https://youtu.be/vyn8gAYtNu4

      "Thank you," Laora said as soon as the eminent danger was gone. It looked like it took everything in her to force those words out, but even so I was grateful.

     I offered her a brief nod and a small smile. "You're welcome."

     She tugged her cloak more tightly around her shoulders, then looked down at the ground as I tried my best to build a fire with what was left of the firewood and a piece of flint I kept tucked away in the strap of my pack. I considered asking her to do the magic fire thing again, but she didn't look up to it, and who was I force.

     It took several minutes and a lot of cursing on my part, but eventually I was able to get a small flame burning at our feet. It didn't sweep away the heat of the cavern, but it wasn't going away either.

     I had dragged both of us back the entire we came, straight into the cavern where we had initially fallen in. For some reason, Encore didn't follow us, not that I minded in the least. Even so, I was worried. The monster was guarding the exit, and there was no way we could leave the same way we entered unless we learned how to fly.

     I let out an exasperated sigh and leaned my head down into my hands.

     Laora slowly brought her hand to place where her head had struck the wall. A sharp wince crinkled her features and she quickly dropped her hand away. "Why did you do it?"

     I glanced up at her in disinterest. "Hmm?"

     "Why save me?"

     I shrugged. "Why not? I owe you that much, don't you think? You saved me from that thing once too. Besides, without you, what else I am supposed to do but wander around until I die?"

     She seemed to accept that answer with quiet resignation.

     "So, do you have any bright plans on getting out of here?" I asked monotonously.

     "I'm working on it," she growled and glared harder at the ground like it would somehow inspire a new way out. Finally, she just shook her head and moved back to lean against the aged stone walls. "We're going to have to wait until nightfall. We can use the darkness for cover and try to make a break for it...but, of course we'll have to deal with atrixes as well."

     The idea didn't seem to sit well with either of us.

     I shook my head sharply. "We can't wait. Night isn't for another couple hours yet. Aldyth doesn't have that long."

    Laora raised her eyes carefully. "The girl?"

     I nodded. "Briar said she couldn't stay in here for more than a half turn...not with the way she is." I fished the transport box out of my pocket and set it on the ground in front of my crossed legs.

     "You're right." Her eyes grew shadowed as she pulled a similar box out from one of her pockets. "We need to let them out and check up on them. We have no choice." She shot a guarded glance in the direction of the tunnel. "We can't try going out that way again, not while it's still light out."

     She twisted the lid of the box and a rain of gold rose from the box. Laora let out a surprised yelp and set it down by her feet, though I was unsure if it was from surprise or necessity. I glanced down at my own box with a frown before glancing up at her.

     "How?" I held the case out at her in question.

      She rolled her eyes and took from my palm. "Have you never carried a storage pack with you before?"

      "No," I replied softly.

      Laora held her hand out for the box and I passed it to her without a word. She muttered something about ignorant confederates under her breath and had to I sink my teeth into my bottom lip to bite back a few select comments. Now wasn't the time. The Northerner's face grew cold as she turned the lid slowly to her left then pushed it across the ground at me. A moment passed before an identical shower of gold light rained down in front of me.

     I tore my eyes away from the Northerner as Aldyth materialized on the ground before me. At first I couldn't believe it. The crazy box had actually worked. Magic was real, tangible, usable.

     But the awe quickly wore away. Aldyth was cold, so cold that for one panic stricken second, I was sure I had lost my friend forever. But then I felt it, faint but steady, a heartbeat thrumming just below her skin. It almost didn't exist, but absolutes weren't built off certainty.

     "So cold," I breathed as I leaned over her and trailed my fingers over her bare hand. I quickly unfastened the pin that held my cloak and laid the thick fabric over her. Hers was left in the tent when we fled the camp, I was unsure if she would have needed it – no that wasn't it. I didn't think back there, not at all.

      "Just hold on," I whispered as I tucked the hood down so that her neck was covered. "I'm here – Noah is too." Her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids, like she knew that she was once again in possession of her brother's cloak.

     Almost as soon as I leaned away, the cold bit at me. I instinctively moved to wrap my scarf around my neck, but was quickly reminded that it had been snatched by the storm. My eyes flickered to the tiny fire burning a few feet away. It wasn't doing much in the terms of warmth, or even light.

      There as a low moan and I looked up to find the Laora leaning over the body of a tall man. His skin was the same medium shade as hers, and was just beginning to stir. "Antone," Laora breathed and leaned over to squint at the man in the thin firelight. Even in the dark, I could see his chest shuddering as he struggled to draw breath. Blood stained strips of cloth wrapping his neck like octopus legs, restraining his breathing – yet also restraining the blood. An evil hand-off from a shallow wound.

     The female Northerner's eyes flashed up at my pitiful excuse for a fire. Her lips drew back in distaste as she swept her hand outward toward the flame. Suddenly the small sparks burst into a blaze that filled with the cavern with a warmth that could stir the dead.

     Or maybe that was what she was going for.

     A weak smile curled up the corner of her mouth briefly before she slumped face first to the ground.

     I leaped to my feet in surprise, then glanced down between the three fallen lying on the ground. With a weighted sigh, I raised a finger at Aldyth. "Wait here," then rushed over to where Laora was laying down by her ...brother, cousin, uncle?

      Her form was still as my hands came down on her shoulders and started to shake. "Ay," I growled. "You're not allowed to do this. No collapsing. I don't care if you built Alyvanter in a day with only one hand and a spoon clenched between your teeth. You can't pass out like this. I don't know what's wrong with this guy -- I barely know what's wrong with Aldyth. There's a killer snow storm outside and a skeleton in a cloak that wants to eat us – I am not doing this alone. I'll forgive you for almost executing the elf if you just get up." Somewhere around there, my lungs ran out of air and the words came out forced.

     The Northerner's eyes fluttered for a moment before cracking open a slit. "What are you doing?" She voiced in irritation.

     "I could ask you the same thing," I huffed as I helped her sit up. Her eyes glazed for a moment and I grabbed her arm before she could fall back again. "Are you alright?"

     "It was cold. I made it go away," she murmured without answering the question. She shook off my hand and leaned over the young man with concern.

     I knew basic woodland medicine – I mean who doesn't? But woodland medicine usually pertained to places that involved woods on the land, not some mystery buried under a dozen feet of snow and a flying pile of bones. I knew that it shouldn't have come as a shock, but it did. I didn't know what to do. And even if there was something I could do, I wouldn't know what it was, and if I did, it was doubtful that I could pull it off.

     I sat back on my knees and rested my palms on my thighs. My jaw moving like I was trying to speak, but there were no words for the situation. No words that could that describe the uselessness I felt in that moment. My heart batted sadly in my chest, as if trying to give me a small reminder. We were all alive. A simple song played in the back of my subconscious, but upon recognition, it blared to fill my entire head.

     I hadn't realized that I had reacted to the sound until Laora turned to me sharply and I found that I was hunched over with my hands wrapped around my temples to quell the sound that resonated within me. She looked startled -- probably in the same way that I had when she had collapsed. She reached a hand out toward me then let it drop after a second. She turned her gaze to her knees.

    "There's nothing we can do for them now," she said quietly. "We're all tired."

     I slowly released the grip on my head and moved to sit with my back against a wall. The room was slowly regaining a steady warmth, the kind that could hug one to sleep or make the illusion of companionship where no companionship existed.

     I took a breath.

     Laora moved uncertainly at first as she rose to her feet. Her stature swayed, but then she was steady and came to sit by my side with her knees tucked to her chest. She blew a puff of hair away from her face before leaning her head against her knees. "We should talk about what's going to happen once it gets dark."

      There was a moment of silence as I waited for the movement of her lips to click into words, and when they finally did I motioned for her to continue.

     "Encore is not going to simply disappear because it's dark out," she started. "But I have an idea..."

     "Go on," I said quietly.

     "As a foreigner, I take that you haven't heard the legend of our reaper?"

      I shook my head.

      "Well, they say that a long time ago..." Laora hugged her knees more tightly to her chest. "Encore...she was just like a us. She was raised away from the East Cardinal, but music was in her blood. No one knew why her family left the Cardinals."

      She scoffed. "This story has been told so many times, that I doubt anything we remember is really true – but as it goes. When her mother carried her, she was told by one of the guardians of the south that the child was cursed. And cursed she was. The mother died in childbirth and she was born blind to all sights worthy and unworthy of seeing. Her father raised her alone in a cottage on the far edge of a foreign kingdom – forsaking his place in the Cardinals and condemning his daughter to a life of solitude.

      It is said that as she grew up, her blind eyes grew darker, her smile grew colder, and the warmth fell like dead skin from her bones. She had few friends, and the only comfort given in life was the song of her flute. " Laora paused. "Around the time of her eighteenth year, her father died. Some say she killed him, others say the spirit of the East finally came to take him back to his homeland – boring people say he died of old age – but whatever the cause, he died, and it doesn't really matter how.

     All throughout the girl's life, her father spoke of his mysterious homeland, and after his departure from life, she traveled to find it. To maybe seek some comfort in the arms of her family's kinsmen.

    But the forests of the East Cardinal are a dangerous place. They hide more secrets than a thousand fake smiles. And soon the blind girl was lost – one night in the forest, she laid down to rest, knowing full well that that night would be her last. And as she stared up into the night sky, the veil of black disappeared from her vision and the first thing she saw was the first thing that all Easterners wish to see."

     "Hmm?"

     "The sacred stars of the East Cardinal – the stars that form the keys on their instruments," the Northerner explained. "She saw them, and as she laid down to death her spirit was carted off to take its place in the halls of the ancients."

     "I don't see how this is about a skeleton in a dirty cloak," I noted.

     "She was cursed, remember?" Laora chuckled. "Her spirit moved on, but her body did not. So, she was forever cursed to roam the Cardinal Nations, searching for the kinsmen of her father. And whenever she finds one who is dying, she seeks to help them like her spirit was helped, and take them to the stars where the souls of men can be free."

     Laora scowled. "It is the most bothersome nuisance of our entire existence – she snatches up our dying before they even have a chance to die. Anyone caught in Sivena, she deems them as good as dead. Encore doesn't like giving us chances to survive...she's welcome when people are truly dead, but otherwise she is probably the worst bane of our existence. "

     "I can tell." I gave her a swift nod. "So, then what's your idea?"

     "I've never actually seen it done," she admitted and craned her neck up to look at the ceiling. "But some say that in the heart of Sivena, when the first darkness breaks, there is a moment of calm where the sky clears, and the stars shine like crystals. The reaper pauses to look, and the dying get a second chance."

     I snorted loudly. "You believe this?"

     Laora shoved my shoulder in irritation. "Do I have much of a choice?"

     "Fine, we'll do this your way."

     "Like you even have a way."

A/N

Ahhh long time no update. I think I have half of the next update written but since my main attention is on Project iDragon updates on this will be slower -- just hopefully not two months. We all need our breaks and I think i'm back.

That video at the top is what I consider Encore's lament. 

So is this insane plan gonna work? Or they gonna get eaten by atrixes?