Mara Wrench's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

Mara pushed past the waypost into thickening snow. The drone buzzed overhead, its camera her only clear eye on the slope. Then the screen flickered. The battery icon blinked red. The drone wobbled and dropped, clattering onto a rough stone cairn half-buried beside the trail. Plastic cracked. Metal scattered between the stones. She ran to it and pulled the broken shell free. Dead. No spare. The storm thickened around her shoulders. Ahead, a stark stone obelisk rose from the white. Its deep warning marks meant the safe trail ended here. Beyond it, the slope vanished into gray. Mara's jaw tightened. She unstrapped the long staff from her pack — gnarled wood, smooth stone head, worn by years of use. If her eyes could not see, the staff would feel. She stepped past the obelisk and began sweeping. The stone head tapped rock, then soft drift, then something that scuffled and hissed. A badger with a thorny snout burst from the snow, ringed ears flat, and bolted downslope. Mara followed its dark trail with her eyes — a clean line carved through the white, leading exactly where she needed to go. She braced the staff and stepped after it. The drone was gone. The aerial search was over. But she had a path now, drawn by claws in the snow, and she would not turn back.