A misty chill runs over me, like passing through condensed fog. I emerge onto a dark beach scoured by wind so cold I gasp with the shock of it. Ahead, gray sand slopes upward to a snowy bank, from which rises the dark outer wall of Annordun, the resting place for Faerie’s most volatile treasures.
The fortress is huge, threatening, dominant. But the most terrifying part is that its walls are full of eyes.
The shock of the sight rips the breath from my lungs more effectively than the icy wind. All over the outside of the fortress, eyes of different sizes stare and swivel, their irises blood-red or icy gray. Some are the size of my fist, others as big as my head or larger. Occasionally, they all close at once, leaving the wall perfectly blank and normal for a few seconds before they all open again.
At first I feel like screaming, but then I realize that the eyes don’t seem to be focused on me particularly. They don’t look alive in the way that a person’s eyes are. There’s no keenness or consciousness in them, only a vague, glassy stare. Maybe they’re not really capable of perceiving us; maybe they’re only present as a fearsome deterrent. That’s what I’m going to assume until I find out otherwise.
The wind bites straight through my clothing and whips my face. I put on my goggles and pull up the loose cowl of my cloak around my neck, covering my mouth and nose.
Clouds scud across the sky too thickly for any moon or stars to shine through, but the snow itself glows with a stronger light than any snow in the mortal world—so bright, in fact, that it makes me instantly suspicious. I walk cautiously forward, peering at it.
The other Javelins are coming through behind me. I hear gasps and ragged curses as they’re confronted with the searing cold, the blasting wind, and the multitude of enormous eyes.
“I don’t think they can actually see us,” I call out over the wind. “They look rather blank and unfocused.”
“By my balls, you’re right,” Flex says.
“Still makes me uneasy,” Boulder growls.
“As it does all of us,” says Maven. “But we keep going, right, Devilry?”
“Right. We persist until we run into an obstacle we can’t overcome, and then we figure out a way to circumvent it. We don’t stop, and we don’t give up. We are Javelins. We always find a way through.”
“Javelins,” they chorus heartily in response.
My anxiety is still there, gnawing in the pit of my stomach, but it’s always worse in the hours before a job. Once we’re in the thick of things, my skills and experience take over, and the immediacy of the task sublimates my nervous nature a bit.
I take another step forward on the sand, still peering at the incandescent snow, still suspicious of it. Behind me, I hear the scuff and clank of climbing gear being taken off belts. The Javelins are ready to charge and swarm up the wall, but I hold out my hand. “Wait.”
I pull a button from my vest and hurl it toward the snow like I’m skipping a stone. The instant it touches the white substance, it dissolves with a hiss. Gone, like nothing was there.
The snow is acidic, corrosive. Deadly.
“We can’t touch the snow,” says Boulder.
“Thanks, Sir Obvious,” snaps Maven. She’s upset because the wall was already her biggest challenge, and this makes it worse.
“Let’s go this way and see if the snow thins out at all,” I suggest.
I lead them along the wall, and sure enough, there’s a promontory of rock where the wind has been scouring with special ferocity. There’s barely any snow here.
Scriv takes out his pressure blower, an invention he uses to test vents and pipes. He turns the crank to force concentrated air out of the nozzle, blowing away the bit of snow left on the rocks.
I find it strange that my button dissolved while the stony foundation and the walls of the fortress appear unaffected by the snow. Some exemption in the spell that created it, I suppose. It’s proof of what I feared, that there are ample safeguards in place for Annordun. We haven’t even scaled the first wall, and we’re already encountering dangerous magic.
Now that I’m less worried about the eyes, I examine the wall more closely and perceive the faintest ruby shimmer along the expanse of stone, extending all the way up and over the entire fortress. It’s most likely the shield meant to keep out any Fae species except for the Stewards.
I’m about to warn the Javelins to be careful, to wait until we can test the shield, but Flex leaps onto the wall, beginning to scale it with his finger hooks and spiked boots.
Though I hold my breath at first, nothing dreadful happens to him. A few of the eyes nearest to him shift and roll, but no alarms sound and no guards appear. The only sound is the rushing wind and the surging ocean.
Flex looks down and yells, “Come on, you snails! Last one to the top buys the first round at the Night Goose once the job is done!”
“Not fair,” shouts Maven. “You know the last one to the top is going to be me.”
He sniggers and keeps climbing.
I release the breath I was holding. “You heard him. Let’s get moving.”
