D’Argen woke up to a pounding running through his entire body. It took him too long to realize that it was his own pulse, sending painful jolts to his head, his ribs, his hip, and the worst ones to his leg. It took him even longer to realize that the pulsing throughout his entire body was nothing to the pain he felt in his mahee. It was stiff, tight, weighed down with a boulder, and dry like leather left out in the sun for too long.
It was painful in a very familiar way that he could not put his finger on.
Then the pulsing in his leg intensified and he finally opened his eyes only to be greeted by complete darkness. He blinked a few times and there was something there, he knew it was not that his vision was messed up like it had been not too long ago. No. This was something—
There was a stifling heat all around him and moisture at his neck. When he tried to breathe in, his chest felt constricted like there was a weight on him. When he went to lift it, he found he could not move one of his arms at all. It was so numb that he barely felt the fingers of it.
Something that felt too much like a breath hit his bared throat and he immediately panicked. He ducked his chin to try and hide his most vulnerable spot and the entrance to his mahee and his other arm shot up to protect it. It hit something in the way instead. The fact that he could barely move his body only made him panic even more, drowning out the pounding inside his skull.
A hum at his throat had him instantly relaxing.
“Thar?”
The hum responded in affirmation.
“Oh, thank you! I can’t move, what happened?”
“Shh.” The warm breath hit D’Argen’s neck again and he instinctively ducked his chin further down.
Once he realized that it was Thar breathing on his neck, he decided to take—warm. Thar’s breath was warm. The pounding was once more overshadowed by his quickened breaths when he realized what that meant.
“Your mahee?!” he tried to ask but the words probably barely made it out. D’Argen felt it churning so softly and slowly that he was surprised he even felt it at all. Something must have happened while D’Argen was passed out that had made Thar use up most of his mahee and whatever that pain was that D’Argen felt in his own, Thar must have felt it too.
Thar hummed again and then D’Argen felt a weight on his chest shift. It took him a long time to realize that Thar was sitting on him in the pure darkness. The weight on his thighs moved and it only brought fresh blood to the stabbing pain in his hip and lower. He moved his one working arm to try and touch Thar. He grabbed cold, wet cloth and yanked. Thar shifted again and his weight returned then moved around until D’Argen could expand his lungs with only a stab from the inside.
“Fuck, that hurts. What happened? Where are we?”
“Shh…” Thar once more hissed but he had shifted around enough so the exhale of his breath brushed D’Argen’s cheek and ear rather than his throat. “Give me a moment.” Thar’s voice sounded so harsh and raspy.
D’Argen gripped Thar’s robes tight to keep himself from moving more than necessary. Thar, on the other hand, moved too slowly.
“Where are we?” D’Argen asked, unable to keep quiet and still for too long. Thar was moving something around and D’Argen only had an indication of the man’s weight shifting around on his chest and thighs.
“We fell.”
“What?”
“Shh… quiet. I think I can get us out, but we have to be quiet.”
“Get us out? Where did we fall? Where are the others? What happened?”
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Thar did not respond this time but D’Argen felt a heavy weight fall from his shoulder. He had not noticed it until fresh blood ran through his numb arm and suddenly the needles and pins were unbearable. Snow fell on his face with the next shift and he closed his eyes, even in the dark, to protect them. The next shift had cold air covering his damp face and though it was still pitch black all around them, he knew that the space was suddenly bigger.
A few more shifts, more drops of snow, more weight moved around, and finally Thar put most of his weight back on D’Argen’s good leg. There was a large palm on his chest, pushing him down and keeping him from moving himself. Then Thar muttered something and only when the spell was finished and a cold white light washed over them, did he realize that Thar had said a spell.
The light revealed that Thar was, as D’Argen had thought, sitting on top of him. It also showed the large clumps of snow surrounding them in what must have been some type of cocoon until Thar broke it open. Beyond that were ice and darkness.
“Stay still,” Thar said, his voice low and slow and still so raspy, as if he had decided to drink sand instead of water.
D’Argen felt the pounding thrum through his entire body. His leg was the worst—a break most likely—but the pain in his hip was a close second. The chest he could deal with, even if Thar was pushing down on what must have been bruised ribs. The head was not too bad. Almost like a regular headache.
A few more shifts around and Thar finally removed all his weight from D’Argen. Instead of standing up, though, he flipped to the side until he was sitting beside D’Argen on the freshly broken snow and leaning against the wall of ice. His eyes were closed, head back, throat bared, and D’Argen felt like was watching something indecent with how heavily Thar was breathing.
“What happened?”
“Crevasse,” Thar gasped the single word out slowly.
D’Argen did not understand right away, then he remembered Vinson’s warnings. He looked around them once more. An ice wall behind him that he was leaning on, an ice wall in front of him, and a drop between both of those that felt looming even without him looking over the edge. When he chanced a look up above them, the darkness disappeared before his eyes could see anything at all.
“The others? Where are Vinson and Hortson?”
“Vinson did not fall with us.”
“Hortson?”
Thar only shook his head slowly and did not move from his spot.
“Was this… my hip—” D’Argen cut himself off and took a deep breath. “The harness?”
“He did not tie it right. It dislocated your hip during the first fall.”
“First fall?”
Thar only hummed and did not elaborate further.
When D’Argen shifted to look at the man, he looked asleep. “How are you?” he asked when he realized it made no sense for Thar to be uninjured. If the height above them disappeared into the darkness before Thar’s light could touch it, it must have been far. D’Argen realized he was lucky if what he felt were his only injuries.
“How are you?” D’Argen repeated and nudged Thar with a stinging elbow.
Thar took a deep breath, as if waking up, and opened his eyes quickly. Startled. He closed them after a moment and said quietly, “Tired. Used too much mahee.”
“Are you hurt?”
A hum did not answer him but Thar shook his head so minutely that if D’Argen was not looking for it, he would have missed it.
“The other teams?” D’Argen asked, feeling that stab inside him intensify as he thought about Lilian, Yaling, and Abbot. Haur was out there too.
“I do not know,” Thar responded quietly.
“How long have we been down here?”
“I do not know.”
“Is there a way out?”
“I do not—”
“Is there anything you know!” D’Argen snapped out in interruption.
Almost immediately, Thar’s eyes shot open and one of his arms came up, covering D’Argen’s mouth. Thar was not looking at him though. D’Argen was angry only for a moment until he realized that Thar was shifting the light of the spell to point right in front of them. D’Argen turned his head slowly and saw a huge crack in the ice wall in front of them.
“We have to be quiet,” Thar said and finally dropped his hand from D’Argen’s mouth. “What I know is, we fell. Multiple times. Hortson made a mistake. You were hurt.”
“Sound echoes in here,” D’Argen said, more to himself, and grabbed the hand Thar was using to shine the light. He moved it around a bit to see their surroundings better but there was nothing but ice, ice, and more ice. “And it’s still not stable.”
“Not fully,” Thar agreed. Once D’Argen’s grip slacked, he pulled his arm back. “I have to conserve my mahee.”
D’Argen took one last stock of everything around them, including both of their bodies. Thar’s robes were wet and the light material was even frozen in some spots. The man himself was shivering slightly, but not enough for it to be worrying. The snow cocoon, whatever it had been earlier, had kept them both warm. Now, D’Argen felt the moisture from that space freezing on his skin and his fingers were turning numb for an entirely different reason.
“Do you think we can die from the cold?” he found himself asking before he could stop it, looking at his own hand in fascination.
Thar extinguished the light and then a moment later the cold air became warmer around them, just enough to keep D’Argen’s teeth from clattering. Thar felt like an ice block beside him, almost the same temperature as the ice behind and under him. It calmed D’Argen so he closed his eyes again and took a deep breath, focusing on healing his body as best he could.