Taliyah picked her way quickly down the snow-covered hillside, skidding in places and plunging thigh-deep in others. She hadn't run from a Noxian invasion fleet to then accidentally kill the first Ionian she saw.
"And knowing my luck, he was probably a holy man," she said.
The pines in the valley had been reduced to spindly bushes half their original size. Only the tip of the shrine broke the snow's surface. A string of tattered prayer flags had twisted themselves into knots, marking what used to be the far end of the glen. Taliyah scanned the area, looking for any trace of the man she had committed to the ice. When she'd last seen him, he had been under the temple's eave. Perhaps it had sheltered him.
As she made her way to the temple, closer to the trees and away from the sweep of the avalanche, she saw two fingers that had broken through the surface.
She half trudged, half ran to the pale fingertips. "Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead. Please..."
Taliyah dropped carefully to her knees and started to scoop away the icy powder. She uncovered fingers as strong as steel. She reached in and gripped the man's wrist, her own clenching hands barely obeying. Her teeth chattered, shaking her body and drowning out any pulse of life she might have felt in the man.
"If you're not dead already," she said to the man beneath the snow, "then you've got to help me."
She looked around. There was no one else. She was all he had.
Taliyah let go of his fingers and backed away a few paces. She laid her numb palms to the surface of the snow and tried to remember what the floor of the little valley had looked like before the avalanche. Loose stones, gravel. The memory swam, then coalesced in her mind. It was dark, a coarse charcoal gray with flecks of white, like Uncle Adnan's beard.
Taliyah held tightly to the vision and pulled up from deep below the snowpack. The crust of ice erupted in front of her, quickly followed by a towering ribbon of granite balancing a lone figure. The suddenly flexible stone wavered at its peak, as if looking to her for guidance. Unsure of any safe landing, Taliyah pushed them both toward the spindly pines, hoping their boughs might break his fall.
The granite ribbon fell short, collapsing into the snow with a heavy puff, but the evergreen arms caught the man before casually dropping him to the surface.
"If you were alive, please don't be dead now," Taliyah said as she hurried toward him. The sunlight faltered above her. Dark clouds were moving into the valley. More snow would soon be upon them. Beyond the trees, she saw an opening to a small cave.
Taliyah blew warm breath into her hands and willed them to stop shaking. She bent close to the man, reaching out to touch his shoulder. He let out a pained grunt. Before Taliyah could pull back, there was a quick breeze and a metallic flash. The sharp, cold edge of the man's blade pressed at her throat.
"Not yet time to die," he said in a broken whisper. He coughed, and his eyes rolled back in his head. The sword dipped to the snow, but the man did not release the weapon.
The first snowflake flitted past Taliyah's chapped face. "From the look of it, you're pretty hard to kill," she said. "But if we're caught in this storm, we just might find out if that's true."
The man's breathing was shallow, but at least he was still alive. Taliyah reached under the man's arm and dragged him toward the small cave.
The lonely wind had returned.
III
