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Thaw
Hravn and Valdae
Night came early, this far north. As she huddled against an old, moldy wall, wondering if it was safe enough to risk a fire, Hravn berated herself for forgetting one of the vitally important facets of life in the frozen wastes. The aurora glimmered overhead, a source more of wavering, disorienting shadows than useful light. The moon was new tonight, the first of the new year. A cry rang out, echoing gloomily in the vast caverns of the semi-drowned elven ruins. Hravn fervently hoped that some seabird had shrieked. She sniffed, shivering miserably as the echoes faded. The night was only going to get colder and darker. She had to get moving—or build a fire.
Carefully, she pulled herself up a fallen pillar, crouched to make herself less of a target, and surveyed her position. A great swathe of freezing cold water, littered with the tips of icebergs and half-broken domes of old elven towers—cracked and dry in the winter air, waiting for the thaw to cover them up again—lay between the gnome and the mainland. In the dark, Hravn had no way of knowing if something more dangerous lurked beneath the waves. Besides, it had been a brutally cold, long swim in the marginally warmer temperatures of the late afternoon. Now, if she got lost, she would certainly freeze to death…
On the other hand, she was standing on a pillar that had fallen against and partially sheltered the moldy backside of a forgotten temple wall. The ground in between the v of wall and pillar was damp sand, strewn with seaweed and the detritus of several wrecked ships that had washed in over the course of who knew how many summers. The temple itself, as well as the other surrounding buildings, were inhabited by huge, ruthless creatures she thought were called Kvaldir. Hravn wasn’t exactly sure what they were or where they came from, but they had sacrificed a village of tuskarr and a probably unimaginable number of naga before that. They’d probably be very interested in sacrificing a gnome, too, should they catch her.
Hravn sighed, taking a good, long look at the cold water, its depth magnified by the reflection of the aurora above. The enveloping mists that lay over the region seemed to creep in a little closer.
“Damn it,” Hravn muttered, and slipped back down to the packed sand. Swimming for land was suicide. She’d have to risk a fire. She straightened, stretching, glad to have made a decision. Between the seaweed and the shipwreck flotsam, she was certain she could find enough fuel to keep a small fire burning for the rest of the night. Once she had gathered a few heaping piles of the smelly stuff, she stacked it as an extra windbreak across the front of the v between the pillar and the wall. She dug a bit of tinder out of her pocket. It was a bit damp from her earlier swim, but, well, she was a mage. She could get stone to burn if she really needed to. She set her tinder down carefully, narrowed her eyes, lifted her hand, and gestured. The handful of tinder went up in a puff of smoke, but the magic fire held on for a moment longer, just long enough for Hravn to start piling on bits of seaweed. It hissed and smoked horribly, but she managed to get enough fuel on the fire to keep it going. It was small, and smoky, and smelled like brine, but already she could feel her face beginning to thaw as she leaned over, rubbing her cold hands. She really hoped that the smoke would get lost in the mist and that the fire was small enough for her driftwood barrier and the pillar to hide the light.
Time passed. The aurora shifted, its colors swirling into different patterns overhead. Hravn got up once to replenish her stock of flotsam. She moved out into the dark cautiously, quietly, and tried not to knock her bits of driftwood together too loudly as she carried the stacks back in her arms. The darkness made her nervous. She could hear the Kvaldir moving in the ruins, drinking and laughing. Their harsh voices sent prickles of unease down her back. As she turned the corner to her little alcove with her last armload for her depleted barrier, she felt an odd tingle at the back of her mind. She frowned and dropped her driftwood with a very imprudent clatter as she lifted a hand to scratch the back of her head. She turned, searching for the culprit, lifting her staff from its resting place across her back.
There! Up on the platform of a ruined hall, in between the jagged pillars, a shadow different from the swirl of shrouding mist was moving. Though the shadow was quite small, Hravn was grateful for the channel of water that ran between the ruined hall and the moldy temple. For a moment, her eyes seemed to meet those of the shadow. The tingle in her mind vanished.
Hravn blinked, shrugging off the encounter. She turned back to building up her stack of flotsam. Behind her, horribly loud in the still Northrend night, something splashed. Hravn barely stifled a shout; she launched herself back into the protected nook, putting the v of pillar and wall at her back, and her barrier and the fire as shields before her. She held her staff protectively in front of her, her fingers beginning to glow with the blue light of a frostbolt held at the ready. But the splash of someone swimming, even as it came closer, grew weaker and slower. There was no attack when the sound stopped.
Curiosity overcame caution. She lifted a bit of driftwood she’d set alight as a torch, and began to creep forward. There was a puddle of darkness half-out of the water, struggling to crawl towards Hravn’s small fire. A hand raised—and the shadows peeled back into the mist, revealing a shivering, sodden gnome shadow priest. The effort of lifting her personal cloak of shadows was too much; she collapsed against the sand, brown eyes drifting shut, her dark, loose hair freezing to her face in the chill air. Her feet were still in the water.
Hravn didn’t stop to think. She dropped her staff, flung her makeshift torch back into her fire, lunged forward, and grabbed hold of the other gnome’s trembling form, half-lifting her unconscious weight. Swearing under her breath at how heavy the gnome was, at how quickly the air was turning the moisture in her clothes to ice, Hravn dragged the priest back into her crude shelter.
The priest roused slightly as Hravn began to strip away the other gnome’s icy cloak, cap, and pauldrons. Hravn helped her sit up as she blinked, shaking herself awake. She managed to pull her own gloves off with trembling hands as Hravn wrapped her warm, dry cloak around the other gnome.
“D-Don’t,” she began to protest, her teeth chattering. “You’ll c-catch c-cold…”
“Don’t be silly, you’re soaking wet and I’m not,” Hravn snapped. “What possessed you to try to swim that?”
The priest shuffled a little closer to the fire, holding her hands perilously close to the flames. “Got c-caught by the d-dark,” she said. “For-forgot it g-gets dark so early.”
“Me too,” Hravn said ruefully. She couldn’t find fault in the other gnome’s explanation, as she had made the exact same mistake. She threw another bit of driftwood on the fire, risking a slightly bigger blaze to get more heat in the little corner they were sitting in. The ice was beginning to melt out of the priest’s robes, soaking her all over again.
“Th-there’s no shelt-ter in th-that hall,” the priest said. “T-too many K-K—” She stopped talking, swiping at her running nose with the back of her hand. “Anyway, they’re having s-some sort of meeting. I d-ducked behind a pillar—s-saw your l-l-li—” She sneezed explosively.
Hravn pulled a scrap of cloth from her bag and handed it to the priest, who murmured a thank you before blowing her nose.
“So, you hoped you’d be safer down here, and then you saw me collecting more firewood, and knew you would be.” Hravn followed the logical thread of the priest’s decisions as the other gnome huddled even closer to the fire. She was steaming in the warmth, and her breathing began to even out as she began to stop shivering.
“I hope you d-don’t mind, I looked through your eyes,” the priest said. “I wanted t-to make sure it wasn’t a bigger drop than I th-thought.”
Hravn lifted a hand to the back of her head, remembering the odd tingling sensation. Then she frowned. “Why didn’t you levitate across?”
The priest suddenly sat up straight, her eyes wide, her mouth a surprised little o. Then she ducked her head and huddled deeper into Hravn’s cloak. “I guess I didn’t think of that.”
Hravn chuckled. The other gnome looked at her, then began to laugh too. She had almost completely stopped shivering. “Are you doing something to make the fire hotter? So I dry out faster?”
Hravn grinned. “Mmhm.”
The priest nodded thanks.
Neither said anything as the fire crackled and popped and the night wore on. Hravn left once more to collect driftwood. When she came back, the priest was pacing, stretching thawed limbs. She’d hung her cloak on a jagged bit of the pillar to dry. She had a book in her hands, and she was quietly rifling through the pages, drying those out as well. Must be magic, Hravn thought, the ink hasn’t run at all. There was a long package lying on the ground that hadn’t been there before. Hravn thought she’d seen something lying on the sand where she’d dragged the priest from the water, but she hadn’t paid it any attention. A thought occurred to her now.
“Did you find the monster-killing spear thingy?” she asked.
The priest blinked, stopped her pacing, and sat back down. She pulled back a bit of the cover, revealing a shiny weapon edge. “Were you looking for it, too?”
“Yeah,” Hravn nodded.
“That explains it.” The priest tilted her head, sizing up the mage. Hravn returned the stare, brown eyes boring into brown. Neither looked away. Finally, the priest said, “When it gets light, did you want to kill the thing together?”
Hravn smiled. “Sure. Have you hunted a lot of monsters?”
“Some,” the priest said with studied modesty. “We should get some sleep.”
Hravn nodded again. “You first. I didn’t nearly freeze to death tonight.” The priest stuck out her tongue, but settled down in the corner without protest. Hravn sat too, her staff drawn across her knees as she prepared to keep watch. They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“Oh,” the mage said suddenly. “I’m Hravn.”
“Valdae,” came the sleepy reply.
Silently, the two watched as the colors of the aurora melted together and began to fade, waiting for the dawn.