Chapter 20 Nightmares and Monsters

❄Snow❄

How many times, must I try and fail?

The darkness was closing in, smothering her, choking her. Snow couldn’t breathe. She could only stand there frozen... A monster was lurking in the darkness ahead of her, it took on the appearance of a knight, with darkened armor blacker than the darkest night. She couldn’t tell where this darkness ended, or where it began. Thick, black tar filled its visor and dripped from every crease in its armor. It could speak, however it was not understood. It slowly approached her. The only movement it knew, was forward. As it got closer, Snow tried summoning her power, but nothing came of it. A burning sensation seared her skin. The monster’s voice was now screams that raddled in her mind. She could feel, almost instinctively, that it was a creature born of death. Born of horrors that she could not possibly conceive or understand. It was standing face to face with her now, and its screams were deafening. But as her sanity began to crack under the strain, she also began to understand. Freedom was its goal and she was in the way. The knight clasped its hands around her throat and began to squeeze the life out of her.

Snow awoke with a gasp, springing up in her seat. As she got her breathing under control, she became aware of the sound of the steady clacking horse hooves and the turning of wood. She had fallen asleep in her seat. They were still riding in the carriage and based on the moonlight coming from behind the window curtains, she could see it was the middle of night. Lussuria was sound asleep across from her and Arthur was in the corner, keeping his eye on the window like usual.

Arthur had noticed her startled wakefulness from sleep.

“Bad dream?” He whispered, mindful of Lussuria’s still sleeping form.

Snow rubbed at her eyes. “It was a nightmare actually.” She whispered back.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Where are we right now?” Shifting the curtains aside from the window behind her, Snow could see nothing but dirt and darkness. The moonlight did little to illuminate the landscape as they rode by.

“We are well within the Regalian frontier, just before the border to the Mountaineers’ realm.” He answered promptly.

Snow watched the rolling darkness from behind the glass. An eerily familiar sight all things considered. Her eyes drifted across the shadowed landscape as she pondered her recent nightmare.

“Arthur, do you think…actually, never mind.”

“Speak your mind, I’m here to listen.”

“Do you think the finality of fate is real?”

She didn’t hear a response for some time, but just as the silence became unbearable, Arthur spoke.

“No, I don’t. People use fate as an excuse to justify their actions, discredit the work of themselves or others, and even wallow in self-pity. What would be the point of praying to the gods, or ambition, if fate was real? We are defined by the choices we make; our choices determine our fate.”

“I see. I think I feel the same way.” Snow answered, comforted by his response.

“You are a little young to be a philosopher. That must have been some nightmare you had. Care to speak on it?”

“I already forgot about it. Thank you, Arthur.” Snow declined, the memories of choking darkness and dark knights fading from her mind.

“You know, Ares has bad dreams too. One time, that big oaf almost chopped my head off in his sleep.”

“Sounds like you weren’t ‘fated’ to go.” Snow laughed discreetly.

“With Ares in a sleeping fit, it really was left to fate.” He chuckled as well.

The shared mirth was interrupted by a knock on the slide window. Arthur opened it to see Ares’ face, a serious look in his eyes even as he grinned.

“See something?”

“Sting sharks in the area, I can handle any that get too close, but we have precious cargo, so I need you up here.”

“Got it.” Arthur went to the carriage door.

“Sting sharks?” Snow had only heard stories of them. Vicious monsters that attacked travelers on the roads, moving through the ground like fish through water.

“Yeah. We will be fine though.” Arthur opened the carriage door, uncaring that they were still moving. He gripped the roof of the carriage and swung up using just his arm, landing on top of it. The door slammed back shut as he let go of it. He stepped forward and took Ares’ seat, while the man himself hopped backwards onto the top of the carriage.

Snow could see from the side windows and the front sliding window what was happening.

Arthur snapped his fingers, creating a spark in his palm before he swung his arm forward causing the spark to grow into a shining orb of fire. The flame was very bright and casted a light on their surroundings.

“Tell me where Crow!” he shouted.

Crow was keeping his eyes peeled ahead of them, there was a moment of silence, a moment of suspense, before-

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“Front-Right!”

Arthur flicked his wrist in that direction as a sting shark lunged from the ground, soaring through the air at them. A ball of fire shot from Arthur’s hand, smashing right into the creature, and sending it crashing back to the ground as they continued to ride by.

“Front-Left!” Crow spotted another.

Arthur repeated the action in the new direction and just like before, the next creature popped out of the ground, this time aiming for a horse. It suffered the same fate as the last: blasted away by Arthur’s fireball.

“Three; Front, Left and Right! All at once!”

The sting sharks moved like a pack of wolves as they dove in and out of the dirt scaring the horses making them go wild. As the horses panicked and tried to bolt in separate directions, Crow kept whipping the reins to keep them under control. There were too many coming at once for Arthur to handle in the same way.

Arthur put both his hands up and brought them together, forming a triangle. All three sting sharks shot up from the ground right at the carriage. Snow could see them from the front sliding window nearly in slow motion. Their undersides had razor teeth and their tails were long and barbed. Arthur responded by slashing down both his arms, releasing a large crescent shaped flame to fly just above the horses’ heads. All three of the sting sharks were blasted back, their bodies scorched. The carriage bumped up as they drove over one, almost causing Snow to hit her head on the ceiling.

“Good hit Arthur!” Crow declared but he spoke too soon. The carriage jolted as another sting shark slammed into the rear right wheel. This time the carriage violently shook as the hit sounded damaging. Lussuria was knocked off her bench onto the floor finally waking up.

“Geez what's the deal! Can’t A girl sleep!” Lussuria complained.

“Lussuria we are under attack!” Snow told her what was happening. Lussuria got up and joined Snow near the sliding window as they watched more of the beasts swarm in from further out in the landscape. They both could see shadows darting in and out of the ground in the distance, moving toward them from all around. It was a swarm of sting sharks.

“Ares, watch our damn flank!” Crow yelled.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it!” Ares’ heavy footsteps were heard slowly stomping down the roof of the carriage towards the back.

“That’s a lot of them!” Snow said, watching the multiple mounds of moving dirt. All Moving towards them.

“You want me to help?” Lussuria shouted out the window to Arthur.

“I got it, I got it!” Ares responded followed by the metallic sound of what Snow assumed was him using his weapon. It grated on her ears as the sound of metal grinding against metal echoed from above them. The memory of the sound was soon forgotten though, because in the next moment, an explosion was heard and felt just behind the carriage. The explosion was so close that the back of the carriage rocked a few inches of the ground. The shadows in the distance abruptly changed direction, frightened away.

“That takes care of that.” Ares declared proudly.

“Don’t destroy the carriage you oaf!” Crow yelled.

“What do you want me to do? It’s not my fault you’re driving like a pansy!” Ares shouted back.

“Alright alright, enough. I think that’s all of them,“ Arthur stated.

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The sun was rising, and they were coming up to the next town. They covered a lot of distance but not without cost, the carriage felt as if it would fall apart any moment. This was only confirmed by the fact that Crow had notified Arthur of the needed repairs.

“Arthur, that fire magic was amazing. You must have killed like half a dozen of them, what kind of spell was that?” Snow asked him.

Arthur was back in his corner as Snow and Lussuria were both back in their usual seats.

“That was just fireball and fire slash. Nothing impressive, trust me. Ares was the one who scared most of that swarm away.”

Snow turned to Lussuria.

“Lussuria, why don’t you have Arthur teach you some of those fire spells? They were so useful against the sting sharks.”

“Elemental magic is for brutes. Their magic doesn’t come close to the complexity and scope of runic magic. I rather be magicless than preform elemental magic. No offense, Arthur.” Lussuria looked offended at the very idea of learning elemental magic. Snow wondered why, since it was so useful here.

“None taken your highness.” Arthur acknowledged her with a smile.

“You can’t just learn it as something useful to know? Just in case?” Snow questioned Lussuria.

Lussuria laughed, even as she shook her head.

“No Snow, that’s not how magecraft magic works. You can only commit to one path of magecraft magic: the three choices being runic, elemental and magician. Like how frostbloods are usually only capable of creation, manipulation, or empowerment. I won’t bother you with the details but in magic you have nodes, and you can only commit the nodes to one style over a long period of time.”

“I see.”

By this point, the carriage had started to make a noticeable crackling noise every time the wheels did a full rotation. Arthur opened the sliding window.

“You think we can make it like this?” The question was directed at Crow.

Crow took a moment to answer as he looked at a map. They couldn’t see his face through the sliding window, but his response didn’t sound positive.

“No, definitely not. We need to stop and repair somewhere, it seems like our only option is the border fort right after Reyna.”

The snowy landscape changed into green rolling hills that fed into a long line of woodland. Once they were inside the woodlands they drove past a very small town. The town contained three long lines of houses.

“What town is this?” Snow asked.

“Reyna.” Arthur answered.

“Can’t we repair it here?”

“No. We have to repair it at the fort.”

Lussuria nosily looking out the window said,

“But there’s a woodworking shop there. See?”

They were passing by a shed that had a woodworking bench outside.

“This town doesn’t like outsiders, the fort is nearby. We’ll make it. No big deal.”

The carriage noise begged to differ. Each rotation rocked the carriage back and forth.

“Outsiders? But we rule this domain Arthur.”

“You do, but this town has been granted an exception by her majesty.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps you can ask her when you return. The fort is less than a mile east from here.”

They skipped the town and proceeded onward into the nearby forest that was just before the fort. The forest was scarred but not in a burned way. There was an entire line of cut down trees, as far as the eye could see. As if a giant blade had been used to cut a path through the forest.

“That’s a whole lot of trees.” Snow noted.

Arthur looked around them for a moment before refocusing on Snow and Lussuria.

“The border fort we will be stopping at has a lot of history; it’s probably the most important defense structure on the Mountaineer border. It has withstood siege after siege. That was until the Lotus Army successfully took it nearly 10 years ago, those cut down trees played a major part.

“Did you fight here, Arthur?”

“No, I joined the Lotus after the war.”

“What did they use all those trees for?”

Arthur put his knuckle under his chin.

“The record goes, the bridge to the fort was untraversable, It couldnt be sieged.. So, your mother made quite a few of her own bridges. Trees are quite versatile.”

Snow couldn’t imagine her mother running through this forest with an army in attempt to attack the upcoming fort. Not to mention the amount of trees the army must have had to cut down just to cross over. As they rode up to the fort Snow saw that it was a place worth defending. It was an incredibly large compound, with walls as taller and wider than the castle back home. A moat separated the fort from the woodland that led into a rock filled creek down below. The doors to the fort were open and as they drove across a stone bridge to go inside. She couldn’t help but realize how interested Gravis would be in this location, especially since mom fought here.

They stopped once past the gates and requested a repair on their wagon which, to Snow and Lussuria’s surprise, arrived in the form of a bunch of collard men with tools in their hands. Since they had to step off the carriage to allow repairs, they were seated at a table in the open and served fresh, steaming hot food. Something that was much appreciated, more so by the three-lotus guard than her and Lussuria.

They ate and conversed, or more it was Ares’s cracking jokes at Crow’s expense before Crow would respond with a witty remark that silenced him. All in all, it was a fun time. A fun time that Snow couldn’t fully enjoy, as her gaze kept returning to the slaves working on their carriage just in front of them. Not to mention there were a lot of soldiers here, she was no military expert, but this fort looked more tightly guarded than it should be. She felt a type of tension here that she didn’t understand. Looking back and the slave workers. It never came across Snow’s mind that this issue was more than just a decree, these people were real, and this was their life. Her mother used to be a slave, a forbidden secret. This deal must have been more than just money for her mother. Perhaps it was a way to make things right for those whom she related with. The more Snow pondered on the subject the more she wanted to know of her mother’s past. The practice of slavery was as old as history itself but finding someone that might know more information about her mother’s past would be difficult. Wandering thoughts aside, she could not lose focus on why she was here. Getting the votes was her number one priority.