FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Cold Start

Ice

"They're... very small," the charr said, rubbing her ear as she looked at the group of cubs lined up before her. Some of them were paying close attention, some of them looked bored, and some of them looked ready to run off and get into trouble as cubs were wont to do.

"The smallest of the small, Primus," her superior told her. A primus was a teacher, the charr in charge of a fahrar of cubs from the time they were dropped off by their parents to when they left the fahrar and swore to a legion, becoming a full warband. He lowered his voice and looked around. "It's because of the whiskey incident, Senika. This group was hand-picked and the order sent from high up. They're yours until they're done and if you break any or don't return a powerful warband, you're done too."

He threw a glance over at the runts. "There's no way you'll be able to do something useful with an entire group this small. I don't want you tied up in this any longer than needed, so I'm assigning the whole mess to the Shiverpeaks. Just normal training there - you can even coddle them and pamper them - but the hardships will whittle them down quickly."

Her mouth opened, then she shut it. She already felt bad enough about her loss of control two months ago. She didn't need this punishment also. Her first ever taste of whiskey, this late in life, became far too much whiskey. She'd never considered hard drinks to be something she wanted to try before. Nobody knew how she'd react, not even her.

Before that cursed spirit, she'd been the model of a primus. Her charges were top of the line, twice winning the tournament by four points. Winning by one or two points was the norm, four was astounding. The cubs she had were rambunctious, like proper charr cubs should be. She was certain that with her guidance and training, they could be tournament winners as well.

But that whiskey. That flamed whiskey. A bad night after the drinks sent her home in a haze to try to sleep it off. The cubs had a 'surprise' for her, not knowing the state she was in. A little prank that she would normally give some bed-making duty for while secretly cheering their ingenuity. The whiskey warped her mind and view. In a fit of alcohol-induced rage, she'd wrecked trusting young lives and killed more than just her own career.

Tears nearly washed the blood from her claws by the time they found her in the morning, but the tears couldn't wash away what she'd done. Put on leave and under house arrest, she barely slept for the first month, screams of her cubs haunting her dreams. She swore the very first morning that she'd never touch a drop of alcohol again. She'd given up on everything, even on herself, and was waiting for execution, or worse, being banished as a dishonored gladium.

She didn't want more trusting, young lives foisted onto her. She didn't want to be given demands to make champions like she'd been proud to do before when she just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. She didn't want to go through years bringing up such... such insanely scrawny and tiny cubs, knowing every day that she was doomed to failure and watching the days tick by toward her doom.

Her legionnaire was doing her a favor. He knew as well as she that this was destined to be a failure from the start. With the orders coming from over his head, he couldn't free her of them. All he could do was ease her suffering and help her reach her inevitable end sooner. Because he knew it was the whiskey - not who she was - that wrecked her that night. He knew she wouldn't - she absolutely couldn't - simply slaughter these cubs as a statement to say she accepted the end punishment sooner, though that was likely what the intent was to goad her into.

The other charr shook his head. "I'll do what I can for you Senika, but we both know you're burned. The Shiverpeak mountains will just help you reach the end sooner without any more weight on yourself." He hung his head. "I wish I had encouraged you to get drunk earlier in life so we'd know to keep you away from it."

"No... No, this was my doing and is my fire to bear," she said numbly, turning away from him and back to the cubs.

"Okay all of you, follow me! We will rest today and tomorrow is your first day in the fahrar officially." He words were hollow. She was working on automatic, her heart no longer in it. She couldn't look at any of these tiny faces without seeing the faces from two months ago, so she turned away, walking swiftly with the group of deadly fluffballs following in a chaotic swarm. It was the beginning of the end for Senika Whitemane.

It was the start of the beginning for the Ice Warband though.

* * *

Senika huffed as she put the finishing touches on the armored training dummy. That should be completely and utterly claw-proof and the cub wouldn't be able to bite any parts either. What better way to keep the rambunctious orange one occupied? She'd be beating on that for hours.

"Okay, Ash. There's your new training dummy. Remember, hand to hand combat, you're not allowed to use any weapons. Take it down," she said, stepping back.

She should have stepped back before letting the youngling attack. She had to stumble out of the way as Ash leaped at the new dummy and bashed at it furiously. Not a single dent of course and no progress was to be had. Hmm, yes, this would keep the whole set of them occupied for hours.

"Karrak, Ty, you can help her. Go ahead and attack it," she muttered as she limped back to sit and tend to her shank. She just needed a short time to dress the wound and this would give her the time she needed. She had to grudgingly admit that despite lacking in size, they didn't lack in spirit.

Three years now in the Shiverpeaks with these cubs - already half of the time before they'd be expected to be a warband. She thought the cold and hard work and training would have killed them long ago. But they slept in a big pile and handled even the bivouacs in the frigid outdoors and the orange one, Karrak, had a knack for working with Ty to find the goals, making the jaunts shorter than she expected them to be.

Karrak's recent interest in taming a snow leopard of all things had been a surprise. Ty barely said a word most of the time, but she was definitely not dumb. Nye was dabbling in magic, which was dangerous, but still somehow avoiding blowing herself up. The little cute one, Ashen, seemed too kind to be a fighter, but she'd made a skill of befuddling minds along with Jorris. And those were just the most noticeable ones. They were still barely half as big as they should be for their age. Yet despite everything, the cubs had not managed to starve, freeze, or get themselves killed by the local wildlife.

Just a moment to bandage this up and...

There was a massive series of crashes from the training area that made Senika leap back in surprise, the wound on her leg giving a twinge of protest. A cloud of dust was obscuring the area and she heard no movement for a short time as her heart slowly stopped racing. What just happened?! She hadn't been watching. Were they alive?!

Why should she care? It was supposed to be better for her if they had an accident.

As her senses finally cleared, the dust settled to reveal the tree cubs standing triumphantly over the toppled and... beheaded?!... training dummy.

"I SAID NO WEAPONS!" she roared, irritated.

"We didn't use weapons," Karrak said defiantly, pointing to where their weapons were still sitting against the wall behind their Primus.

Senika opened her mouth at the sight and no words came out. She moved her leg to take a step and braced for the pain from the wound, but it never came. Just a hand fell away from her shank. She glanced down in surprise to find that Nye had snuck up on her and...

"Better?" Nye asked, having healed the wound with water magic. She stood up from her sneaking.

"I... yes... but..." Senika said dazedly.

"Mission successful, Karrak!" Nye exclaimed gleefully, bouncing over to hug the lanky orange charr.

"Mission?" Senika asked.

"You've been favoring that leg all day," Karrak pointed out. "Can't have our Primus limping around, and we knew you wouldn't let Nye heal you if we offered. So we devised a plan. It worked."

"Yaaaay! Teachy is better!" Ash exclaimed, bounding over and hugging the Primus's leg. Then she stared hard at the adult charr. "When Karrak tells you something about an animal, you listen to him, okay?" she scolded.

Senika wandered over to the downed and mangled practice dummy. An adult-sized dummy nearby was toppled atop it and then the heavy table just behind that had its legs unbolted to drop it on the armored dummy's neck section, popping the head clean off.

"What happened here?" she demanded, though less sternly than she probably should have.

"We saw that going after the armored target head on was futile," Karrak told her. "So Ash kept it distracted while Ty worked on clawing through the post bindings for the other dummy and I undid the table bolts. Then we waited for Nye to be in position and made sure the sound was aligned to make you jump back to Nye. Ty dropped the big dummy on the target, knocking it down, and Ash held it steady for the table to crush it. Then Nye healed your leg while you were surprised."

Karrak nodded happily. "A great mission guys. I'm proud of all of you. Ash, could you move Teachy's chair back to its normal spot? Ty, you and I will shift the rest of the stuff back."

"Yes!!" Ash exclaimed and ran over, rawring at the chair before pushing the heavy object back into place.

"Back... But... it's always been right..." Senika started to say before she realized that all the little things that hung and sat near the chair were also shifted slightly to the side. Normally her jump off the chair would put her back against the wall beside the door, but this time it put her back to the door itself, allowing Nye to sneakily heal her shank.

"You sneaky little..." she muttered, then a paw patted her hip.

"Feels better though, right?" Nye asked cheerily.

"It does," Senika admitted with a huff. This was the most complex plot she'd seen so far from this group and she had to admit, they orchestrated it tremendously well. Even the little details like the scuffs on the ground had been reproduced under the new spot for the chair.

That instant, Senika had a realization. This is why she cared if they'd been hurt. They knew nothing about her past. They cared about her though, and they found wonderful - if highly complex - ways to show that. They may be the tiniest charr in a warband she'd ever had, but their hearts and minds were huge and she could see that they could be a great boon to the legions.

Not that she could convince anyone else of that. The moment they started tournaments or even started meeting other groups in a fahrar, they'd be beaten down and shown their place. It was not her job to protect them other than ensuring the other, much larger cubs didn't waste useful soldiers. But these runts were never considered useful soldiers by anybody. Senika was starting to have doubts about that decree though.

* * *

Senika was beside herself. "You did WHAT?!"

"Freezies!" Ash exclaimed again as Nye was applying the last of healing to a shaved Karrak. The elementalist was not healing him completely, just making the swelling go down and enhancing the speed of the normal healing process. Even the dry outer layer of skin was starting to peel off the slightly-pink areas. This normally wouldn't happen for another month.

"What flamed thought made you think that shaving Karrak and using freezing spells on him would be any kind of a good idea?!" she demanded. "How's he even going to stay warm now?"

"We'll keep him warm," Ash said, nodding knowingly. Yes, yes they would. The warband was very close that way. Very, deeply close, since they'd gotten old enough to be.

"I'm gonna grow his fur back now, Ash," Nye said.

"We'll keep him warm anyway," Ash said with a small pout and a sulk.

"Burn me, this is insane, what am I going to do... with..." Senika demanded, stomping about as Nye healed Karrak's fur back into place. What was once an all-orange, lanky charr was now mostly white with his orange remaining only in a striking pattern of stripes. The transformation in color halted their primus' words faster than an attack by the flame legion.

"It worked," Karrak said happily, looking at his arm. He smiled at Nye. "Thank you."

"That had to really hurt," Nye said softly. "How did you stand it?"

"For all of you," he said to his gathered warband. "We were all left in the cold, to be a punishment for our primus over what she did to her last fahrar of cubs. We..."

"How did you know that?!" Senika wailed, taking a step back in fear, but Ty was just behind her all of a sudden, blocking her retreat.

Karrak smiled at Senika briefly, then continued. "We were expected to perish in the frigid wilderness here and be her punishment. We were just runts, so nobody cared about how it would punish us when they tried to punish her."

His fur finished growing in, thick and mostly-white from the freeze branding now. "They thought they were sending us to icy graves, but we survived and we thrived. We are the Ice Warband, and we won't let anybody take us for granted or leave us in the cold again. We won't be used as a punishment except against our own enemies! We are small, but we are CHARR!" he roared. "WE ARE ICE!"

Senika stood in shock as all her younglings cheered and reared, roaring their approval. They were so small, she still thought of them as much younger than they were.

"Primus, the tournaments are in two months and you haven't tried to prepare us at all. We need to get back to the Citadel quickly if we're going to have the best chance to win that for you," Karrak said.

"I - The tournament? Oh, no, no, you're still too small. Grow for another two years or so," Senika said in a stupor, wobbling suddenly. But before she managed to fall over, Ty and Nye were suddenly there with a chair for her to sit down hard in. They were so good at nearly everything. Just... sooooo small.

"We're as big as well will grow. It's now or never. We learned well," Karrak pointed out as all three of his pets slunk in from the shadows with no indication of him having even signalled them.

"I didn't teach you nearly as well as I should have," Senika said, hiding her face.

"You didn't. We found out about the last cubs years ago. But we learned regardless," Karrak said, patting her knee. "Now we need to make you proud. We will be your legacy, not your doom."

The long-broken primus looked up. They were right. They had learned, even when she'd be drowning in her own sorrow and misery. The years went by, and though her mind tried to once again torment her with the visions of the cubs from long before, for the first time it was completely unsuccessful. All that filled her vision were the triumphant, grinning faces of the Ice Warband.

They would compete in the tournament against the other new warbands. No matter what came of this, whether they won or lost, she knew they would give it their all. She only had two months left to travel all the way back to the citadel and get them ready, and flame her if she was going to send them in unprepared.

* * *

While the tournament itself was for another story, nothing at all could prepare any of them for the end of it...

"FLASHY!!!" screamed Ash, rushing over to Nye's fallen form and casually backhanding the last of the Stance Warband younglings that they were fighting against for the final round, sending him in a tumble to the ground.

The cheering and hooting around the arena had turned into chaos when the attack that felled the elementalist came from outside the arena bounds. The Ice Warband were triumphant over the Stance Band, but just before Ash's backhand felled the last of them, three gunshots left a sharp report from the stands, followed swiftly by two arrows. All five projectiles found their mark in Nye's body and even a full sized charr was not made for that kind of abuse.

The Ice Warband suffered their first loss before they were even officially a Warband.

An hour later, Karrak, the Legionnaire to be of Ice, stood amongst the larger charr with the Spite Warband in shackles before them.

"There was no way I would let my cub lose to a bunch of flaming RUNTS," their Legionnaire said, spitting. The rest of his warband nodded and muttered agreement.

"UNACCEPTABLE!" the Captain roared. "Do you even BEGIN to understand what you have done?! For this treachery, you will be..."

"Challenged to mortality by the Ice Warband. Trial by combat, for your crimes against our own," Karrak said dangerously, interrupting the Captain and causing the whole room to erupt in a set of hushed murmurs.

"But you can't..." the Captain started to say.

"We CAN," Karrak interrupted again. "And we will."

"No, I mean..."

"You heard the runt!" the Spite Legionnaire drawled, already knowing what was going to be said. "Tomorrow at noon. We'll make sure the clean up crew knows they won't have to bring strong people to drag your bodies away. Come on," he shouldered the guard beside him and stormed out, the guards growling and catching up.

The Captain shook his head in defeat once they were gone. "Karrak, I mean you can't fight them. Your warband is not sworn to a legion and not a warband yet, so we can't let you lift arms against them. I understand how much this hurts, but we can't budge on that or all of our tails will be in the fire."

Karrak took a deep breath, then turned to the Captain with a sly grin. "I know," he said.

"If you don't have weapons, they'll slaughter you, and then by law they'll be cleared of their crime! This is suicide for you and horror for us! Those burnt fools shouldn't go free. Even now they're free until the challenge, able to gear up and prepare."

Karrak only smiled more widely. "This I know as well, and we're counting on it. Don't worry, Captain. We are Ice."

The larger charr took a step back as Ty suddenly stepped in beside Karrak and passed a rolled set of scrolls to him. Karrak smiled and looked at the scrolls briefly, then looked up at the Captain. "Ice has this under control."

* * *

"Soooo... they're not even a warband yet?" the massive charr asked as they followed their legionnaire into The Bane.

"That's right. Law says they can't even bring weapons to fight us. We'll make a nice gooey mess and be done quickly with these runts."

"Aww. I was hoping for at least some fun, not just squishing duty."

"Let's just get this over with fast," the legionnaire growled. "Make a name for ourselves and still have time for a drink after."

It was still a few minutes before high noon as they walked to the center of the arena floor. This event had drawn a huge crowd, the seats above filled beyond standing room only.

"They slaughtered a cub in cold blood at the tournament." The voice caught their ear as spectators conversed.

"I heard it was just a runt and in a whole warband of runts," another said. This brought a smile to the faces of the killers below.

"The runts' legionnaire challenged Spite to trial by combat, but without being sworn to a legion, they can't even use weapons." Another comment from above, and many along the same line.

The Spite warband looked around. Still no sign of the runts and the sun was rapidly approaching its zenith. Would they be cowards? Did somebody tell them? The massive charr started to fidget in their armor. Itchy... Oddly itchy... in the most inopportune of places. One simply did NOT scratch themselves there in front of everybody in the arena.

A hush fell over the crowd as the first strike of the Citadel clock began to slowly count to twelve, the massive mechanical device taking plenty of time between strikes.

The other gate opened and a white wolf trotted out, tail wagging as he carried a rolled scroll in their direction. What was this? The wolf dropped the scroll at the Legionnaire's feet and backed away ten feet, sitting and panting softly, tail still wagging.

"It's..."

"I know what it is!" the Legionnaire spat.

"Oh? What is it then?"

"Let me find..." He hefted his armor as the itching was starting to become a burning and stinging down there instead, but like the rest of his Warband, he wasn't going to admit to it. "...out," he finished, picking the paper up and unrolling it to look.

"Is that a bullseye on the back?" his lieutenant asked. "Says, 'Won the tournament by' at the top, and 'points' at the bottom."

"Huh. Says 'Look through the paper at the western sky for the solution' on the front," the Legionnaire said. Curiosity overcame him and he spun, holding the paper up.

With the bright sky behind it, the fact that it was two closely-bonded pieces of paper was made apparent, the ink between the layers showing through with the light. The bullseye had a set of numbers on its ring, starting with '1' on the outermost ring and ending with '6' at the center.

"Did you hear that Truibune Desertgrave herself accepted their allegiance just...?" a strangely loud whisper said from the otherwise-silent crowd of spectators above, cut off by the final strike of high noon.

The two arrows loosed from Karrak's bow each found the bullseye of the paper just before each one plunked painfully into the Spite legionnaire's horns, yanking his head back from the impact and blinding him with the light of the sun above.

The last thing that he heard at that moment was an enraged Ash closing with them, hammer swinging as she screamed, "FOR FLASHY! SMAAAAAAASH!!!"

The last thing that he heard at all was his skull caving in beneath the might of her blow.

* * *

Karrak fell silent for so long that one of the listening cubs literally fell off the front of her chair. He grinned. Perfect punctuation. "That, is how the Ice Warband came to be," he finished dramatically.

"COOOOL!" all the cubs chanted.

"That's so mighty!" a cub exclaimed, bouncing on his chair. "What happened in the tournament?!"

"Yeah, and what happened in the combat trial?!" another demanded.

"What did they dooooo?!" a little female whined.

"THAT," exclaimed Karrak dramatically, pulling them instantly to silence as he gave a knowing smile, "is a story for another time."

Recommended Next Steps

If you enjoyed the story, you're encouraged to comment below, fave the story, and vote on it. Click here to send the author a tip

More StoriesNext Story

Head here to encourage me on Patreon