Welcome, Merrin Dragonrider. The voices ghosted through her mind, every individual one a hairsbreadth out of unison with its fellows, creating a terrifying impression of a thousand bodiless presences, each to be found only in the shadows of her peripheral vision. The sun flamed weakly through the clouds overhead, growing dimmer by the moment, but it hardly mattered. She could see the passageway, stairs to a void of blackness where sun did not penetrate, no matter the brightness.

"Go away - go -" she said, hardly realizing she spoke aloud, eyes closed against the onslaught that trembled in her mind, the floodgates ready to burst open. As a last resort, she grasped at their original purpose for coming here. Tomb of the Four Winds. How many Renegade heroes had died in this battle?

How many were buried deep beneath the doomed city?

It had to be the way. It was the only way. Shadows twined around the spires that still stabbed up at the clouded sky, shadows that took form in Merrin's subconscious and reached, skeletal fingers insubstantial but terrifying. Her throat was too dry to speak.

Every step a battle, she ventured into the ragged black circle of charred stone. Her heart thumped a beat to the repeating gods...oh gods...oh gods... in her mind. Loose ash and pebbles shifted beneath her boots. Too soon she was staring into the gaping maw of the passageway, every sense tingling for the slightest provocation toward a burst of white fire. Her head was strangely clear. Merrin wondered, detachedly, what would happen if the fear that knotted her stomach crept up into her throat.

Best not to think about it.

Instinctively, she looked for Kendath. There. Their eyes met. You're not afraid, are you?

Merrin had said it before. I'm terrified.

She looked at her hand, and with difficulty summoned just enough power to constitute a globe of bright flame above her palm. It crashed against its own floodgates, threatening to burst, but she held it. The stairs were solid under her feet, their one redeeming aspect. Two steps. Three. And then Merrin could see dark passage ahead, and feel sun receding behind. Her sphere of flame flickered but held steady.

"Kendath..." she realized she'd said the name out loud and swallowed it. But she waited until he was beside her before she ventured down the passage.

_________________

That single name, though far from loud, grated against the tunnel's bleak walls and came skittering back as a sibilant whisper. It reminded Kendath of spiders, and he shuddered at the possibility.

"Quiet," he forced his numb lips to breathe back, but the word evaporated in the stillness. The passage was too narrow for two to walk abreast, but again he placed a hand on Merrin's shoulder to urge her onward. Behind them, the descending steps squeezed the daylight into a sullen slice at the top of the stairway, ever waning, until the darkness snuffed it out altogether. The only light that remained was the small globe of fire in Merrin's palm. It tossed soft silver upon gray that grew ever colder as the earth swallowed them.

A tomb. These steps led to a tomb. A romantic, worthless concept - enshrining the dead. The Meiltha burned their dead, for death does not constitute silence. Any necromancer could raise the dead; any necromancer could force the dead to lay bare their secrets. Meiltha necromancers were adept at doing exactly that. The Renegades of old must have been very foolhardy... or very confident. We'll never fall... Kendath suddenly found himself missing his dragon - either one of them. The warm presence in his mind would, at least, diminish the alien cold that now chilled that vacancy.

Abruptly, the tunnel ended. It simply stopped, the stairs leveling out to a stone floor belonging to a stone corridor that yawned away into the darkness. At perfect intervals on both sides of the corridor were doors, reinforced and barred. Kendath took a step forward, and something feathery tickled his face. He brushed the spider web away. The air was clouded, oppressive. If air could scrape, like rusted iron, against throats and lungs, this air did.

Silence. Nothing eerie or dramatic about it. Mere silence. If Kendath had expected some monstrosity to leap out from behind a corner, none obliged his fancy. The apprehension he'd endured on the stairway - the cold, the fear - had amounted to nothing. Pure imagination. The beginnings of a nervous chuckle caught in his throat. He coughed slightly and moved to the first door. The bar slid slowly, carefully to the floor. He exchanged a glance with Merrin, then braced both hands against the door and pushed it open.

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Hinges that should long ago have rusted to nothing screeched in the still, stale air. With a glance behind and around - Merrin hated to have the darkness at her back, despite her little lantern-like globe - she stepped past Kendath to hold up the light.

It fell, palely, on pitted stone. Cobwebs clouded the shadowed corners. The chamber was small and square, devoid of any manner of ornament or decoration save the rectangular sarcophagus in the center. Merrin paused, every sense quivering, but she could hear nothing. Why did she expect to? There was nothing.

Clinging to the thought, she moved to gingerly trace the carved runes on the stone coffin. She could not read them, but she could understand the pictures they framed well enough. A sword, a faint carving in relief of some battle...she correctly interpreted the flaring sunburst, whose rays stretched over the coffin's top and sides, as a Renegade symbol even in ancient times. "We're in the right place," she said, lifting her fingertips from tracing the pictures and turning. Her light flared against their faces. She couldn't read Kendath's expression, but Adeila looked as tense as she felt.

Merrin moistened her lips and stepped out into the main corridor, this time raising her hand so that the light showed a vaulted ceiling, and rune inscriptions above every doorway. Some were adorned with gems that sparkled dully in the pale light, and all were held in some way; a few had locks, to which the keys had long been gone; others bars like the one they'd just entered. Some bore the faint traces of what Merrin recognized as magical wards against tomb robbery.

Abruptly she heaved a breath and resolved to stop holding it. Somewhere in the vague depths of her mind, power crashed against invisible floodgates, and the sphere of light flared bright. Merrin squinted against it. At the end of the passage, carven images on a pair of double stone doors jumped into sharp relief.

A circle, divided into quarters. A stylized snowflake for the cold north, sun for the south, waves for the east and three mountains for the west. Merrin's didn't need to guess at the runic inscription. "The Tomb of the Four Winds," she said, voice breathless and coming back on her ears in echoing whispers.

_________________

Wondering, Kendath traced a finger along the blue snowflake, which glimmered like a thousand sapphires under the silver flare. The stone portal seemed seamless, as much a part of the tunnel as the walls themselves, save for the single crack running down its length, slicing the inscription in twain. He felt along the crack. No bar. No handle. How were they to pass through? Should they pass through? What of the tomb's guardians?

Guardians. Hah. The guardians hadn't confronted them yet because there were no guardians. The vision on the footbridge, the premonitions on the stairs - his imagination, nothing more. Anyone could go mad in this stifling sepulcher. All that stood between them and their objective were the Four Winds themselves... whatever that implied. If Renegade heroes rested here, as Merrin claimed, the allure of the place to potential grave robbers must be overwhelming.

"Ready?" he breathed, almost inaudibly. When both companions wordlessly nodded consent, he braced both hands on the doors and pushed. To his surprise, they swung open, weightless, without a murmur. Beyond the threshold... no corridor. No chamber. No rush of air, as might suggest a chute, perhaps, or a vast darkened room. Simply nothing. How he hated to think it... oblivion. The light in Merrin's palm beat feebly against a black wall.

Turn back. Turn back. What kind of test was this? Turn back. Elementals or demons he could have prepared for, but what was this? Turn back.

Too late.

He looked at Merrin. She looked at him. Was that fear in the gleam of her eyes, the set of her jaw? Was that fear... or determination? Too late to tell. She would be a fool to have one, but not the other.

They stepped over the threshold.

-----

To say that the mountainside was cold would be analogous to saying that terror is an annoyance, a fly to be brushed off. The mountainside was cold, excruciatingly and exquisitely cold, the kind of cold that freezes one's skull until one can no longer think, can no longer breathe for the agony of the air clawing down one's throat and nostrils. The mountainside was cold, cold enough to freeze the blood of dragons, and the man didn't know how long he would endure.

He'd clung to this vertical slate of rock, his fingertips frozen on the ledge above him, for hours or days or weeks. All rationality dictated that his strength should have long ago failed him, that his fingers should have slipped and sent him plummeting to the glistening white below. It never happened. Nor did his heart throb any longer - he wasn't sure if he even had one. He no longer breathed or lived - his very lifeline clung to this cliff, frozen to the stone, while the blizzard screamed in his ears and jealously shielded the top of the mountain from sight. He knew this, but he willed his neck to bend anyway, to support his cumbersome head in its endeavor for a final, fruitless search for the end. He looked up, toward where the peak was supposed to be.

As always, the top of the mountain was nowhere to be found. But this time, he spotted something else. Someone - two someones, actually - clutched the icy stone above him. He could not identify them from this vantage, veiled as they were by storms of white, but he realized, somehow, that he knew them. Who were they?

Did it matter? No - the only thing that mattered was the meaninglessness of his own survival, plastered to this unforgiving mountainside, every muscle immobilized, while some vestige of willpower lurking within him cast his ever-searching gaze toward the mountain peak that didn't exist. That same vestige of willpower knew that he would be liberated if and only if he reached the top.

Yet how could he believe it, when liberation was only a matter of letting his fingers go, one by one? How could he believe it, when it was so much easier to die?

_________________

Wind. Cold wind, and snow. Snow on her eyelashes, coating her hair, gusting into every edifice of her clothing. Was snow all that existed? Just snow, and wind, and something cold beneath her. Not snow. Rock. Rock and snow and wind. She sucked in a breath and felt it singe her throat in unbearable coldness. With the breath came awareness.

Why was she here? Disjointed images flashed, of dragons and cities and an expanse of glittering ocean. Who was that? She was standing on the threshold of a door, looking pale and afraid. Her eyes were intensely blue in her white face. They reflected white fire. White, like snow.

Something warmed her hand against the frigid rock of the mountainside. Something in her palm. She couldn't lift it. To move was to plummet into an unending abyss. But warmth in her hand? Her mind wrestled with the mystery until it, too, was swept away by the howling wind. She couldn't open her eyes. All she could see was the image in her mind. Blue eyes. White fire in air, over her hand.

White fire in her hand.

The fire became an identity, a tiny flaming point of familiarity. She struggled, as if recalling something just beyond her memory. Merrin. Merrin Dragonrider.

The wind howled, but she shrieked over it - "My name is Merrin Dragonrider!"

It howled louder, blinding and deafening her. She clung there, feeling fire kindle within her. She would not be defeated! I can climb an idiot mountain. I can stand against the wind, the snow. If you think you can make me give up, you can bloody well think again!

She didn't know whether the frigid wind was burning her throat, or whether she was shouting over the wind. She didn't know to whom she shrieked defiance. The top of the mountain. The top - and then by all the gods, by the stars and the heavens and the earth beneath, she would defeat it. With the wind came numbness, body and mind, but she knew.

My name is Merrin Dragonrider. My name is Merrin Dragonrider. My name...

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White as the color of his robes, the snow, wind and cold engulfed him, it froze him and set it`s will against him. What was there, but endless promise of desperation and death here? Garthag shivered slightly, but pushed forward, what did he possess here that others did not? Power? Hardly, he hardly anymore held any true power, his life was just a small flickering light amongst the others. There were hundreds, no tens of thousands people like him in existence. They were all the same, he was the same as well? Was he no different from those greedy, petty, mediocre mages, who forever strove to achieve greater power? His magic, his power, had been diminished to being something considered as common in this world.

What had he sacrificed to come this far and become... a tool of the gods? To become nothing? Everything! Just for a chance at great power or was it that it had been always power, that had chosen him regardless of his will and now he was no longer considered worthy? Was all that he had strove for irregardless... Could it be that he couldn`t overcome the snow, the wind or the cold despite what he did. Was the mountain top always beyond his reach?

He wanted to scream in anger and frustration, this was not how it was supposed to be. This was not his will or did his will never have anything to do with it? What, if he had no true, free will? What, if every action he chose was simply set a course by the gods and others? Was he being the puppet here after all instead of Merrin and Kendath? Ridiculous, they were the one`s being shoved around by the gods...

So why do you follow them?

A voice called out, questioning him, putting his actions and goals into doubt. Garthag never showed any shred of emotion outwards despite whatever feelings he might have harbored, he had always attempted to kill whatever emotions he had, but he was only.... human after all. However Merrin and Kendath were more human than he could ever be, they were a sickening thing in Garthag`s existence. They would have everything he once had, something that he could not regain. Why did they fight? To bring peace to the world and to save the dragons, but why did Garthag fight? Vengeance? He had always imagined it as a petty ambition, one that did not concern him in anyway. Vengeance had been a convenient excuse after all, a lie to manipulate himself on this journey, a way to deceive the manipulator.

So had it all been in vain then? His life, efforts, work and struggles? Was he not worthy, weak and a puppet? Who knew? However there was one thing Garthag knew, where there was a will there was a way. He wouldn`t let it all be in vain, his family didn`t have to had been murdered for nothing, He had not slain his own master for nothing! Nothing would be in vain as long as the flame of his ambition burned bright and strong, it would melt the snow before him and open a path to the top of the mountain.

However he couldn`t help wondering, the lust for ambition and power, was that all that remained inside his hollow, cold shell? So it seemed for now... he had chosen the path of being irredeemable.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

[Curunir, the most powerful of Renegade mages set up wards thousands of years ago to test the worthiness of anyone attempting to enter the tomb. The mountain/cliff isn't real. It's illusion, designed to test willpower, and I don't think Garthag's regained enough of his power to resist. I may not have made that clear in my above post... apologies if that's the case.]

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(*blinks eyes* okay... awkward... well I read your posts quite quickly after getting home from work so no wonder, I´ll edit that... so tired...)

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Cold. Sheer, unfathomable, paralyzing cold. Cold like she had never known before - or was it all she had ever known? That seemed far more likely as she clung desperately to the face of the mountain. Cold was all that was. Cold and pain and a terrible sensation long forgotten: despair.

She never despaired - didn't she? There had never been much cause for it before, if there had even been a before. Just peace and serenity and quiet acceptance, because life would always move on. If such a place and time had existed, it was now long distant, a mere shadow of a thought from long ago. There was only here, only now. There was no end - not above, not below. Climb into oblivion, or fall into oblivion. Neither seemed favorable - but why not? To fall, even to fall forever with no hope of ending, would be a sight easier than holding on like she was.

Tentatively, a presence brushed against her mind - hollow, distant, but vaguely familiar. She knew that presence. She was suddenly reminded of the tiny form wrapped around her torso, trembling. Svit. She had Svit.

For the first time, she attempted to look around her and realized that she was not alone. There were other figures, beside her and below her. She knew the others, had followed them here. One, the figure closest to her, was shouting defiantly against the wind, though she could still only barely be heard. Merrin. Merrin Dragonrider. Young Miss Merrin. Chosen of the gods.

Adeila - yes, that was her name, and she wasn't about to forget it. Words came into her mind,a nd almost instinctively, Adeila began murmuring them to herself. She did not know their meaning - whether they were an incantation, or a song, or a prayer - but they helped. She repeated them over and over, each time with growing conviction, and her grasp on the rock tightened ever so slightly. She had promised to come, to help them as much as she was able. As long as they could hold on, so would she.

An inch - the smallest fraction of an inch - must move. Need to move. Merrin was stiff with both cold and terror when she pried her fingers loose of the rock and reached, every muscle straining, for the next handhold. Somehow, in the midst of howling, keening wind and numbing cold and paralyzing terror, she could manage to cling to the very core of her being. "My name..." she panted, feeling pain faintly brush her fingertips as they met sharp rock, and wondering if it would hurt more if they weren't numb, "my name...Merrin Dragonrider..."

Her grip slipped, and for a moment Merrin felt a chilling jolt of terror. She raised her head, desperately searching for the tiny ledge of rock that could mean salvation or destruction. It was so hard to see beyond the storm of white. Straining, she groped for it - and after an endless moment of reaching for what taunted her just beyond her fingertips, she was safe.

Or as safe as she could be, clinging to a sheer mountainside in the middle of a blizzard.

Moment by moment, each infinitesimal effort spanning an age, Merrin climbed. She didn't know whether it was six inches or six feet, but when she next squinted through the raging storm, she could make out...what was that? The barest silhouette of something, white against white, that pierced the sky high above her. The top? Top of...the mountain. Her beleaguered mind struggled with the concept. Top? How could there be a top? There was no end...it continued forever into mindless oblivion. It would be so easy...so easy just to let go.

Merrin's instincts responded before she could force herself out of the numbing despair. She registered that her throat was raw before she realized she was shouting. To whom? Kendath...Adeila...the names were foreign but familiar at the same time.

"The top! Don't let go! Don't let go!"

_________________

An almost gossamer-like sheen of ice coated the mountain face, and for a few minutes or perhaps a few hours, it felt wonderful to rest his head against the stone and close his eyes. Icicles quivered on his face, and some part of his mind registered that sweat froze to his skin before it even fully left the pores. Interesting notion. Amusing... kind of hysterical actually. But his jaw was too numb to laugh.

He remembered a time like this, when he'd sat cross-legged in the snow, shivering in a cloak that felt altogether too small and too thin. Someone had spoken, and he'd been leaning against the warm flank of that someone with desperation much too apparent. "You scaleless, skinless, two-legged worms. It's just a little cold. Just a little cold, Kendath, and you're the worst of them all."

Just a little cold. And then a different voice - whether in his head or from the blizzard itself he couldn't discern - was crying out, "Don't let go! Don't let..."

Slowly, he extended his arm. Slowly, the air parted with a shattering of ice crystals that penetrated his sleeve and ripped across the bare flesh of his arm like a thousand glass shards. His lips cracked and stretched in a grimace of beautiful pain. Not painful like the bite of a knife, but painful like the muscles of his arm were becoming brittle, splitting apart. Yes, pain. Beautiful pain. He was alive. He could feel himself. More slowly still, he stretched his arm farther and, since he couldn't move his fingers, scraped his entire palm across the rock face. He found a ledge. Right beneath his hand. As though he'd willed it there.

This is called climbing. Yes. Keep climbing. He extended his other arm.

Time took its precious time. Every blink, every breath, every twitch of muscle crawled on for seconds that dragged into minutes. His brittle senses cracked every time his grip closed upon another ledge until, at last, not even the pain could remind him of life. He became not a human with a purpose, but an automaton, mindless - no - mind apart from body, as though his mind had winked out long ago, and he was watching his own struggling through the eyes of an impassive observer. Arm. Over arm. Over arm.

And it took a dozen excruciating gasps for breath before he realized that he'd reached the top.

The mountaintop was flat, and Kendath lay collapsed face-down upon the stone surface, too exhausted even to roll over. He was dying or already dead, he was sure of it. A storm of white threw itself against the mountain, but he could feel neither wind nor snow. In fact, he couldn't feel anything; he couldn't even clench his fist. He lay there for a hundred more heartbeats, eyes closed, floating somewhere in the endless white and reveling in nothingness.

It wasn't until he opened his eyes and spotted a flash of color beside him did he remember that he wasn't alone. He dragged himself over to Merrin and clutched her wrist, hard - he didn't mean to, but he couldn't force his viselike grip to relax. Her skin was no warmer than his own. Another pair of hands grasping the edge soon revealed their owner to be Adeila, and a billow of robes the color of snow revealed Garthag. What now? Kendath's lips spasmed, attempted to form the words, but the necessity died on his tongue.

At the other side of the mountaintop, aglow in a halo so surreal it blurred his vision, drifted a single crystalline door. It wavered in the storm, as though a stronger gust would simply blow it over. If opened, it appeared to lead right off the edge.

_________________

Snow clung to her eyelashes, freezing there and making Merrin's eyes feel heavier than ever with the desire to fade into blissful unconsciousness. She took a shallow breath, trying to ward off the lethargy that pervaded her limbs, and icy air stabbed at her throat and chest. It had almost been easier, climbing the sheer mountainside, to keep from losing hold on the tenuous grasp she had on her identity.

"Merrin...Dragonrider..." Her lips struggled to form the words, which were only whipped away on the keening wind. Fingers as cold as her own seized her wrist, and somewhere in her mind, she could recall...Merrin Dragonrider. Kendath. Adeila.

The names were familiar shapes on her lips. "Kendath..." she tried to say, and found it impossible. Instead, Merrin gathered what strength she had left and forced herself up on one elbow, squinting through the haze of snow.

An image caught at the edge of her vision, briefly revealing itself before becoming once more lost in the storm. Merrin squinted. There was still snow on her eyelashes. Very slowly, she could piece together the broken fragments of the blown-glass door suspended in the midst of the storm. This time she didn't try to talk, only reached for the hand she'd felt, and managed one step - two - toward the fragile portal that might lead anywhere or nowhere, but promised a hope of escape.

Falling - through snow and wind, which receded into a vast oblivion of nothingness - falling, and there was that figure on the threshold of a door -

Wind on her face. Warm wind, that thawed the frost - why was there frost? - and stars in an ebony sky, and beneath her silver scales. Silver.

"Wyvern!" Merrin gasped, every sense tingling in shock. "Wyvern!"

The stars made his scales gleam as quicksilver. Merrin found herself wanting to laugh with the joy of it - flying beneath a limitless sky, her dragon - the friend dearest to her heart - solid beneath her. The world hung like a rainbow sphere, fragile as a bubble.

And with the thought, it shattered. The stars flared bright, once, and the wind on her face was warm for a brief second before it turned icy. Of a sudden, Merrin reached forward to feel silver scales, and felt them twist beneath her. A dragon's cry of pain resounded in the darkness and fear clenched around her heart. "No!"

And then she was falling.

_________________

A sheet of white, brittle like glass, shattering as he broke through... body and mind, his body plummeting off the other side of the mountain, his mind screaming at the injustice of it all... And then... falling... falling...

Thud.

It took a while for Kendath to trust his senses again, and when he did, he still lacked the faith to open his eyes. It wasn't just that his ears were no longer ringing, and his nerves were no longer crackling, and his skin was no longer bristling with clinging ice shards. No, it was simply the sensation of... how should he put it? Warmth. He was warm. And the ground underneath him was soft, and the sun was breathing upon his eyelids, and the songbirds in the treetops were singing...

It took another thirty seconds for his mind to fully assimilate the thoughts that just waltzed through it. And when he finally cleared up, his eyes flew open.

Golden light and fleeting shadows danced above his head, provoking a burst of dizziness that quickly passed when he gained his bearings. He rolled over on the blanket of dark, moist soil and blinked at the tangled greens overhead. Wind plucked the gently swaying treetops and carried tiny birds across gaps in the forest canopy. Underbrush rustled somewhere beside him, and he twisted his neck around to catch a glimpse of a squirrel's sweeping tail, raised high like a banner. Color flashed as a butterfly landed on his shoulder. He slapped it off, and it bobbed off, quite unconcerned.

Birds and squirrels and butterflies. What in the abyss was going on?

Well, security is always illusion. He stood halfway up before pain lanced up his back, plopping him back down with a curse. Only then did he notice that the soil surrounding him was wet - he was dripping. He scowled at the flurries of white still clinging to his ripped sleeve. So it hadn't been a dream, after all. He turned and spotted Merrin curled a few feet away, sheltered by the overhanging branches of a giant oak. Another slumped form not far from her indicated Adeila, and a heap of white robes beyond her hinted at Garthag.

The strangeness of this world... Kendath crawled over to shake Merrin awake.

_________________

Merrin jerked awake in the instant she felt his hand, every muscle tense. For a moment she didn't recognize him, and then everything flooded back with the overwhelming intensity of a tidal wave. Her mouth was dry with the remembrance of mind-numbing fear. And then falling through oblivion, when she'd seen Wyvern, felt him beneath her...

She dropped her head to her hands, aching with the renewed pain of loss, and keeping tears at bay with what had become a wearily familiar sensation. Melting snowflakes were wet on her fingers. Merrin gulped air and realized that it no longer stabbed at her throat with the vicious intensity of frigid knives, and raised her eyes to Kendath's.

In that split second rage flooded through her. "How dare they!" Merrin cried, jerking upright to swivel, taking the entire clearing with one sweep of her gaze. By all the gods, all she wanted was the key from the tomb! Was that too much to ask? After the Star Crystal and the Cloud Crystal, and their whole journey back in time - the raw wound Wyvern's loss had left within her seemed to gape wider as she remembered what had happened on their return - and the chilling ordeal with Ironlegs, and now chasing futilely after this key, which brought sirens and a sea dragon and a kraken and now an undead city and whatever idiot place this was...gods, why? It's not FAIR!

And now she was standing here surrounded by verdant greenery, a warm breeze playing with her hair, which was damp with melted snow - there were birds, and grass underneath her feet, and Merrin would have ventured to feel hopeful except that it was all a joke, all a horrible fabrication designed to make her fight for even this. Even this. Nothing could be easy, and it seemed a crime to feel happy, even ephemerally.

"I won't be played with!" she cried, desperately swiveling to search the trees. "I am the chosen of the gods, curse you! All I want is this stupid, idiot key, that's all!"

Nothing.

Merrin covered her face with her hands, grappling with the raging tangle of emotions that she knew was getting the better of her. They made her dizzy. Slowly, one by one, she fought them back. Fear and loss and anxiety and rage, all in a hard tight knot in her stomach. Slowly, she lowered her hands, feeling her eyes dry with the tears that she would not shed.

She turned to Kendath, eyes passing over the stirring Adeila and Garthag, and didn't know what to say. They shared a wordless look, and then Merrin knelt to put a hand on Adeila's shoulder.

_________________

The snow scattered aside, the ice broke and his footing failing him. Garthag would have grinned physically, if he could have for there was no telling what was in store for him next. Thump, he slammed onto the ground, conscious and unharmed nonetheless. For a moment he shivered at the thoughts that had crossed his mind a while back, the pain and the agony, which he had so long feared had been thrown back at him like a giant snowball. Only his stubbornness had been enough to shatter those memories, brake trough and reach... reach what exactly?

His body felt warm again, his limbs were able to act and his mind was free from the terrible stranglehold. The battle within had seemed to have lasted for hours, however he could only wonder the victor. True enough it seemed that he had succeeded to push trough, but he wondered whether he had been let trough after his shell had been broken, after long lost feeling had been pushed into the surface. Thoughts, feelings and sensations long lost to him had come back, making him slip for once. For a brief flashing moment, an amused chuckle escaped between his teeth and there was no coldness to it, for once his mask fell off. Yet as quickly as it had fallen, he snatched it and placed it back on. He slowly opened his eyes, staring at the grass on the ground he was laying upon as his ears caught a sound from behind him.

A sound of frustration, grief and anger, that cried out as, if stabbed to bleed dry. The pawn, the fool, Merrin was letting her emotions burst out it seemed. She cried and whined, what a pathetic existence, it was also her words that Garthag caught and he could only wonder whether she even knew what kind of a fool she was being made of. Had he not once told them? Had it taken her this long to come face to face with the truth? If so then it was about time to rub some salt into those wounds of hers. Garthag slowly raised himself to sit and turned to stare at Merrin with an amused smile on his face, his eyes showed an amused glee about them, otherwise they were like an unbreakable mirror, which simply stared back at her. As she reached for Adeila, Garthag struck.

"It is such a shame when the pawn realizes, that it is nothing more than a sacrifice for the causes of others? Is it not? Merrin, chosen of the gods?" Garthag inquired as he slowly pushed himself up, but never removed his eyes from her, despite a murderous glare he was feeling coming from behind her. Always the murderer towards him, Kendath did not seem to gain any compassion for the likes of him.

"I thought you had already realized it, you have been my pawn ever since we joined forces so to speak and before all this even began, when you were chosen by the gods you were simply made their pawn. You are nothing more than a sacrifice, a thing to be thrown away when you are no longer required and I dare say there is still one more amongst us, who wishes to use you for his own selfish ends..."

Garthag said gazing past Merrin, right at Kendath. He had watched them both, their obvious care and feelings for one another, not for the sake of boredom or anything twisted. He had watched, deducted and come to a series of conclusions.

"Even your dearly beloved Kendath is using you Merrin, can you not see that? You are his last hope, his redemption. For how many lives do you think he is trying to make amends for? For how much blood of innocent people has stained on his hands and soul? He was a meiltha after all and you should know that anyone, who has bore such a name, has done more than enough to condemn them.

However in the very least I am honest with you and do not cloud my intentions with offerings of kindness that ultimately hold deceit...”

Garthag said with a calm tone and slightly turned away gazing at the tree`s around them, letting his words sink in, but he kept his hearing sharp in case the sudden sound of trampling boots approached him. Kendath might be in a very, volatile state of mind, after seeing Merrin break into tears like that and then have the fact that she was nothing more than a puppet rubbed into her face. Of course Garthag was exaggerating, but then again he might have just hit a nerve with such choice of words.

Adeila might have heard something; it might prove to be an interesting after chat with her about his words. She was a rather mysterious hag, which puzzled Garthag and as to why she would help them was beyond him. If she was doing this out of the kindness of her heart, she was a fool, but if she wasn`t then that meant she had a hidden agenda.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Merrin's explosive outburst surprised him, made him step back and stare at her in shock. No, not so much shock. Her emotions were justified, after all. Recent events had begun to grate on Kendath's nerves as well, but it was his lot in life to feel irritated - not Merrin's, not with this vehemence, and certainly not aimed at the ancient Renegades or even the gods themselves. Almost fearing the consequences, he stretched out a hand to calm her, but she ducked away before his fingers could brush her shoulder. With a sigh, he let his arm drop.

That was when Garthag decided to wake up. His voice stabbed into the trills of birdsong, silencing them as a blade silences a dying moan. Back turned to the mage, Kendath raised his head and listened to the tirade, not registering his own movement until his fingers were drumming across the hilt of his falchion. His arm dropped again, and he considered whirling on Garthag. He didn't. Pawns and sacrifices and manipulation - where had he heard those words before? Oh, right. Firstly, from his endearing Meiltha officers. Secondly, from the conscience he'd contended with for ten years. And thirdly, from the mouth of Garthag himself. They might have incensed him on any other day. But to be honest, he'd just scaled a vertical chunk of rock in a blizzard that could freeze hell, and he really, really, really was too tired to care.

His gaze, roaming the surrounding forest for answers, fell upon a narrow trail that ramified from the clearing. It might lead to a dragon's lair for all he knew, but it was a start. Better than standing around, in any case. He looked at his companions. Adeila seemed to be coming around. A curtain of hair shielded Merrin's expression from view, but from the slump of her shoulders, she seemed to be calmer. He took a breath, his mind scrambling for - what? Reassurance? I'm sorry you feel like the world's toying with you, Merrin. Maybe you'll feel better when the war's over.

Shaking his head, he coordinated his aching limbs in a trudge toward the path. "Right. Well, I'm just going to go take a look around. If I'm not back within the hour, assume that I've been eaten and proceed as usual." As an afterthought, he tossed over his shoulder, "Oh, and make sure the mage keeps talking. You never know - he might end up saying something useful."

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