by Tom Hansen
Finny picked up her goblet once again, running her thumb across the flattened part of the metal that had recently hit the floor. In an absent-minded move, she attempted to drink from the goblet, but realizing there was nothing in there, she hurled the goblet across the room with such ferocity that it didn’t bounce off the stone wall. Instead, it crumpled near-to-flat and stuck for a split second before falling.
Both Ynya and Synol stared at the flattened goblet.
“I’m constantly at war. I don’t know which of my selves I should focus on, or if I should embrace them both. Each side of me wars against the other and the only stable thing I have in my life right now is you.
“One side wants me to remain, the other wants me to move on, but I don’t think I can live like this forever. Sooner or later I’m going to have to choose to embrace one side or the other. One day, I may not be the same Finny that you know. I don’t want to, but I might have to. I don’t think I have a choice because it’s all just too much to handle right now.”
Finny buried her face in her hands and fell onto the table.
Ynya hadn’t seen Finny cry once since they found her in Reyoarfjell. It was a worrying thing to see her with tears in her eyes and emotion across her face. Ynya wondered if the monster inside of Finny had taken over completely.
But something else was going on inside of the poor girl. Something dark and sinister had clearly been brewing since they had escaped Reyoarfjell. Whatever it was, she had done a good job of hiding it from her sisters. Now that Ynya knew about it, she could do something to help.
Ynya turned to address Synol, and ask if she wanted to step outside into the hallway, to discuss this situation with Finny, but before she could speak, Finny had lifted her head and addressed the room again.
This time, all emotion was gone from her voice. She spoke in a careful monotone, like she was reciting a passage of scripture she hadn’t wanted to memorize and deliver in front of a crowd.
“There is one more thing I have to tell you.”
Finny pointed at the floor to the side of the table. “I’m not the only one who came from that place. Another is trapped down there and calls to me. I hear him howling in my head. Every step we’ve taken closer to the castle he’s been getting louder and louder.
“I’ve been keeping it from you, and for that I’m sorry, but I wanted you to know before we go and see him. I know the first thing you are going to say is that we shouldn’t go, but I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I have to go see him.”
Synol ran around the table to hold her sister.
Ynya stood and watched the two of them, feeling horrible that she hadn’t noticed this about Finny sooner.
“What do you mean going to see him?”
Finny turned, looking through the floor. “He’s down there, the other one of me. He came from that place before I did. He was the first one that they managed to convert to…to whatever it is that I am, only he isn’t the same. He can’t change like I can, I know that much.
“Now that we are closer, we can talk through our minds. Not whole sentences, but feelings. We sense each other and I know exactly where he is. He’s waiting for me, trapped and alone, and I need to go find him. I need to let him know that he’s not alone.”
Ynya and Synol stared at each other, trying to have a silent conversation of their own. Neither seemed to know what to say.
Ynya’s mind raced. Finny was clearly talking about her beast form that she took to roam around at night. Maybe this explained why she had been out for so long last night. Normally she was only out for short bits of time, scouting, possibly eating.
Hunting.
But she always came back, and she was always her, the proper Finny.
Though by the sounds of it, Finny was more than just what she appeared to be. Perhaps the Translator had changed Finny more than Ynya thought. Perhaps Finny would never be the sweet, loving, literal girl she’d always been. Maybe her new life with dual forms changed her more than Ynya had realized.
Finally, Synol squeezed Finny. “I will support you no matter what, Finny. Ynya and I both will.”
Ynya sat back down. “We are family. That is what we are, and nothing the Queen does to us will change that, Finny. No matter what is going on in your life, we are here for you. Even if we don’t fully understand what you’re going through, we will be by your side to help where we can. Just tell us if anything is going on with you so we know.”
Ynya sighed. “I had no idea this other beast was in your head. I wish you would have told us so we can help. Maybe there is a way to block his voice?”
Finny looked up, wiping tears off her cheeks which shaking her head. “I don’t want him out of my head, that’s the worst part. I need to go see him. I need to talk to him, find out why he’s been calling and crying for me. I’m not scared of him, I’m more scared for him. I just need to go see him, but I’m also worried about coming face to face with him. I know it doesn’t make any sense.”
Ynya balled up her fists, the anger flowing through her once again. This time it wasn’t directed at her sisters. This time it was the familiar focused rage that made her blood boil and her mind centered.
Of course it made sense. Everyone experienced that uniquely human emotion of not wanting to do something, but knowing you had to do anyway.
Ynya relished the heat once again. She had missed it for the short time the Queen had taken it from her. She dug her fingernails into her palms. “Finny, would it help if we went down there with you?”
Chapter Eleven
“So, you wish to visit our newest monster of the deep?” A woman from the doorway replied.
The female voice was both familiar and terrifying, setting Ynya’s hairs on the back of her neck on edge.
The voice had a casual edge to it that could only come from a Skarmyord, one of the Frost Queen’s elite guards who had been through the entire round of torture and reprogramming offered by Reyoarfjell.
Ynya whirled around to stare at the woman in black leaning against the doorway. She wore a sinister smirk on her angular, narrow face, and her piercing eyes instantly made Ynya remember the night she had demonstrated her power to Ynya on the top of the carriage.
It was the night that Ynya had managed to finally escape her clutches and kill the other Skarmyord.
Ynya scowled and built up energy in her hands. “Captain Nora. I was wondering when you’d show up again.”
Behind her, Synol pulled magic in as well.
The woman in black pulled a small silver dagger from her sheath and twirled it around her fingers. “Do you really want your magic taken from you so soon after getting it back? I am to be your escort through the castle so you may want to keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. Or do you want to be taught another lesson in humility?”
Nora whirled the blade once more and re-sheathed it, folding her arms in front of her. Her face took on a hard, pained expression, one of deadly sincerity. “You can try attacking, but anything you do to me is nothing compared to the punishment I’ll obtain from the Queen, so if you are going to kill me, make sure you do it swiftly and completely so there is nothing more she can punish.”
Ynya imagined the woman in black impaled on the ice spikes at the top of the mountain. She wasn’t sure why the thought came into her head, but it felt more like a memory than a dream. A chill ran down Ynya’s spine.
Ynya dropped her fire, and felt Synol let go of her earth magic as well. Finny hadn’t flared any magic.
“We don’t need a babysitter,” Ynya said, grabbing her chair and plunking down into it.
“It’s not a request,” the elite guard answered coolly, checking her fingernails.
Ynya folded her arms and glared at the Skarmyord.
Ever since the Warden had shown her the book containing her mother’s entry into the concentration camp, there had been a question nagging the back of Ynya mind.
She decided to hold onto her verbal jabs for now. There might be a better time to
bring it up. Despite needing to get her sisters safely out of this castle, she had questions, and this woman seemed like the right one to ask.
“Fine. If you’re our escort, then show us the way. I assume you have to do whatever we want?”
Nora’s eyes narrowed. “Within reason. There are a few rules you must follow.”
Ynya huffed. “And what are those.”
Nora paused before replying. “I think it might be more fun if you just stumble into them; more fun for me at least.”
Ynya’s typical anger flared, prodding for her to retort, but she clamped down the urge to mouth off and instead turned to Finny. “Well, you heard what the nice lady said. She will be happy to escort us down to see whoever it is that you need to see.”
Captain Nora led them into the hallway, then back to the main staircase. Finny followed immediately behind the Skarmyord, with Synol behind her and Ynya at the rear.
On their way down the stairs, Synol nudged Ynya and whispered to her. “You think this is a good idea?”
Ynya shrugged. “It’s an idea, and right now, we don’t have anything else to work on. Why, you think we should be doing something else?”
Synol rolled her eyes. “I’m not talking about miss tight-pants over there, I’m talking about Meki. Shouldn’t one of us be with her?”
Nora spoke up from the front of the pack. “When Her Majesty is training, no one is to disturb her. You will have to ask her if you can join in her training sessions, though I have a feeling you’ll be a party to that soon enough.”
Nora hadn’t missed a single step through her entire spiel, garnering a frustrated look from Synol.
“Oh, yes, I can hear everything you say.”
Ynya snapped back, the frustration palpable in her voice. “I have no expectation of privacy, given how scared the Queen is of a bunch of young girls. It does surprise me just how much she’s worried that we might have any freedom. Seems like she should feel more powerful given that we’re in her own castle, or whatever this cave is. Oh, that reminds me.”
Ynya turned to Synol, wrapping her arm around her sister’s. “Do you remember that time when we were in the carriage and someone dragged us up to the roof to prove how powerful she was? Did you know that she actually helped me escape my bonds by taking me outside into the wind?”
Synol glared but Ynya was having too much fun. “If she hadn’t taken me into the cold blowing wind, I would have never been able to shed enough heat to melt through the iron bonds. Had she just left me in the cabin instead of taking me out I would have never escaped. Maybe next time she won’t feel the need to lord how big and strong she is in the face of her prisoners. It might make her feel powerful in the moment, but I don’t forget, and will use any opportunity to prove just how wrong she was.”
Nora stopped and whirled, her face a mixture of rage and singular intensity. She stared at Ynya for a long second before her face relaxed. “We should hurry, we don’t want to keep the monster waiting for his girlfriend.” She flashed a jocular expression and turned back down the stairs.
Ynya stewed at this for a while, wanting to retort, but nothing really came to her. The last thing she wanted to do was insult Finny, who was the whole reason they were following this horrible woman.
Nora had incredible control of her emotions.
Of course she would, she’d been alive for a long time and had been through the concentration camp known as Reyoarfjell to train to become a Skarmyord, the elite guard of the Frost Queen.
The memory of the books with her mother’s registration had been at the forefront of Ynya’s mind ever since she had seen them. The fact that Nora Oblique had been the name right next to her own mother’s, and she now had a Skarmyord with the first name of Nora seemed like too much of a coincidence.
Ynya wasn’t entirely sure how much she truly wanted to know one way or the other. If the woman was her aunt, did that change anything? She clearly had no sense of moral obligation when it came to family. She was a soldier for the Frost Queen and nothing more. Maybe Ynya could try a different tack to get a reaction out of Nora.
Ynya’s heart pounded against her ribs. She knew she was pushing the woman hard, but she needed to. She needed to elicit a guttural reaction to see how far she could push her. If they weren’t going to tell her what her rules were, then she had no choice but to seek them out of her own accord. That way, when she was punished, at least she would have done something worthy of the punishment.
“Captain Nora Oblique? Sister of my mother, Talia Oblique? How old are you, exactly? Mama never spoke of a sister, though after meeting you I think I know why. She also didn’t tell us just how old you all are. Are you over one hundred? If so, I’m rather impressed, because I don’t see much drooping like most of the ancient shriveled grandmas you slaughtered.”
Lub-dub.
Ynya’s heart seemed to slow, and her vision focused on the placement of the woman’s next footstep. Nora’s foot was angled out slightly, a tell-tale sign of the sort of thing Ynya had been pushing her to perform.
Nora turned and pulled her dagger, throwing it in one fast motion.
Anticipating the reaction, Ynya jumped to the side, pushing Synol away from her. Ynya went one way, with Synol the other, the dagger narrowly missing both of them as it sailed past and hit the stone wall behind them with a resounding metallic clang.
The entire scene was surreal. Ynya’s heart pounded in her chest as she sprung to her feet, reading for a fight.
Nora’s face hardened and she took a step toward the girls, but Finny was in front of her so fast Ynya had to blink to believe it. Five knife-sharp talons from Finny’s now-blackened hand dug into the Skarmyord’s chest plate.
“I would leave my sisters alone if you don’t want your heart ripped out. You are supposed to be escorting us, not fighting with us.”
Nora’s gaze never left Ynya’s but she huffed and spat on the ground.
“Get your filthy claws off me, dog.”
Finny growled, a guttural, feral sound that Ynya had heard before on the wind late at night while she couldn’t sleep. A deep chill settled in the back of her head, dissipating through her scalp.
“Finny. She’s not worth it. We learned what we needed to anyway.”
Finny growled once again, but Nora took the first step back, detaching her leather breastplate from Finny’s claws.
Ynya took a couple steps forward to stand directly in front of the Skarmyord. She wrapped her arm around her younger sister, and hugged. “Thank you Finny. I appreciate you looking out for our little family.”
Synol chimed in, having just picked herself up off the floor.
“So you are our aunt, I guess that fact has been established. Anything else we should know?”
Nora huffed and turned. “I have all the family I need.”
Chapter Twelve
The rest of the trip down the stairs was silent. They went right to the main floor that led out to the plains and the standing army of the Queen.
Seeing the place for the second time, Ynya was able to concentrate more on the details than she had when she was being led in by the Frost Queen earlier that day.
Two staircases flanked opposite sides of the massive cave, with towering pillars supporting the immense rock ceiling above them. The expansive room was large enough that hundreds of soldiers could easily stand at attention in here, possibly a thousand if needed. It was chilly in the space, but nowhere near as cold as outside.
The drone of the wind was ever-present no matter where she had been in the castle, but it was definitely more pronounced in here. The constant song of the north, the ebb and flow of the wind, howled along to the other activity that continued to support the Queen’s empire.
Spaced along the outside of the cave were dozens of doorways leading to stables, blacksmiths, cobblers, and other assorted vendors. Well over a hundred tradesmen hammered, cut, and filed their various crafts, but each one did so to some unseen beat of nature.
Lub-dub
. Lub-dub.
Ynya’s heart pounded in her chest. Each step down the stairs matching her heart’s cadence.
She hated the feeling that she was following some unseen mandate from the Queen. It was as intrusive as it was rhythmic, and the fiery rage inside of her lashed out, refusing to follow the unseen beat.
Ynya skipped a step, falling out of line with the never-ending silent pulse, and concentrated inward, willing her heart to slow slightly out of pace from the magic surrounding her.
Her heart didn’t respond, at least not at first.
She concentrated really hard, forcing her heart to beat differently. A growing hardness in her chest weighed her down, pulling her back into the familiar groove of the Queens magic.
Regardless, she pushed harder, focusing her mind inward, rather than outward on her steps.
Lub-dub, lub-dub.
Ynya pushed harder, like she was using a muscle for the first time. Forcing her heart to beat erratically was a futile effort, but it was one she wanted to try, one that she needed to interrupt. She couldn’t fathom being locked in time with every other man and woman under the Queen’s spell. She wanted, no, she needed to break free and forge her own path.
She tried again, this time focusing even more inward. Her magic swelled at the reaction, adding in heat and a little bit of hardness–
Lub–––dub.
For one glorious moment in time, Ynya had bucked the Queen’s overall mandate and had forced herself to go against the grain. It was exhilarating, and terrifying, and made her weak in the chest. Her weak knees nearly gave out and she stumbled to the side.
I skipped the beat!
Synol grabbed her arm to steady her. “Are you all right?”
Ynya nodded, but she would not forget that brief moment of exhilaration she felt by not being in time with the Queen’s magic.
My heart actually skipped a beat!
Despite their lot in life, being under the thumb of the Queen, Ynya felt a small thread of hope. She had broken out of the Queen’s magic for an exhilarating moment. That meant there was hope, and hope was enough for now.
