Selection (Book 2 of P.O.E. chronicles)

Chapter 23 - Ice

I tried not to get too cranky as I wiped the snow off my borrowed goggles for the thousandth time. Standing in the glaring white landscape I sighed and asked myself how I ended up in this situation. In front of me John had gone plunging on with Jenny and Kenneth. Shaking my head I shook off as much snow as I could and tried to catch up.

“You doing okay?” Wayne’s muffled voice called out from behind me and I managed to give him a thumbs up despite my arms being frozen. Letting out a chuckle, the large African took a few long strides and came up next to me. I envied his ease at navigating through the snow; and how unaffected he was.

“We are not too far off.” He shouted in order to be heard over the guiling wind. I gave him an impatient look, they had been saying that for the past few days, and yet all we saw was snow. I had little to no idea as to where we were, the only thing I knew was that we were far enough north that it was freezing cold. We had separated from the main group who were heading back to the nearest base north-west of the mountains. Whereas we had to head due north in order to reach a secret rendezvous point which I was pretty sure that we had missed already.

“I can’t see anything!” I shouted back, frustrated with the weather. John had only picked three more people aside from the two of us on this secret journey, trying to draw as little attention as possible. Jenny, who turned out to be his younger sister, both of them telekinetics, which I gathered was the general mutation of the de Silver. And very powerful as well, as I had seen John lift a huge boulder out of the way across a ravine.

There was also Kenneth, who I gathered to be some kind of protector of the two siblings. He appeared to be in his late forties, a surprisingly fragile Asian man and an ice elementalist, one of the rarest powers. I had seen him conjure an ice cylinder from thin air and spear a Felixia blanc in a matter of seconds.

Wayne was the joker of the group; he was the one who shielded the group from sight, whilst the red head (who I discovered was called Celine and is John’s fiancé) was the sensor. However his personality is a complete opposite to his power. Loud, cheerful and energetic; he was cheerful in almost every situation and overly friendly too.

Sometimes I wondered if this guy was born with some kind of emotional deficiency as a result of his power.

“We better catch up!” The happy hiker shouted and dragged me forward by my backpack strap. Groaning I tried to match his pace against the building blizzard towards the trio ahead. The wind was so strong that I struggled to stay on the ground.

“How much longer do we have to go on for?” I asked through my gritted teeth, finally caught up to John. It was difficult to gauge his reaction with only the bridge of his nose visible.

“It’s just up there.” He called out, voice muffled by the layers of fabric shielding his face. I grunted under my breath. This whole thing was getting ridiculous. My mind drifted as we surged onward to a certain fire elementalist. The thought of him being here and frozen into bits was enough to make me laugh, which quickly turned into a sigh, I missed him.

They should have arrived at the alleged campsite now, seeing as almost two weeks had gone by. I closed my eyes for a brief second and let myself remember his face. Then a particularly nasty wind snapped me out of my reverie. Just great. Life couldn’t get any better.

“I can see it!” Jenny shouted excitedly, it took me a few seconds to fully process the words properly through the wind. By then John, Jenny and Wayne had already broken into a run, although it was more of a walking pace due to the thick blanket of snow that covered the land. Quickly following them, I squinted into the distance trying to make out whatever that was our destination.

“Hurry, I can see the jet!” Kenneth exclaimed and I looked up, alarmed. No one ever said anything about flying. I thought airplanes were expensive, the fact that they are sending a plane to pick us up meant serious business.