Fable - Ask Frostfling Barrow

[Frazil Valrulf]

Spoiler: Music

Sastriga gracefully leaped over the dwarves and through the doorway Rimer and Rovan had opened. Frazil flung herself rather less gracefully through the door among a stampede of panicked bodies trying to escape the yawning pit. Looking back, she saw no one behind her, but she considered the lack of echoed screaming a positive outlook for their survival.

Frazil's eyes, being adapted to prevent snowblindness in the tundra, were not accustomed to the darkness of the underground. In this place, void even of the moon and stars, she could only squint into the unseen as they rushed forward. But her ears caught a familiar sound that caused any ísflögur to immediately pause: the soft groaning of ice underfoot. Sastriga, who had been idly sniffing around the chamber, also stopped. Her ears perked up.

Frazil gingerly shifted her weight from foot to foot to test the ice, frowning at the feel of it beneath her boots and the small air bubbles that hugged the bottom surface. She whistled to get the attention of her brash companions.

"Watch step! Ice not as thick as looking."

She moved over towards one wall, thinking that the ice was likely thicker there, and kept going at a cautious pace.

One of the dwarves muttered a curse as his boot slipped on the ice and he dropped his torch to catch himself. As he bent down to pick it up, he froze for a moment, his stare locked on the icy cave floor.

"What in the Hell?!" His outburst drew the attention of the nearby survivors, who quickly understood his sentiment.

From below the ice, a monstrous eye nearly the size of his body stared up at them.

Rovan Ravenhill

 

[Rovan Ravenhill]

This eye of primordial size observed them through the ice, nothing but a thin barrier separating these young races from something truly old. Rovan felt as small as a snowflake before a blizzard, gazing into its dark slit, like some wound in a sea of brass sclera. The eye sunk and vanished from view, the opaque ice hinting at some gargantuan form gliding away.

The ice . . . another cloud of frost poured over it from below, like a titanic breath. That cloud spread well below all their feet and caused many an explorer to panic and begin staggering across the ice. Frazil's warning reverberated in his head though. He didn't move immediately, but took his time to observe the more impatient souls going across.

Just as he was about to take his first step after them, he noticed a curious feature to the ice. Shapes were left behind from the cloud below - impossibly so, like someone cutting shapes in a foggy window with their finger. These, however, quickly caught his scribe's eye in their impossibly angular shapes. Letters. Symbols.

ᚼ◟ᛁᚱᛘ⸝ו╮ᛅᚦ⠃ᚢ◟ᚱ ᚾᚬᚱᚾᚠᚬᛏ⸌Íᛙ╮
ᛏ ᚾᛅ⸜⸝ᛋᛅᚢ⸌ÍᛚÍᚠᚢ

Memory splintered his current thoughts. He had seen these symbols before. In Tafna's book. But could he find a similar arrangement as to this?

Rovan feverishly flicked through pages in the book, eyes flitting from left to right, seeking, seeking, before the runes might disappear . . . and finding. There.

Marking the page, he sought to join the rest, taking the path that appeared safe from others walking it.

Frazil Valrulf

 

[Frazil Valrulf]

The ancient creature dove back into the depths, apparently losing interest in them. Some of the dwarves breathed a sigh of relief at its departure, while others held theirs in anticipation of the worst as they crossed the slick surface of this frozen grotto.

The quickest of the survivors had nearly reached the far side, in a desperate half-running, half-sliding fashion, when they felt the whole floor shudder beneath them.

Crack!

Fissures snaked out from an uplifted chunk of ice. A massive shadow in the underlying water recoiled and disappeared down beyond their sight, possibly to ram the lake's surface again. Several dwarves closest to the collision lost their already precarious footing and toppled over, uninjured but dazed.

The whole cavern was reverberating from the force of the impact, sending masses of icicles plummeting from the ceiling. Frazil flattened herself against the closest wall, trying to get as far from the cracks in the floor as possible. Her gaze was drawn to movement on the ceiling just as one of the icicles came shattered next to her, coating her flinching form in white.

Crack!

This time the leviathan creature breached the surface several yards away from its original impact point. Glacial water spilled out over the separating ice floes as rows of flat, serrated teeth closed around a chunk of ice and its screaming dwarf occupant.

The remaining survivors took off in every direction, trying to avoid both the falling shards and the more deadly threat that was lapping at the widening cracks in the floor -- hypothermia.

Even Frazil could not survive long in such frigid waters... especially with a hungry monster in it.

Rovan Ravenhill

 

[Rovan Ravenhill]

Spoiler: Music

He slammed the book shut, about to pursue the others, when the first crack shook the floor and sent the ceiling weeping with deadly, frozen tears.

"Noo--" Rovan began with an upward inflection at the first icicle shattering near him, as if he could tell the rudely impacting object to stop, like one might scold a drunk coachman. When more fell in swift succession, so did his negations, increasing in volume and desperation: "No, no, no - no - no,"-the frozen lake heaved and lurched like a dying whale, splintering the surface-"NO! NOOO--!"

His shrill cries and tripping escape were cut off when he slipped, falling as long as he was. The book tumbled out of his grasp and kept sliding along, before its part of the ice broke off, drifting in water. A gap substantial already separated him from Tafna's knowledge.

He struggled to rise, pointing and crying out for his lost item to anyone nearby:

"The book! We must not lose it! Get the . . ."

None listened. They all ran for their own lives. There was one last soul he could ask. He managed to struggle himself up to his knees without slipping, his clothes rendering him about as agile as a cart. Waving frenetically at Frazil and pointing at Tafna's book drifting off on its own ice-floe, he shouted, nasal voice rattling dully against ice walls:

"Frazil! We cannot afford to lose Tafna's work, it may prove vital for us!" He staggered to his feet, reaching the end of where he could safely stand, watching the book drift further from him, now by a gap of three yards. "Aid me!"

Frazil Valrulf

 

[Frazil Valrulf]

Frazil turned to look at the book Rovan was so excited about. It was about ten yards from her position, but between her and it lay a hazardous field of glacial water, ice and slush; all of which looked about the same in the haphazard torchlight borne by panicked dwarves. At least it seemed that the roof had already launched all of its projectiles.

She hoisted her own torch in one hand and made a run for the fallen tome. While her boots stuck somewhat better to the slushy interface between ice and water, the cracked floes threatened to fall apart beneath every step. Being lighter than the dwarves and more used to navigating thin ice, Frazil managed her way across the drifting surface without incident.

Sastriga had been pacing along the ice at the lake's edge, whining fretfully as she tried to figure out how to get at the creature below. She took Frazil's rush forward as a cue to bound across the ice, claws scratching across slippery surfaces, feet sending chunks of ice into the water as she went.

Frazil reached the final gap between her and the book first, but stopped short of the jump when an ominous shadow swam beneath the light of her torch and, a split-second later, the ice sheet she was standing on tilted violently.

She reached desperately for the edge of the ice as a dark head crested the water. With a momentary grip keeping her aloft, she swung at the leathery hide with the torch in her other hand. She couldn't tell if she'd struck the thing before it fell back into the water with a splash, sending her and bits of the ice floe flying. She only saw the blue light of her torch careening through the air like a comet before being engulfed by near-freezing water.

Luckily, she'd landed closer to the shore, and was able to drag herself out of the shallow water without much issue aside from being wet, cold and thoroughly angry.

She sputtered a string of curses. The book must have been long gone then.

A black nose nudged her. She looked up at Sastriga and managed a grin.

"Bring it to him," she pointed to Rovan after picking herself up and grumbling at her sodden armor and clothes.

Rovan would see the large wolf run up and stand before him with a tome held gently between its teeth. Sastriga would drop the book at his feet with the satisfaction of a lesser canine fetching a stick before shaking the extra water from her fur.

Amazingly, the tome would be unharmed except for maybe a few teeth marks in its cover.

Rovan Ravenhill