Chapter 120: [120] Fourteen Days to Hearthome
"Fourteen days to Hearthome," he muttered, glancing at the ashen sky that stretched endlessly above them like a worn blanket. "If we’re lucky."
Naomi guided Ember alongside him, her cheeks already flushed from the cold, the golden-bronze skin taking on a rosy hue that contrasted with her thigh-length black hair. "You don’t sound convinced."
"Let’s just say I’ve learned not to count on things going smoothly." Xavier shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, wincing as his persistent headache throbbed behind his eyes, a dull hammer pounding against his skull with each heartbeat.
As the caravan left the city’s protection, the landscape transformed into a vast expanse of pristine white broken only by the sentinel-like dark pines and the jagged, knife-edged teeth of distant mountains that seemed to tear at the very fabric of the horizon.
Naomi’s breath caught in her throat, forming a small cloud that dissipated quickly in the frigid air as she took in the overwhelming view. "It’s... beautiful. In a terrifying sort of way."
"Your first time outside the city walls?"
"Nessa’s memories include trips to nearby villages, but nothing like this." She gestured expansively at the wilderness stretching endlessly to the horizon, her expensive rings catching what little light filtered through the clouds. "Nothing so goddamn empty."
Xavier understood her awe. Despite the ever-present danger, there was something breathtakingly majestic about Frostfall’s unforgiving landscape. The mountains rose like ancient, weathered sentinels against the steel-gray sky, their snow-capped peaks lost in heavy clouds that promised more punishing snowfall. Forests of pine stood dark and defiant against the white canvas, their branches heavy with crystalline ice that glittered like scattered diamonds when occasional sunlight broke through the cloud cover.
"Don’t let the pretty fool you," came Efler’s voice from the red wagon ahead. She’d turned in her seat to address them, her piercing golden eyes narrowed against the glare of snow. "Everything out here is trying to kill you. The cold, the beasts, even the beauty itself. People get so caught up staring at the mountains they don’t see the crevasse at their feet."