WE BECOME THOUGHTLESS

eleven | carrion with the carrion

Alistair feared he might lose himself to the stillness. The cold had numbed him to a point that he wondered whether he was still lying somewhere in the river, waiting for the water to gorge on his flesh until he was carrion with the carrion, because how else could the cold persist if not for the press of ice-water all around him?

By the time they had stumbled through loose snow and up the edge of a hill, verging on mountain, Alistair's eyes were starting to slip shut. As if they had turned to stone, he suddenly didn't have the strength to keep them open.

"Wait—wait..." He murmured, nerves chiming like bells from behind his ribcage. His body was not carved from whatever the Welish were carved from, he couldn't persist through the cold and survive like this. The gold-blooded weren't built for the snow. "Stop."

"Up there is a cave," Cole huffed. His hair fell in wet ringlets, inky and dark. The tawny-brown of his skin had gone grey like cold stone. "We rest there."

"I don't think..." Alistair could hear his own heartbeat thump against his chest, working hard and beating fast to keep him from freezing all over. "It's too far."

He had jostled his shoulder too much. His limbs were rigid and refused to move properly. Cole grunted from where he was making a path in the snow, and turned his head to watch the mindrenderer almost trip on a loose stone. Alistair looked up to meet his dark eyes. Droplets clung to black eyelashes.

"You look like death."

Alistair looked away, scoffing through the sudden force of a shiver wracking his body. He suddenly felt bitter "I bet you're hoping for the cold to – to take me away, hm?"

Why were they here in the first place? Because Cole couldn't seem to get his feet from the ground, couldn't find any other way from getting attacked by a bear. Alistair had acted on impulse – it hadn't been his fault that they landed in the river, it was all Cole's fault.

But there wasn't anything they could do about it now, and so Alistair held his tongue, saved his strength for later.

If he had any strength left.

Cole shook his head and staggered down the small slope. He kicked up snow and dirt with every fall and slip of his boots. Alistair went to step away, but now that he had stopped walking, he couldn't find the strength to start again. Eyes fluttering and breath pitching, he wondered whether Cole would have the decency to bury his body when the stillness took him.

Cole's gloved hand disappeared into his coat and pulled out the heat pack, still intact, and threw it at Alistair's chest, who fumbled with it before clutching it to his body. Surprisingly, it was still hot to the touch – and it felt like a piece of the sun in his hands against the fierce cold.

He placed it beneath his coat, beneath his vest, so that it was pressed against his skin, hugging it close. A sudden flush of warmth worked through him. Cole must've refilled it in the morning with fresh ash.

And then Cole was moving up the slope again, moving towards the cave. Alistair's teeth chattered as he followed, flushed with the last piece of strength that would get him to the cave and then to a fire.

"Thank you..." He mumbled.

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Tobias was tall, lean and dark. Alistair remembered seeing him for the first time, cool and collected, like nothing on this earth could touch him. He didn't act like a general with all the weight of an army on his shoulders – Alistair expected stress lines and sweat-drenched skin – he acted like a man who always knew his enemy's next step and so never thought to worry.