[FFBE] The Wall

  The snowstorm was worse here. Worse than it had been only moments before, and there was not a single cloud in the sky. Holding tight to his cloak, Shiki yelled though the biting winds, back to the men huddled in the crevasse behind him.

"It is likely we approach the lair of a Frost Dragon!"

  They had taken pains to avoid them, and it seemed they were not enough. He could not see their faces, but then, he did not have to. There were few enough tales surrounding the frost dragons of the Wolfsfang Mountains, creatures that commanded the ice and winds themselves. Few, because once encountered, not many lived to tell stories. Their objective could not be far beyond this pass. He'd heard that within these mountains, the deposed lord to whom he'd pledged his blade, had taken residence. He was certain they were on the path... they could not turn back now.

  Turning to press forward, he heard the roar of one of those fabled beasts as it tore the winds in much the same way the winds had torn through his party. Beside that fell sound, the icy chaos was reduced to a quiet static.

"The storm abates" one of his men shouted, "let us make our way through before the winds return!"

  It was as he said. The winds were not just quiet by comparison, but quieter in truth. Not wasting any time to marvel at their luck... or to consider their possible danger, he left the cover of the walls, and could hear as his men followed suit.

  Coming back into the open air, he saw what he feared ahead. Making no attempt to mask itself, watching his party from atop a boulder was a beast that could not be mistaken for anything other than the raw elemental force that it was. With waves of white icy fur coating its trunk, rippling in the lazy whorls of snow that danced about it. It crouched on powerful scaled arms ending in talons the size of a man's leg, biting into the stone as if it were clay.

  There was no doubt that had wanted, it could have scooped his entire party out of the small crevasse where they had taken shelter. So it means to toy with us...

  He was not afraid. If it were his time to die, then he would fall as he had lived. Dropping the cloak, he pulled his Kiku-ichimonji from its sheath, whispering the words of his lord's gift as he did so. I pass to you the lives our people. Bear this blade, so they need not.

  At the site of the blade, the dragon stood to its full height, and the air around it became ice. The snowstorm returned in full force, and between one breath and the next, he and his men were lost in the winds as the beast descended upon them. It was reflex that allowed him to avoid the creature's claws, a reflex that his men did not have, and even in the violence of the winds, he could see his men disappear into it's jaws.

  He took the moment to bring his blade up, cutting into its hide and stepping into the motion, so that the wound would be more than superficial. The beast roared to let him know his blade struck true, and he was thrown from the beast with a lash of its tail.

  Though he managed to maintain a hold on his blade, there was no time to bring it up before the beast was on him once more, and coming to his feet, he prepared to face the death in front of him. A flash of light erupted in the air before him, and he was tossed through the snow by claws that should have torn him in twain.

"Stand back dragon," a woman's voice cut through the winds, and in that moment, the storm died down, "for I am the wall."

  The sight that greeted him, brought no clarity to what had occurred. The young woman he had heard stood between him and the beast. Wearing a heavy green cloak, she brandished an intricate golden staff as she was faced off with the dragon. It was as if she had nothing to fear from it and the beast, for its part, was watching her warily.

"Can you stand?" she spoke in that same carrying voice.

"I..." he was injured, but alive. It was impossible that he had survived such an assault, but now was not the time to consider his fortune. Taking up his blade once more, he moved to stand with the woman, and the dragon let loose a hail of ice in a blast that was certain to shred them apart, if it did not simply crush them.

  This time he could see the woman as she brought her staff up, and he saw the barrier her staff conjured to take the brunt of the dragon's blast. He had seen mages produce barriers before, but this was a power unlike any he had ever witnessed. The beast's assault broke on the shimmering field before them, and the dragon roared in its frustration. It appeared she was known to the thing.

"Who..." this wasn't the time for conversation, but to have such power, surely he would have heard of her...

"That is immat-," she began, before seeming to catch herself, "I am called Cerius."