Chapter 266 - The Last Howl ( Part 1 )

The forest faded away suddenly.

One minute Jennie Queens found herself moving under twisted branches, listening to someone speaking. And the next moment she found herself staring at an enormous frozen lake under starless night sky.

There was no moon. No stars. Nothing that might have shown the presence of distant mountain ranges.

The whole world beyond the frozen lake disappeared into the dark and there remained only an endless sheet of ice reflecting the soft silver light coming from some unknown source in the sky above. The light seemed like memory of brightness that the sky had long lost.

Jennie stopped at the shore.

The cold hit her immediately. Cold fingers crept under her clothes, biting into her fingers until they ached and settling deep inside her bones—a cold that was more than just physical, being much older and whispering about endings, silence and death of stars.

Her breath was turning into the fog hanging in the air for a while and then disappearing.

She glanced at her right hand. Pale and motionless fingers were barely touching the cold air.

"Wonderful."

Her voice sounded strangely small in the vastness of the empty world.

"Another place specifically designed for my own misery."

No one answered.

Jennie crouched and touched the ice with her left hand. The ice was incredibly smooth—not that of a natural frozen lake, but some artificially polished surface. Under its surface faint shapes were moving around like shadows underneath skin of a sleeping creature.

She moved her hand.

The lake was giving her strange feeling. Not of danger. Just of familiarity.

She knew such ice before in the frozen valleys where she was taken by Snow during the storm. She remembered the enormous wings of ice he used to show when he was in Divine Wolf shape and the nine tails sweeping behind him, making all the battlefield fall silent.

She remembered his voice.

Live.

The memories squeezed her chest in tight fist.

"I know."

She had promised herself she would keep on moving. She had promised herself she would stop punishing herself for her survival. But it is easier to make promise when people you love were alive.

Jennie stood up and looked across the lake. There was no visible path. There was no bridge. No sign showing her way. Only ice and darkness.

And suddenly there was a voice, rolling over the surface of the ice lake—deep, resonant and full of ages.

"IF YOU WISH TO CROSS, WALK."

Jennie turned. Nobody was behind her.

The voice spoke again, this time deeper.

"IF YOU WISH TO LIVE, DO NOT TURN AWAY."

The tremor ran through the lake. Jennie slowly turned her face towards the center of it.

Someone was there.

For a second, she thought it was a mountain of ice – a monstrous silhouette emerged from the frozen waters of the lake, covered in silver fur that reminded her of moonlight. Nine gigantic tails dragged along the snow-covered floor, shedding mist and ice crystals on the way. Two gigantic wings extended from the creature’s back, reflecting pale light in a thousand fragmented pieces.

The monster raised its head.

Its eyes shone in an ancient blue light – not the warm light of a summer sky, but the cold light of glaciers and deep seas and things older than any words to describe them.

Jennie stopped breathing.

She was blind for a second; unable to see anything beyond the figure in front of her, the figure she used to know as a gentle friend who watched over her without telling about it. Snow standing in front of her now was complaining about her terrible judgment. Snow who called her an idiot and protected her from all enemies with his very existence.

Snow covered in blood. A spear piercing his heart. A last desperate strength carrying her from the abyss, even as he himself was falling down there.

"Snow..."

His name slipped off her lips despite the fact that she did not mean to say it out loud.

The giant did not reply. It only watched her.

Jennie took a step closer. "Snow, is it you?"

The creature bowed its head. Then it opened its mouth.

"I AM NOT THE ONE YOU LOST."

The voice shook the very foundations of the lake.

"I AM THE MEMORY OF A WARRIOR WHO WALKED BEFORE THE END OF THE WORLD. I AM THE HUNGER OF WINTER. I AM THE LAST HUNT."

Jennie’s face stiffened. "Then why do you look like him?"

"BECAUSE YOU CANNOT LOOK AWAY."

Nine tails of the wolf extended all over the ice.

"YOU CARRY HIS DEATH. YOU CARRY THE DEATHS OF OTHERS. YOU HAVE MISTAKEN YOUR GRIEVES FOR A CHAIN AROUND YOUR NECK."

It rose to its full size.

"LET US SEE WHETHER YOU CAN WALK WITHOUT IT."

A crack appeared below Jennie’s feet. She jumped away from there just as another crack opened in the ice ahead of her.

A whirlwind of sharp crystals was thrown into the air. Jennie fell sideways, cutting her cheek on the edge of the ice. She crashed on the snow and jumped to her feet.

The ghostly wolf was still at the middle of the lake. It did not move. But the storm had started because of it.

Jennie touched the cut on her cheek. "Right. We are going the complicated way."

The wolf’s eyes narrowed.

"YOU MUST REACH THE OTHER SIDE."

Jennie glanced to the far shore. A silvery light was glowing there.

"And if I won’t?"

"THEN THE LAKE WILL KEEP YOU."

The wolf opened its mouth.

A howl echoed across the frozen surface – not a sound, but the very force. The temperature dropped. A powerful wind knocked Jennie down to her knees. Ice and snow rushed over the surface of the water, blinding the view completely.

Jennie managed to lift her left arm just before the first strike of ice hit her.

A piece of sharp ice broke through her sleeve. Another one pierced her shoulder and made her spin. She fell and slid across several meters of ice, crashing into a ridge of frozen snow.

For several seconds, she could not move. Pain spread through her body. Her shoulder throbbed, she was breathing in short bursts and felt how the coldness started to numb her fingers.

Jennie looked into the black sky.

She could feel Rudy laughing.

You look like you fought a mountain and lost.

A weak smile crossed her lips. "Shut up."

She got onto her side and forced herself to stand.

The wolf was watching her from the distance.

"WHY DO YOU CONTINUE?"

Jennie wiped blood from her face. "Because I must get to the other side."

"WHY?"

"Because I need the weapon."

"WHY?"

Jennie stopped.

The wolf raised its huge head.

"WHY DO YOU CONTINUE TO FIGHT?"

Jennie opened her mouth.

Because Zuko had killed Lilia.

Because Rudy had died.

Because Snow had sacrificed his life.

Because the world would be destroyed if she fails.

Because she must get stronger.

Because she must justify everything they had done.

All of the answers were crowding in her mind. All of them sounded true. All of them sounded like obligations.

Jennie looked down at her hands. Her left hand was trembling from the cold. Her right one was hanging helplessly at her side.

She remembered the first law of the Celestial Battlefield.

Power has weight.

Perhaps the same was true about every reason she brought into this place. Every promise. Every guilt. Every expectation.

She had treated survival as yet another debt to pay.

If she survives, she must avenge Rudy.

If she fights, she must save Lilia.

If she gets stronger, she must justify Snow’s sacrifice.

If she fails to accomplish something extraordinary, maybe she does not have the right to survive at all.

Jennie bent her head.

What a ridiculous way to live.

Even then, she could not let go of using the ones she loved to keep herself from stopping.

She recalled Snow on the beach. His colossal form was soaked in blood. His wings made of ice were broken and his nine tails were hardly moving, yet he had managed to find enough energy to speak.

You must live, Jennie.

Not Leonis. Not Sword King. Not the being the world wanted her to become.

Jennie.

She could see those ancient eyes that watched over her throughout every fight, every failure, every time she doubted herself.

Live because you are you.

Her throat constricted.

Snow had never told her to be stronger than Zuko. He never told her to kill all of her enemies or save all of the lives. All he wanted was for her to live.

Yet even that he managed to make her consider another burden to bear.

Jennie smiled. It was a disgusting laugh caught somewhere between fatigue and sadness.

"I really am an idiot."

The ears of wolf twitched.

"What did you say?"

Jennie lifted her head.

"I said I’m an idiot."

She stared at the faraway shores.

"I thought that if I lived, I had to make their death have some meaning. That I had to become strong enough to beat Zuko, save the world and show everyone that dying for me wasn’t a mistake."

Her eyes became harder.

"But that’s not why I’ll keep on walking."

The wolf’s tails froze.

Jennie took one more step.

"I’ll defeat Zuko because I’ll decide to stop him. I’ll keep my memories because they’re mine. I’ll mourn because I loved them."

She breathed in the frozen air.

"And I’ll keep on living because I want to."