Chapter 37 Alar
ALAR
"Beware the silence that follows the storm. Beneath the cover of snow, fury lurks untamed, ready to unleash chaos without warning or sign."
—Elucian Proverb
The auroras above us twisted around the clouds, coiling like serpents made of light.
I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision, but the hallucinations only intensified.
The magnetic currents that guided dragons through these skies seemed visible now—ribbons of force that wound through the air like luminous streams of energy.
"Keep your eyes on the person ahead of you," Lysara called from the front of our line. "The hallucinations will get worse now. Don't trust what you see in the distance."
Easier said than done. Morek's form wavered in front of me, sometimes seeming to split into two or three versions of itself. Beyond him, Kailin's golden hair caught the strange light, creating a halo effect that made her look like an angel.
I tightened my grip on the rope connecting our group, using its solid presence to anchor myself to reality. The hemp fibers bit into my gloved hands, the slight discomfort helping me to focus.
"Does anyone else see the green and purple dragons?" Codric asked from behind me, his words coming out slightly slurred.
"Not real," Shovia called back from the front of our line. "Blink a few times and purse your lips. Sometimes it helps."
Could Codric and I have the same hallucinations?
I saw the dragons too, massive shapes formed from the flowing lights above, diving and weaving through the air in complex patterns. They looked so real that I could almost hear the beat of their wings.
"Thanks," Codric said. "It helped."
Shovia lifted both gloved hands, thumbs up.
The wind picked up, driving needles of ice against any exposed skin. The weather was turning again, the relative calm of the morning giving way to another storm.
"It's coming back," Morek said, his words nearly lost in a sudden gust.
"We need to reach the summit before it hits," Lysara shouted from somewhere ahead. "Keep moving!"
That was bad news. It meant that there was no shelter between us and the summit, and the distance to the cave we'd left behind was not any shorter than what was still left to the summit.
The path narrowed again, but since we'd been walking in single file anyway, it didn't make much difference. The hallucinations made depth perception unreliable, and the drop beside us seemed to shift and waver, sometimes appearing bottomless, other times deceptively shallow.
I didn't like the edge being so close, and I could only imagine how difficult it must be for Kailin.
As a low rumble rolled through the mountain, I wasn't sure whether it was another illusion or if it was really happening, but then I heard a guy from another quintet ask if anyone felt it.
"It's just the wind," came someone else's reply, but it didn't sound convincing.
The rumble came again, stronger this time. Small rivulets of snow began sliding down the slope above us.
"Avalanche!" The cry came from further up the trail. "Move! Move!"
Everything happened at once.
The world tilted as a wall of white roared down the mountainside. We plastered ourselves against the rock face as snow thundered past.
We were lucky.
There was a rock ledge above us, about fifty feet or so up the mountainside, shielding us, but the third quintet up the trail wasn't as fortunate.
There was nothing above them to provide a shield; they were exposed, and the avalanche hit them hard, a surge of white that seemed to attack with deliberate malice.
One moment they were there, five dark shapes against the white; the next, they were gone, swept away like leaves in a storm.
Their screams cut off abruptly as they vanished into the void.
"No!" The cry came from multiple throats, but there was nothing any of us could do but watch in horror.
Cutting through the chaos came a roaring sound like that of another avalanche tumbling down a mountainside, but then I realized that it was the distinctive roar of a dragon.
A massive shape plunged through the swirling snow, scales gleaming like polished copper in the aurora light. The dragonia—for it was clearly female, given her smaller size and more graceful build—dove after the falling group with impossible speed.
Time seemed to slow down as we watched the rescue attempt. The dragon's wings folded close to her body as she streaked downward, her rider barely visible against her scales. At the last possible moment, her wings snapped open, and she disappeared into the clouds below.
"Did she catch them?" Codric's voice shook. "Did she—"
Another roar answered his unfinished question, this one triumphant. The dragonia burst up through the cloud layer, her massive form a welcome sight. She carried one shape in her claws, and four others dangled from the rope they were still attached to.
It was impossible to tell whether any of them were alive, though. From where we were, they seemed to be hanging lifelessly from the rope.
The dragonia wheeled gracefully, banking upward toward what I assumed was a place she could safely land with her cargo.
"Everyone, stay where you are," Lysara shouted. "Press against the mountain face until we're sure there won't be another slide."
I became aware that I was shaking, though whether from cold, adrenaline, or the aftermath of the hallucinations, I couldn't tell. The rope connecting our quintet thrummed with similar tremors from the others.
The wind continued to howl around us, but the immediate danger seemed to have passed. Small streams of snow still slid down the slope, but nothing like the massive surge that might have claimed the lives of those pilgrims.
Had it been another sabotage?
It would have been easy to set up an avalanche. A small explosive would have been enough, and with the howling wind, the sound of the blast would have gone unnoticed.
We all wanted to find out whether any of the five were alive, but we were at a standstill. Hopefully, the medics were already rushing to their aid.
When Lysara gave the order to start moving again, I focused on putting one foot in front of the other and trying to ignore both the hallucinations that twisted my perception and the echo of those screams that seemed to linger in the wind.