I Want to Live, Part Seven

I looked around. We were on the side of a mountain with snow up to our stomachs. I wondered if we might somehow get a bit taller when we got our disguises, which would make it easier to move through the snow. It was cold, and there was a powerful and brisk wind in the area that would kick up large flurries. So large, in fact, that if you weren’t paying attention, they would bury you in a quick puff. The sky was dark, but not too cloudy, the sun apparently hadn’t finished circling around. I wondered what we were supposed to do. Zoltuce had said something about disguises but he was sitting in the snow and staring off into the northern sky. The three red Sckaens were back in their little huddle, talking to one another. Every now and then one looked out of the huddle towards me, but I was too interested in where we were to gossip with them. They could have been talking about me, I suppose, probably just in awe of me. I am their King, after all.

Zoltuce suddenly stood up, which made the three of them shut up quick and I respectfully stopped trying to build a snow house. The most obvious deficiency with the structure was that it was missing its roof. I hadn’t been able to climb on top of the damn thing because the walls kept sinking in. We watched as a large, glass-like dragon landed, reflecting a myriad of colors onto the snow. The Titan that approached us was like looking at a living rainbow. The sun, that lazy stub, had finally managed to jog around and was now sitting to the east of us. It was a horrible sight, the orange, purple, reds and yellows that were splashed across the sky in its wake made me want to puke. This Ice Titan shimmered in a gorgeous kaleidoscope of all these vibrant colors. Her body was angular with sharp edges, and her elbows, jaw, nose, and eyebrows were lined with small needle-like horns of different sizes with two large tusks that protruded outwards. Her eyes were grey with solid white pupils and us Sckaens had to try and find some cover from the freezing gusts of wind as she landed gracefully next to our master. They exchanged a few words but I was too far away to hear all of it. I did catch something about “Turphol, finds” something, and something else, “happy.” I wasn’t sure if they meant Turphol the great Brown Wyrm. The eldest and supposedly most powerful of all the Titans? I knew that I couldn’t ask, if I did I would probably have to do something terrible, like eat my own tail for having snooped. They probably wouldn’t even cook it, and I would have been a Stub!

I kept my lips sealed and watched as the Ice Titan began to make elegant movements in the snow with her tail. This Hybrid was a bit smaller than our golden lord, about eight or so feet tall and maybe about ten feet long. She had four wings that made an X shape on her back and were practically invisible, made of a very thin membrane. She had thin legs and a long, narrow snout with needle-like teeth that were not curved like Zoltuce. Her wings flattened along her slender side, vanishing against her reflective body. After she had finished, she called us over and motioned to a specific spot below all the sigils in the snow. Once we were exactly where she wanted us, she moved around behind us and pushed us down, suddenly burying us beneath the snow before we could escape the freezing coffin.

I wasn’t sure what the point of all this was and I wanted to trust my master, but it was hard to trust this strange Ice Titan. Had my master even seen what she had done to us? It was so cold in this snowy grave and my body started to feel numb. We could have been there for a second, a minute, an hour, a day, who knows. Well, probably not a day, I would have eaten my own tail if I had waited that long for food. What I do know is that suddenly I was yanked out of the snow by my neck and placed standing upright. Startled, I looked over at the three red Sckaens, wondering if they knew what was happening. They still looked like three red Sckaens, who were, of course, whispering to one another again. Call me naive, but I thought the whole point of those sigils and shoving us into the snow would have been what magically gave us our disguises. Zoltuce, who had apparently pulled us out, now smiled as his gaze met mine. He took a deep breath and said “there you go, it’s all done.”

“You will appear as Sckaens to one another but to the Gathe, you will appear as the smallest of their people, the Hal-Gathe.” Suddenly, Zoltuce got within millimeters of our faces, so close that we could feel the sparks passing from his scales to ours and back. “Now, get in there and do your job.” With that, he crouched down, opened his wings about a third of the way again to gather power, and with a bolt of lightning was up above the clouds.

We hurried away from him as he got ready to shoot off into the sky, knowing how dangerous it is to be near him when he takes flight and lands. In front of us was a small opening that even a Hal-Gathe could barely fit through. It was probably one of their little air or natural light vents that helped illuminate an underground tunnel, or provide fresh air to the Gathes below. Usually there were large iron grates over these vents, and from what I could see there wasn’t one here. No signs that one had been here either, maybe they hadn’t remembered that they had built this shaft. Maybe they just hadn’t gotten around to sealing it off. Maybe it was booby trapped, maybe the Gathe expected us to do something like this. One of the Reds was just about to go in, and my legs moved on their own as my hands reached out, grabbing his tail. “Nooooo!” I yelled slowly, being dramatic.