Fireborn

Chapter Four: Into the Darkness

White iron felt strange against her skin. It was both hot and cold, fluid and rigid. It wasn't like normal iron, and not just in the pale, silvery color. It didn't have the lustrous gleam of silver. Agren only knew what it was called because she'd been raised in Ironwood.

    Every now and then, miners returned with heavy carts of the ore, rough and stony, but if held up to the light, it would glimmer.

    No one knew exactly where the iron came from, but books and stories all centered around the idea that it was a gift. The Stormguard used white iron in place of steel. It was a rare stone that had to be clawed out from the deepest tunnels below Armaad, dangerously close to the chambers of the Mountain of Ashes.

    Agren had once been fascinated by the metal. If she focused enough, she could feel a faint tingling when she touched it. After she'd excitedly run to her mother with her childish discovery, stuck in the youthful idea that others would not have noticed, that perhaps she'd been the first to notice, only to be reprimanded for touching the supply.

    She no longer held a wonder for it, now that she knew its true purpose. It had the strange ability to cancel out unnatural capabilities. Capabilities like her dragon fire. Heavy wings unfit to fly and dragonsteel she could not summon, armed only with the skills of a Pit fighter.

    At the least, it was inconveniencing, a single band of the metal she'd once been fascinated by clamped around her wrist, which was still stained with dried blood.

    Torrok had cursed and yelled, sworn death upon them, but it had done him nothing but give him a splotchy bruise on his jaw, partially hidden by a thin line of stubble. Luna said nothing, made no sound, painting a placid expression over her featured, but the glimmer of worry and fear shone in her large, dark eyes. Agren too had said nothing, only emitting a low growl.

    She wasn't sure how she felt. Frightened, angry, completely shattered, or completely placid? Her heart raced and her gut twisted, but there was too much rage simmering in her veins for it to be fear. She carried no expression, but she did not bare silence.

    There was a clamor in the branches of a sycamore. Rough and old and twisted, a bent-backed crone that barely seemed to stand. An owl shot from the branches, screeching, the shrill call echoing over the trees and reverberating in the shaky branches. The bird was bright white, a flurry of snow. White, splattered red.

    Agren had decided that these rogue warriors truly were the remnants of the Moonsbane, due to the sunburst emblazoned on their armor.

    They drew weapons. After the squawking, there was a crushing void of silence.

    A raccoon padded away from the crone of a tree. He hissed, revealing glinting teeth, shining with a coat of crimson. He was plump, or maybe just fluffy with a thickening winter coat, soft smoky fur with stormcloud and soot rings dusting over his pelt and his bushy tail, lining his face with a mask of warpaint. The unsuccessful hunter of the owl.

The tension vanished from the warriors, and weapons were lowered. A crossbow, a spear, a claymore. Agren forced back a smile.  Silent, and fiercely swift. She's certainly found her chance. Luna had vanished, returning to the shadows of Mother Amethyst, hidden, protected by the darkness. Most likely, she'd return to Ironwood, probably find her bow Shadowfell and, hopefully, inform someone of where Agren and Torrok were.

"Where the shit did the tiny one go?" the one with the crossbow asked, demanding, livid, her voice shaking with rage.

"Wherever the hell she wants to be, apparently," said Torrok. Unlike Agren, he didn't hide his amusement. It got him another bruise across the jaw. He growled and huffed.