The Crossing

There weren't always dragons in the Valley.

Running. A driving whiteout of snow. A burst of rogue wind from above, driven by powerful wings. A throaty rumble too low for my ears, I felt it in my bones.

They were meant for war, but they made the armies allies against their heavy hides and claim of the skies.

Namut was a blurry, charcoal shadow through the blizzard. She wouldn't leave me, and I followed her blindly. My snowshoes made me tortuously slow, but I would crash through the snow if I removed them. Trekker dogs like Namut were light enough to skitter atop the icy crust. The dragon was somewhere above, soaring on the howl of the storm, and despite our pounding fear, we kept silent. Dragons had acute hearing; we knew what a single sound would summon.

The Valley became a place of winged beasts and teeth. A fool's journey, until the deserter proved us wrong.

Namut reached the Second Pass just blinks before I did. And once we were inside, I fell to my knees, tried to catch my ragged breath.

Another tremor.

"Great Spirits," I cursed in a whisper. "Namut, g…" I stopped, hesitating. If rocks shook free and fell deeper within the cave, we would be trapped or worse. “We should stay near the opening,” I amended to her in a whisper, the earth vibrating beneath us. “Wait out this tremor and -”

A great impact shot a snowy veil into the belly of the storm, startling my heart to a standstill in my chest. That hadn’t been the tremor. I held Namut in my arms, gripping the fur of her neck in my mittens and holding her panting body against mine. Together, we stared into the whipping, white winds.

Muzzle first. Then teeth, talons, wings. The dragon was white, like a snow owl, and sported feathers to match. It approached with a feline grace that contrasted its immense size, second eyelids protecting its sight from the sharp wrath of the blizzard. It swiveled its head, as if searching, and began snuffling and digging at the snow. It hadn’t seen us yet. It let out a throaty rumble that rattled my skeleton.

I removed my snowshoes, returning them to my back, then shook Namut once in my arms to get her attention. Her dark eyes found mine, pink mouth closed and ears pricked. Flickering my eyes from hers, I looked purposefully at the deeper recesses of the Second Pass cave. The tremor had stopped; we needed to move from the cave’s mouth before the dragon’s found us instead. Namut obeyed, retreating from me and quickly melting into the perfect darkness.

I turned my eyes back at the dragon. Reaching over my shoulder, I retrieved my rifle from my back. The dragon was a male, and he was persistent. He rumbled again, cooed once, then let out a keening whine. Could I risk a shot? The only killshot a bullet could deliver was a shot to a dragon's head, specifically near its owlish eyes. If I missed, he'd charge me, but if I could dispatch him, that would be one less dragon to worry abo -

He turned in a circle, and the powerful sweep of his tail launched snow at the cave entrance. It hit me in a wave and knocked me backward.

A shout of pain broke from me as my head hit stone.

For a few beats, I was woozy. Booms. A roar. Shaking. Another tremor, or just my head? My senses melded together in some sort of brief, disorienting parade - and then I was myself again, pushing up off my back. Namut was with me, her nose by my ear. If every bit of my skin hadn’t been covered against frostbite, her nose and tongue would’ve wetted me. I stroked my hand over her ear.

And realized the dragon was gone. And the sheet of snow on the face of the mountain was gone.

“Avalanche?” I breathed. Remnants of it were still pouring down. A roar shook the sky, followed by the unmistakable sibilance of feathered wing beats. The dragon had been tumbled off his feet into the air. Namut and I fled.

Deeper, deeper, deeper into the Second Pass, I lit a torch to guide us. Firelight and char marks of Crossings past led the way. Rinti-ket village wasn’t far now, just on the other side of the mountain. I would complete my first solo Crossing, blight it all.

Of all the Crossings I’d undertaken as an apprentice with Unuc Treton, Aun Tryn, Mother, Father, none had been like this. I’d hardly seen a dragon all those times, let alone been hunted by one. And the tremors; those weren’t normal. Krost never had earthquakes…

I let out a frustrated sigh, my fear and anxiety fermenting into anger. There was a painful bruise on my shin, and my palms felt raw despite my thick mittens. In contrast, Namut preceded me through the tunnel with an effortless lope. The Second Pass was an eerie place: a twisting network of paths and offshoots that amplified the tiniest of sounds. A shifting pebble was a shiver against every wall, as if the rock were alive with the mountain’s soul.

It was the very first time I’d been here alone. There was hovering gloom, and the hums and plinks of many things, all echoed within the bones of the earth. I wondered if the ghosts of my ancestors walked with me as I traversed our ancient path.

The Trekkers were a family of adventurers and merchants, and the essential glue of Krost trade. Only we knew how to cross the Valley safely, and we guarded our maps and surveys of the land like a mother bear would her cubs.

We did so for two reasons.

First, it guaranteed us money as the sole merchants of Mora-ket and Rinti-ket. If people were unhappy with that arrangement, they were more than welcome to scout their own paths through the Valley - though the survival rate of that was low.

Second, it was our inheritance, one everyone spurned us for having. The peoples of the Two Armies would spurn the Trekkers no matter what though, so we leaned into our role all the more. The history of that stigma was recorded in the popular tellers' tale, "The Ballad of the Battle for Krost".

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They were meant for war, but they made the armies allies against their heavy hides and claim of the skies. The Valley became a place of winged beasts and teeth. A fool's journey, until the deserter proved us wrong…

The "deserter'' was the traitorous Moran soldier, Bjorn Trekker. And I, his great granddaughter. Generations ago, during an all-consuming war that was swallowing the world, the island of Krost - bleak and harsh as it is - was very strategically valuable. Anyone to control it had an isolated port in the middle of the Iceover Sea to resupply and launch coordinated attacks at closer range to enemy shores. The armies of Rint and Mora were sent to Krost to secure the island for their country. The Morans arrived on ships that were swiftly eaten by unexpectedly vicious storms, stranding them. The Rinti arrived on the backs of dragons, the "great drakes of the north" or dracit ourn let whin in my Moran mother tongue. It was something that had never been done, and it struck awe and terror into all that had seen.

The Morans were pathetically outgunned by the dragons and their breath of frost. Soldier after soldier fell to jaws, ice, exposure, and sickness on the inhospitable land. Bjorn Trekker saw how his people were slaughtered and whittled away. He made his decision to desert his countrymen and offer himself as a prisoner or spy to their enemies. He scouted hidden passageways through the Valley, a narrow swathe carved through a spine of mountains separating the Moran and Rinti camps. His clandestine expeditions produced a rudimentary map of crevasses, crags, and tunnels that he used to reach the Rinti camp, unseen by the Morans.

The Rinti’s deathgrip on Krost didn’t last. The dragons rebelled. Rather, they broke free of the Rinti mages bewitching them. They took up their freewill again, and that freewill rained blood from the skies. The Rinti mages were torn apart first, then Rint's hapless army.

It was Bjorn Trekker that saved them. He led the Rinti soldiers into the Valley, through caverns too small for the dragons to follow. Then, he returned to the Moran camp - where he nearly died. The Morans knew he had betrayed them. Only the famous words of my great grandmother saved him, a woman yet to have anything but loathing for him.

"Don't let one man's sin kill you with its fruit."

The Morans followed Bjorn into the Valley to the place where the Rinti waited. A tenuous peace was achieved after some scuffles and brawls; all realized they couldn't survive alone. The Moran's guns were useless against the dragon's hide, and the Rinti had lost their magic with the death of their mages. What remained was a Rinti man named Coran Vrist. He was an enscriber, a person of limited mana whose magical talents were for runes.

With Coran's talents, runes of shielding and protection were carved around both army's camps. Many soldiers died in the process of defending him as he worked, but once the Runes were complete, the camps became safe havens. Dragons crashed into unseen barriers whenever they flew too close.

The Rinti, also marooned with the rebellion of the dragons, returned to their camp on the coast where they made medicines from seaborne plants and hoped for rescue by passing boats. The Morans went back to the mountains, the defensible position they'd chosen when they'd first arrived to Krost. There, they harvested coal and iron for their machines.

The Rinti needed machines, and the Morans needed medicine. Bjorn Trekker put his maps to good use and kindled trade, all the while hiding his Valley pathways from curious and ambitious eyes. The gratitude, resentment, and need of the Two Armies wrapped him in a stigma of suspicion and mystery. Along with his maps, that stigma was the inheritance of every Trekker. And thus, mine.

The blackness of the Second Pass quickly began to fade as we approached its end. Tendrils of white light guided us back into open air: the Twin Cliffs. A narrow bridge of snow-dusted rock dropped away to fatal falls on either side, needled pine trees far below. Trekkers before me had built wooden railings for safety, but the wood was old, and I didn't trust it with my weight. A frigid wind tantrumed across the bridge and overhead, so I crouched low to keep my balance as I crossed, Namut behind me. On the other side was the Rinti-mot Tunnel, the last stretch of my Crossing. A perilous thrill washed through me. I was strong enough. I would make it to Rinti-ket and see the acknowledgement on Unuc Treton's face. I was ready, I was capable.

I felt a snout nudge me and stopped to look back at Namut. "What?" I asked her. She snorted once then looked to our right, angling her head and ears down toward the cliff. I crawled gingerly to the edge; she was pointing me toward something.

A nest.

My breath caught in my throat. Great Spirits, a nest! A dragon nest! My body kept still, but my mind leapt and tumbled with a rigorous joy. This was perfect.

I turned and began rooting through my pack for rope. "Good girl, Namut," I praised her. "Good girl!" I tousled her fur affectionately then drove a climbing spike into the rock of the bridge. I looped the rope around it then began knotting it to my climbing belt.

The dragon's nest was ten or so feet down the face of the cliff on a small stone shelf. Dragon nests were rare to find - I'd never seen one before - but the Trekker stance on them was absolute. Dragon eggs. Good gone, best their weight in gold. If you see a nest, either destroy the eggs or steal them.

We didn't want more dragons hatching, and dragon eggshells were exceptionally strong and apparently had a magical essence the Rinti coveted. They fetched a monstrously high price and made the Valley that much safer. It was the perfect accolade for my first Crossing.

Namut squinted at me through the wind and gave me a small whine as I began repelling down.

"It's okay," I reassured her. "Lay." She laid down on the bridge to wait for me but continued watching with wolf-like intensity.

The nest was on the lee side of the storm, so as I descended the cliff face, the wind disappeared and plunged me into a world of grim quiet. I had no idea where the sun was in the sky through the storm's pale veil above, but I wagered I had a few hours of daylight left.

If the mother returned to her nest while I was here, I would be killed. There would be nothing I could do. I didn't let that rush me into errors; I repelled carefully, with control, until my boots clattered against the arranged rocks of the nest.

Another whine from Namut.

I looked up at her. “Hush.” Namut normally didn’t whine or keen; it was unsettling. The nest was in a pocket of calm from the teeth of the blizzard, so when I scanned for the mother and saw nothing, I felt confident she wasn’t there. I looked back at Namut, wondering what was concerning her, and found her dark eyes gazing down at me. She was on her feet, despite what I’d told her.

“Lay,” I insisted. This wasn’t like her. She cried once then barked, a sound that rang against the rocks. A chill ran down my spine. “Namut.” I put command in my voice. “Silent.” She ignored me, barked again. Something was very wrong.

I reached for the beige eggs at my feet. They were massive, nearly the size of my head. I leaned my pack against the cliff and hefted an egg into it, then another. Would a third fit -?

Trembling.

Namut yelped and cried down at me, growing desperate. Loose rock rattled from under her nails, showering down on me and the nest.

“Another tremor,” I realized with horror. Namut had sensed it coming.

And then, the sun disappeared.

I threw my head up, shaken by the abrupt darkness. Had the mother returned? Another avalanche?

Nothing. Nothing was there.

Everything, living and not, was frozen in time under the tableau of a darkened sun. For the first time in my life, I genuinely couldn’t move. An unnamed, faceless fear clamped around me like the hand of a frozen corpse.

For an eternity, the world waited. The hellish night stretched, and everything started feeling heavier, heavier, like the sky was pressing on the earth. My knees sank into the dragon nest. Nauseous with panic and unable to breathe, the life within me cried out and thrashed in protest.

All around me, in a way I’d never experienced, I abruptly felt nature, like a network of life. And I felt it as it recoiled from something… violating. And poisonous. If the world could vomit, it would have.

I’m pretty sure I did. My cheek was pressed to the sharp rock of the dragon nest, and the eggs were dyed gray and silver by the ethereal dusk. I focused on breathing. Breathing…

…

Night. True night, this time; the nameless dread had faded. Gingerly, I pushed myself to my knees and saw a naked sky, indigo and flecked with cold stars. My face hurt where it had been pressed to the nest rocks, and my mouth tasted vile.

“Namut!” I called up to her. “Namut!” No sign. Then, a weak sound. She was alive. I let out a breath that fogged in my face and set to work finishing the nest. I had no way of understanding what had happened. It had been like a nightmare would break the world apart, and the threat of it happening again was enough to make me heave over the side of the nest. But I had to keep moving. I was terrified, cold, exhausted - but those things would only grow worse the longer I stayed. I had to reach Rinti-ket.

There were four remaining dragon eggs. I began tossing them from the nest. One, two -

Into the gelid air, there was a great sound of fracturing stone. A boulder three times my size came crashing down the mountainside at lethal speed, and I watched in awe as it found the forest far below with a great explosion of snow and wood. I swallowed.

The muted thump of feathered wings.

“Blight it all!” I cursed to fate as the entire cliff shook with the mother dragon’s weight. Dropped from somewhere above, she latched her talons onto the rock below the nest, hissing ferociously. Her white and brown feathers were ruffled, and she seemed unsteady. Whatever had happened had downed a whole dragon.

As soon as she could move, she must’ve been driven to check on her nest - and she’d found me destroying it. A whole dragon’s length separated her from me, but her curved talons found swift purchase and careened her bulk upwards with surprising speed. She was far larger than the male had been.

My mind faded back into the fog of life or death. I didn't have time for my rifle. I threw her last eggs down at her, squirmed into my pack, and began climbing my rope with the threat of blood on my heels. Namut was up and frantic as I reached the bridge. I pulled my belt knife and cut the rope I’d tied to my belt, then fled for the mouth of the Rinti-mot Tunnel beside Namut.

The mother dragon had reached her nest, discovered it empty. I glanced down at her, and our eyes met for a single, chilling moment through the shadow of night. Her eyes glittered like great, ebon baubles, and they seared me with a mother’s frenzied ruthlessness. She screamed as she threw herself toward us, and her claws followed us into cave gloom. A shout ripped itself from my throat as a line of hot pain gouged itself down my leg.

I dropped, and as I did, the dragon’s great forefoot struck the ceiling of the tunnel as she reached for us. A cacophony filled the tunnel. Loose gravel and boulders fell from the impact, and the dragon spat with pain and retreated her probing claws.

For a breath, all was still as a cloak of dust from the fallen rocks settled. I hugged my bleeding leg to my body, and Namut worried at me and nudged me to stand. I managed to, and muscle memory lit a torch with my shaking hands. Something was blocking the moonlight from the mouth of the cave.

Teeth and saliva. A forked tongue.

“Namut!” I cried, grabbing her and yanking her behind the cave-in. She yelped, and I shushed her, praying, praying the shelter of rocks would be enough. “It was never meant to be like this,” I whispered into Namut’s ruff, hugging her close.

The air was sucked from the cave and into the dragon’s lungs, making us sputter and choke. There was a sound like singing icicles. And then a shrieking blast of absolute cold. The Rinti-mot tunnel went from black to white as the dragon’s breath violently sheathed everything in a rime of ice.

In our tiny refuge, Namut and I cowered. The savage bite of the dragon’s breath tore at our eyes and lungs. The sheer power of it sucked at Namut’s fur and my clothes like a gale-force wind. But the virulent ice didn’t reach us.

When the shrieking cold tapered away, I found my throat was raw - I remembered screaming. Our torch had gone out. Namut shook in my arms, and I felt her small breathing.

Stillness.

The dragon waited for several heartbeats in the aftermath, her exhales echoing into her frozen tunnel. We waited in petrified silence. Even after all hints of the dragon had faded, we remained until terror thawed from our joints and we were able to move. I peaked back at the cave entrance. The mother was gone. Probably.

Keep moving.

I relit our torch and moved to stand, stumbled once.

"My leg…" I hissed. The dragon had raked me with a claw. Namut sniffed concernedly at the laceration, and I gently pushed her back. “I’m okay.” With an effort, I got to my feet and righted my pack on my shoulders. “Go.”

Namut obeyed and snaked through a narrow slit of ice deeper into the tunnel. I could fit after her, but the pack could not. “Spirits,” I snarled as I dropped my pack to the slippery ice floor and retrieved my quickmelt vial. The dragon eggs were intact. Good.

I dripped the quickmelt down the sides of the slit then held my torch to the chemical, activating it. It began belting out waves of heat, quickly melting the slit wider, but the wait was agonizing. I watched Namut for signs of danger; she sniffed the air and swiveled her ears to sounds I couldn’t hear, but she didn’t whine or meet my eyes. That gave me some confidence until the slit was wide enough to shove my pack through.

The last stretch. So, so tired. We picked our way down the steep incline of the Rinti-mot tunnel.

And then, a great portal of indigo, nighttime light at its end.

Krost was a dazzled landscape of snow and stars on the other side of the Valley; our ancestor’s constellations all but rained praises down on us as Namut and I stepped into the pristine field of white. Reattaching my snowshoes, we made for Rinti-ket, drooping like autumn flowers.

A speck of yellow light found us from afar. A figure with a lantern, a lambent glow through the freezing night. “... lky?” the man called, the word lost on the breeze.

“Treton!” I yelped back. I finally felt like I could take a full breath. “Unuc Treton!” I dashed for him, Namut racing joyfully forward for my uncle’s Trekker dog, Rok. The dogs met first, yipping and tumbling in greeting. Cascades of snow rose from their play and shot back into my face, but I didn’t care. I could smell the ocean, its waves like tolls of victory. “I’m here,” I announced as I reached my uncle. “I did it! I did it. My first Cros -''

My words fell away as I saw Treton’s face. He stood still as stone. The lantern he held twisted and creaked in the coastal wind. Something wasn’t right.

“Uncle?” I asked quietly.

“Elky.” His voice was beleaguered with pain. Fresh worry wound itself through me, and I all but collapsed. He cleared his throat. “Well done.”

“Th-Thank you… but…?”

“I’m glad you weren’t here. I don’t know if I could’ve saved you.” The arm holding his lantern fell a bit, as if the light were too heavy to bear. “The village was destroyed.”

I blinked. “What?” I leaned around him for a look at Rinti-ket. I couldn’t see it through the night. I stepped past him, moving closer, closer still. Faster. “What do you mean? Dragons can’t get through the barrier Runes.” I stopped at the edge of the black sand beach, and Treton was beside me. Broken pieces of driftwood bobbed in the tide.

“There are refugees,” he assured me, “but Rinti-ket is… underwater.”

“Under…” I looked at the rippling ocean, monochrome under the moon. “I-I… the tremors in the mountains. I was going to tell you about them but…” I swallowed. “How many escaped? What happened?”

“A great wave, taller than a dragon. It destroyed everything. I was waiting on the outskirts of the village for you, so I was able to flee in time. But many others were - caught in it. Swept away.” My eyes, distracted by the driftwood, found what looked like a doll washed up on the beach. I looked away.

Treton pointed my eyes toward another distant glow. A campfire. “Myself and a dozen others survived. That is all.”

My throat tightened like a steel cord pulled taut. Namut and Rok still wrestled, oblivious to the disaster. My voice creaked. “What do we… do…?”

“I don’t know,” Treton admitted. “But we can't stay." He started walking toward the refugees, and I followed, Namut and Rok directing their play after us. The night’s misleading peace covered us.

I reluctantly broke the scar of quiet between us. “Do you mean we can’t stay by the shore, or with the refugees?” My breath clouded in the wintry air. “We could bring the survivors back to Mora-ket. But, the Crossing was deadly for just Namut and me, let alone an inexperienced group. Um…” My mind raced, trying to puzzle out a plan.

“I agree, we can’t stay near the shore. But I don’t think Mora-ket is enough, Elky.” I furrowed my brow. He continued, “Krost was never meant to be a home. For generations, we’ve searched for ways to leave it, but with the barrier Runes, we were protected from dragons. Urgency fell by the wayside. This,” he threw a hand out at the expanse of the ocean, “we cannot protect ourselves from. Without Rinti-ket, medicines are largely lost. Fishing contraptions and traps will have to be rebuilt. I don’t know if we can sustain that. And if the ocean continues rising…” A significant pause. “If the ocean wants Krost, it will take it.”

I shivered. There was nothing left to say.

As we approached the camp, the flicker of the fire felt like the last vestige of hope, and all huddled around it. One man raised a hand in greeting as we entered the ring of firelight, and Treton dipped his head, but no one spoke. Namut trotted to my side and pressed her flank to my leg. It hurt. I hissed through my teeth, and Namut flinched back.

“Elky?” Treton put a hand on my shoulder.

“Dragon claw.” I’d nearly forgotten the pain. My pant leg was stiff, caked with frozen blood.

“You were attacked?” Was I imagining it, or did he sound impressed?

“Twice.” I was invited to sit beside the fire, and I obeyed with my final drop of energy. Exhaustion gripped me like the roots of a tree. “But,” I slipped free of my pack and tossed through it with a clumsy hand, “I found a dragon nest. Destroyed four eggs, kept two.” I handed one of the eggs up to Treton.

It startled me when every eye in the camp fell on me, regarding me like I was an unknown creature.

“A dragon egg?” One of the Rinti spoke, a boy around my age, probably seventeen or so.

“Two,” I corrected him. Then, I was too tired to move anymore, or speak. Namut laid down next to me, and I snuggled against her. I looked up at Treton.

His sunken gaze was electric. He was holding the dragon egg up to the sky, studying the shadows that played across the shell while all the Rinti refugees watched him. Then he turned to me.

“Elky,” he said. A kindling hope freighted his voice. “Rest now. But I think you just might've saved us.”