Ashes of a Black Frost

har spread out their branches, seeing by touch and tasting the air with their leaves. They understood how different they were from the others. They understood they were anchored in place by a root system driven deep into the ground, and so they tore themselves free from the soil, severing their roots when the last of the ichor had been drained. Pain was not new to them, but understanding it was. It filled them with a whole new concept: anger.

They ignored the thrashing fury of the sarka har around them that could not change, and focused on their own growing awareness. In order to move, they could not stay as they were. More pain would be required.

Much more.

They twisted the remaining shards of roots into two distinct shapes. The first wound itself into a corkscrew shape that drilled back into the ground, anchoring the tree in place. The second took the form of a massive claw, and began crawling inch by inch in the opposite direction. The sarka har groaned as the tension built on its trunk. Cracks began to appear in their new bark that quickly spread to the wood beneath. The more the claw crawled the bigger the cracks grew until the night was shattered by explosive ripping and splintering.

These sarka har now had legs.

Pulling the twisted root back out of the ground, they took their first awkward steps across the line of power drawn by the Jewel of the Desert. Sparks flew as they crossed the line. Flame crackled but then died. This new land was inhospitable, the soil filled with the power of the Star, but they remained on its surface, and were not struck down by it.

Each step was a stumbling, broken motion that threatened to topple the trees over, but they soon learned to swing their branches to act as a counterbalance. The sarka har had learned to walk.

As they walked, they began to transform further. In order to better move across the snow-covered desert, the sarka har altered their form to something more suited for traveling upright over distances. Their trunks split further, lengthening the two pieces they were using as legs while their branches twisted together to form two rudimentary arms.

Two sarka har, however, took a different, more difficult form, finding a template long lost in the power of the ichor. Their transformation was much more painful and time-consuming. Branches tore and trunks shattered as the two sarka har remade themselves. Ichor spilled on the snow and steamed as it burned. Leaves spun away in the wind, but more sprouted. Larger. Stronger. They didn’t grow tall, but they grew long, extending themselves along the ground. It was a strange and horrifying sensation for a tree to fall toward the earth, but as more of the transformation took hold, they saw the power in this new stance. When the transformation was complete the other sarka har were gone, their trail in the snow already erased by the wind. It mattered little. These sarka har had discovered a new means by which to travel, and they knew where their brethren were heading.

Deep in the heartwood of every transformed tree lived a surging intelligence adapting itself to its newfound form after laying dormant for centuries untold. There was little for it to find beyond basic needs in the sarka har except for one, pure thing-a hatred of elves. In fact, it was a distorted echo of an emotion so ingrained in the Shadow Monarch’s Silver Wolf Oak that its acorns spread the poison of this feeling. The emotion of Her Silver Wolf Oak was a confused maelstrom of fury and love aimed at a single elf. As a result, the forest sprouted from its acorns reproduced this hatred in every sarka har. These new sarka har felt the hatred burning deep inside them, and while they little understood it, they were driven by it all the same. And unlike the sarka har who had not transformed, these trees could do more than lie in wait. They could move, and they could hunt. Their leaves tasted elf in the air. They weren’t far.

Without knowing its name, its history, or even what it was, the transformed sarka har began to close in on a single point in the Hasshugeb Expanse.

Suhundam’s Hill.

To march is to grind the body slowly with a torturer’s attention to detail. Granules too small to see find that perfect place between flesh and strap, rubbing skin until it blisters, weeps, and tears, staining shirts and filling boots with an oozing, red-tinted mud. Muscle and sinew explore pain so searing that the onset of stabbing needle pricks of numbness comes as a welcome relief. Shoulders erupt in burning cauldrons of agony that ache long after pack straps have been pried off, while wild thoughts of amputation race through the mind with every footfall.

At his most cynical, Konowa even wondered if it was all diabolically planned to be this way. Soldiers have very little to say about marching that’s relatable in mixed company. And when no officer or sergeant is around, their comments usually start by spitting in disgust, and for good reason. The prospect of battle, no matter how terrifying, grows in the mind of the soldier to be a kind of salvation from all the damned marching.

Konowa pushed away those thoughts and scanned the inhospitable wasteland curtained with snow. That in itself was worrying enough. What only yesterday had been a broiling pan of bleached sand and wind-frayed rock was now an unnatural tundra, cold and unforgiving. That the Iron Elves were about to march straight into the teeth of it was of less concern than what lay on the other side. Every man knew that the Shadow Monarch and Her creatures would be at the end of this journey. This march would have to be several types of hell for that prospect to look good.

Konowa did his best to buoy their spirits. “Just a short jaunt to the coast, lads. Not exactly a walk in the park, but we’ll make it.” Soldiers nodded, mostly because he looked at them, but hopefully because some actually believed him.

“Remember, the Prince brought a whole fleet with us when we landed,” Konowa said. “Admittedly, the navy types are a bit soggy, but they’ll be there for us when we need them.” I hope.

Konowa gave up on his pep talk and wandered among the men. Every soldier was busy examining the contents of his pack, lifting it and judging the weight, knowing every ounce carried would become ten pounds of pain in a few hours. Contents were dumped out and reexamined on the snow as soldiers thought long and hard about what to keep and what to discard.

“You might find your stomach will wish you’d kept those,” Konowa said, stopping by one soldier who was kneeling in the snow, busily dumping out the hard-as-rock biscuits given to them from the HMS Black Spike’s stores. Feygan. . Feyran. . Konowa tried, but couldn’t remember the man’s name, if he ever knew it. This soldier was scrawny and his uniform so dusty and torn that he looked more like a beggar sifting through a rubbish heap.

“My stomach don’t have a death wish, but if yours does you’re welcome to them,” the soldier said, then looked up and realized who he was addressing. He jumped to his feet and saluted. Eyes still wild from battle stared back at Konowa from a gaunt, sunburnt face smeared with black powder. Konowa recognized the look, knowing his own visage was just as startling. He returned the salute and motioned for the soldier to continue with his packing.

“You’re right; they are an acquired taste. Still, if you dunk them in a mug of arr they almost become edible.”

The soldier’s face took on a puzzled look. He reached up and brushed a greasy lock of blond hair off his forehead. “Well, sir, if that means poison then I agree with you there. I tried feeding one to a rat on the ship and the little bugger took one sniff and hightailed it in the other direction.”

Konowa could smell the soldier from here and suspected the rat hadn’t reacted entirely to the biscuit. None of them, save the Prince perhaps, were too fresh at this point. “Smart rat. How are you set for cartridges?”

At this, the soldier brightened. “Chockablock full there, Major. These heathen warriors use a ball just a smidge smaller than ours. They might rattle a bit coming out the barrel, but we’ve been grabbing up as much as we can carry. I’d wager our muskets will still be true enough to a hundred yards give or take.”

Cartridges weren’t the only thing the Iron Elves were stripping from the dead Hasshugeb warriors littering the sand around them. In addition to jewels and coins quietly pocketed, belts, robes, daggers, and goat-hide water skins were quickly becoming part of the regiment’s dress. Konowa marveled that the Prince had nothing to say on the subject-a far cry from the parade-ground dress he had demanded just a few short months ago. That strange sensation of hope stirred in Konowa again. If the Prince could learn, who knew what else was possible?