Page 11 of Frostforge, Passage Six
A woman nearby stumbled, her makeshift club—a broken table leg—glancing off a Warden's armor without effect.The guard raised his sword for a killing blow.Thalia moved without thinking, throwing herself forward.But before she could reach them, another prisoner—a burly man who might have been a blacksmith before captivity—brought a hammer down on the Warden's helmet with crushing force.
The guard crumpled, and the blacksmith nodded once to the woman before turning to find his next opponent.It struck Thalia then—these people didn't need her to lead them.They needed only the opportunity to fight for themselves.
She pushed deeper into the fray, aware of eyes tracking her movement, of whispers spreading through the crowd.Some recognized her blade for what it was—a Frostforge creation, ice-metal.Others saw only the Warden armor she still wore.
"Warden!"a voice shouted from her left."There's still one among us!"
Thalia turned to find a group of prisoners advancing on her, their faces twisted with hatred, weapons raised.She raised her hands, realized her error, and quickly began stripping away the black armor plates.
"I'm not one of them!"she called, casting aside the Warden helmet."I'm from Verdant Port—just like you!"
The nearest man hesitated, his improvised spear wavering."The sword," he said, gesturing with his chin."That's no Warden blade."
"Frostforge," she confirmed, letting the last of the armor fall to the cobblestones.Beneath, she wore the simple clothes of a continental traveler—a far cry from the elaborate leather and metal of Isle Warden garb."I came back to find my family."
Recognition dawned in an older woman's eyes."You're Celeste's girl," she said, lowering her weapon."The herbalist's daughter—the one who was Selected."
Relief flooded through Thalia at the mention of her mother's name."Yes—have you seen her?Or my sister, Mari?"
But there was no time for answers.A fresh alarm sounded from the western edge of the square, and the crowd surged in that direction, carrying Thalia with it.More Wardens had arrived, but this time, the former prisoners met them with organized resistance.They advanced in waves, those with makeshift shields in front, those with longer weapons behind.
Thalia found herself swept along, fighting at the edge of the crowd rather than its center.From this vantage, she saw the full scope of what she had unleashed—hundreds of prisoners now armed and fighting with increasing coordination, pushing the Wardens back street by street, reclaiming their city one bloody cobblestone at a time.
The magic of her blade pulsed stronger, feeding on the violence around it.Mari's voice came again, a phantom cry at the edge of her consciousness:Help me, Thalia...please…
She shook her head, trying to dispel the hallucination, but the voice persisted.In its wake came fragments of other sounds—children crying, the clash of metal, desperate pleas in voices too young for such fear.
Those sounds, at least, were real.
Thalia turned toward them, breaking away from the main tide of fighters.Down a narrow side street, she spotted what had drawn her attention—a group of Warden guards had cornered several teenagers who were still trying to fight their way out of a smaller holding pen.The youths wielded makeshift weapons—broken chair legs, a cooking pot, a length of chain—but they were clearly outmatched by the five armed Wardens who advanced on them with drawn blades.
Without hesitation, Thalia charged forward, her glacenite sword leading the way."Over here!"she shouted, drawing the guards' attention away from their trapped prey.She crashed into their formation like a wave breaking against rock, her blade a flicker of deadly light in the cramped space.
The first guard fell before he could fully turn, her sword finding the gap between helm and gorget.The second managed to raise his weapon, but Thalia was already inside his guard, her shoulder driving into his chest, sending him stumbling backward into his companions.The confusion gave the trapped teenagers their opening—they pushed through the damaged section of the pen, falling upon the disoriented guards with savage desperation.
One boy—no older than fourteen, his face gaunt with hunger—swung his chain with unexpected precision, wrapping it around a Warden's sword arm and yanking with all his weight.A girl beside him drove a sharpened stick into the vulnerable spot beneath the guard's arm, exposed by his raised weapon.The Warden screamed, a sound cut short as another youth brought a heavy pot down on his head.
Thalia engaged the remaining guards, her blade moving in the patterns drilled into her at Frostforge.Duck, parry, strike.Advance, feint, withdraw.
A Warden blade sliced the air inches from her face.Thalia stepped inside the arc of the swing, too close for the guard to recover.Her own weapon thrust upward, finding the soft tissue beneath the jaw, where the armor ended.The guard made a wet, choking sound and collapsed.
The last of them tried to retreat, but the teenagers cut off his escape, herding him back toward Thalia with their improvised weapons.Desperation made his attacks wild, dangerous, but unfocused.She parried one slash, then another, looking for an opening that would disable rather than kill.
It came when he overextended on a thrust.Thalia sidestepped, brought her blade down hard on his wrist.Bone cracked, and his sword clattered to the cobblestones.Before he could recover, one of the teenagers—a girl with fierce eyes in a too-thin face—snatched up the fallen weapon and ran him through with his own blade.
The guard's eyes widened in shock, fixed on his killer with disbelief that someone so young could end him.Then he fell, and the street was suddenly, eerily quiet.
Thalia turned to the teenagers, who now stood amid the bodies of their former captors, bloodied weapons still clutched in white-knuckled grips.They were so young—some no older than Mari had been when Thalia left for Frostforge—yet their eyes held the hard glint of those who had witnessed horrors beyond their years.
"Are you hurt?"she asked, her voice gentler than it had been during the fight.
The girl who had delivered the killing blow stared at her, then at the body at her feet.Her hands began to tremble, the sword suddenly heavy in her grasp."I killed him," she whispered, shock replacing the fierce determination of moments before.
Thalia moved forward, carefully taking the weapon from the girl's unresisting fingers."You protected yourself and your friends," she corrected."There's no shame in that."
The boy with the chain stepped closer, his eyes fixed on Thalia's blade."That's ice-metal," he said, his voice cracking between childhood and whatever came after."Frostforge magic.Are you...are you here to save us?"
The question hung in the air, weighted with hope Thalia wasn't sure she could fulfill.She had come here to save two people; her mission to save her family was now becoming something larger, heavier, and infinitely more dangerous.Her gut instinct, her decision to open the pen and free its occupants, had been the spark to a wildfire that now burned out of her control.
