Tomas gulped again to help clear his throat. “Aye… I was a part of a special unit sent to aid the Magisters at the Repository, father.”
“Is that right?” Evin scoffed.
“Rilan and I were chosen to lead the company to the mountain.”
Evin looked around, shrugging sarcastically. “And where is your little friend now, then?”
Tomas bowed his head, feeling the weight of the past few weeks sitting atop his shoulders. He found it difficult to mutter the words.
“He’s gone,” Tomas muttered under his breath.
“Gone? Gone where?” Old Bertha said with concern.
“Dead.”
Old Bertha gasped with a hand to her cracked lips. “Oh, goodness. No… no, that cannot be.”
Brittlepeak being a modestly sized village meant that everyone knew everyone there. While not related by blood, Old Bertha had always been a trusting, caring guardian to both Tomas and Rilan growing up.
Tomas continued. “The Repository came under attack. Lynn and I fled for our lives.”
Evin simply rolled his eyes. “You expect me to believe all of that?”
“It’s the truth,” Tomas said, still finding it tough to look his father in the eye. “We are all still in danger. We need to leave Brittlepeak.”
The middle-aged man took another step closer to Tomas, and for a moment he swore he heard a lamb crying in the night.
“What’s more likely?” Evin grunted, unblinking. “That my coward of a son was chosen for a special mission away from the invasion that brought him all the way back home, or that he fled from the war he was forced to fight, in the first chance he got?”
Nobody uttered a word. Tomas kept his head bowed but could sense his father’s harrowing eyes burrowing into his skull from above.
The silence was only disturbed by the crackling of the hearth fire as a log disintegrated before Lynn finally spoke.
“What he says is true,” Lynn said. “We came under attack from some sort of predatory beasts and ghoulish creatures, the like of which I have never even read about before. Things not from here. Something terrible happened at the Repository, but your son saved my life.”
Evin scoffed, before turning back towards the door to leave in a fit of rage at what he was hearing. “What son?”
Those two words cut into Tomas’s chest like a knife through the ribs, yet he looked back up and stared down his father as he left the house, refusing to let him have the final win that time.
No. I won’t let you hurt me again.
The wind from outside roared like a tempered bear.
Old Bertha got up to try and stop Evin from leaving but he had already shut the door before she could intervene.
Lynn gazed over to Tomas sympathetically, although unsure of what to say or do. He felt sweat against his brow, so he wiped it off before standing up, still speechless.
“I brought you both some warm clothing to put on,” Old Bertha said, handing them each a pile of folded clothes. “The equipment you had on you is over by the door.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Lynn said with a bright smile.
“You saved our lives,” Tomas added.
Old Bertha waved her hand. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat for you, Tomas. You were always a good lad, always have been.”
The two promptly got dressed beneath their furs. It was a nice change to have clean clothes for once. Tomas hadn’t realised how foul his old ones must have been, having fought in a battle and travelled across the kingdom without having the chance to wash properly.
“I’m sorry about your father,” Old Bertha said, offering an outstretched hand.
Tomas tightened his belt before patting her hand quickly and releasing it. “Some things will never change.” He then made his way towards the door, Lynn close behind.
“Where are you going?” Old Bertha asked abruptly.
“We have to leave,” Tomas said. “I can’t stay here, not with him.”
“We need to find help,” Lynn added. “The Repository wasn’t the first attack. Your village might be in danger next.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Old Bertha said. “Brittlepeak is a safe place. A very safe place, yes. The mountain side and pines protect us from everything. We are simple working folk; we have nothing here that an army could want.”
“This is no army we are up against,” Tomas said as he tied his dried boots to his feet.
“You can’t leave, anyhow! No way! The blizzard! You must stay here,” Old Bertha insisted.
Tomas seized up upon realising something strange. The howling wind from outside, the incoming blizzard. It had all grown silent. Not just a temporary break in the storm. Dead silent.
Tomas looked over to Lynn with an expression of fear as she picked up her satchel.
“What is it?” she said.
Tomas quietly unlatched the door, swinging it open. The night air was still chilly, yet no snow fell, and no wind blew. Plumes of smoke rose straight up from the chimneys of the scattered houses around the village. The pine trees stood dormant from their dancing.
Lynn and Old Bertha approached to have a look for themselves.
“Oh, my. What happened to the storm?” Old Bertha said.
Looking up, Tomas noticed that the clouds had vanished. The sky was alight with millions of stars. Rea and Ixo cast their ghostly blue and white lights from high above, with the cascade of the moon’s broken rocks sprawling over the sky.
It was far too silent. No owls hooting, no trees rustling, no water rushing down the river, no wind blowing.
Tomas left the house, the snow crunching beneath his boots. Lynn was close behind. He took a few steps towards the
