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Ascot looked between Clef and Zazu, biting his lip, not entirely certain whether he wanted to start laughing or apologising as Clef looked more like he had a headache with every second Zazu kept enthusiastically explaining his latest project, and why he really needed to test it now so he could send the blueprints back to Autozam if they worked…
He probably should never have told Zazu that the Guru approved when people were passionate about their work. Especially as Zazu had set about using that to his own advantage.
Clef sighed as Zazu wound up his story, and glanced at Ascot with one raised eyebrow and a tiny smile.
Flushing, Ascot looked down at the floor, trying very hard not to laugh.
“So,” Clef said, “I won’t ask why you can’t send this back to be tested on Autozam - you talked all the way around that very neatly. Just - what likelihood is there that this thing you’ve built is going to explode when you turn it on?”
Zazu grinned, not bothered at being called out for being a possessive creature when it came to his work. “Oh, it’s not that likely to explode. Even if it did, it wouldn’t be all that forceful - it might flatten a few trees, I guess. For about a mile? But that’s hardly anything-”
Clef waved a hand to cut him off, and looked to Ascot. “You’re confident with the protective shield we were working on a fortnight back, right?” Ascot nodded. “Good. As long as you cast it before Zazu starts his experiments, you can go ahead - but I want you to head out of the way to do so. We’ve had reports of the weather doing strange things up in the forests out beyond Eleru recently, I’ve been meaning to send someone to investigate - if you go, you can take this one and his experiments with you. The area’s already been evacuated, not that many people were out there, and that spell should at least keep the forest from being damaged too badly.”
Heading to the shelves at the back of his study, Clef pulled down a folded piece of parchment which he brought back to spread on the edge of his desk. It was blank except for the map-markings about the edge, but as Clef held a hand over it, the lines of an actual map swirled into place. He nodded, and handed it to Ascot. “The centre of this would be fine. But I suggest you walk in - the air has been behaving strangely, apparently.”
“Oh, walking’s best,” Zazu said, leaning into Ascot’s side to check out the map. “Probably shouldn’t bounce the prototype about too much.”
Clef eyed him. “Just remember, if you explode Ascot, Caldina won’t be the only one hunting you down.”
Ascot flushed bright red, but Zazu laughed.
“Eh, it’ll be fine.” Zazu looked up at Ascot, his eyes dancing. “I did test a little version already, on the NSX, it worked fine. I just couldn’t get any usable results from it to see if it’s worth making a full version. Plus Geo won’t let me experiment over a given power level unless it’s an emergency.”
“That seems only sensible,” Clef agreed, wryly. He turned back to Ascot, handing him the map. “If you could have a look about, see if there’s any obvious reasons the weather keeps getting very cold for no reason, just let me know if you find anything? I’m not asking you to try fixing it, just… I don’t have time to go take a look myself.”
“I’ll look,” Ascot promised, folding the map back up. The image would stay on it now until someone who knew the right spell cleared it off. “…Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Just look after both of you out there.” Clef smiled at him, and Ascot flushed again, but smiled too.
oOo
The edges of Cephiro were a bit… wild, in places. Some intentionally so, some because they were still expanding and not entirely stable. The forest of Eleru was stable, and had been for years, but it wasn’t a tame place. The miles of woodland that stretched out beyond Eleru’s borders, however, were both wild and unsettled. Not many people lived out this far to the west, not even that many spirits, so by the time they reached Eleru there were no real roads left to follow. Just a winding dirt path that led in roughly the right direction, marked every hundred paces with the signs the Rangers used for wayfinding.
Ascot knew a bit about the symbols; Rangers were an offshoot of both the Guild of Herders and the Cephiran Guard, a joint unit which patrolled the wilder areas to keep an eye on things, and Ascot had spent a full year studying with the Herders after he got his Iru rank from the mages. Plus, he’d been sharing space with the Captain of the Guard since he and Caldina had got together, years ago. He explained them to Zazu as they went, the marks notched deep into the thick bark of the eakon trees, which healed with a lighter colour to leave the mark clear for as long as the tree remained - so several millennia at least.
They’d walked half a day, spent a night in a Herder’s camp, and set out again in the morning at an easy pace, walking all day to sleep at the edge of Eleru last night, just the two of them under the clear star-studded sky… and the one brighter light which indicated where the NSX was parked. Zazu had sighed at it, and made a show of setting up his blankets on the other side of their fire from Ascot while Ascot watched with amusement. “No roof, no snuggling,” Zazu had grouched. “And we were sharing a tent with three people last night!”
He’d relelnted enough for a goodnight kiss, the touch chaste enough, but lingering, and Ascot had fallen asleep with a smile warming him all through.
It was late afternoon now, almost evening, and Zazu had slowed down rather a lot. But they’d both decided against calling any of Ascot’s friends out. Much though they liked the company, this was mostly an excuse to spend some time alone with each other, something that was hard to come by in the Castle or the NSX. Not that the middle of nowhere was quite alone when your colleagues could watch you from their spaceship, apparently. But time to talk, without being interrupted, with nothing either of them had to rush off to do…
Ascot was enjoying it. He just hoped Zazu was, too, and he wasn’t horribly bored with all these trees and no machines in sight except the one in his backpack. (With the power supply disconnected, he’d admitted to Ascot, so there was no chance of it doing anything interesting on the walk.) But he’d also been looking for signs indicating a Ranger’s shelter for the last three hours.
(…No roof, no snuggling. The forest canopy wasn’t dense enough to count. But if he found them a roof…)
“So what does this wavy squiggle mean?” Zazu asked, pointing at the mark in question.
Ascot blinked at it. “Er, the start of it means a watersource, but I don’t know what the… wriggling… is about.”
Zazu tilted his head at the tree. “…A wriggling water source?”
“Or someone got their knife stuck?” Ascot shrugged. The marks were starting to stand out strongly in the growing dark under the trees. It wasn’t sunset yet, but it was getting close; he shifted from foot to foot, feeling cooler now they’d stopped moving. “Is there anything else on that side?”
“A little box with a hat on it?”
“Oh!” Ascot came round to peer at it, and sure enough, there was the sign for a shelter - with marks for at least half an hour walking to reach it. At their current pace, that probably meant an hour. “…Oh.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a shelter, but it’s another hour, probably - it’ll be dark by the time we get there. It would probably make more sense to find somewhere to camp for the night again.”
Zazu considered it. “A shelter would be nice,” he offered. “Not because- well, that too! But it’s getting cold out here. It’s colder than last night already. If it drops too much, neither of us will be comfortable. Another hour should be reasonable. It’s not that late yet - it’s darker under the trees, but I’ve got a couple of work-lights with me I can get out if we need them.”
It was getting cold. Even for the cool season, it was a bit much. Clef had mentioned the weather doing unreasonable things, and Ascot had grabbed what bad-weather kit he could from LaFarga, but Cephiro just didn’t get that cold naturally; they didn’t have equipment for it. And Zazu didn’t have any camping gear at all on the NSX, he’d scrounged what he had on him from LaFarga right along with Ascot. “Okay,” Ascot nodded. “We’ll try for the shelter. If we don’t find it, I can call a friend or two to stay with us overnight and help keep warm?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Zazu agreed, and shouldered his bag again.
They moved off, and the temperature dropped further; Ascot could actually see his breath in the air in front of him, as if he was in the cold-pantry under the castle kitchens where they kept things frozen solid. He and Zazu started keeping closer together, and moving more cautiously. This was decidedly out of range for Cephiro, and Ascot was about to suggest they turn back and head out of the cold for the night, come back in the morning, when Zazu jolted to a halt beside him.
“What was that?” Zazu said - holding an open palm up and looking up at the sky. Ascot looked up too. The clear sky had been blotted out by fast-piling clouds, a heavy coppery-colour tinging them, and as they watched, little specks of white began to drift down.
They stared a moment longer, then looked at each other in confusion. Ascot held out a hand to catch one, and flinched at the cold of it, then watched in astonishment as the little puff of white melted on his skin. They were staying longer on Zazu’s gloves, and he held it out so they could both stare at them.
“…Is this snow?” Zazu asked, bewildered, using a word Ascot had only ever heard in high-level water spells before. “I’ve read stories about it, but Autozam doesn’t get it anymore… I didn’t think Cephiro did, either?”
“We don’t,” Ascot said, equally as bewildered. He looked up again, and paused. “…It’s coming a lot faster now. Zazu, maybe we should-”
“Shit, look.” Zazu was pointing back through the trees. The ‘snow’ was settling on the ground and staying there, coating everything in white - and doing it fast. The path had already vanished underneath it. The flakes were getting thicker in the air, too, swirling down between the trees and making it hard to see anything. There was a twisting wind starting to come in through the branches, too, and the cold stung when it his his face.
Swallowing, Ascot reached out for Zazu’s hand and moved in close. He didn’t want them losing each other in the suddenly-alien landscape. If this storm was moving this fast, they weren’t going to be able to back out of it even in daylight, let alone at the end of the day. “We were close to the shelter,” he said, leaning in to Zazu’s side. “It should be close, and large enough to see. If we kept going straight…”
“Got it,” Zazu agreed, giving him a thumb’s up and a grin. He bumped their shoulders together. “Hey, we wanted a bit of adventure, right?”
“Not really?” Ascot said, but he had to smile, which was apparently what Zazu had been aiming for by the way his grin turned pleased.
They moved on cautiously, hand in hand, each step taking more effort than the last as the snow lay deeper with every moment. The wind started to moan, a rising wail that Ascot suddenly realised wasn’t the wind at all - just as they stumbled into a clearing, the edges of it just about visible.
A huge shape turned and reared up in front of them, easily three times their height, with a sharp wail and a harder gust of cold.
Ascot froze, frantically trying to make out details. Zazu, though, yelped, grabbed Ascot’s hand tighter, and ran- straight past the creature, dragging Ascot along with him back under the trees.
The wail turned into a shriek and the snow turned, horribly, pelting at them from all sides as they ran on. Ascot’s lungs ached as he gasped in cold air, and he followed along trusting Zazu not to run them into a tree. Zazu had one of his work-lights out of a pocket and in his hand, at least, the brightness reflecting back off a thousand snowflakes, and the thick layer of it on the ground.
Another shape reared at them from the dark, but when Zazu stumbled and would have turned, Ascot took the lead and headed straight for it, his hands finding the doorway to the shelter without help from his eyes; he pulled Zazu into the quiet dark, and slammed the door shut.
There was a bar for the door; Ascot got it in place, and then thumped the stone set into the wall by the entrance, activating the built-in shield. Then he paused, leaning on the wall, trying to get his breath back. He couldn’t feel his toes or his fingers, and his ears ached terribly, but they would be safe here for the night.
When he managed to turn about, Zazu had set the work-light on a table which folded down from the far wall and was examining the little heater beside it. As Ascot watched, he found the trigger, and switched it on - there was still strength in the spell, fortunately; it hummed to life and began emitting a soft golden glow. Sighing, Zazu got back to his feet and stretched, his back cracking audibly. “Well! That was interesting. I can’t hear our friend outside, so I don’t think we were followed. Is this what we were aiming for?”
Ascot nodded, looking around. The little hut was shaped like a large egg, with a flat floor. He’d asked why, once; apparently it took less energy to run a shield over a single curved surface than one with corners, and the spells on these shelters were only recharged once or twice a year - whenever a Ranger with the ability to do so came by. It was small, inside, with the little table and two stools over on one side by the heater, a kitchen area to his left, a little screened area to the right which would hold the toilet and maybe a showerhead, and a bed folded up against the wall beyond that. That was it. The largest things in the room were the table and bed, and they folded up in case a large group of people needed to squeeze in - you could get ten people in bedrolls on the floor, if they were all friendly and no-one kicked.
“I like this,” Zazu said, patting the table where it hinged out of the curved wall. “This is well designed, not just an idea with some magic holding it together.” His voice was shaking slightly. Outside of the wind, Ascot couldn’t see his breath in the air anymore, but it wasn’t that much warmer - and the little heater wasn’t designed for weather this extreme.
Dropping his bag on the floor by Zazu’s, Ascot came across to him. “We need to warm up. My coat is wet through with that snow stuff.”
“Mine, too,” Zazu agreed, and started to peel it off with shaking hands. “…If we set these stools by the heater, we can spread the coats over them? My backpack should be okay, so my blankets will be. How are yours?”
Ascot struggled out of his coat, found his jacket was also damp about the edges and the shoulders, and pulled that off too. His boots had protected his trousers where they were tucked into them, at least, but his socks were both wet along the inside of the foot. Those off, he knocked the snow off the outside of his rucksack and hoped as he opened it up.
The bag had held; everything inside was still perfectly dry, though a little cold. Ascot pulled out his bedroll and dropped it onto the bed, then went hunting for dry socks in the bottom of the bag.
“I’m not sure we’re both going to fit on this,” Zazu said, and Ascot looked up to find him in a similarly partially-dressed state, inspecting the bed. Ascot reached out without a word and tapped the trigger on the side of it, and watched Zazu blink as the bed expanded out to twice the size. Not a full double bed, but larger than the one Ascot had in his room, which they’d managed to share before now. “…Huh. It’d be really handy if your bed did that,” Zazu grinned at him, even though he was still shivering. “Or mine, but I think Geo’d court-martial me if I went about enchanting bits of the NSX. …Might be worth it.”
Ascot threw a sock at him, then had to retrieve it, feeling his face flush. “Grab your blankets too, we should get in the bed, the heater’s not meant for temperatures this low and we still need to warm up.”
“I can think of some interesting ways, but I think I’m too cold for any of them,” Zazu told him. He came back with his blankets quickly enough, and started arranging them all into a nest on the bed as Ascot got the kitchen working just long enough to make them some tea. “At least we get to snuggle! Uh, if you want to snuggle, that is.”
Handing him a mug, Ascot leaned in to press a kiss to Zazu’s forehead - which was cold and slightly damp. “I like curling up with you,” he said, and didn’t say anything about the rest of the comment - he couldn’t think of a response he would manage without going bright red.
They curled in together, wrapped up in each other as much as the blankets, with the tea and some of the food from their bags. The blankets warmed quite quickly, and the air outside them was losing some of its bite as the heater did its best. But Ascot kept turning his head to listen; he could hear the wind, still, and under it came the distant wail.
“Hey,” Zazu said, reaching to coax Ascot’s head back in his direction. “It’s too dark and too cold to try doing anything tonight.”
“…I’m not meant to be doing anything, just reporting back,” Ascot said, weakly.
Zazu rolled his eyes. “It’s a creature, you’re going to do something. But not tonight.”
“It’s upset.”
“Yes, and in the morning when it’s calmer you’re going to find it and have a chat or whatever you do. But right now if you go out there, you’re going to freeze, and then I’ll be cold.” Zazu pouted at him, blatantly exaggerating the gesture, and Ascot finally laughed and relaxed against him.
“I’ll wait,” he promised, and Zazu kissed his cheek, tea-warmed lips startlingly hot on Ascot’s cold skin.
oOo
In the morning, pale light filled the shelter, filtering in through a skylight at the top of the room. Zazu was busy checking his clothes had dried out when Ascot opened the door and gave a startled, wordless exclamation. Zazu dragged his jacket on and shoved his feet in his boots before turning around, protection against the cold air which had spilled in. But when he did look, he lost his ability to talk, too.
Everything outside was white, a thick coverlet of glittering white ice, but it was soft - Zazu’s feet sank into it when he followed Ascot out. The wind was gone, and so were the clouds. Morning light spilled down and reflected off the snow, nearly painful to look at. Zazu pulled his gloves out of a pocket and got them on, then scooped up a handful, crumbling it between his fingers. It stuck together when pressed; he got another handful and squeezed it, some of those stories from centuries ago coming back as he weighed the resulting lumpy ball in his hand. “Hey,” he said, looking at it. “Ascot-”
Ascot was right behind him as he turned, one hand full of snow, which he promptly shoved down the back of Zazu’s neck before running off cackling.
Yelping, Zazu wriggled, yanking his shirt from his trousers and bouncing until most of the cold had fallen out. He scooped up a larger handful and made a bigger ball, aimed, and tossed it straight at Ascot’s head.
Ascot ducked, but it knocked his hat off; then it was an all-out battle, snow flying everywhere as they ran in circles about the shelter, laughter echoing off the trees. Zazu had better aim, but Ascot had a longer range, so it was a fairly even fight until Zazu gave in and charged, knocking Ascot down into a pile of snow which had come off the shelter in a heap. Ascot grabbed Zazu as he fell, pulling him down too and then twisting them so Zazu was on his back with the snow pressing into the back of his neck, his hair, about his ears. He was breathless, laughing silently, and the snow was so cold and Ascot’s lips were too, as Zazu pressed up into the heat of him, shifting so he could wrap his legs about Ascot’s waist and set about generating their own heat.
A confused ‘Mmrrrr?’ echoed at them from the other side of the clearing.
Zazu and Ascot looked at each other a moment. Zazu knew Ascot hadn’t managed to summon one of his friends to help in the fight - that would have been cheating - and Zazu knew what they all sounded like anyway. He looked across the glade, resigned, and the creature there was so large that the way it was trying to hide under one of the trees was comical enough to make it a little less terrifying.
It was… enormous, a big shaggy-coated creature the height of the FTO and just as long, with four tiny stubby legs and a bizarrely extended nose, a lump on its back which Zazu reckoned was probably wings.
He sighed, and patted Ascot on the shoulder. “Go on, then,” he said. “Do your thing. I’ll make breakfast.”
oOo
An hour later Ascot introduced him to their new friend, Lanval, who was apparently less than a year old - a somewhat terrifying thought, Zazu hoped he was at least fully grown - and had been trying to lower the temperature because he was itching all over. He was shedding his winter coat, only he’d not known that was the problem, or how to solve it. Which was how Zazu spent most of a day helping Ascot comb out the coat of a creature the size of a reasonable house.
By evening, they were done, and Lanval had wandered happily out into the woods again. The snow had all melted as Lanval let the spell go, no longer itching everywhere, and Ascot looked about the muddy field, clumps of fur drifting about it, and sighed. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to experiment today,” he said.
Zazu stretched, and let himself grin as he caught Ascot watching the motion. “I’m not,” he said, happily. “We’ll need to clean all this fur up tomorrow, too - I reckon we can justify at least two more nights here before we have to go anywhere. Three, maybe, if I need to redo any tests, and I’m sure I can work out something I’ll need to redo.”
“…Oh?” Ascot’s face was red, but he was stepping closer, hands sliding about Zazu’s waist.
“Three nights with our own roof and no one to disturb us,” Zazu told him, feeling decidedly gleeful. He stretched up to kiss Ascot properly, mouth to mouth, taking his time. “…That skylight is opaque, though, right? It wasn’t just snow?”
“It’s shielded,” Ascot promised him, grinning. “No one can see in. Is that good enough for your plans?”
“Come inside with me and find out?” Zazu asked, and then he kissed Ascot again. Which made the walk back to the shelter rather slow, but a lot of fun.
Perhaps not as much fun as a snowball fight, but maybe they could find Lanval again and get him to help out with that before they left.
oOo