Glace and other attempts at writing

The cold hard-packed earth hit hard and winded him as he was thrown back, and the little snow-cover did nothing to soften the fall. Matvey coughed and wheezed a few times while staring up at the tops of pine trees, rolling onto his side and scrambling to get up. He coughed again until his breath started to return and he lifted his gaze to a log across the clearing, where a faint chuckling came from. A grey-haired girl sat with her legs crossed on the log, a large wood-handled crossbow laid over her lap. She set down her chiseling tool, brushing bits of wood-chips off her pants with one hand. Her eyes smiled back at Matvey with another laugh.

"Hi..." he muttered breathlessly.

"Hi. You better get up, she's coming back." Lia said, going back to carving at the handle of the crossbow. Matvey pulled himself up and shivered as snow fell into the back of his coat. He'd heard the sound of hoof-steps before Liatanu had said anything.
A tall centaur, nearly twice the height of an average human, stepped through the snow. Light pieces of silver armour covered her dark tunic around the shoulders, and she had iron bracers on her arms. The sword she carried was not drawn, but kept sheathed at the belt around where her human waist merged into the horse half's shoulders.

"What did I do wrong this time?" Matvey asked incredulously, crouched and put his hands on his knees, still trying to get his breath back.

"You picked a fight with Hira." Lia called before the centaur had a chance to speak.

"My point is you need to train with someone your own size." Hira glared at Lia for her interruption. "I'm sorry for kicking you so hard before your watch but it's your own fault for jumping me like that." Matvey could tell Hira was trying to be sincere in her apology, but her deep and emotionless-sounding voice made it hard.

"We don't train anymore." Matvey complained.

"We can't train anymore." Hira said. "You have night watch now, I have day watch. And you should find a human sparring partner."

"No one else in Glace has the warrior training you do." Matvey said, following Hira as she started down to the lakeside. Liatanu stood up from her log and her boots crunched in the snow loudly as she ran to catch up.
"You'll manage. Spar with Lia." She sighed.

"We already do spar." Lia smirked. Hira gave her another look. Lia huffed and pushed the crossbow into Matvey's hands before walking off. Matvey hooked the handle of the crossbow onto his belt so it hung by his leg.

"If you're going to bring up Yuri, I assure you I can't teach him anything if you don't teach me." Matvey said when Hira stayed silent.

"Surely I've taught you all I can? I'm not human. I can't teach you anything like the graceful footwork of a Meviahn sword-fighter, or evasive maneuvers. Sagittai tribal warriors aren't known for our techniques." Hira folded her legs under her to lay down in the snow-covered reed bed.

"What am I do to then?" Matvey asked, still standing.

"You're never going to be some renowned fighter, no one will sing songs of your battles from the Red Forest to the deserts. You're a guard of a small refuge town. All you need to know is what you're good at and use it to any extent that you can. Fight smart."

"That doesn't sound like the typical advice of a Sagittai.." Matvey said.

"Yeah... well... you're not a centaur. You can't just stand like a defensive tank and hope to defend your small piece of ground like I do. That's how you get kicked into a snow-bank." Hira stretched her arms over her head, her armour-plated gloves glinting in the fading sunlight. "I will talk about Yuri now. He will do better to learn from you than from me. He looks up to you the same way you do to me. When he's not hunting with Liatanu, take him to guard the gate for a while some night."

"I have brought him to the gate a few times, though he either goes home or falls asleep after just an hour. Snezhana doesn't like it." Matvey spoke up.

"For heaven's sake! The boy is 15 and needs to do something other than laying rabbit traps. Matvey, don't ever think such a fussy and paranoid mother is a model parent. Don't think the same for Glacier either." Hira stood up, pulling her gloves off and starting to walk around the lake.

Mat followed her but Hira stopped again.

"Go to the cabin while there's still an hour before sunset. Tell Yuri if he can stay awake and watch the entire night I'll forge him his own sword."

"You sound like you want to be on Snezhana's bad side." Mat chuckled, testing the ice on the edge of the lake while gazing across to the main cabin.

--

Snezhana, also simply called 'Snow', looked incredibly tired, as usual. Her silver-white hair wavy and curled in a thin messy way and she had bags under her piercing amber-coloured eyes. She was sorting through a pile of pelts with her sewing needles and threads out on the wooden dining table. Yuri sat at the table, drinking leftover stew broth out of a wooden bowl.

"Is there anything left of dinner?" Matvey asked quietly as he hung his coat up by the doorway.

"Stew will stay on the fire until the fire goes out." Snow replied. "You're up early."

"And I'm going to regret that by morning." Mat filled a bowl with the venison, vegetables and stew broth before sitting down across from Yuri.

"Yuri, if you're done go to bed." Snow sat down in a third chair, setting a folded deer pelt onto the table and started cutting it into pieces for clothing.

"I'm having thirds then." The boy stood up and went back to the stove pot.

"You're not going out tonight if that's what you think." She said sternly as her son passed behind her, her gaze still focused on the pelt. "It's going to be a long night, one of the longest of the year. It may not look like summer in the mountains but we're close to the equinox. Summer is more dangerous, the pathway up the mountains might be uncovered, anything could wander up that path and find us."

"Hira has an offer for Yuri if he can stay up the whole night for once."

"For once? I'm disappointed." Snow leaned back in her chair and gazed over at her son. "If you want to be a guard so badly you can't fall asleep on the job."

"I won't this time!" Yuri smiled excitedly.

Snezhana just sighed and glared at Matvey.

"Fine. But Mat, if anyone or anything comes up the mountains... you kill them."

Matvey looked over Liatanu's work on the crossbow, thinking about how she was probably awake at this time as well, hunting just over the ridge. Yuri slept with his coat tucked around him, further down the path from the gate laying against a tree-trunk. Everything was quiet save for the whistling of the wind blowing flakes of snow over the hill. The "gate" had no doors. It was two pillars make of ice, worn down into smooth curves but had never melted since they were formed.

Mat was not at all sensitive to magic, but he knew there was a barrier around their whole valley of the mountains. Yuri could sense it, but not see it.

The wind howled and fog started to roll in with the snow. Matvey felt too cold after a while from sitting in the snow and paced around a couple times. He walked up to one of the icy pillars and reached his hand out to it. The ice was so cold it stung. Matvey held his breath for a moment before his hand disappeared into a black transparent shape and fazed into the pillar. He held it there for a couple minutes, leaning into the pillar as the black transparency extended up his arm. He pulled his arm back and it returned to normal, and glanced down the hill to check on Yuri.

Matvey heard the crunching of footsteps in the snow and looked around, wondering if it was Liatanu or anyone else, but found it was coming from beyond the gate. He walked up to the middle of the pillars and gazed down the slope of the mountain below. Through the dark snowy winds he could see a figure, and quickly bolted and raised his crossbow.

"Halt!" He shouted. "Who are you?" He asked, keeping the crossbow trained on the figure. The figure, a tall man with broad shoulders, kept walking closer only stopping a few feet from Matvey.

The man didn't say anything at first, and Matvey looked him over carefully. Despite not looking very old, he had a pure white beard and hair, and bright green almost reptilian-looking eyes. He wore a simple patterned coat over what looked like a riding outfit, and Matvey wondered if he had a horse nearby. For a man who came all the way up the mountains he didn’t look the least bit tired and he carried no bags or weapons with him.

"You're a guard?" The man asked.

"I am and I asked you a question." Matvey said.

“I was hoping to see a woman who came this way... Maybe she stayed here...” The man said.

“How long ago?” Matvey’s brow furrowed and he continued to look upon the man with deep suspicions.

“About 20 years.” He said.

Matvey tried not to scoff. “If you’re trying to follow a trail from 20 years ago I wish you luck, but we don’t have many here, likely not including the woman you speak of.”

“Please, she’s my sister, she left a long time ago.” The man stepped forward, his hands out as if pleading. “This is the most likely place she would be.”

He’s looking for Snow. Matvey kept the crossbow trained on him and didn’t speak his suspicions out loud. The less he told the man, the better. But the man shared the same pure white hair he’d only seen on Snow or Yuri, even if the eyes were different. Then again he recalled times, when Snow was tense or angry, that her eyes would have the same reptillian effect.

“I know it’s late, this is an ungodly hour, but I finally made it up these mountains and I just want to speak with her.” The man spoke after Matvey’s long silence.

“What is your name?” Mat asked.

“I’m called Mriynik, or Dreamer.”

“That’s a very haughty name to have. There was a dragon with that name once.”

“The very dragon they claimed made the world. The name is a reminder.” The older man said. “May I ask your name?”

“Matvey.” The black-haired guard replied, finally lowering the crossbow after his arms started to ache. “If I know who you’re talking about I can speak to her in the morning.”

“Then what shall I do until then?” The man asked, furrowing his brows in confusion.

“Go back home, I suppose, or carry on around the mountains.” Matvey said. “But you can’t come through here.”

The man stepped forward slowly, his expression changing. “Why not? What are you guarding here?” his voice became deeper and more serious. The man overtowered Matvey by almost half a foot.

Matvey took a few steps away and aimed the bow again, conscious of Yuri sleeping just down the hill.

“Do you even know? Or has Glacier fed you lies?” The man asked.

“It’s best that you leave. I’ll fire if I have to say it again.” Matvey said. The wind howled as snow blustered through the mountain pass.

“Go ahead.” Dreamer began walking forwards again, and Matvey fired the bolt, but the white-haired man seem to disintigrate into mist, rushing forward and engulfing the sky in what seemed like giant wings. Matvey fell backwards like a tidal wave had hit him, and when he opened his eyes again the mountains had turned to sandy cliffs. The man, Yuri, the gate, and the crossbow were all gone.

The air seemed to ripple from arid heat but Matvey felt both the sting of the cold and the burning heat at the same time, fading between to the two like pockets of hot and cold air swirling around him.

When he tried to sit up he found himself laying at the mouth of a tunnel into a large abandoned iron fortress. Two sets of eyes peered at him from the large gaping entrance, one piercing yellow, the other bright green. A deep echoed growling came from the tunnel and rang in his ears.

He crawled backwards on his back with his elbows before he stood up. The green eyes moved forward, rushing towards him only to go through him. He felt the rush of piercing cold again.

This isn’t real, is it? Matvey thought. The green eyes belonged to a large dragon hatchling, a heavyset breed with thick white plated scales and four horns. It seemed more preoccupied with the giant shapes that loomed over the whole canyon.

There were three, now four dragons fighting. The illusion was fading and blurred but Matvey could still see the ferocity of te fight. Two adult white dragons clashed, one with a spiked crown and bluish-tinted scales, the other heavyset like the dragonet and from what Matvey could see it only had one wing. They crashed together and the noise of their battle echoed deafeningly throughout the entire canyon.

The third adult, a brown and blue serpent cut off the dragonet and lifted it up in her mouth, stopping him from entering the fight. The dust and sand kicked up by the dragons looked like a sandstorm.

Matvey heard shrieking as his vision was blurred further by the sand, and he kept his distanced, walking along the edge of the canyon, trying to find some way out of the illusion.

He reached an angle where he could see through the sand. The crowned dragon beat its wings furiously, and seemed to pin the one-winged female with its jaws around her neck.

Despite the crowned dragon being skinnier and appearing weaker than the heavyset, it only took one powerful jerk of its head to snap the heavyset’s neck.

The sound shook Matvey to his bones and stayed with him as the sand faded back into snow. He tripped forward and stumbled down the hill leading away from the inner gate. The last whisps of the fog were fading.

Shivering and turning around Matvey quickly regained his crossbow. Both the man and Yuri were gone, and Matvey statrted to panic. He ran up to the gate, staring at the ground for tracks leading away but the man’s, and Yuri’s, tracks led further into Glace and towards Snezhana’s cabin.

Matvey started to run.