Eighteen
Kvalhissir was the first of the inhabitants of the room to wake up. This was for several reasons. First, he had been taught from an early age to sleep with one ear awake. Second, he slept in the coldest place. Third, he hadn't been very much asleep to begin with, which made waking up trivial. After making certain that neither he nor the calves he had rescued would perish, his thoughts had immediately gone to the rest of his property. Given the circumstances, however, he had known that there was nothing he could do until the sun rose, the storm blew over, and the horrid beings of the storm were gone with it. Like most sentients who knew there is nothing they can do and that it's not their fault, he felt horribly guilty over not doing anything, and hence had trouble sleeping.
He rose, carefully, silently, as soon as he woke. He stopped for a while, watching the calves sleeping, and smiled against his will and instinct. He could at least save someone. It was a small, small comfort, but he needed any now. He went to the coat hanger and got their jackets, vests and shawls, then clumsily covered them with the clothes against the creeping cold. There were frost all over the room – only their warmth and the dying hearth had held the ice away from them. He then went to the door, unlocked and unbarred it, and stepped outside. He carefully closed the door behind him and surveyed what he counted as his domain. He could hold back his tears for a second or two.
When Saga woke up there was a strange weight upon her brow and the world was dark in a strange layered way. She lay still for a while and felt her tail pressing against cloth. After a while she figured out she were covered in clothes. She had less problem with identifying the scaly, warm lump by her side as Spike, and the leg that touched her forelegs as Vigg's. It didn't take her long to remember yesterday's adventure.
As she lay in darkness and pondered what to do she was struck with one of her fancies – not one of her visions, because it was obviously impossible, but one of her fancies, just as real and a bit scary. She imagined that the whole world was gone now. Outside the cave – because that was what the sauna was, really – the whole world was ice. The only ones left alive were the ones she could feel next to her and herself. She and Vigg would have to thaw and repopulate the world. About when she figured Spike would still be alive the day when the sun had returned enough that there were some few plants growing, and that the horribly inbred descendants of her and Vigg would be scared of an unfrozen sea, Spike called her back to the world of the possible by moving, mumbling, then sitting up and asking for Twilight.
“She is not here,” whispered Saga.
“She's back in the city. We'll see her later today,” she said to Spike, who yawned and nodded.
“Why are we whispering?” he whispered.
“Because Vigg is still asleep,” Saga whispered.
“No I'm not,” said Vigg. “I'm awake. Where's Kvalhissir?”
“He went out,” said Saga.
“Yeah, I can see that” said Vigg a bit irritated, as he stood up, stretched, and tried to orient himself hung with clothes in the dark room. “I just wondered if he said where he went.”
“No,” said Saga caustically. “My telepathy is a bit rusty this early in the morning.”
“Lets just go and look for him, OK?” said Spike and stood up. “I'll get some light” he added, and blew a thin ray of fire from his mouth, like if he was holding a little flame in it.
Vigg found the door to the hall and then the outer door and opened them, and they fumbled with their clothes and stumbled outside. The view made them stop and stare and their skins – furry or scaly – feel colder than they already were.
They hadn't paid much attention to the landscape when they struggled up to the hollowed-out hill yesterday evening, but there had been a forest, and the hill had been covered in trees. Now, the forest was gone. Not chopped down with axes or torn down by a tornado or burned up with fire. It had been frozen, crushed and chewed, not always in that order. Most trees seemed to have been flash-frozen, and then either slammed, which had made them burst into frozen splinters, or they had huge chomps bitten out of them. In some cases the bites were almost comical marks like a pony eating a banana, but in most pieces had been torn off, chewed up and swallowed, the ripping action tearing the rest of the tree into more splinters. The ground was covered with pieces of frozen wood, from half stumps to what might as well have been sawdust.
The snow had been whipped up by roiling bodies that had left long trails like worms in the sand. In some places the ground itself had been gnawed, chewed, or ripped up. In most places it had been struck with sudden permafrost levels of freezing, bending, cracking and bursting open, the thin layer of dirt reduced to frozen dust, like dirty snowflakes. There were no sign of any animal – any ones still about in winter had obviously fled long before the landscape was killed, and anything that might have hid in the ground during winter was frozen to death.
Vigg was the first one who spoke.
“This... can't have been one nidhogg. I... I have never met one myself, but this is too much. This must have been... several nidhoggs. Their tracks... are crossing each other. A gang – pack – pride...” he said.
“A blizzard of nidhoggs,” Saga suggested mumbling. “I... I was born in the city. I've only heard of them. From grazers. And... read in books.”
She stared at the landscape. Hundreds of yards away, there were actual trees.
The world is still alive! she thought. It is only here that... it isn't.
Spike looked at them, then at the landscape. He hadn't learned that much yet about Tarandroland's fauna, but from Vigg's stories, he had gotten the clear impression that nidhoggs were solitary animals. Normally.
“What is that sound?” Saga whispered.
Kvalhissir's sobs lead them to the lake, or what had been a lake. He lay at the beach in a soggy heap of frosted fur, his body wracked with long wheezing sobs. The lake had been frozen just as the landscape around it... and big chunks had been ripped out of the sod around it, probably the only deeper layer of earth around here. “Frozen” didn't mean “a layer of ice”. It had been frozen all the way to the bottom, like a solid block of ice.
The reason was plain to see: a nidhogg had plunged its head down into the lake, void-cold breath at full power, and flash-frozen the water around its own head. Panicking, it had flopped and floundered and, smashing its body against the ground, succeeding in getting up and tossing ice blocks around the area, but not freeing itself. It had died from concussion and suffocation, strangely fast for such a huge and uncanny beast, and was lying on the ground next to the wrecked tarn.
Saga laid down next the moose and pressed against him and, in a rather incoherent way, tried to say something comforting. Vigg knelt on the opposite side and pressed against him, but couldn't really come up with something to say; he feebly ransacked his mind for something to do about it.
What's the point with magical powers or royal blood when you cannot comfort someone who saved your life when they are crying their eyes out? he thought.
Spike hugged what he could reach of the poor stalu (the rump), then patted it as he got up and went to take a look at the icy carnage. He walked down to the exposed bottom of the lake. He imagined he could see the little bugs and things you can see wriggle about in the bottom mud in the summer, when you sit by a lake like this and wriggle your toes in the water. He definitely did see roots like those he himself chopped for dinner last night, frozen solid then ripped up from the lake bottom. The water would come back, of course, as soon as it melted. Some of the little bugs too, if there was another lake nearby. Spike was no botanist but assumed it would take a far bit longer for the plants.
He went up to the nidhogg corpse with apprehension. He couldn't shake the feeling it was playing dead, it was all a trick... Then, after poking it with a stick, he became convinced it wasn't. He was instead filled with a very special kind of horror, deeply related to being a dragon, even if he was a small one. It is possible only another draconic being could have felt like him, though similar concepts exist for all beings, and all thinking beings certainly could have understood him.
The being was too draconic without being a dragon. The ice-encased head, a maw that could have been a dragon's with a flat head and just rudimentary eyes. The long serpentine body, void of claws or wings or any limb at all, like one fat tail. The rubbery hide that looked like it had scales but didn't. It's different white patterns – white like snow on the back, for lying in the snow and waiting – mottled gray and white on the belly for moving through a snowstorm. It slithered straight through the uncanny valley for Spike, in between being like a dragon and definitely not being one, just like a plastic doll with its lifeless muzzle and fake coat trots between a comforting rag doll and a real, living pony. He felt disgusted and sad and wondered if the nidhoggs had to be or just were. He turned back to the others.
Saga rose up from her place next to their inconsolable host and looked sadly but serenely at the hole where the lake once was, as her legs swayed. Spike hurried and came up beside her, thinking she was as sick as he felt.
“I am Seeing again,” she said with a clear sad voice. “I am seeing the lake as it could have been this summer... probably as he wished it would have been... I am glad he cannot hear me, he is already sooo down... There would have been waterlilies and bulrushes... grass and sedge and reeds... thick moss around it and when you walked upon it water would have seeped up around your hooves... mosquitoes and gnats dancing above it and dragonflies and flycatchers hunting them... mergansers and golden eyes swimming in it...” Saga sighed “And Kvalhissir swimming... cooling himself in the waters... and digging up the bulbs and stalks...”
“It's his garden,” said Vigg. “Figures. Stories say stalus grow the plants in lakes – that's why you shouldn't harm them.”
“Then there is the summer sun for a month reflected in it... and the big august moon... and he would have...” Saga stopped babbling but not seeing. “He would have... dropped flowers and berries into the water... for the sun and moon...”
“It's his temple as well,” said Vigg morosely.
“He knew my amulet was of Hrimfaxi,” Saga mumbled. “He recognized me.”
She stumbled a bit, knelt and gave the moose another hug. Spike followed suit. After a while, however, he rose up.
“Guys, I'm sad for 'Hissir too... but we have to think of things. Like food. And a fire. And are we going back ourselves or should I... call a ride?” he said.
Before Vigg could protest, Saga nodded.
“Send a message. Tell them we are OK but would really want some company home, OK? That the storm was really bad?” she said.
“What do we say about Kvalhissir?” said Spike.
“Nothing,” said Saga. “Let's deal with that when they get here.”
She rose up.
“Vigg, I am going to make a fire. Can you see if you can find something to eat? Preferably for Kvalhissir as well?” she said.
Vigg rose as well, patting their devastated host.
“He must have more food in his home. He cannot live in his sauna. But, well, it is hard enough to talk to him when he isn't like this and I am not going to dig in all the hills until I find his house. Sooo... I'll backtrack to the ackja, I'm sure I can find it now, and dig out our provisions. They should be OK if the nidhoggs haven't eaten the ackja because it is part wood. We're going home sooner so we can give the extra rations to Kvalhissir if he can get anything down being like this,” Vigg said, looking in the distance.
“Can you send the message, Spike?” said Saga. “Twilight gave me some kind of dragonfire jar, but I'm not sure it will work.”
“Sure” said Spike. Then he laughed. “I have nothing to write on or with, though. I hope Luna doesn't freak out when she gets a birch bark letter written with charcoal!”
Luna arrived shortly afterward, by flight. She must have assessed the situation from the air, because she made an extra few circles before she landed. When Spike and the others came to meet her she was less than pleased.
“You tell me you had a hard night because of the weather? And I come here and find you next to an ice-wyrm? Is this a joke, Spike?” she said to the young dragon.
“Well... no one was harmed. The nidhogg sort of killed itself in the lake, we were hidden underground the whole time. That moose saved us,” said Spike. “We thought that if we talked about monsters and stuff in the letter you would think it was worse than it was.”
Luna still looked a bit angry, but when she was greeted by the relieved reindeer (one of whom wanted to give her a cup of coffee and a bun) she mellowed. And when she saw Kvalhissir lying by the remnants of the lake...
“A moose? They are not extinct in Tarandroland?” she said and walked up to him.
The big deer hadn't seen the alicorn yet, but turned his head when she approached. His eyes went wide and he scrambled to his feet, babbling something in his loud tongue. When he bowed in front of Luna she bowed down and kissed him on the forehead, and said something in a language none of them knew.
Well, not fluently.
“I think that was Ancient Cervine,” said Vigg. “We had classes in it in school...”
“You know it?” asked Spike.
“I can conjugate the verbs,” said Vigg sheepishly.
“School dropout,” said Saga. “I only know a few old chants and prayers.”
“Luna, is that his language?” Spike said as he walked up to the Princess.
“Sort of,” Luna smiled. “He mostly has a very heavy... brogue. It is the proto-language of all deer-kind, and the moose in Tarandroland must have kept it somehow.”
She returned to talking soothingly to him. After a while he started talking back, now and then gesturing with his muzzle or hooves, and taking her inside the sauna (from which she emerged a bit sootier than usual), apparently to show her what happened.
Just outside the sauna, she seemed to remember something, excused herself to Kvalhissir who bowed deeply, reared toward the sky and shot off a flash of magic from her horn. Vigg and Saga cried out and shielded their eyes a bit too late. Spike was less affected but still stunned.
“Wow! What was that about?” he asked Luna.
“I told Lady Sparkle I would set up a beacon for her teleportation. She would be bringing company... but not too many,” Luna said with a crooked smile. “I completely forgot when I saw the corpse of the ice-wyrm.”
“Company?” said everyone with a certain amount of trepidation in their voices.
Luna chuckled.
“Young ones, I hardly think you will be scolded for surviving a disaster,” she said.
“Are you sure you ever had parents, Your Highness?” said Vigg.
Luna laughed.
“In most of the meanings of the word, I did, yes. Maybe you should be afraid,” she said.
Then she looked at Kvalhissir and spoke to him. He answered in a downcast way.
“I asked him if he wanted to run and hide. He said he didn't have time to hide his tracks to any moose he could ask for help, and doesn't want any reindeer warriors to find them,” she said. “He says he'd rather stay and face their wrath like a bull.”
“Wrath?!” sputtered Vigg. “What wrath? He saved my life, and my family rules this realm! If anyone touches one of his hairs I'll see to that...” He sputtered some more.
“And he saved mine, and Twilight will never let them harm him. It's all just a misunderstanding,” said Spike.
“And I... shoo, I'm... not anyone. But I can come up with some really terrible punishments for Mistress Sparkle!” said Saga indignantly.
“You are my servant” said Luna and smiled towards her, the moon shining. “As is, I'd guess from his stories, the 'stalu' as well. At least they got the whole moon well concept better than reindeer.”
“It is a bit fitting to have trolls together with bats and wolves, Oh My Goddess,” said Saga.
“I think Kvalhissir will be rather pleased if you stop thinking of him as a troll,” said Luna.
“But trolls are totally cool!” said Saga. “I became a troll last night! Vigg too!”
Luna looked confused.
“Don't ask,” said Spike. “It's Saga. She is basically the goth version of Pinkie Pie sometimes.”
“Goths are posers!” said Saga with her nose in the air, but any further discussion of subcultures was interrupted by the arrival of Twilight and two smoking reindeer.
To her credit, Princess Ljufa didn't dry heave as long as Jarl Vidar. The grazer noble looked absolutely terrified when he finally looked anything at all.
“There were... things there!” he panted. “They... looked at me!”
Twilight was only embarrassed a very short while for exposing someone with second sight to the space between space, because then she was barreled over by an overjoyed Spike.
“TWILIGHT!” he shouted and hugged her. “I was so scared! Not when it was dangerous... but this morning... I...”
He looked up and felt very embarrassed.
“Erh, I mean...” he said.
Twilight smiled and hugged him back.
“It's OK. It was only a storm, and...”
Then she looked up and saw the nidhogg corpse.
“Oh Spike!” she said and hugged him harder. “What happened here!”
“Oh Vigg!” Ljufa sighed and hugged her son. “What have you gotten yourself into now?!”
“Mom!” he protested but hugged back. “I haven't done anything!”
“No, he hasn't!” said Saga and trotted up to the reindeer princess. “He found shelter from the storm for us! Well, someone who would hide us anyway... We would just have kept going until we fell over otherwise!” She looked very angry.
Ljufa looked at her with a certain amount of shock. She choked down a reprimand and Looked at Saga.
“You don't need to lie to me for my son's sake,” she said softly. “I am only afraid he will do as his father.”
Saga, not abated, looked at Vigg. The young sarv sighed.
“Dad froze to death in a blizzard. He kept walking when he should have made camp,” said Vigg quietly.
Jarl Vidar coughed.
“Vigg isn't frozen to death, and neither are the others,” he said. “Sister-in-law, I think scolding is sort of irrelevant here, given the circumstances.”
He turned to Saga.
“Lady Sparkle assumed your grandmother's health wasn't strong enough for a witch-jump. I'll assume she was right, given what I Saw – and I barely have the Sight. In any case, she wishes you to know she waits at your home with a warm bath and a dinner,” he said.
Saga nodded.
“I'm kind of used to being like independent. It's OK. Why are you here, by the way?” she said. “I know you're Vigg's... I mean Prince Vigg's uncle, but doesn't he have a ginormous family?”
Vidar laughed.
“I am concerned for Vigg, but I actually followed because I was interested in the effects of the blizzard – it is kind of my duty. And I am lucky I came. I didn't think there would be nidhoggs here... or stalus,” he said.
Saga bristled.
“Don't you dare do anything to Kvalhissir! He saved our lives because we could hide in his sauna and he had fired it up!” she said.
Vidar nodded.
“Which to me indicates he guessed the nidhoggs were coming and tried to defend himself even before you turned up. I'd like to speak with him about it,” he said.
“He kinda sorta speaks no Poatsi...” said Saga.
“I'll have to find an interpreter then,” he said and walked up to Luna, who was standing beside a tired moose.
Spike and Vigg was explaining the whole affair in a rather incoherent and non-chronological order to their respective mother figures, and finally came to a rather gushing description of Kvalhissir. Perhaps wisely, they left out the horrible what-if scenario from Saga's vision.
“And it was Spike who talked us down and made us trust him,” said Vigg. Spike looked down at his feet.
“It was just because I had helped Sweetie Belle with her homework,” he mumbled. “And I only did that to impress someone else.”
“Well, Lady Sparkle, it is pretty rare you have to praise your son for walking home with a mysterious stranger,” said Princess Ljufa.
“Son?” said Twilight. “Yeah, you're right, that's probably the right word here... And you are right. This time it was a very wise thing to do. And thanks for looking out for him, Vigg, and for listening to him. Not many youths would be grown-up enough to listen to a younger kid in a crisis.”
Vigg blushed a little and mumbled something. Spike was temporary dismayed.
“I think some words of thanks are in order,” Ljufa said and walked up to the moose who was having an animated discussion with Vidar through Luna, presumably about nidhoggs.
“I want to thank you, sir, for helping my son and the other youths in the blizzard,” she said in somewhat halting Ancient Cervine.
His answer was bellowing and bleating, but she could make out the words.
“I saw they were children. Only a monster leaves children out in such weather, with ice-wyrms on the prowl. I am no monster!” he said.
“I see that now,” said Ljufa. “Is there anything I can help you with, now that your home is... destroyed?”
“Only the sauna is harmed, but no, my lake is slain and I have to leave my barrow for reindeer warriors will find it otherwise,” he said laconically. “But Our Lady of the Moon has promised me refuge and a task in her temple.” He grinned. “I'll have to grow accustomed to he presence of you small ones everywhere.”
“Temple?” said Ljufa confused to Luna.
“This happens to be our new gardener,” said Luna. “The temple has recently acquired a new ceremonial lake, and I think he should be good at it.” She smiled. “His kind seem bad at accepting charity.”
“But at least let me do something for you...” said Ljufa.
Twilight and the boys were looking at the nidhogg. As her fear for Spike's well-being had dissipated, Twilight was now the ever-curious scholar, and was inspecting the dead thing.
“Where do these come from?” she said. “They do look slightly draconic, but only a little...”
“They are spawned off Joukulvakt when winter comes. Some survive each winter and grow larger,” said Vidar who had joined them. “This one must have been ill or mad. Water is dangerous to them, so they tend to avoid it even when in a feeding frenzy.”
“Why were they looking for the kids if they only eat wood?” said Twilight.
“They weren't, I think... seeing as how the hill is... was covered with small trees they should like. But the lack of instincts on this one means... it could mean anything. This is what I was talking about, Lady Sparkle. Have you had the time to look closer at what I told you?” said Vigg anxiously.
Twilight rubbed her muzzle and looked very tired.
“Things... came up. But Princess Luna herself looked at them, and has talked to her sister... It seems there are good news and... bad news,” she said. “I don't want to say too much yet.”
“At least give me something, Lady Sparkle,” Vidar begged.
Twilight sighed.
“It seems, at this stage, as if the Princesses can help you with your long-term problems, and it should actually be a somewhat trivial task, so it should be done soon,” she said.
“That... that is actually great news!” said Vidar.
“Those were the good news. The bad news is... that the Princesses don't see much they can do about the short-term problems, and they are as bad as you say, what happened to the kids tonight prove it. We will do everything we can but...” Twilight said.
Vidar's features dropped.
“No joy lasts, as the saying goes,” he said.
“Princess Celestia... really Princess Luna should be saying this... was saying that – if necessary, only if necessary – any and all refugees would be welcome in Equestria. The winter would hopefully last no more than five or six years... and then anydeer who wants could go home again,” said Twilight, her last words dropping to a whisper.
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A little fanart of a Reindeer I did for your story, http://d.facdn.net/art/keecoyote/1321847858.keecoyote_mylittlereindeer.jpg
My only criticism of some of the story is that the Spike-Vigg-Saga(SVS) chapters and storyline seem to lack focus. Twilight and Luna's storylines seem to have some goals in mind: The pirates and the Lord Eminence and the Winter issues. In contrast, I'm having a difficult time discerning if there's any sort of greater plot to the SVS chapters other than the youngsters adventuring a bit. Still could be coming though. Can't wait for more explanation why this winter is so severe
36866
The two storylines will converge, but the purpose is threefold (or threefold and a half):
It is one other source of exposition, varying who tells the crazy foreigners things. Elder kids telling a younger kids work differently than Twilight holding a lecture or the grownups probing a local for answers. Sometimes there is synergy: early on Spike is skeptical of the Sampo because Twilight told him you cannot make something out of nothing, then Vigg explains why magic is bad (it has consequences), then Luna lectures that even her powers cannot make something out of nothing AND they have consequences.
It is character establishment for later on. While I could have had the youngsters hang around Twilight/Luna, it was a little bit less realistic to have them there all the time just so we could learn to know them.
And it means someone is Out There actually encountering the reality The World's Greatest Sorceress (And The Most Evil!) and Our Lady Of The Moon only hears of; having someone present during a nidhogg attack instead of hearing about it is show not tell, but Luna and to a lesser extent Twilight could have dealt with that face on, so to speak.
The half is that any story with Twilight and Spike with Twilight as the heroine tends to end up with Twilight being adorkable and frighteningly powerful and Spike being a snarky buttmonkey. By separating them for part of the story at least, I avoid that with a cheap trick.
Still, if I rewrite this by some strange chance, I will establish earlier the fact that gives the youngsters a goal: that Spike likes to be with kids, and kids a bit older than him, and finally has the chance - at the same time as Twilight thinks her next weeks will be listening to boring people quarreling...
36797
Thanks so much! *saves to hard drive*
Oooh, fanart!
*Spit-take* Five or six years?!
36797
Apparently the destination is 'Forbidden' as the page puts it. Far as I know I have no parental controls active.
2392459
It isn't to me...
Anyway, I use that pic as my avatar (with permission).
That's exactly it! That's why I love Saga!
3305402
It will be interesting when you reach chapters 34 and 35...
have classes in the morning... but I want to keep reading.
I suddenly remember the problem with adventure tagged stories: I can't put them down.
Well shite ... Fimbulwinter indeed ...