Chapter 405: Ancestral Wisdom (Part One)
On the snow covered slopes of the High Pass, the night sky rippled with lights. Ribbons of pale, icy blue and soft, shining lavender bent and twisted like curtains in the breeze, bending and swaying at the direction of a young man standing atop an exposed ridge.
Further down the mountain, at one side of the ancient roadway that had guided travelers across the mountains for centuries, several Frost Walker sorcerers stood in awe as they watched Young Lord Hauke transforming the icy tower they’d constructed into something that felt infinitely colder and more dangerous than the simple structure they’d built during the day.
"You’re doing well, young hero," a soft, feminine voice whispered to Hauke as he extended the reach of his sorcery as high into the sky as he dared. "Can you feel it? How much colder the air is at the top of your ribbons than it is at the bottom?"
"I c-can f-feel it," Hauke said, his teeth chattering as his sorcery brought him directly in contact with air that was several times colder than the worst winds to buffet the High Pass in the depths of winter. "H-have I, gone h-high enough?"
"It will do," the voice said. "Now, as I’ve taught you, allow that cold to flow through your ribbons and into the core of the tower. The colder the core becomes, the longer your Eternal Ice will last."
"I u-under s-stand," Hauke said, touching the shining, iridescent horn on his chest as he adjusted the flow of energy through his Sky Ribbons, forcing the temperature of the icy tower to plummet even more than it already had.
The horn’s glow intensified under his touch, its light pulsing slightly as the remnant of the powerful ancestor dwelling within the horn helped Hauke to adjust and finetune the flow of his sorcery. Even after months of working with the honored ancestors who possessed iridescent horns like his own, that feeling of silent guidance and support still filled him with a mix of pride and unease. Pride in being trusted with such power, and unease at remembering how close he’d come to losing this opportunity entirely.
The glowing horn was the second in a row of five iridescent horns that the young Frost Walker lord wore on a bandolier across his chest. The first time he had appeared in public wearing the horns it nearly caused an uprising when Cator, one of the candidates to replace Elder Paulus on the council of elders, saw his actions as an opportunity to advance his own position and immediately decried Hauke’s actions as heretical.
The aging Frost Walker demanded that he be captured immediately and that the ancestral horns be stripped from from his body so they could be returned to an appropriate Ancestral Cave. Commander Jannik had actually agreed with the shouted demand, ordering his warriors to surround the young lord. Only his father’s swift intervention had prevented things from coming to blows, but he was still forced to stand before his father and the council of elders to explain the heretical arrangement.
"I’m not defiling our ancestors," Hauke had insisted when he was brought before the full council. Thankfully, Cator had yet to earn the right to occupy Elder Paulus’s vacant seat, but there were still plenty of people who felt strongly that Hauke’s actions were almost as vile as those of the Elder who betrayed them to Tuscan hunters.