by Simon Archer
About a mile in, Petra collapsed in the snow behind us. I was the first to make it to her side and help her up to her feet. Her green skin had taken a deep turn to blue, and the ends of her limbs were worryingly white. She wasn’t even shivering; she was slowing down entirely.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just need to catch my breath. I’ll catch up to you.”
“And I’m king of the flamingos,” I said to her, matching her ridiculousness with some of my own. “We aren’t leaving you for a second.”
“Her dryad body won’t survive long out here, my savior.” Amalthea was the second to come to Petra’s aid. “She must find somewhere warm if she’s to stand any chance of making it the rest of the way.”
“I can do warmer.” Shikun rushed to my side, overhearing our conversation. “Let me.” She picked Petra’s limp body up in her arms, wrapping her fiery wings around her in a portable hearth. Petra’s blue skin returned to its natural green, the whitened tips of her limbs returning to normal as well.
“You’re a life-saver, Shikun,” Petra breathed out as she leaned her head back. “I didn’t anticipate it would be this cold. Once I’m warmed up, I have a plan for this.”
“If it’s anything along the lines of ‘toughing it out,’” I said to her, “I’m vetoing it now.”
“Don’t worry, it’s a real plan,” Petra said as she let the heat relax her.
Over the next little bit, Shikun’s fire wings at least kept her warm enough to stay awake. Fortunately, she was able to bring about an evergreen coating around herself to adapt. Her green skin darkened, and she had her bark armor on constantly as we continued up the mountain. When push came to shove, she’d be fine to help out. Even so, she still chose to stay next to Shikun, as did the rest of us.
Amalthea, Reggie, and I were more than fine in our honeysteel armor. Turns out that honeysteel is a terrible conductor of heat, so it stayed nearly the same temperature at all times. That was part of the reason why it’d be almost impossible to work with a forge: It didsn’t matter how much heat you applied to it, it would still be about room temperature. The armor acted like a wool coat, keeping us nice and toasty as we waddled our way through the snow.
Silver was as happy as always, bouncing in the snow like an arctic fox.
A couple of hours into the hike, I could see the spirits of my people waning. Petra and Shikun were clustered together as the dragon-girl tried to keep the dryad warm. Reggie had turned his helmet around about an hour when he started complaining about ‘frostbite’ in his nose. He began just holding onto the barbed armor around Amalthea’s tail as a guide as he walked up, but now, he had started using the tail more as support from falling backward as he trudged onward.
“Malthy, can you take Petra for a while?” I asked her as we trekked. “Reggie, let go of her tail. She’s got enough passengers as is.”
“How will I see anything?” Reggie said in muffled and echoed tones. “She’s been more than helpful as a seeing-eye assistant.”
“I’ve got you, you old coot,” I said as I took Reggie’s hand, like a caretaker to a patient at a nursing home. “Do you need your pills and your walking cane as well, sir?”
“Oh, come off it!” Reggie rebuked my sarcasm as I chuckled. “I’ve got enough in these bones to give you a once over!”
I waved Shikun over to us, and she came to place Petra down, still keeping a wing over her to keep her warm. Reggie had both my hand and Amalthea’s tail in hand, but let the tail go as soon as I led him away from it.
“Thank you, my savior,” Amalthea said in gratitude. “The stretching had become a nuisance very early on.”
“You’re a strong girl!” Reggie said, facing away from the conversation. “You should have said something if I was bothering you.”
“It is respectful to make no complaints when assisting the elderly,” the sphinx swished her tail sassily.
“I’m younger than you, sphinx!” Reggie raised his fist in the air, still facing no one in particular. “You are the eldest in this group, by far!”
“I’m quite young for a sphinx,” she rebutted. “Not far past adolescence, to put it in simpler terms.”
“That’s quite unfair.” The Brit grumbled in his helmet. “Longevity and youth should be mutually exclusive.”
“If it’s any consolation, Sir Reginald,” Petra said as she lay on Amalthea’s back, “you’re my favorite of all the elderly in Etria.”
Shikun, Amalthea, and Petra all giggled as they watched Reggie struggle to come to terms with the compliment. Even under the helmet, it was a visible conflict upon his soul.
“Yes, well, um,” Reggie pawed the back of his mind for words to say, “Thank you very much.”
We all shared a laugh as we continued up the mountain.
This mountain was endless. We were finding none of the alleged ‘traces’ that Solannus had spoken of. Why would he even come up here, anyway? It was all starting to feel very suspicious. If we didn’t find any draconians, he and I were going to have a long talk about loyalties.
Another couple of hours passed. Each part of this mountain looked like the rest of them, except maybe now it was even colder. The wind brushed past each of us, chilling me to the bone. The air had gotten thin, and my breathing became stale. Every tundra-cold breath was more and more of a burden to take, and my hands were starting to shake. I looked back to Amalthea, who was now carrying three people, as both Reggie and Shikun had made their way onto the sphinx’s back, the former only to warm himself under Shikun’s wings. Amalthea bent her wings over Petra to add another layer of insulation, but I could still see the dryad between the feathers. Even with the evergreen coat, she was suffering in this cold.
“How are we all feeling?” I shouted to them, knowing the probable answers.
“Petra suffers the worst of all of us, my savior,” Amalthea called back to me, “but even I find myself in need of some rest.”
“I can carry Petra again,” Shikun said, stepping off Amalthea and taking Petra with her. “My wings make the trek bearable. It’s the least I can do. We need to keep moving.”
“What we need,” I spoke over the roaring gusts, “is a break. Next place to hunker down, we take.” I trudged onward, and the rest followed me.
As we rounded a curve in the path, it became clear that our path led to a wall of ice, almost perfectly vertical, with barely any handholds to climb. That looked to be a bad sign, but the wind was starting to settle. In maybe another hour, it’d be safe to fly for a bit, and we could make up all the time we lost walking. If we could find a place to warm up, rest for a while, we could fly up to the top of the wall and search the mountain for the draconians from a better vantage point, at least.
I stepped out to the edge of the path we had trekked through in our search of the mountainside. As far as I could see, there was snow and stone, and more stone, and more snow, and some cliffs, and even more stone, but nothing remotely resembling shelter from the storm. I looked back up to the cliff we found ourselves at the base of.
Lo and behold, I saw the top of a cave. We were saved... If only we could make our way up the practically unclimbable cliff. And the wind was still churning about. We needed that shelter, though.
“I see a cave up there!” I shouted to the rest of the circle. “If we quickly fly up, we can take a rest until the storm dies down, then search the mountainside for the tribe.”
“A cave!” Reggie exclaimed, his muffled voice from the backward helmet barely carrying over the wind. “What luck! We’ll be out of this storm yet.”
“Shikun should take Petra up first,” Amalthea shouted over to me. “Then I can take you and Reginald up. We’ll have to be quick in this wind.”
True to Amalthea’s words, Shikun swiftly adjusted Petra in her arms and took flight, her burning wings faring better in the winter winds than natural ones. I ran over to Amalthea and climbed on, more than ready to be out of this storm as Silver hopped on with me. Reggie held onto my back as Amalthea t
ook to the skies as well.
In what felt like a single bound, we swiftly soared to the top of the cliff, landing at the mouth of a cave. Shikun and Petra had already made their way in and were already making a fire using some sticks Petra had grown and a puff of Shikun’s dragon-fire. Amalthea, Reggie, and I rushed into the cave as well, and the relief was incredible. The wind no longer constantly bashing me around, freezing my balls off, and a warm fire to keep cozy by.
Petra and Shikun started to build upon the fire, filling the space with its warmth. They stopped when we could all fit around the blaze and still feel its heat without having our backs to the mouth of the cave. Petra layered up in evergreen bark plates, building more ample protection from the cold now that she knew what to expect. Amalthea curled up next to the hot fire and closed her eyes, while the girls and Silver leaned next to her, all of them blissfully drifting to a cozy rest. Reggie moved over to sit beside me.
“I sure hope we find these dragon people soon,” he said as he warmed his hands. “I don’t see us getting down much faster than we got up.”
“We’ll find them,” I said, not really convincing myself. “We’ll wait for the wind to die down, then we’ll take a quick search around.”
“Do you plan to comb every inch of this mountain for the draconians?” Reggie pressed. “What if we don’t discover them?”
“We’ll find them,” I repeated myself as adamantly as I could muster. “They have to be here. The fact that Shikun is doing fine out here proves that they would, too.”
“But that isn’t proof that they’re truly here,” Reggie said. “Shikun’s wings give her the advantage over her kind. If we don’t find them while searching the skies, will we have to look underground as well?”
“We look until we know they aren’t here,” I said firmly. “Then we return and come up with a new plan. Something that won’t get everyone killed.”
I rested on my hands as I looked up at the ceiling of the cave. My hand touched upon a strangely shaped stone, which I took up curiously. It was mostly smooth, with just a little roughness to it, and long. I leaned forward and held the rock up to the light. Except what I had picked up was a bone. A piece of rib, to be specific. Probably the remnants of a meal.
Something lived here.
As if to say dramatically, “You bet your ass,” the thunderous footsteps of something huge drummed through the cave from outside. All of us perked up at the noise, me drawing both Libritas and my sword, Reggie cocking his revolver, and the girls all waking up from their nap, poised to strike. The thundering resounded louder and louder until a shape came into view at the mouth of the cave.
As it stepped into the light, we saw a humanoid shape take up the height of the space, a towering ten feet tall. Its broad shoulders hooked the white, hairy trees of its arms to a barrel chest, and a thick coat of pale fur dressed the creature from its head to its toes. Built like a gorilla weightlifter, a thick layer of fat hung around its body, but that layer was blended with the obvious muscle that it had in spades. The tusks that protruded from his mouth almost came up to his eyes as he snarled at all of us.
We probably just took this… what was it?
“Yeti,” Libritas filled in the blank for me, “It’s a yeti.”
We probably took this yeti’s home, and it was pissed about it.
24
The yeti roared as it stomped its lumbering feet, shaking the cave like a quake. We all stood our ground as we prepared for whatever this man-beast was about to do.
“Hold on,” Reggie lined up a shot with his new Golden Webley, “This’ll be over in a moment.” He fired straight at the yeti’s head, placing the bullet dead center to the forehead.
However, instead of the beast’s brains splattering over the wall, the yeti merely groaned as it rubbed his head. It took a few steps back then leaned back forward, grunting as it sprayed snot all over the cave. In the spot Reggie had shot, a glimmer of the golden honeysteel bullet remained, embedded deep into the yeti’s head.
“Impressive cranial girth, my abominable friend.” Reggie complimented the yeti. “William? Thoughts?”
“That thing’s going to snap us like a twig if we get too close,” I said, thinking aloud. “We need to get it outside, maybe push it off the cliff.”
“I can help with that,” Shikun replied, and before the yeti could bear down on us, she swallowed a large gulp of air, her nostrils flaring with silver flames. She unleashed a torrent of flame upon the shaggy beast, and it lit up like a dry twig. It yelped and cried as it spun in place, trying to douse the flames in its own ineffective way, but amazingly, the yeti wasn’t simply burned to ash.
So, I pulled out Libritas and lunged into the beast’s back as it turned around, forcing it to walk towards the cave entrance and outside. It continued to scream as it whirled its way into the winter air, twirling closer to the cliff edge.
Unfortunately, it stopped just short of falling to its death. As the fires burned through the yeti’s fur, they died out as soon as they made it to the monster’s thick, rough rhino-like skin. Now, a completely naked and stacked abominable yeti stood just outside the cave with only strings of its milky coat to adorn it. Unfortunately, singeing its fur seemed to only piss it off even more.
Before I could rush forward and push the beast off the cliff, its attention shifted from us to something above the cave. The yeti gritted its long teeth as it swung its hammer hands upward at something we couldn’t see. I took a few steps forward to catch a glimpse of the new threat to the yeti just at it gripped something, struggling to tussle with whatever-it-was. The beast slammed its prey to the ground, a black-scaled draconian male, wings twitching as they flexed against the yeti’s grip. The draconian wore furs over his legs like a kilt, both his clawed feet and his tail reaching out from underneath. His arms were free still, and he had a club with black rocks knotted into the brown wood gripped in his fists.
Yes, a draconian! That was a good sign that there were more, and even so, just one more draconian would be a monumental improvement upon the situation.
Well, assuming we all lived through the next few moments.
The club beat against the fingers of the yeti who seemed to ignore the blows as it lifted the draconian up. The dragon-man flipped over himself, his wings twisting inside the yeti’s hands and his feet over its head poised to strike against the monster from above. The kick missed as the yeti threw its weight into a hammer tosser’s swing, spinning the draconian around itself like a helicopter. I wanted to dive in to assist, I think we all did, but the space was tight, and the spinning chaos only spelled doom for anyone who got close. The space between the yeti and the cave’s walls wasn’t enough to outstretch its arms and the draconian completely. He slammed against the two edges of the cave over and over again as the yeti built up momentum. With a growl, the yeti tossed the draconian off the side of the cliff, sending him hundreds of feet out towards the Marches until he almost disappeared from view.
Damn beast just threw our one chance at finding the draconians!
As the yeti gazed upon its handiwork, I took the opportunity to push forward into its back with Lib, burning a black spot into the yeti’s hide as I shoved it towards the cliff’s edge. It tried to counterbalance with its arms, vainly clinging to life, but it couldn’t find purchase. The yeti’s weight eventually took it down the cliff as I gave it one last, hard shove. It fell the sixty or so feet down before splattering on the snow below.
I didn’t even get a chance to catch my breath or even say a witty one-liner before I was flat upon the ground, two draconian warriors pinning me with their knees as they dove from above. The first one, a green draconian, had furs across his chest and around his waist like a combination sash-loincloth. The other, a blue one, was wearing a full fur tunic and pants, with a hole cut out for the tail. They placed their weapons, a wooden sword with obsidian teeth making up the blade for the blue and another club like before with obsidian spikes for the green, up against my head as they
interrogated me.
They were clearly trying to be intimidating, but I couldn’t help but feel elated at the sight of even more draconians.
“Who are you?” the sword one asked with a voice like he had just finished gargling rocks.
“Why do you interrupt our Trial of the Hunt?” the club wielder said, his voice somehow raspier than the first one.
“Okay,” I tried to suck in air. “First, you’re going to have to give me a little space to breathe.”
“Talk, outlander!” the sword wielder rasped at me. “We will not ask you again.”
“Why do you carry a Brand?” the club draconian snapped at my ear. “Are you one of the Black Runes?”
“I’d save the questions for after you’ve dealt with us, dear dragon.” Reggie pointed his gun at the club draconian’s head as he put his boot to the draconian’s back. “Perhaps we can discuss our arrangement like gentlemen.”
“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Amalthea said, placing a paw over the other draconian.
“The sooner you cooperate, the sooner we can get off this godsforsaken mountain,” Petra slithered a couple of vines around them and up to each of their ears, tickling the insides of their eardrums for emphasis, “so TALK!”
With all of this commotion, I noticed a distinct lack of my favorite draconian girl. I turned my head as much as I could to peek through the spaces left between all of the bodies. Shikun stayed inside the cave, hiding in a shadowy corner, still too scared to face her fellows.
“We would rather die,” the green one growled, a determination in his tone.
“Our souls to dragon-fire, outlander,” the blue one stated, like a military salute or a pact.
“We can arrange something along those lines,” Reggie said, cocking the revolver. “Although I guess wyrm-fire is as good as I have on hand. You don’t mind dying by little dragon turds, do you?”
“Do your worst, softling!” the sword-wielding one said, clearly unintimidated. How much of that was from ignorance at the power of a firearm and how much was from sheer courage, I didn’t know. “We will fight to the bitter end.”
