Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 9

Ghroklor’s reaction to the brutal sight was immediate.

“Skrili!” He roared, “Take cover!”

More shards of ice sailed in on the winds of the mountain storm, forming a razor gale that scythed down Beastman and Haugrarl alike with every howling gust. Within seconds, the village had become a landscape of severed limbs and victims impaled by their icy assailants. Ilyshn’ish scurried into one of the village’s stone dens. The building normally served as a communal home for several Con families, offering simple living spaces and storage for its inhabitants.

Over the next few minutes, Beastmen hastily entered in various states of injury, including Ghroklor. The Nar Commander staggered to a stop, twisting in place to examine the missing end of his tail.

“Damn it all,” he snarled as a mystic came to heal him, “we never received any reports of this!”

“Because it hasn’t happened before,” a Con hunter holding his side nearby said. “I’ve lived on the frontier for two decades and the Skrili have never done anything like that.”

Another Beastman dove into the den. Ilyshn’ish winced as a crack sounded from the entrance. Ghroklor helped the new arrival to her feet, examining her wounds before scanning the building’s interior.

“How much mana do we have?” He called out.

“Two-thirds,” a mystic reported. “We’re done tending to the wounded aside from her.”

“Then we need to bring in more of our wounded,” Ghroklor said as he pawed through a pile of hides. “Let’s see if we can improvise some shields…”

A variety of objects ended up near the entrance of the dwelling, but, in the end, Ghroklor settled on bundling several layers of hides together. He poked the hides outside, waiting silently for several seconds before stepping out. Ilyshn’ish watched from the entryway as he scampered to the nearest fallen Beastman and dragged him back to the den. A group of warriors came to carry their wounded comrade to the mystics in the rear.

“You didn’t get attacked,” one of the hunters said. “Is it clear?”

“I don’t know,” Ghroklor replied. “Let’s try this again…”

The Nar Commander left the den again, this time following the wall of the building to pick up a warrior lying flat in the snow. It turned out that the warrior wasn’t injured – he was just staying low and out of the wind – so Ghroklor sent him back into the den before continuing his search for survivors.

“You can barely see anything out there,” said a Nar who had come to peek out of the entrance with Ilyshn’ish. “Where’s Ghroklor?”

“He went around this den,” Ilyshn’ish replied. “Oh–”

A Skrili flew in and bounced off of Ghroklor’s makeshift shield. She wasn’t sure if the Beastmen could hear the impact.

“Are blizzards like this common?” Ilyshn’ish asked.

“I’m not sure,” the Nar warrior answered with an unknowing look before glancing over his shoulder.

“Sometimes, it can get cold enough around here to snow during the summer,” one of the Con nearby said, “but nothing like this. Worse yet, the high ice is flowing down from the Worldspine. I don’t know if you saw it coming upriver, but our upper valleys are buried in glaciers. They’re advancing two or three hundred metres a day.”

“We can fight the mountain tribes,” another Con said, “but we can’t do anything about the ice! All of the game is leaving because there’s nothing to graze and the herds aren’t doing any better. Even a fine village like this will be buried by the end of the month.”

Ilyshn’ish pondered the Beastmen’s claims. What they described was certainly unnatural. Before the arrival of the blizzard, the temperature was only a bit colder than in Miss Gran’s village during the summer. An unexpected blizzard might have been plausible, but not the glaciers creeping their way down the valleys.

This should explain the flooding, at least.

Massive volumes of ice were flowing into areas where temperatures remained seasonally normal, resulting in ever-increasing amounts of meltwater entering the jungle basin. The question now was what was causing it and why.

Ghroklor appeared again with another warrior, who was holding his severed leg in his claws. The warrior brushed away the attempts to help him in and hopped by himself to mystics at the back.

“It’s going to take forever for you to retrieve your troops at this rate,” Ilyshn’ish said. “Why not have the others help?”

“Because I’m the only one with armour good enough to deflect those damned Skrili,” Ghroklor gestured to his Green Dragonscale Armour. “We have a lot of people alive out there, hiding behind buildings and such. They’ll stay safe as long as they remain behind cover. I’ll get them all eventually.”

What an obstinate fellow.

While his subordinates might have found his resolve admirable, Ghroklor had the brute-force thinking characteristic of the Nar. She glanced at the other Beastmen in the building, but they seemed content to rest and leave the decision-making to him. It didn’t make much sense to Ilyshn’ish: shouldn’t the races most familiar with their current environment be in charge?

She tamped down on her annoyance, closing her eyes and feeling the area around the den. The Con village was rather spread out, but she could at least get a feel for the closest structures and the Beastmen dispersed among them.

“You mentioned that the warbands will be safe so long as they remain behind cover,” Ilyshn’ish said. “Is that due to some characteristic of the Skrili?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a characteristic…what are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to figure out how they’re conducting their attacks,” Ilyshn’ish said. “As far as I can tell, they’re using the blizzard to blow them along, but they do have a good bit of control over their trajectory. How are they selecting who and where to hit?”

Ghroklor looked up at her with no small amount of confusion. Ilyshn’ish sent her gaze to the Con who were supposed to be natives of the area.

“We’ve never seen them attack like this before,” one of them finally said. “Usually, they hang onto cliffs and tree branches, pretending to be ice until someone crosses under them. Then, they use the speed built up by their fall to cut into their prey.”

“What happens if they miss?” Ilyshn’ish asked.

“That rarely happens,” the Con warrior answered, “but I’ve seen people swat them out of the air. They don’t like facing off directly against their targets and they’ll try to scamper away against anyone ready for a fight.”

That still didn’t give Ilyshn’ish the answer she was looking for, but it did give her some idea of a Skrili’s capabilities. Her Blindsight made them out to be some sort of flying creature, though she couldn’t decide whether they were more like a bird or a bat under their icy exteriors.

“In that case,” she said, “why not use this blizzard to your advantage?”

“How do you propose we do that?” Ghroklor asked.

In response, Ilyshn’ish grabbed a pack filled with preserved meat and tossed it out of the den. Three more packs flew out after the first, forming a loose line in the snow. In under a minute, the makeshift barrier formed a snowdrift.

“Like so,” she said.

The Beastmen who could see out the den’s entrance exchanged looks between themselves. One of the Con hunters crawled out on all fours, remaining still for several moments before carefully picking up the packs of meat and placing them atop the new snowdrift. It wasn’t long before they had a length of wall tall enough to stand behind. Ghroklor experimentally pressed his paw against the snow.

“While this feels reassuring,” he said, “the Skrili can penetrate this barrier with little effort.”

“I’ve never known an ambush predator that would attack what they can’t sense,” Ilyshn’ish said.

“I suppose I should stand here just in case,” Ghroklor said, then addressed a few hunters standing at the den’s entrance. “Try and find more of our people. Stick close to the walls of this building if you don’t want to get cut down.”

Two pairs of Beastmen left to carry out his orders. Another group came out with more supplies and got a fire going. The wall that Ilyshn’ish had started steadily expanded according to Ghroklor’s orders, stretching toward the den in the next plot over. As more and more Beastmen crept in to join them, Ilyshn’ish pondered the tangible transformation in everyone’s mood. Their situation hadn’t changed much, yet they were positively cheerful as they distributed rations under the incessant howl of the wind.

“You all suddenly look like you’re ready to move heaven and earth,” Ilyshn’ish said.

“A secure flank is priceless to a warrior,” Ghroklor replied. “Thanks to the inspiration that you’ve provided us, we can turn this village into a fortress.”

She wasn’t sure what was so ‘inspiring’ about it. Hadn’t they ever seen snow drifts form around boulders before? He was just complaining about the strength of the walls, too.

“So long as this blizzard continues,” Ilyshn’ish said.

“It would be even better if it ended,” Ghroklor said. “We’d be able to get out of here.”

“Didn’t you come to win this village back for your people?”

Ghroklor looked up at the wall of snow beside him before letting out a helpless laugh.

“That was under the assumption there was something to win,” he said. “There’s little point in spilling the blood of good warriors on unproductive land.”

“How will the loss of this area affect your food supplies?”

“It won’t for the short term,” Ghroklor replied. “We may have lost territory for game and livestock, but most of the mountain tribes just so happen to be edible. Speaking of which…”

A hearty cheer rose as one of the hunters brought in the freshly-dressed corpse of a Haugrarl. Soon, the aroma of roasting meat wafted through the air, tempting the appetites of everyone around the fire.

“There must be thousands of dead Haugrarl scattered around the village,” Ghroklor said. “We could hold out here for months if need be.”

“I sincerely hope we aren’t stuck here for months.”

“I’m just noting how well-provisioned we are,” Ghroklor offered a good-natured chuff. “Rest assured, we’ll be getting out of here at the first reasonable opportunity. We have a war to fight, after all.”

Ilyshn’ish looked at the snow blowing overhead. It was still late afternoon, but the storm had extinguished any traces of sunlight. Ghroklor’s forces wouldn’t be able to leave any time soon.

By midnight, Ghroklor managed to connect over half of the dens in the village. The blizzard continued to dump snow on them, creating drifts that were eight metres high in some places. Wall-building was replaced by tunnelling, though the Beastmen weren’t very good at it.

“This reminds me of a story I heard last year,” Ghroklor said. “My father led an army to a part of the Worldspine east of here to reinforce the Con against an incursion by the mountain tribes. They ended up getting buried by a blizzard as well.”

“You weren’t there yourself?” Ilyshn’ish asked.

“No,” Ghroklor answered. “I was in the same army, but I wasn’t part of the detachment that rushed to aid the Con. There were some things I had to oversee in Gor’lior. The operation turned into the withdrawal of nearly sixty thousand warriors.”

“Well, the weather is oblivious to the struggles of those it affects,” Ilyshn’ish replied nonchalantly. “Was it a fight with Haugrarl and Skrili like we just had?”

“No, it was a race we hadn’t seen before. That bunch from the Confederacy called them ‘Yeti’. We can only assume that they migrated from deeper in the Worldspine. Thinking back on things, these problems that we’re facing now may have started long ago in some far-off place, well beyond our means to influence.”

The way that Ghroklor accepted that many things were simply beyond his control was characteristic of most of Rol’en’gorek’s denizens. In that sense, they were closer to a tribal society – whose survival was subject to the whims of nature – than the Human countries in the region, which sought to exert as much control over their circumstances as possible. Xoc’s rise to power showed that they could quickly change their ways if suitably motivated, however.

“What happened to the Yeti after that?” Ilyshn’ish asked.

“We’re not sure,” Ghroklor answered. “They haven’t been seen since we withdrew and sending warbands into the Worldspine to look for them would be suicide. At any rate, we have enough to deal with as it is without adding to our troubles.”

It seemed that she would have to take a look for herself to gain any useful information. Unfortunately, she couldn’t just wander off when everyone was supposed to be stuck.

They found Vltava sometime during the night. Apparently, the Krkonoše had simply found a nice place to sit down when the blizzard started, allowing himself to be buried under several metres of snow. Pebble and Pinecone had opted to take shelter in a den nearby. They had since relocated to a cosy alcove near the southern edge of the village, away from everyone else.

“So,” Ilyshn’ish said as she went to join them, “what do you think?”

“After being in a jungle for months,” Pinecone said, “this is actually quite refreshing.”

Ilyshn’ish didn’t disagree. While Frost Dragons didn’t suffer any adverse effects from not being in their preferred habitat, it felt nice to be in an icy environment again.

“This weather has certain implications,” Vltava said.

“Those implications being…”

“It depends on the source,” Vltava said. “Remember what I spoke of shortly after we arrived in Rol’en’gorek.”

She nodded silently in response. If one considered things from that perspective, all of the strangeness that was happening was a part of something that should have occurred long ago.

“We should still confirm what’s going on,” Pebble said.

“How do you propose we do that?” Ilyshn’ish asked.

The Krkonoše looked at her as if she had just asked a stupid question. They probably expected her to do the looking for them.

A pitch-dark dawn greeted them the next morning, along with three more metres of snow. Ghroklor’s forces had lost most of their raw edge and many were going around trying to make improvements to their icy accommodations. Ghroklor himself had converted one of the village’s dens into his command post. In addition to several chiefs, a few mystics were with him, using summons to scout the surroundings. Ilyshn’ish went to sit on her haunches beside the Nar Commander, wrapping her tail around her toes.

“I wish I could do that,” Ghroklor said. “The cold from this blizzard is clinging to the ground.”

“Would you like to try?” Ilyshn’ish asked as she raised her tail and moved it over his feet.

“Wh-What?” Ghroklor shifted away from her, “O-Of course not. I mean, no, thank you.”

The Nar Commander cast one last look at her fluffy tail before clearing his throat and turning his attention back to the mystics.

“Find anything new?”

“Blizzard, blizzard, and more blizzard,” one of the mystics replied.

“I haven’t seen anything of note since we finished going over the village perimeter,” another mystic said. “Even if things did clear up, the entire valley is buried. We’d see treetops sticking out of the snow, at best.”

“We may as well burrow our way home with things as they are,” Ghroklor grumbled. “Actually, why don’t we go ahead and do that? We could follow the river back and our enemies would be none the wiser.”

“While you do that,” Ilyshn’ish said, “do you mind if I take a look around?”

“Around?” Ghroklor froze, “As in beyond the village?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“You understand that I can’t guarantee your safety while you’re out there…could you at least wait until this blizzard ends?”

“Won’t you be leaving once that happens?”

Ghroklor settled into an uncertain silence. Ilyshn’ish had never specifically requested any sort of protection, yet her host or guide or whatever considered her safety his responsibility regardless. At the same time, she had no desire to demonstrate her strength since she didn’t want people asking her for help with this and that.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Ilyshn’ish told Ghroklor. “My race is well-suited for this sort of environment.”

“If you insist,” Ghroklor finally relented. “Do you require any supplies?”

“Thank you for the offer, but they won’t be necessary. It’s not as if I’ll be gone for long.”

Ilyshn’ish left the command post before they could ask any more questions. She made her way back to the Krkonoše, who had expanded their temporary shelter into something that almost looked artistic.

“Are you that bored?” She asked.

“It doesn’t hurt to make the place more livable,” Pinecone answered. “This design is far warmer and has more space.”

“If you say so,” Ilyshn’ish said. “I’m going to be making a hole over here. Make sure no one follows me out.”

“You’re going to scout the surroundings?”

“Yes. Maybe I’ll find something interesting to eat along the way.”

She pressed her paw against the wall of packed snow, sighing at the prospect of tunnelling out. Krkonoše were nowhere near as good as Frost Dragons at burrowing, but she had to keep up appearances. She made her way down from the village and over the wall of Haugrarl corpses. It was there that she encountered a lone Skrili feeding on the dead.

Those she had questioned described them as monsters made out of ice, but, as with the Huagrarl, it was a woefully inaccurate description. In reality, Skrili were small flying creatures with four wings and four taloned legs. The one before her was covered in a coat of scales formed out of translucent crystalline ice. Three sets of eyes sat behind a hummingbird’s beak, which it had been using to suck blood out of the corpses nearby.

In other words, it was a Stirge. A variant of Stirge with high ice affinity. Rather than a monster, it was a type of Magical Beast and their ‘tribes’ were actually colonies or flocks of the things. The extreme winds of the storm allowed them to ‘fly’ even when covered by their weighty armour.

The Skrili looked up at her with its beady crimson eyes. Ilyshn’ish stared back for a moment before snatching the thing and tossing it into her mouth. It disappeared into her maw with a startled peep, struggling for a second before she put an end to it with a satisfying crunch.

Not bad…

As she thought, food was best served frozen.

After snapping up a few dozen more Skrili, she made her way to the riverbank and examined her surroundings. It seemed like she was alone in the blizzard, but she ran several kilometres upstream before taking wing as a Frost Dragon. Her lithe form cut effortlessly through the storm as she considered her next move.

I suppose I should get a better view of what’s going on…

She climbed through the blizzard and above the clouds, ending up a dozen kilometres above the landscape. In the distance, the peaks of the Worldspine loomed higher still, but it was what she saw below her that captured her attention.

“This is…wrong, isn’t it?” She muttered to herself.

Thick layers of clouds obscured most of the mountain range nearby, but they seemed to cling to one spot like a frigid miasma rather than move like normal weather. The blizzard that had overtaken Ghroklor’s forces had been raging for over twelve hours, but there was no sign of it advancing beyond its present location. On the other side of the pass that they had crossed to get to the village, the highlands remained as she remembered them.

Control Weather or something similar…where’s a Dragon Lord when you need one?

A Dragon Lord wouldn’t tolerate such a blatant disruption to their domain’s characteristics. Then again, it was probably because there wasn’t a resident Dragon Lord that whoever was messing with the weather could get away with it. If they had tried the same thing in the Jorgulan Commonwealth, it would have probably gone poorly for them.

Ilyshn’ish descended a few thousand metres, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever or whatever was causing the inclement weather. Of course, it was due to curiosity more than anything else – she had absolutely no desire to confront anything that could create such a powerful effect. What she saw through the storm as she flew north, however, added to both her confusion and curiosity.

In the high alpine valleys nestled between the deep ranges of the Worldspine, weather conditions could be best described as ‘normal’. Traces of the brief mountain summer could still be seen and there was no sign of the endless snowfall that was smothering the Worldspine’s southern fringes. Furthermore, someone was building things.

Roads of packed snow snaked through the mountain meadows, connecting clusters of buildings fashioned out of ice and stone. She was unfamiliar with the architecture and layout of what she saw, but she knew the sight of a growing country when she saw one. Unlike the Baharuth Empire, which she had observed expanding throughout her life, the country below her seemed to be using weather to drive out undesirables dwelling in its frontier before having its citizens move in.

The citizens in question looked quite appetising, with round, fluffy bodies suited for living in frozen climes. There was no visible evidence of farming activity, but there were herds of animals both familiar and unfamiliar being managed wherever she looked.

I suppose that means they’re carnivores…why does everything down there look delicious?

Her eyes went from the herds of shaggy Nuk on the mountain slopes to the Giant Elk grazing in the meadows. Then, a more exotic sight drew her interest.

What is that, I wonder?

She settled into a stealthy glide, circling over the snow-covered meadows in one of the larger valleys. The creature in question was a woolly behemoth at least ten times as massive as a Nuk, standing six metres at the shoulder. Two long, curved tusks protruded from its head, between which some sort of long appendage hung nearly to the ground. Smaller versions of the creature grazed alongside it, using their nose appendages to hungrily shove wilted wildflowers and shrubs to their mouths.

Ilyshn’ish descended a few thousand metres more, trying to figure out how to separate one of the small ones from the big one. Normally, she would employ her dragonfear to scatter the herd and make off with her target of choice, but that would cause far too much of a commotion and she wasn’t sure what the builders of the civilisation in the mountain valleys were capable of.

A bit of patience inevitably saw one of the smaller creatures stray from its companions. Flexing her claws in anticipation, Ilyshn’ish aligned herself for a quick dive to snatch it up.

Shadows of movement against the snow caused her to abort her attack. A pair of rotund fluffballs waddled over from the edge of the meadow, waving at Ilyshn’ish target. To her annoyance, it returned to the relative safety of its fellows.

Is there anything more annoying than a herder?

She cast a sour look downwards, considering conducting a flyover to scatter all of the miserable creatures crawling below out of spite. Ultimately, she decided against it. Learning more about her new enemies without them being aware of her in return would work to her advantage in the future.

After ascending to a safe altitude once again, Ilyshn’ish followed the curve of the Worldspine southwest. Her leisurely cruise to the southeast brought her well past where the Jorgulan Frontier was supposed to be, and it was there that her suspicions about the Dragon Lord in the Commonwealth being a deterrent against incursions from the mountains was confirmed. Additionally, like Rol’en’gorek, what she could see of Jorgulan civilisation didn’t suggest any great degree of complex industry or magical artifice, so their overlord was likely the reason why they were spared Rol’en’gorek’s current crisis.

Ilyshn’ish skirted the domain of the Green Dragon Lord for a few minutes before banking east toward the Worldspine. After crossing over several successively taller ranges, she once again located the civilisation sprawled over the icefields and alpine meadows. The amount of development was about the same as what she saw closer to Rol’en’gorek, so she kept flying eastward to see if there would be any noticeable change.

How strange. I still don’t sense any Dragons in these mountains.

The lack of draconic presence had gone from a vague threat to something utterly mind-boggling. She was flying over prime territory for several types of Dragons, yet the only ones that she could sense were bracketing the Worldspine to the north and south. Greens dominated the belt of tropical rainforest south of the Worldspine, while at least six different types of Dragons laired to the north. Some of those Dragons should have expanded their domains into the mountains, yet something was dissuading them from doing so.

After following the mountains another three hundred kilometres southeast, a possible explanation appeared before her. Covering the lower half of the tallest peak in the area was a shimmering city sculpted out of pure ice. Cold blue light suffused the entire mountain metropolis, dancing lightly within its towering spires like a captured aurora. On the frozen highways leading to its massive gates were hundreds of the same woolly behemoth she had encountered earlier, each pulling a massive sledge bearing frozen food and fodder. There were items of far greater value mixed in with them, but they were all stashed away in tied leather sacks and frost-bound chests.

Ilyshn’ish circled high above the spires of the city, trying to get a sense of what was contained within. Unfortunately, it appeared that the entire place was protected by magical wards that could foil her powerful senses. She didn’t linger any longer just in case her attempts to examine the city had triggered some sort of magical alarm. Idly watching the streams of traffic far below, she pondered the significance of her findings.

There’s no way Rol’en’gorek can stop these people…

Even if they knew what was attacking them, the position of said attackers was effectively unassailable. Rol’en’gorek could send just as many armies as they had to the Draconic Kingdom and they would probably die before winning a single frozen pass.

On a more positive note, it looked like the mountain civilisation was content to remain in the Worldspine. That meant everyone else would be helplessly driven away by their weather control strategy, but at least the whole jungle wouldn’t end up frozen. At worst, the Beastmen simply needed to adapt to their new reality.