Chapter 421 - 420: The Cold Country
Location:Northern territories — Empire farmland to the Northern border
Date/Time:TC1855.01.06-12
The Empire ended gradually and then all at once.
For the first six hours of flight — sky-surfing blades in formation, Raven at point, Bjorn and Freya flanking Aren between them, Jace on the left wing, Mira at the rear — the landscape below was familiar. The outer ring farmland south of the Imperial City: orderly fields, irrigation channels catching winter sunlight, villages connected by roads that the Charter communities had helped maintain. The infrastructure of civilization. The organized world.
By evening, the fields thinned. The villages grew smaller, further apart, the roads narrower. The forest encroached — not the managed timber stands of the Empire’s middle territories, but older growth, trees that had been growing since before the Diminishing and had survived because nobody had bothered to cut them down. The canopy was dark green, going to black, the winter foliage dense with species that didn’t shed their leaves because the cold up here wasn’t seasonal. It was permanent.
They made camp the first night in a forest clearing at the edge of the relay network’s coverage. The formation crystals still worked — Raven sent a brief message to Seven Peaks (day one, on course, no contact) and received Taron’s equally brief response (acknowledged, all quiet). The efficiency of people who communicated by omission: if it wasn’t mentioned, it wasn’t a problem.
The cold was noticeable. Not dangerous — formation-enhanced thermal clothing, Silas’s design, spiritual energy heating elements woven into the fabric at meridian contact points. The gear worked. Raven barely felt the temperature. Jace complained about it anyway because Jace expressed discomfort the way he expressed everything: vocally, continuously, with a comedic intensity that functioned as the team’s emotional thermostat.
"My ears are cold," he announced to the campfire. The Moonveil Blossom on his shoulder — which one today, Raven had stopped tracking — glowed faintly, apparently unbothered by the temperature. The flower was a plant that thrived on spiritual energy, and the Northern territories were saturated with it. If anything, the Blossom looked healthier in the cold.
"Your ears have formation heating," Mira said from the other side of the fire, where she was organizing medical supplies with the methodical precision of a healer preparing for everything and hoping for nothing.
"My ears have formation heating that doesn’t work on the outside of my ears. The outside of my ears is exposed to the actual air, which is hostile."
"Wear the hood."
"The hood crushes the flower."