Reiji Kageshiro's Arc

Chapter 8 of 4

At dawn Reiji laid out the plan. The wolf would hunt the captor's old road. But the frozen plain was wide, and one nose could not cover it fast. Scarlett spoke first. "We split up. Two search paths. We cover twice the ground." Reiji nodded. He took Scarlett and her wolf. The other three formed the second team. They agreed to meet at a broken ridge by nightfall. Reiji walked beside Scarlett for hours. Her wolf swept the snow in long arcs, nose down. Purple lines still marked its fur, faint under the white light. "He's slower than he was," Scarlett said. She kept her voice flat, but her hand stayed near his neck. "The flower saved him. Now it eats him." Reiji said nothing. He knew she blamed herself. Then the wolf froze. Its hackles rose. A low growl rolled from its chest. Scarlett drew both crossbows. "That's not a track," she said. "That's a warning." The ice cracked. The ground heaved. A massive serpent burst up through the frozen crust. Its scales shone like glacier ice. Spines ran down its back, and pale runes glowed along its coils. The beast towered over them, ancient and slow to wake. Its jaws opened, and cold breath rolled out like fog. Reiji drew his mother's katana. The blade hummed against his palm. "Run for the ridge," he told Scarlett. But the serpent's tail swept wide and cut off their path. They were trapped between its coils and open ice. Gunfire cracked from the flank. Corvus Reave charged in, his purple scythe raised. He pulled the trigger on the handle and a bullet burst from the barrel. It sparked off the beast's scales. Behind him came Crimson Valdris, red aura blazing along his silver sword, and Aria with her blue lantern glowing bright. The second team had heard the roar and turned back. "So much for splitting up," Corvus shouted. He fired again. "Bad idea from the start." The serpent struck at him. Reiji ran under its jaw and drove the katana into a seam between scales. The blade screamed with light. Crimson stabbed his sword into the beast's other side. Aria's lantern flared, and the runes on the serpent's body flickered and dimmed. Scarlett's wolf leapt and clamped its jaws on the throat. The beast shuddered and sank back into its hole. The ice sealed over it. Silence returned. Reiji dropped to one knee, breathing hard. The plan had failed. Splitting up had nearly killed them all. But as the fight ended, Aria pointed past the beast's collapsed pit. A wide, packed groove ran through the snow there, old and straight. Wheel ruts. A road. "The serpent guarded it," Aria said. "That's the way in." Reiji stared at the frozen track leading north. They had split up and paid for it in blood. But the wolf's nose had found nothing. The monster's den had. The road to the frost keep lay open, and now they knew what watched it.