NEVEN

Sixteen.

His true steps into adulthood began at twenty and five — when his full feathers bloomed into gold-spun ridges. Training started at the crack of the blizzard against the barrier, where the Knight Valiant of Irimount gathered the Ice Squires to see to the senior Sentinels, from the well-being of their gryphlings, to running errands or caring for their weapons. It was a monotone, consistent schedule, and Father couldn't blame him for his taste of excitement. Every morning, he got up and headed straight to the garrison fields. Fire runes embedded into marble slabs to create a pond of water in the middle of the square. He tuned his ice magick to a razor sharp point, his confidence on the water's surface steady, but ready to change as the flow of a river. It's either that, or I fall in and get soaked... in the cold.

Him and several other Ice Squires stood on the edge as the Knight-Valiant, Utuvar, hopped onto the crystal surface of the pool. Ice stretched from his scaled boots, where small claws built on the toes gripped onto the surface with a runic pulse. He held a glaive next to his side. Neven shifted in his spot among the other squires, feeling the pressure in his muscles — but the results would be worth it with further training, listening, and shadowing of older Sentinels.

"In a few tolls, we will be sending the best of you to the Volaris Tournament." Utuvar spun his glaive. "Tradition dictates this to scout prospective Blizzard Sentinels, even his Winged Grace shall attend. Some of you might be lucky enough to find yourselves in the employ of the royal house."

But I want to stay here.

"As it is—" Neven shook his attention back onto the Knight Valiant. "Four Turns you thought you had what it takes, from page to squire. So, let's see if you've improved." He pointed his glaive at them, with some of the Ice Squires puffing out their chests — a thirst to prove themselves, something he shared and sunk his teeth into every time. "Shall we start with the best of the lot? Neven Lotayrin."

I hold the expectations. Neven stepped onto the fire-spun edge and pressed his own clawed boot against the water. One wrong step, and I'll be spending my time in the hot dome alone. None of the runes extended deeper than the water's edge. It kept off the ice for training purposes, but experience was a harsh teacher. Neven caught an ice glaive when an observing Sentinel passed it to him. One last look at his fellow squires, one gave him a small thumbs-up.

"Let's see if Atoran's legendary skill passed into this generation," Utuvar said with a devious smile. "And doesn't turn out to be a waddly snow duckling."

Neven slid onto the water and skated to his teacher, and Utuvar planted his feet. Patches of ice fluttered out to create an uneven battlefield. Waves fluttered from the explosion of glyphs, but Neven went with the momentum instead of fighting it like he first had done. His glaive slammed into Utuvar's, but he gripped the handle hard, and shoved him across. No matter what angle Neven tried to come at, Utuvar never broke his icesteel defense. He scowled when Utuvar slid on his heel, almost forcing his grip off the glaive in his hands when he skidded to the edge, but wasn't out of the ring yet. He used a pulse of water, shoving his foot on the surface to stop his stumble.

"Very nice use of your environment, Lotayrin," Utuvar said with a spin of the glaive. "You aren't completely hopeless."

Neven dodged, slicing the ice at Utuvar's feet when he launched an aggressive attack. Glyphs of ice spread around him, but Neven knocked his glaive into the centers to interrupt the glittering magick, twisting them along his blade to turn them into leashes of water. Utuvar redirected each bubbly whip, then spun to slam his glaive downwards. Another mark when he jumped, he shoved his handle into the runes, refusing to be pushed out of the center of water.

Keep my feet angled, and don't give the enemy a big target. Neven slid to the side to echo Utuvar's movements. We both have range.

Neven lunged and swept for his legs, but Utuvar brought his boot up. Water followed the motion to form a shield. His glaive stuck inside the sharp glyph, trapping it in ice. Neven grunted when Utuvar backhanded him, and he tasted rust behind his teeth, and he fell on his rear. Ice caught him before he fell into the water.

"If this was a real fight, you'd be dead." Utuvar sighed. "Thinking five steps ahead only works if you don't trip over yourself." Neven scrambled when Utuvar whacked his shins with the shaft of his glaive. "Get up. I need to test the others."

He rubbed his back and shuffled to the others.

"Are you alright, Neven?" Tyvan questioned as another boy rushed out to the water with more gusto. "You've been distracted."

"It's nothing." Neven passed his glaive along the ranks. "I'm just not looking forward to going to Volaris."

"Why?"

Neven set his hands against his practice gambison. "I've heard... rumours."

Tyvan scoffed and cuffed him over the head. "You are such a mother hen. What rumours have you heard now?" He rolled his grey eyes when Utuvar made short work of the squire.

No... not what I heard specifically... A memory, fuzzed at the edge of his tongue. He rarely reflected on his childhood, but it left a sense of dread. "I've heard Blizzard Sentinels in Volaris often..." He lowered his head and whispered, "Icedunk people."

Greatest shame. Greatest torment — left to die in the blizzard, a stain on the family name for whoever found themselves unfortunate enough to be turned into a spectacle.

Tyvan frowned. "... and?"

"That, and weird disappearances," Neven added. "It doesn't bother you?" He folded his arms, then shook his head. "You know what? It's nothing."

"Well." Tyvan puffed out his chest. "I'm taking Kya and Yatava out snow gliding."

Neven raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"It's their idea," Tyvan pointed out. "I tried to tell them no, but they won't hear a word. They want to find the Ice Tombs... so, I acquiesced. I'm sure after they'll have their fill of adventure and leave the boys to it."

Neven frowned. "That's a little irresponsible of you to agree to take them outside the walls, they'd be safer within Irimount," he pointed out as one squire fell one after the other to the power of the Knight Valiant. "Something might happen to them, Ty. You don't want to get in trouble for taking the girls out where they shouldn't be going."

"That's what I tried to say," Tyvan argued. "I told them it was too dangerous." He crept closer. "So, if you come along, it'd be the four of us. We're well-trained enough."

"Right..." Neven grinned when Utuvar called him up, then shoved Tyvan forward. "Go on then, Ser." He waited with a growing sense of smugness when Tyvan got his hindquarters handed back to him on an ice platter and his friend shuffled over to him with a huff.

Never gets old.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was trying to kill us," Tyvan grunted when Utuvar dismissed them. "Just come, Neven, you're the one who makes these plans half the time."

"Yeah, but I make them with the other Ice Squires." Neven trailed after Tyvan through the garrison of Irimount. In the middle of the collection of alabaster carved buildings, a statue of an Ice Knight sat. His Ice Glaive pointed down into the focal center of the marble glyph created to the path of desires to pierce the ground below. On the plaque, the name of the Snow Prince's right-hand knight.

Atoran Lotayrin of the Ice Blade.

Neven lifted his head to his face, unable to see past the wyvern-crested helmet. Tyvan tugged on his arm.

"Blizzard to Neven? Are you even listening to me?"

"Sorry." Neven continued through the alleyway. Catwalks of stone led into the higher buildings and upwards into the multiple layers of the mountain city. Irimount glowed in a frosty rainbow for the upcoming festival. Blues. Reds. Greens, each danced with life. Young children went along the streets carrying bundles of snowrose seeds to push into little mailboxes and sang their songs. In the center of the middle ring of Irimount, the crystal cathedrals steps set out a carpet of snow-crusted ribbons. Evyriaz spread out his wings to shield the arched entrance — he who blessed the Snow Prince of old to bring power to a frozen land.

Tyvan nudged him to the bakery, where Kya and Yatava stood at the window to investigate the sweets on the other side. Nearby, agriculture tunnels led underneath Irimount to the farms shielded by complicated fiery circuitry to breathe some sustenance. Magick cultivated the native flora of Naveera, but the cold frosted the soil any higher than the tunnels — sometimes even then.

"Neven! Ty!" Kya waved them down, but Neven chose to peer over her shoulder at the interesting specks of snow. "How did the test go?"

"Like all the other ones," Tyvan said, also keeping his gaze locked somewhere else but the two girls. "Did you check to see if those snowgliders are still there?"

"They are still there," Yatava said with a devilish grin, and Neven trained his attention back on them at the continued response to the conversation. He let Tyvan take the lead to the huge gates bleeding to the bridge which carved itself over the small ravine and to the frozen wastes. Neven waited for them to draw up their protective scarves and hoods before doing the same. On the pillars of the gatehouse stood two wyverns, staring out into the hazy expanse.

Neven flinched when Yatava tugged the snowgliders out from behind the crevice, taking them around the gatehouse to avoid the Sentinels on guard. This is a terrible idea... He took the snowglider from Kya when she held it to him in expectation, wrapping the ropes around his wrist to pull them out onto the lower rungs of the bridge. Over the bridge, he set the snowglider flat on the snow, and hopped onto it to unfurl the sails. Kya and Yatava climbed onto Tyvan's snowglider, so Neven took point to check that the road ahead was safe.

His magick swirled to push him into a speedy route. Neven glanced back at their small shapes with a grin, and tapped his compass. It pointed back to the grand spire, still shining in the blanket of flurries, but it twitched with the blizzard's forceful might. He kept his hand on the glass to protect it, drawing his magick outwards. Snow whipped out from underneath the curve of the glider to move them over the dunes. Tyvan caught up, with both girls clinging onto him. He looked particularly disgruntled, but it was his idea to bring them.

Neven smiled. "Hey, Ty! Watch this!" He sped up the snowy ridge. Higher and higher, until the glider left the ground. Any faster, and the sensation of flight tickled his back with empty wings. He steadied himself and held his arms out to try and catch the fleeting moment. Mist left between his lips, a low song bellowing through the blizzard. He tipped forward to follow the motion of the dune to land on the other side of the drift, through the haze of mist.

Until his glider cracked into something down the slope.

He almost fell out, and he bit down on a gasp as he fought to twist the sail and correct his mistake. He dodged a half-covered piece of a ruined tower, then slowed to a stop on a cracked marble street.

"Guys?" Neven frowned, but relaxed when Tyvan came over the ridge at a much slower pace.

Frost fell off the walls as Tyvan slid into the buried town.

"You two should stay on the snowglider," Neven said when Tyvan jumped off, and Kya and Yatava made to follow him. "Just in case..." He pushed his finger into his chin, and silence echoed around him. What are these ruins? I know there's a bunch of ruins to the east of Irimount, but this can't be it...

The wind stopped howling.

Neven rested a hand on his glaive.

"But what if the Tomb is hidden here?" Yatava called from the snowglider.

Tyvan scoffed. "Everyone knows those are underground."

"And there might be an underground entrance," Yatava pushed.

Tyvan folded his arms with a shake of his head, and his downy feathers followed in the wind. "If there is, you're going to let me and Neven check it out. You're going to watch the snowgliders to make sure they don't... glide off."

Snow whispered into twirls at their feet. Darkness betrayed nothing of the time they spent outside the safety of the walls of Irimount. He checked every crevice for an icebeast slavering for unwitting Avaerilians. No clue of time, he stopped Tyvan from heading deeper into the ruins when Yatava and Kya climbed off the gliders. "No."

"What?"

"We should go back," Neven hissed.

"Why?"

"I'm tired." Neven rubbed his chilled arms. "And we need to get those two home, and it's getting late."

"We just got here," Yatava grumbled, the snowgliders abandoned at the bottom of the ridge.

Neven stood in the broken town and listened to the dissonant chord lighting his heart on fire. Tyvan took out his compass, and it spun over and over.

An unearthly howl broke the roar of the blizzard.

"What was that?" Kya asked.

It sang a horrid tune.

"The wind?" Yatava replied.

Neven murmured, "Go get the snowgliders. We need to get out of here—"

A pair beady eyes pulled itself with a squelch out of the snow dune of the tower, too close to Yatava and Kya. Its mangled tongue slipped out its frostbitten jaw. It clawed at its trappings on its formless limbs. A hungry moan drove teeth into his spine. Icicles twisted into crimson sludge on its back. It cracked and screeched with ice. Frost grew over its yellow teeth as it mashed and crunched. Neven lunged forward when it leaped. Glaive at the ready, he exploded an icy shield along the shaft. He gasped when his back hit a piece of rubble, and he shook out his head as it exploded to cover the crimson creature in snow.

"Neven!" Tyvan gasped from where his glyph pushed them all out of the way of the beast.

Neven edged back when the thing focused on him with a growling hiss. Pain cracked along his ribs as he tried to breathe through the tide of snow. Around the debris, he tried to find his footing as Tyvan disappeared with the two girls around the corner. Trapped against a fallen statue of a wyvern buried by another dune, the icicles extended and grew frosty claws. He kept his glaive on his lap as it came closer, frozen to its black bones as it fought equally as hard to feast on him.

It flopped, detaching its limbs, only to grow them back frozen.

No.

It prickled and gazed into the abyss.

Until the chord screamed with a tearing song underneath his blood with piercing sapphire eyes.

It pulsed with leashes of sapphire-tinted gold as teeth gnashed for his being — his soul. He grasped for a better grip on his glaive, and golden claws matched his fingers when it leaped with a burst of powerful snow. Bones cracked, and the wyvern wings came to life in a plume of rosy gold. Neven screamed with the Derelict when the wind tore through unseen wings and sent him through the blanket of snow, tumbling down the next ridge. He landed face-first in the snow with a grunt, caked in the golden snow when he tried to tear himself with the painful prickle underneath his skin. He itched at it with shimmered magic layering over his fingers, trying to claw the pain out from his blood, and he whipped around.

Nothing.

Endless nothing.

He whipped around for something tangible, the mountains.

Nothing.

He heard it howling.

He sank to his knees when the golden flutter burst off his skin.

"Nev!"

He winced when the shadow of a snowglider skidded for him, driven by Kya. He shoved himself to his feet to leap onto it, ignoring the pulse of pain over his back to take the ropes from her, causing her to frown, and he stared when Tyvan's snowglider came over the other ridge to catch them. Just need to get her home. Just need to make sure we all get home.

Neven threw an emergency rope to Tyvan when he passed, keeping their snowgliders together to follow the pointing of the compass. Underneath the bridge and through the secret entrance, he slumped against the wall.

"What was that?" Tyvan asked.

"A Derelict."

"Not that," Yatava demanded. "You."

"Huh?"

"You sent that Derelict flying," Kya whispered. "I mean, the snow might've been playing tricks on us—"

"What?" he mumbled.

Tyvan frowned. "You... Well something lunged out from you when I came to help you. I got thrown back right to the snowgliders." Tyvan rubbed his own back with a scowl.

Neven shook out his swimming head. He got back up. "Ty, just get these two home. I'm going back to the barracks."

"Are you hurt?" Kya asked.

He ignored her to stumble home, to find solace from the crimson, formless shape that sang a ruined song.