Sons of winter chapter 6: The Veiled Path
#6 of Sons of Winter(Novel)
Hello there, and welcome back to this novel! "Sons of Winter" is a bit of an experiment on my part. It is what I call a "High creative-freedom novel commission" in which the commissioner allows me a great deal of liberty to detail the plot, as well as employ any number of OCs I deem necessary to help guide the protagonist down his fated path. So, the reason why I liked to call this a personal work is because it definitely feels like one. However, after talking with my beloved patron, he allowed me to credit him in order to give proper recognition to his OC, as well as provide an example into how these sort of novel commissions look like ^^
So, without further ado, let's get readin'!
Sons of Winter chapter 6: The Veiled Path (high creative-freedom novel commission written for Teufel: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/dragonteufel/ )
Chapter description: A sudden enemy attack forces Aleks to make a difficult choice.
Aleks belongs to Teufel: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/dragonteufel/
The other characters featured in this novel are my creation
In his groggy state, Aleks mistook the muffled screams and roars for an advanced stage in the celebrations. It was only after a fellow Snowfang, Ilkrud Magthrul, shattered his locked door into fine sawdust with his magic that Aleks rolled out of the bed and onto his feet, sword at the ready.
"They're needing you outside," the coyote half said, half squeaked. "The turncoats sneaked into the gorge and attack us from three sides."
"There is...there is a battle happening right here?" Aleks attempted to digest that terrifying truth, lingering drowsiness still permeating his judgment.
"Is what I said." Ilkrud chanced a glance behind him to make sure no enemy sneaked upon them, then looked back at Aleks. "Find a commander. They'll point you to where you need to be."
Aleks blinked several times, but Ilkrud was still there, ashen faced, petrified. The yells grew louder, as did the cacophony of shrills emitted by the many wyverns inhabiting the gorge. They wouldn't participate in the fight, per their pact with Lothering, but their clamor sure helped rally the village's defenses.
By the Purefire! This was happening. It was really happening!
"But where can I find this commander?" Aleks lunged forward, seizing the coyote by his petite shoulders, shaking him so hard he stumbled on his tiny, awkward feet. "Help me. You have to...help me..." Aleks's voice faltered, his voice dwarfed by an agonized wail just across the street.
Ilkrud tensed up at the sound of it too, his jaws setting into place, features hardening all of a sudden. "I don't know. You'll manage, Snowfang."
Koanyr, his wyvern hatchling, clung onto his back, trembling like a leaf, mirroring the coyote's barely suppressed fear. Like Aleks, Ilkrud Magthrul hadn't known real battle, so he ventured out into the wailing night with but a thought and a prayer.
Aleks wasted no time. He sheathed his sword to free his hands. Then, he grabbed his knapsack, eased it onto the bed, and stretched its mouth wide open. "In here, quick," he urged Nyrisa, who absently stared into the distance, listening to these most foreign of sounds. "We can't get separated during the battle. I don't--I can't--I shouldn't have to worry about your safety."
She protested with bared fangs and a hiss, but much to Aleks's relief, she did as was told. With the hatchling safely tucked, the blue wolf strapped on his combat gear, fastened his cloak to his shoulders, and took his first few steps out of his dormitory. The windows of the living room were aflame with the fire, shadows and magic erupting across the street, the victorious roars mingling with the sharp cries of the dying.
Aleks's knees melted like wax exposed to a flame before such relentless carnage. Smoke filtered into his house through the nonexistent door, half part charred wood, half part seared flesh. It turned his stomach and brought tears into his eyes, but he still lumbered forward, sword drawn, dagger clutched in his offhand.
A massive silhouette alighted in front of his house, the thud rocking the very walls of his dwelling. It must have been a dragon or a wyvern, for Aleks had to shield his eyes from the conflagration that engulfed what used to be his neighbors' houses. When exposed to a wyvern's rock-melting flames, those without the proper magic to shield them didn't even have time to scream.
A second thump came, lighter, definitely a bipedal.
Aleks's grip turned taut on the handle of his blades. His breath grew still, and his jaws clenched so hard sharp pain lanced through his teeth.
"Outside, ya craven fool, before ya choke ta death," Leobard, the white bear Aleks had noticed earlier, said to him. He was clad in full plate, the amber eye of his wyvern poking past the missing door. "They dinna expect us ta fight, so this battle happens on the ground for the time at hand. I expect that ta change soon as their scouts take note of their dwindling numbers. Now out with ye!"
He grabbed Aleks by his vest and hurled him straight outside. Were it not for the wyvern's snout to ease his lurch, the blue wolf would have surely fallen.
"Thank you," he whispered to the wyvern who blinked his acknowledgment in return.
"Ye can make out with Ariuvor at yer leisure after ye slay some of them bastards. Head west. Is where they attack the strongest."
Leobard clambered onto his wyvern's back and ordered him upward with his sword, Ariuvor's keening cry assembling the aerial force of Lothering to gather in one cohesive unit. Aleks didn't afford the chance to watch that glorious display. A battle happened everywhere around him, bloodstained troops and swords gleaming in the blaze encroaching upon the center of the village.
"West, west, west," Aleks muttered under his breath, unable to concentrate amidst the din of battle. "Goodwill fountain. Where was the goodwill fountain?"
"Rrrik!" Nyrisa squeaked, her unfurled wing pointing him in the right direction.
"Good eye, but stay inside!" Aleks almost shouted, curling his arm back to shove the hatchling down where she belonged. With his heart already threatening to burst in his chest and his head pounding relentlessly, Aleks could barely make sense of his task to reinforce the western flank, let alone keep track of Nyrisa.
The fountain was a mere fifty feet from his location, but the number of people trapped in the ubiquitous chaos made that distance feel infinite. Almost everyone fled their homes, most of the villagers clutching whatever arms they could find in their trembling hands, wearing the first rags they laid their hands on or no clothes at all. Their nakedness disturbed Aleks, but not more than their crude weapons. Weren't soldiers supposed to keep them safe? To grant them time to flee? And how in damnation was that arctic fox supposed to kill somebody with a candleholder?
That question vanished from his mind as a snow leopard astride a black, giant cat charged through the ranks of the hapless townsfolk, hacking and slashing at those too slow or too panicked to keep away from the middle of the road. The blood of the arctic fox sprayed all over Aleks, its salty, coppery sting deep in his eyes and nose.
"A warrior," the snow leopard rasped, snarling at Aleks. "Hope you know how to parry better than the dozen wretches I met before you, else this is going to end too quick."
Aleks held his breath in his chest to contain his nausea, sword and dagger at the ready.
The leopard steered his mount towards him, blood dripping from his crescent blade, fur painted in a dozen shades of crimson.
Three arrows punctured the flank of his mount in quick succession, the fourth penetrating one side of the leopard's exposed neck and exiting the other. The mount crashed, and the leopard flopped right at Aleks's stiff, frozen feet.
"That's what you get for being a loud mouth," Toragren, a lithe snowcat hunter who Aleks had seen around, said. "I'm better suited for open spaces. You go west. It's there where..."
Aleks didn't see nor hear the enemy wyvern, no more than Toragren did. His words came to an abrupt stop as dark talons snatched him from where he stood, flapping wings carrying him higher and higher into the sky, after which he just...fell. A dozen, coordinated screeches, roars, shrieks and cries filled the sky, heralding the beginning of the aerial battle Leobard had predicted.
Instead of fleeing through the alleys, Aleks made a run for it across the main road, keeping on the edge of the gutters where the fliers wouldn't surprise him from the right. In a swarm of panicked people, he could hardly tell apart friend from foe, so he never stopped. No matter the pleas of the villagers under his protection, or the taunting of the enemies infiltrated into the heart of Lothering, Aleks kept on running.
Halfway across, the remnants of a wagon crashed into the porch of a house forced him to sheathe his blades, secure his knapsack under an arm so that he could crawl under its wreckage. On the other side, carnage awaited, death descending from the skies upon the frightened mob in the form of claws, teeth, fire or magic. One of Lothering's Snowfangs, a sky serpent rider whose name evaded Aleks, attempted to block the enemy's ground advance with the elongated body of his mount curtained behind a wall of living fire. He managed to save a number of lives before a dragon landed right on top of him, its lightning breath reducing the head of the sky serpent to fine ash scattered in the wind.
"The west flank is lost," Aleks mumbled as he shifted his gaze away from the grisly sight, his wild, frenzied eyes scanning his surroundings for the Veiled Path. "The west flank is lost, the battle is lost, there is nothing I can do about it. No help to provide that will make a difference."
If Nyrisa heard him, she made no sound nor gesture to express her disagreement with his line of thinking. And why should she? Aleks had drilled ruthless realism into her head, teaching her to see the world not as a dragon, or as a Snowfang, but as a being desperate to live.
From his lowly position under the wagon, Aleks posed grave disgrace to his kind. His father would have crushed his skull with his bare hands for such shameful cowardice, but Father wasn't here. He didn't witness his warriors being run through, disemboweled by dragon talons, incinerated, electrocuted, strangled by magical vines or entombed into the very ground upon which they stood. Their magic waned before the superior technique of the enemy, just as their animal companions lost both the battle of size and strength up in the sky or down on the ground.
They sent some of their best; grizzled veterans pitted against too many outcasts and too few warriors, Aleks realized, chilled to the bone by everything he witnessed. Nyrisa's head poked out of the knapsack, her blue eyes scanning the desolation before her with utmost calm.
"We have to flee," he said, more to reassure himself of the righteousness of his desertion than to inform Nyrisa of his plan. "We can't defend Lothering, but we can reclaim it from these wretches once my father gets wind of it. The wyverns will be safe, as will the hatchlings," Aleks soothed Nyrisa, her muffled whine stabbing his very soul. "They might be turncoats, but their culture is our culture, which means they won't dare harm the wild wyverns or their young."
The same couldn't be said of the animals already bound by loyalty to their bipedal companions. Wild ones could be brought into their fold, and the young always accepted the world as was presented to them, but bonds such as the ones Snowfangs possessed could only be severed by death. Aleks winced as he noticed panicked Ilkrud stand his ground against a black bear, expertly deflecting his attacks, only to get stabbed in the back.
The female shadowfox who took his life claimed Koanyr as well, wrapping him into an amethyst bubble that hovered beside her smug, satisfied face.
"You're not going to tame that one," the bear said.
The shadowfox grinned at the challenge. "You obviously don't know who I am and what I do."
Aleks shifted his focus from their casual chat beside the twitching body of Ilkrud, gurgling for breath. His eyes found Aleks, widening for a split second before drifting to the west. He regarded him again, then repeated that terse motion of his pupil, until life fled his husk.
Aleks followed his cue...
And found the Veiled Path, just where he remembered it to be, between the Eternal Bond shrine and the baker's shop. The Veiled Path led out of the gorge and onto the Snowdrift Plains, ignored by the enemy bent on capturing Lothering. Unlit by the fires consuming the village, it provided Aleks with the best chance to save Nyrisa and himself.
Fortunately, Lothering's forces didn't relent. The squads that came to invade this part of the village spent little to no time sniffing out those in hiding, diverted away by a flanking attack from Aleks's allies.
The timely intervention granted Aleks the perfect opportunity to weasel out of his cranny and make it to the darkened alleys slithering between the still standing houses. He kept his head low and his cloak wrapped tight around himself, posing as Larn the Beggar, borrowing his effective gait and illegible muttering to make himself inconspicuous among the Lothering defenders preparing their ambush, should the enemy return.
If others took upon the Veiled Path, Aleks couldn't see them. So few people used it thanks to their dragon and wyvern allies, that most of them must have forgotten it.
Not Aleks. Ever since he heard of it, he had safeguarded its location in his mind. The steep, narrow, hard-packed trail might lead to his demise on the barren Snowdrift Plains, but at least Nyrisa would live her days as a wild dragon, not as a pet under the whip of the enemy.
Aleks lowered himself onto his fours, sinking his claws into the frozen ground, clambering up the treacherous slope. The smoke billowing from the burning buildings shielded him from the keen sight of the fliers, allowing him to reach the top without as much as a roar aimed in his direction.
As he crested the cliffs overlooking Lothering, the magical roof erected above the village no longer protected Aleks. Cruel, freezing gusts impacted with his slender frame, disbalancing him, forcing him to lunge forward into the snow, lest he risked crashing back into the gorge. Nyrisa jumped out of the knapsack, scooping away the snow cluttered around Aleks's muzzle, her little tongue bringing hot, stinging warmth to his frozen nose. The blue wolf rolled onto his back, panting for breath, suddenly exhausted now that his adrenaline levels subsided.
"Don't look at it." He scooped Nyrisa into his arms as she made her way to the edge of the cliff. "Don't look at them either," he said, pointing at the splotches of color dancing in the sky. The blinding flashes, the angry, thickening clouds, and the whipping winds made Aleks's fur stand on end. He didn't know much about magic or its potency, which was why it terrified him.
"Here," he held the knapsack so she could enter it. "Go back where its warm and peaceful. We have a long journey ahead of us."
Nyrisa snorted at the notion, pushing his offer away with her forepaws, curling into a ball atop his belly. Aleks had half a mind to force her inside, yet her presence brought great comfort to his tormented mind. Whatever wickedness drove him to abandon his oaths and people had also protected Nyrisa. While that might never make up for his transgressions, it was a good Aleks strove to cling to with every fiber of his being.
"Latch yourself onto my vest for a moment," he said after he caught his breath, despite the tremors of guilt wracking his frame. He rolled forward into a squatting position, then pushed himself up with Nyrisa holding fast onto his chest.
Good. At least she listened to this one thing. He draped his cloak across her, then shuffled into the long, freezing night, the warmth of his hatchling his only beacon of hope.
END OF CHAPTER 6
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