wasn’t this dragon thing going to finally finish this story for us?”

As Rasmus begins, Søren pries the pistol away. His mind listening, his hands break it open. Six rounds within. All spent.

“Yes, so… Before them, lounging in its gilded nest, the Dragon of the Abyss lay, its glass-scale skin riddled with pustules.

Before Gripen could bellow, Orn held him back, pushing him aside to, to spar tongue against talon they thought, but no, he stepped forward to kneel.

“Cowards.” Søren interjects half-heartedly.

“Isn’t it a trick?” Elle replies under Rasmus’s hard glare.

“Orn beseeched the Dragon, that even this city would run silent if Spring went unreturned, all it would rule would be a world frozen for her absence. Behind him… Moren held Gripen back, rage pulling his hand to his blade.

Yet at this the Dragon merely laughed, even as the first snows drifted down, that Spring ruled even now in the Abyss, happy to have escaped the bickering madness of your pantheon. That she asked and I did answer.

This was too much for pure Gripen, who hefted his Gifted spear and bellowed, demanding Spring be returned to her rightful place.

The Dragon glowered at the righteous knight and stretched. Every pustule on its carapace bursting in turn. Each expelling a ravenous beast of the Dragon’s own dark glass skin. Before sinking into the soil, leaving a fetid sinkhole and its last taunting words.”

Enthralled, no one sees Søren pocket the pistol. He leans back, feeling its comfortable bulk on his thigh.

He glances at the corpse. Fortunately, unmoved.

“While Gripen could dodge and impale, while Morn could rip them apart with a gesture, Orn, tender Orn, was pushed back against his sibling knights under their animal onslaught.

Many fell, but suddenly, between heartbeats, Orn was dragged into the mob, its writhing mass enveloping him.

At the moment the fangs sunk in, the moment of Orn’s final cry as his sword fell from his hand, the sky opened with an almighty, holy flash as Storm’s wrath descended. Sinner and saint both were swept away, their shadows cast into the cursed stones.

Another instant, and Storm’s typhoon became one of flensing glass, seeking those who survived the first judgment, silencing the city’s siren song.

Within such rage, Gripen and Moren could go nowhere but follow the Dragon’s tunnel, that breathing, gasping gullet into the Abyss beneath. A lingering glow forbid any backward glance.

Behind them, as Storm’s wrath abates, a sickly, black-metal snow began, smothering the buildings he blew down, leaving only the upright sword, standing proud amidst the righteous desolation.”

“Explains the ruins. And the shadows.” Elle mutters with closing eyes.

“I would not be sure. They hid plenty of things.” He says remembering the stories and images dredged from ruins, and those seen with his own eyes. The awful tales stolen from the world-that-was.

“Levelling a city is an act of the Gods. Not for our hands.” Rasmus says with a deep yawn as the story slows and exhaustion drags them down. “I hope.”

They dream of a scratching beast in their belly, as the corpse chatters away, its words swept away by a silent wind.

Then the city parts and spills away and they stand in a valley, behind, its steel bones scar the sky, singing them a last song in an orchestra of metal groans and wind notes.

Ahead, dry mountains raise, time-mottled red rock filling their eyes and future but for now the roads are thin and the towers now desiccated bark.

Ahead, the ground has crumpled as if stone and soil had flowed like water for an instant.

Søren watches Elle climb this impromptu ridge. Watches as she looks. Watches as she dives down and clings to the slope.

Sprinting, then crawling up, hard pebbly soil grinding against skin and mask, Søren edges an eye over.

First, he sees the eater-beasts, over legged obsidian monoliths.

And knows they are dead.

Rasmus reaches his side, peeping too, joining his motionlessness.

He wonders how long their unwashed stench will take to betray them.

Still staring, his mind sweeps what he carries, presenting a litany of uselessness. He hears Rasmus gasp and push binoculars to his mask.

Then he sees.

Sees that which the beasts stand around; a pristine slab of stone wrapped with vines of petrified bark. From them bloom petals of glass, visible only by the glint of their edges. Within, glowing even under the dusty sun, a curved blade.

He doesn’t want to, but the word altar creeps into his brain.

“Isn’t that? Orn’s sword? From the story?” Elle squeaks.

“Just as described.” Rasmus weeps with awe.

“Bloody creepy.” Elle says.

“Do you not believe now, Søren? Doubt the sayings of the Oracle maybe but your own eyes?

“Not with the ghosts I’ve seen.” Søren murmurs.

“Not now.” Elle says sternly.

“Anyway. Most things have some truth somewhere.” Søren mutters to himself.

Creeping back, they step between islands of stone, every crunch of dead soil too loud. Around they go, their ears haunted by clicking glass leg, eyes haunted by the altar, unable to blink away the afterimages.

Rock and shadow envelop them as the crag gives way to a deeper dark. The sudden absence of the wind-roar leaves their ears humming. The only sounds now are the rustle of cloth, clink of boot and slowing throb of heart.

“I can give no directions now. Like them, we are now beyond the Gods’ sight.” Rasmus muses.

“I never needed your story.” Søren mutters. “I’ll put my faith in seismic surveys, I think. Not your half-history half-hogwash.”

“It guided us this far! How can you say it cannot guide us further? Where will you get the will to carry on?”

“Entertainment is one thing! But you’re a fool to trust your journey to them! If I’d followed your ‘gods’ you’d lie forever on the White!”

The passage widens into a chamber under the mountains, its floor of stone treacherously smooth. The onward passage a tempting orifice, half-lit rock curves dancing in the swinging lantern-light.

They collapse.

Air is checked and masks removed. The cave has a tang of ice and metal, encased in total silence, the whispering’s absence loud.

Their bedrolls do little to cushion the stone’s strange contours as they huddle around the lantern. Its steady light and meagre heat quickly stolen by the cold rock.

“We all saw the sword.” Elle says quietly. “Maybe there is truth is your tale?”

“Holy truth. Tongues reforge stories, but holy truth remains…” Rasmus says wistfully, reverentially.

Søren, sitting in sullen silence, raises an eyebrow and holds his writhing tongue.

“Hey! Everything’s got a grain of truth somewhere.” Elle interjects. “Could it be these gods are leaders, or even just people of the old world, deeds we cannot understand twisted into myth?”

“But the gods live! They walk amongst us!” Rasmus replies “and you too have seen now! Søren! You asked for evidence and they did provide! Touched by the Gods themselves, even you must see that the blossoming is a miracle! Life in this sarcophagus of a city, you had the gall to call a short cut! If only we could have returned it!” he pauses, tongue clouded by awe.

“You’re welcome to go back for it.” Søren spits. “You better have a coin for your ferryman.”

“Please.” Elle says softly, yet silencing Søren and pulling Rasmus from his rapture. “Just one more night in these caves. Then we’re home. Nearly anyway. Besides, it was a good choice of story. The oracle and the dead city.” Elle’s voice trails off…

“Another sign of their hand, we walk a holy path.”

Once more, ration paste is heated, passed round and forced down. Rasmus continues his tale with Søren staring at the cave wall.

“The loss of their sibling-knight on their cheeks, Gripen bellowed at Sky and Storm, a final goodbye lest they never meet again. And in reply, wettest snow did fall, the path ahead treacherous with bitterest grief.

Into the depths and the Dragon’s realm they descended now. Armoured and gifted yes, yet dragging a wet cloak of fear.

Then, the stone steps ended, and they did stand upon a beach under a stone sky, there, they came to a crowd, listless and half-faced, gripping their coin and waiting at the river’s edge for the ferryman’s hand.

Pushing through the unjudged dead, where the waves sunk into the sand around a boat, they met the ferryman. He was silent as the unjudged flowed past them. Bowing, Gripen spoke first, offering the prescribed coins.

Speaking at last, he said that there was naught he wanted from the living, for nothing could be carried across.

Denied even with their destination in sight, Moren did not stop Gripen’s steps into the water, where every crest showed a tormented face.

Suddenly, before Gripen was lost, the Keeper, clothe-ed in red, rose from that roiling surface of damned souls.

At first, his feet corroding, Gripen saw the Keeper’s face and called her Spring. Pulling back the water, she told them that her twin was ahead, but beyond her remit. Though the doorway.

Moren, brazen Moren, interrupted the Keeper, petitioning her for a token such that they could return to the land of the living, Spring in hand.

Tearing a crimson strip from her robes the Keeper declared “Fly this pennant on the dead shore so that I should recognise you amidst the judged dead.” To the kneeling ferryman she decreed their passage.

Gripen bowed, and bellowed thanks to her as she slipped back beneath the waters, as they stepped aboard that swaying boat.

But upon that distant shore, Moren and Gripen did again fall to strife, for Gripen, mindful of Father Sol’s parting whispers, did not trust the Keeper’s gift. Angry to at Moren’s irreverence they began their final journey, watching each other far more than their path.”

With the chapter finished, sleep, dreamless, ghost-less sleep quickly wraps its hands around them, dragging them down.

***

Awake and walking yet still wrapped in their dreams, the passage undulates around them, its uneven surface animated by their stride. They turn a corner and the walls and ceiling fly away, cloaked now in distance and darkness as they pass into a cavern.

The clean tap of footsteps on stone becomes the crunch of gravel, then the soft hiss of sand as the entrance fades behind them. The air is motionless, their breath spilling around them, haloed by Elle’s lantern.

Without warning, an invisible vice clamps around Søren. The air hardening, pressure forcing needles though his eyes and ears. But no wind, just silence and imagined whispers. As if the air crowds them. Crushes them.

Pushing through, the sand becomes ice, and the grinding crunch of sandy boot doesn’t quite blot the whispers out.

A few more steps, and Søren feels the pressure vanish. Looking around, everyone is standing a little taller. Behind, nothing but frozen beach. He shakes the memory away, clinging to rationality.

“The dead wait upon a river’s bank.” Rasmus says flatly. Søren scoffs, but privately, there should be silence here in the depths of the world, yet he cannot quite shake the whispers seeping into their circle of light.

He forces a chuckle. “Good thing we’re not dead then!” His voice rings out, returning with irregular echoes.

“It feels like quite a queue…” Elle murmurs, entranced by the ice beneath her. The things that slither and ripple below it, an illusion her moving lantern, she thinks.

Surely.

“Crossing the river, they met the Keeper” Rasmus says with a twinge of reverence, trailing off into silence.

“Your fantasies are not helpful. They won’t tend your wounds should you slip.” Søren spits in reply.

“She seemed friendly enough.” Elle shivers.

Trudging on, words become effort demanded by muscle. There should be silence but Søren shakes his head at the inaudible whispers. His inner ear itches a slow, feather light, itch, tempting, begging him to claw them out.

With each step, the lantern’s circle jerks forwards to reveal another boulder of turbulent ice, replacing the ones subsumed by the darkness behind them. Only the faintest glimmer suggests a far shore. Or even a ceiling. It could pass for night, were the stars to be extinguished.

Here, past the shore, Rasmus leads, with Søren glaring at his backpack.

Many steps later, he speaks “That whispering. It’s the wind, right? Just the wind?”

“It is the dead on their journey.” Rasmus states.

“No. No!” Søren shouts now. “Enough with your fantasy! To the depths with your gods! What am I hearing?”

“Grant me patience.” Rasmus groans. “The dead whisper around you, we have seen, seen! Orn’s sword with our own eyes and you still think this to be a matter of delusional faith! You asked for evidence and it was delivered and you still deny? My mind is settled, my faith stronger for it is you, you! Who built a fantasy of what this world is and cower from what seeps though the cracks in your defective world view.”

“So for every strange thing, for every silver lining, you must have a god, yes? Because nothing you do belongs to your own skill, everything is theirs and when you find a strangeness, something beyond you, you think, there is not discovery, no attempt to lift yourselves above this world and understand it, there is and only the mystery of why you then act surprised why you have a world you cannot see when you haven’t lit a bloody light!”

“Oh shut up. Both of you.”  Elle spits. For a moment there is just their trudge, the crunch of ice. “Six more hours. A camp we’ve damn well earned. Then it’s downhill all the way. So if you’re nice and quiet now, once we’re home you can have a cathartic screaming match where neither of you have guns and then we don’t have to ever speak again.”

Rasmus opens his mouth…

“Good!” Elle shouts, clapping her hands, glaring at both of them.

More silence. More whispers. Trembling exhausting creeps up their bones, numbness spreads across their shoulders, its tendrils pulling shut their eyes.

Glinting hints, suggestive of the far wall but naught more than shadow become glowing peaks in the uneven stone. Even closer, their dim light peels back more blackness, the featureless grey rock becoming patterned, detailed and veined.

The creaking, clicking of the ice fades to echo as they sink into the shore’s sand. Before them, perfectly carved from the rock, an archway looms, ready to engulf them.

Closer, lantern-light shimmers off silver within its throat, the sudden reflection burning a green scar into their vision, flickering with every blink.

Closer, shimmers become stars and stars become lines.

And lines become bare branches, roots flowing through cracked stone. A misshapen tree blooming to fill the growing passage, its bark gleaming under the lantern seems not of metal, but light.

Under it, crushed in a cocoon of silver bark, a desiccated body. Gripen’s long hair hangs motionless, his eye-sockets empty.

Chill gripping her veins, Elle forces her mouth open to spit strangled words, “How does the story end?”

“Moren is seduced by the dragon. But plants are Spring’s work” Rasmus mutters.

Beside it, a spear, cast in silver with a leaf-shaped point, lies. Rasmus slumps penitent to his knees before it. He reaches out to caress the scenes etched along the blade, dissociating rapture flowing from his fingers.

“Maybe your scripture isn’t quite the whole truth then.” Søren says, the thought escaping his lips.

Wrenched from his vision, the divine hands that once so close to his own evaporate. Boiling wrath bubbles through him.

“How dare you.”

His hand shaking, Rasmus reaches, grasps the spear. He bares it aloft in tender trembling hands, tears choking his voice.

“It is clear… now… we were meant… meant to find it.”

He turns back to Søren so that its point, bearing the shape of a leaf none can name, floats between them, rising and falling with Rasmus’s haggard breaths.

“You were a test.” He says quietly. “Only the faithful.”

“Rasmus.” Søren says. Eyes transfixed by that glittering, sharp point edging towards him.

Inside his coat, rubbing through sweat-matted hair, his pistol itches.

“Put the spear down.” The soft words echo in this silent place.

“Only the faithful.” Rasmus mutters to the spear. “But the faithless…”

He looks at them, his eyes wide, as if taking them in for the first time all those epoch days ago.

The spear lunges, dragging his white knuckles along.

The iron cables of Søren’s muscles jerk, half-remembered training throwing him aside, and into a blossom of flashing red pain against the sharp rock wall.

Pushing himself up, he watches Elle’s cloak fall from her sidearm.

For a single heartbeat, the shadows change. A blue spark snakes its way across the stone, leaving a green-black line to be blinked away. A clatter in the rushing quiet as the stun dart bounces around.

Elle falls back, clutching at the crimson gash dripping across her face. Through her fingers.

A few drops slap into Søren’s beard.

The itch wins, drawing his hand to the warm metal. Draws the pistol out.

Elle is shouting now, her words mangled in the harsh reverb, deafening and inaudible to Søren’s ears. From below, Elle’s shocked sobs come too fast, each a moaning hyperventilated breath.

Amidst the human din, Søren fires.

The bullet ricochets down the tunnel, an echoing animal snarl screeching at every corner heard alongside the shot’s reverberating punch a hot pain stabs through their ears.

And then there is silence. Ringing silence.

“Rasmus.” Says Søren softly. “Put it down.”

He steels himself for the bitter taste of compromise.

“We… We can take it with us?” He tries.

“Take it…? You would have me abandon this holy place in the name of your narrow-minded drab world?” Rasmus shouts.

“Can’t we come back later?” Elle squeaks, holding a pad across her face.

Suddenly Rasmus’s eyes are wide with revelation.

“This was foretold.” Rasmus sobs, staring at the spear point between them. “We stand at odds with a leaf between us.” Taking a haggard breath, “Gods guide me.” He whispers.

Instantly, he jerks away, bounding erratically across the treacherous floor, swallowed by a gaping tunnel.

Stunned, for this moment, they are motionless, watching Rasmus vanish into the downward path’s darkness.

 “Go! It’s a shallow cut!” Elle says, pushing a device into Søren’s hand. “I’ll head up and see if Freja can lend a hand!”

Søren nods, ignites his lantern and strides after Rasmus, lead by the electronic ear he holds, shown the path as it hears uneven steps ahead. He shivers, a wave of cold shaking his sweaty skin as Elle’s beacon fades with ever further step.

Away from even their small, human, noises, there is only deafening silence, shattered with every footfall, with every breath. The only light, the puddle cast by the lantern he drags. The only smell, the taste of metal in his mouth.

So lost to total focus, his only world the path the machine has marked, that he does not hear another sound rise from the rock.

First, it merely haunts his screen, so faint the machine alone can hear, enough to cloud its ears and confuse his way.

Then, it comes to his ears, moments of an echo, notes, motes of music lost and wandering.

With more steps, a longer sprint, a deeper strain, the hum turns to harmony.

More stone, a long step over white roaring water. Still slaved to the failing path.

The medley becomes melody, drowning out the silence.. and those faint foot-falls Søren chases.

He stops. Rasmus’s trail smothered under song. Alone in the depths. Alone in the dark. Treacherous thoughts catching up. The music is all around now, flowing from the very rock. The cold rock in which Søren can feel only his slowing heart beat.

Mixing with the music hanging in the air is an earthy, almost cloying, petrichor scent.

Søren stops, breathing, trying to think over the beat in his chest.

He checks the screen again, and there is just the music. He could be entombed with an invisible orchestra.

Motes of relief and terror shake though him. Relief, his body loosening at the thought that this is no hallucinatory haunting, but safely real. Terror, everything tightening, for what could sing at the bottom of the world?

Lost down here, chasing only the ludicrous faith in his heart, where would he go? Down which gullet would one follow his faith?

He looks again at the screen, the machine he clings to. His fingerprints glitter on its case.

Straining against his own thumb, he clicks it off.

And follows the music.

***

Lantern-light gives way to a meagre glow ahead.

The claustrophobic passage gives way, unveiling a lake, maybe an ocean hidden behind the blinding dim glow of a tree rising from the shoreline, casting everything silver or shadow.

From a pool of darkness a spearhead lunges towards him.

Instantly, he grabs it, crushing it in his sweaty hand, holding back the leaf-shaped point as it dances between them in Rasmus’s fevered struggle.

It slips. A millimetre closer.

Then again, closing on Søren’s eye.

He tightens his slipping grip, his attention snagged on the point creeping closer so he can only watch, detached and ambivalent as his other hand raises the gun.

The trigger pulls his finger back.

With the echo, Rasmus’s cry and clattering fall, he cannot hear the music’s sudden stop.

For this heartbeat, as the ringing dies, Søren gazes over this oasis. For this heartbeat, the branches are bare, the shimmering patterns in the petrified bark, simple.

The moment passes, and he looks down. A new colour spurts into this scene.

Red.

Bright Red.

From Rasmus’s leg. Already a pool. Already creeping towards the water.

In a single moment of total horror, Søren’s mind is crushed, frozen. Reduced to screaming at the world and what his own hand begat.

But his hands remember what can be tried. Unburdened by his anguish, dragged by rote and memory.

His hands do not panic.

They clamp Rasmus’s hands onto his wound and wrench a tourniquet about his thigh.

“Sorry. I’m s-sorry.” Rasmus moans from his paling face. His damp hand clings for a moment to Søren’s coat. “I saw. I saw.”

Søren is silent, tongue bound in chains of guilt.

“Sorry.” Rasmus sighs again.

Slashing Rasmus’s soaked trouser away, Søren barely registers the deepening welts, the spreading bruise seeping from the tourniquet’s grip.

Still the blood comes.

Then a whisper. “Doctor…” Then from all around or deep within, “This needs a doctor’s hands.”

I know! I know! Søren tells himself, memory dragged back to the voices, beyond hearing, heard upon that frozen river.

He paws at the underside of the bleeding leg to find only unbroken flesh. And more blood.

But Rasmus’s eyes are wide, “She whispers.” he whimpers.

His hands bandage tight, each layer soaked crimson before the next wrap.

Pushing aside the whispering fogging his mind, a wet hand grips Rasmus’s arm, canula in the other, and tenses.

Suddenly, Rasmus writhes under Søren’s hands. Scratching against the canula before it can be jerked back. For the same moment, the pool boils cold.

Ignoring the water, Søren pleads, “Lie back, lie back”

The next instant Rasmus is still once more, the water again serene. Looking through tears at the tree. Søren plunges the canula in.

Nothing behind but the tree he tells himself. Nothing at all.

Amputating that mote of fear, he flicks the cap off a syringe. The clatter of its distant landing thunder in the silence. Holding it to the light, he pushes a few drops out before pushing the clear fluid into Rasmus’s canula.

Nothing behind him he says again.

Another rummage through the medical kit, the treasure chest of life. Out comes a heavy bag, its fluid contents sag around his fingers.

In the excruciatingly long now, he looks at the rate limiter, tries to think, tries to remember that table on that wall in that classroom.

But his mind is a racing, clouded mess, setting to maximum, he pulls the red ring, and the bag inflates. He watches the clear, oily, fluid run down the tube, another terror, of mistake or memory joins the orchestra haunting him.

A few drops fall, mixing with the warm blood in its trickle into the water.

Another ripple, the soft lap of water on stone, drags him away from the hot, sticky cloth he clings to. Giving in, he looks behind.

Ripples. Tree. Darkness.

Nothing.

He turns back, pushing the tube into the canula. The vein bulges slightly as the blood substitute flows in.

“Søren.” Rasmus says with dull flatness. “I can’t feel my pulse.”

Søren parts his lips, but “Hold on” dies upon them. Blood in his gloves, on his trousers, matting his hair. On his hands

“The tree… I would like… to see.”

Søren glances again over his shoulder. The tree is unchanged.

“Please.”

Søren looks at Rasmus. At the blood they sit in, soaking into them. Infesting their clothes. He looks at the medical bag. Its miracles depleted.

Its miracles depleted.

The only light is the lantern. A white light. Under it, the stone is grey and the tree silver. The vines still dead, the bark still desiccated.

No sky above.

No hope ahead.

Søren levers Rasmus up, sitting behind him. His chest crushed by Rasmus’s back. Søren’s hot pants on Rasmus’s shoulder.

Throbbing though his back, Rasmus feel a racing pulse. Søren feels nothing in return.

The lamp seems weaker now. The shadows close in. The greys deepen as Søren’s world collapses into him.

Locked together, their warmth mingles, Rasmus whispers.

“The vines are in flower.

I would not have thought.

Such colour.”

Rasmus takes a gulping breath.

Søren looks at the tree and tries to follow. To see what Rasmus sees. Beyond fuel and water.

He blinks deliberately, but the tree is unchanged, its silver glow the only light, just as Rasmus is his only warmth. But the vines still move, in that strange, iridescent way he so carefully ignored, flowing across and into each other. With exhaustion’s poison seeping in, he cannot scream impossible, even to himself. He can only see.

“If only.

I would have liked.

To see what Spring will bloom.

After the Melt.”

Another gulping breath.

Her footsteps!” Rasmus sighs, his eyelids flickering.

Søren gently presses a sore, tingling finger into Rasmus’s neck. And breaths out. Still a pulse.

“Do you not see her?” Rasmus sobs. “I would have liked to see the next world.”

“Why? What do you mean?” Søren asks gently, to keep him awake. To cling to consciousness.

“Tell me about it.”

“The White, the Ice.” Rasmus breaths. “It’s a punishment.”

Søren pats the wound. Has it stopped? Or merely found somewhere insidious to bleed?

“And when Spring is free… It’ll melt.”

Søren looks again, to the water, to the tree. Sees again, the flowers bursting from the vine, but small, as if petrified half-bloomed. In the pool, a line of leaves glitter and surface, emerging from the red cloud now suspended in its depths.

“And sweep this world away so there can be a new one.”

A half gasp, half wail.

“And She is here! Must be free. Must be upon us.”

Søren’s head snaps round. There were no footsteps! I would have heard! I would have heard! he wails in his own head.

Behind them stands a figure. For this moment they are motionless, but in Søren’s mind their image flickers. As if many stood in their place, each visible for but a speck of time.

His eyes water. In his arms, Rasmus squirms around.

“Moren! I told your story!” he cries with shallow breath.

She is as Rasmus said and Søren dreamed. Hair ice white, eyes sapphire. Plate and mail. Hand on sheathed sword. Her shoulder wrapped in crimson cloth.

But other images, points of view… The face is the same, but the rest… No archaic armour, fit for theatre and playroom but the scale-mesh proudly borne by the lost dead of the old world.

No sword, her hand resting on a holster all the same.

A single adornment, maybe a nod to beauty. A winged creature clutching arrows cast in dull iron on her neck.

Maybe not.

Seeing both at once, Søren strains to blot one out. Focusing on the true one. There has to be a true one!

There has to be.

Under his thumb he feels Rasmus’s pulse quicken, his skin throbbing and sticky.

She crouches over Rasmus.

“Do you know.” A deep breath, his ribs strain against Rasmus’s weight. “What you’re doing?”

“Do you have faith?” Her voice is soft, yet rings from all around.

Hot bile claws at the back of Søren’s throat.

“He will die and you have done all you can. So do you accept? The help of what you are so sure are deliriums. What other help is there down here? So I will ask again, are you a creature of faith? Søren?”

His tongue freezes. Petrified. This has to be madness! But an itch prickles its way up from his sodden hands.

Then his memory writes his name in molten metal across his eyes. He tries to force the thought down, after all, the whispers still with him must be imagined! Must know his name!

“No!” He shouts. “You cannot be real.” He whimpers. “But if you are…” he sobs. “Heal him… Please.”

Smiling with a hundred faces, her hands dance over Rasmus’s wound. Needle. Thread. Scalpel. All mundane miracles as her boots shimmer with darkening blood. Dark spots polluting her cloak.

Rasmus sighs a bubbling, gurgling breath.

His ribs fall and do not rise.

His head slumps to the side, lolling on Søren’s shoulder.

Søren’s thumb digs into his neck, already etching a nail mark.

He whispers words of begging wakefulness into Rasmus’s ear. Warm breath flowing across skin only to return sweat and stink.

Søren looks up from the paling, clammy body he clings to. Out of the pool of blood soaking into him, his hands. Out of the tears drowning his eyes, clawing down his cheek and laying salt upon his lips.

He opens his eyes and sees the flowers. Silver as the tree they enrich, but hinting at a multitude of colour, in the manner shattered glass hints at the rainbow.

“Where did the flowers come from? I didn’t see…” Søren mumbles.

“I wanted…” Rasmus gasps and for a moment there is just his haggard breathing, ribcage growing, straining against Søren’s arms. Then shrinking once more. “you to… see them.”

Søren hugs Rasmus tighter as more subtle shades grow across the tree. “You were right.” The only memory he can dredge, is a sunset, seen from the highest peak. A legion of clouds cast fire then dark over a world of grey stone and white ice. “They are beautiful.”

Rasmus reaches up, his hand shaking before grasping Søren’s steady fingers. Then he looks out, into the many faces, into a single pair of eyes.

“Moren… How much? Is anything true? Anything?” Rasmus burbles, begging.

“All of it. But it was not whole.”

I told you so dies on Søren’s exhausted tongue.

“Thank you.” murmurs a wide-eyed Rasmus as Søren hauls him onto his back, wedged across shoulder, between pack and neck. His stiff muscles rebel at first, then return to a seething ache.

Søren twists back. “I wanted to ask…” Each question bubbling up like hot bile.

She chuckles, “I thought you of all humans wouldn’t want answer just handed to you. Besides, your friend above will not wait forever.”

“No, really-” but he stops himself. Between blinks, she has vanished.

The questions die on his lips as worms of disappointment chew their way through his cheeks, his jaw. His tears.

***

Both are quiet, the only sound his own hoarse breath. The scrape of boot and the fading squelch of bloody prints.

Time slips through his fingers, he will not remember if he walked for days. Or minutes. Eventually, the darkness ahead dissolves, lit not by his lantern’s sterile light, but by the stars’, gentle touch.

It is a feeble light at first, enough for shadow alone. Another corner turns it to a moment of blindness. Søren’s vision revives as Elle stands, bright before dawn’s pitiful glow, to his eyes adjusting from the total darkness behind.

Prickling numbness turns red hot in his shoulders as they lever Rasmus onto the unfolded sledge. Søren’s body blooms with blood and sensation’s rushing return.

Rasmus, his eyes closed, his arms crossed, the bloodied spear they lay at his side.

Søren presses his shaking hand into Rasmus’s wrist until a feeble throb beats against his thumb.

He breaths, the gout of vapour haloing his head.

He looks back, free from voices or haunting music. At the empty passage with only the faintest hint of bloodied boot prints. And wonders if those memories will suffer entombment wrapped in forged chains of logic.

With every breath, the cables of tension crush his chest a little less. In every blink, the tree, rising from oasis, remains.

They look out, out of the mouth and into the clear night beyond. As starlight falls, painting the ice blue and the shadows abyssal, other light, human constellations, rise to meet it. Islands of buried warmth under dull domes and the black sparkle of solar fields all haloed in ice, its proper brilliant white.

And it is downhill all the way.

Huddled tight on the sledge, revelling in each’s close warmth, they skim down the ice gripped mountain to the horizon engulfing plateau below.

Further above, the brightest stars shine, their myriad patterns fill the night.

Søren looks up and sees two skies. Unfeeling globes of gas unfathomably far. Named and numbered. Beaten and formed into tools of time… and desperate navigation.

Or… perhaps… a library of stories cast into their eternal dance. To soar unchanged, remain ever young.