Eternal Winter

Foggy Hope: Part II

We gathered the essentials and readied ourselves. Pulling my hair back, I kept the braid tight, each strand tucked in and away from my face, save for a single strand tickling my cheek, too short to stay. I tightened my gearbelt taut across my hips, and the weight of my shortsword and staff hung from it heavily. Then, I shortened the book satchel to keep it from bumping into them. With shaking fingers, I clasped the mantle across my shoulders to where it held my cloak in place.

I met the others in the hallway—Sammy, with only a dagger at his side and his gray hat pulled low over his ears into his eyes; Julian, a stony cast to his eyes as his hand's grip tightened and retightened absentmindedly on the engraved hilt to his sword; and Michaela, her hair still loosely falling in waves and ever the challenge still set in her face, in the slight quirk of her lips, in the furtive energy that licked in her voice, "Better now than never."

As I locked the door, securing the rest of our supplies within our inn's room, an unbidden voice whispered in the back of my mind, by the end of today...well, our things will be dealt with one way or the other.

On the streets, Julian kept his scarf tight against his face with only dark eyes peering out straight ahead. He wound through the streets with ease and familiarity I helplessly wished for. Michaela kept on his heels, her intense gaze flicking from person to person, intense on anyone who stepped too close. More than once, though, I had to pause for Sammy, who dragged behind. With each street we went down, with each guard or citizen or corner we turned, the closer we grew, the farther back he drifted.

Finally, I had to stop completely. I turned to call up to our friends, more than block away, and stumbled over Julian's name, catching it before it was said—the guard on the corner caught my eye. I could remember his face as he reminisced of his soldiers, his Spruce guard, it was where I belonged—even if...I am not welcomed back. 

I bit my words off and redirected my shout, "Michaela! Wait a moment!"

She paused and waved back at us. She quickly caught Julian's arm, pulling his stiff form to the side of the street, into the shadow of a snow-dusted awning. I turned back to Sammy, who had gone completely still, his cloudy gaze staring off into the distance. Far beyond the buildings, far above the rooftops.

"What is it, Sammy?" I asked gently, but firmly. "We can't stall much longer—the guards may notice us."

He remained motionless for another moment. I bit my tongue against the urgency that wished to snap out. I remained still and I waited for him.

Slowly, one hand, trembling and loosely curled, pointed up and up and up, to that point in the distance he had been so focused on. "There," he breathed out. It was barely a word. "I've glimpsed it from a distance, but...something's not right. Something is different. And wrong." He forced out that final word, his face twisting, shifting—between anger and awe and absolute, raw terror.

I followed his finger, but I could not see what he did. I could not see what it would have been before. The only thing I could make out was the dull shine that broke through the snowfall and buildings. It was the same thing that had occasionally caught my eye, even from farther out, over the last few weeks. 

What, exactly, was Sammy seeing? 

"Show me," I murmured.

And with my demand, he latched onto my wrist and began to sprint down the street, to Julian and Michaela. The two of us rounded the final corner without slowing. Sammy ignored our friend's voices and continued to pull away until he pulled up short, in the middle of the open street, clamoring with activity. Sammy was huffing quick, short breaths and quiet, just staring, staring, staring at the building that towered up in front of us.

At the shimmering, gray-metallic building blank of windows, or divets, or flaws even as it stretched up high above the tallest rooftops. Its walls dropped sharply down the front and sides, smooth, too smooth for what architecture I had seen in this city and others.

I heard footsteps shortly followed by Julian's voice from behind me, and it came out rough and strained, "That—that's not...no. What has she done?!"

"What is it?" I finally pushed, trying to see what I couldn't, what I never had. "What is wrong with it?"

Sammy's shoulders began to quiver and his brows were drawn tightly together, rage alit in his dark brown eyes. "She changed the palace—she covered it."

I reexamined the strange building, finding my way to the bottom, straight in front of us and behind a short bridge, was there the only anomaly, a door laid into stone bricks which quickly broke into—no, just as Sammy said, the stone was still there, but covered by the gray...material.

"What is that?" Michaela voiced my own confusion. "It does not appear...natural."

Movement pulled my attention back front. Movement from the stone bridge, where guards were stationed. They were moving towards the four motionless individuals, staring wide-eyed at the palace in the open. I glanced to each side of us, once busy with people, now empty of traffic. The sun had hardly hit midday. 

Without a second thought on this, I grabbed at Sammy's shoulder and threw a quick look over my shoulder at the other two. "Time to move!" I barked. They instantly snapped into motion, falling into my footsteps almost as quickly as I vacated them.

We quickly came upon the advancing two guards, who, noticing our swift approach, both withdrew their swords, eerily similar to Julian's own. "Halt!" one of them cried, just barely getting his weapon aloft. "You are not to—halt!"

I withdrew my own weapon, but it was not like their steel. With the pulse feeding into me from the warm wood of the staff, I leaned low to the ground, letting my friends flow around me as I slowed, and brushed my fingers against the stone, and spoke one word through gritted teeth, 

"Quake."