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    Everyone was quiet while watching the remainder of the Galley Glider slip beneath the surface of the water. They all barely fit onto the shelf on which they now stood. The soldiers were bundling up the gear into shoulder sacks and then waited for their next orders.
     “Do not lose hope, Your Majesty,” said Hethro from behind the group. “There may be a way out.”
     There was hardly any room to spare for Noran to see what Hethro was referring to. Everyone in the king’s path shuffled to the side as he squirmed his way through to the back. It was warmer away from the river as he met the soldier. He saw Hethro pointing at a tall, thin crack in the cavern wall.
     “Put your hand here,” Hethro said, grabbing the king’s wrist and pulling it in the direction of the gap.
     A warm breeze of air flowed steadily through it and brought life back into the king’s fingertips.
     “Boris, bring your club here,” Noran ordered. It was even trickier for everyone to move out of the barbarian’s way. They changed many positions so he could join Noran. After several moments of shuffling, he saw what his task was going to be.
     “Get behind me, Yer Highness.”
     Hethro and Noran both complied.
     “Everyone down!” Boris shouted as he raised his club.
     Once they were all in a crouching position he pulled back his arms as far as they would go and swung so fast and hard that the wall crumbled on impact like a castle in a child’s sandbox. Dirt flew everywhere when he yanked his club back out. A great rush of warm air flowed through the group while the dust settled. The opening was still not large enough for him to fit through.
     “One more should do it!” he shouted. He raised his club higher to allow him a better angle to knock out the lower portion of the wall without hitting anyone in the group. The rest of the new portal formed as he fell through at the end of his swing. He laughed at his clumsiness after falling into something that crashed on the other side. “Sickleberry Fickle!”
     “Are you all right?” Noran shouted. The king looked into darkness. “Quinn, lend me your torch.” The guard nodded and complied.
After he stepped into the opening, Noran found Boris lying on his back in the middle of a large, oval room. A heap of clay-fired vessels lay smashed under his thick legs. A red cloud of powder was settling over him while it poured out of broken containers. “What have we stumbled upon?” Noran asked.
     “Don’ know,” Boris said, rolling over to push himself up. He tried brushing the powder from his cloak and pants but it only seemed to make it worse. It had thoroughly permeated the material. “Bloody treefrogs! Won’ come off!” he grumbled.
     Boris exited to wash his hands off in the river. The barbarian was in a much better mood after he removed the thick substance from his skin.
The men searched the room and found practical items while others found objects whose use they could not guess. Woven blankets with patterns of dancing blue flames were stacked high in one corner. Several buckets of the blue glowing stones that Boris had cut his finger on rested near a set of stairs leading up to a small door. The barbarian eyed them covetously.
     Strange rows of lumps in the sand lined one wall. Bruneau dug around one and exposed a perfectly round red egg that was bigger than both his hands put together. It began to rock before he quickly covered it back up.
     “What in the heavens is this?” said Quinn, holding up a long wood handle with a large, black loop on the end.
     “You think that’s odd, what about this?” Blaynor asked. He studied a drawing on the wall in the red powder that covered Boris’s clothes.
     Noran came to a rest beside Blaynor to decipher the mysterious drawings. He withdrew in horror at what was depicted. “Can that be possible?” Noran asked.
     Blaynor announced that several of the figures were distinctly familiar. “This is Boris,” he stated clearly as he pointed to the largest in the group of figures on the wall that numbered exactly their size. “And this is you, Your Majesty,” he said and pointed to a second that resembled Noran with his crown. "These figures represent us. We are surrounded by dozens of shadowy creatures in this first panel.” As Blaynor’s eyes shifted to the next, he began to grow alarmed. “They hold us in front of the eggs while they hatch with that instrument Quinn has.”
     Quinn immediately dropped the item as if it would turn on him by itself. “What do you mean? How could those figures be us? That’s impossible…’
     “It is not impossible, Quinn,” said Noran emphatically. “Our own Elders can see visions of the future. It appears these creatures can as well, somehow… but how would they gain the knowledge?”
     Blaynor scanned the next panel and said grimly, “One of us is to die.”
     “Who?” Noran gasped and rejoined him next to the wall. The rest of the men in room now paid full attention to him.
     “Can’t tell. The face is … disfigured.”
     Blaynor’s eyes shifted to the next panel. “A battle ensues between us and these creatures. Several more of us perish. But we kill many of them in the process. None are Boris or you, my Lord. The bodies are of normal size and bear no crown.”
     Noran felt relieved for his own sake but terrible for the others in the same instant.
     Boris grunted and looked around at the faces on the rest of the men. “Don’ ya think we should be movin’ along? We don’ want any of these drawings t’come true, do we?”
     “Just a moment,” Blaynor said as he looked at the last panel. He paused before saying, “It shows the rest of us beneath a collapsing mountain. Unmistakably illustrates shadows of skulls extending from each of us. Highly unusual drawing...”
     The door at the top of the staircase suddenly burst open. Every Yawranan guard and soldier instinctively went into a fighting stance. A solid, stoic-looking figure in dark copper-colored armor with a flat-top helmet to match entered the room. The armor was glistening like the reflection of crystal ice in the moons and an engraved dragul symbol stood out on the chest plate. Two blue eyes, dancing like fire, were piercing them through the thin slit in the helmet and a cold breath of air was emanating from a second slit where the mouth should have been. The room quickly grew cold from the presence of the strange individual. The figure began pulling a sword from a sheath with its left hand.
     Bruneau started to ascend the staircase to take the figure on. Seeing the guard’s move, the figure extended its right hand and opened it. A small blue ball was released from the figure’s glove and dropped into a groove on the railing. It rolled past Bruneau before he could snatch it. The ball left a trail of ice, picked up speed and then spun off into the air after it reached the curved and raised end of the rail. It seemed to hover for a moment before finally falling toward the ground. Oreus made an attempt to catch it, but it fell just beyond his fingertips, crashing into numerous shards. A blast of cold wind raced across his face, whipped through the entire room and rendered them all unconscious.

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Excerpt from The Ice Shadows of Arna by Scot R. Stone

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