Frost Burn

by K T Munson

  “Rhett,” Cas interjected, and seemed slightly offended by the man’s tone. “This is Queen Aradel of the Frost Nation. You will address her with the distinction she deserves.”

  Rhett pressed his lips together and sighed softly. “My apologies, Queen Aradel,” he said carefully with a bow. “I was not aware.”

  Aradel nodded her head and silently accepted his apology. She felt as though valuable time was being wasted on formalities. “We cannot help the dead, I suppose,” she said. “We should focus on the living.”

  Rhett nodded, but said nothing. Cas on the other hand asked, “What about the magic haters?”

  “Their leader fled and they with her,” Aradel said. “I do not think they will bother us again, and we have more pressing concerns. If you do find anyone still resisting, take them as prisoners.”

  “I’m afraid they are more of a concern than you know,” Rhett said. “I didn’t see the leader of their group from the Fire Nation here.”

  “How is that a concern?” she asked, glancing round. “They may be one of the dead.”

  “If not, they may attack again,” Rhett warned. “There were enough survivors to be an issue in the future.”

  “Then we should be ready for them,” Aradel agreed. “We need to get to the safety of Hurra. Work together, and get every man, woman, and child safely to the town.”

  She turned to leave after issuing her order, but Cas called after her, “Lad—Queen Aradel.”

  “Yes?” she asked, turning back.

  “Where are you going?” he asked quietly as he approached her.

  “To make sure Queen Darha made it to the eastern guard post safely.”

  “Your people need you here,” he whispered.

  Aradel glanced around as people tried to help the wounded. She forgot that she was now responsible for them all. She couldn’t leave them and take care of matters herself. She realized she was going to have to have someone to fetch the Fire Nation’s Queen. She nearly laughed at the idea of her giving orders to anyone, but knew this wasn’t the time or the place.

  “Rhett,” she finally said, “send a messenger to tell Queen Darha the outcome of this battle and that she is needed in Hurra.”

  Rhett looked surprised a moment before he nodded and took off to do as requested.

  She glanced at Cas, who seemed pleased. Looking around the field, she frowned. “Let’s get to work.”

  Fire: Chapter Twenty-Six

  It took every ounce of willpower Thea had to not jump into the ocean and swim home when Tamon exploded. Coor and Darha were her first thoughts, her first fears, and her first longing. Even from the distance she was at, Thea could see the ash cloud rising up far to the northeast before the jagged peaks of the Verses Mountains blocked her view completely.

  It took a lot of convincing, especially from Kimbro, to make Thea stay the course she was on now with this stupid iceberg. His greatest argument was, “You have to trust Coor to be okay.” Thea had reluctantly accepted that, knowing she had to, whether she liked it or not. For two days after that, she’d been anxious and trembling, pacing the longboat impatiently, trying to calm herself. She wished with all her heart and might that she could be with her husband and sister again. She had already been on this ridiculous journey on the ocean for two weeks.

  They had entered the wider expanse of Ebra Ocean early in the morning and were in much warmer water and climate. Before the sun was even up, the Frost Nation natives had disembarked the ships journeying with the iceberg to return home, as planned. That left the Fire Nation in charge of the boats and Thea in command of all of them, which did nothing to ease her stress. She felt like a trapped animal on the longboat, barely sleeping and hardly able to settle her mind with thoughts of home.

  The warmer weather was great for her and her soldiers since they could strip down to one layer now, but from the few glances she’d caught of the Frost Knight, she could see he was having a difficult time keeping the entire island from melting in the warmer area. He was drinking a lot of water, and Thea unexpectedly found herself worrying about him, too. Not because she liked him, she told herself, but because if something happened to him, this whole freezing trip and time away from Coor and Darha and her people would have been a pointless waste. Over the course of the day, though, she couldn’t deny her genuine concern for him any longer. Not a single native from his homeland remained, and that sounded lonely. Thea had Fitzu and was surrounded by people she knew cared for her, but the Frost Knight had no one, and he was the one carrying the brunt of this burden.

  As the sun started going down, the Knight came to the back of the iceberg. Thea looked up and saw him wiping sweat from his brow and drinking water, yet again, from some of the barrels he’d placed there a few days ago. Thea couldn’t imagine how much tremendous magical energy it was taking to hold this massive ice island together, in waters warm enough that a Fire Nation citizen might actually survive if he or she went for a swim.

  She sighed heavily and cast a glance over at Fitzu and Kimbro, who both nodded. “Go,” Fitzu said, indicating the rope ladder with a tilt of his head. “I’ll handle things down here.”

  Thea nodded and made her way to the ladder attached to the bow of the longboat. She wasn’t going up to the iceberg for the Knight, she told herself. She was going up there because she was climbing the walls down here. She took off her cloak and weapons and tossed them into the corner of the ship, leaving her in a fitted black, wool, long-sleeved shirt, black wool pants tucked into heavy black boots, and black wool gloves. In such close proximity to the iceberg, it was still too cold to put on any leather armor.

  She stared up the ladder just as the Frost Knight went out of view completely. With another sigh, she began to climb. She reached the top a few minutes later and only had to take a few steps to reach the Frost Knight’s exhausted form. He sat with his head bowed low between his shoulders, and his elbows resting on his knees.

  “Hey,” she said, feeling more concern for him than she’d expected. She went to him quickly and crouched by his side. “Are you all right?”

  He wiped sweat from his brow once more and without even glancing at her responded, “I’m fine. This is just a lot of work.”

  Thea could see he was too exhausted to even try to be hostile toward her. “Well,” she said as she scooped up two handfuls of snow and rested them on each side of his neck, “you knew it would be a struggle, right?” She removed her hands quickly before his cold could burn her.

  Kirill looked up at her in utter confusion.

  Thea knew what he was thinking and slightly shook her head. “Shut up,” she said, without any real trace of scorn as she picked up more snow and rested it behind his neck.

  The Frost Knight let out a short moan and dropped his head down between his shoulders as the snow began to melt and drip down the back of his collar. When it was gone, Thea scooped up another handful and rested it in the same place. It quickly got awkwardly quiet as that handful melted and Thea started glancing around, trying to find an excuse to escape. What had she been thinking coming up here? Things were too awkward between them.

  Before any brilliant ideas came to her, the Knight spoke again. “How are you holding up?” he asked, meeting her eyes.

  “Me?” she asked, genuinely confused. “I’m fine,” she declared as if he were daft.

  She felt the familiar flash of tension erupt between them, but for some reason, she didn’t want to fight with him right now. Maybe she was just too exhausted as well, emotionally for sure, after having seen the eruption of Tamon.

  Thea softened her expression and tone, and sighed. “I’m not the one holding together an island of ice, now am I?” she said, half-joking, as she picked up another two handfuls of snow and rested them on the back of his neck.

  It was quiet a moment. “I saw that ash cloud, too, you know,” he said suddenly, compassion in his voice.

  Thea thinned out her lips and sighed softly. She didn’t really want to talk to him about this
. She didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her or anything about her people or their suffering. She debated how to respond as she reached down to pick up another two handfuls of snow.

  “My husband is smart and brave. He’s taking care of everyone and everything. My people will be okay,” she said, letting some sadness and vulnerability seep into her voice as she absently scooped more snow into her hands. “He’s going to be fine. He’s going to be just fine.” She figured if she said it out loud enough, Thea could convince herself it was true.

  “You’re married?” the Frost Knight asked out of the blue, jolting her out of her worried thoughts of Coor and Darha.

  She stared at him. For a moment, she’d nearly forgotten where she was and to whom she was speaking. She looked back down at the snow she was collecting and nodded. “Yeah.” Picking it up, she rested it on the sides of his neck under his jaw. The conversation seemed to die there, but not with any terrible awkwardness.

  Examining the Frost Knight after that handful of snow melted, Thea realized he seemed a lot better. Not so sweaty and empty looking. She smiled and stood, slapping her hands together to get the snow off her gloves. “Well, don’t you look all spiffy now?”

  Kirill managed a small smile as he stood. It was an unexpected, nice thing to see. He actually had a very charming, gentle smile, which surprised Thea. “Thanks for the help.”

  Thea nodded and headed toward the rope ladder again with Kirill beside her. “No problem. If you need any more babying, just let me know,” she said with a smile, and he actually managed a chuckle. It was a nice sound, too. It reminded Thea of Coor’s chuckle, deep and soothing. Thinking of Coor made her sad, and she sighed again as she bent down to grab hold of the top rung of the ladder.

  Before she even took hold, the iceberg jolted violently! It seemed to vanish from under her feet and she was over!

  Suddenly, something like an iron bar hit her in the stomach and she was snatched out of the air and yanked in the opposite direction. She landed hard on her left side, which erupted in pain from the cold. Her entire back and stomach were also in pain. Trying to focus through that, as well as the jostling of the world, Thea realized the Knight had grabbed her. It was his cold causing the pain on her back and across her stomach where he was holding her. She caught a glimpse of his face behind her and saw the grimace in his own features, her heat likely fracturing his skin in turn, but he held her tightly against his stomach until the iceberg stopped jostling.

  As soon as it calmed, both Thea and Kirill spun to their hands and knees, looking north in the direction of the scout ships. Sure enough, fire was erupting in the sky from all three with the symbol, indicating “trouble a vast.”

  Jumping to their feet, they made a run for it, heading as fast as they could north along the iceberg. Without missing a step, Thea sent a blast of her fire magic over the edge to the boats behind, signaling for Fitzu to get the soldiers up onto the ice.

  Thea and Kirill hadn’t even made it halfway to the north when it became terrifyingly obvious what was wrong. Stopping in their tracks, they looked up into the heights of the iceberg and saw that some of the peaks, one of them over six hundred feet high, had massive tentacles wrapped around them. Ocean water dripped from the enormous, fleshy appendages down the jagged ice peaks.

  Thea’s heart raced. She’d heard of this terror, but she’d never actually seen it with her own eyes. She doubted the kraken even existed, to be honest. The disturbance of the planet must have woken it from whatever slumber it had been in, sending it into waters it had never known before.

  The tentacles began to tremble and the entire iceberg jolted again from the incredible power of the massive creature tugging on it. Thea and Kirill grabbed on to each other to keep their balance as the island sloshed around under them. Thea could only assume more tentacles were wrapped around different peaks out of view. When the island settled again, Thea and Kirill glanced at each other in wide-eyed horror. Then, as if by silent command, both continued running full speed north.

  By the time they reached the northern edge and the ocean was in view, the sun had set and several more tentacles were stretching from the sea, wrapping around the tall peaks. There had to be thirteen visible tentacles, thousands of feet long or more, reaching from the depths of the ocean to those high reaches. Ocean water dripped like a steady rain where the appendages stretched overhead.

  Thea watched the tentacles begin to tremble again. With a deafening crack, and a roar from the creature that sounded more like a loud moan from deep underneath the sea, the ice peaks gave way, breaking where they had been yanked. Kirill tackled Thea to the ground as the island jostled violently, shielding her from the flying ice shards. His cold burned, but Thea wasn’t going to complain; she knew her heat was burning him as well.

  Peeking over Kirill’s arm, Thea saw a ripple of waves disturb the surface of the water, and her eyes went wide. Just beneath the surface she could see the kraken’s head, or at least one massive eye—its left eye, which had to be five hundred feet long from one corner to the other. The eye took up nearly her entire view—which meant the kraken’s head alone had to be about a mile long. Its tentacles? Six times that length, easily.

  The Knight slowly pushed himself up until he was just hovering over her. He was already sweating and appeared to be exhausted. “That thing,” he said, panting with his eyes closed, “is going to tear the iceberg apart.” He swallowed heavily and opened his eyes. “I’m barely holding it together.”

  Seeing him so exhausted, knowing the effort he’d already put into traveling this far, and recalling the fact that everyone she loved and cared about would die if they didn’t get this iceberg to Rask intact, Thea’s resolved hardened in a way it never had before. The stakes had never been so high.

  Thea clenched her teeth and shifted her dangerous gaze to the massive eye just under the surface of the ocean. As if it could physically feel the threat Thea now posed, the kraken eye shifted to her in turn, and the pupil constricted into a thin vertical line.

  Thea slowly turned onto her side, pressing her palms deliberately into the snow, looking like a mountain lion about to pounce on its prey, and defiantly met the beast’s gaze. “Come on,” she growled.

  With a roar that Thea was certain reached the ends of the ocean and reverberated back again, the monster started to pull itself out of the water. It seemed as though the entire ocean was rising up in front of her eyes. Then the water broke and the red and purple skinned creature breached.

  Thea didn’t think, she just scrambled to her feet and ran, leaping up onto one of the appendages that were giving the thing leverage to rise. She ran along its blubbery flesh, which was wide enough for four men to walk abreast, toward its face. She was instantly soaked from the sea water rushing down like waterfalls in every direction as the creature continued to rise, but it was warm enough to barely harm her. Even when her feet slid across its wet flesh, Thea didn’t stop. This beast would not keep her from saving her homeland.

  She reached its face just as its massive left eye fully breached the water. It instantly focused on her, but Thea already had her fire magic burning in her hands. With a scream, she stopped in her tracks and threw her hands out, sending a steady, wide column of fire into the creature’s eyeball. It roared in agony and reared back as its eye closed. Its movement sent Thea sprawling, and the sound was so loud that it felt like she had been punched in the ears. Slapping both her hands over them, she felt a small amount of thick moisture. Looking at her palms, she saw a little blood.

  Clenching her teeth, her heart pounding with determination to save her family, Thea got to her feet. Luckily, the kraken was big enough, and Thea was close enough, that even though its eye was closed, an accessible crack between the eyelids remained. Digging her fingernails into the fleshy material of its face with one hand, she sent a continuous blast of fire along the crack of its eyelids with the other.

  The beast roared again, and this time Thea went deaf. It was eerily silent, save
for a soft vibrating buzz that filled her ears and skull. The kraken lurched back, either as a reflex of pain, or in an attempt to throw Thea off. It was so big, though, and she was so small, that she was barely jostled. Continuing to send the current of fire along the crack, the horrific smell of burned flesh and burned fish invaded her nostrils so violently that she gagged and nearly retched. She quickly began breathing through her mouth to avoid as much of the smell as she could. Rancid brownish goo began running from the corner of the beast’s eye, looking like a mix of blood and eyeball gunk. The substance tried to smother Thea’s fire, but with a fierce growl, she increased the heat of her magic, making the gooey material boil as she continued to burn out its eyeball.

  The beast writhed in agony, creating eighty-foot waves and sprays of ocean two hundred feet high. The tentacles finally came off the iceberg as it started slapping at its own face, trying to find and remove the flea that was causing it so much pain. Thea could see the iceberg jostling from the thrashing of the kraken, and the massive waves, but Kirill seemed to be doing well holding it together.

  Finally, the creature seemed to weaken. It slowed its struggling and began to sink below the surface of the ocean. Thea was panting as the left eye started to sink into the water. With a brief sizzling sound, her fire went out, but she must have done enough damage because it didn’t try to resurface.

  When the ocean water reached Thea’s bottom, she blazed her core and dove in. The water was kind of warm, but the swim was long. The creature had reared back at least a mile, a distance Thea hadn’t felt while standing on its face. Realizing how far she had to swim, she wasn’t quite sure she would make it. But she was sure going to try. She swam for about five minutes, during which time her hearing started to return, but her skin was getting stiff, making swimming difficult. She still had air in her lungs, though, so she kept going.

  Suddenly, like a mirage in a desert, it looked like someone was walking toward her on top of the ocean. Thea paused, treading water for a moment as she watched. She blinked a few times, trying to clear her vision, but the figure just kept getting closer. When everything came into focus, Thea bowed her head, realizing it was the Frost Knight walking on a thin bridge of ice he was making with his magic. She stopped blazing her core and gratefully waited.