Me versus the snow storm was like an ant before the world.

    Small.

    Insignificant.

    Mindless.

    And determined to survive.

    I couldn’t die.

    Not now.

    Not like this.

    And in those things, me and the ant were the same.

    The snow came knee high with flakes that swirled through the air were like falling knives. It didn’t take long for my vigor to wear down, and I had mostly my mind to blame for that. My common sense went on long tangents about how I didn’t know where I was going, how Aldyth only had so much safe time in the box, and that I was trudging through a snow storm that even the people who lived here feared.

    Thunder crackled above me, and I looked up to find the sky dark with clouds. Sivena had the anger of a thunderstorm, the winds of a tornado, and the oblivion of the worst murderers known to man.

    And of course, I was trudging on foot right through the heart of it.

   Two weeks ago, I never would have seen this in my future, and now looking forward, I didn’t see any future left. Not for me anyway. Being the intellectual one I was, with no hope, no map, and not even a random elf to guide me, I chose a single direction and continued onward, feeling my way through the snow and dark, and hoping that the mess with the rags wouldn’t find me.

    And on top of it all, my brajé sense was composing a menacing overture for my demise -- complete with drums, thunder cracks, winds, and a half dozen different sounds I couldn’t identify.

    “Be quiet, head,” I muttered to myself. “I need to be able to listen for Encore.”

    But my mind took the request in the other direction and started the piece over from the beginning. I rolled my eyes. The song was giving off an encore presentation. I wasn’t even aware of my own sarcasm until the song went on repeating itself with no way of stopping.

   Despite all this, I spent my time calling hoarsely for the horse. It was unlikely that he would appear. No smart animal would willing go on a gallivant through this hell storm once he'd had a taste first hand.  Suddenly an unworldly howl shook the woods again.

   “Took it long enough,” I muttered to myself as picked up my speed as much as I could.

    I dove headlong into a cluster of trees, hoping that like an atrix, the monster would slow down. But instead, Encore swooped right through the barriers like the death spirit it was.

    My feet grew numb beneath me as I ran. The snow was deeper between the trees, and suddenly my escape plan became my own death trap. Branches scraped at my flesh and caught my cloak. Encore swept toward me, and this time it wasn’t be thwarted.

    My boot snagged on a root hidden deep within the snow, and I went down hard into the sea of white.

    And then it had me.

    Hands of bone wrapped themselves around my throat, it’s tearing fingers digging deep to draw blood. An abysmal, middle toned hiss grumbled outward from under the hood and its golden eyes drew all the light from the world around us, making the two of us the only thing in existence.

    I struggled manically, feet kicking, arms swinging, but all I could hit was rags as if the creature didn’t have body beneath it’s cloak. My breathing grew ragged with the smell of decaying flesh, and I began to choke on my own bile as Encore heaved me off the ground and a started flying up through the branches.

    Black spots danced in my vision; my consciousness began to slip.

    “Oh, blast me for a fool!”

    The voice was vaguely familiar, but I was too busy being suffocated to care.

    Until…

    The monster was hit with a sharp blast from behind and in its surprise; Encore released its grip on my throat. I fell a short drop through the branches, hacking and coughing the entire way down. I hit the snow in lump, and would have laid there unmoving if someone hadn’t dropped down to the drift beside me.

    “Get up, you weakling,” Laora hissed as she dragged me up by the hood. “We have to find shelter before she comes back. Hope you like falling.”

    Before I had time to ask, she was half dragging me through the snow. It took all my concentration just to keep my feet beneath me, so I didn’t even have time to realize what was happening before she leaped into the air and plummeted head first into a snow drift. I wanted to stop, I really did, but the momentum we had built up carried me over the edge as well and before I knew it, I was in laying on the floor of some sort of cave.

    I looked up to find the surface world somewhere high above me. The walls stretched up around us to a gaping hole in the ceiling where we had fallen through. The mouth of the tavern was already starting to fill in with snow, and soon nothing would know we dwelled in this bubble below the earth.

    Laora already had her hood down and was kicking some brush into a pile on the floor. She sat on the ground before the twigs with her legs crossed over each other, Laora started tapping at her thighs with her fingers and clicking a gentle rhythm on her tongue.

    Suddenly the temperature of the dwelling rose by what felt like a dozen degrees. And a fire leapt from the tinder on the floor. I had seen this once before, I realized.  It was back in the forest, the night the elf cried brajé. He had swept away the coldness, and I had started to hear.

    Laora leaned back on her hands with a sigh. “I hate death.”

    “Then we have something in common.”

    She shook her head and fell onto her back. For a moment, I thought she’d collapsed, but when I crawled over, I found her eyes open and staring at the high ceiling above us. At a second glance I realized that the woman was younger than I had first calculated. The hardened cold in her eyes made it so she looked years beyond her physique. But upon closer inspection I noticed that she was young, no more than a couple years older than me.

    “Thank you,” I said at last.

    She didn’t acknowledge my words, in fact it was as if she hadn’t heard me at all. “What are you doing here?” She whispered, not even trying to mask the venom in her voice.

    I paused for a moment. “I don’t know.”

    “Then why did you come?” Laora demanded and sat up abruptly. Her face was red from the cold, and several dark locks of hair fell from her braid and cast dark shadows over her eyes. “What did you do to Briar?  He was our most dedicated border guard and he just let you in like –“ Her voice cracked painfully. “Why did you come?”

    I shuffled backwards a few spaces.

    Her shoulders rose and fell unsteadily, and she ducked her head into her chest so that I couldn’t see her eyes.

    “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

    Laora slowly rose to her feet with her back turned toward me. “I should just tie you up here and tell the others you disappeared in the storm.” She turned sharply to glare at me through a veil of tears.

    I also rose unsteadily. “Will you?”

    Her eyes hardened. “It would be easier for everyone if I did.”

    “But will you?” I insisted and held my arms out in front of me. “Because if you’re going to do it, then you should do it now. If that thing comes back, then there’s no point in any of this.” I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing, but now that I thought about it, I never did.

    Up until this point everyone had making the decisions for me, and no matter how much I tried to fool myself, that was the cold, hard truth.  Everything from the moment we were rescued from the Easterners was a calculated sway. And now I was here, alone with Aldyth dying in my pocket, and a vengeful Northerner ready to tie me for the elf I knew nothing about.

    “Maybe I do deserve this,” I hissed as the Northerner drew a length of rope out from a light pack she had tied to her hip. The bag must have been enchanted for she seemed to almost pull it out of thin air. I took a step forward with my arms held out in front of me. “Maybe I should have thought deeper, and looked past the moment. And maybe it’s too late for me, but if you want to make the same mistakes I did then go ahead. You’re still in your home land so what rebound can you get? Just remember judgement guided by emotion is only vengeance in disguise.”

    She froze momentarily and her arms dropped to her side. All the fight appeared to be gone from her body. “You’re a brajé,” Laora stated flatly. “You’d probably just sing your way out or something.” She looped the rope several times around her forearm and turned to face a large dark shadow where the fire didn’t shed light. “You can follow me out, and do this my way or I’ll drop you where you are and let Encore have the both of you.” Her shoulders quivered uncertainly like she was forcing back a sob.

    She waved her hand in a swift cutting motion by her right ear and the fire sank dead to the ground. I straightened my shoulders and gave a brief nod to her back. The temperature in the cave dropped briskly as the Northern descended into the shadows, taking the heat away with her.

    I quickly shouldered my packs and tucked my head under my hood. I hadn’t noticed in all the excitement, but the fire was singing a warm, quiet song. Something that I bet everyone could hear if they listened hard enough. A melody as dangerous as a siren, yet as warm as a hug.

    “Brajé,” I mouthed, then hurried after her.

    The shadows led into a tunnel that burrowed deep into the earth. My lungs clouded with dust that blew up from our footsteps. Just when I was beginning to think that we were going to crawl inch by inch through the dark; small shafts of light filtered in from cracks in the ceiling, leading me to believe that we were closer to the surface than I had initially thought.

    I didn’t dare say anything to agitate the already unsteady Northerner, but secretly I wondered how she knew where she was going. Sure, she had lived here her whole life, but the thick layer of debris and animal droppings made it was clear that no one had trekked this way in a very long time.

    Suddenly the ground seemed to slope upwards and Laora beckoned for me to crouch down. I moved my shoulders forward to balance over my bent knees as we crept up the passage. When it appeared that we could go no further, Laora turned around and held a finger to her lips. Then she braced herself against the incline with three limbs, and used her free hand to reach out toward a weak spot in the ceiling that appeared to just be a large hole clotted with snow.

    As her hand came an inch from the spot, something else crashed down from above. Laora let out a sharp scream and lost her footing as the hand of a skeleton clawed the air an inch from her face.

    Suddenly we were both screaming.

    I grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her away. But the hand caught a handful of Laora’s cloak, and as we fell, the fabric gathered tightly around her neck. I stopped to find the Northerner getting dragged up the tunnel by the neck of her own cloak.  Her feet kicked madly against the cold rock, but the spirit was having none of it.

    Another hand of the skeleton broke through the snow and fisted a fold of the cloak, which created a deadly noose around Laora’s neck.

   But still, the hole in the snow wasn’t big enough to pull her through. I scrambled up the tunnel, pushing the girl to the side as I did. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a murderous glare from a person on the brink of death. The ceiling at the end of the incline was too low for me to stand up straight so I was hunched over as I brought my foot down on the skeleton’s arm.

    My efforts were rewarded with the most satisfying crunch I had ever heard in my life. The limb shattered at the elbow and the bones fell away from its tattered sleeve. But if Encore was surprised that one of its arms were forcefully absent all of a sudden; it didn’t show it.

    The other hand tightened its grip on Laora’s hood and there was no way I could stomp that one without the risk of taking out the Northerner’s face. Laora’s fingers clawed desperately at her neck, but there was little she could do.

    Encore gave a mighty yank and jerked Laora’s body sharply. Her entire form went limp as her head cracked against the side of the tunnel. The sudden lack of resistance appeared to be all that Encore needed to drag the girl out from the cavern.

    “Oh, no you don’t,” I hissed and looked around desperately for something to use as weapon. The ground was completely bare, except for the skeleton’s arm that laid twitching several feet away. I took a split second to swallow my logic and scooped the fleshless limb off the ground. The fingers twisted around to grab me, but I didn’t give it the time as I raced to the mouth of the tunnel and started beating the other arm with the arm.

    Apparently even Cardinal reapers get a little shell shocked when someone starts beating them with their own limbs. Or maybe Encore had just concluded that it was missing an arm, but either way, the spirit released its hold on Laora before I could snap off the other one.

    As soon as she was free, I dropped the arm and dragged the Northerner to her feet. She was still dazed from the strike to the head, but with a little help she managed to keep her balance as we half ran, half fell back the way we came.

    I shot one glance over my shoulder, and instantly regretted it.

    The arm was using its fingers to inch back its master.

    “I hope you have another plan,” I muttered as I wrapped one arm around Laora’s waist and plunged us both back into the darkness.

A/N
Lo siento for the long wait. I've had this written for a week now but the lack of WiFi is making it hard to update.

The North Cardinal has an underground cave system? Is that what that is? What was your impression when Laora and Eli jumped into the snow? What is the Hades is Encore -- or who? Laora, yeh or meh?

We're gonna get a Cardinal culture lesson in the next chapter so stay tuned.

Leave a comment below, I love hearing from you!

Peace and Party Parrots,
Mya.