21.

The throbbing of his missing leg woke Lynn just before dawn. He stared aimlessly upwards towards the wooden support beams above him in the cabin as he attempted to fall back asleep. He still felt sore and exhausted but after an hour with no success he finally groaned and rolled out of bed. He reattached his fake leg and stood up.

Constell hadn’t moved from where he had fallen asleep, his chest heaving up and down accompanied by soft snoring.

Lynn moved quietly as he maneuvered over to Constell’s bag and grasped aimlessly in it until his hand closed around a vial the length of a pointer finger. Keeping it closed within his fist, Lynn slowly backed away from Constell and slipped out the door.

Once outside, Lynn hobbled over to the frozen lake and, after quickly scanning the area with his eye, found a decrypted log on the bank. His body ached with sores from the previous day’s climb but he made his way over to it and sat. He opened his fist to reveal the vial in his palm. Lynn focused on it. For about an hour he simply stared at it, attempting to change it in some way. Still, nothing seemed to change about the milky white liquid.

“Put the vial down and place your hand on the lake,” Constell instructed.

Lynn turned to see him smiling at him and did as he instructed. The lake’s icy surface burned his hand with the cold. He kept it there for several minutes before withdrawing it. It had become red from exposure and felt raw as beads of water dripped from his palm.

“I thought this ice was unmeltable,” Lynn said.

“The main body of the ice is. What ya were just touching was the layer of ice that’s built up on top of Lysendra’s from exposure. When it rains, a less mystical layer of water ices over on it. That doesn’t matter though. Set your hand back on the ice. Ya need to feel the ice. Feel its essence, know it better than ya know yourself. Don’t take your hand off until ya’ve memorized the touch of it so clearly that it’s burned into your head. Either that, or until your hand blackens and falls off. Whichever’s first.”

Constell slipped away, and left Lynn alone. Hours passed with Lynn pressing his hand into the ice. He devoted every fiber of his being to focusing on the frozen water under his palm, attempting to block out all other distractions. It was as if he was reading a book so engrossing that nothing else in the world could break his concentration from it. Staring so intently on the unchanging ice until suddenly it did change. For only a split second he saw inside the ice a pretty, youthful girl traveling with a hooded, young woman holding a lantern that shed purple light.

Lynn leaped back, startled. Where his hand had been, an inch deep handprint remained engraved in the ice from the heat of his hand over several hours but the woman and girl were gone.

“Constell!” Lynn cried. Lynn’s mentor swaggered out of the cabin.

“Wha ish it?” As he slurred his words, Constell’s body swayed as if he was on the deck of a boat in choppy waters.

“You’re drunk?!” Lynn said. “You’re supposed to be teaching me and instead you got drunk?”

“I’m so bored. You jus’ gotta sit there. All icy and cold. My belly warm I am and be.”

“Your syntax isn’t even functioning. You’re not going to be able to answer my question. Get back inside. I’ll talk to you once you’re sober.” Lynn sighed while pointing back at the cabin with a soaked, red hand.

Constell nodded his head eagerly and walked back to where he had just come from, teetering at every other step. With his mentor safely back in the cabin, Lynn turned back to the ice, staring at it with new purpose, he searched fruitlessly for any sign of people in the ice. Neither the girl, the woman, nor any other entity appeared before him but still he looked on. It wasn’t until the sun was setting that Lynn noticed the ache of his rumbling stomach. Hobbling back to the cabin, he found Constell snoring on his bed with bottles strewn around himself. Lynn shook him until he spluttered awake.

“What?” he asked as he shoved himself under the wool blankets.

Instead of answering, Lynn shot back with his own questions. “Why were you day drinking? Did you seriously haul liquor all the way up here from the library?”

“Ugh, quiet down.” Constell groaned. “It’s from a stash hidden under the third bed’s floorboards. A friend told me about how his uncle, a talented brewer who used to climb up here to drink on the weekends.

“So you’re stealing?”

“The uncle’s dead now, he won’t miss a few bottles. Thought I’d put them towards a just cause..”

Lynn held himself back about questioning the justness of getting day drunk and focused on the questions that mattered. “Is there anything or anyone under the ice?”

Constell remained silent for a few seconds and then burst into a fit of chuckling under his blanket. Then he winced and put a hand to his head.

“I thought ya were randomly changing the subject but now I realize ya must be drunk too. Why’d you ask where I got the liquor if you already found it, Lynn?”

“Nevermind. I must have spent too long staring into nothing that I thought I started seeing things.”

It had only been half a moment he thought he had seen the two figures but their image was vividly imprinted in his mind when he closed his eye. The younger one couldn’t have been older than twelve, she had pretty brown hair that fell down her shoulders in slight curls and her skirt whipped around her legs as her white teeth seemed to chatter as if being in the ice made her cold. The older girl was closer to his own age and appeared stoic as she leaned against a walking stick in her black robes. Most notably though, under her hood, her face appeared disfigured, speckled in snake-like scales.

Lynn shook his head, the image had been too real. He went back outside and approached the lake. Regaining his position, he set his hand back down on the ice and stared back into it. Only this time he looked past the ice, scanning for what was beneath it. A chill echoed through his body and suddenly he saw multiple images pass him by. First there was a little boy and girl laughing together while perched on a small little row boat in the middle of the sea. Then he blinked and saw a girl lying on the stump of what must have once been a massive tree while another girl loomed over her with a curved knife. He blinked. There was a grizzled man screaming into a storm as the ocean crashed around him. He blinked. A woman he recognized as an older, scarred Nyx stabbed an unknown man in the stomach with a wooden spear, the blood shifting down the spearhead to her fingertips. He blinked. A young man held what seemed to be his daughter in his arms, cradling it with compassion. He blinked. A boy with only patches of hair ran through a desolate city. He blinked. A pale, white haired boy Lynn recognized as a slightly younger Rin lazily waved a hand and fifty men and women collapsed onto the ground, dead. He blinked. A black crow swooped down at a soldier and clawed out his eyes. He blinked. A handsome, raven haired man stood before him staring directly at him. He blinked. The man remained there. He blinked. The man was closer, his presence chilled him in a way the lake hadn’t. He blinked. The man grasped Lynn’s face and peeled his eye open with two fingers, making him unable to blink.

“Hello,” the man said.

Lynn opened his mouth to speak but words weren’t able to form.

“It has been a while since I have last encountered one of you. In the past when I’ve seen your kind I have removed their tongues to keep them from spilling secrets. But I’ll be forced to make an exception this once. Only half of you has decided to come for a visit and your tongue seems to be left behind. I could still reach out to your physical body but it seems so tedious and unnecessary. Instead, I’ll give you a few images of my own.” The man gave him a white smile and released his eyelid.

Lynn blinked. Vivian screamed while tied to a post watching what Lynn assumed to be her brother and mother being burned alive by a mob with pitchforks, her mother’s burning post held a sign titled “WHORE” above it. He blinked. Vivian’s scorched corpse was peeled down by men who threw her in a wheelbarrow on top of her family. Lynn saw himself standing in his family’s mansion as a white haired man reached out with a hand and the left half of Lynn’s body to immediately whither and collapse. He blinked. A different white haired man strolled past his parents’ corpses, picked up his brother by the throat, threw him into a sack, and walked out the broken door. He blinked. His brother lay stretched out on a stone slab as masked figures carved lines in his body with steel knives which glistened with blood. He blinked. A woman forced his brother’s arm out and sliced his wrist open, draining his blood into a bucket. He blinked. His brother lay in a stone cell completely naked save for the thousands of scars which spread across his body. He blinked. Vivian lay at Rin’s feet, whether unconscious or dead, Lynn wasn’t certain. He blinked. The city beneath the library erupted in flames spreading from a single tower and causing tens of thousands of voices to cry out in pain as they were burned. He blinked.

Lynn was back on the lake. He tumbled backwards off the dead log and stared up at the pale blue sky. There was no doubt in his mind that those scenes he had seen were real. Some were in the past but obviously not all of them. Nyx had been older in one and, as far as he knew, the image of Vivian at Rin’s feet hadn’t occurred. Not yet. Lynn sat up. He yanked out the vial of Savirelet that he had hung around his neck. Every drop had dissolved. Lynn half ran, half hobbled over to the cabin and flung the door open.

“We need to leave,” he demanded.

Constell moaned and burrowed further down in his sheets.

“Constell. I saw something in the ice. I can’t explain it but I know that Vivian is in danger. I need to get her away from Rin. I might not be able to alter the events I saw in the past but maybe the future ones still can be changed.”

Constell groaned.

“Damn it! I need you to lower me down with your sand rope! There’s no other way for me to get off this mountain!”

“Ya ate something funny and had bad dreams. Go back to bed.”

Lynn grabbed Constell and shook him.

“S-stop!” Constell said, glaring. Fine, I’m awake. But I need a clear mind to focus on using my ability anyway, I couldn’t lower ya down if I wanted to. Which I don’t. I just spent several days getting up here with you. And there’s still so much whisky.”

Lynn let go of him and grabbed Constell’s bag, took the last vial of Savirelet, and stormed out of the cabin. First he went to the cliff Constell had helped him up. The slope dropped a steep 90 degrees. Lynn paced along it, examining it for a long while, before leaving. He continued along the edge of the plateau, scanning for any reasonable way he could descend it. Finally, after almost an hour, he found what he had been looking for. By some miracle, a rusted pulley system emerged from the side of the cliff on the other end of the plateau. Examining the pulley, Lynn decided that he was only about twenty feet up and could risk the aged machinery. He slipped the rusted metal cord to his belt, grasped the counter weight cord, and let himself drop at a snail’s pace.

Lynn was about halfway when he chanced a glance down at where the pulley was lowering him to. Red eyes glared back at him. In his surprise, Lynn let go of the counterweight for a split second before managing to regain a grasp on it but the shock of his weight caused the rusted pulley to break from the cliff. He fell.

The wind was knocked out of him on impact with the ground but from there he began tumbling down the hill like a hopeless ragdoll. Colliding with a tree, Lynn felt several ribs crack in his chest but his fall seemed to be over.

Lynn raised his head up to see just how far he had fallen and, as he did so, his heart dropped. He watched helplessly the rusted metal that had been the pulley system rolled down the mountain. Straight at him. Every bump tossed it in the air and seemed to give it more momentum as it barreled in his direction. Lynn attempted to shift himself off the tree, hoping to get himself rolling in a direction the metal pulley wasn’t but the pain was too much and before he had a chance to fight through it, the rusted metal collided with the back of his head and everything went black.