Chapter 424: Flickering Faith
When Tausau and Savis led their soldiers in an assault on the Frost Walker fortress, Ignatious followed along with them, separating from the group to dash to Heila’s side by the ice prison that trapped Lady Ashlynn with the treacherous Hauke. When he arrived, the diminutive Willow Witch was already in a heated argument with her gladiator-turned-guardian, Kurtz.
"... understand, my Lady," Kurtze pleaded in the face of an intense glare from the woman he’d come to rescue. "Even if I ran into the blizzard, I might not be able to find your Tuscan soldiers. It’s almost impossible to see anything in that snow, and I’m no vampire or witch to blow the snow aside."
"And even if, if somehow I could find them," he added, trying to convince the stubborn young witch that sending him away to fetch the giants was a fool’s errand. "Leading giants through the caravan when we can’t see, we’d only trample our own people beneath their feet."
"Tuscan’s have their own magic for handling snow and ice," Heila insisted. Snow Fang trembled in her hands, and she was nearing exhaustion from maintaining the snow cloud. Talauia had already reached Lord Ritchel and his honor guard, and she’d used the snow cloud to provide cover for Savis and Tausau’s charge, but she still needed to maintain the barrage of snowball,s or Talauia would find herself outnumbered and overwhelmed before she could finish dealing with the sorcerers keeping Ashlynn prisoner.
"Just go find them," Heila insisted. "We need their strength to break these walls!"
As she spoke, the walls of the ice prison shook and trembled, with cracks spreading across the surface of several walls. Just a few minutes ago, nothing seemed to damage the walls, and it was clear from the fading magic supporting them that at least a few of the sorcerers who trapped Ashlynn had fallen to Talauia’s assault, but they weren’t failing fast enough!
"Lady Heila," Ignatious interrupted as he knelt down in the snow, placing the box containing the Holy Flame Blade on the frozen ground before him. "Mistress Nyrielle sent me to dispel the blizzard and break Lady Ashlynn free," he said, his hands already moving from one lock on the case to the next before revealing the gleaming blade.
The temperature around them seemed to grow several degrees warmer as soon as Ignatious removed the lid, and everything more than a few feet away from them seemed to grow darker, as if all the light of the world were gathering around the sacred blade.
"Sir Ignatious!" Heila cried, relief washing over her now that they had the support of one of Lady Nyielle’s progeny.
"Can that sword really dispel the blizzard?" Heila asked, trying to suppress the surge of hope that wanted to erupt in her chest, just because Ignatious had arrived. All her life, she’d put her faith in Lady Nyrielle and her immensely powerful progeny to protect the Vale of Mists, and part of her wanted to believe more than anything that Nyrielle’s progeny wouldn’t fail.
But now that she’d become a witch, she knew much more about how difficult it was to destroy someone else’s working once it was fully formed. Armed with a powerful Severing Knife, she might have been able to unravel the magic that sustained the blizzard, but there was no way she could do that and support Talauia, not without trees or growing things to draw strength from. But perhaps, in Ignatious’s hands, the Holy Flame Blade could act like a Severing Knife and destroy the heart of the blizzard’s magic.