Page 172 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“It’s because they are not a presence. More like a manifestation. My father might have mentioned something like this some time ago. A lingering presence that feeds on magic similar to the Fogling, except that these have never even breathed air or possessed a soul. They just simply exist out of nothing. Like most of the creatures we’ve passed today. Empty, just holding on to some odd sense of life.”

I spun around, searching for…anything. “How can you see them?”

“Because they are alive. They emit life. Some sort of life my magic seems to like.” His stupid smirk was back. “This suits my taste so well.”

“No magic, Mal.”

He cocked his head to the side, black spidery veins crawling around his eyes. “Just a smidge.”

“Can I cut your legs just a smidge, too?”

He cracked his neck, shadows pulling away. “Fair.”

Thora unsheathed her daggers, tentatively swinging them around her. “Do you think they are what Eren has seen?”

“Don’t know,” I said, letting ice slip over the ground around us. “But we can find out now.”

“Here goes my dick,” Mal sighed.

“It will be one short story to tell,” Thora mumbled.

He tugged her harder against him and bent down to murmur something in her ear that had her writhing and screaming. His head snapped up and he covered her mouth with a large hand. “Shhhh, little bird.”

Still holding Thora, he faded beside me and slashed his sword a hair away from my left shoulder.

Another creature fell slain to the ground. Black blood and bile getting on my leathers. Ugh. “This was my favourite pair.”

“Fuck,” he hissed, spinning round.

“What?”

“Don’t panic, but about a hundred of them are closing in on us.”

“On the ground?” I asked.

He nudged the thing laying slain on the ground, kicking its three fingered foot. “They seem to have legs, so yes, on the ground.”

Thora looked at me, already reading my intentions. “You think we can be fast enough?”

“My poor pride might never recover.” I clasped my sister’s hand and we both lifted the other forward. At the flash of a second, countless tall, sharp shards of ice rose around us, piercing everything above until we were locked between a field created by them. Bodies and black blood became visible, the latter dripping and sliding between cracks of ice until it soaked our boots.

When the ice melted away at our command, a graveyard of mangled bodies encircled us, and somewhere in the distance, a faint trickle of a pulse caught my attention. Eventually, the count of heartbeats began doubling and tripling. Steady heartbeats—human heartbeats. Resting hidden right below the mantle of snow.

The men poked their heads out of the snow piles they had buried themselves in, finally giving away their disguise. They were dressed rather lightly compared to us, there was only a thin layer of brown leather and pelt between them and the blistering cold.

Standing at their full height, they pointed the end of their bone spears toward us, muttering all sorts of curses and prayers in old Ysolt to their unheeding god.

Shivering, really.

How had they managed to have the odd creatures protect them?

In fact, how did they manage to have such control over every creature existing in their land?

Murmurs grew like the buzzing of bees when they slowly approached us, studying me and the colour of my eyes.

“What are you?” an older man rasped in the old language, narrowing his icy gaze on me.

“My name is Snowlin Edlynne Krigborn, first of my name, blood and kin of Edric, he who wore the first crown. Queen of Olympia and the seven skies.” I’m sure I’d missed something.