Chapter 476: All I Wanted To Do...
Hauke watched in frozen horror as Ashlynn methodically built her way to what seemed like the only logical conclusion. By the time she arrived at the end, everything seemed to fit neatly in place. So neatly that any other explanation wouldn’t make any sense at all.
Nyrielle had explained what the Frost Walkers had lost over the years. She even told them who was responsible for it! And now, hundreds of years later, the rulers of the once mighty Frost Walker nation of the Seven Peaks had returned, finding a ready-made pawn who was eager to participate in their scheme to restore their fallen empire.
But for Hauke, it hadn’t been like that at all!
He’d shared with the ancestors everything that Ashlynn had told them about humans, their church, and the power of their Crusades. He explained the threat facing the Frost Walkers and how much they needed strength to face the battles to come. It was only because of those threats that the ancestors had offered up ways he could use his powers to rebuild ancient defenses for his people.
Everything he learned from them had a purpose. Ansgar taught him how to fight against mighty champions while Eraric taught him how to create strong fortifications. Though he’d had little opportunity to use the healing arts he’d studied with Eugen, Hauke struggled to see how those or the lessons in managing a nation he’d received from Kimsel...
Suddenly his mind froze as he began to look at those lessons from Kimsel from a different perspective.
"You will need these methods for now," she had told him in one lesson when she spoke of methods to advance while seeming to retreat when negotiating with more powerful nations. "But in time, strength will accomplish what honeyed words can not. By the time you are as old as I once was, perhaps no one would dare to suggest you give way to them."
Other lessons also sounded different if he listened to them again with fresh ears.
"The air above us contains vast pockets of even greater cold," Ines explained during her first lesson on Sky Ribbons. "When you can connect the peak of a mountain to those pockets of cold, you can do far more than simply prevent a glacier’s retreat..."