Frost Winterchase's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

Three days after the riders fled, Frost's bonded serpent began to fail. It coiled at her feet in the valley grass, thin and slow. The heat of the valley pressed on it. Its scales dulled from clear ice to gray slush. When she reached for it, its cold barely touched her palm. Her three summoned serpents she could dismiss and call again. But this wild one had chosen her. If it melted, she lost the truest link she had to the wild magic she needed. She knelt and offered cold from her hands, the way she had bonded it. The serpent lifted its head, then sank back down. The warm air drank her cold before it reached the creature. Frost's fear rose. She needed this magic to face the riders alone. Without the wild serpent, her pack felt hollow. She went to the old ice elf. Caeleth had taught her to surrender rather than grip. He lived hidden here among people who had never seen snow, exiled for teaching frost magic to someone forbidden it. He sat under a frost tree, the only cold shade in the valley. When Frost set the failing serpent before him, he studied it without a word. "It is dying," he said. "The valley is not its home. Cold alone will not save it." "Then tell me what will," Frost said. Caeleth reached into his robe and drew out a weathered book. Icy runes glowed faint on its cracked leather cover. A snowflake sat locked at its center. "You carried this from your town," he said. "You read the parts you could. The rest is old script. My people wrote it." He ran a thumb over the runes. "You do not feed a wild serpent cold. You feed it your own magic. You let it draw from you." Frost stared. "It could pull everything I have." "It could," Caeleth said. "That is why the elders forbade it." He turned the book to her. "Open your hands. Do not push cold at it. Let it take." Frost knelt beside the gray serpent. She opened her hands and stopped guarding herself. She let the creature reach into her. The pull was sharp, like cold water down her spine. Her breath shook. She did not stop it. The serpent's dull scales cleared. Its body firmed from slush back to hard ice. It lifted its head and wound up her arm, bright and strong, cold pouring off it now. Frost gasped and sat back in the grass. She felt scraped thin, but the bond held. The serpent circled her wrist, alive. Caeleth closed the book. "Now you can feed them," he said. "All of them. From yourself." He did not smile. "It will cost you every time. Learn how much you can give before the riders make you spend it." Frost looked at the runes she still could not read, and knew the next lesson waited inside them.