Page 37 of Cursed Shadows 4

The mist is lightening. The steel grey of the skies is easing. Within the hour, it should turn into a cool fog—one brightened by the weak sun.

Weak, small, distant—but the sun is the sun.

And the dark males exposed to it will burn.

Daxeel firms his grip on the bow.

He notches the arrow as he rises up and faces the glacier.

Rune’s gaze latches onto him.

Daxeel aims. Finger coiling around the string, he looks down the arrow and narrows his gaze on the cracks.

Bows and arrows have never been his weapon of choice. His aim is accurate, but a blade is always more true.

He releases the arrow with a steady exhale.

It zips through the icy mist.

Rune homes in on it, muscles bolting to bone. His knee is bent, a half-crouch, and he’s still, prepared to pounce.

The arrow is faithful.

It strikes into a solid sweep of ice, a point without cracks—and just some reaches away from Rune.

Rune lunges for it.

The litalf behind him staggers after him.

The sudden strike of scattered movements sends cracks spearing all over the glacier.

The dokkalf behind wobbles with the sudden shudder of the ice.

Then it collapses beneath him.

The noise is harrowing. The cracks spearing all over chunks of ice before the thunderous collapse, that sound is a call of beasts, it is the source of fable and tales of monsters.

Daxeel’s breaths shudder with the glacier.

He fists his grip on the thin rope, his muscles tensing as he digs his boots into the ground.

Rune vanishes—gone with the collapse of the ice.

But the weight on the rope tells Daxeel he’s holding on, the weight that has his balance wobbling.

He leans his weight back.

Rune pulls on the silken rope—and drags himself over the edge of the broken ice. His leathers are slick with fresh, glacier water. Just seconds in that water, his lips have tinted blue.

His ability to move will suffer from that bout of freezing cold. Rune won’t be able to control his climb along the rope, it will be all that he can do right now to just hold on.

Digging his boots into the earth, Daxeel leans his weight back further and coils the slender rope around his fist. His arm tenses—and holds the weight dragging closer to him.

He reels him in.

His teeth bare from the strength he forces into it, one hand gripping onto the rope, then pulling back to his chest, and again and again, until Rune is dragged onto steadier ice.

Rune pauses, the rope coiled around his fist and turns his chin to his shoulder. He looks over the glacier to the litalf. The one still alive. The very one who crawls over the thin ground creaking under his weight. He moves around the fallen ice floor… closer to Rune.

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