The beast that was the storm roared its way over the Northern Kingdom.
Gates of water veiled the world in spectral disarray, swallowing trees and houses, mountains that stood far off everything until shadow covered it.
One man moved toward it.
His cloak, black with faint gold trim at the edges, billowed behind him, wet and heavy on his broad shoulders. The embroidered dragon on its back blazed whenever lightning ripped through the sky, the scales reflecting into white-blue light before disappearing into darkness once more.
Most would have taken cover.
He didn't.
If anything, the storm appeared to be bending around him, wind curling but not slamming, rain lightening just enough so he could see a pathway.
Elian Solvain didn't notice.
Or perhaps he just didn't give a damn.
He was tall and muscular with pitch black hair covered by his hood.
His crimson eyes, alert and bright were focused on the village just visible ahead: Hollowreach, a hamlet of sorts wedged against the bottom of a forested rise. The storm had destroyed a few windows but the one tavern at the village's center still shone. Elian arrived there already knowing what he had come to find.
He passed the first, fraying stone arch that told of the boundary to the village gate as he walked. Half-buried in moss and weather, the waves of age lapping even at its darkened edges, was the sign of the North: a wolf's head bound round with iron the ancestral arms of Vaelgard. It was a flash thing by the lightning and darkness once again swallowed it.
An inscription, very faint after all this wear and tear on a survivor who had lasted so long that even under thunderous fire it was possible to read something beneath the crest:
"The North Endures."
Elian ran his hand over the stone as he went.
He drew his cloak closely around him and began walking toward the lights.
His boots were soggy and muddy around his ankles when he arrived at the tavern. The Hollow Boar. All along the building's frame with its lichen-covered, mold-crumbling northern-style wooden carvings, protective runes in the nature of angular wolves and shields cracked from disrepair after who knows how long. Some had been reinforced with iron nails, as though villagers believed old symbols retained power.
He dented the door of the tavern and entered.
Warmth hit him instantly.
The fire made a loud popping in the hearth, battling the roar of the storm. The smell of spicy stew and wet wool surrounded him. Villagers were gathered at wooden tables, with cups clasped tight in their hands and the weariness etched on their faces. Heavy wooden beams overhead were carved in the style of northern houses, crossed patterns of frost runes and mountain sigils that showed off old Vaelgard handiwork.
They all turned and looked over when he entered.
It wasn't the cloak.
It wasn't the drenched, storm-lashed look of it.
It was his presence.
Quiet.
Controlled.
Bright.
A single man with that kind of presence made even silence seem like a show of respect.
As Elian entered the room he offered them a polite nod before walking toward the counter.
In it now stood a woman with a mass of red hair tied behind in loose plait, and her sleeves pulled up to the elbows, the ladle on her side. A look of astonishment spread over her face as she blinked at him.
"Well," she said. "That's… quite the entrance. Storm didn't chew you up?"
Elian smiled faintly. "It tried."
A few guffaws rippled through the crowd, thickening the air.
"What'll it be?" she asked. "We've got stew. And stew."
"I'll risk the stew."
She sniffed, pulled forward a bowl, filled it with the skill born of time and practice, then pushed it toward him across the counter.
"You're not from here,"
"No," Elian said. "Just passing through."
He hovered the spoon, and something went by in the bar. Subtle. Too nuanced for the lay traveler to discern. But everyone else noticed.
Voices hushed.
Chairs stopped creaking.
Eyes flicked to the door, to the windows, to one another.
The tension settled like fog.
Elian put the spoon down gently.
Something was wrong.
He shifted back toward the auburn-haired woman once more.
"You're all … quiet," he whispered.
A low hum went round the room.
Then, a man near the back, broad-shouldered, his face etched by sun and sorrow, coughed.
"Kids are missing," he said. "Two of 'em."
Elian's jaw tightened imperceptibly.
"Missing?" he echoed.
The woman nodded. "Gone since yesterday morning. We've searched everywhere. Forest, fields; even the old mine."
His interest was aroused by the word mine.
"And? Any luck?" Elian asked.
Her eyes glanced to the window as thunder rumbled overhead.
"Nobody's going past the first tunnels," she said. "Not anymore."
"Why?"
The room shifted.
Deep-down fear churned and bubbled like mud on the surface of still water.
The woman lowered her voice. "Things whisper down there. The walls, the old miners tell you, breathe. Some believe that the tunnels are cursed. Others swear there's something alive in those dark environs."
Elian's spoon clicked against the bowl.
"And you?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"I think something's wrong,'' she whispered. "Terribly wrong."
A boy across the room swallowed nervously. "My brother said he saw lights in the mine last night. Like little fireflies. But fireflies are not down there."
A man to the side of him hissed, "Speak with sense."
One muttered, "We should have closed that damn place. The North remembers, and the North survives, but not when fools make old wounds…"
Elian listened to every word.
"Mines usually do not whisper," he said.
"No," the woman agreed. "They don't."
Elian's eyes went to the window, where rain was pummeling the wood in a steady beat. Behind it, he could barely make out northern-style roofs, steeply angled to shed snow, chimneys banded in stone, shutters carved with that same damn old Vaelgard crest he'd already seen tonight.
"Who's in charge here?" Elian asked.
"That'd be Mira," said the woman, her hand on her chest, a dry smile. "Unfortunately."
"Then I'm talking to the right person."
Her eyebrows rose.
"You planning to help?"
Elian didn't answer at first.
It was just a few inches of his hand raised in the air.
Lux Astra flashed dimly on his palm.
Golden.
Soft.
Controlled.
Gasps went around the room.
"You—" Mira's voice broke. "You're an Astra user."
"Advanced rank," Elian said calmly. "Good enough for an old mine."
The boy who had spoken of the fireflies leaned up in wonder.
" Astra… we have to use it!"
"By frost and fire … perhaps hope abides."
Hope, timid and quivering, began to glow in their eyes.
Mira set the ladle down.
"You don't need to be doing this," she said. "Vaelgard has enough problems of its own. Storms, wolves, disease. If there's something in those tunnels, it ain't your fight."
Elian's gaze softened.
"Children are missing," he said softly. "So it is."
Mira's breath caught.
She nodded, once, sharp and grateful.
"The entrance is at the north end of the village," she said. "Follow the ridge. You're going to see a broken cart next to it."
Taking one last bite of stew, Elian stood and pulled his hood on.
As he got to the door, Mira whispered:
"Be careful. Please."
Elian paused.
And faced enough to look her in the eye.
"Always."
He pushed the door open.
The storm roared at him like a mad beast, beating itself against the tavern walls. Flash lightning streaked through the heavens, brightening the way before.
Elian made his way to the rain.
The door shut behind him.
The wind whistled past him through the village streets, rattling behind shuttered windows scored with frost designs, carrying upon it stone walls of age-dulled stone chipped into pieces of Vaelgard's wolf crest.
Some of the villagers had been looking and seeing him through chinks in their curtains, eyes on him with desperate hope, murmuring the old northern phrase again:
"The North endures…"
He shifted the backpack and completed the last section to the ridge.
There came another roar of thunder, shaking the shattered wood of the cart.
There it was.
The mine's opening, dark, gaping, its perimeter still encircled in splintered beams and vines gone heavy from abandonment. The wind of the storm didn't appear to penetrate inside. Its darkness was still. Heavy.
Waiting.
Elian stopped at the threshold.
"Father was right sending me here. It's obvious even from here.... Demons."
He took one slow breath.
"Alright," he murmured. "Let's find them."
He stepped into the mine.
The roar of the storm fell behind him.
His footfalls were smothered in darkness.
And somewhere deep inside something whispered.
"…Astra…"