NEVEN

Irimount's icy grip flowed through his feathers and regulated themselves into flimsy warmth as he paced the old corridors he once tread as a young boy with a dream and a code of honor held by the Knights of the Round. Their tenets echoed out across their plaques. Shield the innocent. Uphold the honor of their ancestor wyverns who flew the skies with Evyriaz, the Ancient Traveller. Sing with heart and soul. Feel the voice of the land, the world. The Navei carved itself into the Knight Valiant's office, a reminder of Irimount's chosen carrier of all the ideals the Knights favored. Whoever sat upon the seat had to hold the tenets of Naveeran valor close, unburied and unfrozen against the blizzard's raucous, empty maw.

His first step, he longed for honesty found within history when it refused to reveal its secrets.

The second, his loyalty to a golden creed.

Third, the valor found in duty.

Fourth, the final, the most important — the song of their faith, a spiral of a rune with three forked points. Xe'tana. Zet'alna. Navei'al. Three precious words. Three truths to his people. As the western winds cry out for the new day, the Snow Prince's crown remains on an icy throne for when Naveera will have need of him again. He repeated the ancient stories over and over until he reached the last step, leaving Maria at the bottom to sort through horticulture books. It led into a circle of rooms, a representation of the table the Knights once sat at. And the last time I was up here... I was giving it all up. I was giving up my name for distant lands I never knew. That I have only heard of in stories about a bright light in the sky emanating warmth. His boots clicked against the cold stone beneath his heel as he stopped in front of the largest, decorated door. Ceremonial glaives sat on hooks between each of the doors of thirteen likenesses. His fingers wrapped around the knob, biting at his skin. Ice danced across his tongue when he slipped it across his lips, and broke the blanket of frozen instability to creak the door open.

Metal hinges squeaked from lack of use, and he let go of the knob. It slid past his fingers, floating on the whispers of old ghosts. Crystals hung off the chandelier in the center of the room. Two small wings went into the Knight Valiant's personal armory and record stores. One hand went to his extra dagger latched onto one of his leather straps when the door clanged against the stone it hit. Pieces of stone clattered from the motion and tumbled to the floor from their precarious position on the fractured wall. The low howl squeezed past the cracks as he took a hesitant step forward, hearing no other noise but Irimount's refrain of grief. In one corner, a Naveeran lute hung on the stand, one of many specialties every knight had to know. Dancing. Music. Fighting. One in the same. One tempo. He curled his fingers aghast the wrapped hilt as he dragged himself to the truth behind the desk.

Another breath hushed down his feathers and through his nose into a plume of excess magick.

The shape's fingers dug into the arms of their chair. Flakes of frost-bitten blue skin peeled off their bones, where their other arm hung off the side, holding a shattered glaive shaft. Its blades sat at their feet, a motion of defense in futility. His knees touched the edge of the desk as the corpse gave no sign of reanimation. Sunken into its skeletal bones, mouth frozen open to reveal chipped fangs. Stains splashed against their scaled armor, leaving a sizable hole in their chest with nothing left behind. Tension sent a wave of energy through his feathers with an added sense of unease as he slowly slipped the dagger out of its sheath halfway.

"You live in a world that doesn't exist anymore, Lotayrin."

His dagger slipped out of his fingers.

"Ser Utovar... Knight-Valiant of Irimount," he whispered out a forgotten name, carried solely by him.

On the name's song, his feathers thinned at the rumbling hiss deep within the belly of death. A rattle of unlife as the fingers unfurled with the name, the last call of memory unreleased to Avae'londu — where the knights awaited the lost. Bones chipped, the seat peeled, stuck and glued. Neven's hand slipped through the focal center of his glyph, a glaive blooming across his palm with icy gold ribbons as the draugr shambled upwards with the continuous rattle. Through the window, the training fields with the frozen over pond, covered with the blanket and several other fallen shapes. His attention drew back to the draugr when it fought against its frozen shackles, slowed by the blizzard.

Weight fell deeper into his fingers as the glyph fell apart, closing the door with the blunt end of the shaft to not disturb Maria of her research of Naveeran life. Many a time he found himself in the office he stood in, with the expectations of a family name on his shoulders, and he thought himself powerless to the course set for a nobleman. Until the Storm Wardens awakened his heart and soul. As the draugr came closer to its release, he hummed under his breath, setting the magick in the air on fire. He drew back his grip as it found its footing, and went for one last lunge. Neven drove himself forward without hesitation, driving his glaive to create another hole in its stomach. He twisted it as ice spread from the impact, crawling up what was left of the draugr's body.

It whispered, and Neven broke it apart.

Mist exploded outwards as the body crumbled without an anchor, nothing more than a fallen bunch of shards. He listened to the last passages of the song of his past, breathing in the excess magick as the swirls dissipated. Your name will be remembered... we are the blizzard, born within its coils. We will never die. He brought his hand to his face to grab onto the moment of silence for the departed of Irimount. The glaive returned to the flow from which it came through his glyph. Now... let's see if I can find answers as to the purpose of what happened here. He stepped over the icy shards to enter the small records room. He pressed his thumb into his lip as he gathered small journals of the previous Knight-Valiants to have a timeframe of the cult activity. On the small windowsil, he brushed through the information for similarities, tossing aside whatever was irrelevant to his duty. All, except names. He kept those close to his chest as he unfurled one of the larger scrolls, then raised an eyebrow at architectural schematics of the headquarters. Oh... this might be useful. Off his seat, he spread it across the wall and glued it with magick as he looked over the diagrams, measurements, and annotations of the stonemasons.

His gaze drifted to the lower bowels of the building. A tunnel connected to the spire, but a bunch of scribbles blocked the truth, nor did it look recent enough to be Ser Utovar's doing. I know there's tunnels under Irimount... but I didn't realise the Headquarters were connected to the Grand Spire. He traced the careful, precise drawings, mapping out Irimount in his head to match. I've never seen a tunnel connection between... here and...

Neven unhooked the schematics to stare down at it. Dread filled his stomach with ooze as he rolled it back into shape and left it with the rest of the records, hurrying down the steps of mendacity, betrayal, disgrace, and mistrust. Maria looked up from her reading. "Find anything?" she asked as she packed up her books, but he found himself without his voice. "Nev?"

"Follow me." He needed to find the truth before it slipped out of his grasp. Maria's quick footsteps followed as he went deeper into the headquarters, taking the flight of stairs to the bottom levels, full of dust, barely used even back when he wandered its halls.

"Neven?" Maria questioned as he raced for the door at the end of the basement, boarded up by several layers. He pried each one off, listening to the rotted wood clatter onto the floor, ripping apart frosty webs. He tore open the door, to come face to face with stone foundations. Undeterred, he raised his fingers into the flow, snapping apart the illusion rattling his feathers. "Are you going to explain what's going on?" she insisted when he walked past the veil, rushing down the stairs to the unused cellblock. He went straight for the jailor's area, flipping open the ancient ledger. Some pages ripped from the very movement, and he flipped over to the recent ledgers — with the most recent being turns upon turns old.

"Neven?"

"Apparently there's a tunnel built between here and the Spire. One that I didn't know existed, but maybe they never built it." He peeked in the old cells, unfit for the well-being of any prisoners. It continued to fill his heart with torment as he paced the length of the cellblock.

"Neven... you don't sound like you believe that."

He slammed on his heel. "That's because I don't." He pushed his thumb against his dagger. Blood slipped to his palm as he pushed it through a glyph, throwing it into the wall. The braziers clattered to the ground, and the weak stones tumbled down a dirt staircase. No... no no no... He chewed on his tongue to taste the rust as he rubbed his thumb and raced down the uneven staircase. No! He tossed up a magelight to give him some light as he reached a level plane, with Maria scrambling behind him.

Old rot and decay filled his nostrils as he breathed out pain.

"Nev?"

He went the full length of the tunnel, running around a corner when a door revealed itself as he sent his bloodbound glyphs ahead on the hunt for the truth. Wind slammed it open as he pushed himself forward, and the candles lit up with a gasp of life. Books filled the shelves hooked onto the wall, but his heart fell at the sight of metal bars, one by one. He went for the desk first, and slapped the corner at the muddled texts, hidden underneath Obscura. ... the answers won't be found in a book. He pulled the books off the shelves. Advanced textbooks. He rifled through the pages until he reached the hard back, running his fingers down the childish scribbles.

"Nev...?" His own dawning realization filled Maria's voice.

He drew his tongue across his lips. "The cult must've worked out of the Grand Spire, which meant someone knew they were operating here," he mumbled, tossing the book onto the desk to rush through the cells, most of them empty save for one furnished one. He dug his fingers into the bars to pry it from the wall, putting all his magick into his arms to force the lock open. It broke with ease from tainted rust, and he winced at its groan against the stone floor. Stone wrapped around the walls to a little desk and bed in the corner, with another pair of manacles on the other side of the wall. Red streaks lined the connection, its ooze frozen. Neven hurried over to the desk, rifling through the book with multiple ripped, red-spotted pages. He pushed off the edges until there was barely any parchment left, torn apart with teeth from the sharp ends.

Air caught in his lungs when he tried to expel it through his nose as he returned to the cover of the book. A crown studded with old blood splattered across the snowbound fields. His fingers drifted across the marks, his song lodged against his lips as he read the broken words of lost hope. He tapped the center gem with his pointer. "... he was reading it when..."

"What?" Maria knelt by the manacles, lifting one up, but it turned into red dust in an instant.

"This is... Yuven's cell." Hatred and frustration slammed his fangs against his lips, curling into a dangerous sneer. Maria's shadow lifted itself into a standing position. "This is where the cult kept him until the Derelict had fully assimilated with his soul. They were using Yuven and Irimount's position in the cradle to..." Each thought escaped his grasp as he put words to the hidden truth. "Wipe out an entire city in a single night using Yuven's latent ability— how much blood seeped into the land?" It was on the tip of his tongue, the answer in the ruffling pages, alive with its own soul. It was so close. Flames escaped his nose as he threw all the excess energy into the wall, causing Maria to gasp when the stones cracked and fell forward onto the supports. Winged claws followed his movements as he latched onto the bars, tearing through every weakness with his magick. It crinkled through openings as he dug deeper until it tore off the hinges, and he threw it to the outside.

"Neven, you're going to take down the whole tunnel!" Maria snapped.

He tossed another crystallized burst into the other cells with a single breath, and the candles whisked into smoke's suffering. Dust waterfalls clattered, until it fell silent as Maria raised her hands. Her own expression contorted with pain, and anger, but clarity filled the amber irides.

"This isn't over." He stomped out of the cell block, grabbing what he could of the cult's writings to shove it in his parcel. "I'm close. I can taste it."

"Neven, remember what happened last time?" Maria pleaded. "The Obscura Text drove you out of your mind." She slid in front of him and he came to a forced stop. "You destroyed the cell, you need to think. We need to focus on why we're here. If you take down this entire place, you'll never find what you're looking for. We will search this place top to bottom, I promise you, but you need to leave it in one piece." Maria shoved him with the fiery energy born of ocean seas. "Yuven is safe. This place can't hurt him anymore."

This place... Neven released another plume of smoke as grief filled his heart once more.

This place... I called my home...