Chapter 123: Ancestral Tomb
Hauke’s horn glowed a dark blue, illuminating his way has he carried Ashlynn and Heila toward the island in the center of the lake. He didn’t know if he would find the thinner ice he was seeking there, but even if he didn’t, he felt that it was better to choose a direction and try than to search aimlessly while Ashlynn and Heila were running out of time.
Hauke himself felt very little distress from the cold water beneath the ice. In contests, he’d shown that he could hold his breath in cold water for nearly ten minutes and the combination of his fur and a layer of fat over his muscles helped to insulate him from the cold. Frost Walkers had adapted well to life on the freezing mountain peaks and he was no exception.
While he could endure for a long time, however, his new friends couldn’t. Hauke’s heart raced as he searched for a crack or weak spot in the ice only to find, to his horror, that the ice seemed to be getting even thicker. For a minute that felt like an hour, he circled the island, using a trace of his energy to bend the currents to his will and propelling him along faster than he could swim even if wasn’t carrying two people.
Just when he was about to give up and head for the far end of the lake where the ice broke at the mouth of a stream, he spotted the entrance to the ancestral cave that had been covered by the rising lakewater.
For a moment, he paused as he tried to recall whether the cave led to another exit on the island or not. If there was another way into the cave, it wouldn’t have made sense to abandon this ancient ancestral cave.
But, looking at Ashlynn and especially Heila, he wondered if they might be able to pass through an exit that was too small for Frost Walkers. After all, some people still visited these ancient ancestors. Surely there was a way for their voice to reach the ancestors even if their body couldn’t, he reasoned.
In the end, he didn’t know, but if he was right that the cave led to another exit, or even if there was air in the cave, it was safer and easier to reach than the stream at the far end of the lake. His decision made, Hauke didn’t waste any more time as he dove for the cave entrance, pulling Ashlynn and Heila along with him.
Once he entered the cave, for a moment, his world was almost completely dark. The light that filtered through the thick sheet of ice above didn’t reach very far down and almost none of it extended into the cave. Only the dim blue light of his horn allowed him to find his way through the underwater cavern.
A few moments after he entered the cave, however, ice crystals along the cave walls began to glow as if recognizing that a visitor had come after hundreds of years beneath the frigid water. Most importantly, the cave sloped upward and a hundred feet from the entrance, Hauke spotted a glowing oval of light that danced and rippled like the surface of the lake seen from below.