A vast wall of white blanketed the horizon.

  What breaks in the cloud she could see, shifted slowly from right to left, churning and deforming constantly. Only the sheer distance, and the winds whipping past Ceph herself, revealed that apparent laggard motion to be deceptive.

  Ceph, along with the mercenaries that replaced her team, ran across open plains toward the storm. Frigid gusts pelted them. The winds grew stronger with each passing second, along with the hurricane that had erupted to life; the target of their chase.

  The chill carried by stormwind clung to their bodies, sapping all warmth. It was intense. Even with their enhancement, the cold seeped deep, slowing their muscles and stealing their energy.

  The weather had been clear for the past week; the perfect late spring day. Growing ever nicer as they had travelled east, away from the constant ash cloud spreading from the Titan Alps. A few minutes. That’s all it took for the weather to turn sideways and grow to this nightmare of a hurricane.

  A frozen storm.

  Ceph knew its origin — not a single one of the people beside her could feign ignorance — and she wasn't looking forward to reaching it. Nobody wanted to cross her path.

  Beira. The Inner Circle Mage.

  The elite of the Mercenary Order were a terrifying group. Stories spread about them were frequent and terrifying — contrary to how infrequently they fought — yet there was one constant; the mages were the worst. While those of skill and strength focuses were powerful in their own right, the Inner Circle mages were horrifying not only to their enemies. Vast, unrepressed power shaped weather and land to their will, caring not for the beings in their way, whether they be friend or foe.

  For the storm to have grown this strong. For the ice to sting at their skin despite the distance. Then the ice mage had found her target.

  With each pounding step forward, Ceph and her entourage were pelted with winds and chill that would kill any unenhanced in an instant. The volans couldn’t fly; if they tried, they’d be flung far through the air. It made them burdens, having to cling to Hirsh and Albin as they ran through the intensifying winds.

  Frost already covered the landscape. Blades of grass were left frozen in place. Rivers turned solid. The branches of countless trees had either been stilled in place, or the winds had shattered them and left the forest floor flooded in crystallised foliage. The air itself had long shifted below freezing, and each step it only grew colder.

  If there had been any villages nearby, they certainly wouldn’t remain.

  “Should we really be running towards the storm?” one of the volans asked. Fay, if Ceph remembered right. “This isn’t something our team can handle.”

  Ceph swallowed the insult that nearly, involuntarily, rose to her mouth.

  Her team wouldn’t be this cowardly. Her team wouldn’t cower at a little blizzard.

  But she knew this wasn't the time for that. Not only was it pointless to say, she knew her true feelings would not be well received.

  “We aren't going there to fight,” she said. “We are simply here to oversee the creature’s death.”

  A sudden intense gust washes over them. A rain of small crystallised shards of ice pelt their forms and the air temperature sinks rapidly. Both volans were torn from their holds, and slammed into the ground. The wind nearly does the same to the rest.

  Ceph grips the hilt of her snake-shed blades, and braces against the assault. How she wished for the comfortable grip of her hand-cannons. Glaus had been right that they were pointless and ineffective, so she’d had the hard scales incorporated into blades instead. The same type he’d been teaching her.

  “Fuck,” Albin swears besides Ceph. “She’s going all out.” The albanic had been mostly stoic since she’d met him, but now his eyes showed a tinge of terror, anger, and he refused to step forward. “I was near enough the front she fought during the war. Any closer is death.” His voice carried no indecision.

  Despite his concerns — or maybe because of them — Ceph started forward again. She made it only a few metres before a heavy thump jolted up her tentacles. Only moments later another quake thrums along the earth. Nothing intense like the Collapse, but not something that can be ignored either.

  A second overwhelming icy gust washes over them. The rest of the water wave Hirsh uses to keep up freezes in place, locking his lower antlers inside.

  This was as far as her teammate and the prospective members would come. They couldn’t handle the power of an Inner Circle. Ceph didn’t have the arrogance to believe she would survive if an attack came her way, but she was quick. She likely had the most enhancement of any of them. She would need to do this herself.

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  “Hirsh,” Ceph said. “You and the others stay here. I’ll head on and assure the worst doesn’t happen.”

  She ran on before any could state their opposition. Her speed too great for any but the volans to catch, and they were out of commission in this wind.

  What exactly the worst would be, she didn’t know. Ceph didn’t know whether the serpent beating an Inner Circle mercenary would be worse than that mage leaving thousands of casualties in her path to kill it. All Ceph could hope, was that the fight didn’t carry on too long, nor would it extend far.

  They'd spent the last days racing after the Inner Circle mage. The Albanic left a clear trail of her passage that made it easy. Well, easier than finding the snake. Ceph didn’t know if the snake had grown more subtle after causing a stir in Meja’s capital, or if Beira destroyed any signs, but following the mage certainly had them passing through the pact nations quick.

  They had been outside Meja within a day, and had rushed through the regional farmland of Kizthak for the remainder of their travel. Thankfully, the land they passed wasn’t home to any major residential areas. No cities or suburbs. No large populous that might have fallen prey to the serpent… or Beira.

  It was surprising how sure the Inner Circle mage had been of her path. Ceph didn’t know what the woman’s markings could do — that was something the Mercenary Order had historically been very dedicated to keeping quiet, using any means — but if she was to take a guess, there would have to be some part of her arsenal that detected traces otherwise invisible to the eye. Nothing else could allow such rapid tracking.

  Ceph pushed through the strengthening wind. There was nothing but storm around her now. Debris carried through the air forced her into a hurdle course to avoid. Despite it being day, it was dark. Darker than she’d experienced in months. Even night didn’t grow this dark; not with the blood moon burning the ashen sky a deep crimson.

  What Remus had said, his hunch that the serpent could be intelligent never left Ceph’s mind. It was a hopeful thought. One she might have even considered naive if it hadn’t been such a universally respected figure to propose it. She wanted to believe that it could be convinced to leave them alone. To return to the depths. But if Beira had already attacked — which is a certainty, considering the weather — then the serpent is almost assured to hold a grudge.

  Considering the circumstances, it would be best if the snake simply died to the mage. But… the Remus had shown doubts at her ability to kill it. The remnant from her great-grandfather’s time wasn’t to the level of an Inner Circle mercenary himself sure, but he had gained a legend greater than one. Anything that concerned him should terrify Ceph.

  If the serpent killed the mage, or even if it simply survived and fled, the grudge Beira might inflict could leave the pact nations within the fangs of a beast it could not handle. A hatred for her nation that it had yet to gain. Those it had faced so far must have seemed less than inconsequential, after all.

  If the serpent could beat an Inner Circle and turned its fangs on Meja or the other pact nations, then who could stop it? Tore Hund? She doubted the southern ruler would be so kind.

  No. If Beira failed, then Ceph needed to speak with it. She needed to try and get across her non-hostile intent so that the beast didn’t begin killing indiscriminately.

  She had hope. The snake hadn’t killed any of the residents of the land it passed so far. It could be that it simply wasn’t hungry, but that wasn’t the only indication. That boy’s story of the serpent saving his friends, it could be true… or it could be the snake trying to snatch up an easy meal.

  Regardless of what went through the serpent’s mind, Ceph had little hope to defeat the creature herself. All she could do was hope it wouldn’t bite her head off immediately. Hope that even if not domesticatable, the creature could be convinced of a lack of threat from her kind.

  If, as Remus hinted, it was sapient, that might actually turn out the worse than if it only had some intelligence. Ceph could speak with it all she wanted, and it could listen all it wanted, but the moment it interacted with some of the people of the nations… things could get ugly.

  True, intelligent creatures could hold grudges, but those held nothing to the grudges of a person.

  Portians relied on the bodies of animals and beasts to survive, and yet their parasitic nature terrified many — herself included, admittedly — despite their overall amiable disposition. They could not leave their sole village because of the distrust and hate. If a creature with the power of an Inner Circle had to face harshness of that scale, Ceph doubted it would settle with isolating itself as the portians did.

  It wasn’t even a question. Should Beira fail, Ceph needed to try.

  The winds grew ever stronger as Ceph ran through the obscuring weather. If her eyes were exposed like any of the other races and not free-moving beneath her membrane, the rain of frozen blades would have cut them open. She would have had to cover her eyes to move. Instead, all she needed to worry about was the small welts that rose from each impact. Each little ice shard sent the chill further through her body.

  If she’d had any less enhancement than she did, then she was sure she would have died in seconds under this onslaught. The constant gusts crashing into her body kept freezing her further, and there was nothing she could do to fight it off. As she ran forward — the odd thump shaking her limbs — the chill spread deeper through her muscles.

  Finally, she crested a ridge and her eyes landed on what could only be called a frozen wasteland. The swarming winds of ice blades were dense below, having carved away the earth for kilometres. What wasn’t sliced apart, was frozen over and chilled to the point ice crystals rose from the earth; they never lasted long under the intense winds.

  Beira, the ice mage, was here. That was obvious. But it was her opponent that surprised Ceph.

  Slithering along the ground with enough weight to send quakes through the earth, was a snake. But not the snake they’d been following. This one was massive. A hundred metres long, and its thickness twice that of the albanic it attacked.

  It snapped through the air far faster than something its size should ever be allowed. The terrifying size, weight, and speed, only second to the fact that Ceph recognised this serpent. Of course she did, she had the same glistening green hue embedded into her blades.

  This was the same snake from beneath the Titan Alps. And it was terrifying.

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