Glacius Frostmaw's Arc

Chapter 3 of 14

Glacius came off the last slope with the mountain breaking behind him. Below the tree line stood a small hut of packed ice, and beside it a cherry tree in pale frost. His sister worked at the tree's roots, packing snow, blind to the wall of stone rushing down. Skara. Three winters he had not seen her face. He shouted her name over the roar. She turned. Her blue eyes found him, then the wave of rock above him. "Run," he called. "The peak is falling." She did not run. She grabbed a spear leaning on the hut and set her feet. "You did this," she said. Flat. Certain. She looked at the sword in his hand, at the dragon head glowing blue on its hilt. "You took the heart. I left it there for a reason." "I came to get you out," he said. He reached her as the ground split. A crack tore between his boots. The earth dropped on both sides. Skara stumbled. Glacius caught her arm, but there was no solid ground to stand on. Ice and dirt broke loose beneath them and slid toward the drop. He had her. He had nowhere to put his feet. Skara looked down at the falling slope, then up at him. "You can't carry me on air, brother." He looked at the sword. The blade he had forged to protect them. Strength had not tamed it. Purpose had. He drove the point straight down through the shifting ground. "Guard," he said. The dragon head flared white. Cold shot out from the buried blade. The loose slope beneath their feet froze hard, a plate of solid ice bridging the crack. It held. Boulders struck the frozen shelf and shattered above them. Glacius pulled Skara flat against the ice and covered her head. The mountain poured past on either side and did not touch them. When the roar faded, the slope was changed. The old peak was gone, sheared to a broken ridge. Their frozen shelf stood above a field of raw stone. The cherry tree was buried. The hut was gone. Skara pushed off the ice and stood, breathing hard. "You saved my life," she said. She was not soft about it. "With the thing that nearly killed me." Glacius pulled the sword from the ice. "It holds now. It protects." She stared past him at the shattered ridge, and something set in her jaw. "Then it comes with us," she said. "My brother is up there. Not this one. The warlord took him and sealed him in a glacier fort on the far ridge. The seal closes in three days." She met his eyes. "You broke one mountain. Help me break into another." Glacius looked at the blade, then at the ruined slopes he had made. He had come for a weapon. Now he had a road, and a debt, and a sister who would not wait.