Page 33 of Winter's Dragons. Frozen Flames
Predictably, her remaining underlings didn't question her further."N-No, Your Majesty," January stammered. "We have no objections."
"We are yours to command," February continued, his gaze fixed on the stranger's body like he was hypnotized by its existence.
"Excellent. Now, we shall first move against The Realm of Eternal Youth. I want our troops to be rallied as soon as possible. We..."
She trailed off and something echoed at the back of our temporarily shared consciousness, a secret knowledge nobody else could detect or grasp. I couldn't interpret it, but she had no such problems. Within seconds, she seemed to return to herself and she let out a put-out sigh."Oh, Jack. My dearest brother. You just had to go and do something foolish again. What a shame. You had so much potential. I would've preferred to keep you alive."
The scene shifted, and in the blink of an eye, I was on a familiar river bank, in front of The Bridge of Melting Snowflakes. Snegurka was now facing off against two children, a pale, white-haired boy and a little girl who appeared to be trying to protect him. "Run, Jack!" she shouted. "I'll stall her!"
If the earlier memory had been eerie, this was terrifying, as I could recognize my soulmate in the face of the tiny slip of a girl, and in her already existing strength and protectiveness. Physically, I could distinguish significant differences, as her hair was a deep, earthy brown, and the eyes I'd always known as blue were a bright, vivid green, a clear sign of her alignment with The Realm of Eternal Youth. Even so, her demeanor reminded me of the earlier battle in the amarok caverns, when Cassia had tried to protect me and the rest of her people from the ghost of her nemesis. Some things might have changed about my beautiful female, but her character hadn't.
As frightening as it might have been to see Cassia in this situation, the experience turned repulsive when I starting sensing Snegurka's hatred and anger toward my soulmate.This girl needs to die,she thought.How dare the insignificant little gnat plot with my brother behind my back?I could hear it so clearly, and everything inside me rebelled at it, at the fact that I could sense these things almost as if they were my own recollections and beliefs.
In the memory, Jack tried to argue against Cassia's decision. "I can't just leave you. This is all my fault."
The irony of the boy's words didn't fail to escape my notice, as the more time passed, the more convinced I became that Jack's rash enchantment must've had something to do with his half-sister's sudden ability to free herself. But as my fellow dragons and I had decided before, it was just as possible that it was indirectly our responsibility, due to the stress our parents' arrival had placed on the wards around Chronikos. The reasons behind our current situation mattered less than finding a solution for it.
It was a little difficult to do that, though, when the fragments of Snegurka's past distracted me so much. Cassia cast her desperate enchantment, the same one she had mentioned earlier. Pain exploded through me—or rather, through Snegurka—as the vines pierced her chest, and that was when things got even weirder.
All of a sudden, the memories started to become odd and jumbled. The strange, but fierce clarity cracked, replaced by incomprehensible images that swept through my mind at a dizzying speed. I caught a few glimpses of a man who seemed to be confronting Snegurka, wielding magic similar to the spell Cassia had used. The memory vanished quickly as if Snegurka had deemed it unimportant.
When the strange flashes came to a grinding halt, I found myself standing in a field littered with bodies. I wasn't unfamiliar with bloodshed, so this did not alarm me. I might have never been in a war per se, but I had still fought enough battles and seen enough violence to not flinch away from death and gore. It was more Snegurka's attitude to it that took me aback. She stared at the body of a dead yeti, but she couldn't seem to process what had happened to him.
In front of her, a dying unicorn let out a protesting neigh. She knelt by its side, taking in the gaping wound in its flank. With a small smile, she blew a gust of icy air over the magnificent creature. "Sleep."
Frost settled over the unicorn and within seconds, it went limp, its life claimed by the cold hand of death. Snegurka nodded, and the sense of satisfaction she experienced at her accomplishment seemed to reach into me and freeze me to the bone. It was getting increasingly hard for me to keep a barrier between my consciousness and hers, to not be swallowed up by her mind. I held on, knowing that if I let go, I would forever lose not only my own sense of self but perhaps Cassia's as well.
As I struggled to maintain my control over whatever part of me was accessible in this strange space, a bright light suddenly appeared in front of Snegurka. The glow was so intense it reminded me of a miniature sun, and I had no doubt that had I had a physical form, I would've been forced to look away.
It took me only a couple of seconds to realize this was no coincidence. When the light dimmed, a blond man dressed in ornate golden robes was standing there. The heat he emanated made Snegurka want to recoil and told me everything I needed to know about the identity of the new arrival.
She hid her discomfort well, and when she spoke, her voice was just as steady and level as the smooth surface of the icy Topaz. "Helios, what a surprise. Do the other gods know you've dropped by for a visit?"
"It's not a visit," the sun god replied. "I've come to stop your rampage."
Snegurka let out a sharp bark of laughter, her cold facade slipping away as she allowed herself to revel in the damage she had done. "And how do you think you are going to accomplish that? I am as immortal as you are, and my existence is bound to that of this realm. Or have you forgotten?"
"No, I haven't. But there are solutions for everything if you only look."
The seriousness of Helios's tone drove a sharp spike of alarm through Snegurka, and her amusement faded into apprehension.It's too late,I thought with some vindictiveness.This story won't end well for you.
"You might be correct," Snegurka said, "but there's hardly a need for you or any of the others to get involved. It is only normal for the powers of one season to take over on occasion, and it's not like Jarylo can permanently die."
"I couldn't care less about Jarylo. You attacked my family, and for that, you must pay."
Snegurka's breath caught as she took in the meaning of Helios's words. "Your family? The nymph girl in Lillia... Of course. I should've known.
"Well, I'd say I'm sorry, Helios, but that would be a lie. The little half-breed should not have trespassed on my territory or convinced my brother to betray me."
Helios's eyes flared with a blaze that mimicked my own elemental magic. "It would not have mattered if youhadregretted it. A decision has been made regarding your fate, and you will not escape it."
Fire exploded from his body, as bright and intense as the death of a star, the fury of a god who had experienced genuine fear and loss. Snegurka fought back, her own ice magic clashing with that of the sun god.
After seeing the confrontation between Cassia and her foe, I expected something similar to happen here. Instead, a strange feeling of wrongness overcame Snegurka and her elemental magic cracked and collapsed in on itself. Horror rushed through her and an image of the young Cassia flashed through her mind.
Cassia had said that more than a deity, Snegurka was an elemental being. Still, I got the feeling that Snegurka felt she should've been able to hold her own against Helios. Her fight with Cassia at The Bridge of Melting Snowflakes had damaged her in some way, and while she had been able to defeat Jarylo—a spring deity not known for being all that violent or harsh—Helios was an entirely different matter.
Helios's powers blasted her back, and she landed several feet away, right next to the body of the ruler of The Realm of Eternal Youth, whom she had presumably just killed. His dead eyes seemed to stare at her accusingly, and I couldn't help but wonder if she had lied when she'd said that he would recover from being killed.
