Winter Reign: Rise of the Winter Queen

by N. M. Howell

  I read her mind and know she is about to transport herself. I charm my body, giving me incredible speed and I race toward her. The ceiling is crashing down around me, the walls buckling in explosions of metal and stone. The floor is splitting. And Laoren is vanishing. I am moving so fast it is as if the world has slowed to a crawl. Quicker than a blinking eye I have traversed the room to Laoren. She is almost completely gone, but I reach out and grab her white cape. We vanish.

  We land at Moerdra Castle. Laoren loses her balance and falls to her knees. My kick lands so powerfully on the back of her head that her face is buried in the stone. The Stones must have given her the power to transport us. I take them and cast a spell to make them invisible. I toss them. Laoren rises. A nearby battalion of her men sees me and advances, but I have no time for this. With a cursory wave of my hand I freeze thousands instantly in a white rush of ice. Laoren stares across the space between us.

  “At last, we have our stage, false idol,” she says. “Shall we fight for the fate of the world?”

  “For that and vengeance and justice and many others,” I respond, “But chiefly for your destruction.”

  “I am destruction! I am fire and ruin and always! I am the waking and sleeping of the world, and the lifeblood of the horror that controls it! So many ages of the world I have seen, child. You don’t even know that it was I who was the first Red Shadow. Meager Queen! You would challenge me?”

  “Enough of your talk. Let this end.”

  I throw my hands up and conjure a thousand bows and as they all fire, a thousand flaming arrows rush for Laoren. She creates a shield to block the shafts, but she takes their fire and makes a giant scorpion of it. The great beast tries to hit me with a stinger the size of my head. So hard does the stinger strike the ground that the earth shakes and I stumble, but I draw the moisture from the air and send it down the beast’s throat. It vanishes in a great cloud of steam. Laoren emerges from the vapor and strikes me fiercely as she rushes past. The blow sends me twisting through the air. I collide with the ground and then become one with the earth; her Norrolai aren’t’ the only ones that know this trick. I suck her down as far as her chest and then resume my form. With my magic I raise a massive piece of stone ruin and bring it crashing upon her head. She is only quiet for a moment before she bursts through the stone and lunges for me.

  We trade blows, both of our own strength and of magic. She is stronger, but I am faster. I beat her with as much fury as she beats me. I take her by the arm and, pulling her over my head, slam her against the earth. I lift her and do the same again. This time the earth shakes. She rights herself faster than I can see and kicks me with such force that I collide with a tree some twenty yards away. I pick myself up, ready to attack, but as I watch her she becomes invisible.

  “Come and find me, little Queen. I will give you your birthright. Death.”

  A blow strikes me from behind and I hear and feel my spine snap. Her unseen foot kicks me across the grass. As I lie there, the winter magic heals me. I use the rush of magic to bring snowfall; this will surely point her out. But she whips the air with fire and burns the snow away. I rise and close my eye, for if I cannot see her, I will sense her. It is only a moment before I find her. I catch her hand in the air as she tries to strike me, and break her arm violently. I kick her knee and break it, too. I grasp her throat and squeeze. She tries to fight me, but it is no use. I will not release her. I bring her down to her knees. Her eyelids are lowering some, but then she reaches up and begins to squeeze my throat. Soon she has brought me to my knees and then pushed me over to my back. She flips over on top of me and the hand that grasps my throat begins pounding my head into the earth. I am losing my senses. After some moments even the agony goes numb. She does not stop pounding or squeezing and I lose my grasp on her throat. As my hold goes, hers increases. Her other hand strikes away at my stomach and it is only moments before I am breathing as much blood as air. I am nearly faded from this world, but I think of Delara and what Laoren did to her. I think of the child. I muster just enough strength to place my hand on her chest; I create there an explosion more powerful than a hundred cannons. She is sent flying across the land in a ball of flame and smoke.

  The winter magic surges in me, like a flood through a canal. Slowly, I heal. Already I can see Laoren rising, beginning to heal herself. She begins walking to me, slowly, staggeringly, her body half burned away and her legs still on fire. I gain my knees. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and place my hands against the earth. Snow and ice and wind pour out of me and rush across the land in every direction. The ground and the ruins are instantly covered in a bed of white snow and ice hangs from the trees in thick spikes that nearly touch the ground. Freezing wind howls across the sky and snow whips and blows around us in a terrible blizzard. Laoren, still healing, is nearly upon me. My thousand bows still exist in the sky and when they shoot this time, the shafts are of ice. They rain upon her, knocking her to the ground and pinning her there like frozen stakes. She manages to protect her vital areas. I raise a hand and in the sky above us, clouds as black as night gather and beat the earth with lightning. I catch a bolt in my bare hands and shape it into a blade of pure, hot light. The winter storm is so fierce that I can see no farther than Laoren, who has regained her feet. With my free hand I whip the winds into an even more frightening gale. A colossal funnel of ice, snow, and wind surround Laoren and me, a barrier keeping her locked in. The terrible rushing winds of the funnel extend far into the sky. I have plunged the entire land into a winter storm and trapped Laoren in a circle with myself. I brandish my crackling blade of light.

  “I am Maerolwyn of the Winterlands and I bid you come and face your final hour, witch.”

  Chapter 28

  He was created in darkness. When he came into being there was nothing in existence but stars and the black cosmos stretching around him infinitely. There was no one to give him purpose or to guide him. No one to care for him or love him. But he had been given a tremendous amount of power and he felt the entire cosmos was his toy. For many life ages, years so many and so long they cannot be counted or remembered, he was alone and to his own mind he was a god.

  And then the cosmos when still, only for a moment, and when it moved again there was another. A new entity existing in wide black Creation.

  “Who are you?” the first being asked.

  “I am not anything yet. Who are you?”

  “I am the ruler of this place. I am your god.”

  “You created me? You created the cosmos?”

  “No. But I was given mighty power and I have been here a long time.”

  “I understand. I will call you Almighty, then. And I will be Compassion.”

  “What is that? What does your name mean?”

  “Compassion is a combination of love and sympathy for those suffering or experiencing misfortune. It is my purpose.”

  “Your purpose?” the Almighty asked.

  And from that very moment the Almighty was jealous of Compassion. He hated him. He thought it unfair that this new being should not only have a purpose, but know it. For millennia the Almighty had existed in the dark void of the cosmos, occupying his hours with exhibitions of his power and convincing himself that he was the ultimate being. The only being. Everything that existed was his and he crowned himself superior to all of it, but with Compassion’s appearance everything he knew and believed was destroyed. He had been deceived.

  As much as he yearned to be alone again, the Almighty learned much from Compassion. He learned of things to come. He learned about the nature of his own power. More than anything he learned who he was. What his mind and spirit were capable of. He learned words like anger, hate, vengeful, dangerous. Evil. The more of these dark things he learned, the more he liked them and wanted to be them, for in his mind he needed to be strong and ruthless to protect his power from Compassion. And when he thought he’d learned all he could, he turned on Compassion and made him a prisoner. Compassion never even fought bac
k, never said a word in his own defense. With the other being locked away, the Almighty began searching the cosmos, for Compassion had spoken of a new thing, a world. It was called earth and if Compassion’s stories were true there were beings on it. Many of them.

  He found the earth on the other side of the cosmos. He watched it for a time, and then went down. He came with many lies and false promises, many assurances and tales of future perfection. The humans and creatures of the earth believed him and he took advantage of it, for Compassion had told him of something curious. There was a thing, an action, that was very old and at the same time had not yet come manifested in the world. It was strong, irrevocable, and dangerous: death. The first evil in the cosmos. So terrible was death that it had yet to be released. But the Almighty was arrogant and avaricious. He took immortality from the beings on earth and they grew old and began to die. He laughed in his high gold throne, thinking they made good pets, but would now never be able to steal his power.

  But Compassion, though a prisoner, felt the sadness go through the cosmos when the living things of earth began to die. He pronounced a punishment. As the Almighty had stolen immortality from the earth, so, too, would it be stolen from him. Instead, the Almighty would have to draw power from souls that had faith in him and all his power would drain as their faith waned. So powerful was this spell that Compassion could only cast it at the cost of his own immortality and strength. It was Compassion’s hope that this would teach the Almighty humility and love. But it only made him angrier and bitterer. He ripped Compassion from the cosmos and threw him into a pit in the belly of the earth.

  Reluctantly resigned to his new condition, the Almighty decided to try kindness for a time. Not even a year had passed before he grew sick of sympathy, forgiveness, patience, wisdom and all the other traits of goodness. He could not stand it. And so he laid waste to an entire continent; the people there had been faithful and had loved him, but he destroyed them anyway. In their final despair they called out a name. Ragnarok.

  It felt good to purge the earth of the weakness of love. He felt his power decline with the loss of all those lives, but he was clever. He created two things: first, heaven—where souls could unwittingly become a direct and concentrated source of power for him—and second, his Warriors. He created them to bolster his power and to aid him should Compassion ever desire to be free. He told them that Compassion was a great evil that he had locked away to protect the earth. Of course they believed his every word.

  Time went on. Every few millennia the Almighty would rain destruction on the earth, for sheer pleasure. When his Warriors would cry out for mercy for the little creatures he would simply take their memory. All through the life ages of the earth he perpetuated the myth of his kindness, love, and fairness. Millions worshipped him and had that faith rewarded by their death or the consumption of their souls. Much to the Almighty’s delight, death had exposed the world to many other horrors: famine, drought, storms, disputes, lies, betrayal, infidelity, and too many others to count. His favorite was murder, for it seemed the perfect expression for his vision of Creation.

  There came a time when he decided to give the powers of a Warrior to a human, for stronger humans meant stronger faith, which in turn meant more power for him. His lie was that he wanted to reward them. So he chose Laoren and history tells how that played out. When Laoren, Throdan, and Traega were exiled, the other Warriors began to doubt for the first time in their existence. The Almighty didn’t dare take their memories, for the process had gotten harder every time. Between their doubt and the three Warriors’ competing heavens, his reign was quickly ending. He knew there was only one solution. War.

  Down he went to the pit in the earth and found his prisoner. Over the millennia Compassion had withered until there was not much left of him. When the Almighty first imprisoned him, he stole Compassion’s Stones, blue rocks given to him for some undetermined event. The Almighty had never learned how to use them and so he asked Compassion.

  “I have tried to be a brother to you,” Compassion said. “I have taught you and put myself at your mercy when I could have destroyed you the very moment we met. Even now, withered, I have more power than you.”

  “How pathetic,” the Almighty sneered. “In your final hour you seek comfort in lies.”

  But Compassion had not spoken falsely. He stood and broke the cage without effort. The Almighty turned to flee and Compassion bound him fast without even blinking. The Almighty cried for mercy.

  “I will not kill you, brother,” Compassion said. “It is my purpose to feel as my name suggests. I have always hoped that you would renounce your evil and fall into the warmth of good. I still hope it now.”

  He released the Almighty and kneeled before him. He took out the Stones and blew on one. It lit up. He handed them to the Almighty.

  “Right now you may decide who you are. These five stones I give to you. They were given to me to destroy you, should you prove beyond saving. Only vierg’lumière can power them. I have activated one, should you choose to use it. Even now I have faith that you--”

  Before he even finished speaking, the Almighty shoved the stone down his throat. Compassion began to glow, brighter than all the stars and right before he exploded he managed a few last words.

  “You have chosen destruction as your path. Pity. I was sent to you to as a light, to give you hope, love, and joy. And now you will never know them, brother.”

  Compassion was no more. The Almighty was standing to close when the Stone went off, and because of that he obtained a long blue scar, one he would never be able to remove. The Almighty went back to the earth and began the War of Four Heavens. Toward the end of the war, a clever Braelynn spy fooled him. When she left, she took with her many of his darkest secrets, including his spell books, who he really was, and what he planned to do to the Warriors. When the war ended, many souls had simply been destroyed, including the ones in the heavens he obliterated. He still had many followers on earth, but most had turned from him to one of the three Warriors. The Warriors in his heaven, who did not take part in the war at his request, had grown suspicious, even angry. And he could not find the spy. There had never been such threat to that he held most dear. Power.

  So he darkened heaven and in that darkness slaughtered every Warrior. He visited King Aavon in his sleep and persuaded him to kill every white-haired people of the earth. And for a time his reign was secure. But when he sought to use the Stones for the next purging of the earth, he discovered just how rare vierg’lumière was. He had to wait many centuries before Laoren turned the sky red and created the brothers. By the time he realized what had happened, he was too late. He reached the boy only to find his magic had turned and he was useless. He took the boy’s memory and tried to return to heaven, but he could not.

  He had been careless. Since the beginning of the War of Four Heavens he had been using his power in incredible ways and in all that time his followers had dwindled. They had either heard word of his wickedness or simply forgotten him, thinking him a fairytale for children. He had not drawn much power from souls in a long while and he had used up almost all of the souls in his heaven to kill the Warriors. And traveling to earth in search of vierg’lumière had been too much. He was trapped in the world.

  He wandered for many years, but the human form he had assumed began to grow old and weak. He needed to do something to save himself. One of the few tricks left to him was the ability to possess bodies. He lifted his essence from that form and drifted. In that other world in which he existed then, out of space and time, he decided to inhabit an infant, hoping it would help his power grow again. He made his way to a mother’s womb and discarded the baby’s soul and took its place. He was born underground, among a white-haired people. The Braelynn.

  He chose them because he realized after the war that he had inadvertently given magic to Veorlwyn, who had given it all to his wife and child. The wife, Maerolwyn, wrote a powerful spell capable of restoring her people. The Almighty decided to
become a new being. A new legend. He planned to infiltrate the Braelynn and win their trust. Have them worship him. He would become their king, marry the Queen, and draw her magic. He would make them love him and he would raise them from their tunnels. They would be so grateful that they would spread his name and tales of his magnanimity. He would be a god to them. And then to the world.

  But he learned soon that his plan would not work. In the years he had wandered he had lost even more power and the winter magic had withered underground without the sun. People all over the earth were forgetting him and the curse over the Winterlands drained him daily. He stole what power he could from the Queen’s Prism, but it was useless. He took his revenge in secretly torturing the Braelynn. He killed the mother and father who gave birth to the body he’d taken. He made others so ill they died in pools of their own blood. Whenever his body was at the point of death, he would kill another young soul and be born again. His scar always followed him; the Braelyn thought it was just an occurrence among their people. And his evil never waned: rock slides, cave-ins, accidents, illnesses. Cruel, sickening evil. For more than three hundred and fifty years he lived among them, a silent killer, an impotent fallen being.

  Then one day he’d had enough. He could hardly even feel his magic. He was already in the body of Analwyn. He convinced Corinnalwyn and Rhealwyn to take the newborn princess above ground. They trusted him and so they went, with a few others. The Almighty went as well. He knew Gardenwall would soon discover them and so he used his remaining strength to draw off the spell in a small area of the land. For a time Corinnalwyn was able to have her magic. But of course, peace did not last and the princess was taken by the House of Eaynfall. He knew that unless the princess mastered her powers and returned, this would be his last life. He would die as Analwyn, in the dark, damp bowels of the earth and Ragnarok, ruler of Creation, would be no more.