I gasp, a raw, shuddering inhale of frigid air.
He looks down at me. His red eyes are still burning, but the hate is banked, the red haze held back by a force of will I never knew he possessed.
I stare up at him. His brutish face, his tusks, his glowing eyes.
He just saved my life.
Not with a roar and a slaughter. With stealth. With control. With thought.
He smelled them. He heard them. Minutes before I, the "civilized" one, had any idea. He knew to hide. He knew to be silent.
In the hovel, I was his keeper. I was the healer. I was the one with the mind.
But now, I am the liability. I am deaf and blind.
He is not my pet. He is not my penance.
He is my protector.
He grunts, a low, soft sound, and reaches down, his massive, clawed hand wrapping around my arm. He pulls me to my feet as if I weigh nothing.
I'm still shaking, my legs weak. "They... they're hunting us," I whisper, the words stolen by the wind.
Threk doesn't look at me. He looks at the gray, oppressive sky, his nostrils flaring wide. He seems… anxious. His growl is low, uneasy.
Then I feel it.
The wind. It’s not just a whine anymore. It’s a wall.
It screams. A high, thin, monstrous sound that pierces my clothes, my skin, my bones. The temperature doesn't drop. It plummets. It is a biting slap that steals my breath.
A single flake of snow, hard as a pebble, hits my cheek. It stings. Then another. And another.
Within seconds, the world is gone.
The mountains, the path, the black trees... even Threk, standing five feet away... all of it dissolves into a roaring, suffocating, blinding white.
The blizzard is here.
10
THREK
The world is gone.
It does not fade. It is stolen.
One moment, I see the path, the trees, the elf-scent on the wind.
The next, there is only white. A screaming, roaring white that is not sight. It is a force. It is a sound that is a wall.
The wind howls. It is not the moan of a normal wind. It is a shriek. A monster made of ice and rage, it tears at my hide. It bites at the new, open wounds on my shoulder and my side, a thousand needles of glass and pain.
I roar back at it. A challenge.
The cold is an annoyance to me. My hide is thick. I am built for the mountain.
But she is not.
