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Chapter 24

Stone's expression is, well, stony. His features harden into an unreadable mask, which is unlike him. His eyes, deep blue oceans, freeze up and become solid, unbreakable ice, and I'm unable to tell what he's thinking at all. He nods, but stiffly, as if having some internal battle with himself.
I tell him we need to keep moving. Sleeping is like surrendering to the biting cold, so we need to keep our blood flowing, and the best way to do that is continue on the path. If it takes two weeks to hike to the top of this mountain, and we're barely one day up the slope, we need to get moving.
"What about the others?" Stone puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me from heading right on up the trail, and jerks his head toward the other families.
I bite my lip, and look down at the ground. I've been thinking about that too. I don't trust the other travelers at all- Though they really haven't given me a good solid reason not to. That's just my extreme paranoia working. But we can't just leave them all to freeze to death- The rebels will need everyone they can get. If they're really at the top, I remind myself.
"Fine. Wake them and tell them they need to keep moving, or they're going to freeze. If they argue, move on. I'm not going to waste any time trying to convince people." I say, and he nods, and heads off to one cluster of people. I blink, then realize I'm supposed to go and wake some more families.
I head first to the two crazy dog men. I figure it will be easy to start in with friendly people.
"Um," I wonder, tentatively shaking Bugs- Or was it Rugs? shoulder, and trying to ignore his thunderous snoring. He could have given Pine a run for his money.
I frown when my efforts show no result, except louder snoring, and then I grab the man's shoulder and shake him harder, straining. The snoring was a good sign- It meant he wasn't dead. Yet.
"Wake up!" I grunt, all attempts at being gentle forgotten, and now I'm pushing as hard as I had been on the dead Beast when Stone was trapped underneath it.
I stand, and put my hands on my hips, frowning. Then a singe claw shoots from beneath the fingernail on my pointer finger, and I gently insert it into the man's arm.
"Yow!" He yelps just like a hound dog, leaping instantly to his feet, and grabbing at his arm. A little dot of blood beads on the bare skin, but I know worse would have happened to him if I hadn't woken him, so I don't feel bad.
"What the-"
"Wake your brother. We need to get moving. People have started freezing to death in their sleep, and we can't join them." I say grimly, retracting the claw and turning away.
"What about-" The man yawns massively, much wider than he should have been able to. "Sleep?" He mumbles.
I stop and turn back to face him. "It's your choice. Fall asleep, though- and you ain't waking up." I put my back to him and go to the next family. I'm not in a friendly mood, and I don't feel like arguing. If they want to argue, they can freeze to death for all I care.
The next family is made up of two parents and their child. The three have a leopard spot pattern on their skin, and all their hair is short and fuzzy and yellow.
I gently shake the mother's shoulder, and, much unlike the last one, she instantly leaps to her feet, and suddenly there is a lethal, glinting dagger clutched in each hand. The car whiskers on either side of her animalistic nose twitch, and glowing yellow eyes regard me coldly. I like her.
"Sorry, but we need to get moving. Everyone. People are freezing to death in their sleep. Wake your family, and start climbing, or you're all going to die." I say apologetically. Her eyes narrow, but she glances to her right and sees the hound men beginning to pack up, and looks back to me, nodding once.
I move on to the next group, a single man/woman (can't tell) that was far below Impure. But, so am I, so who am I to judge?
"Um, yeah, we need to move. All of us. So we don't freeze to death." I say brokenly, distracted by the creatures enormous kaleidoscope eyes, which shimmer red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple, all the colors you can imagine.
It stares blankly at me for a moment, then opens it's mouth, baring knife-like baboon fangs and hisses like a snake, forked tongue jutting out between the two front fangs. I take that as a no, and turn away, quickly walking away to the next group.
I spend the next fifteen minutes waking up random members of groups and families, and telling them the same thing- Move, or die.
By the time I meet back up with Stone, I feel moderately succesful. About half the group, maybe fifteen, twenty people, are on their feet, and hoisting their backs tiredly onto their shoulders.
The other half is either looking annoyed and covering their ears so they can get back to sleep, or have already died, and are frozen in tight balls on the ground.
I shiver at the recent memory of putting my hand on the cold skin of a corpse, realizing I was too late, and then seeing all the other members of the family are alive, and I have to break the news to them.
There's a new scar on my arm from the couple that had rejected us from their fire. It's shallow, but still stings, though me and Stone had decided it had no poison. The woman glares at me from the arms of her mate as they settle back down to sleep, and I hiss like a cat, baring my slightly overlong incisors.
I watch sadly as the families getting up go to shake awake members of their group- Then cry out, before screaming in agony as the sleeping person doesn't react.
It's so painful, I find my fingers slipping into Stone's strong hand, gripping it tightly. Only when he glances at me strangely to I realize what I'm doing, and hurriedly pull my hand away, looking awkwardly away.
"What about the dead?" I say after a while, glancing over to the corner where Clay's cold little body is still nestled in our blankets, and hurriedly back to Stone, my slate gray eyes finding his icy blue ones, still hard and reserved, but they almost melt me with invisible heat.
"We make a pyre." He says coldly, watching as a husband sobs over his frozen wife's chest.
"But... That's fire, that's what we were avoiding..." I say slowly. Then I realize he wants the Servants of the Order to return. The hardness in his eyes is the same rage that is still burning in my blood.
"Exactly. C'mon, we should get some wood." He turns away, pack and swords already on his back, and I follow him, confused and angry and sad on so many levels I feel like I'm falling through a whirling vortex of millions of random and broken thoughts.