Eternal Winter

Precious Findings: Part I

Nothing but white as far as the eye could see. The air whipping curtains of snowfall directly into our faces, stabbing at us even through the thick fabric that wrapped up to our noses and down to our eyebrows. Hardly able to see even the path we traversed down, that, too, was covered in layers and layers of snow. We would have all veered off the cobbled roads long ago if not for me continuously redirecting us. I was the only one who knew which step was road and which was not, the only one who could speak to the earth and hear it in return. Jakob had long since stowed away the tattering map, trusting me, alone, to lead us on.

This relentless weather had begun when we had descended halfway down the mountain from the ever-flame and Noah. It continued to plague us even after miles of distance.

The brief pressure on my shoulder was the only warning before Michaela's voice was in my ear, close enough to not be snatched by the wind, "I am beginning to suspect this is not our barrier's doing."

I craned my head back towards her. "I would agree; it doesn't have the same sense yours did. But—"

With my eyes pulled away from the front, I had bumped into Julian, frozen in place staring cloudward. I gently shook his stiff shoulder, leaning in close to speak—

His snow-crusted glove immediately motioned to cover my mouth with eyes wide as he whirled to look at me. A barely perceptible shake of his head had me silent. Without a second thought, I grabbed onto Sammy's hand, always at my side, and looked back to Michaela, still beside my ear. I motioned once with my head towards a tree line, still invisible to our eyes.

I hadn't even taken one step when Julian caught me and frantically tugged me in the opposite direction. My next pulse from the earth returned and...something was wrong. I had felt a giant, stalky tree barely twenty feet to our right—it was gone. I moved backwards, letting Julian direct me as I sent another pulse out—there it was...

Now another twenty feet further ahead.

Not a tree. Most definitely not a tree.

I fumbled at the clasps holding the spell book. Yanking my gloves off and braving the frigid air, I finally unbuckled and slid it free. It was one thing to face an opponent, no matter what kind, it was another to face them blind. So, I opened to the spell and breathed the words into the wind,

"My summons do my bidding; my words speak the power; my magic grants my wishing, to aid me in this hour."

"I beckon to the space before me to hear and obey this command: halt."

With one hand holding the book open to that page, the other was outstretched before me with the staff gripped tight and unwavering. There was a beat of nothing but the roaring echo of the wind.

Then...silence.

I stared at the snow that had frozen in place, the snowflakes suspended in the air as motionless as we who stood in the shadows of the trees did. My focus moved further beyond and there, through the halted storm—

Any words that remained now caught in my throat and I stumbled further into the tree line we sheltered in, as all the strength disappeared from my legs. A hand steadied me upright as I craned my neck to look up and up...and up.

Up at the dark, gigantic mass that towered up towards the clouds. With a broad, long neck stretching from the head breathing in the low hanging clouds, all the way down to the tops of the tallest trees where it met a body, a body that was stocky and massive and crushing, crushing in sight the same way it crushed the trees it brushed against and walked over on four, thick stumps of feet that were coated in frozen mud and dirt and dust, painting them an ugly mottled brown, darker than its rough, crackled, grey skin. A short, thick tail, unnoticed at first glance, rose and thumped against the nearby trees, easily knocking them to the ground with a reverberation that nearly sent us all sprawling into the snow.

A word was breathed out from behind me, and it chilled me more than any winter could, "A Dreadenotitian..."

"What is that?" I hissed, not daring to break my eyes away from the creature. The creature easily the size of a mountain. With its coloring, I had no doubt...I was staring at a walking mountain. 

"It is a brachion—a breaker," Jakob replied, his voice still barely more than his breath. Louder now in the silence left behind by the halted storm.

Too loud, as the head, even so high up, swiveled around towards us and stared down from atop its impossibly long neck. The eyes were mere empty, black pits from this distance, yet my instincts were alarming as they swept over us as we all held our breath.  

It held my gaze for but a moment—a tense, too long moment in which nothing but fear filled me—before it lifted up its foot from amongst the trees on the other side and stepped away, the ground rumbling as it did. My knees shaking along with it.

No one said another word until the rumbling receded and no one dared move until only its head and neck were all we could see over the trees. Even then, we only returned to our path when the storm began its roar once more, covering us in its fury.

After another few minutes, I finally stepped up beside Jakob. "You said that was a breaker?" I asked.

"A brachion," he amended, swallowing hard. "It means breaker in language of the old world. It's a type of Dreadenotitan—massive, towering monsters that are thought to be more legend than reality."

"Brachions would never venture from their dwellings in the heart of the mountains, much farther than any settlement dares to exist," Michaela cut in, sidling up to my opposite side. "But even those are from stories of adventurers trekking to places no one else dares to go. I never thought they were anything more than stories, though."

"You say they never venture far—so, why would one be here?" I asked, still casting glances in the direction the very beast had gone.

"I suspect the possibility of a few things...and none of them bode well," Jakob replied, his voice drawn out. "Regardless, we must make our way to Grendilian without any more dely. It shouldn't be much farther off."

We set off again, our pace quicker than it had been, even wading through the snow at mid-calf height. All of us too aware of the monster that now resided at our backs.

The snowstorm had not let up in the slightest after the momentary pause. It seemed to only grow stronger the further in we went, testing my fading strength all the while. So, at the faint outline of a building with light pouring out from its window, the relief was palpable in the air. The prospect of a warm meal and a fire too comforting that my last reply from the earth had gone unheard until it was too late.

For there, standing in the doorway of the beckoning house, was no human soldier.

But one of a beast.