There is a period of calmness after every storm.
It is a time when man and nature reconnect, when they go back to their roots, inspect their cells and find little cracks they need to fix before the next snowfall. During that time, the troubles of the rocky period seem trivial, embarrassing to recollect, and both man and nature swear that they will never again make silly mistakes that lead them to the point of snapping.
And then they do. Over and over again.
Thomas was moving through the snow quickly, and with a new resolution. His resolutions, like every child’s, were quickly made and strong enough to split the Earth in half, until they are met with new challenges they cannot withstand. Then they break, together, because every word is too strong and every obstacle too insurmountable. Then comes the calm. And right now, as the snow threatened to bury him, he once again told himself that he had to put himself first.
Diane is not here anymore. And she obviously couldn’t care less about what you’re doing or what your worries are. You don’t have to impress her anymore. Just do what you feel is right. That’s right. No more Diane Hunster. Thomas Hammer. Me. I’ll do what I want and…
“Did she tell you who the Swan is,” Kyle suddenly asked. He had an uncomfortable habit of appearing next to people when they were in deep thought and asking them strange questions.
“What?” Thomas let out.
“I heard Diane sent you a note. Did she tell you who we’re looking for?” His question made all the sense in the world; it was obvious to assume that Thomas would have received a tip from Diane as their finding the Swan would benefit her more than anyone.
But he didn’t. Thomas tilted his head towards Kyle and said in a bitter tone, “Not a word on that. Or anything, actually.”
Kyle snorted. “So, she doesn’t know. Great.”
He sped up his pace to catch up with Kyla. Thomas watched him lean to his right and whisper what even Thomas knew he shouldn’t have whispered into her ear. But Kyla didn’t yell or beat him unconscious; she just nodded and continued walking in a daze.
Diane and the Swan not having met was a scenario Thomas did his best to completely ignore because it would make this entire trip useless. They couldn’t rely on the Swan’s second power because they didn’t know if it had yet manifested. In theory, all members of The Six should have gotten their second power by the age of twelve, but as was evident from Thomas’s case, different circumstances could hinder that growth. So, if Diane truly had never met the Swan and the Swan had no reason to approach them in search for answers, than all of this would be for nothing. And now that two people, two people whose names he didn’t bother to learn, were dead, the thought of wasting all this time was even more horrifying. So, Thomas, as he left holes in the snow, made another resolution.
I will not go back empty handed.
So, when a hole opened right beneath Kyla’s feet and Kyle grabbed her hood and pulled her out like a carrot, tossing her in the snow and then picking her up and folding her over his shoulder like a sack of flour, when they started running to the side to avoid the hole, when his mask fell off and he inhaled the frozen air and a few snowflakes, then his mind became crystal clear and he, watching as the hole grew in size, realized there was only one thing he had to do.
Stay alive.
The guides, as Thomas had expected, never said a word to him. They exchanged maybe three sentences with Meredith, and about two with Kyla and Kyle, explaining that the only safe way to get to the castle would be to go back to where they came from and go through Nowhere, this time correctly. They refused to answer Kyla’s question on how exactly they knew the three needed saving, probably assuming that it was obvious. There was only one woman wicked, or smart, enough to change the paths in the manual the Ravens used. And Thomas, in stead of being furious like Kyla, for the first time admired Elaine’s persistence; because this time, it actually worked.
Luckily, this hole was a smaller one; soon enough they were able to leave the danger behind and keep on moving like nothing happened. They didn’t need to look back and wonder what would have been in Kyle didn’t keep his eyes on Kyla all the time. And now that Thomas was moving even faster, all but running through this snow that could disappear from under his feet at any point, all he wanted was to talk.
So, Thomas came up to Kyla and asked, “Are you alright?”
She seemed distraught, which was to be expected considering that she was all but brought back from the dead. “Miraculously,” she replied, still trying to catch her breath. She was walking on her own now, Kyle being busy exchanging pleasantries with the guides. “It’s really a strange feeling. I’ve barrely escaped death twice now. Does that mean I still have one chance?”
Thomas smiled and put his hand on her shoulders. “We’ll all be fine.”
“Yeah, well, two have already died,” she mumbled.
“What was that?” Thomas asked, the wind too strong to lose to insecure comments.
“Nothing. How are you feeling?”
“Cold,” Thomas replied. That was when he felt a tear roll down to half o his cheek. If it were any warmer, it would have made its way down to his jaw; but it was freezing cold, so it left an icy trace on his face that burned and he had to quickly ignite the spark in his eyes and raise his body heat to melt it. That was when it finally fell, and as it moved through the air, turned into a microscopic icicle that made a microscopic hole in the snow.
“It does get freezing sometimes,” Kyla replied. She couldn’t see his face because of her hood, or because she refused to look, but she knew how he felt. “Have I told you about the day I was brought to the Ravens?”
It was a marvelous moment to change the subject; Thomas admired her for her sense of timing. And there really was nothing else to do but talk or think about death. “Just partially.”
“Well, it was a cold day. Not like this, of course, but cold enough for a winter jacket. I didn’t have one, being homeless and all, so Diane gave me her jacket. It was really warm, I remember, and it smelled like that weird chocolate soap she sometimes uses. Anyway, there was snow everywhere, but not around the Headquarters. You have to see that building sometime, it’s astonishing. And extremely clean. Anyway, I didn’t have a name then, being an orphan and all. So, they were brainstorming names when another unit brought another child in.” She pointed forward. “That was him. So, Maya, the leader, you’ve met her, decided to name me Kyla, because he is Kyle. Pretty fun, right?”The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Thomas nodded; there was so much filth under her story, a life of abandoning children, starving to death, and worse, that he was also ingorant of. “Yes, fun.”
“Kyle had it better than me though. He wasn’t homeless. But his parents decided to sell him because they couldn’t feed them all anymore.” Kyla continued with a sudden subdued misery Thomas’s hadn’t heard coming from her before. “They had fourteen children. They sold six. Kyle turned out to be talented, so the Ravens kept him.”
“And the rest?!” Thomas let out, suddenly unaware of the inhumane weather of Iceleus.
Kyla shrugged. “Who knows.”
And no one did know, except the new queen. She knew it all. Yet she ran away. She didn’t stand before her people and tell them she would protect them.
She could have at least lied.
They were walking next to that old hole now, the one that swallowed their teammates. It wasn’t as big anymore, so Thomas gathered the courage to look down. As he was slowly leaning over it, his heart started beating fast in hopes of encountering a horror that would make it feel real. But there was only a thick layer of snow. It was all happening too quickly. He had to move now not to lose the guides.
The giant wasn’t there anymore. They probably moved him somewhere, a graveyard perhaps. Now that he thought about it, Thomas wondered it any of the criminals were employed in that activity. Maybe the extremely obedient ones. The reformed ones. The rest were still moving snow around, going madder by the second. Have any of them sold their child to the Ravens to feed their family? If so, Thomas didn’t feel bad for them. He was carving himself a new path, one towards complete apathy.
That was when he lost consciousness. He didn’t dream of anything; he could have been unconscious for years he wouldn’t have seen a single color. That’s how tired he was of worlds.
If he weren’t unconscious, he would have realized why Elaine, in the most roundabout way possible, made him bring the Ravens with him. She knew she would make sure he got lost in the desert, and there was much more hiding under the snow than a giant or two.
This time, it was centipede, gray, with icy eyes and eerie stripes that looked like smiles, and about twice the size of an average human. It was fortunate that its legs were covered in a tranquilizing powder because Thomas, or any pray for that matter, would have surely hated being eaten by it, even if it was only for a moment.
Meredith Brown was a trained warrior. She was not only physically strong, but also extremely perceptive. She would only miss the things she would estimate should be missed, and a member of the Six being eaten alive by a giant bug was not one of them. She quietly pulled out her scythe, brushed passed Kyla who was only now turning around to look for the missing Flamer, and cleanly cut the centipede in half before anyone else comprehended what had happened. Blue blood was everywhere now, and as she pulled Thomas Hammer out of the heap of guts, all slimy and gross, she wished for a slice of cake. Or a whole cake.
“Damsel in fucking distress,” she mumbled to Thomas. She carried him bridal style, his head dangling and his mouth wide open.
Kyla was fuming. “You could have fucking killed him!” she screamed.
“But I didn’t,” Meredith replied. “I guess he has a decent amount of luck for someone eaten by a giant bug.”
She didn’t care what Kyla was complaining about to Kyle behind her back. Kyla was always complaining about something. Meredith simply kept on walking only stopping to tell one of the guides, “I don’t like doing other people’s job. This is twice now someone almost died. Next time, Lila comes in. Understood?”
She didn’t wait for a reply; she probably wouldn’t have gotten one anyway. She carefully stepped into the snow in front of her and, when it didn’t cause a landslide of any kind, dropped Thomas on the ground. She cleaned the snow around him a bit, then slapped him a few times with moderate strength.
“He’s not waking up,” she noted, unimpressed.
Kyle knelt next to her. “Probably the traquilizer. He’s not used to it.”
“The bastard must have been getting his beauty sleep just fine.” She proceeded to slap him a few more times. “The pills I use can knock out a horse.”
“Yeah,” Kyla replied sarcastically, now also kneeling, “a bear.”
The silence was short. There must have been something strange in the snow. Maybe the centipede also had some hallucinogen in its stomach that made the three burst out laughing. Their voices filled the vast space, carried by the wind left and right, broken into several chains of different color.
Kyla fell back holding her stomach and mumbled, “What the hell is all this?” She felt good as the tears, from all the laughing, streamed down her face and burnt her skin, when Kyle lay next to her and replied, “Life.”
“No, but like, what are these… events? He,” she couldn’t finish her sentence from laughing too hard.
“What?” Kyle urged her, also barely breathing.
“He got eaten by a fucking bug!” Kyla screamed, and the two laughed even louder. “And those two girls got eaten by Earth itself!”
“And I thought I had it rough,” Kyle continued in a pause between two series of manic laughter.
Kyla screamed in pure joy. “Your parents sold you!”
“And yours died!” he yelled back, his tears racing against Kyla’s.
Meredith, who was also holding her stomach, pulled down her shawl and yelled, “Try being George Brown’s sister!” which sent the three into another fit of frenzy. “Try that!” she screamed, falling back and landing next to Kyla. And they would have stayed that way, making snow angles, and competing on who had the most miserable existence, had Lila’s head suddenly not towered over them.
At first, Kyla thought she was seeing things. She hadn’t thought much about Lila since she left them that day, life getting more gruesome, but she entertained in the back of her head the idea that Lila was rotting in prison. But now that she was looking at the girl who once betrayed her, the girl partially responsible for this mess, it made all the sense in the world that she would be here. After all, Meredith Brown couldn’t have appeared out of thin air; and Elaine had to have a plan C in case all of them died and Thomas was left alone in the desert. Seeing him now, still asleep, Kyla secretly thanked Elaine she provided them with a portal.
“So, is Michelle here too then?” Kyla asked, her stomach muscles finally getting rest from the straining. She could breathe normally now, the clear sky and the sharp air now much less entertaining. The snow was falling so slowly now she could count the snowflakes, small but sharp.
“What do you think?” Lila bit back. “Look at you three wasting everyone’s time. I had to come here to get you because it didn’t look like you would get a grip anytime soon.” Then she looked up and shot the guards with the arrows in her eyes. “What are you looking at?”
“I guess she thinks she’s in control now,” Kyla commented, the left side of her mouth curling up in a reproaching smirk. “When the cat is gone…”
“Well, you are free to stay and find your own way to the castle,” Lila bit back.
Kyla pulled Kyle up and pointed towards Thomas. “I can’t.”
He just nodded and threw Thomas over his shoulder. Neither looked back at Meredith who was still lying facing the sky, her arms spread and her face accumulating snow. She was huffing and puffing, playing with the steam that came out of her mouth.
“Let’s just go,” Kyle grunted. “I’m sick of all this snow.”
Lila turned around and sighed deeply. She made a circular motion with her hand and a portal opened leading into the grand hall of the Icelean royal castle. Thorough it, they could see Elaine standing with her hands crossed, her eyebrows dangerously narrowed.
“Beautiful,” Kyla mumbled as she walked into the portal, followed by the rest of her newest team. A few snowflakes sneaked inside as well, desperate for warmth.