Book 2 Ch 8: Biting and Clawing Snow

They camped under a small stony outcropping that shielded from the worst of the snow and wind. Ollie managed to pile and freeze snow on one side of it using his magic which blocked the icy wind that seemed to be whipping out toward them constantly. It was all coming from the same direction, and seemed relentless.

“It’s definitely not natural,” said Lance stoking the fire a bit and tossing a few more magically dried twigs onto the pile. “I’ve seen some strange weather, but this is beyond being out of season. It feels like we’re nearing mid-winter out here.”

“Could it be magic? Some kind of weather control?” asked Davi.

“I’ve never heard of any magic that could affect the weather to this extent. Maybe in the old days of the united Humelands there were some mages with this kind of power.”

“Could that be it? Some mage found an old piece of magic? Is that a thing?” asked Pyotr.

Lance shrugged. “I’m not sure, all the history I studied was… Stent specific.”

“It’s not like spells here use books,” said Francesca. “If a mage wanted to affect the weather like this he would just need to understand the principles of it and have the magicka to make it happen, right?”

Ollie frowned. “Most spells have to be cast within a… bubble? Field of magicka that surrounds us. We can extend that field pretty far when we focus, but I don’t know… maybe with a group of us with the right knowledge it would be possible. I don’t think this is that though, I can usually tell what’s a spell or not by feeling the magicka press against my own field, and I’m not picking any of that up at all.”

Michael listened to their conversation quietly as he ate a bit of rabbit that Marcus had managed to shoot. It was good. He hadn’t ever had rabbit back on Earth, but found it very flavorful. His old taste buds may not have appreciated it as much, with how much sugar and salt he was used to in his meals, but he really enjoyed the more subtle flavors of things in this world now that he had a ‘hard reset’ of sorts.

There was a slight break in the chatting as everyone moved to check on the state of their equipment and supplies after the bounty hunter’s attack. Davi managed to convince Francesca to sit still while he made a valiant attempt to draw her despite shivering fingers and heavy winds.

Michael finished his meal and tossed the bones into the corner where everyone else’s were laying. He closed his eyes and said several short prayers. One to Seras, the goddess of protection for helping him to protect Ollie, one to ‘the’ who had helped him to beat the bounty hunter, and one to the divine in general and all the gods he’d had yet to meet or even hear a whisper of. When he was done he drew his bedroll and blanket from his pack and went to sleep for the evening. They would have watches, but Michael usually took the second one through to morning since he needed so much less sleep than the others.

The next day they bundled back up and started walking again. Michael had noticed Davi and Francesca’s bedrolls had been very close together the previous night, but chose not to say anything about it. It was a bit difficult to not give Davi a high five though, in spite of the more than sixty years of life, there were just some things you wanted to praise a friend for.

The wind and the snow were biting as they moved, but even when they attempted to move a bit more north or south on the trail there was almost no difference. They were all as bundled up as possible, with blankets tied around armor like cloaks and several of Ollie’s floating orbs of heat rotating around them to dull the worst of the cold.

“There is one good thing about this,” said Marcus as they moved.

“Oh?”

“It’ll be a lot harder to track us with all of this snowfall.’

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Michael nodded, his helmet clanging a bit from the motion. He was feeling anxious as they moved. At first he thought it was just the unending snow with no reason behind it, but as the anxiety built to dread he realized that wasn’t the reason behind it. It was the same feeling he’d felt when he’d approached the rift with the horned men inside of it. A powerful sense of wrongness that made him want to turn back.

“It’s a rift,” said Michael as they continued to trudge their way up the road. “That’s what’s causing the cold.”

“How?” asked Davi.