Cold. That was the first thing he felt.Not the sharp bite of Emberfall’s snow he had grown up to love, but a damp, heavy cold that clung to his bones like wet cloth.Tomas opened his eyes, weakly. A flicker of firelight blurred into focus above him. The ceiling wasn’t the thatched roof of the home he used to know, but rough canvas— from memory he knew it to be a trader’s tent. His ribs ached with every breath he took, wrapped tight in linen that smelled of herbs and something foul.He groaned as he tried to sit up from the wool covered bed.“Easy there, lad.” A gruff voice came from the shadows. A man with a scarred jaw and fur-lined cloak leaned forward, pressing a steaming cup into Tomas’s trembling hands. “Drink. You’ve been out for two days. We thought you’d gone to the frost. But fortunately you survived.”Tomas looked at the man, he was kind looking, had brown hair and a warm smile. He stayed there motionless holding the cup in hand and watching the steam rise from it and dance

Ash pat a whining Snow gently on the head as she bulged her head out of his coat. He steadied his breathing as he climbed over a huge tree root, his stomach gave a low growl so primal he almost thought it was the leopard pup.The forest of trees in front of him only grew more dense. Lyra had been in more of an haste than she usually was and it left him a bit more out of breath than he had been before.He had not seen her in a while now but knew she had to be lurking somewhere in the trees, or he proposed she might be. Snow was the only thing that relieved the loneliness he felt even by a little but not having anyone to talk to for the time being proved detrimental to his mind and body.Ash's thoughts slowly drifted back to the day his world crumbled, he tried to forget it all; the cries from that day but that was not the person he was.Since the day of the incident he seemed to be overwhelmed by the chaos for days that nothing made sense, he had even tried to take his own life. But of

Ash stood there looking in shock at three dead bodies scattered on the ground and a bloody elf standing over them all. Even Snow seemed impressed as she gave a proud whine, Ash felt the need to gag and he did. To his disappointment nothing came out of his already empty bowels.Lyra looked over her shoulder and held her gaze on the scene of what she had done for the fraction of a second before addressing him. "We have to go there are others coming."Before Ash could ask how she knew this someone interrupted, and the chained man seemed all to interested in them now. "By the devil's arse, that was a mighty good save. If you could kindly take me down from here I would appreciate it, though I can't promise you riches. I shouldn't have said that part, ignore the last bit."Lyra did not spared the chained man a look as she walked over to the first corpse of the man she had killed recently and pulled out her other dagger.Ash looked up at her, then his gaze fell to the chained man. "What abo

Ash sat there paralysed by shock for several minutes, his mind pondered if she was messing with him. But that did not seem in her character. So what did that then mean to him?He wondered which was more traumatizing. That the mother he never grew up with, or ever knew existed was alive?Or that she might have had an idea what had happened to him before it even happened. Did that mean she always knew where he was and never showed up? If she did know where he was, why did she not come himself.Lyra broke his minutes of silence with even colder words of her own. "I wasn't supposed to tell you that. I wanted to see how you would react."Ash did not know how to feel about that either... Did that mean she was she was trying to show that she could be trusted or that she was trusting him? It could also be that she was lying to manipulate him, he did not really know anything about her either way. So was it a ploy to control him or the truth?The words slipped out of his mouth like venom. "How

"Let me get this straight, you can't get back to the wall the same way you came. And you also don't want to take advice from the locals here?" Kip said with a very clear hint of sarcasm. They were currently making their way through the forest in the light of day. Lyra led the group as she always did, she found herself losing her senses by the second. She tripped several times over tree roots she should have seen earlier. She tried to block out the noise of others, she could hear her breath wheezing. "What's happening to me?" She said under her breath. Ash answered Kip with very little enthusiasm. "She's afraid of being discovered. If we could get a map, we would know where we're going." "I'm not afraid." She said under her breath, too low for any of them to hear. Kip grinned from hear to ear as he whistled to the wind and looked at the trees around him, then turned his gaze to the sky. He peered at the sky for a while before saying, "There are no birds in the sky." Dry leav