King frostwalker's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Frostwalker carried the cracked crown back toward his castle of ice. The runes still glowed inside the split, faint and blue. He had won the crown but broken it, and now a bigger worry chased him. Muffin ran beside him along the ridge. "They saw the crack," she said. "Word travels. A broken crown looks like a weak one. The raiders will come back for it." She was right. By dawn, dark shapes crossed the snow below. The raiders had turned around. They meant to seize the crown before Frostwalker could hide it or heal it. He gripped it tighter. If they took it now, cracked and glowing, the north would never see a king. Then the sky turned red. Heat rolled across the frost. A dragon dropped from the clouds, its scales lit with running fire. On its back sat a red cat in a gold crown and a fur-trimmed cape. Frostwalker knew him at once. Eric the First, the rival who claimed the throne without any right to it. "You dropped something, kingmaker," Eric called down. He smiled. "A cracked crown. How fitting." His dragon breathed a line of fire across the snow between Frostwalker and the raiders. The raiders froze, unsure who to fight. Frostwalker understood. Eric did not want to help him. Eric wanted the crown for himself. Two enemies now circled the same broken prize, and Frostwalker stood in the middle with it in his paws. "You can't crown yourself," Frostwalker said. "Only I place the crown. That's the old right." "Then place it on my head," Eric said, "or I take it and melt it to slag." Frostwalker's mind moved fast. The runes gave him one chance. He pressed both paws to the crown and pulled cold into the crack, the same way he pulled frost from stone. The glow flared bright. A wave of freezing air burst outward. It struck the dragon's fire and turned it to steam. The dragon screamed and reared back. In the white blast, the raiders scattered and ran. Eric's dragon beat its wings and climbed away from the cold, carrying its rider off. Eric's voice cut through the mist. "This isn't over, Frostwalker. That crown answers to fire too." Then the ridge was quiet. Frostwalker knelt in the snow, breathing hard. The crown sat whole in his paws now. The cold had sealed the crack, fusing the ice back together. But the runes still glowed under the surface, brighter than before. Muffin crouched beside him. "You fixed it." "No," Frostwalker said. "I woke it." The crown pulsed warm against his fur, though it was made of ice. He had kept it from the raiders and from Eric. But now he held something that answered to more than his cold hands. Before he could crown any king, he had to learn what he had woken.