Ilaris
Iawoke to three bearded men standing over me.
As my vision cleared, I became aware of a throb in my ankle, the lack of wind, and the fact that the men were human.
They were older in years, with silver-white hair, balding foreheads, and beards reaching to their chests.
One had braided his, the plaits bound tight and precise.
Another had secured his with three gold rings, the metal catching what little light the fire offered.
The third let his flow freely over his hands, wearing the extra length like a scarf against the cold.
If I hadn’t been so disoriented, I would have found it charming.
I sat up. The cave resolved itself around me, the low slope of stone overhead, a fire burning close enough I could smell the resin of the wood, and in the distance, a tunnel opening into white, the howling outside still very much alive.
Killian. The storm. The crash. Jasper.
“Have you seen my companion?” I asked. “We came in an air balloon and crashed during the storm.”
The three men exchanged glances, their faces troubled.
Panic clawed up my throat. I forced it down, wondering whether they spoke my language, if they understood me.
The fire threw orange light across the stone, and I used that moment to study the rest of the shelter.
The symbols carved into the cave walls were not runes, but I recognized them nonetheless, the shapes half-recalled from texts I hadn’t opened in years.
“Who are you?” the man with the braided beard asked, his voice soft, haunted by a slight lisp.
I shifted, acutely aware of my vulnerability.
I needed to go back out into the storm and search for Killian.
But I was also, undeniably, human, with a throbbing ankle, no weapon, and no certainty about whose shelter I’d stumbled into.
They might be Guardians, the kind who helped.
Or they might be like Lady Justice, ancient and self-serving.
I couldn’t tell, but it was clear they were equally wary of me.
“I’m Ilaris, a Scholar from the House of Scholars. I’m traveling here to conduct fieldwork. My companion and I were crossing by air balloon when the storm came.”
Another exchange of glances. Braided beard spoke again. “Then you know of what’s been happening across the world.”
“I’ve been traveling for a while. Enlighten me. And who are you—do you live here?”
Braided beard held up a hand, as if slowing the flow of questions.
“We came here to escape the chaos. Surely you’ve heard, since it originated with your people.
The House of Scholars.” He paused, the silence heavy as snowfall.
“One such scholar traveled south, to the volcanic region of Vold, and opened a rift between our world and the world of something much darker. Evil beings are spawning and feeding on flesh. They come at night, feeding, feeding . . . ”
He stopped. His milky eyes went distant, and his claw-like hands trembled as though the memory had physical weight, as though it pressed on him from the inside.
I blinked hard. They didn’t know it was me, or what I’d done. Yet there was an opportunity to gain their allegiance. If I were careful. “But why come here? To these remote lands?”
The man with the loose beard spoke up while braided beard remained caught in whatever horror he was reliving. “Once the soldiers started marching, we fled as far as we could from the madness. The city is panicking, fear turning to violence.”
A numbness came over me. I could picture it, the panic, the accusations, the House of Scholars blamed for what I had done. My throat tightened. Ironic. They’d sent me away because of the embarrassment I’d caused them, and somehow I’d made it even worse.
If this was a story that was spreading, it was abundantly clear that I was to blame. It explained the wanted poster I’d seen in Caranhal, the bounty on my head. These three men knew nothing about it, yet I’d given them everything they needed to draw conclusions.
“I’ve traveled here to close the rift,” I blurted. “But I need to get back to my companion, time is of the essence.”
Braided beard steadied himself. “Then you know of the chaos, which raises a question: how and why?”
My gaze darted to the tunnel. The howling whiteness beyond it held no appeal, but I noted the distance. If the conversation turned sour, I could run. Poorly, with a wounded ankle, but I was certain it would be enough to escape the three old men.
“Have you heard of the Guardians?” I asked.
The man with the rings in his beard rose from his seat, glaring at his comrades. “The game is up, she knows.”
“What do I know?” I asked, half tempted to make a dash for it. But even underneath the cloak Killian had given me, I shivered.
Ring beard waved toward the carved wall. “You know the meaning of those words, who we are, and why we are here. You’re right, we didn’t leave the city simply because of the chaos. We are Guardians. We stand in the gap while devastation is wrought across our lands. And we mean to stop it.”
Their eyes sparkled with determination. I remembered the power Harlan wielded, the odd chant that called forth strange creatures. And I recalled the way Lady Justice had used her vines. I had no desire to find out what these men could call forth if they chose to.
“We’re on the same side,” I said, too loudly, mirroring them as I rose to stand. “I have a plan. I will stop the Unmaking.”
And then a white bear barreled down the tunnel.
Or at least it looked like a white bear, covered in snow and fur, until I realized it was only Killian and Jasper.
Jasper had grown again, nearly Killian’s height at the shoulder, his horns scraping stone as he bared his teeth at the three old men. His growl was low and resonant, something felt more than heard, vibrating in his chest.
I held up my hands as tension danced in the air, thick and as dangerous as lightning.
Killian read the situation in a single breath.
His fists loosened, and he let his arms fall to his sides.
It would have helped if he’d apologized.
It would have helped if he’d said anything at all.
But he only stood there among the wizened men, snow-wet and enormous, his long hair plastered dark against his face, looking less like a man who had just survived a crash landing and more like something the mountain had made and finally decided to release.
“This is my companion,” I announced before they could react.
“I thought I'd lost you.” Killian’s voice was low, rougher than usual. “The storm. The crash.”
“I’m fine,” I said, and moved toward him.
A bright spike of pain went up my ankle, and I crumpled, catching myself on the cave floor with both hands. “I injured my ankle.”
Killian was by my side in a moment, brow creased, frustration written across his face.
He yearned to touch me, even though he wasn’t sure whether he should.
I recalled his fire, the way it appeared to be dormant as of late, and for the first time I wondered if it were purely his restraint or something else.
I reached for him first, holding onto his cloak, nothing more.
The bearded men interrupted. “Are you here for the same reason she is?”
“And what reason would that be?” Killian spoke evenly.
I tugged him toward me, speaking low. “They are Guardians, here to stop the Unmaking.”
Killian held my gaze a beat, then straightened and addressed the men. “Then I hope you will pardon the intrusion. We’ll only rest here until the storm abates.”
His wording did not give them a chance to refuse.
Ring beard stood, his eyes going back and forth between Killian and me. Even before he spoke, I became aware of what he’d say, the blame he was about to place on my shoulders.
He raised a crooked finger. “You.” His voice held something stronger than anger, awe, deep and unsettled.
“You’re the scholar responsible for this, aren’t you?
You opened the rift, brought the Unmaking to our land, and now you.
” His finger pointed at Killian. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? One of the ancients?”
Killian did not back away from the question. “I am Prince Killian of the Fire Giants of Vold. I have returned, woken by the scholar, and our aim is to bring utter devastation to the Unmaking.”
Braided beard pointed to the symbols on the wall. “Your coming was foretold. The giant who would bring destruction, who would lose the devils and destroy our world.”
“Is this a prophecy?” Killian demanded, voice hard.
“It is known.”
The three men nodded, repeating the words like a prayer they had said so many times it became reflex. It is known. It is known.
Jasper growled.
“With the winged beast, doom has come.”
Unease rose, thick and hot. I shifted my gaze to the symbols, trying to read them. But I needed to transcribe them for clarity, to reference the books they’d come from, to fully understand. This was a scholar’s work, and I would not leave without doing it.
It was only then I noticed my satchel. Killian had salvaged it from the crash.
Relief poured through me as I lifted out my journal.
The edges were cold to the touch, the leather stiff.
The pages stuck slightly at the corners as I opened it, exhaling the faint, familiar smell of ink and old paper.
Taking a deep breath to steady my trembling fingers, I sketched the symbols.
The shapes filled me with dread, for this was a message of doom, yet I hesitated to ask them to decipher it for me.
By the time I finished, the three men had drawn together at the far side of the cave, speaking in tones too low to catch beneath the wind’s howl, though most of their meaning came through gesture anyway. The stolen glances. The slow shake of the head.
At last, braided beard turned to us. “What will happen is inevitable. Come. We will show you.”
Killian and I exchanged glances.
“They are Guardians.” He shrugged, letting me know it was unclear where their allegiance lay. They might help, or we could walk into a trap, but at this particular moment, we were not in any position to refuse either.
I wanted to believe they could help us, so I stood, wobbling on my feet.
A hand settled at the small of my back.
The warmth of it moved through me before I could stop it. Not the fire, not the burning he always held at bay. The fact that he reached out, touched me, made warmth bloom within. The fire was smoldering, but it would not burn me, not today.
I faced the three Guardians. “We will follow.”
Shadows shifted as they led us deeper into the cave, into a network of tunnels that branched and curved and arched upward without warning.
Killian supported me while I limped, and Jasper trotted behind us, his form shrinking to fit through the narrower passageways.
The soft rhythm of his paws was comforting, the only sound aside from the old men’s shoes and the distant moan of wind finding its way through cracks in the stone.
The concave halls curved then arched, springing up wide, as though this were a place where giants once walked. Did they live here in these halls deep under the mountains?
Symbols marked the entrance to each tunnel, repeated on the walls between them.
I wanted to stop and study all of them, to press my fingers against the grooves and note them in my journal, but there wasn’t time.
I tried to memorize everything, the slight gleam to the tunnel walls, the bitter cold biting out all sensation, and the uncanny warmth emitting from somewhere.
We descended ever so slightly, and there in the growing dark a memory bloomed, uninvited, of Killian’s home, how he took me underground, under rock, down into the depths where the Unmaking fought against the doors.
My chest tightened. I was in another ruined city with no idea of what waited at the end. Another door? A giant? Something worse?
The passageway opened, and the three Guardians moved in three directions, lighting torches as they walked, murmuring a low, rhythmic chant. The light grew slowly, revealing the room in stages.
Stone shapes. Dozens of them. Figures carved in postures of motion, so still that for a terrible moment I thought I’d found a city of giants, frozen in pain.
Then I stepped closer and understood, they were statues, arranged in a sequence along the walls.
The history of the ice giants, rendered in stone.
Birth. Domination. Greed. I moved from figure to figure, reading the progression the way I’d read a text, beginning to end.
It was the last statue the three Guardians went to stand in front of, heads bowed.
I already knew, before I looked, that I didn’t want to see it.
Still, I approached, gaping up at the statue.
Two figures, carved face to face, palms pressed together, gazes locked, seeing nothing but each other.
The smaller one was a woman, clad in armor, a long braid over her shoulder.
The larger was a man, a giant, broad-shouldered, bare to the waist. At the woman’s side leaned a rod, in one hand rested an object shaped unmistakably like the Heart. And at their feet was a stone.
My pulse skipped a beat.
A mortal. A giant. The gifts of the gods.
We were carved in stone. Set into rock hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. As though our coming had not been a possibility but a certainty. As though the world had been waiting for us to catch up to what it already knew.
I staggered back, a hand going to my mouth to keep the cry inside. “How? What does it mean?”
“Sacrifice. Redemption. Hope,” braided beard said. “Even among prophecies, there is a choice.”
I stared at the statue. At the woman who was, impossibly, already me, and the giant who had Killian’s face. It didn’t feel like a choice at all. It felt like fate.