Page 8 of The Shadow of Polaris

Arcturas tucked her oversized paws beneath her and peacefully dozed off, letting the heat from the fire warm her exposed, full belly. Wiping the grease from my fingertips on my stained, ratty shift, I pulled the flaps of my cloak tightly together and closed my eyes too. I kept the fire roaring. If the guards had searched this far for me, they’d assumed the smoke was a hunting camp. It wasn’t uncommon for bands of hunters to spend a few nights in these woods.

The unease melted away with the chill of the night. Maybe it was the endless days I’d spent in the woods or the memories I’d made with my father, but the soft rustle of rabbits and the quiet tune of the night birds soothed my racing mind. I closed my eyes, letting the memories flow in again. I fell asleep to the deep chuckle of my father, reliving each fleeting second we’d shared.

Chapter 7

The scent of blood assaulted my nose. I cringed at the sounds of breaking bones and squelching flesh. Thick grey smoke swirled around me and I shielded my eyes from the glint of fiery flame in the distance. I struggled to breathe, the smoky air searing a trail of pain down my throat. Clenching the hilt of the tarnished longsword I held in my bloodstained hands, I ran. Tendrils of black hair escaped from the plait hanging down my spine and tickled my cheeks. Every muscle in my body throbbed in utter exhaustion.

With every crack of bone beneath my boot, I advanced closer and closer. Just as the pyre came into focus, the sky shifted abruptly to a deep, endless black. Darkness entrenched me. The great flames roared higher, but no light radiated across my face.

I fell to my knees.

It had begun.

Suddenly, cold, rough hands wrapped themselves around my ankles and pulled me back. My skin screamed as the hands dragged me against dead flesh and bone. The earth of the battlefield rushed past me. Claws pierced the tops of my feet with a pain so excruciating my vision blurred in crackles of black.

Sobbing, I raked at its grip. I begged it to let go; the words poured from my mouth in waves of frantic gargles. The unseen force stopped short and I skidded to a halt. I couldn’t breathe through the pain of my raw skin and mutilated feet.

The temperature dropped around me and a pair of menacing red eyes glared at me from the surrounding blackness. A silent sob escaped my lips as I tried to pull my limp body away. With an inhuman speed, the beast leapt at me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I shielded my face with my forearms from the impending death racing towards me.

Chapter 8

Engulfed in darkness, I jerked awake and reached for the dinner knife that rested beside me and swung at that unseen beast. Arcturas stirred from her sleep and sniffed the air. Sensing my terror, she threw her tiny body towards me. Her little claws scraped against my thighs as she jumped to my lap and began licking my cheeks, the scratch of her tongue wiping away salty tears that fell.

Short, shallow breaths escaped my lungs as I struggled to regain control of my body. The black, starless sky was caving down on top of me and I thrashed and wailed beneath its weight. A piercing nip at my fingers brought me back to reality. Arcturas whimpered through fangs latched onto my skin. The pain of her bite pulled me up from beneath the depths of a stifling panic and I heaved full, gasping breaths.

She licked the now blotched red skin of my palm and nuzzled into the fold of my elbow. A dream. It had just been a dream. There was no monster waiting in the horizon’s darkness. The snapping bones beneath my feet transformed into twigs. Stars rekindled in the stretch of unforgiving black overhead. I wiped the tears from my eyes and gazed into the cooling embers of our fire.

Smoothing back the stray hairs falling around my face, I apologized to my little companion. Arcturas nudged me until I stroked down the length of her spine. Wiry black fur was poking through her adolescent coat. Curling into the warmth of my lap, she settled back into sleep. Clasping my still shaking hands together, I looked up at the night sky. The countless stars speckled across the stretch of blackness glinted with a fluidity that seemed to ebb and flow with the soft caress of a silent wind. I wondered if this same sky beamed down on the immortal realm. Or did they have another galaxy of stars to wonder up at in the late hours of the night?

There was a time, thousands of years ago, when mortals and gods walked the Earth hand in hand. Stories of love and mortal consorts solidified the peace between the two races and all existed harmoniously. The bond we had with our gods, however, disintegrated when the goddess Tethys discovered her husband’s plan to run away with a mortal chambermaid.

In a fit of rage and deeply rooted jealousy, Tethys slaughtered her entire mortal court, including her faithless husband, splaying their bodies from the outer fortress walls. It is said that the affair caused her undoing, and she spiraled into a mania that has since imprisoned her mind. When the immortal leaders of the other realms caught wind of Tethys’s murderous spree, they broke our partnership.

Leaving a council of four, nearly immortal, elders to act as their emissaries, the Gods retreated to their separate realm. Despised by the other immortals, Tethys stole away into her fortress, plotting the downfall of the mortal realm with vigorous revenge. Without the protection of our namesake gods, the monster attacks increased. More and more mortals disappeared outside of city walls. Before my sentencing, it was not uncommon for men, women, and even children to vanish.

Shuddering at the thought of Tethys’s army of beasts and the monsters that lurked in the shadows of our realm, I forced my mind to silence and shut my eyes.

Hours crept by and finally, the quiet dawn appeared. Splashing a handful of spring water across my face, I extinguished the remaining coals and buried them. Arcturas, with newfound energy, zoomed through the clearing, chasing snow mice back into their burrows.

We traveled for miles through the forest, stopping to sip from the stream or pluck a handful of berries. Grey wisps of clouds gathered overhead, marking the approach of another snowfall. The pines thinned and eventually cleared away altogether. In their place, a weathered stone wall towered over us.

The wall, constructed of huge bricks molded together with a thick layer of mortar, extended into the sky hundreds of feet. Crippled turrets scattered across its length with tattered, faded flags carrying the signet of the northern goddess- a single pointed star. We’d finally reached Ursae. Arcturas let out a growl of excitement and took off down the pathway lining the edge of the wall, her tail bouncing with each kick of her hind legs.

“Wait!” The hem of my cloak trailed behind me as I sprinted after her. She leapt down the trail faster and faster until blurring into the horizon. The bricks continued on as I followed the prints of her tiny pads. The city wall finally gave way to a cavernous, dark tunnel. Arcturas sat before the entrance, her pink tongue hanging loosely out the side of her open mouth and tail swiftly brushing fallen flurries from side to side.

“You couldn’t have walked with me?” I panted, wiping my clammy brow. Sweat pooled in the creases of my armpits as I fought the urge to collapse.

Arcturas simply glanced at me, then took off down the tunnel. Grumbling with aching calves, I started into the darkness after her. The tunnel stretched through the width of the city’s outer walls, at least a mile in thickness. City folk spread fables of the giants who’d carved the wall from a mountain top thousands of years ago. In reality, the first people of the north devoted generations upon generations to its construction. Only a small, glowing speck of light marked the entrance on the horizon. Water droplets gathered on either wall and slowly trailed to the paved stone floor. Fortified metal gates at each quarter mile of the tunnel were raised, allowing free passage into the city. Never in my life had those gates closed. Never in my life had they needed to be. It would take a sea of monsters or men to penetrate the tunnel into the city. And even then, they’d have to face our people. City folks- men, women, and children alike, we’re all trained as warriors from their first steps to their last. The Northern Realm was infamous for our fighting ability. Rugged and harsh from the cold, the other realms kept cautious allies.

A chill whipped through the darkness as Arcturas and I traveled deeper and deeper. A rat, giving a startled squeak, scurried across the tip of my boot as I took a step. Jumping back, I watched it scamper into the shadows behind us. We continued on. With each step, the daylight of the city’s entrance grew brighter.

Approaching the tunnel’s exit, I shielded my eyes from the searing contrast of the white, late afternoon sky. We stepped out of the darkness. Flipping my hood over my eyes, we wandered down a rickety cobblestone street towards the heart of the city. Ursae had once been a glorious, northern fortress with marvelous stone carved towers jutting over lively city squares. Guards stood watch along gilded turrets, embellished with massive amethyst flags floating permanently beneath the inexhaustible winter wind. Scents of various roast meats and vegetables filled the air at the merchant’s market, with spices from every corner of the realms for sale. The air was electric with the buzz of a flourishing kingdom.

The Temple of Polaris was the beating heart of the realm, its walls carved out of the mountainside that lived at the city’s very core. A statue of our patron goddess stood hundreds of feet tall. Her long, trailing robes delicately wrapped around her curved frame. Outstretched in graceful arms was a broadsword- its hilt carved with an intricate crystalline pattern. Atop her head rested an iron crown, its apex as sharp as a dagger, with a single, four-pointed star carved delicately at its center. The star was the symbol of the North, representing the celestial body that guides us to it- the vertex of the night sky in which all other stars rotate around. The marble goddess stood guard over thousands of jagged steps snaking up the mountainside to the summit temple. A large pyre with a constant flame overlooked the city at the temple’s highest point. The flame blazed as long as the bond between our realm and our namesake goddess remained intact.

Although the flame still burned brightly, a beacon in the wintry haze, the city had begun to crumble and die. The gilded turrets- now tarnished. The markets- now feeble and cold. And the temple- now sinking back into the earth. It had been five years since I’d walked these cobblestone streets, and all that was recognizable had vanished entirely.

Arcturas and I started towards the center of the city, passing crumbling stone homes with deteriorating wooden rooftops. I wasn’t entirely sure where we were going, but we needed to find shelter from the approaching storm, and soon. Judging by the darkness of the clouds lurking in the distance, we wouldn’t just see a light snowfall. Temperatures would reach dangerous lows, and we’d be subjected to harsh blizzard conditions.

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