Part Two

Someone once told Nadier that in other universes, people don't dream of memories when they slept. On Tearha though, you dreamt of your past. That was how it was, always and every time.

Most of the time, Nadier would see visions of his late brother, or the green-haired elven girl he loosely called family. But sometimes, he would get darkness, and it was not as if he was dead. He would experience the darkness, fully. And from the dark came feelings of fear, courage, camaraderie, and freedom; the cheer of the crowd. He could only assume that those periods of darkness came from his lost years.

Footsteps.

His eyes flashed opened on instinct.

“Hey Nads,” Ratface's voice slipped through the wind. “Wake up. It's night-oh, yar' awake.” The man looked surprised as he pulled the canvas to the caravan back. “Guess ya' didn't sleep well?”

“Slept fine,” Nadier answered, standing to a crouch within the confined space and letting the two thick layers of blankets slip off him. “You're just too loud.” He rubbed his ears to get rid of the cold.

“I'm loud? It's a mini blizzard out there!”

“Right. Can only guess how loud you'd be without it.” Nadier began ransacking through the slavers' possession until he found another thick coat he could wear over his own.

“Whatever,” Ratface spat, climbing inside. “It's yar' shift.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Nadier was ready to leave when the Guide stopped him.

“Hey.” Nadier turned to the voice. “Why ya' heading out north? I know ya' people are gone and you ain't got a gate now, but ya' could have just find ya'self a nice hole and stayed there. Like a vamp'ere and all that. I'm sure you wouldn't mind.”

The dark elf took a cold breath to wake his mind. Ratface wasn't wrong. Living a nocturnal life wasn't that bad an idea for Nadier.

But the dark elf asked, “What about you? Why are you going north? And for free too.” Ratface's sideways glance and lack of answers told him all he needed. “We all have our reasons that we don't want others knowing. See you in the morning.” Nadier left the man to his rest and jumped out into the snow.

Like slashes from blades, the snow and cold cut his exposed face. He pulled up his hood to further protect himself from the wind. Night had fallen, and his dark vision could see far better than Ratface's human ones. They were going to travel through the night so they took shifts. The faster they reached a settlement, the fewer resources they wasted.

He climbed onto the driver's seat as a wolf howled in the distance.

Ratface was right. The ground blizzard had kicked up a fog of snow that roared like a lion's call. In the few minutes that their caravan had stalled, the sleds' runners had already accumulated a layer of snow. Nadier quickly tapped the rear of the trhaskar and the beast of burden urged forward. While he need not as much sleep as Ratface, Nadier's stamina was nothing compare to the trhaskars who could traverse the cold weather for 5 whole days, though they were whale of eaters.

He looked to the side to make sure that the other 3 creatures that carried their food and supplies were still following their alpha. One of the few plus sides to living in the permafrost was that food were forever preserved until they needed otherwise.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

They lumbered slowly through the snow. He checked his compass twice to make sure they were going the direction Ratface had instructed. The darkness and the snow made visual confirmation of direction next to useless.

Another howl from a lone wolf reverberated the air.

For about an hour, nothing happened but ice and night. A single snow roller had passed by in that time and provided a minute of intrigue to him in the rare meteorological sight. Crystals of ice had formed on the cuffs of his coats and edges of his hood. Occasionally, his dry cough echoed into the dark.

Aside from the risk of death via freezing, the time was an otherwise unassuming slow dredge through a piling mountain. Ratface said travelling while it was snowing was tiresome as the ice just piles up. It can feel as if you're climbing eternally up a gentle incline as if the journey were a continuous build-up of exposition meant to simply bore people to the grave.

Within the storm of white and flashing teal, something red caught the corner of Nadier's eyes and in a split second, he was fully alerted. Adrenaline pumped through his body and the cold forgotten.

They were not alone.

Nadier stood to his feet and allowed the trhaskars to continue without a pilot. He could always readjust their bearings later. He lowered his hood to allow for his ears to prickle against the wind. Sharp numbness from the cold began rubbing against his exposed head. His eyes squinted against the snow.

A deep growl followed by the jingle of metal.

He drew his daggers.

Then, he saw it. As if staring into the maws of space, a wriggling mass of shadow like an anemone on land slowly grew closer on his left. Within the black, a pair of red eyes stared at him.

A magical beast - rare creatures born with magic circuits. Seems like the one he faced was an animal that gained the power of shadows.

He reached for his vial of neverrite - a substance that negates magic - but quickly remembered the liquid's freezing point was negative 4 degrees. They were well past that. It seemed he had to do things the hard way.

The beast ambled closer. Between the snow, the night, and the shadows, Nadier could not make out a clear shape within the magical darkness. Even with his night elf dark vision, he could only faintly glimpse the outline of the creature's mane. The beast charged, moving on all fours as would a panther, or a zepard, or a wolf. A hunter. It jumped and stepped on some invisible platform and rose above the ground as if running up stairs. In the background though, there was the jingle of metal. Once it neared Nadier, it leapt at him.

Nadier grabbed the edge of the trailer's roof and rolled onto it. The little snow above had him slide across the canvas which trampoline him onto his feet just as the creature turned on the driver seat, its red eyes flicking around the ball of fiery shadows. It let out a growl and Nadier witnessed the snout of a canine bear its teeth, ready to bite.

Almost as surprising as its appearance, the creature's suddenly animosity suddenly disappeared. Its eyes gentled and it began sniffing the air.

Sensing the tension dissipate, Nadier warily lowered his weapon from a combat stance as the form of a wolf, black mane with streaks of white fur across its body, stepped through the shadow as if exiting a room.

“A shadow wolf...” Nadier breathed out at witnessing the existence of a rare creature of magic.

Around the wolf's neck was a linked metal chain. It looked to have barely rusted, mostly oxidised a swamp-green, indicating age.

Nadier's brows raised. “Do you belong to someone?” Who could possibly tame such a powerful and wild creature?

He took a slow step forward for a closer look. The shadow wolf pounced at him without warning; but even more surprisingly, without killing intent, or had at least hidden it well enough to catch Nadier off guard. He could not raise his weapons quick enough to defend himself and he fell backward on the slippery surface trying to dodge. The last thing he noticed was darkness engulfing him.

Then, snow.

Nadier sat back up. He was not sure how long he was out, but not enough for the snow to accumulate on his body, and for some reason, he felt warmer than before. Perhaps the battle still had his blood pumping. He was sat atop the trailer, still moving slowly across the permafrost, and Ratface had not seemed to wake. Obviously, the Guide was simply not paying attention enough, blizzard be damned. A quick scan of his surrounding showed the shadow wolf as having disappeared.

Two unnatural white light shone from his right and he turned, expecting another beast to approach. Instead, a large metal box carriage broke through the fog of snow like a bear on wheels. Engines akin to the steam ones of Eltar churned their gurgled sound over the wind as the machine rammed into the side of the caravan. He jumped off the trailer upon impact, landed atop the roof of the machine, and rolled over the back of it, landing knee-deep in the snow.

Before he could dig himself out and escape, he heard doors opening and slamming. Turning his head back, he witnessed two people dressed in winter clothes and masked by scarves, point a piston gun at him.

Finally, electric.