Dreihander marched across the landscape, away from the icebergs and away from everything. He took us away from the empire, away from whoever was pursuing us and away from those who wanted to smother me and steal my ember for themselves. Petrov’s expressions were burned into my mind, the confusion and pain behind the prince’s eyes an unforgettable sight.
Despite the prince's undeniable sincerity, I trusted her word more than anything.
Dreihander marched into the woods where we were hidden, only for the wolf to freeze for a moment. He lifted his nose to the air before drool began to spill down his jaws.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“He smells blood.”
I felt a growing hunger inside the wolf, and Dreihander, like a horse, needed to graze. His nose led him forwards, through the forest, past smaller, lesser wolves who caught onto the same scent — beasts who fled at the sight of him — and towards the source.
A bloodbath filled the forest floor. Snow mixed with blood streaked the trees, dirtying the ground below. Before us lay the carcass of a bear, a remarkably clean corpse, untouched and uneaten. The only wound on the beast was the spear that ran under its jaw and up through its throat, ripping and emerging out the back of its neck.
“A hunter?” Anise muttered, looking around to find nothing — no clue of a person other than the spear left behind. Seeing nothing around, she went ahead and patted Dreihander, allowing him to eat away at the carcass that was twice his size. Anise stepped down, pulling out her hatchet to investigate with me.
We circled around towards the stomach where its guts laid — dragged out of its body. We paused, saw a cut on its stomach, and opened it up. We both leapt back when a creature emerged from within like a parasite. A knife swung, and from within the carcass stepped out a man who stood naked, smeared head to toe in blood.
“Back away, beasts! I’ll kill you all the same!”
“Beast?” I asked, lifting the hood of my coat, lifting the fur off my face.
The man, shivering in the cold, shrunk away. His knife lowered, his expression softened, and the man grasped my hands like a beggar.
“Please! You have to help me and my wife! We need warmth! Fire, if you could!” and he pulled the flap up, revealing another victim of the endless winter.
Anise had Dreihander lick most of the blood off the man before he got dressed again, and with a bit of work, I brought back enough sticks and wood to start a bonfire. Of course, I hid the fact I could wield fire, bringing back a burning ball of tinder from out of view, one I used to light the campfire.
The man, seeing the flame, let out a sigh of relief.
I split the flame, leaving one outside the sheltered sled while Anise took another, heating up a bowl of snow into water. She brought the man’s wife inside, cleaning her up in the privacy of the tent. Outside, I tended to the flame, all while the man — dressed and cleaned up — rested by the flame, by the bear’s carcass and warmed himself up. With his knife, he cut up chunks of the meat, skewering it onto a stick before cooking it atop the fire. The man, bearded and rugged, looked half dead.
Sunken eyes stared into the flames. “Thank you, stranger,” he said. “Without you, we’d have frozen to death in the stomach of a beast. I’m Nolan and my wife is Maeve. We are in your debt.”
“It’s nothing,” I answered, skewering my own piece, the two of us sitting by the carcass and beneath the canopy of the trees for cover. Dreihander sat with a full belly, blood dripping down his lip.
“About the wolf,” Nolan asked.
“He’s Dreihander, a hollow wolf. He’s Anise’s wolf brother,” I answered.
“Anise, and…”
“Emil.”
“Anise and Emil, oh?” Nolan muttered. “Those names — they’re similar to Valenese names. We don’t happen to be in Vale now, are we?”
“Vale? You mean the mainland?” I asked, and the man waved the thought away.
“Forget about it,” Nolan asked. “As long as we haven’t been shipwrecked on Nordsummer, we’ll be fine.”
I looked over to him, and the expression on his face said it all. His smile faded and dread settled in. I couldn’t help but look back at what Commander Lucas told Anise and me, about the barricades on the beach. “Are you two pirates?” I asked.
“Worse,” Nolan answered. “We’re stowaways.”
As we spoke, I heard a shout. "Emil!" Anise said, ordering me to bring a bowl of warm water into the tent. Anise had cleaned the woman up and got her dressed, bringing her a bladder waterskin full of hot water for warmth. Nolan’s wife, Maeve, was tanned and had silver hair, foreign traits that made her stand out from first glance.
Maeve woke up in the night, waking up to Anise who worked with a mortar and pestle, grinding away at herbs and medicine.
“Where am I?” Maeve asked.
“You’re in one piece,” Anise answered, lifting the flaps of the tent, revealing Nolan who waited by the campfire.
“Thank the goddess,” Maeve said, her voice soft and weakened. “I didn’t think I’d ever see fire or feel warmth again.”
The two spoke amicably, but for the sake of our safety, I had to speak up. Even though Maeve was exhausted and hardly older than Anise, I had to step in and ask a few important questions.
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I sat firm, my tone as sharp as the wintry winds. “Where are you from, foreigner?” I asked. “You clearly aren’t Nordsummerian."
“Nordsummerian?” Maeve asked me. “You mean we’ve been shipwrecked on the cursed isles?”
“Cursed?” I asked to which Maeve smiled.
“It looks like we’ve shipwrecked upon the impenetrable storm fortress. For the longest time, no one’s been able to set foot on the cursed lands.”
“Nobody until now." I looked over at Anise who, hand on chin, nodded — accepting Maeve's answer.
Anise, out of courtesy, wrapped the woman up and sent her off with a medicinal tea. Seeing as Maeve was fine, she sent her off and out of the tent to reunite with Nolan. Nolan was quick to pull her in, enveloping her in the combined warmth of the flame and the warmth his body regained. If anything, they seemed like a happy couple despite their situation — of the tragedy that is washing up on the cursed island of Nordsummer.
“Are you alright?” Nolan asked her. I felt a tinge of secondhand embarrassment come off Maeve, a shy woman who preferred a bit of privacy.
“We’ve been shipwrecked on the cursed isles of all places,” Maeve answered. “So long as we stay here, we’ll get caught up in the invasion.”
“Invasion?” I asked the two.
“We’re deserters, Nolan and I,” Maeve answered. “We fled conscription by the Vale Empire, stowing away in a merchant ship in an attempt to escape the coming war, only to end up shipwrecked on the target of said invasion.”
Not only were the northern kingdom and the southern empire at war, but the Vale Empire who ruled the mainland was sailing to Nordsummer with an army.
"What a mess," I muttered to myself, to which Maeve nodded.
“Tell me,” Maeve asked us. “Are the myths true? Has fire really been banished from Nordsummer?”
I glanced over to Anise who gave me her nod of approval. “It is,” I told her, snapping my fingers to light my flame, “but some folks are exempt from the rules.”
The Vale Empire had tried countless times in the past to invade, but once they reached a perimeter around Nordsummer the flames of their ships vanished — their engines coming to a crawl as the eternal winter caught them in its grasp. The ocean and the wind worked together, sinking ships and wrecking their remains on the beaches of Nordsummer.
Historically, merchants and soldiers who washed up on the shores met similar fates.
And Nordsummer was far from kind to foreigners.
People who traveled to Nordsummer never returned. Knowing that, I grew curious. “What other myths do you mainlanders have?” I asked.
"Seeing as we’re trapped here," Maeve said, "we may as well answer some of your burning questions.”
We sat, gathered around my flame. The mainlander couple sat tight, keeping close, huddling for warmth beneath their blanket. Meanwhile, we Nordsummerians sat next to one another unbothered by the cold. Maeve got comfortable. Wrapped up tight in a blanket made of Dreihander’s loose fur, she told us the mainland's distant tales of Nordsummer, of the cursed island.
“Legend has it, the island of Nordsummer — just north of the mainland — is a cursed land inhabited by giants who wield ice. Trapped in an eternal winter, those who sail to the island are haunted by spirits who steal away the flames from their torches, trapping them in a swirling, freezing night that kills all indiscriminately.”
Nolan interrupted. “The reason anyone would risk their life, sailing to Nordsummer, was to obtain the fabled immortal’s sword — a sword that's said to have been forged from the collected ashes of the flame heretic. Legend has it that the blade guarantees victory and immortality to its wielder, but at the cost of plunging the land it has conquered in an eternal winter.”
The immortal’s sword. I had only heard of it in myths. Legend has it, Emperor Eckard — Nordsummer’s conqueror — used it to conquer the island while also fending off an invasion from the mainland. If the mainland legends were correct, then the sword was the reason Nordsummer suffered under this eternal winter.
But, as far as we knew it, that was all myths and legends — nothing I could confirm or deny. I had to tell Maeve the truth about fire, a question only I could answer.
“It’s true,” I told her. “You can try to light a fire, but normal methods will do you no good. Nordsummer is cruel to all. Even to its natives."
Anise spoke up. “You should be glad we found you,” she told them. “If anyone else who found you — like the roaming tribes who hunt here — you’d be roasting over a proverbial fire.”
“Anise,” I muttered with a frown. She couldn’t help but smirk to herself — at the sight of their genuine fear. “Don’t worry,” I told the two. “We here in Nordsummer look down on barbaric acts like cannibalism.”
“But you should really be glad it was us who found you,” Anise said, butting in. “I doubt anyone else could’ve warmed you up. Without Emil, you would’ve froze to death.”
Hearing that, Nolan paused. “You're a wielder of fire, correct?” Nolan asked. “In the myths surrounding Nordsummer, there are legends of flame scourges, demons who can wield fire in spite of the eternal winter — evil spirits who are said to be bad omens who bring ruin wherever they go.”
“How cruel of you, calling him a bad omen,” Anise said. “Is this how you repay someone for saving your lives?”
I stopped her. "Perhaps I am," I told Nolan, "but tell me — do you really believe those tales?" The two foreigners paused, glancing at one another before staring at me and my flame.
As the night passed on, we sat around the flame, chewing at pieces of meat taken from the carcass of the bear. Anise sat, tearing her meat apart, eating it nearly raw — cooked enough to kill parasites. Maeve ate slowly, bit by bit while Nolan helped her, cutting pieces apart to help his sickly wife.
I sat quietly, watching as the flames flickered. I knew what had to be said — for both our sakes. “We should take them to the empire,” I blurted out.
“The empire?” Nolan asked.
“The Empire of the White Winds,” I told the two foreigners. "It'd be safer than roaming Nordsummer, I can guarantee that much."
The empire already knew about the coming invasion and were preparing their defenses. Handing the foreign couple over to the empire would be better than leaving them to die at the hands of the goddess, Asha Maria. Knowing that, I had to put my foot down and do the responsible thing.
I pressed a hand against the body of a tree, effortlessly spreading my fire through the roots, into the trunk and to every branch. Embers spilled out, lighting the pine needles ablaze — turning the tree to a beacon of flames.
“The imperials will find you,” I said. “You’ll meet Prince Petrov — someone who’ll surely help you.”
“A prince?” Nolan asked. “Are you telling me an imperial prince is out here, in the middle of the countryside?”
I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. “Believe me. You’re not the only one who’s surprised.”
Maeve and Nolan turned to one another before accepting my help. With the tree burning as a beacon through the mist, one that’d last through the night and into the morning, the two would surely be found by the imperials who’d be scouting ahead, looking for their fated flameseeker.
The two of us got back onto our sled, back to the grace of my guiding flame. Before we could leave, though, Maeve had a few questions of her own.
“If you trust the imperials, why not stay and wait for them to arrive?” Maeve asked. “If they could help us, they could help you — could they not?”
I took one glance at the flame I held.
“I’m sure they could help me, but I already have all the help I need,” I answered. I took my flame carrying hand and wrapped it around the shoulder of Anise, of the girl who was scarred by the false flames.
The warmth of the fire filled my arm, spreading out with gentle radiance into my partner.
Maeve, hearing that, simply nodded. The mainland couple returned to the safety of the canopy, beneath a burning tree whose inferno I controlled. I made it hot enough to keep nearby people warm but not hot enough to burn them. My guiding ember scorched through the night, cutting through the foggy blizzard that shrouded Nordsummer.
Together, Anise and I left — my arm wrapped around her. Not a single comment escaped her lips. The both of us had come to a mutual conclusion — a silent agreement about how things stand.
This road was ours to travel.