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Prologue

Under the Polar Lights

*

Mushroom clouds of fresh snow cascaded behind his feet, particles of dark water thrown into the sky and freezing to shards of ice before landing on the cold, white blanket. He ran on all fours now, crinkle-crankling his way forward, never looking back, never looking up. His nostrils breathed vapour, his tongue tasted cold from blood. Maybe, just maybe, it had been a mistake?

Looking forth over the frozen lake's horizon, they were still distant - the firs garbed in their thick snow-coats, glowing blue in the reflection of the brighter Moon. And the frozen sky sang the hymn of the Polar Lights, the creaking, slowly rolling green waves shielding a star-pocked black endlessness.

He felt that calm again - when he fully, truly became his body. How his breathing relaxed to give a regular feed to the pulsing heart, how the tendons rhythmically stretched out and retracted, how the veins expanded, how he was one with his body and reacted with it, all the thoughts, worries and estimates disappearing behind the need of immediate survival. Knowing every breath to be his last, he lived for the moment, sliding down a dune of powder-like white which promptly blew up behind him, burying him under the white. Turning around, he started to run west, alongside the dune, while the hunters - too fast, too inflexible for their own good - flew south before making a wide turn, finally allowing him to put some space between them and himself. On the hair, he breathed out while running - the first thought he'd allowed himself since the chase had begun.

Others might find his lack of desperation, or despair, perplexing. After all, wasn't he one hundred and fifty leagues away from his homeland, running away over a snow-covered ice lake in the middle of a cold winter's night? Hadn't he just seen his best friend, his closest comrade, being struck down and scattered in patterns red over the fields of white? Yet, the predominant feeling inside him was an impassionate confidence, a faith in the strength, stamina and sheer survival will of his body.

An observer witnessing the chase would have seen two winged shadows hounding a rabbit. A rabbit garbed in a white uniform-like jacket, a pair of white gloves and a white scarf tightly wrapped round the neck. Appearances did deceive, and this particular creature - the one chased by the two mirages - had spent years refining his skills of appearing like a regular lagomorph. Of course, he wasn't really a rabbit - for rabbits could not speak, adorn themselves by clothes or handle tools and weapons.

Normally he walked upright, like most individuals of his race. When he did so, he stood nearly two feet tall - excluding his ears - and that was considered to be on the tall side of the spectrum amongst his peers. While rabbits had beautifully arched spines, his Race had straight and sturdy spines which nevertheless were flexible. Instead of front legs, he had arms ending with hands displaying five slender digits - four regular fingers and a thumb. They were not large hands, but they were much useful for him. The arms were of the same length, however, as rabbits' front legs, and could easily be used for running. His skull was somewhat less elongated and with a larger lobe than that of a rabbit, and his eyes were placed looking forward rather than mounted on the sides of the head. These differences, however, were not markedly noticeable, at least not enough for untrained eyes to not judge that what they saw running on the frozen was indeed a light-brown rabbit with silver markings over his brows, dressed in a white jacket.

So, what was it that he was?

His kind was known as Leporians. For centuries, they had been known under that moniker throughout the Northlands. Like rabbits, they formed closely-knit communities and nourished themselves on the green growing from nature. Unlike their four-legged cousins, however, they were farmers, growing various species of wheat and vegetables. Planning ahead, they salvaged for the harsh winters, though sometimes even that wasn't enough. Rats, wet seasons, gruesome snaps of cold and parasites could cause famines. Knowing this, most of their religion and culture had been designed around the brief harvest season, and their entire society - developed under countless generations - was centred around the notion that every Leporian was responsible to see to it that everybody went to their beds with content bellies.

By rituals and sacrifices, they tried to acquire the mercy of a higher power. By laws, they tried to protect their communities and individual rights. By collective effort, they struggled to live and bring up their young in a world which could feed them. They had sung hymns to agriculture, created art to celebrate rural, pastoral work and written guide-books on how to successfully cultivate crops. And they were proud that they had adapted so well to the unforgiving northern climate. In many ways, Non-leporians would find them familiar, for really - they were a nation of farmers, desiring nothing more than a good life and a space in the world to live and thrive. Just like farmers from other Races had done since times past.

He did not reflect on all of this, for he did not have the luxury of time right now. He knew however that he needed to return home, to his people, to tell what he had seen, to warn them of the danger approaching, this time for the first time from the North, from where all that had previously bothered them had been the boreal winter breaths and occasional sulphuric summer rains. Of course bothersome, they had not consisted actual threats. This time it was different - what he had seen unfold could very well spell the end of his entire Race. He should have felt crushed by this responsibility. After all, he was alone in the Wilderness, a hundred leagues of icy lakes, frozen moors, stilled streams and forests sleeping under thick sheets of snow between him and his homeland, and he was the only Leporian alive who knew of the impeding darkness. For him, however, all that was just objective facts. He even found it a bit strange that he preferred situations with few possible solutions - for when one had eliminated the unfeasible and the unrealistic, the reachable roads would manifest itself beyond the haze, and one just had to follow them to their conclusion.

For this particular Leporian, running for his life through the nightly winter wonderland, was not an ordinary Leporian.

He was a warrior, tasked with defending his homeland and his people, bucks, does and little-ones. For weeks and sometimes months in row, he had reconnoitred the northern wastelands, and had years of training and experience in self-defence, combat and ambush techniques, survival skills and camouflage behind him. His designation was 'Veteran Rim Scout', given as a badge of honour to those bucks (and very rarely does) who had ventured over the Rim fifty times. In a dozen or so encounters, he and his comrades had emerged victorious - sometimes against pretty nasty odds. He had endured wounds, especially during his early days. He had suffered fatigue several times. Once, he had even been taken captive. He had seen and gone through much, and never had he complained - for it was not in his nature, and for he knew his sacrifices were made so his family, his children and their mother, could sleep safely at night.

A part of him couldn't help but feel a bit guilty, for there was elation in the blood which he tasted. Never before had he, or maybe any other Leporian since Rusk himself, stood before a threat of this magnitude. And never before had he found himself in such a mortal peril, hounded over a frozen lake, several days' journey from his comrades, maybe already surrounded by the Enemy. A certain form of twisted happiness rushed through his veins, that he would live to experience this - to see the limits of his own body!

He continued to run, snow-dust swirling behind his feet as he focused all his energies. Just a few jumps away from the lakeshore...

*

Rest.

He had curled himself up on a pine branch, resting his back against the cold, black trunk. Legs crossed to keep the head, he melted some snow in his palms and sucked up the water. He had already eaten twigs with green spikes, bark and even some edible lichen, white patch-works growing on the coarse tree-surfaces. What more could he do? Oliver had carried their supplies, and the rapid unfolding of Oliver's death, coupled with the need to run away as quick as possible had left the crust biscuits in the hands of the Enemy. A loss most regrettable, he scoffed for himself, and then feeling a little sadness and emptiness inside. Oliver had been a dear friend and comrade one could rely on. Shame he had died so far away from their homeland...

A trickle of moonlight sought its way through the patch-work above, then and then shining over him depending on how the branches moved in the wind. He sat about sixty feet above the ground, but the thick cover of snow and the camouflage he had covered himself in (pine twigs and snow over his jacket sleeves mostly) would keep him covered, as well as serve to hide his scent. Luckily, the mirages did not seem to patrol the upper tree-tops, instead flying low between the trunks, patrolling the ground underneath him. They had returned three times, dark shadows stalking the landscape, visible only by the light of the moons and the stars reflecting over their smooth, metalloid hides. He knew this night would be long, but hopefully the Enemy would turn away from stalking him towards other pursuits - after all, wasn't he but a little Leporian who accidentally had stumbled into a gathering of some of the most detestable nations of northern Ayrien? He could not be of such importance?

Breathing out cold air, he opened his jacket and took out his tiny notebook with the red cover, worn and stained from years of usage. He opened the hasp, and looked on the first page - left empty apart from the compressed green petals of a flower, a memory of summer - and of his dearly loved daughter. Sniffing on the page, the still sweet smell brought him away from the frostbitten wilderness, back to last summer's and autumn's adventures in the Backwoods.

Though he had two sons as well, he tended to think more about her as his son, for while the lads were alert and broad-shouldered, helping their mother attend to her little garden of peas, radishes and carrots, his daughter was a child of nature - much like him, though much more so. From the moment she started to climb walls and trees, he knew that there would be a special bond between them. Though he dearly loved the mother of his children, and cohabited with her in the Valley during his permissions (a rather unusual arrangement in his culture), he had come to regard the little mop-haired hurricane as his closest accomplice and friend. Days and nights, they had spent out in the backwoods, running between tree-tops, diving into streams, camping and watching the stars twinkling on the night sky. The girl's mother had not been particularly fond of her outgoing wild streak, but his support had prevailed, and earned him a special spot in her budding heart too.

She had found that flower, rare and probably forbidden to pluck, had worn it in her hair, mixing her scent together with that of the petals. As he smelled on it, he closed his eyes, remembering how every time he had entered the colony's garden, coming home from his regular tours, she had been crouching behind the fence, then ambushing him with sudden jumps, pressing her slender, gracile arms around his neck, burying her muzzle into his neck and felled him by surprise. Looking up towards her, he had seen a smile of pure delight, radiating from a curly head crowned by green twigs and leaves. "Oh dad, how amazingly, awesomely green are you!" she had chirped happily. And he had laughed, tears of joy spurting out from his eyes as from a fountain. All the weariness, all the worries of the Wilderness (which had contained beauty too, he was the first to admit), melted away before her pure, childish joy. Oh, his wonderful, innocent, eccentric daughter!

The respites from his service had increasingly become a happy time, a time of sunshine, hide-and-seek and mentoring. His daughter was like a sponge, wanting to - demanding to - know everything he did, and the only fear which blighted the brightness of their days together was that she would aspire to become a Rim Scout like him. He did not belong to that school who believed that does could not good soldiers make. What bleached his sense of fulfilment was the knowledge of the scars that every warrior carried in their hearts - the memories of all the friends lost beyond the Rim, to be mourned by their close ones.

And he knew she must've sensed it, or maybe it was just that she liked him so much? He could not tell, but he knew that every time he left, she had protested. She had hung from the chandeliers, wrinkling her nose and made faces. She had filled his backpack with tadpoles. She had lied down on the floor like a small child, slamming her arms and legs around and let out strange noises. That had been before, the last times, she had preferred to spend the nights before his departure sitting on the rooftop of the colony, silent, looking out over the sunset with a sad expression - well knowing it broke his heart to see her like that. He had climbed up to sit next to her, placing his green army jacket that she so loved over her shoulders, trying to comfort her. Tell her he only would be away two, three, four weeks, and then he would come back. "But dad-i," she'd said, "time just stops when you're gone! You're my bestest friend in the entire world!"

The following mornings, she had stood guard at the entry of the fence as he was leaving, her eyes clear and unrelenting, her arms crossed. His little scout. And what could he do? When he had explained that he ventured beyond the Rim to defend her and her brothers, she hadn't understood, said that it was dumb that he could be hurt, and then she had wanted him to move into her room - so she could defend her dad against the baddies outside of the Valley. Her clear eyes, wise and deep beyond their age, had sparkled with anger. Of course, he had omitted to tell that he could die away there, though somewhere he knew that she understood that it was a risk. She was a bright child, and could put together two and two. He had said he had to go, for there were not many Rim scouts like him left, and he would manage.

At the end, she had accepted, hugging him with tears in her arms. "I will come back," he had said, "'I'll promise."

"Your promises true?" she had wondered.

"As true as the grass's growing!" he had joked, pinching her cheek, making a shimmer of joy reappear in her bright, blue-green eyes.

Looking up towards the large, blue moon, he had closed the book. "Lovechild, as true as the grass's growing. I will never fail you, I will prevail! I promised to return home, and I will keep my promise!"

The ghosts - in lack of a better world - still hovered around down there, almost as if they were ogling the snow. A cold realisation gripped his chest - his tracks. Of course, they ended somewhere in the vicinity of this tree, and he found that his worst enemy during this particular chase had been the clear sky. Snowfall would have erased his tracks, and given the force seeking his annihilation no clue he had left the ground. That meant the embrace of the trees weren't the safe refuge he had sought, and that it was a matter of time before the Enemy would find him...

He threw himself upward, grabbing a twig and threw himself towards the next tree. Next to him, something swooshed past, slicing through a thick branch before him so it collapsed onto the next level, packed snow falling down. Grabbing a twig and hanging from it, a quick flinch made him turn right staring at the fir's trunk, onto which a crescent-shaped blade had buried itself. It was made from a metallic substance which he did not know, for he could see his own reflection stare back at him...

Swoosh... He turned around, narrowly avoiding having his left arm sliced off by another swirling blade. Releasing the grip, he allowed himself to fall onto the branches below, made thicker by their severed brother. When he pushed them down, the force of his impact turned around - and he was thrown up again, making a somersault while avoiding three more of these nearly silent, flying swords... These dark killers of the winter night...

And so he ran between the trees, firs, pines and birches alike, branches raining down around him. The mirages joined into the hunt again, trees splintering into tiny fragments as they burst their fire on them. He was thrown around, ducked in mid-air, ran over falling branches and used his arms to swing himself around over the forest, trying to lose those hunting him once more...

*

Back at woods' edge.

Breathing, the heart still racing from adrenaline.

He had covered the wound on his left leg with snow, to slow the bleeding. For the first time since Oliver's death, he started to feel panic's ram knock on his heart's fortress. Or rather, it wasn't really panic. It was a profound sense of inevitability. Wounded in a sub-zero environment, without adequate nourishment and surrounded by hostiles? His chances of survival were slim.

Inhaling, filling his lungs with cold air, he breathed out and allowed the acceptance to finally sink in. He would die here, far away from his homeland. He had failed them all, for he had been the only one able to tell...

He had failed her, broken his promise. And that too, had always been an inevitability. If one exposed themselves to such dangers as he did, sooner or later the luck would've run out - and now it had done so in his case. Probably the case for everyone. Not that he should be blaming himself, self-blame after the fact was seldom constructive. He tried to smile, but it became a stiff grin, the cold and the pain wearing too much on him.

A thin cloud of powder-snow blew over his face, and he could see a large object descend over the frozen lake, two wings fused together without a body. Its exact shape was hard to discern - its underside lied in shadow, but the side turned towards the sky offered a distorted mirror image of it, the Blue Moon, the darker Orange Moon - a thin, mostly blackened crescent now - and the stars appearing as blurred lines over its smooth, fairing surface. The flying beast descended until it stopped, standing immovably hovering a dozen feet or so over the white surface of the lake.

Then it slowly opened its previously invisible lower jaw, a light orange like fire revealing itself. It descended down, toothless but fish-like, the interior of the being's mouth glowing - turning night into day. A sickly orange day. In the middle, he could see a tall silhouette clad in armour stand, arms behind the back, distributing its weight between two massive hoof-like boots. When the jaw touched the surface of the snow, the figure walked out into the white world of winter, its feet floundering, leaving deep tracks in the snow.

The wounded Leporian estimated that the thing - whether it was a person or some kind of daemon - was well over nine feet tall. He gave himself a figurative pat on the back, having correctly guessed that it was entirely covered in armour which seemingly consisted of shards reflecting the orange light from the monster's glowing belly. These looked sharp and menacing, like pieces of broken mirror fused together. They were especially prevalent over the massive shoulder-pads, covered by layers of razor-sharp edges shaped like blades. The lower legs also seemed to protrude outward, becoming massive until they ended in a pair of large boots. The helmet was insect-like, sporting mandibles over a skeletal mask consisting of numerous rounded blades, fused together with a crown of glowing horns growing like spires, everything silvery colourless but reflecting the surroundings. Around the neck and under the shoulder pads, a black cape folded around the chest. It trailed in the snow behind the figure. The sides of it were marked by a lining of fine white fur - ermine he'd guessed. Is it because of our furs? a thought struck him as the figure stopped before him, placing its hands - garbed in claw-like metal glows - on the sides of its hips.

And then, the thing spoke - one word uttered with a deep but hollow voice.

"You..," it said, a mixture of recognition, disgust and triumph interwoven into the lone syllable.

The wounded Leporian should've been 'fraid, but he had already found his peace and did not feel any fear for himself - though he worried for his valley. The apparition leant its head ever-slightly, looking at the tiny creature before it with what the Leporian imagined was a certain bewilderment - he must have evaded the Enemy for like three hours, despite crushing inferiority. For himself, he started to pray to the Goddess of his people.

Then the giant, armour-clad figure took a step forward, towering over the panting little creature. The last thing the wounded Leporian saw was a gargantuan, armoured hand, clutched like a paw with claw-like fingers descend down on him, turning the world black. Forgive me daughter, he thought. I won't come home at Midwinter as promised...