Ava nocked her arrow and aimed, unsure where to hit the creature. She was certain that if she did not kill it with one shot it would kill her. Bulky and clumsy it may look. Its eight legs made it six times faster than her.

It lifted its foremost limbs threateningly, the action making the creature twice her size, and emitted a clicking sound. Beast hissed at it from behind her.

She had heard of these creatures in Minervin’s tales, though he made them seem so much smaller. Beast had entangled himself in their thick webs six days into their journey south and she struggled to cut him loose. Their efforts, thankfully, had stirred nothing predatory. She had thought the webs long abandoned at the time.

‘Is it sick? Frenzied? Does it bite?’ it hissed.

Ava lowered her bow, recognizing the look in its four, large, beady black eyes. She had seen it so many times already, sometimes reflected in the pools of water she found. The spider hesitated, it flexed its foremost legs at her uncertainly before lowering them and scurrying passed her. It raised them once again and clicked a warning at Beast before continuing north.

‘We must leave this place, mother. It is wrong when predators flee like prey and prey attack like predators,’ Beast pleaded as she continued deeper into the forest.

Not once in their journey did he walk beside her, always following a few paces behind. A show of hesitation to continue as well as an unwillingness to leave her behind. And despite his constant whining about the forest’s dangers, she was glad for his presence. The further south Ava went the more pervasive and heavier the sense of forbidding became. It was a weight on her shoulders, a stone in her gut and a constriction in her chest. Everything told her to turn back. But what good would that do for anyone?

“The deer had the mad illness, Beast. It would not have attacked otherwise. You should go back and help Minervin, but I need to see.”

‘Beast’s place is always at mother’s side. Mother has no one else to protect her from mad deer. Beast will stay close.’

Ava had feared for Beast when he attacked the deer, both of them had battled creatures with the mad illness and neither had suddenly died as Beast’s real mother did or developed the symptoms that Malgorn displayed. She and Minervin were certain Malgorn became infected through his wound, but how or where he got the illness from, they could not say for sure.

It was on the eighteenth day when Ava reached the edge of Draugr Forest. Fog hung thick and heavy in the air and with it the sharp and cloying stench of rot. She would not continue into it, her sight of the land before her so obscured she could not see the nose on her face.

Beast lowered himself closer to the ground, the hairs on his neck raising.

‘Beast does not like this place, mother. Let us leave.’

“Hide yourself Beast. I will climb a tree and attempt to see the lay of the land ahead,” she whispered.

Ava picked a tree that offered the most cover and climbed high enough to see through the fog.

Dread entered her heart at the sight ahead. Crypts and barrows littered the land, so many and so vast it seemed the hilly ground was made from them. Humanoid creatures shuffled between them silently, disturbing the fog around them.

Dead things, dead people, far too numerous for her to count. And these are only the ones I can see through the fog!

 Her eye caught another movement, it did not shuffle like the others but glided through the air, and the fog gave way to it as if revolted by its presence. A faceless figure formed of the blackest smoke, its eyes and heart burned with an angry red haze. Ava felt evil emanate from it in malicious waves and sank lower down onto the branch.

It drifted to the entrance of one of the barrows, from which two Draugr appeared, carrying a desiccated body. They placed it on a cracked altar. The shadow floated over to it, placing his hand over its grimacing mouth.

Ava started when the body convulsed a moment later and emitted an unnatural shriek. The shadow turned and looked up. It took a dread-filled moment for her to realise that it was staring directly at her. Her heart plummeted and then beat hard and heavily against her chest. She jumped down to a lower branch before the shadow flew at her. She tried bringing her bow around to face it, but it was too late. Darkness surrounded her and she was pushed from her perch. Pain ripped through her shoulder when she landed, and her lungs emptied of air.

She gasped for breath and clutched her wound. Her blood was warm against her frozen fingers. The shade hovered before her. The sword it brandished in place of a hand glinted like dark, jagged glass.

It spoke. The sound of its voice was long and dissonant. The words were strange, yet familiar, like a distant dialect of elven or orcish. Her head swam with dizziness.

“You do not understand me, do you?” It asked when she did not answer.

“What a disadvantage the spirits and their god have gifted you with in place of a solution. They sought for the remaining races to forget how Archaicron broke. Yet they have only delayed our plans to an age where they both have grown weak. How can I not laugh in the face of their fruitless efforts? Tell me now, where is the Artifact?”

Ava willed herself to move. Her bow was in her hand, yet she did not have the strength to strike out with it. The will to fight vanished the moment it had cut her.

“You are a fool, Dra’On. You will die in their name, and they will offer you nothing for it.”

Ava lay frozen as the shadow stepped over her and placed his sword at her neck. Her death was so close she could taste the sourness of it in her mouth.

The shadow dissipated before her, the sword at her neck melting back into smoky nothingness as Beast jumped into it with a menacing growl. He looked around befuddled when he landed over her and said in a panic, ‘We must run, mother! Beast still senses the strange shadow, even though Beast cannot see it.’

She forced herself to stand but collapsed again after a few paces.

“I cannot, Beast. He did something when he cut me,” she told him, weakly.

‘Then climb on Beast’s back, Beast will carry you back to the wizard and his magic water.’

Ava dragged herself onto his back, gladdening at the feel of his warm body. How long has it been since I felt any form of heat?  She was surprised that her added weight did not slow his pace. Trees whirred by in a blur as he sprinted, and Ava watched them pass with darkening eyes.

The shade appeared suddenly at their side. Beast hissed as it continued to keep pace beside them. It reached out for her. Ava drew her dagger and sliced its hand, uncertain as to what it would accomplish.

The shade shrieked in pain and disappeared, the echoing sound still lingering in her mind afterwards.

‘Come to me! I demand it! We cannot linger here any longer!’

“Go left, Beast,” she muttered into his fur.

‘The wizard is before us, mother.’

“I know, Beast. Go left.”

#

Beast stopped at the edge of the forest and refused to go any further, Ava slipped off his back, her legs and hands stiffening from the blasts of cold wind that blew. The Whirlwind of Frost twisted and roared menacingly before her in the clearing.

Just as Malgorn’s drawing depicted, there were people here. A field of frozen corpses, rooted in place.

Ava clutched her shoulder, the cold piercing painfully into the injury. She pushed her weak legs forward, fighting the wind that blew her back. Her cloak flapped violently behind her, pulling at her neck. Frost and clouds blinded her as she made her way into the roaring vortex.

‘Mother! Beast cannot follow! The cold wind bites him!’

“Fall back, Beast. Do not follow me!” she yelled.

Whether he heard her she could not tell, but she knew he would not listen if he did. He would follow until the wind froze him in place. She just needed to keep going, to save him. To save all of Archaicron. His reply did not enter her head. She could hear nothing but the deafening roar of the swirling wind. It moved through her body as if it were a part of her.

She fell forward suddenly, the push of the wind gone, yet it surrounded her, twisting around and around this small space but never touching it. Ava looked up and saw the sky, so blue and bright the sight of it nearly blinded her.

Then, it disappeared, leaving only grey cloud. A woman hovered before her, wind and frost shaped her form and dress.

“Why have you tarried? My power is failing! All our powers are failing!” she screamed before reforming into a crystal. Cold mist emanated and swirled lightly around it. “Take it, quickly and leave this land before the evil I have kept frozen here consumes us all!”

“What must I do with this?” Ava asked, touching the crystal tentatively.

“Take it quickly!” It yelled.

Ava stood dumbfounded, turning the intricate crystal in her stiffening hands. Take it where?

She started and ripped her arm from the blackened, emaciated hand that grabbed at it, then moved away from another’s grasping arms, and another, and another. Her heart hammered in her chest. All around, the frozen corpses were coming alive.