Seon's Freedom

by Lisa Daniels

  “Always,” Erlandur answered. “There is one rule, though, when we go. It’s ‘don’t get lost.’” Faith smiled despite herself. Cursed moon, this man was brave. Likely foolish, too, but what did that leave her? She’d agreed to come along as well. She had prepared herself to sacrifice everything for the greater good.

  Everyone here was as mad as the black knight who led the way, his undead wolves silently padding the murk.

  Faith could barely see in the night, but the werewolves had no such issues. They navigated the cold and the dark, unafraid of the horrors that lurked, pushing through the embrace of the remorseless mountains that hemmed them in.

  When the werewolves tired, they huddled together in a sheltered enclave, where the remnants of an old campfire lay – evidence of Erlandur’s former journey across to the Fractured City and back. Even with the cold, Erlandur never took his armor off. He lay there, with Faith, as the six werewolves huddled together to conserve their warmth, helping the humans to not freeze to death. Faith lay squashed between Nox and Mordyn, both with the distinctive white shade colorings of the Fractured Spine clan. She missed the warm springs of her home, and the clear crystalline lakes which were perfect mirrors of the sky.

  It was lonely, being so high in the mountains, seeing nothing but swirling blizzard around, shivering in the gloom as they waited for the first hint of light to come.

  According to Erlandur, the Shadows would not attack so high up – could not, even, but it didn’t stop Faith from lying awake for a long time, wondering what awaited. It didn’t stop her dreading the ominous appearance of those nightmares.

  She remembered the first time she’d ever seen one. Seven years old, out with her mother and father in one of the lakes, fishing for their supper, when one of them had formed nearby the bank. She’d already been told so many stories about them, and watched as it pathetically lurched towards them.

  They never directly form underneath us. They always have to form nearby, outside the spiritual field we all carry around us. Look how it stumbles. Look how the snows hinder. This is the power of the Lunar Wastes. It makes them like children.

  Her father then morphed into his golden werewolf form, and with easy bounds, ripped the thing apart.

  More Shadows came over time. Faith soon realized their advantages lay in their numbers, in their tireless pursuit and the element of surprise if they attacked at night, making it harder for them to be seen.

  Movement disturbed her. She strained her eyes under the faint light of the moon, inhaling the wet fur smell of the six werewolves as she saw Erlandur twitching, his eyelids fluttering. She watched him curiously for a while, though the twitching never stopped. Something haunted him. Tormented his dreams.

  “I won’t give in,” he muttered, tossing over to his side. “Won’t give in.”

  He continued mumbling, and a chill went through Faith.

  She knew one other person who had that kind of dream.

  Yarrow of the Dreadwood.

  Gradually, Erlandur’s twitching died out, and he breathed slower, calmer.

  What did this mean? Did Erlandur suffer from corruption as well? Did he hear the voices? Was that why he never took his armor off? Part of her itched to unclasp the buckles, to see what lay beneath. The wayward fantasies she contained of him being naked, with a clear, unblemished torso, those deep blue eyes piercing her soul, with her on top of him, whispering into his ear that she planned to decipher all his secrets – her imagination blossomed. What if a spider web of black veins sheltered underneath his armor? Was that why he never took it off?

  A horrible notion came to her.

  Erlandur claimed he didn’t have magic. His armor did, which enabled him to control the undead wolves.

  What if he was lying?

  What if he had magic, unheard of in an ordinary human male?

  Shadow magic.

  Her brain weighed down with sleep. Too many speculations, too many possibilities to consider.

  What in moon’s eye happened to him the first time he entered the Fractured City?

  Sleep came, fitful, plagued with doubts and worries, with the fear that somewhere, something was going to go terribly wrong. Maybe all her doubts were misplaced.

  She hoped so, anyway.

  Traveling the next day on an empty stomach made it hard for her to focus. She ignored the pangs of hunger as best she could, knowing they needed to make it through the Fractured Spine as soon as possible. They ate sparse snippets of food, traveling hard for three days, drinking from the snow when they had no other choice. On the fourth day, the wolves spread out, their enormous forms lumbering over the snow, which now sunk waist deep for them in areas. Progress went slow, and Faith felt the powder scrape against her boots as they advanced, and the air oddly compressed her lungs, and clamped her skull. Headaches pinched her brain.

  “Up there,” Erlandur wheezed, pointing at the highest peak of the mountain they climbed, “is the death zone. We have to be fast when we reach it.”

  “W-why?” Faith’s teeth chattered. She felt queasy, dislocated from reality.

  “There’s not enough oxygen for us to breathe. Our bodies will start shutting down once we pass eight thousand meters, so we need to make it fast to the other side.”

  Two of the werewolves lagged behind, suffering the effects of the altitude as well.

  “We’ll have a few minutes. It’s a short distance. And we only just dip into the zone – but I lost two members of my expedition last time we made it here.”

  “That doesn’t sound promising,” Faith said, clutching tighter to the undead wolf. She heard Nox growl softly beside them. The Fractured Spine wolf whimpered, eyeing the two who struggled from altitude sickness.

  “Remember,” Erlandur panted, his voice carrying across as they waded. “Once we pass the arch, we have to be as fast as we can, but without exerting ourselves. A trot will do. We need to start our descent before we stay too long in the death zone.”

  Whimpers and growls punctuated his speech.

  The dizziness and nausea became stronger. Their group advanced at a glacial pace towards the arch.

  Once they passed under it, everyone burst into trotting speed, except one werewolf, who sprinted ahead.

  “Fool,” Erlandur hissed. “There’s not enough oxygen…”

  Sure enough, within twenty or so seconds, the werewolf stumbled, and fell unconscious, unable to breathe efficiently. He morphed back into human form. Erlandur and Faith quickly dismounted to help sling him over Faith’s undead wolf, and they continued their gruelling trek in the death zone, racing against time and oxygen decay.

  Faith’s heart thudded traitorously. Her head pounded, the nausea intensified, until she wanted to vomit out her insides, but kept it in check, holding onto the undead steed and the unconscious werewolf – Mordyn.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted two corpses in the snow, perfectly preserved, their icy yellow eyes staring blankly, as if judging them. She saw other bodies as well, some higher up, others collected at the base of an incline – expeditions that had failed in the past.

  Their group began descent. The nausea didn’t go away, and Faith began seeing spots in front of her eyes, finding her eyesight failing, and she panicked, though tried to not show it. Was she going blind? How? Why?

  They descended. Visions began swimming at the corners of her sight. Shadows rustling, a mass of wolves, all with undead, luminous blue eyes, watching them in eerie silence. Laughter and manic gibbering in the background, a voice hissing, telling her she’d never make it, she would die and freeze, and the snow would pile over her body, and the cold would preserve it, so she could stare at all the other travelers who passed.

  I’m hallucinating, she thought vaguely. None of this is real.

  What is real? The voices mocked, the army of blue eyed watchers said. The susurrations swam into her ears.

  Erlandur hovered in front of her, like a spectre. He seized her roughly, and planted dead blue lips upon he
rs, kissing and kissing.

  She gasped as her breath sucked out into his mouth. Her entire body iced over, as he inhaled every drop of warmth from her, leaving her an undead husk, with an un-beating heart.

  Now you will kill for me, the Erlandur monster declared, and something tinged in her bones, like an involuntary movement for her to let go, to kill, to fight against the onslaught of cold.

  Gradually, her thoughts cleared. The distorted images vanished. The headache grew calmer, and she took in great gulps of air, feeling wonderful, crisp oxygen igniting her lungs.

  The group continued their downward slant, no one saying anything. Faith didn’t know who else suffered the hallucinations, who else went through the same nausea as her, or whether it had just been her and Mardyn affected by the death zone.

  The descent on the other side appeared dangerously steep – they often sunk into snow and slithered down it, whilst trying to stick to a designated path which had been marked by travelers in the past with clothes tied around boulders, and rocks piled in uniform shape.

  When Faith bravely looked into the distance, trying not to let her head spin at the dizzying height thousands of meters up, she saw, for the first time in her life, the full outline of the Fractured City.

  The whole expanse stretched ahead, with thousands upon thousands of buildings, most collapsed, but some towering and still standing. The tower that reached above the mountains was a monolith, thickening as it neared the foundations to support its awesome height. Although this building was made of black cast iron, the other buildings in the distance looked as though they were made of marble, or glass. Streets between the buildings looked wide enough to host marching armies, or many wagons side by side. The buildings on the outer rims looked the most ruined. Most had crumbled into dust long ago, but the fact that so many areas still looked functional, despite the centuries it had been since the Lunar Wastes first formed, left Faith flabbergasted.

  The whole thing was gigantic. At least half the size of the Lunar Wastes. Maybe even more so.

  “Strange, isn’t it?” Erlandur’s voice drifted to her in the chilled air, so cold that Faith felt certain that if she moved her hands away from the wolf’s furs and from the wrappings she had them in, they would catch frostbite and drop off within hours. Even with her face wrapped up warmer, the cold had a way of seeping into her bones, slithering past all her defenses to make her feel eternally frozen.

  “It still looks like a city,” Faith said, gawping. She shivered. “I thought everything would be gone.”

  “Not everything,” Erlandur said. “Werewolves,” he called out then. “If anything should happen to us – if we get separated for any reason, even if you are alone, attempt to complete your mission and then return to the Fractured Spine clan. Scout the activity, determine where our best entry point will be. And… if you meet any living creature down there, if they’re not wearing a crescent moon pendant, then don’t trust them.”

  What?

  “There’s people there?”

  Before Erlandur had a chance to answer, a low, rumbling sound emanated.

  The werewolves hesitated in confusion.

  “Keep going,” Erlandur urged, his eyes roving around nervously. Faith clutched onto the unconscious Mardyn, wondering what that stomach wrenching sound belonged to.

  Her eyes settled on a shadowy mass standing by a thick clump of boulders.

  “Shadow!” She barked.

  “What?” Erlandur sought where she looked. “That’s… no. That’s not right. They can’t be up here.”

  The Shadow raised up its arms, swaying as if in a trance.

  Faith’s heart squeezed in fear. “It’s a Supreme.”

  “Oh, curses!”

  The Supreme shot black bolts out of its hands, striking the sheer mountain face. In the encroaching night, Faith heard the face of the mountain growl, before a horrific sound, like tearing rock resounded through the area.

  “RUN!” Erlandur screamed. “RUN!”

  How in curses could they outrun the avalanche? The snow and rock roared towards them like a vicious glacier tide, the noise and impact causing Faith’s bones to vibrate. She clung onto the undead wolf, and Mordyn began slipping from her grasp.

  No! Her wolf stumbled, struggled with the additional weight upon it, and Mordyn now slid at an awkward angle, dangling. No!

  “Let him go,” Erlandur screeched.

  “I can’t! That’s not fair or right!”

  “Then die.” His words chilled her more than the environment around them. There was no warmth there, no mercy.

  She clung onto Mordyn for longer, seeing the mountain fall down on top of them, casting a blotting darkness over their position. With a curse, she let Mordyn go, and the undead wolf silently sprang forwards, free from its bindings, eager to follow the bidding of its master. No matter how fast they ran, though, they couldn’t escape the advancing white death.

  The snow slammed into her back. She clung, desperately onto the wolf, as they stumbled, tumbled, and went flying into empty space. The world spun around, as they rolled off the edge of a jutting incline into nothingness, seeing the sheer drop below.

  Faith’s heart practically burst out of her chest. She yelled as she and the wolf tumbled through the air, and she saw two other forms in the same position as he, one howling, the other silent as he clung to his wolf.

  We can’t die here!

  Even with the resilience her combat magic gave her body, she couldn’t – if they hit the ground…

  She screamed in pure, unadulterated terror as they plummeted towards the ground, thousands of meters below.

  Chapter Three

  Everything hurt. Someone gently shook her body, murmuring words into her ear. She stirred reluctantly, unsure what was happened, what had happened, if she was alive or dead.

  At first, nothing but darkness greeted her vision. Every bone ached, but her back elevated off the ground, as if cushioned by something.

  “Come on.” Now she felt herself being picked up, one hand tucked under her knees, the other between her shoulder blades. Her head lolled groggily, and she saw the reason for the softness on her back – one of the undead wolves there, squashed to a mangled pulp. The horrible, disturbing thing about what she saw was that the eyes still blinked.

  The bloody thing still lived. If that could be called living.

  It twitched, still wanting to obey the absolute command of its master. Faith focused more, saw shafts of moonlight in the gloom, and came face to face with Erlandur.

  “Wha—what happened”?” She stared into his blue eyes, which examined her in worry, appearing weighed down and burdened by whatever fears swam in his mind. She saw beyond Erlandur’s head, as her breath frosted the air, the crack of earth they had apparently fallen into, and a segment of moon in the sky.

  “Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable,” he said. Faith saw the wolf which had cushioned her crawl across the ground, dragging its back legs uselessly, following Erlandur as he cradled Faith in his arms, and walked with her a short distance. On either side of them, nothing but damp rock and limestone decorated the view.

  “We fell into a chasm,” he clarified, clambering over a heap of scree. “You landed like me. You hit the shelf above then slid into the incline, the impact absorbed by the change of direction and well…” he glanced towards the undead wolf. “My creature. Loyal to the end, they are.”

  He continued his walk, wincing slightly, and Faith saw part of his armor had dented into his shoulder, obviously making breathing difficult.

  The chasm swallowed them up, a yawning gap at the bottom of the Fractured Spine, which according to Erlandur, they normally would cross over a bridge for, rather than fall into it.

  “Did anyone else survive?”

  “I don’t know,” Erlandur answered. “You’re the only one I found.”

  Oh. The news didn’t surprise her, but didn’t thrill her, either. In that chaotic swirl of destruction, she doubted anything could s
urvive. Least of all her, or Erlandur, in their fragile human bodies. Except, well, he had the armor, she had the magic.

  They entered within a gap in the chasm face, walking through a narrow corridor into a cavern, lit by candles, with a frayed blue carpet on the floor, a running underground river, and a bed.

  A bed? The undead wolf Erlandur had ridden lay crumpled near the river, equally mangled and messed up from the long fall. Erlandur gently placed her upon the bed, then began to check her body, first for concussion, then for additional injuries on her skin. She squeaked in weak protest as he stripped her bare, his eyes very careful not to linger on her bare chest as his fingers ran over the bruises and blemishes across her skin. She shivered involuntarily at his touch, her skin hot where his fingers trailed. He took off her pants as well, but mercifully left her panties on, before turning her over.

  “A few blood spots. Scrapes. Bruises. Bleeding on the back of your thigh. Let me clean that up for you.” He went to grab a cloth.

  “Well, we failed rule number one,” Faith said. “Don’t get lost.”

  Erlandur chuckled as he came back with a damp cloth. “We didn’t fail rule number two, though.”

  “Oh? What’s that, then?”

  “Don’t get lost alone.” He smiled slightly, before dabbing the cloth over her skin. He lingered a while on her clavicle, before washing away the scrape of blood on her back, the contusions on her arms. A dark cloud of discord hovered above Faith’s head, thinking about the ones who didn’t make it, who didn’t survive past the horrors of the Supreme.

  “You were so surprised to see the Supreme there.”

  “Well, yeah,” Erlandur said, gritting his teeth, wincing when he stretched his arm at an awkward angle. “The cold inhibits them. Pretty much the last place you’d expect to see a Shadow is on the top side of the Fractured Spine. I don’t understand how it got up so high.”