43 lines
No EOL
2.8 KiB
Markdown
43 lines
No EOL
2.8 KiB
Markdown
The wind was rising again, whistling thin and high across the ridgelines like a bone flute. Snow hissed underfoot, powder giving way to crusted plates of ice. Each step forward was a negotiation with the mountain—and the mountain had no mercy left to give.
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Sari moved at the head of the line, a blur of motion and instinct. Her cloak was streaked with frost, the talismans at her throat whispering in the wind. Where the others stumbled, she moved like a creature born to cold and altitude. Her eyes scanned every drift, every contour of the slope. She murmured to the wind as if to a sibling, listening with her skin as much as her senses.
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Behind her, the rest of the group struggled: Eris leaning into the slope, Weylan huffing through chapped lips, Halven muttering oaths as he fumbled with his footing. Telaryn stayed silent, watching Sari more closely with every step.
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The trail narrowed. A ledge slanted across a hollow where snow had banked high against the rock, unstable and laced with fracture lines. Sari raised a hand, halting them.
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“This is wrong,” she said softly. Her voice didn’t carry—it slid into the wind and dissolved.
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“What is it?” Eris asked, lowering into a crouch beside her.
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Sari didn’t answer at first. She knelt and placed both palms to the snow. The air shifted—tightened. Telaryn felt the hair on her arms lift.
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“The spirits are tense here,” Sari whispered. “The slope is ready. We’re walking on a breath held too long.”
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Telaryn stepped closer. “Can we cross?”
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“Maybe. But that’s not what we should do.” Sari stood, brushing snow from her hands. Her eyes had taken on the hollow gleam of second-sight. “If we break it the right way, the mountain will bury the path behind us. It will cost us time. But we’ll vanish.”
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Halven frowned. “And if we misstep?”
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Sari tilted her head toward him. “Then the mountain swallows us too.”
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The snow groaned—distant, shifting deep beneath. A warning.
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“We try,” said Telaryn. “Set the path. Choose the edge. You lead.”
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They moved with painstaking care, following Sari’s whispered directions. Each placement of boot or hand was measured. Weylan slipped once, sending a shower of powder down the slope—he caught himself on Eris’s arm. Everyone froze.
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But the slope held.
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They finished laying the unstable trail along the edge of the corniced drift, the channel primed. With enough force, the mountainside would fall.
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Sari turned once more to Telaryn.
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“I can stir the wind,” she said. “Enough to wake the ice. But not here. Not now.”
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Telaryn nodded. “Then we draw them in. And you break it when they’re close.”
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Sari looked back over the path they'd laid, the glint of rising snow behind them already catching her eye. “The spirits will take their price.”
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She did not say from whom. |