Chapter 557: Free At Last
Hauke had completely lost track of time in the days since the spirits of the ancestors used his body like a puppet and trapped him in a frozen prison within his own mind.
At first, every hour had been precious as he fought against the curse that bound him, struggling to escape from its icy grip before Artificer Erkembalt, the madman with a bone saw, could hack off his horn in an attempt to ’cure’ him. That desperate struggle alone had kept him tethered and fighting until the night that he spoke during the trial, which ultimately sealed the fate of the ancient ancestors and dramatically changed the destiny of the High Pass.
Since then, the world outside his eyes turned into an ever-changing series of small plays, each one unfolding on the stage of the world without action or reaction from the cursed Frost Walker. Hauke was left with no choice but to listen and observe as his mother clung to his body and wept bitter tears when she told him that she had been commanded to remain in the High Pass while Hauke and his father were taken to the Vale of Mists to receive healing from the witches.
He was as motionless as a frozen sculpture when they loaded him into a carriage next to his wounded father, unable to offer the slightest comfort to the man who had given him everything he could have asked for in this life and more. Now, when he would have given almost anything to give his father a few words of reassurance and a youthful promise that things would get better soon, his lips wouldn’t move, and his jaw remained firmly shut, trapping any words he would have said within his chest.
Worst of all, however, had been the news that the artificer and his sorcerer companion would be placed in charge of determining a method of freeing him from the curse. The man with the broken beak from the Dark Feather Clan wasn’t the worst part. He at least tried to offer reassurance, from time to time making statements like "The world isn’t done with you yet, young hero," and "the darkness of a world without you in it is too great for my shoulders to bear."
The feathered sorcerer always spoke as if Hauke had some great purpose but he never once mentioned what that purpose might be, and the more often he repeated the same cryptic reassurances, the more Hauke began to wonder if the man might be going mad.
Compared to Artificer Erkembalt, however, the sorcerer was a model of sanity and rational thought. No matter what Aspakos said or did, he seemed to have Hauke’s best interest at heart, and restoring him was the sorcerer’s highest priority.
Erkembalt seemed more interested in using Hauke and the curse that bound him as a research subject, and some of his experiments turned out to be entirely irrelevant to the task of removing Hauke’s curse! He just wanted to better understand Frost Walkers and the unique magic of their horns.
Finally, after an unknown number of days had passed by under the agonizing questioning, poking and prodding by his ’physicians’, Ashlynn wandered into his dark and muddled world like a ray of sunshine peeking through endless clouds of blowing snow, instantly rekindling his hopes that he would soon be free of the magic that kept him prisoner.