A chill wind filled Siegyrd’s lungs and pulled his cheeks into a broad smile as he leaped from the precipice of the highest mountain at the Crown of the World. His silver hair waved in the wind as he turned his back to the earth and caught a last glimpse across the broad courtyard of the cavern entry large enough to swallow a city. The mountain rose above him with titanic majesty draped in a cloak of azure sky. His mercurial silver eyes danced like diamonds in an angled face covered in flesh the color of gray-sky snow. He leaned back and placed his hands behind his head as he fell – whistling to himself.

  A brilliant sun bloomed weakly in the boreal sky as Siegyrd careened farther away from the cliff’s face, and the mountain stood taller above him by the moment. He wore no shirt, and silver sheen scales shone on his skin. The rushing air tugged at his baggy trousers as he fell, but the pants gripped his ankles with perfect chastity above bare feet which tapped the empty air to an unheard tune.

  As the earth rose to meet him, Siegyrd arched his back and pulled his feet above him, head down, speeding his descent to the earth as he transformed.

  #

  The tumult of their shouts reached her ears from long down the frigid valley.

  “Hurry, Gudrun!” the man’s voice was strained, his strong hand gripping hers vice-like.

  With one hand, she pulled her thick fur tight against her light-skin and ran toward the village, her feet cloying in the thick snow. She replied between heaving breaths.

  “Kal, I can’t.” She took a deep breath, stumbled. She dug in and ran harder, pulled along by Kal.

  “Hear that?” Kal’s voice slipped with fear, and he let go of Gudrun’s hand. She stumbled again but caught herself and stopped and stood as tall as she could gulping the cold air. Her hood fell back to reveal locks of flaming red hair braided with simple cords. The man’s strong features were punctuated by a light blonde beard as he looked back and spoke, his hair echoing between red and gold.

  “Wait out of sight. I’ll call if it’s safe.” He pulled off his slung pack piled high with gathered firewood and dropped it in the snow.

  “I’m coming!” She shouted, and he hissed for her to be quiet.

  He drew in close and kissed her on the forehead, then hugged her, “Dad’d kill me if I let you go, little bird. Be ready to fly.”

  She opened her mouth to oppose him, but he gave her a stern look with coppery-green eyes filled with concern. She breathed out hard and huffed into silence. He nodded and turned away to run up the small hill that concealed the village. She watched as he reached the rise, looked back, then disappeared over it. She hunched down out of sight behind the wood.

  A scent of burning struck her nostrils, and a haze gathered around her. Shouts punctuated the sounds of a confused cacophony. She bit her lip and wrung her hands for as long as she could bear, then a scream tore open the air above her. She burst up the hill without thought. She summitted into billows of smoke and the clear sounds of a battle. Brands clashed, and battleaxes crashed. In between strong gusts of frigid air she caught glimpses. A large man with a twisted half-mask swung his sword through Ander, the grocer’s son, laughed and moved past, as smoke concealed all but his cries. The thunk of a crossbow bolt produced an unsettled silence soon after. Gudrun froze.

  Feeble hunting arrows struck another raider’s ironwood shield with dull threats, and screaming raiders rode through on heavy horses cutting down the archer. The crackling of a delighted fire danced deviously through the mountain coolness spreading from home to home. A wave of heat warmed her face already red with cold. The scene blurred to madness in her mind. Swarms of strangers poured like insects over the dying corpse of her home and were then veiled in a choking smog. At the edge of the battle, Kaleo burst through the smoke toward her, weaving strangely through the snow as arrows rained around him appearing from small punctures in the haze. It was some fifty paces to him, and she started to move, but heard his shouting, “RUN!”

  She cried out, “Kaleo!” She coughed and choked, still she ran down the hill toward the burning village and the great mass of murderous madmen. Kaleo shouted back at her waving frantically, “By all the…” He stumbled, his voice cut short. His steps faltered.

  He gathered his strength. “RUN!” Kaleo shouted with an immense pain in his voice. He limped forward two more steps before collapsing in the snow to his knees. Something struck him, and he tottered forward. Gudrun could see him mutely mouthing, looking at her with eyes of pain. A strong wind rose behind her and sent the smoke and haze into a full retreat down the hill.

  “NO!” Gudrun screamed as she ran faster down the hill spitting all the curses she could muster like cackling sparks from a wetwood fire. Kaleo half-smiled and fell face forward into the snow, his back filled with bolts.

  She screamed like a banshee from nightmare stories as she ran at the nearest group of raiders some fifty paces away drawing a small skinning dagger from her belt.

  The man with the half mask and horned helm saw her and smiled his half smile with half his heart. He stepped toward her once and yelled to her in a language she didn’t know. He stopped and looked up. He stopped and yelled again, shielding his eyes as a shadow filled the valley. He stumbled back, pointing at Gudrun. She ran and screamed with lunatic fury. She stumbled, but continued, blade held high, knuckles white around the hilt. A whole host of enemies shouted, many dropping bows and throwing down swords, others fleeing in panic. She was twenty paces from them now. Her hair whipped wildly from another powerful gust that pressed her forward.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The masked man shouted once more and turned and fled. Gudrun felt an instinct to pursue like a violent thirst inside her. She licked her lips, and suddenly she was skyward her feet running against empty air beneath her. She felt strong pressure around her shoulders and hips. The whole world dropped away from beneath her as if pulled by some cosmic illusionist, and she was carried high above. The village and smoke and enemies and friends and family fell to great distance beneath her. She stared downward as she careened sideways, feeling her stomach rise with the rapid weight shift. She passed through a cloud of lazy white and blinked beyond it to see the brilliant landscape of sky kissing earth below. She looked up, and dropped the dagger in her hand as all her muscles relaxed into a state of utter confusion.

  #

  Raiders crawled their way out of the snow groaning and tried to regroup. The masked man pulled off his mask and a helmet with a single horn in the center, and watched as a dragon larger than the whole of the village flew away carrying the last woman of the village into a brilliant blue horizon. The man’s cold blues eyes narrowed, and it was all he could do to stop himself from shaking in the snow.

  #

  Gudrun gawked at silvery scales as large as her head that interlocked in concentric patterns. On the edges of the scales, translucent crystalline structures caught the rays of light and sent them forth in rainbows of color which danced and played to the next scale and the next and the next. Her eyes were wide and unblinking. Her jaw hung open. She looked down, the world below like a distant painting. She looked back up and squinted at the thing that carried her. Its head was the size of a house at least, and great crystalline spikes jutted from its jaw like spears of ice in a patterned beard. She tried to scream for help, but whipping winds swept her breath away. The cold closed in with tight embrace.

  Do not fear, as best you can, daughter of the mountains. Enjoy what few of your kind will ever witness. The voice within her swelled and filled her with warmth, a kindness bursting with delight. The tenor of it shook her and held her gently there. Her fear fled giving way to wonder, and, despite herself, she smiled.

  Her smile faded shortly, and thoughts began to race like painful lightning through her skull as the manic energy of the moment slipped from her. She tried to speak back through her mind, but a subtle melody played through the dragon’s scales, and she felt herself emptied of strength. She tried to fight the weight of sleep, struggling with her whole body, but, at last, she drooped and fell into a slumber as the dragon glided northward.

  #

  Gudrun opened her eyes to a brightly lit gallery. She lay on a hasty bed of soft furs beneath a globe of purest light, as if a sun made miniature, which hung from a ceiling hundreds of paces above her. She sat up, shrugging away sleep’s attempts to pull her back down with loving arms. She blinked and breathed. Her breath fogged the air around her. In front of her, a hoard of treasures sparkled with gold and silver, with gems cut like hearts and heads and hands, stones carved into animals she had only heard described in bardic tales. The pile was as tall as a small hill. She jolted as she saw the enormous creature that lay there. Its face was clear among the treasures, though much of its form was hidden amidst the gleaming. It looked directly at her with eyes of clouded platinum surrounding a multifaceted diamond shaped iris that glowed with an inner light of shifting colors.

  The young woman looked at the dragon, torn between wonder and terror and then spoke, her voice barely a whisper.

  “Where am I?”

  “A home, daughter of fresh sorrow.” The dragon’s voice set the whole cavern quaking.

  The woman looked around, not really seeing anything, but searching, “Where are they? Why didn’t you save them?”

  “I saved you.” The breath from his mouth was the north wind.

  She felt the chill and shivered, “But why not stop the raiders? You could have crushed them!” Her voice gained strength, and her confused anger pumped fire through her veins as she stood on the bed of furs. “You could have saved them! You could have done more!”

  “I saved you.” His voice was softer this time, though it rattled the coins of silver and gold beneath him.

  “You kidnapped me! Kaleo was, I have to help him! He was wounded! Take me back! I’ll kill them all.” She looked around, memory imposing itself on her vision.

  The creature hummed a deep singular note that gave the impression of a concerned mountain.

  The woman raved, “Do any of them live? Kaleo? Ander? Father? Step-mother?” her fury and sorrow comingled in tears which froze as they fell upon the cavern floor. “You! Kill them all, or save them, or. Why? How?” Her words and phrases were chopped short by confusion’s rough hatchet. The dragon weathered her sorrowed storm with repeated hums of regard. Soon, her strength gave way to sobs, which gave way to a collapse, and there on her knees she whispered, in a voice barely above a rabbit’s paw in fresh snow, “Just kill me too.”

  The roar she received in response sent arcing shockwaves through her body. Her heart banged out a dynamo drum in her ears and behind her eyes, cheeks flush with cold and blood. Her hair bristled and flesh rippled with terror. She pulled herself back from the dragon, scrambling against the furs until her back struck a large bookcase where she huddled with hands over her ears, eyes clamped tight. She feared her bones would crack beneath the weight. When the last reverberation faded, she felt herself on the edge of a great chasm of the universe as it tilts into endless terror and thought, I don’t want to die.

  “Feel that, daughter of snow and ice and beloved father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends.” The dragon’s voice echoed through the gallery as he stood, filling the cavern, sending treasures flying in all directions which glimmered in the light of the false sun, blinked, and returned to their place in the hoard.

  He stepped forward with a giant claw that filled twenty paces of a man, “Feel the pulsing of your life within your veins, the chill of sweat upon your skin. Feel it! Feel your inner heart, bursting with that sorrow but also with a mad hope at something more.”

  He took another step, his colossal back arched like a lion ready to the hunt, “Feel terror, exhilaration, joy, feel it. Look at me!”

  He pressed his long neck forward and brought his enormous face within a few feet of the young lady as she opened her eyes and blanched at his closeness, eyes locked on one of his giant eyes that was larger than her whole body. The supernova radiance within burned with dazzling power.

  “Feel your life, and ask me again to kill you.” His voice was an avalanche of sound.

  She exploded into horrendous tears, “Please, don’t. Please. Please.” Her body shook from an earthquake sourced in her soul, and she buried her face in her hands. She wheezed and wept, chest heaving. Then she felt her shoulders covered with a warm blanket of thick wool, and a soft sound like wind through an aeolian harp played around her. She dared not open her eyes, but she could feel the blanket tugged around her by gentle hands and brought together in the front. She warmed, and a close scent of wool mixed with sage and pine made her feel at home. She reached up and drew the blanket closer as she opened her eyes. There before her was a man of chalk white skin covered in ghosted silver scales, his eyes the same eyes as those of the creature minus the iris.

  Her eyes widened with recognition, “You…”

  He spoke softly, “I have oft known fear to be a match for mad despair. You live, daughter of the mountains. Speak not of seeking death, for where life abides there grows hope as well.”