Darkness carved in bone

Chapter 12

Ten

Ten leaped after her, his body reacting without thinking. He ended up staring into the dark hole where she had gone under, kneeling before it and gripping the edges with his bare hands. The sharp and jagged edges cutting into his bare skin. He didn't even know when he had thrown off his gloves. His breaths were shallow and the air from his mouth turned into white smoke that flowed towards the water and disappeared the moment it collided with the dark water below him. The skin on his knees protested in agonizing pain as they were pushed into the ice and water started seeping into his clothes.

The freezing and pitch-black water was completely silent, lifeless and unmoving. Helen would not survive staying under the water for long. The freezing water could kill her almost instantly. He was about to move forward and reach into the water to grab after her and try to save her, but something stopped him. Was he saving her because that was what his queen would want, or was he doing it because it was his choice? Perhaps he should just let her die, let the ice take her. And let that be his choice. He expected the scrutinizing look to come and guide his hand again, but this time Helen's face popped up into his mind instead, pale and faintly shining like the moon. And as strangely as it might have been, he decided to save her, but not because of the queen, and not even because of Helen. But because he wanted to save her, needed to save her.

He pushed himself forward and ducked through the hole, searching for her. Shock made the freezing water almost feel gently warm against his skin at first, but when his skin got over the immediate shock, the water felt like a thousand needles piercing his skin at once.

He forced his eyes open even though there was not a single cell inside him that wanted to put his own eyes through such an abhorrent treatment; to let the freezing water directly into his eyes. For a short moment he thought he had gone blind, seeing nothing but a blur of strange green-brown darkness. But then he spotted some movement to his right, and his head turned towards it slowly, his neck already stiff from the cold water. His vision sharpened as the blur disappeared, and he could see her. Helen's hands were frantically banging against the ice, some paces away from him, as a current had drawn her away from the hole. He could see how she tried to muster every ounce of strength inside her body as she tried to put her weight behind her as she turned her hand into a fist and slammed it into the ice, her knuckles almost breaking. The sound of a muted and strange bang rippled through the water. A cloud of red spread from her hand as she pulled her hand back, readying herself for another blow.

He pushed himself up, his lungs burning as he inhaled heaps of air and ran to the spot his fast calculations told him she would be. He could feel how the freezing water droplets on his skin turned into ice when it came into to contact with the blistering cold air.

He pushed armfuls of snow away from the spot as he kneeled down, working as fast as his body would allow him. The layer of snow was thankfully thin enough for him to clear it within moments, and for a split second their eyes met through the clear ice. Her face was strangely puffed in the water and small air bubbles clung to her skin. The cloud of blood from the wounds on her hand formed a strange halo around her head, framing her face in a macabre but beautiful picture. And in that split second where their eyes met, he could see the absolute terror in her eyes before they rolled back into her skull and she inhaled that faithful last gulp of water into her lungs.

Terror hit him as he saw how she began sinking slowly down towards the endless bottom of the lake. Ten grabbed his dagger and brought it above his head, the sharp blade singing as it cut through the air, before he pushed it down towards the ice with every scrap of strength in his body. He paused for a moment, expecting to hear the devastating sound of metal cracking and breaking against the eternal ice of this lake, but instead the blade went through the ice in a surprisingly smooth manner. He ignored the alarm that went off in his head that told him this ice was disturbingly and unnaturally thin and began cutting open a hole big enough to pull her through. He pushed his hand into the water and reached after her, her body still faintly visibly as she sunk towards the eternal darkness beyond them both. He twisted his body so he could increase his reach, but he could not find her. He frantically moved his hand around in the water, searching for her, but his hand came only in contact with more freezing water. A haze of discomfort and heaviness hit him as he was sure that he had lost her forever. He pushed himself further into the water, the ice biting painfully into his body as he forced himself further down.