Chương 21: Swallowed

Every hair on Solstice's body stood at once. His breathing turned ragged, every inhale dragging in like something jagged was lodged behind his collarbone. He looked at Khufrol.

"My organs."

"I can tell. You humans are so frail. Just a few shards of salt and you're already—""Shut up." Solstice hissed the words out between coughs, forcing himself upright, glaring hard enough that even Khufrol's grin faltered a degree.

"If you still want that deal." A beat, breath rattling in his chest.

"Help me with this." Khufrol didn't say anything.

"Help me stop this." Khufrol's grin came back, sharper now.

"Follow me." The back stretch of the orphanage looked nothing like the rest of it. Broken carriages sat half-buried under drifts of snow, stripped down to bare wood in places. Crates stacked in tidy, deliberate lines, too orderly to be an accident. Past all of it stood a wall, five meters of packed stone rising up against a sky that never once let sunlight through.

"I don't know what that wench told you kids." Khufrol said it without looking back, dragging one of the crates into position against the wall.

"But this orphanage runs on strict rules for its Nameless. Emelia doesn't get a say in that, whatever you think of her."

"Rules?" Solstice's voice came out ragged around another cough.

"A Nameless kid can't leave without permission. There's a whole process. Emelia's the only one who can walk you out that gate." He shoved a second crate onto the first.

"So you're not using the gate."

"That's some bullshit."

"Use these instead." Khufrol jerked his chin at the stacked crates.

"Once you're over, leave Ourola behind you and keep your eyes open." He stacked the last box, testing its weight with one hand.

"Look for snow that looks wrong. Almost translucent. Blocky, like it's hiding something solid underneath."

"That's the Oryth?" Solstice managed between coughs.

"Yes. Snow Eater, some call it. Count the time once you're inside its stomach. Any longer than a minute and you're not walking back out. Hold your breath the second it swallows you. Don't fight the pull, let it take you in. Once you're inside, find a red organ, round, and cut it clean. It'll spit you back out on its own after that." He set the final crate.

"Use these to climb."

"You'd better be right about this. Because if I die in there, I'm coming back to haunt you for the rest of your miserable life."

"You runt. Of course it works." Khufrol's voice sharpened with something close to offense.

"That thing can digest anything. Magic stones included. You think a little crystallization in your gut is going to survive that?" Solstice winced.

"Can't we find Emelia instead? Surely she knows what to do about my conditio—""Don't be an idiot." Khufrol cut him off before he could finish.

"Crystallization from Pale Salt is fast and unpredictable. You're coughing now, but give it a little longer and you could stop breathing without warning." His grin thinned.

"There's no time to find that wench and hope she knows what to do., I suggest you get moving."

'I don't have a choice here, do I. Compromise now or end up like Murren.' Solstice took his first step toward the crates.

"Lend me your knife."

"Bring it back, you brat."

"You're not coming with me?"

"Can't." Khufrol tapped a finger against a small, circular artifact fused into the side of his neck.

"The second I step past that wall, I'm dead. This place is my punishment. Has been for longer than you've been alive." Solstice didn't say anything to that. Filed it away instead, same as everything else.

"Wait for me. And tell emelia I've gone out."

"I got you. And done die kid" He started climbing.

"Endure the burn," Khufrol called after him.

"Don't breathe in. Count to a full minute. No less."

"I got it. Shut up." Khufrol's grin stayed put behind him.

"I'll be waiting." Every step up the stacked crates dragged pain through his bad leg, sharp enough that his teeth ground together by the third one. His shoulder wasn't much better, screaming every time he had to pull his own weight up with it. By the time he reached the top of the wall, sweat had soaked through the back of his coat despite the cold, and his hands shook from more than just the effort. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The world past the wall looked nothing like anything he'd known. A woman passed hauling an insulated metal cylinder strapped to her back, steam hissing faint from a valve at its top, sloshing with water somebody somewhere still needed hot. A man walked the opposite direction with a small furnace canister lashed between his shoulder blades, coals glowing dull red through a mesh grate.

Metal pipes ran along the outside of every building, thick as a man's arm, feeding warmth into the housing from some source Solstice couldn't trace back to its start. Others wore coats stitched through with what looked like flat heated plates. A cart rattled past loaded with furnace bricks, each one glowing orange from within. Children darted between adults carrying small lanterns of their own, tiny flames guarded behind glass, more toy than tool but clearly treated like something precious.

Snow stretched out in every direction, but it moved wrong, drifting sideways in slow spirals that never seemed to touch the ground, caught in some current he couldn't feel from up here. Far off, structures jutted up out of the white in jagged, leaning angles, half-swallowed by drifts, like a city had tried to grow here once and frozen mid-attempt. The sky sat low and pale, close enough that it felt like it was pressing down rather than stretching out above him. He didn't have time to stare at it.

Solstice lowered himself carefully, using his good leg to take the weight, but the snow gave way under his boot without warning, and his stomach dropped with it.

"Shit!" His hand shot up on instinct, catching the wall's edge with his good shoulder, jerking his whole body to a stop before gravity finished the job. He hung there a second, boots scraping for purchase against stone slick with frost. He looked down. Still too far to land clean.

"Okay." A breath, sharp enough to burn on the way in.

"I got this." He let go. Half a second later, the ground met him in a burst of pale snow and pain that tore straight through his bad leg. He bit down hard on his own lip, tasting copper, forcing the sound back down his throat before it could turn into a scream. Warmth flooded through his leg anyway, the bad kind, the kind that meant blood. He rolled, anchoring one hand against the wall, hauling himself upright on his good leg.

Blood had already soaked through the fabric at his thigh, dark against the pale wrap underneath.

"I hate my life." He kept walking anyway. People moved along the street ahead, taller than him, fed well enough that it showed in how they carried themselves. All of them in a hurry, boots crunching fast against packed snow, heads down, shoulders pulled tight against a cold that didn't seem to bother anyone but him. Solstice kept his pace steady, forcing himself not to limp any harder than he had to. Ahead, the gate came into view.

'Alright. Act like you belong here. Not like some Nameless runt who just climbed a wall to sneak out.' He pulled the goggles down off his forehead and settled them over his eyes, then cinched the red scarf tighter around his neck. Straightened his back. Walked.

"Kid? Where do you think you're going?" The guard's voice cut through, casual, bored.

"Kid?" Solstice's voice dropped, low and flat. Then sharper.

"KID?" The guard's expression flickered from bored to confused in half a second.

"HOW DARE—" Solstice cut himself off, letting the outrage build like it actually offended him.

"How dare you call me a kid. Do I look like a kid to you?"

"Well, I'm just asking—""Of course I'm going out. I've got business waiting for me. And tell me." He tapped the goggles once.

"Do kids wear artifacts like this?"

"No, that's not—""That's what I thought." He let the silence sit a beat, cold and final.

"Mind your mouth before I call the ring guards myself." The guard didn't answer. His face had gone somewhere close to embarrassed instead.' Please, please work. Listen to me, you frozenbitten bastard.'

"My apologies. You may proceed." Solstice nearly laughed right there. Held it in, barely.' Guess I still have some luck left.' Past the gate, an endless stretch of white and ruin opened up ahead of him, boulders scattered across it like something had dropped them from a great height and never bothered clearing them away. He kept walking, eyes scanning every patch of snow he passed. The plan was simple enough for a Nameless runt with no better options. Get eaten.

Let the Oryth's stomach burn the crystallization out of him from the inside, assuming Khufrol wasn't lying, assuming his organs weren't already too far gone to save.' Just hope it isn't as bad as it feels.' He kept walking, breath fogging thin in front of him, eyes tracking every drift he passed. A patch of snow ahead sat wrong. Too smooth. Too solid. Blocky underneath the white in a way nothing natural should be. That had to be it. He moved toward it slow, limping, one hand already closed around Khufrol's knife.

Every step dragged fresh pain up from his bleeding thigh, another cough tearing loose halfway there. Then the snow around it erupted upward all at once, like something beneath it had shoved the whole drift skyward in a single motion. What stood in front of him was red. Steaming. Expanding fast, swallowing his vision inch by inch until there was nothing left in front of him but heat and color. His eyes went wide.' Oh.'

Every nerve in his body screamed at once, telling him to run, to dodge, to do anything but stand there. He didn't move.' Alright, you white bastard. Eat me.' The nameless boy disappeared into it whole.