Chương 76: Chapter 75: The Everfrost Plains.

We marched for the better part of a day. Count Vance had been right. You really did get used to that perpetual crunching noise. It was a true shame, then, that the Ash simply stopped. Our expedition crested a small hill, and it felt like stepping from one world into another entirely. The land behind us was ridged and valleyed, choked with dead trees. But as we crossed that invisible boundary, the world dropped away into a flat, endless expanse of pure white. The glare of the snowfield stabbed into my eyes.

I blinked hard, refusing to reach for my Gift over something so petty just yet. The party around us continued moving with only a few furtive glances at their surroundings. I felt Violet's tug on my shoulder -violent and insistent.

"Hey, hey! What the hell is this?!"

"The Wastes, girl," a passing expeditioner said. The ones around her agreed in unison.

"The Wastes," I said, "are not just one thing. Only about a tenth of them are actually ash. The rest have other features…ones that only the Expeditioners and House Veyne care about anymore. This is-""The Everfrost Plain." Damian supplied helpfully.

"Just so." I nodded.

"This is about as far as we go. About as far as anyone goes. The place we're seeking is not far from here." Even as I watched, the Expedition had stopped. Men and women moved towards the porters in the back who carried all of our things. They moved to add heavy furs over their armor. Gloves over their hands. I moved to join them, waiting for my turn, though some men gestured me forward. The fur cloak was thick and dense. Even tailored to my size, it hung off my shoulders.

The biting wind still managed to slip past the collar, slicing across my cheeks. I had to condense my mana into my back just to not hunch over. Violet, Damian, and Sere took theirs after me. Theirs were… a little less cut to their frames, but not egregiously so. Only when our entire expedition was fully cloaked did we set out again, crossing the invisible barrier from ash to snow. The wind picked up eerily quickly, biting and cold.

The crunch had a different pitch now, and each step felt like my feet were sinking into the ground. The snow, thankfully, wasn't piled too high. Though given that this land had been in perpetual winter for a century, that was just as eerie as everything else. Sere shivered next to me. I leaned down next to her.

"Hey, you okay?" She slowly nodded her head. Her cheeks were red and puffy from the cold. Mine felt the same way. I reached out for my Gift. Click. Click. I adjusted my perception of temperature. The biting cold simply... stopped. How convenient. Really? Vaelin murmured. I paused. That had sounded downright sarcastic. Vaelin, just what in the hell are you?

"Keep your bloody eyes and ears open, lads." Lieutenant Simone barked out the order. All the men and women cast suspicious looks around them. It was odd, given that I could see in a straight line for what felt like miles. There was absolutely no cover. The only feature the land had was the broken road our procession walked through. The Ashen Wastes had been dead and lifeless, but even that paled in comparison to how empty this was. It felt like an incomplete sketch, and not something that should actually exist.

Corrupted. Intent. Vaelin murmured in the back of my mind. It had said that before, too, when we'd first entered the Ashen Wastes. Eira. That made me pause. That was new, though I hadn't the faintest idea what it meant. It sounded... sad. If a Godblade could be sad. It wasn't all silent. The expeditioners talked amongst themselves, their conversations carried in hushed whispers. Every so often, a howling wind would blow in, suffocating those conversations. The winds sometimes came from the front.

Sometimes from the side. Sometimes from our back. Once, the wind came from directly above us, pressing down like a hand.

"I don't like this place," Damian muttered under his breath. His words came out in a puff of white smoke.

"Who does, lad?" The man closest to Damian muttered. He was broad-shouldered, with a red scarf wrapped tight around his neck. Harren, I'd heard someone call him.

"Always hate coming to this side. Out North is livelier."

"More deadly, too," a woman replied. I believed her name was Saffer, but I wasn't sure. Heads bobbed in agreement around us.

"What? Why the hell aren't we going off in that direction then?" Violet said, loud enough to carry over the biting wind.

"... you do remember why we're heading in this direction, don't you?" I asked. She looked to me, smirked, and puffed out her cheeks.

"To kill a Dragon. I'm just saying we can find way cooler things than a Dragon if we go somewhere more fun."

"To kill a Dragon already on its last legs." Count Vance corrected. I hadn't seen him step so close to us.

"If it were a healthy one, we would not dare attempt such a thing." That was the crux of the plan Count Vance had brought to me. I'd needed to make a statement, and there were few statements as grand as slaying a Dragon. Of course, nobody in Aelheim could have managed such a thing. Not even my father, had he been healthy. Then, there had been reports of a Dragon near one of House Veyne's few mining outposts. A Dragon that looked to be on the verge of death. It had all lined up rather nicely.

"Hmph." Violet shook her head.

"Beating down something that's already on its knees isn't my bloody style. Find me a healthy one, and I'll consider it." That got a loud burst of laughter. Harren laughed the loudest. Violet didn't seem to care. I did quite like that about her. There were yells from the front of our caravan -a rippling warning that slowly moved through the column until it reached us, stopping everyone in place. The laughter of just a few moments prior was forgotten. A man came running up to Count Vance and whispered in his ear.

Count Vance slowly nodded, murmured an order I didn't hear, and sent the man running farther up the back of the Caravan.

"My Lady," Count Vance said to me.

"Stay in the center." Even as he said this, men and women began to form a circle around us.

"W-what's going on?!" Dorothy Carter yelled. Evidently, she was one of the people thrown to the center. I saw the light-skinned man who carried her Scrylens follow.

"Yeah, what is going on?" Violet demanded.

"They found water," Count Vance said finally. His words carried, made the nervous men and women around us look all the more unsettled.

"Water?" I asked.

"Is that…bad?"

"It is." Count Vance drew his broadsword.

"Shallows travel through meltwater. If there's water running beneath us, they're already here."

"How many?" Lieutenant Simone asked.

"More than one channel." Count Vance's expression darkened.

"Doesn't make sense. Shallows don't pack together like this." Many other men and women around me drew their weapons as well. Others raised their hands, colored mana coalescing in their hands. Damian stood on my right. He had a shortsword in his hand, though I had never seen him use it yet. Violet stood on my left. She looked downright eager as she stared left and right with her warhammer. I didn't see Sere, though she had been right there just a second ago. For a long few second, nothing at all happened.

The silence stretched, grew more tense as it did. There was no place to hide. Click. Click. I scanned the skies with my Gift. There was nothing.

"Below us!" Damian shouted.

"Somewhere far, getting close!"

"Shit. Fucking Shallows." The man in front of me murmured. The word spread like a curse through our ranks. Now, men and women were nervously staring at the ground below them.

"There!" Someone pointed in the distance. My head snapped to follow his shout. For the briefest of moments, I saw it. A silver streak flying through the sky in the distance, before it was lost in the snow. More streaks followed the first. They carved up the snow as they made a beeline straight for us. Fire and lightning were hurled at them by four of the expeditioners. The Shallows were still too far, and neither of their Gifts reached. Did you know this text is from a different site?

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"Hold!" Lieutenant Simone barked.

"Hold you fools!" The creatures in the distance grew larger. Every now and then, they would leap into the air before digging back into the snow. With my sight, I could see them. Their silver carapaces caught the light. Instead of faces, they had massive, circular maws filled with rows of jagged, spinning teeth. When they were within fifty meters, the expedition began attacking again. The four elements -fire, earth, water, and wind- shot out towards them in sweeping waves.

The Shallows ducked underneath the ground, evading the attack entirely. The men who shot imbued arrows had more luck. I saw one of the Shallows get pierced by three blue bolts at once. It crashed on the snow, writhed in place. Most of them did not. There was a distinct pause where the Shallows did not surface again. Instead, we heard their grinding get closer and closer. Men looked around nervously, looking ready to swing at nothing if need be. Something erupted a distance behind me. I turned.

The beast's maw clamped over a man's head with a wet crunch. The man's body staggered a single step, then folded. A geyser of blood sprayed across the white snow. By the time anyone else turned, the Shallow had already dove back beneath the ice. More screams from all around me. Our line of defense didn't matter at all against an enemy who could burrow right past it at will.

"Duck!" My body reacted on instinct, doing just that. Thud. I stared up as Violet's Warhammer met one of the Shallows head-on. She slammed it so hard the beast spun through the air, crashing into the distant snow.

"Pay fucking attention," Violet growled, hefting her hammer as she stared uneasily at the ground.

"Can you see them?"

"No." Damian slammed his hands to the ground. The ground beneath me violently trembled, and a thick pillar of earth erupted upward, carrying the three of us a dozen feet above the bloody snow. A massive thud reverberated up through the stone beneath our feet, nearly knocking me over. The column did not fall. I understood the point of this in an instant.

"Good call," I told Damian.

"Thanks. Just don't move much. I don't know how stable this is." He looked very proud of himself for a moment before he remembered where we were. Other pillars rose after ours. I counted at least five more raised into the air, carrying more than a dozen men between them. Count Vance and his Lieutenants were among them. So this was the standard counter. Get off the ground, force the beasts to surface, and pick them off. Against a smaller number, it would have been more than enough. This wasn't a small number.

"Keep your formation." Count Vance barked orders below.

"Cover each other!" I saw them more clearly from here. They were slithering shapes that shot above for only a moment before they struck at someone. Their mouths would either cover a man's head and bite it clean off, or they would crash into someone's chest, biting right through. Once, I saw it leap from directly beneath the feet of a man, digging right between his legs. I saw a few of the Shallows fall as soon as they broke the ground. Their bodies sliced in half. The attack wasn't mindless.

Often, a Shallow would erupt from the ground and go right back down before a man could attack it. That was enough for another one to strike at a person's exposed back. These beasts had intelligence. There must have been twenty of them, by my estimate. Click. I enhanced my sight again, paired it with Mana Sight. The ground was a light blue now, just as it always was when I did this. I strained, and then… I saw them. Streaks of darker blue crawling around beneath the ground. Eighteen.

I counted eighteen of the things, darting through channels of water beneath the snowpack.

"Count!" I shouted across the gap between our pillars.

"I can see them! I'll give directions!" Count Vance glanced across at me. His face carried no warmth. Not even the barest warmth a retainer was supposed to show their Lord.

"Keep your head down, My Lady." His voice was flat, even though he yelled. He turned his back to me without another word, barking orders at his men. Damn it. I watched the streaks beneath the ground converge. Three of them, circling beneath a cluster of soldiers on my right.

"Count Vance! The far left, three of them, they-" He didn't turn. The first Shallow erupted directly beneath a woman's feet. She went down screaming. The second took the man beside her before he could even raise his sword. The third burst upward directly into a cluster of soldiers who had their backs to each other. A good defense against something they could see and anticipate. I saw a red scarf for just a moment. A body folded sideways, half of its torso simply gone.

The scarf settled on the snow, impossibly bright against all that red. Three dead in the span of seconds. Three, I had seen coming. Something cold settled in my chest. Draw.

"And just what would that do?" I whispered. It hadn't come to that yet. The power pressed against my skull. My hand twitched. I refused it. Not here, not in front of so many people. My resolve was tested by all of the screams. I held it firm, hating myself all the while. Things weren't that desperate yet. The blade seemed to pause. I felt it hesitate. Then, almost reluctantly, it whispered again. Then defy. For the barest moment, I almost thought it wanted me to draw it again. Then, I understood.

It agreed with me, or perhaps was forced to agree. I channeled mana into my voice. My voice was calm, but it carried. Even over the battle.

"Count Vance." I saw his shoulders stiffen.

"You will listen to me. Now." With the words, I flared mana. Just as I had in that clearing. His shoulders stiffened more. If I'd wanted to, I could have pressed a weight on him that might have made him fall off that platform. I wondered if he knew that. He turned. His jaw was tight, his expression caught somewhere between fury and something I couldn't name. I didn't give him time to argue.

"Damian... there. In three seconds. Behind that girl with the blue hair." I pointed. It took exactly three seconds. I saw the Shallow erupt from the ground, aiming for the woman who had her back turned. It rose and arched, teeth ready to close around the woman's head. Damian's stone spear found it and knocked it off course. The thing hissed as it fell on its side. That was enough for the woman to notice it. She screamed as she turned, arms outstretched.

Lightning arced from her hands, striking the Shallow where it lay. Its body oozed and then burst into purple goo. Count Vance stared at me for all of two seconds.

"Damian, connect our pillars. Fast, lad!" I crossed the stone bridge without looking down. Count Vance didn't look at me as I reached his side. His jaw was still tight.

"Just point them out," he said.

"I'll shout the code." His tone had changed. It was not warm. Not that it mattered. It took me a second to adjust. There were fourteen of the things darting beneath the snowpack. I pointed them out, and just as Count Vance had said, he shouted out a code. Our formation had been more complex than I'd given it credit for. Each man and woman here had a certain 'code', one they listened to almost instinctually as Count Vance barked down the orders.

The main advantage those Shallows had was in how disorienting they were. My sight made that advantage moot. The chaos began to turn as Count Vance's orders came faster and faster. The beasts had been attacking with an almost reckless abandon. Now, it was like I could see their hesitation in their movements, in their deciding the right time to lunge out of the earth. In contrast, our own expedition only got more and more confident. In my searching, I found Sere every now and then.

She mostly seemed to hover around Dorothy, protecting her twice from attacks that I saw. Dorothy just hunched over, hands on her head. Soon, there were fewer than four of the beasts left. Those started to turn, started to flee.

"Esra, tell me where the hell they are!" Violet roared from the opposite platform.

"What?" I shouted back.

"Tell me!" I sighed. The last of the beasts were running. They might circle back. Given the intelligence I'd seen, they might even bring more. No point leaving loose ends. I still wanted to refuse. The look Violet gave me stopped me.

"East.. there." I pointed with my finger. Violet launched off the platform so hard that she left a small hole where her feet had been. She couldn't see as well as I, so surely she needed more specific directions. Violet fixed that problem by slamming her warhammer indiscriminately into the ground. Snow erupted, and with it, two of the beasts. Violet swung for one of them, her hammer slamming into it so hard it flew into the distance, body crushed. The other lunged for her head.

Violet dropped her hammer, turned, and grabbed the upper and lower ridges of its maw with her bare hands. My stomach lurched. I jumped off the platform without even thinking, landing hard on the snow, scrambling to reach her. My ankle almost twisted. I didn't care. I scrambled forward. I was still ten feet away when crimson mana flared around Violet's gauntlets.

"There... we go!" she roared with a feral grin. Crack. Violet ripped the beast entirely in half down the middle. It fell to the ground in two ruined, steaming heaps, its purple blood burning holes right into the white snow. She turned and saw me, smiled widely.

"Look! Esra, Look! I always wanted to do that!" My panic died with her smile. I sighed, stepped forward, and gently smacked her side.

"Are you crazy?!" I grabbed her arm.

"I thought you were…" My voice cut off on its own. Violet paused, whatever retort she had dying away. Then, her cheeks reddened. She nodded, tugged at her braid as she looked away from me.

"Erm…sorry. Guess I got a little…carried away."

"A little?" It was hard to be mad at her. I grabbed her shoulder, started dragging her back towards the waiting men and women. Many of whom were staring at her.

"Hey, don't just drag me!" Violet protested. The attack had only just ended, and yet all the men were already skinning the beasts. The air felt colder now, more biting. Many men held up gleaming silver beast cores. That was the source of the added chill, I knew. Count Vance had gotten off his platform, too. He regarded me, regarded Violet. Then, he nodded. Turned towards his men and shouted more orders. We had lost eight. Nearly a dozen more were injured. The men laid the dead in a row on the snow. Eight bodies.

All were missing pieces. Torsos. Chests. Heads. Most had died so fast they still wore the expressions they'd had a moment before. I saw surprise, fear, pain and shouts that would never come. The ones that couldn't bear expression any longer were the hardest to look at. Harren was the fourth in the row. I recognized the red scarf before I recognized anything else. Someone had placed it back around what remained of his neck. The woman -Saffer- hunched over him, weeping quietly even after the others had moved on.

Those two had been moving together all this time. A detail I hadn't cared for before. Why did I only notice it now? That had been less than an hour ago. Three of those eight, I had seen coming. I had called it out. I had been ignored, and then I had let myself be ignored. If I had pushed harder. If I had pulled rank from the start, and not waited until people were already dying. If I had used the Godblade instead. I forced myself to stop thinking. I had to. Nobody else seemed to consider eight a devastating loss.

"We got off lightly," Count Vance said, skinning one of the fallen worms.

"Eight dead is light?" He looked up at me and held my gaze.

"My Lady, it's been mighty peaceful out here. More peaceful than any time I can remember." He shook his head.

"Was damn creepy. Bet the men could feel it too. They're glad something finally happened."

"Eighteen in one pack, though." He muttered just loud enough for me to hear.

"Haven't seen that in twenty years. And the Walkers last night, all at once like that." He shook his head.

"Doesn't make sense." He went back to skinning. The conversation was over, and yet I felt it hadn't even properly begun. It was no wonder the people of Aelheim and the expeditioners couldn't see eye to eye. They might as well come from two different worlds. Sere walked up to me in the aftermath. She looked perfectly fine. Not a scratch on her. I checked. She looked little like the trembling girl I had seen in that forest. She stood straighter now, and her eyes were clear.

Something about seeing her made my own body feel lighter, too. My shoulders sagged. I do good?

"Yes, you did." I paused.

"Why Dorothy, though? Do you like her?" Cool didn't seem an appropriate answer for Sere protecting her twice. She shrugged, started writing again. Chocolate. Ah. Well, Dorothy might have just considered it a kindness, not knowing that the sweets she had brought had apparently gotten her a rather terrifying guard.

"We need to move, My Lady." Count Vance said.

"We can't dawdle."

"Already?" He nodded.

"There are worse things in this place than Shallows. We need to make it to Iron Hollow before dark." I didn't know why he was asking, but I nodded anyway. Count Vance turned and shouted out orders. Soon, we were moving again. It was a few hours before we reached Iron Hollow. It was a small village, though even calling it that felt like a lie. A few shacks in the white void. A large mountain range was behind them, vanishing upward into clouds that looked too low and too dark.

The first change we'd seen in a long time. Smoke rose from one of the shacks. Thin, grey, barely visible against the snow. I had never been here before, and yet compared to that endless white, it felt like returning home.