The cracking of the ice started slow. Then it built up. Then it connected. The mortals were the first to panic but they were not the only ones. The first scream of terror that sounded from their line made those that were only looking at their feet look up. A crack, as loud as thunder right over their heads, preceded the ice breaking apart completely.
Thar opened up his mahee, connecting to the ice under his feet and filling it up completely. It became a part of him and each crack and break felt like a lash against his core. The pounding of feet on the ice felt like punches against his temple. The scrambling and slipping as the snow fell in the cracks felt like someone raking sharp nails down his spine. The screams and breaks faded away into nothingness.
“Thar!” Until that voice.
Thar did not realize he had closed his eyes until he opened them to look right into a pair of dark, dark blue eyes that could only belong to one person. D’Argen was yelling something at him but the cracking and shaking under them kept him from hearing the words. Then D’Argen suddenly disappeared from sight. Thar felt something inside him clench tight. The yell that followed had him reaching even further, his mahee spreading much further than it had any right to.
D’Argen had fallen in one of the cracks and Thar felt his hands trying to grab onto something. He reached out, a spike of ice shooting from the smooth wall of ice. D’Argen grabbed it to stop his fall. The rest of the mortals that fell were too slow. With a speed that surprised even him, he reached further down. The ice was thick, at least a few meters down before it touched the water, but he reached that line before the mortals did. He forced the ice on the edge to break apart into small chunks. When the mortals fell into the water, the ice was already near them for them to latch on.
Not all did.
Then he felt another mahee at work, tugging at his own work to try and tear it apart. He resisted, focusing on trying to harden and freeze the water further to bring the mortals up, but the other mahee fought him. It was only when he realized what was happening that he let go. Nocipel was using their mahee, forcing the water to churn and spin and bring every single body to the surface.
Thar heard the gasps for air but they were not as loud as the clattering of teeth. The cold would kill these mortals long before the lack of air would.
Abbot’s mahee allowed him to control light, but he was still a naturalist. With Nocipel leading the spell, Thar felt Abbot’s mahee latch onto it. The mortals in the water were thrashing, their fear palpable in the air. The waves were trying to throw them up and Thar realized that even if they successfully kept the mortals out of the water, there was nowhere for them to go. He reached into the ice once more.
Another break, this one even more violent, had him stumbling. He saw a figure in black robes with blue trimming climbing over the opposite edge of the break. D’Argen was safe. Thar reached into his core and spread his mahee far, trying to touch both sides of the ice between the break. It was too long. The gap was widening with every breath and stretching further and further out into the distance.
Lilian was not helping. Thar had no time to think about them as he felt the solid chunk of ice under his feet breaking apart even more. It tilted, shifted, and cracks appeared all around him. There were three mortals not that far from him sliding around, unable to keep purchase on the slippery surface.
Suddenly, D’Argen was coming right at him. Thar reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping the runner from going too far.
“Keep it together!” D’Argen yelled at him and Thar forced a nod. Then had to force his fingers to unlatch from around the runner’s silver bracers. They were warmer than the air around them. Thar focused on the block under him alone, feeling every crack within it as it shattered into millions of pieces under his feet. His mahee alone was what kept those pieces from separating and falling into the water.
A warm hand on his shoulder had him opening his eyes again to look right into D’Argen’s face. The runner was saying something, his mouth moving too fast. Thar could not hear the words over the sprinkling of jewels as the ice kept shaking and shattering and breaking. But he did notice that the three mortals were all latched around one another and D’Argen had his other hand at the back of a woman’s neck. He nodded.
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D'Argen nodded in reply.
Thar felt for the ice under him, keeping all those pieces together, and then focused on the patch right under his feet. His feet were anchored in the ice, never slipping. The ice under D’Argen’s feet was rougher, the edges sharp enough to give him stability from slipping. Then they became harder. Then harder. D’Argen tapped one foot against the ice and Thar felt that gentle nudge against his ribs. He hardened the ice further. D’Argen did not need that big of a push to carry the three mortals.
The ice block under him disconnected from all others. The cracks surrounded him completely. The block suddenly sank a few meters and then jumped up even faster. Even Thar had a hard time keeping on the spot, he could not imagine what it would be like for D’Argen and the mortals. But they were gone. That initial push down was D’Argen pushing away and off, jumping the ever-widening gap with all three mortals wrapped up in his mahee.
When the ice block rose up again, he saw nothing but white and ice all around him. Even the group from the other side of the gap disappeared. Then the block started tilting. Thar made the ice under his feet grow and climb over his ankles, locking him in. The tilt intensified. He crouched down and touched the ice with his hands. It crawled up his hands and over them then shackled around his wrists. The block tilted almost completely horizontally before it hit something hard. Another block of ice, opposite of the gap. It bounced back and up, then down. The giant break bobbed in the water and no matter how far he spread his mahee, he could not control it, only keep it from shattering further apart.
The scent of the ocean was so strong, even this far up north in this cold, that for a moment Thar thought he was hanging right over the water. The block bobbed up and then sank down and he felt that water splash at where his hands and feet were frozen to the ice block. He expected that water to rise up to his chest, his neck, cover his mouth and eyes and drag him down. Instead, he felt a warm hand on his shoulder.
“They are all safe,” D’Argen said, his words so quiet they could have been lost in the wind.
Thar felt for the ice, the block under him ready to break apart, then reached across the gap. It was so wide. He could barely touch the other edge. It was far enough away.
“Let go.”
He did not need for D’Argen to say it. The ice around his wrists and ankles melted away as if it was under a hot summer sun. Then he felt D’Argen wrap around him. The runner’s mahee felt like those ocean waves that lapped at his feet earlier, but they were warm. The salt water climbed up his feet to his knees and slipped between his fingers like a comforting embrace. It ran up his chest, a weight that felt comforting before it entered through his mouth and nose and ears and eyes and filled him up from the inside, an empty vessel waiting to be used. When that ocean water touched the iceberg of his own mahee, Thar let it. When it started shoving it around, Thar embraced it.
When D’Argen pushed off the ice, Thar let go.
The block of ice broke into millions upon millions of small pieces, some too light to fall into the water and floating up instead, a mist of ice that tried to grab onto the light. The world faded away into a blur of white and ice and water and just suddenly as it did, it came back.
The ocean water around and inside him pulled back, emptying him out once more. Thar collapsed on solid ground—cold and uncaring ice—and felt his stomach try to expel the rest of the ocean water. He retched into the ice until there was nothing left in him at all. But he was not sure if it was safe yet. He opened his mahee and reached for the ice under him. The cracks where it had split apart from that small section were there, ragged edges that burned like a fresh wound, but the surface under him was solid. He felt for the cracks at the edges, reached far, far down below the water’s surface, reached even further down into the empty nothingness. The ice was solid. For now.
When he let his mahee return to him, taking all that cold in the air and bringing it back to replenish, he opened his eyes. The mortals were huddles in small groups, fur blankets and flasks of alcohol already out for those that fell in the water. He tried to count but could only pay attention to the faces of the three that had been stuck with him. They were all safe and as dry as could be. Then he saw another small clump that made something inside him clench.
Nocipel, Haur, Abbot, Yaling, and D’Argen. All of them were crouched around a sixth figure and the last of the Never Born that was still with them. Lilian was soaking wet, their long blonde hair in frozen icicles, lips blue, eyes closed, and their entire body shivering so hard it looked more like a seizure than from the cold.
Thar pushed himself up and slowly made his way over, reaching for his mahee and then the cold air around them. He started taking it into himself, bringing the temperature of the air up while also replenishing his mahee in one go. Abbot and Nocipel were using some of Yelem’s fire spells, bringing heat to Lilian without touching the ice under them. D’Argen was biting at the side of his thumb, the gesture tense and tight and it looked like it would cause a wound soon. Thar wanted to reach out to stop him. In his peripheral though, he noticed Haur.
Haur was once his closest subordinate, the two working together for millennia and fighting side-by-side. In all that time they had known one another and been so close, never once had Thar seen that look on the other man’s face. Not aimed at him.
Haur looked terrified.