Page 31 of Frostforge, Passage Six
Morning painted the archipelago in gentle strokes of pearl and silver, the sun a pale disc rising through wisps of lingering mist.Thalia stood at the schooner's bow, fingers gripping the salt-crusted railing as she scanned the impossibly calm waters that stretched before them.The serenity felt like mockery after the night's revelations—islands vanishing without a trace, Wardens fleeing their ancestral homes, something unnamed lurking beyond the eastern boundary that could devour land itself.The refugee vessel had departed before dawn, its passengers casting wary glances backward as they continued their desperate journey toward the mainland.Toward Southhaven, perhaps, or another captured coastal city that would fear their approach.The irony wasn't lost on Thalia as she watched the last traces of their wake dissolve into the glassy surface of the sea.
The world she had understood—the neat divisions between enemy and ally, between aggressor and defender—had fractured during that strange midnight encounter.She had looked into the eyes of Isle Wardens and seen not bloodthirsty raiders but frightened families, not conquerors but refugees.The same expressions she had witnessed in Verdant Port after liberation, the same haunted gazes that had followed her through the streets of her childhood home.
"You're quiet," Ashe observed, appearing at Thalia's side with the silent grace that marked her Northern upbringing.Her red-streaked hair was pulled back in a tight braid, emphasizing the sharp angles of her face.
"Just thinking," Thalia replied, not turning from the water."About the Wardens we met last night."
Ashe's lips thinned."Don't let one encounter change your understanding of what they are."
"And what are they, exactly?"Thalia asked, genuine curiosity in her voice."I've always thought I knew.Raiders.Killers.Monsters."She paused, the familiar pain of that loss a dull ache that never truly faded."But those weren't monsters on that ship.They were people.Scared people."
"Scared people can still be dangerous," Ashe countered, her hand resting casually on the hilt of her sword."Perhaps more so.Fear makes people unpredictable."
Thalia nodded slowly, understanding the truth in Ashe's words even as she struggled with the shifting landscape of her own perceptions.The Isle Wardens had been the enemy for so long—the face of evil in countless childhood stories, the threat that loomed over coastal communities like a storm that never fully passed.To see them as vulnerable, as victims of something even more terrifying, required a mental adjustment she wasn't sure she could make.
Ashe moved away, her boots making barely a sound on the weathered deck as she resumed her methodical preparations.She checked and rechecked weapons with practiced precision—her crossbow, her knives, the glacenite blades they'd brought from Frostforge.The repetitive motions spoke of tension, of a wariness that belied the peaceful morning surrounding them.
At the stern, Roran bent over charts spread across the small table, the parchment weighted against the breeze with pieces of smooth stone.His curls had been tied back, though errant strands still escaped to frame his face as he marked their position with a stub of charcoal.The furrow between his brows had deepened since their encounter with the Warden refugees, and he worked in unusual silence, without the humming or idle commentary that typically accompanied his work.
Thalia approached, drawn by his intensity.The charts before him were covered in notations—some in the flowing script of continental cartographers, others in the sharper runes of Warden origin, added by Roran's own hand.Red markings indicated the positions of islands they had confirmed missing, while question marks hovered over others yet to be investigated.
"Finding anything?"she asked, keeping her voice low to match the strange hush that had fallen over the ship.
Roran glanced up, dark circles beneath his eyes suggesting he had slept little, if at all."Patterns," he said simply."Or the lack of them.The missing islands aren't in a straight line or circle.They're scattered, seemingly random."His finger traced invisible connections between the marked locations."That makes prediction impossible.We can't tell where it might strike next."
The word "it" hung between them, pregnant with implications neither was ready to voice aloud.Whatever force could erase landmasses from existence defied easy categorization.Monsterseemed inadequate.Catastrophe, too impersonal.
Thalia's mind returned to the captured Warden mage at Frostforge, the one who had taken his own life rather than reveal more about "what waits beyond the fog."The stormcaller’s final words echoed in her memory, weighted with new significance after last night's encounter.Not the ravings of a desperate prisoner, but a warning from someone who had glimpsed a truth too terrible to articulate.
***
The morning stretched into afternoon, the schooner cutting through waters that remained unnaturally still.No birds wheeled overhead, no fish broke the surface.The absence of life intensified the sense of wrongness that had settled over them since discovering the first abandoned settlement.Nature itself seemed to be holding its breath, waiting.
Ashe paced the deck, restless energy evident in every line of her body.Her gaze constantly swept the horizon, hand never straying far from her weapons.The Northern warrior in her responded to the unnatural quiet with heightened vigilance, treating the peaceful surface as a deception rather than reassurance.
The sun had begun its slow descent toward the western horizon when Roran's voice broke the silence, sharp with sudden alertness.
"There," he said, pointing to a dark smudge where the sea met sky."That shadow."
Thalia squinted against the glare, straining to make out the shape he indicated.At first, it appeared to be merely a darker patch of ocean, perhaps a change in depth or current.Then, as they drew closer, the shadow resolved into something more substantial—a mass that rose from the water like an island, yet moved with deliberate, if glacial, speed.
"Is that...?"she began, her voice trailing off as comprehension dawned.
"A fortress-whale," Roran confirmed, his tone shifting to something between awe and trepidation."And a large one."
Thalia's stomach dropped as the true scale of the creature became apparent.The fortress-whales were legendary among continental forces—massive leviathans that carried entire Warden fortresses upon their scarred backs, capable of navigating depths that would crush ordinary ships.They were living weapons, symbols of the Wardens' mastery over the sea and its creatures.And they were supposed to be anchored far from continental waters, in the deepest parts of the archipelago.
Yet here one was, alone and seemingly adrift, far closer to the mainland than any had been sighted before.
"It's not on any chart," Roran said, checking his maps with quick, precise movements."This area should be open water."
“You sure your island didn’t just move?”Ashe muttered.
Roran clicked his tongue in irritation.“Yes.I’m certain.”
As they drew nearer, the true enormity of the creature stole Thalia's breath.Its body stretched longer than three schooners placed end to end, the dark mass of its flesh visible beneath the surface like a living island.The fortress built upon its back rose in tiers of volcanic stone and black metal, towers and battlements creating a silhouette against the sky that seemed both organic and constructed, a melding of nature and artifice that defied continental architectural principles.
Thalia retrieved her spyglass from her pack, extending it with practiced motions.Through its lens, details emerged that were invisible to the naked eye—deep scars that marred the metallic plating encasing the whale's sides, gashes that no ordinary weapon could have inflicted.Some were partially healed, the tissue knotted and puckered like badly mended fabric.Others appeared fresher, the wounds still raw despite their impossible scale.
