The Iron Grip

Chapter 7

Lillie looked behind her. Sure enough, a faint red light could be seen in the large bank of fog. The Drednaw had followed them.

Lillie yelled at the top of her voice, causing her captors to shush her. An earthquake resonated throught the tent city. Tents began to collapse as the ground tore itself to shreds.

The three friends broke free and began to sprint northwards. They mounted some (Galarian) Rapidash and galloped away. The tent city disappeared beneath a huge cloud of rubble, and a red shockwave tore through the air, signifying that the huge Drednaw was gone.

It hadn't lasted for long, but it was enough to let Lillie, Kiawe and Lana escape. Now they had to head north into the mountains.

After three or four hours, they reached the base of the mountain range. The Rapidash could no longer continue, their bodies could not cope with the cold. Lillie dismounted her ride and looked back at the tundra.
There was no going back now.

Over to the west, a grey line created a defined border across the landscape.

"You see that Lana?", Kiawe gestured. "That is the Border Wall."

"If we can see it so well from here it must be really big!", Lana replied keenly.

"Ten meters tall in the most places, over a hundred miles long from one one place to another. It controls the mouth to the tundra. Stops them getting in and us getting out", Lillie added.

"How do you know this will work?", Kiawe asked.

"Our only other option is to traverse the whole mountain range, and that is suicide", Lillie explained. "It is one of many escape routes from the Queendom, and is by far the. easiest to access."

Th wind began to pick up speed and suddenly they were engulfed by a vast blizzard. The wind lifted Lillie off her feet, and she tumbled down the valley walls and landed in a fluffy snow drift.

Sophocles had been walking for days on end, and finally he could see the mountains on the horizon.

After he had been separated from Lillie, he had decided to continue to the border. Instead of heading to the wall, Sophocles had decided to cross the desert to where the mountains reached the sea.

Only Arceus knows what had befallen Lillie, but Sophocles was determind to cross the border into the land of freedom and wilderness.

Yes, crossing the huge desert had been dificult, but the Royal Guards had built settlements around the oases, so it wasn't hard to spot places where on could get a drink.

Kiawe and Lana wondered aimlessly through the blizzard on search of a way out. They wondered in a meandering line that lead them to the desert. The mountain range stretched out to their left, to their right lay the desert and behind them resided the tundra.

Their hopes of finding Lillie again where low, but they knew how to get there, why give up now? Survival is an instinct, and currently, this was all they were thinking about.