Skylands Legends

21.1. Lord of the Night

Winter Keep was a colossal stronghold. With somewhere near ten million inhabitants, it had to be. Fortunately, its size did not detract from how fortified it was. The city had been built in a symmetrical nonagon shape with the Winter Palace positioned at its center atop a manufactured hill, emphasizing the way its pointed spires towered over the rest of the city. A large wall of ice surrounded it with dozens of watch towers atop its ramparts, closing in what was called the 'Frost District.' The rest of the city sprawled out around it, stretching a couple of miles in every direction, all the way up until The Wall.

The Wall was the prominent feature of the stronghold, an immense structure rising five hundred feet high and stretching nearly fifty miles long around the city. Its ramparts were lined with frost cannons and paths wide enough to fit twelve frost elves shoulder to shoulder. At each of the nine points of The Wall stood great towers made of stone, each capable of housing as many as five thousand troops. Two additional towers stood surrounding the great gates at the southernmost portion of The Wall, both serving as guard towers over the only ground entrance into the city. A wide road stretched upwards from these gates leading to the Frost District. It was known as the Monetta. One hundred thousand soldiers had marched down the Monetta in preparation for the approaching battle. All of them under the command of Jet-Vac.

While it was not his first time leading an army, it was his first time leading from a defensive standpoint. All of his previous experience was out in the open field, never from something as heavily fortified as Winter Keep. That was where Este came in.

Este was the Empire of Ice's foremost defensive tactician. Essentially, it was her job to find the weak points in the city's defensive response and eliminate them with precise maneuvers. She had spent the last few hours giving him the lowdown on all of the strengths and weaknesses of the keep, preparing him for what was to come. In any other situation, he would have felt invincible. But with the Night Squatch on his way, he felt anything but.

The city will hold, he told himself. The beast may have taken down a few small armies, but never an entire military force. A force that was widely considered the strongest army in all of Skylands. There was a reason the Skylanders and other Prime Realms all treaded lightly around the Empire of Ice. Their military being the primary one. From a defensive standpoint, he was in the safest place in the world. The thought didn't calm his nerves one bit.

BWWOOOOOO! The horns of winter were blown once more. It came out as one long blast followed by two short ones. All residents take shelter. The fight was upon them.

Or so it seemed. The beast stood alone in the distance, unmoving. There was no reaction from him to the horns blows, nothing other than his original roar to announce his presence. What was he doing? To those on the wall, the Night Squatch was nothing more than a dark speck that stood out against the snowy landscape. But not for Jet-Vac. Using his arcane-enhanced vision, he was able to pick out every detail of the creature's face. The glowing red eyes and the sharpened ivory teeth too big for his jaw. A smushed nose that likely contributed to his heavy breathing through his mouth, the hot breath turning to mist in the chill air.

This was Jet-Vac's quarry. The beast he longed to kill.

Yet the creature continued to stand there, eyes watching The Wall in an almost thoughtful way. What was he thinking? What was he planning? Was he waiting for them to attack? If so, Jet-Vac would gladly oblige. A part of him wanted to fly out and fight the beast one on one. But he knew that wasn't a viable tactic. He needed to wear the beast down first. So he resigned himself to watching. He could tell from the expression that the beast was clearly planning something, but what?

As if in response, the beast let loose another tremendous roar. It cut through the air like a knife, shaking the ramparts and buildings around them, breaking off chunks of ice from The Wall.