The Foxfire Saga

The cold was different now.

It no longer clawed at Skadi or gnawed through the joints of her suit. It curled around her like breath in a lover's lungs. At the same time sharp, possessive, and intimate. A reminder of who she'd become.

Beside her, Fenrik trudged through drifts that swallowed them to the knee. His suit's servos whined under the strain, visor clouded by the frost-scratched wind. Skadi could hear his breath in her comms. Tight, wary, always a little too careful around her now.

Good. Let him be careful.

Wind scraped across the flats, rattling loose snow like dry bones. Their suits registered the temperature at minus seventy, warnings flashing amber on Fenrik's shoulder display. Skadi's suit pinged the same alarm, but she didn't bother to acknowledge it. The cold couldn't kill her anymore. Not like it had killed—

"You're quiet," Fenrik said at last. His voice cracked through the static like ice under boot. "Haven't cursed me once in twenty minutes. That's a record."

She didn't answer. Didn't trust herself to. The words that burned at the back of her throat were crueler than even he deserved. And maybe a tiny part of her, a part that still sounded like her mother, soft and warm, didn't want to drive him away completely.

But that voice was so small these days. Buried under cold and rage.

A flare of ice crawled under her skin, sharper than any blade. Her fingers flexed reflexively inside the suit's armored gloves.

He turned slightly, enough that she caught the dim glow of his visor. "Skadi… I know you still blame me."

Skadi's throat tightened. Blame. That was too small a word. Too neat for the screaming wound inside her chest. Their mother's body suspended in that tank, dissolving bit by bit. The way her eyes had lost focus, her last breath trapped behind glass.

Fenrik shifted, trudging back toward her until he stood close enough that she could've reached out and slashed the air right out of him.

His voice dropped, rough with something like desperation. "But you can't carry it all yourself. Haven did this. Ashara did this. Karn was just the maggot that burst first. You and me… we're still here. Still family."

Family. The word tasted sour.

Skadi's breath came in slow, icy pulls. Family's dead.

But she didn't say it. Because the truth was colder than the wind. He was right about some things. About Haven, about Ashara, about all of it. If she wanted revenge to mean anything, she couldn't stand alone. Even if it meant standing beside the brother who'd let their mother die.

So she gave him nothing. Just pushed past him, heavy boots kicking up dry powder, her breath clouding the inside of her visor in quick angry bursts.

Behind her, Fenrik let out a shaky exhale. She could almost hear him trying to decide if he should follow. Of course he did. He always did. Maybe he still thought he could fix it.

They crested a low rise. The wind died for a heartbeat, and the world opened up. Miles of fractured plain, silver-blue under Zephara's distant sun. And there, crouched beneath drifts and the long shadows of their breath, rose the scarred dome of Isvann Hold.

Its outer towers were shattered, skeletal frames clawing at the sky, and the distant glow of its internal grids was patchy at best, a wounded thing trying to remember how to live.

Skadi stared, breath fogging against her visor. Something twisted low in her chest.

Home. Broken. Cold. Struggling to keep itself together under too many old wounds. Not so different from her.

Fenrik rested a hand on the pistol at his hip, thumb drumming a nervous rhythm on the worn grip. "We're close. Red Stripes have a cell camped inside. Should be willing to deal, so long as you keep your… you know."

His hand twitched, vague and awkward. Skadi let a low, cold chuckle slip through her mic.

"Keep my what, Fenrik?" Her voice slid across the channel, thin as ice. "My pretty new eyes? The chill that ruins everything I hold close?"

His exhale rattled. "I meant your temper."

Skadi let out a quiet, brittle laugh, no warmth in it at all. The air around her seemed to tighten, the faint swirl of frost curling off her suit more pronounced, as if the cold was drawn to her heartbeat.

"Don't worry," she said, words edged with something that might've been amusement. "I'll be on my best behavior."

Then she started down the slope.

They were heading toward the same end, she supposed. Both of them wanted to see Haven burn, to watch Ashara choke on the scraps. The difference was Fenrik pretended he was reaching for something cleaner. That he could still build a future unsullied by the blood on his hands.

Skadi let the frost gather thicker around her boots, spiraling out in ghostly tendrils that cracked under Fenrik's tread when he fell in behind her.

Her hands were already marked. So were his. Some stains didn't wash out. No matter how hard you lied to yourself.

They were close now. The outer flanks of Isvann rose ahead in fractured tiers, half the old structures still gutted from the chaos. Battle scars that matched the raw cracks inside her own chest.

It should have been simple to blame Haven. The boot on all their throats. The raids, the quiet purges, the way even the breath in your lungs felt like it had a tariff. She'd grown up knowing that weight. But her mind always circled back to that day, clawing open wounds she couldn't stitch closed.

The crash of boots in narrow halls. Fenrik at her side, she'd thought, then, that they were fighting the same enemy. Armed men flooding into their home, all because of a fox-faced outsider. Akiko. That's where it all began to unravel.

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Captured alongside the kitsune, caged like dangerous animals because she knew her, because somehow just being near Akiko was crime enough. Then the break. Akiko smashing them free, desperate, promising safety she had no way to guarantee. So late. All that precious time wasted when they could have been saving her mother.

Skadi's teeth pressed together until her jaw ached. She remembered the final clash like frostbite: Akiko howling with some foreign power, and that cursed breath that twisted the half-finished corruption already festering in Mother's veins. It had latched onto her too, left her changed, hollowed, full of knives made of ice.

It was easier to believe one neat lie:

If Akiko had never come, none of this would have happened.

Zephara wouldn't have split open under the strain. Her mother wouldn't have become something else, only to be destroyed. She wouldn't be this frozen mockery of herself, living on borrowed frost.

If that kitsune simply vanished, if her presence stopped rippling through every fragile piece of their world, maybe things would stop shattering.

It was a fragile, convenient delusion. But Skadi held it close all the same, like a charm against the dark. Fenrik had convinced her, for now, to set it aside, to turn her fury on Haven and Ashara instead. And she would. For a time, at least. But before the next firestorm came, she would be ready.

The thought curled deeper, sinking like a blade between old ribs, then snapped as Fenrik cleared his throat. A low, warning cough over the channel.

Skadi blinked, attention jerking outward. They'd come up on the entrance to the Hold without her noticing, lost in that spiral of frost and blame.

Two guards in patched suits stood by the heavy airlock doors, rifles propped against their shoulders. Their helmets tilted, wary and uncertain, but it wasn't just suspicion that made them edge back. Frost was creeping across the door's outer seals, spreading in delicate, lethal filigree from where she stood. One of the indicator lights sparked, went dark.

Fenrik's voice was tight. "You're freezing the hatch. We're not getting in until you—"

Skadi closed her eyes. Inhaled. Pushed down against the tide inside her. It was like bracing both hands against the edge of a calving ice shelf, forcing it to still, to hold. Bit by bit, the frost ebbed, color returning to the indicator's glow.

When she finally opened her eyes, her breath fogged inside the helmet, but the creeping glaze on the metal had stopped.

"Better?" she muttered, voice clipped.

Fenrik only gave her a look. One that managed, somehow, to be both relief and a subtle rebuke. Lifted his hands, palms out. Slow, deliberate, so they wouldn't spook.

"We're just here to talk," he said. "Looking to resupply, maybe make a few connections. You know how thin things are getting out there."

The nearer guard's visor twitched, betraying a glance at his partner. The second man's helmet bore a faint strip of red paint. An old marking, faded, but clear enough once you knew to look.

Fenrik saw it too. Let out a slow breath, then shifted his stance just enough to broadcast confidence. "You're Red Stripes, right? Haven's tightening the noose on the routes, and Nika wouldn't want us out there blind. Thought it best to check in first."

That earned the faintest shift in posture from the guard with the red mark. The name drew a reaction. Whoever they were, their name carried weight here. Skadi filed it away, feeling the tension shift as the guard muttered something low to his companion.

After a moment of terse, crackling private comms, the second guard let out a resigned breath.

"Fine," he said, voice crackling over the external speaker. "But keep your… friend on a tight leash. The last thing we need is more systems icing up."

Fenrik dipped his helmet. "Won't be a problem."

He gave Skadi a small jerk of his chin: come on.

Skadi exhaled, frost trailing in the helmet's tight air. Then followed, her boots crunching over the thin layer of brittle ice she'd left behind.

The hatch rolled closed behind them with a heavy clank, sealing out the wind. Frost hissed where Skadi's aura met the metal, but she reined it in by slow degrees, the cold tugging at something deep in her chest as if to protest. The inner doors would cycle soon.

For a heartbeat, she thought she saw Raya on the other side of the small view-plate. That slim figure, that dark hair pulled back against the bulk of a suit. Her pulse lurched, throat tightening in a rush of feelings she wasn't prepared to name. But when the figure shifted, it was only a stranger, the resemblance a cruel trick of poor lighting and distance.

Still, it left her hollow.

Of course Akiko was loved. Of course she'd found someone to curl close to in the dark, to stand at her side through every storm. She hadn't lost everything. She hadn't felt her world ripped out from under her while her own hands were slick with blood.

Akiko got to belong to something.

Skadi clenched her jaw, a spike of cold crawling up her spine that had nothing to do with magic.

It was easier, sometimes, to hate the shape of that happiness than to admit how desperately she wanted it for herself.

The inner hatch finally ground open, seals parting with a reluctant sigh. Warm, stale air met them, heavy with old machine oil and the faint tang of recycled water.

Skadi stepped through first, boots thudding on the grated floor. Her frost followed, creeping out in delicate fractals before fading under the Hold's higher temperature.

Beyond the threshold, the corridor stretched on in patchwork repairs and dim overhead strips that flickered uncertainly. People moved past in small clusters, all bundled in worn suits or thick jackets, their voices hushed. A few paused to glance over, eyes darting quickly away when they caught sight of Skadi's shadow trailing chill in her wake.

Fenrik came up beside her. Together, they moved deeper into the Hold, leaving the hatch to close with a hollow, echoing clang behind them.

Skadi's hands clenched. The recycled air in the corridor bit colder than the outside frost, or maybe that was just her own magic leaking through again. It stung less than the heat burning in her chest.

"Do you need a minute?"

Fenrik's voice cut through the thrum of the Hold's ancient ventilation.

She glanced back. Frost clung to his visor despite the warmer interior, his posture steady, patient. Even beneath her anger, that damned undercurrent of concern was there.

"No," she snapped, sharper than intended. Her voice cracked, drawing curious stares from a pair of locals edging around them.

She turned away, quickening her pace through the narrow hall.

Fenrik followed. Calm and measured, his boots rang hollow on the deck plates.

"You can't keep carrying this."

"I'm not carrying anything."

"Skadi—"

"I said I'm not."

He exhaled, boots crunching on scattered frost left in her wake. "Every time I pushed us closer to these people, this place, you shut down. It's not Karn you're most angry at. Not Haven. It's her."

Skadi stopped mid-step. Her breath caught, sharp and ragged. Frost feathered out from her boots, spidering across the metal floor.

"Don't."

"Why not?" Fenrik pressed. "You blame her. For everything. The Hold. Mother—"

"Because it is her fault!"

Her voice tore through the corridor, jagged and raw. Magic surged, thin sheets of frost crawling up the bulkheads like grasping hands.

"If she hadn't come here. If she hadn't dragged us into her mess—"

"Then what?" Fenrik cut in, voice roughening. "You think Karn wouldn't have come? That Haven would've just let us live quiet, happy little lives out here forever?"

She stared at him. The temperature dropped, frost crystallizing breath mid-air.

"That doesn't matter," she hissed, trembling. "I care that she gets to walk away. She comes. And leaves. And she loses nothing. While the rest of us, we're too fragile to survive in her wake."

Fenrik stepped closer, hand settling on her shoulder, firm and steady through the layers of her suit.

"She doesn't matter now. We do. The people still here, they're who we fight for."

Skadi didn't pull away. She looked past him, out toward the junction leading deeper into Isvann, where the lights were dim and voices echoed with wary hope.

They were waiting. For someone. For something.

"We'll make it matter," she said at last. Her voice was low. Fierce.

"Good," Fenrik said. "Because they're waiting. Someone needs to lead them. Someone who knows what it's like to lose everything and still keep moving."

Fenrik was right about one thing: they needed a reason to believe. But not him. Not ever him. Whatever burden he thought he carried, it was too soaked in old blood to lead anyone out of this.

Skadi exhaled, sharp and unsteady. The storm inside her didn't vanish, but it shifted. Coalesced.

She let it. Let it harden into ice, into something that would not break when the next blow fell.