The flames churning the steam, which powered the tram up the mountain, flickered.

With her back to Sebastian, Astrid clenched her teeth, holding onto the hot threads of Fire with everything she had left. It was true; her connection with the elements had returned in the time it had taken Sebastian to pull off his rather amazing water feat. Not that she would ever tell him that. But healing her own broken bones, getting the engine into the tram, starting a fire by hand in the middle of a snowy forest because Sebastian surely didn't know how to do that, and then manipulating that meager fire's threads to get them this far up the mountain had nearly depleted her reserves.

Again.

She really shouldn't be such a showoff.

One of her flames flickered out entirely.

The tram was an open-air contraption. Snowflakes whipped into her face as it climbed upwards. She pulled the edges of her hood around her head as tightly as she could, but it was difficult when she only had one free hand. Behind her, she felt Sebastian move; he'd been unbearably restless. She wondered if he felt as claustrophobic as she did. The space inside the tram was ridiculously small. When she inhaled too deeply, her spine pushed back into Sebastian's shins.

At least he was warm.

"You asked me who I am," Sebastian muttered into the howling air, "back there before this whole task started."

Astrid gripped her slipping threads a little tighter. "I asked what you are."

"The truth is I have no idea," he said. "My parents took me in. I'm not of their blood. And now I've come to learn that everything my ma had ever told stories about was all true. Elementi, Scribes and Authors, even Elves—"

He choked on the last word, his exhale wavering. It somehow made her believe him.

"If it makes you feel any better," she began, "those creatures were news to me, too."

"Really?"

"My mother only taught me what was necessary, it seems." The flames she nurtured fluttered again. "I mean, I knew of the Elvin Folk, fae, merpeople, the fire Elementi in Demue—I knew they had all existed. Once. Centuries ago, maybe. I just can't make sense of it." Her pause hung between them. "If The Purge erased all our memories of the elements and the magic of Elementi, how did my mother remember enough to preserve her Fables of Monverta?"

Sebastian's boot slipped against the frosty floor of the tram. "Fables of Monverta?" he asked. "That's the name of Queen Davina's book? The one with the bloody ink that we blew up?"

One of Fire's threads surged hotly against her thumb. "You know something more about it," she accused. "What is it?"

"Monverta," he said again, "It's a Scribal word. It means 'my blood.' It was the name of the books Authors used to imbue the elemental threads into. It was a way to share the seven elements between the realms. Scribes would detail the information with ink and Authors would call it to life with their gifted blood. My ma—" he broke off, clearing his throat before he continued—"I always thought they were just stories, but they weren't. She knew, but how? Like you said, The Purge erased memories of it all."

Astrid's hands shook. "Not well enough, it seems."

Sebastian leaned closer; she didn't even have to look at him to know his eyes would be alight with curiosity, his scholar brain whirring. "You can wield all seven elements, can't you?"

When she nodded, he released a breath. "My ma claimed only Authors had that power. Gifted to humans by Queen Branwyn of Galandreal. Is that what you are? An Author?"

"I would think it's what we are."

"But I—" Sebastian clicked his tongue as his thoughts changed direction—"The trait's passed genetically, correct? So, Queen Davina...?"

Astrid shook her head, tremors rolling down her arms. From the cold, the conversation, or her draining reserves, she couldn't be certain. "My mother can't use the elements. It was my father, but I know little about him. I've never found anything written about him except for his lineage mapped out in some genealogy I found in the library as a kid." She scowled at the struggling flames. "The father who destroyed my mother: Niklaus Verilibros."

Sebastian straightened. "Norham Verilibros?"

"Most would relate that family name back to Lady Guinevere Verilibros." Her back slumped against Sebastian's knees, her spine aching in exhaustion. "I should have known you would come up with someone more obscure. Who is Norham?"

"My tutor back in Eilibir," he answered. "And your father now...?"

She knew what he insinuated and disregarded it just as quickly. "He's gone. Destroyed during The Purge. Even if he weren't, I doubt he'd be hiding out in a dank fishing village such as Eilibir."

The tram rocked as Sebastian leaned against it, deep in thought. Astrid had no such luxury. Not now. She felt her vision pop with small black dots as the flames sputtered. If the fire stopped, the tram would stop, and they were on such an incline that Astrid imagined the tram careening backwards on the tracks. It wasn't an adventure she particularly wished to experience.

"How opposed are you to trying out Fire's threads?"

"How opposed are you to staying alive?" he countered. "Because I would prefer to make it back down this mountain without suffering third degree burns."

It was hard to keep her tone neutral as another elemental thread burned away from her fingers. "Curse the Skies, Seabass! You're an Author, a descendent of Lady Guinivere like myself, it seems, so you better just accept it before—!"

Sebastian yelped when the flames extinguished completely, dousing them into the darkness of the night. Astrid sucked down a breath. For a hopeful second, the tram simply stuttered to a stop. It paused on its tracks, the wind jostling it side-to-side as it fell still. An eerie silence settled around them until Astrid gasped against the pounding in her head and fell against Sebastian's chest. Her hooded head banged into his shoulder with an awkward thump.

His hands caught her. "You really shouldn't move right now. The momentum could—" he must have caught sight of her pained expression. Either that, or her breaths were actually rattling around inside of her and he could hear them. He gripped her elbows, right where her cuff normally sat.

"It's gone again, isn't it?" he asked. "You're drained."

"In my defense—" Her head swam—"I tried to tell you."

The tram rocked backwards.

Sebastian swore, bracing them both against the cabin floor. "The fire! We need to get it back!"

"You can't!" Words were difficult to form. She swallowed the dizziness. "Not even Authors can make something from nothing!"

Astrid knew it was coming, had known it from the moment her hold on the elements had started to slip, but it still didn't prevent her scream as the tram lurched once more and then careened down the mountain. The speed of it drowned out all noise. All she could feel was Sebastian's arm around her waist, the feel of her prayer as it strangled her throat, dislodged to her lips, and then exploded.

"Voíxili!"

"No!"

Sound rushed back as Sebastian tackled her. His weight fell heavily atop her spine as he pinned her, his eyes half-wide above her. Astrid craned her neck, heart slamming against her chest, but they weren't moving. Even the air seemed to have halted around them. It lay thick and somehow humid. She felt like she couldn't breathe.

She pushed at him, but he held her firm. He was stronger than he looked. That, or this blasted mountain had sucked all her strength.

Sebastian shook her. "What have you done?"

Astrid blinked up at him, brain buzzing. "You—You said you didn't know what it meant."

Sebastian's jaw clenched before his head wrenched to the right.

A small noise echoed in the silence, like a stone bouncing against metal. Something ricocheted off the metal side of the tram. Astrid pushed at Sebastian's shoulders again. This time he relented. She sat up and followed his horrified gaze. It had been a rock that had fallen. A series of stones that fell from above, bounced around them, and clattered down the jagged cliffs of the mountain.

Well, that couldn't be good.

Her stare met Sebastian's wide-eyed one, because of course he had already put it together. A low rumble reverberated beneath them. The earth shook. It felt angry. Voíxili...But she had used the word before, and nothing had ever happened like this.

The air cracked.

Sebastian gaped. "You started an avalanche."

She couldn't argue with him this time.

The mountain opened its maw and roared.

It barreled into them, throwing the tram from its tracks. Sebastian's fingers dug into the back of her snowsuit, his hold tethering them together. The tram spun, tossing them up, down, left, right, until direction lost its meaning. Sebastian's hand disappeared from her. She thought she heard him shout. A word that was unintelligible amidst the rolling of the tram, the suffocation of the icy snow that dragged her under like a tidal wave, and her connection to the elements couldn't save them. Because power without control was chaos. And this was a chaos she very well might not survive, and she was absolutely useless—

Her back smacked into the metal frame of the tram. The pain snapped her back to herself. She thrust out a blind hand, trying to claw onto anything, but there was nothing—

An unknown force threw her from the tram.

Snow rushed around her, filling her mouth as it opened itself to scream. It turned into a splutter as her head finally broke free from the rush of the avalanche. She sucked down a breath, struggling to stay afloat when an invisible hand yanked her from it. Threads she knew lifted her. They wove around her, the breezy threads of Wind, but the threads were not from her. She had not even thought of calling to them.

Instead, she cried out for Sebastian, but his Wind carried it away.

O O O

Someone spat in her ear.

Astrid tried to whack the culprit, but she found her arm wouldn't work.

It tingled uselessly, pinned between her stomach and the slippery, shockingly cold substance under her.

With a strangled gasp, Astrid jolted into consciousness and immediately fell backwards. Her numb limbs refused to hold her up. The back of her skull smacked into thick ice; it hadn't been some creature drooling in her ear but a frozen pond that had been melting under her warmer body temperature.

Infinite Pond.

Somehow she'd made it to the watchtower. That wind—

"Sebastian."

His name was nothing more than a croak that she half-choked on. You ridiculously idiotic, ignorant fisherboy! She was going to scary murder him if he hadn't already been killed by the avalanche and his own selfless stupidity.

Astrid forced her breaths to slow, drawing in air to expand her lungs, and wiggled her fingers and toes, testing for any broken bones. She turned her neck to the side to inspect her hands. One of her gloves was missing, lost somewhere under the torrent of snow that had crushed down on them; the other was nearly ripped to shreds. The tips of her fingers held a bluish tint and were starting to sting. It explained why her limbs refused to cooperate, at least. She would have to get off this slab of ice before she completely went into hypothermic shock.

Above her, stars twinkled with a joyfulness that Astrid could only scowl at. They winked at her now that she had breached the mountain's cloud coverage. She clenched her teeth and forced herself into a seated position. Her spine cracked. With a pained huff, she flopped over her knees, stuffing her hands between them. Well, at least she was now vertical. Trying to keep her teeth from chattering, Astrid looked around.

The infamous Watchtower of Muir stretched upwards in front of her. Its turrets had been smashed, now jagged and cracked, and the entire base of the abandoned fort leaned to the right. It looked like, if she so much as touched it, the whole thing would collapse into dust. And underneath the tower lay the frozen, glittering expanse of Infinite Pond. It was where Astrid currently sat, the thickness of the ice easily holding her weight. Rumors said the ice that accumulated here was sheer due to the minerals in the water that alchemists had used to create the reflective drumsticks of the Iced Guards. One was meant to be able to look straight through the feet of ice and into the deep waters below.

Astrid looked down at it.

A bloated, white face stared back at her.

She screamed.

Adrenaline shot into her cold muscles and sent her scrambling on her hands and knees. The studs on her boots clicked against the ice as she threw herself off the pond and onto the snowbank. Her heart beat so rapidly that it clogged her throat. She stared at the lake, half-expecting some grotesque pond monster to claw its way up to her.

"Calm down, you twit," she hissed at herself. "You're going to have to carry one. You may as well get used to looking at the dead."

Hopefully, all the bodies weren't that ugly.

Glimpses of elemental threads swirled around her, stretching in response to her fear. Water's threads were most visible, rippling from beneath the ice. Astrid sighed, relieved that she'd been unconscious long enough for the elements to return to her. Her connection to them awoke within her gut, seeking a way out.

"Slow and steady," she told herself. "Control leads to power."

Her breaths puffed white as she knelt by the pond's edge and held out her shivering fingers. She found the wispy, translucent threads of Spirit first, hoping to find a hint of Sebastian. She owed him that much, at least. But she only found a few threads burrowed under the snow, dens of arctic foxes or mice, and a single, stronger thread from the pond itself. Probably some type of fish cohabitating with the dead down there.

Where was Sebastian when she could have used him? It would be nice to know if there were any breeds of fish down there with jaws that preferred human flesh.

Astrid shook off Spirit's threads. They drifted from her fingertips and back to their owners, disappearing into the silent night. Instead, she turned her attention to the pond, sitting back on her heels. The ice wasn't as thick at the edges, but it was still frozen solid, tiny paws of mountain animals indenting the mounds of snow around it. She would have to break the ice to get to the bodies trapped beneath it and finish this blasted task. Her mother's directions for this part rang in her ears: Water could be used here and no other element.

Too bad. It would have been so gratifying to use Earth's threads to topple the rest of the watchtower onto the glacial pond and hear it smash into smithereens.

She placed her hands atop the ice, biting back the shock of the chill. "Slow," she murmured. Her fingers examined the ice, feeling out the grains of the ice, how they held together. "Steady."

A vision of Matthias came to her mind, the stiff set to his shoulders, his slow expressions as if he weighed every twitch of his muscles with the same importance he wielded a sword. By the Scribes, her captain really could be quite annoying, but at least it was a useful annoyance now.

Slow. Steady. Control leads to power.

With a tight grin, she grabbed onto the correct threads and pulled.

She wrenched her hands apart and a resounding crack echoed from the depths of the pond and against the watchtower.

A fissure snaked out from where Astrid knelt, popping and clawing its way across the center of the pond and to the opposite side. The slab of ice groaned as it tore apart. Astrid took a step back as frigid water seeped over her boots. For a short moment, she stared at the serrated crack, catching her breath. She had hoped for the break to be a bit smoother, but it would do.

Her grin widened. She swiped a bead of sweat from her brow before taking a step closer to observe her handiwork.

"Let's finish this."

The ice held firm on either side of the opening as she stepped back onto the pond. It rocked beneath her weight, but her core kept her balanced, just like Matthias had taught her years ago. Bracing herself, she approached the edge of the chasm and peered down into it.

There had to be close to a meter of sheer ice before the water lapped serenely against its confinements. She walked along the crevice, waiting for something fleshy and disgusting to float past, knowing the movement of the freed water would eventually set something loose. At the pond's center where the water would travel the deepest, Astrid paused, her sight catching on movement beneath her feet, the reflective ice showing its direction as the current carried it.

She dropped to her knees and laid herself flat against the ice, allowing her neck to bend over the edge and dangle into the fissure for a closer look.

A metallic helmet. Dark weeds, but no, not weeds. Hair. A limp arm.

Refusing to think, Astrid plunged her own arm through the crack and into the pond. Her breath caught, freezing in her chest. The water was so cold that her skin instantly numbed, but she was still able to close a hand around a leather strap—

Fingers wrapped around her wrist.

Before she could even shout, they dragged her headfirst into the glacial water.

The elements within her smothered as the water squeezed her, the pond her new cuff.

Darkness. Death. It surrounded her.

Her shout rose in bubbles around her head, the shock of the temperature stealing whatever air remained in her lungs. She clamped her mouth shut and twisted for the knife she knew was strapped to the waist of her suit. The pull of the water made her movements sluggish, but she found it, slicing herself on the blade as she yanked it free.

Wrinkled, sharp nails grabbed for her again.

And then a garbled voice. "The dead. Always the dead. Cursed to feed on their flesh."

What in the Hel's Abyss kind of fish could talk?

Astrid slashed out with her knife, lungs burning, screaming for the air above. The grip loosened with a hiss, and Astrid spun in the water and kicked upwards.

A flash of a long scaled tail. A woman's naked torso attached to it. Red eyes glaring from the depths, ribbons of dark hair streaming behind its head.

Fear gave her adrenaline, and she kicked out at the creature—definitely not a fish!—the icepicks on her boots connecting with its face.

Its screech was unearthly, tearing through Astrid's eardrums.

Black dots erupted across Astrid's vision, but she refused to give in to the awaiting abyss. A white mass floated from the depths, bumping into her hip. She swallowed the urge to wretch and grabbed the body by the straps of its breastplate as the creature swung back towards her.

Its nostrils flared like it had smelled something enticing. A dark substance flowed from its nose, but the creature smiled against its own blood and hissed. "You are its kin." The creature's eyes glowed brightly. "It calls to your blood."

Up, up, up, Astrid thought, using the buoyancy of the soulless body.

The creature's tail swooshed past her ear. "Only the quill will end this," it crooned. "Find it, salveretta. Free us all."

Up!

Water flooded through her nose. It drowned her. Her lungs spasmed, and her mouth opened on an instinct to cough, but there was only more water. Water everywhere. Panic dug its claws into her blood, her hold on the dead soldier slipping, falling through her weakening grasp, but no! She couldn't fail now.

Something hit her on the tailbone, hard enough that her last bout of oxygen escaped her, and she couldn't see, couldn't feel anything except the unbearable burning in her chest, and she was going to die down here in this complete and utter hellhole of horror—

Her head broke the surface. Astrid barely had time to suck down a painful breath before she was tossed into the air, her legs scraping against the jagged edges of her fissure.

For the second time that day, someone had thrown her around like a sack of potatoes.

She fell against the icy surface of the pond. The dead body she held flopped across her lap. Gasping for air, she shoved the dead off of her, rolled onto her side, and wretched.

Stinging water and bile rushed from her nose and mouth.

Hunched over, her body convulsed, expelling the terror, failure, and death from her soul until she was left dry-heaving. Her connection to the elements boiled inside of her, coming to life with a vengeance after being smothered by the water. Her own spirit's thread twirled around her head, her shoulders, like a comforting embrace, and then drifted to her fingers. With trembling hands, she grabbed onto it and tugged.

Her body temperature warmed so swiftly she felt her cheeks grow hot. Steam arose from where her hands and knees were pressed into solid ice. With a stuttering breath, she forced herself up. She swiped at her eyes, pushing her damp hair out of her face.

Finish it!

Though her thighs trembled, they held her weight when she stood and approached the fallen soldier. His helmet was gone, either during the final battle of the Purge or lost in the frozen pond, Astrid couldn't tell, but she supposed in the end, it didn't necessarily matter. He was dead, but shockingly well-preserved by the below-freezing temperature of the water. His eyes were closed beneath thick, dark eyebrows. It looked as if his nose had been broken at one point, bulbous and crooked in the center of his face. Seven of his fingers were missing, nothing but shards of bone jutting out from the nubs.

That creature truly had been feeding off the dead.

Vomit threatened to crawl up her throat again.

Astrid knelt beside the man, staying clear of the icy crevice, and reached for the soldier's lifeless arm to drag him back to the bank. It's just an arm, she repeated in her head. Just an arm. Like your own. 

She paused. 

There was something inked into the skin of the body's wrist, directly over where his largest vein would have been.

She flipped his hand over to observe it.

A quill.

The lines were blurred and disfigured from the years spent underwater, but there it was: a tattoo of a quill not even an inch long, filled entirely in with black ink.

What was it that demonic mer-creature had said: Only the quill will end this?

It couldn't be a coincidence.

Dread itched its way down her spine.

Teeth chattering, Astrid dropped the soldier's wrist only to hoist his opposite arm over her shoulder. Now, how to get back down? Her connection to the elements still roiled in her stomach, not as strong as normal, but good enough for the terrible plan she had in mind, she hoped.

"Come on," she told the body, trying to hold back her shivers, "Let's get off this bloody peak." 

- - -

This chapter always gives me the shivers! 

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