Lady Of Lake And Arrow |A Swan Lake Retelling|: Book One

Chapter 15

Hydrogen Sea - Beating Heart

"It's starting to turn to chaos, Your Majesty. These creatures of Hell are destroying the villages, killing every living thing in their wake with their unusual abilities. They won't even grant mercy to our own people. They're worse than the Faeries, more animalistic. I warn you, we must not let them control us.

'Don't let your kingdom down. This is not a request."

- Duke Arren to Mortal King Bramos of Freybourne, seven hundred years ago -

–––

Don't look back.

A force of ice slammed into the fortress's stone wall.

Don't look back.

Another blast.

Don't look back.

A shape started to form midair. Her concentration dropped. Ice shattered to the ground.

She tried, again and again, crushing the misshapen shapes afterwards. None of her attempts looked close enough to a weapon.

Finally, she stopped. Her fingers were trembling. Jessa clutched them together to stop it. The more power she used, the more energy it drained from her. It got harder to use, particularly when trying to make shapes out of it. She was no blacksmith–she didn't know what Terhen was thinking when they made the deal. Nevertheless, she agreed to it.

She considered the loopholes in the deal; no time limit, no specific type of weapon. She could do practically anything.

Reaching her hand out, Jessa released another force of ice. All it left was a black mark on the stone, icicles shooting out of it with extremely sharp ends. She went up to one, pressing a finger to the point of it, though not hard enough that it would draw blood.

She held the icicle firmly, then broke the body in half. Droplets of water dripped down her hands. As it melted, she tried concentrating on it, reaching into its very particles. Jessa imagined the icicle turning to the sharpest shard, like a pocket knife, able to cut through skin with merely a touch.

Of course, it was only an imagining.

The icicle continued melting, not changing in the slightest.

No wonder Terhen kept insisting on letting her do this small thing. If someone told her a month ago that she would be making shapes out of her ice in a stone fortress, she would've laughed and called them silly.

"Stupid blond trainer who acts like one of those 'ancient masters' in books," Jessa muttered incoherently, blasting yet more of her ice powers against the wall. She needed a distraction, so she thought of Terhen's hair. Ridiculous, but a distraction nonetheless. It wasn't the common type of light-blond most people in Andalia had. There was a reason why she saw it as silver-blond; because of the ash coloured streaks mixed with the blond. In daylight, those streaks became more visible, from what she observed. It intrigued her at first. When people had more Faerie characteristics than what a normal Tartarean would have, yet still have some mortal blood–the Half-Fae–they only had silver hair. It was what made them stand out, and what made them perish in the Middle Continents, hence why there were very few nowadays.

Don't look back.

Jessa made a frustrated sound, flinging her arm out. Ice met stone, forming icicles. The previous ones were already more than halfway melting. She watched it drip water into puddles on the ground, her mother's words never ceasing to repeat over and over in her head. So much for distracting her mind.