original story- Icestorm ch3
link to the cover- http://www.furaffinity.net/view/940269/
link to chapter 1- http://www.furaffinity.net/view/941641/
link to chapter 2- http://www.furaffinity.net/view/944161/
CANID EARTH: ICE STORM
by Silva Noir
CHAPTER 3
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Veronica Plague sat helplessly in a high corner of the sparkling cave. She’d hoped the mountains would provide comforting shade… certainly a crevice cut deep into them should have.
The inside of the cave was not some drab hole. There was no denying it was beautiful. Light reflected off every facet like diamonds in the sun. The light did not come from the snow storm outside, but from underground. Crystals jutted out everywhere. Within the glassy surface of these crystals (some big enough to fit her entire wardrobe, she thought) iridescent liquid bubbled up. It was nothing like she had ever seen. It was energy in its purest form.
No, she thought again, she had seen its equal but opposite in her own country, which lay on the Far East end of the continent. There, every few city blocks, rose a fountain of black oil. They did not spill, rather, grime from the streets were drawn in and swirled around like a bizarre upside-down tornado. It was the sort of shadow-and-decay magic to which she was accustomed. The fountains were once small, but without the industries that were so plentiful, they’d grown to ridiculous heights.
Speaking of ridiculous heights, she eyed the shaggy white beast in the depression below. It was some kind of dragon, she assumed, but covered in fur except for its opalescent scaly head. Its wings had thick white feathers like that of a snowy owl. If she were to stand next to it, she would only come up to its knee. No IT -Veronica corrected herself- SHE.
This was a MOTHER polar dragon.
Her rambunctious offspring, who would be up to the height of Veronica’s waist, were but a few body lengths in front of her. They were cute furballs with wide periwinkle eyes. They were also little terrors. Their nest was lined with bones… cow femurs, deer antlers, and the skulls of wolves. These were not the fruit eating palm tree dwellers she’d seen
On her last island trip; these animals ate anything that moved.
One of the polar dragon cubs currently held her right arm and hand in its jaws. It taunted its siblings with this prize, keeping it just out of their reach.
Veronica stared resentfully at them from her corner. She was weak, getting weaker by the minute. The energy that the dragons thrived on was destroying her. When the cub tore at her it hadn’t hurt. It was able to rip out the seems in her fursuit to get at the bone easily, little bothered by the purple goo that was the filling of her body.
Darknyss, the god possessing her remains, could not help her. Its wings, which normally stuck out of her back and reached to her ankles, had withered to that of a chicken’s… tucked neatly behind her shoulder blades. The god, who could grow at its strongest to a four eyed bird nearly the size of the mature polar dragon, shrunk to its smallest state and was comatose. Veronica couldn’t draw on any of his power. If this supernatural emanation was to negate Darknyss’ existence, Veronica would fall as well.
Luckily for this damsel-in-distress an adventurer had just entered the cave.
From her perch, he looked and moved a bit like a mouse. He was clad in unremarkable browns and blacks and clung close to the wall. Every so often, he’d be distracted by his own reflection in the crystals that he’d see out of the corner of his eye.
He wasn’t there for her, of course. No doubt he sought one of any of the treasure hordes of the dragons. Countless warriors had battled these animals and lost. Their armor, shields, and weapons remained. Their flesh did not. Even the marrow has been sucked out of the bones.
If only the corpses hadn’t been picked clean. She could have temporarily re-animated them, creating a distraction long enough to get away.
She’d given up before the plain-clothed thief showed up. Her ivory bird mask was in the neatly folded square of her cloak by her side. If the shell of her body were to be discovered, she had thought, she wanted the first impression to be that she had been a lady not a monster. She then shoved the bundle into the cavity in her back by her shoulders where the wings of the god usually protruded.
The thief below was dangerously close to accidentally bumping into the mother dragon’s fluffy leg. He didn’t see her.
“LOOK OUT!” Veronica found herself shouting down to him. She didn’t know what came over her. Of what consequence was he to her? Why did she care if he lived or died?
He didn’t know where the warning came from, but did skid to a halt on the floor of crushed crystal.
The polar dragon and the thief spotted one another at the same time.
Veronica dove towards the polar dragon cubs. If she was to be seen, she wanted it to be with both arms.
“Give that here, you rapscallion! She commanded of the little male.
She bit into his scaly snout. The red welts left by her short sharp teeth instantly became infected by the plum-hued venom of her saliva. The dragon pawed at it, hissing. The sting was enough to make him drop the bony appendage. He was soon rolling around head first trying to scrape the very skin off his face.
“That will teach you to trifle with a god of decay,” she whispered to the baby beast.
She popped the arm bones back into the empty right sleeve of her fursuit. She tested her paw, flexing it back and forth. The joints ground against one another before being re-coated in the purple good that held her together.
She then set out to check on the thief below. Standing on the edge of the nest, she peered over the largest of the semi-transparent crystals.
“Up here,” she called to him.
He was presently weaving in and out of the mother dragon’s legs, doing his best to avoid being stepped on or gobbled up. “Ho, maiden!” he waved his cap at her. “So you were not a figment of my imagination…” he panted, “Be with you in a moment!”
“I shall await you! Impatiently!” She urged him on.
She wondered how he would manage to climb the cave walls quickly enough without the mother polar dragon snatching him off them.
The thief ran around to the base of the dragon’s tail. He took a mittened pawful of the dragon fur and hoisted himself up. With what Veronica concluded to be a mix of determination and lunacy, he ran all the way up the dragon’s spine, scooted up its curved neck, and knelt on its forehead.
The mother dragon’s attention had been diverted to her squealing cub. Defending them against the first intruder had become more important than devouring the second.
Before the adult dragon could shake him off, the thief leapt onto the high ledge beside Veronica.
Their eyes met. His were blue, but a much richer, less unsettling tone than the dragons. “Fancy meeting you here,” he smiled awkwardly, mouth crooked at the edges, as if it hurt the muscles to do so. He must not smile much, Veronica thought.
“WATCH OUT!” Veronica shouted suddenly.
The mother dragon slammed her head full force to where the thief had been only a second ago. He half rolled in reaction, half was thrown by the shock wave out of the way.
“My appreciation to you, M’Lady. I should try saving you sometime,” he offered a mittened paw.
She took it.
He was a total stranger and rather scrawny for what she realized was an arctic wolf. This was a temporary alliance, she was sure, allowing them both to get out alive (relatively speaking).
“May I ask your name?” he inquired breathlessly as they ran along the ridge away from the dragons.
“Veronica,” she replied curtly.
He seemed shocked to hear the name. “Come again?”
“VER-ON-I-CA” she repeated. Must be a dullard or hard of hearing as well as being physically lacking… though he is swift on his paws, she mentally noted.
“Are you sure?”
Did he know something? Was there the off-chance that he recognized her? “Chiyra,” she revealed her true name “is the one my mother gave me.” It meant ‘useless girl’ in her native tongue. Her mother had wanted a boy. When she got a girl instead, she alternatively neglected and abused it. “Veronica is my chosen name. It was given to me by a gentle yet strong wolf-man, who told me it was the name of an strong and accomplished woman.”
“As in ‘Veronica Smithe’?”
“Yes… so she is legend among wolves.”
“Have you ever met your namesake?”
“Not in person, no.”
“Ah…” the gears churned silently in his mind. “…still an odd coincidence…” He didn’t reveal what kind of coincidence it could be. “You are rather small for a wolf.”
“You should talk!” She pulled him to a stop. “That would be because I am a FOX. What is your excuse sir?”
“I was rather sickly as a child. My father refused to let me be treated. If I was to survive, I would do it by my own will, he said. Anything else would be coddling a weakness.”
“How awful. I do not believe I like your father.” They must have been poor, she thought. His garments were that of a simple laborer.
“Most do not.” Another small smile, but this was a sad one…some attempt to laugh at a less than ideal life.
She changed the topic. “… You came here seeking something?”
“Ah, yes! I do not suppose you have spent long here?” He waited for her response. “You have? Have you seen a sword…”
“Many swords…”
“This one has a blade made of ice.”
“Hmm…” she thought it over. “It would be difficult to pinpoint in a cavern like this amongst the crystals, but I will assist you in this search.”
“KAW!” A crow flapped up to him excitedly.
“I cannot believe he followed me all the way here,” the man marveled.
Veronica reached out to embrace hr long-lost familiar. It landed on her lace collar, beak nuzzling her muzzle lovingly. She’d sent him out years ago with a note from Obsidian for his mother (the original Veronica) tied to the crow’s leg. The crow let her know that his man, though unrefined in appearance, was kind.
“We may be in luck yet,” she told her rescuer then conveyed a silent message to the crow. It tilted its head knowingly. She threw him into the air, saying, “Seek this sword, Mephistopheles.”
“You named him?”
“Yes,” she didn’t admit it was not that in that moment, but long ago, that she had.
“Do you really think he will be of much help?”
“Who knows better how to select ‘shiny things’ than a crow?” She displayed her own awkward smile, though hers looked a bit more evil than painful. “Now what did you say YOUR name was?”
“Just call me Tom, M’Lady.”
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Twenty minutes later, Mephistopheles shrieked from a lower corner. “KAW! KAW!”
“He may have… found it… how… nice…” Veronica Plague tried to get up from where she had knelt, but the magics of the northwest had taken their toll. Sapped of all her reserves, she collapsed.
“M’Lady!” Tom shouted at her, picking her up by the shoulders. He was hesitant to call her by her first name, since it was intentionally the same of the woman who sent him on this mission. “What am I to do now? Carry you?”
He was surprised at how light she was. She looked like she had ample curves, but felt only as heavy as a wooden rake.
With Veronica slumped over one shoulder he made his way down slowly. He stuck to the small spaces between the larger crystals that would be hard for the mother dragon to fit her head through. The dragon cubs might have… but their mother held them back, like any good mother would.
Reaching the portion of the dragon’s horde that Mephistopheles perched upon, he set the maiden down. “Only a few moments more, M’Lady. I cannot have come this far in my quest without reaching the object I sought.”
In addition to bouncing up and down the length of the swords protective covering, Mephistopheles held several charms and keys in his beak. They looked tarnished and ancient. The bird would not give them up.
“I thought crows liked ‘shiny things’…” He took off his cap to scratch his head, then replaced it. “Alright, let us see if this is it…” Taking off his mittens, he gripped the golden handle of the fabled sword. He pulled the blade from its sheath slowly. Mist twisted up from it, like hot breath on a cold day. The jagged blade was indeed made of ice…
He lifted it into the light. No matter how cold it already was, the sword looked and felt a thousand times colder. He swung it a few times to test its weight and ease of use. With every arc, snowflakes fell. He swung back hard and brought it down on a heap of coins. The coins snapped in half; the blade sang but was unharmed.
“Only one last way to make sure this is ‘the real thing’.” Some of the colloquial terms of the Middlelander youth had crept into his speech.
He rested the flat of the ice blade directly on his outstretched palm. A cold so intense it burned radiated through his limb. Frost zigzagged along the rough skin and through the fur. He bit his lip as the pawpad cracked open. Blood oozed from the wound, pouring down over the edges. It crystallized into tiny stars and misshapen cubes before twinkling down to the toes of his boots.
He watched the process with fascination. Something deep in the back of his mind screamed at how wrong it was that the rest of him had grown so complacent and self-destructive.
He ripped the blade away. “I wonder if the frostbite is severe enough to make me an amputee…” he sighed, not nearly as worried about it as he should have been. “Or will father let me see a healer now? Or… will I sneak behind his back to… it is all I have been doing lately.”
With the uninjured paw he picked up some silver and copper coins and a sapphire necklace for his new lady friend, putting them in his pocket. Once Veronica (the second?) was tucked under one arm and the sheathed Ice sword under another, and Mephistopheles on his hat, he left the cave.
“I cannot skulk about forever. I will need to face it sooner or later… I hope you do not mind going home with me.” He frowned at the unconscious girl.
---------------------------------
Dry exhausted eyes slowly opened and focused. She breathed in the scent of the male wolf lingering in the sheets around her. The wolf in question was on the other side of the canopy bed. It was large enough that both could have reached for one another and not have touched.
They must have spent all night like this… or many nights. Like in the Dark Gate, she’d lost track of time.
In the night, nestled in the shadow, her wings had grown out again. She could feel Darknyss within her pecking at the folded cloak containing the mask. He was annoyed at the foreign object.
‘You are a foreign object, too.’ She thought at him. ‘I let you in without complaint.’
‘I want more room’, Darknyss’ deep voice echoed in her skull.
Wait… all night in this man’s bed… her wings returned…
Brain beginning to function normally, she realized the mistake she’d made.
“I cannot be here,” she gasped, getting up. She drew the midnight blue linens around her curves (she noticed she was down to the slip she’d had under her dress… had he removed her outerwear?).
Her bedmate yawned and scratched his charcoal tipped ears. Now that she could see him clearer she noticed his snout and paws also faded from the white of his main body fur to charcoal markings. “Is it morning?” he squinted at the sunlight pouring through colored shards of the floor to ceiling stained glass window.
“What have we done?” she smoothed down her now tangled raven locks.
“Would M’Lady like a recant of the details?” He chuckled, tail draped thankfully of his hips as he dressed on his side.
“No, I would not.” She answered, furious. “I demand to know where you have abducted me to!”
“I have taken you to the finest bedchamber aside from the King and Queen of the Wolves… this is the Prince’s room”
“If the prince finds we have defiled his bedchamber as such…”
“Defiled?” he cocked his head. “I would never do such a thing. I kept my paws to myself.”
“How do you explain this?” She pointed to her dress, tights, and boots lying on a settee on the opposite wall.
“I thought you would be more comfortable if…”
“You assumed wrong!” She was panicking now. If she had not panicked it would dawn on her that she had no parts to defile, and if he was not panicking, it meant he had no idea of her anatomy and who and what she really was.
“I doubt the Prince will mind.” He yawned again.
“Doubt he will mind? It is most improper, most disrespectful…”
“Do not worry so. The Prince and I are very close. He will understand.” There was a hint of mischievousness in his voice. “Come close, M’Lady, let me whisper a secret in your ear.”
She did as he asked, but only after he was fully dressed. She would not embarrass herself by gazing upon him while he was half-naked.
He inched close to her, putting one arm with a bandaged paw around her shoulder, and whispered, “I AM the Prince of Dantain.”
She reacted with shock, leaping away, at first forgetting to hold the sheet about her. She fixed it quickly and yipped at him. “Most cruel joke! The prince will be angrier still!” She had no reason to doubt it was the prince’s room, it certainly appeared as such. He, however, did not have the appearance of a prince of the wolves.
“I do not joke, M’Lady.” He stood in front of her and looked deeply into her violent eyes with piercing blue ones of his own. “Let me prove it to you.”
He walked over to a wall where a heavily embroidered tapestry hung. He tugged a cord beside it which pulled it back, revealing a telling portrait.
The young man in the painting was undeniably the Prince. PRINCE THOMAS ICESTORM OF THE WOLVES OF DANTAIN, the plaque below it read. The canine in the painting bore a perfect resemblance to the one holding the cord.
“Sire…?” Veronica muttered, her paws drawn to her chest, still clinging to the sheets that hid her black angel wings. “Why did you not inform me of this before, instead of posing as…”
“As what? A normal person?” He looked away from her. He obviously did not like who he was.
And really, was she not guilty of the same thing?
“I am a knight first and a prince by blood. This castle and power are mine by inheritance, not by skill. A knight, however, cannot be esteemed unless he as proved himself worthy: in training, in matches, and on the battlefield. Royalty commands respect but knighthood demands honor. Do you see why I chose to conceal myself as well as why I need a unique sword, M’Lady?”
“Yes, I believe I do.”
“You will forgive my rudeness I trust?” He once again offered his paw to her. “I would like to get to know more about you: why you have that name, where you are from, and why you were a polar dragon’s prisoner. I will reveal all my secrets to you if you reveal yours…”
“I cannot, sire,” she backed away. “There is nothing more that I would like than to be a participant in the royal court of the wolves…. Oh, even that was presumptuous of me to say...”
“No, by all means. Forget rank; let us treat each other like…”
“I cannot!” Violet tears rolled from her violet eyes. “I am sorry!” She grabbed the remainder of her belongings and seemed to dissolve into the shadows on the wall.
He wasn’t quite sure of what he saw, and checked the hallway. “Wait!” he called after her, not knowing what part of the castle she could have taken off to. He lowered his arm when he knew it was futile, which was almost immediately. “To be feared as some CREEP or for my STATUS … which is better, which is worse?”
“Kikiki… Kaw?” Mephistopheles, roosting on the arms of a candelabra, was the only one to answer him.
link to chapter 1- http://www.furaffinity.net/view/941641/
link to chapter 2- http://www.furaffinity.net/view/944161/
CANID EARTH: ICE STORM
by Silva Noir
CHAPTER 3
--------
Veronica Plague sat helplessly in a high corner of the sparkling cave. She’d hoped the mountains would provide comforting shade… certainly a crevice cut deep into them should have.
The inside of the cave was not some drab hole. There was no denying it was beautiful. Light reflected off every facet like diamonds in the sun. The light did not come from the snow storm outside, but from underground. Crystals jutted out everywhere. Within the glassy surface of these crystals (some big enough to fit her entire wardrobe, she thought) iridescent liquid bubbled up. It was nothing like she had ever seen. It was energy in its purest form.
No, she thought again, she had seen its equal but opposite in her own country, which lay on the Far East end of the continent. There, every few city blocks, rose a fountain of black oil. They did not spill, rather, grime from the streets were drawn in and swirled around like a bizarre upside-down tornado. It was the sort of shadow-and-decay magic to which she was accustomed. The fountains were once small, but without the industries that were so plentiful, they’d grown to ridiculous heights.
Speaking of ridiculous heights, she eyed the shaggy white beast in the depression below. It was some kind of dragon, she assumed, but covered in fur except for its opalescent scaly head. Its wings had thick white feathers like that of a snowy owl. If she were to stand next to it, she would only come up to its knee. No IT -Veronica corrected herself- SHE.
This was a MOTHER polar dragon.
Her rambunctious offspring, who would be up to the height of Veronica’s waist, were but a few body lengths in front of her. They were cute furballs with wide periwinkle eyes. They were also little terrors. Their nest was lined with bones… cow femurs, deer antlers, and the skulls of wolves. These were not the fruit eating palm tree dwellers she’d seen
On her last island trip; these animals ate anything that moved.
One of the polar dragon cubs currently held her right arm and hand in its jaws. It taunted its siblings with this prize, keeping it just out of their reach.
Veronica stared resentfully at them from her corner. She was weak, getting weaker by the minute. The energy that the dragons thrived on was destroying her. When the cub tore at her it hadn’t hurt. It was able to rip out the seems in her fursuit to get at the bone easily, little bothered by the purple goo that was the filling of her body.
Darknyss, the god possessing her remains, could not help her. Its wings, which normally stuck out of her back and reached to her ankles, had withered to that of a chicken’s… tucked neatly behind her shoulder blades. The god, who could grow at its strongest to a four eyed bird nearly the size of the mature polar dragon, shrunk to its smallest state and was comatose. Veronica couldn’t draw on any of his power. If this supernatural emanation was to negate Darknyss’ existence, Veronica would fall as well.
Luckily for this damsel-in-distress an adventurer had just entered the cave.
From her perch, he looked and moved a bit like a mouse. He was clad in unremarkable browns and blacks and clung close to the wall. Every so often, he’d be distracted by his own reflection in the crystals that he’d see out of the corner of his eye.
He wasn’t there for her, of course. No doubt he sought one of any of the treasure hordes of the dragons. Countless warriors had battled these animals and lost. Their armor, shields, and weapons remained. Their flesh did not. Even the marrow has been sucked out of the bones.
If only the corpses hadn’t been picked clean. She could have temporarily re-animated them, creating a distraction long enough to get away.
She’d given up before the plain-clothed thief showed up. Her ivory bird mask was in the neatly folded square of her cloak by her side. If the shell of her body were to be discovered, she had thought, she wanted the first impression to be that she had been a lady not a monster. She then shoved the bundle into the cavity in her back by her shoulders where the wings of the god usually protruded.
The thief below was dangerously close to accidentally bumping into the mother dragon’s fluffy leg. He didn’t see her.
“LOOK OUT!” Veronica found herself shouting down to him. She didn’t know what came over her. Of what consequence was he to her? Why did she care if he lived or died?
He didn’t know where the warning came from, but did skid to a halt on the floor of crushed crystal.
The polar dragon and the thief spotted one another at the same time.
Veronica dove towards the polar dragon cubs. If she was to be seen, she wanted it to be with both arms.
“Give that here, you rapscallion! She commanded of the little male.
She bit into his scaly snout. The red welts left by her short sharp teeth instantly became infected by the plum-hued venom of her saliva. The dragon pawed at it, hissing. The sting was enough to make him drop the bony appendage. He was soon rolling around head first trying to scrape the very skin off his face.
“That will teach you to trifle with a god of decay,” she whispered to the baby beast.
She popped the arm bones back into the empty right sleeve of her fursuit. She tested her paw, flexing it back and forth. The joints ground against one another before being re-coated in the purple good that held her together.
She then set out to check on the thief below. Standing on the edge of the nest, she peered over the largest of the semi-transparent crystals.
“Up here,” she called to him.
He was presently weaving in and out of the mother dragon’s legs, doing his best to avoid being stepped on or gobbled up. “Ho, maiden!” he waved his cap at her. “So you were not a figment of my imagination…” he panted, “Be with you in a moment!”
“I shall await you! Impatiently!” She urged him on.
She wondered how he would manage to climb the cave walls quickly enough without the mother polar dragon snatching him off them.
The thief ran around to the base of the dragon’s tail. He took a mittened pawful of the dragon fur and hoisted himself up. With what Veronica concluded to be a mix of determination and lunacy, he ran all the way up the dragon’s spine, scooted up its curved neck, and knelt on its forehead.
The mother dragon’s attention had been diverted to her squealing cub. Defending them against the first intruder had become more important than devouring the second.
Before the adult dragon could shake him off, the thief leapt onto the high ledge beside Veronica.
Their eyes met. His were blue, but a much richer, less unsettling tone than the dragons. “Fancy meeting you here,” he smiled awkwardly, mouth crooked at the edges, as if it hurt the muscles to do so. He must not smile much, Veronica thought.
“WATCH OUT!” Veronica shouted suddenly.
The mother dragon slammed her head full force to where the thief had been only a second ago. He half rolled in reaction, half was thrown by the shock wave out of the way.
“My appreciation to you, M’Lady. I should try saving you sometime,” he offered a mittened paw.
She took it.
He was a total stranger and rather scrawny for what she realized was an arctic wolf. This was a temporary alliance, she was sure, allowing them both to get out alive (relatively speaking).
“May I ask your name?” he inquired breathlessly as they ran along the ridge away from the dragons.
“Veronica,” she replied curtly.
He seemed shocked to hear the name. “Come again?”
“VER-ON-I-CA” she repeated. Must be a dullard or hard of hearing as well as being physically lacking… though he is swift on his paws, she mentally noted.
“Are you sure?”
Did he know something? Was there the off-chance that he recognized her? “Chiyra,” she revealed her true name “is the one my mother gave me.” It meant ‘useless girl’ in her native tongue. Her mother had wanted a boy. When she got a girl instead, she alternatively neglected and abused it. “Veronica is my chosen name. It was given to me by a gentle yet strong wolf-man, who told me it was the name of an strong and accomplished woman.”
“As in ‘Veronica Smithe’?”
“Yes… so she is legend among wolves.”
“Have you ever met your namesake?”
“Not in person, no.”
“Ah…” the gears churned silently in his mind. “…still an odd coincidence…” He didn’t reveal what kind of coincidence it could be. “You are rather small for a wolf.”
“You should talk!” She pulled him to a stop. “That would be because I am a FOX. What is your excuse sir?”
“I was rather sickly as a child. My father refused to let me be treated. If I was to survive, I would do it by my own will, he said. Anything else would be coddling a weakness.”
“How awful. I do not believe I like your father.” They must have been poor, she thought. His garments were that of a simple laborer.
“Most do not.” Another small smile, but this was a sad one…some attempt to laugh at a less than ideal life.
She changed the topic. “… You came here seeking something?”
“Ah, yes! I do not suppose you have spent long here?” He waited for her response. “You have? Have you seen a sword…”
“Many swords…”
“This one has a blade made of ice.”
“Hmm…” she thought it over. “It would be difficult to pinpoint in a cavern like this amongst the crystals, but I will assist you in this search.”
“KAW!” A crow flapped up to him excitedly.
“I cannot believe he followed me all the way here,” the man marveled.
Veronica reached out to embrace hr long-lost familiar. It landed on her lace collar, beak nuzzling her muzzle lovingly. She’d sent him out years ago with a note from Obsidian for his mother (the original Veronica) tied to the crow’s leg. The crow let her know that his man, though unrefined in appearance, was kind.
“We may be in luck yet,” she told her rescuer then conveyed a silent message to the crow. It tilted its head knowingly. She threw him into the air, saying, “Seek this sword, Mephistopheles.”
“You named him?”
“Yes,” she didn’t admit it was not that in that moment, but long ago, that she had.
“Do you really think he will be of much help?”
“Who knows better how to select ‘shiny things’ than a crow?” She displayed her own awkward smile, though hers looked a bit more evil than painful. “Now what did you say YOUR name was?”
“Just call me Tom, M’Lady.”
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Twenty minutes later, Mephistopheles shrieked from a lower corner. “KAW! KAW!”
“He may have… found it… how… nice…” Veronica Plague tried to get up from where she had knelt, but the magics of the northwest had taken their toll. Sapped of all her reserves, she collapsed.
“M’Lady!” Tom shouted at her, picking her up by the shoulders. He was hesitant to call her by her first name, since it was intentionally the same of the woman who sent him on this mission. “What am I to do now? Carry you?”
He was surprised at how light she was. She looked like she had ample curves, but felt only as heavy as a wooden rake.
With Veronica slumped over one shoulder he made his way down slowly. He stuck to the small spaces between the larger crystals that would be hard for the mother dragon to fit her head through. The dragon cubs might have… but their mother held them back, like any good mother would.
Reaching the portion of the dragon’s horde that Mephistopheles perched upon, he set the maiden down. “Only a few moments more, M’Lady. I cannot have come this far in my quest without reaching the object I sought.”
In addition to bouncing up and down the length of the swords protective covering, Mephistopheles held several charms and keys in his beak. They looked tarnished and ancient. The bird would not give them up.
“I thought crows liked ‘shiny things’…” He took off his cap to scratch his head, then replaced it. “Alright, let us see if this is it…” Taking off his mittens, he gripped the golden handle of the fabled sword. He pulled the blade from its sheath slowly. Mist twisted up from it, like hot breath on a cold day. The jagged blade was indeed made of ice…
He lifted it into the light. No matter how cold it already was, the sword looked and felt a thousand times colder. He swung it a few times to test its weight and ease of use. With every arc, snowflakes fell. He swung back hard and brought it down on a heap of coins. The coins snapped in half; the blade sang but was unharmed.
“Only one last way to make sure this is ‘the real thing’.” Some of the colloquial terms of the Middlelander youth had crept into his speech.
He rested the flat of the ice blade directly on his outstretched palm. A cold so intense it burned radiated through his limb. Frost zigzagged along the rough skin and through the fur. He bit his lip as the pawpad cracked open. Blood oozed from the wound, pouring down over the edges. It crystallized into tiny stars and misshapen cubes before twinkling down to the toes of his boots.
He watched the process with fascination. Something deep in the back of his mind screamed at how wrong it was that the rest of him had grown so complacent and self-destructive.
He ripped the blade away. “I wonder if the frostbite is severe enough to make me an amputee…” he sighed, not nearly as worried about it as he should have been. “Or will father let me see a healer now? Or… will I sneak behind his back to… it is all I have been doing lately.”
With the uninjured paw he picked up some silver and copper coins and a sapphire necklace for his new lady friend, putting them in his pocket. Once Veronica (the second?) was tucked under one arm and the sheathed Ice sword under another, and Mephistopheles on his hat, he left the cave.
“I cannot skulk about forever. I will need to face it sooner or later… I hope you do not mind going home with me.” He frowned at the unconscious girl.
---------------------------------
Dry exhausted eyes slowly opened and focused. She breathed in the scent of the male wolf lingering in the sheets around her. The wolf in question was on the other side of the canopy bed. It was large enough that both could have reached for one another and not have touched.
They must have spent all night like this… or many nights. Like in the Dark Gate, she’d lost track of time.
In the night, nestled in the shadow, her wings had grown out again. She could feel Darknyss within her pecking at the folded cloak containing the mask. He was annoyed at the foreign object.
‘You are a foreign object, too.’ She thought at him. ‘I let you in without complaint.’
‘I want more room’, Darknyss’ deep voice echoed in her skull.
Wait… all night in this man’s bed… her wings returned…
Brain beginning to function normally, she realized the mistake she’d made.
“I cannot be here,” she gasped, getting up. She drew the midnight blue linens around her curves (she noticed she was down to the slip she’d had under her dress… had he removed her outerwear?).
Her bedmate yawned and scratched his charcoal tipped ears. Now that she could see him clearer she noticed his snout and paws also faded from the white of his main body fur to charcoal markings. “Is it morning?” he squinted at the sunlight pouring through colored shards of the floor to ceiling stained glass window.
“What have we done?” she smoothed down her now tangled raven locks.
“Would M’Lady like a recant of the details?” He chuckled, tail draped thankfully of his hips as he dressed on his side.
“No, I would not.” She answered, furious. “I demand to know where you have abducted me to!”
“I have taken you to the finest bedchamber aside from the King and Queen of the Wolves… this is the Prince’s room”
“If the prince finds we have defiled his bedchamber as such…”
“Defiled?” he cocked his head. “I would never do such a thing. I kept my paws to myself.”
“How do you explain this?” She pointed to her dress, tights, and boots lying on a settee on the opposite wall.
“I thought you would be more comfortable if…”
“You assumed wrong!” She was panicking now. If she had not panicked it would dawn on her that she had no parts to defile, and if he was not panicking, it meant he had no idea of her anatomy and who and what she really was.
“I doubt the Prince will mind.” He yawned again.
“Doubt he will mind? It is most improper, most disrespectful…”
“Do not worry so. The Prince and I are very close. He will understand.” There was a hint of mischievousness in his voice. “Come close, M’Lady, let me whisper a secret in your ear.”
She did as he asked, but only after he was fully dressed. She would not embarrass herself by gazing upon him while he was half-naked.
He inched close to her, putting one arm with a bandaged paw around her shoulder, and whispered, “I AM the Prince of Dantain.”
She reacted with shock, leaping away, at first forgetting to hold the sheet about her. She fixed it quickly and yipped at him. “Most cruel joke! The prince will be angrier still!” She had no reason to doubt it was the prince’s room, it certainly appeared as such. He, however, did not have the appearance of a prince of the wolves.
“I do not joke, M’Lady.” He stood in front of her and looked deeply into her violent eyes with piercing blue ones of his own. “Let me prove it to you.”
He walked over to a wall where a heavily embroidered tapestry hung. He tugged a cord beside it which pulled it back, revealing a telling portrait.
The young man in the painting was undeniably the Prince. PRINCE THOMAS ICESTORM OF THE WOLVES OF DANTAIN, the plaque below it read. The canine in the painting bore a perfect resemblance to the one holding the cord.
“Sire…?” Veronica muttered, her paws drawn to her chest, still clinging to the sheets that hid her black angel wings. “Why did you not inform me of this before, instead of posing as…”
“As what? A normal person?” He looked away from her. He obviously did not like who he was.
And really, was she not guilty of the same thing?
“I am a knight first and a prince by blood. This castle and power are mine by inheritance, not by skill. A knight, however, cannot be esteemed unless he as proved himself worthy: in training, in matches, and on the battlefield. Royalty commands respect but knighthood demands honor. Do you see why I chose to conceal myself as well as why I need a unique sword, M’Lady?”
“Yes, I believe I do.”
“You will forgive my rudeness I trust?” He once again offered his paw to her. “I would like to get to know more about you: why you have that name, where you are from, and why you were a polar dragon’s prisoner. I will reveal all my secrets to you if you reveal yours…”
“I cannot, sire,” she backed away. “There is nothing more that I would like than to be a participant in the royal court of the wolves…. Oh, even that was presumptuous of me to say...”
“No, by all means. Forget rank; let us treat each other like…”
“I cannot!” Violet tears rolled from her violet eyes. “I am sorry!” She grabbed the remainder of her belongings and seemed to dissolve into the shadows on the wall.
He wasn’t quite sure of what he saw, and checked the hallway. “Wait!” he called after her, not knowing what part of the castle she could have taken off to. He lowered his arm when he knew it was futile, which was almost immediately. “To be feared as some CREEP or for my STATUS … which is better, which is worse?”
“Kikiki… Kaw?” Mephistopheles, roosting on the arms of a candelabra, was the only one to answer him.