With just 11 days to go until the release of book 4 of The Frostmarked Chronicles, The Deathless Sons, it’s time for another early look chapter. This time, from Otylia’s point of view.
If you missed the first chapter, you can read that first HERE. Again, know that I do not recommend reading ahead if you haven’t finished The Daughters of the Earth, as there are definite spoilers.
With that all finished, here’s chapter 2!
Chapter 2 – Otylia
Where are you, Mother? I don’t care who or what Marzanna has guarding you. I’ll bring you home. I swear upon my moon and your wilds. I’ll bring you home.
For the first time in what seemed an eternity, I awoke to the light of the setting sun as I emerged from the shelter we’d dug in the snow. No clouds. No blizzard. It was as if Marzanna had forgotten to swallow us whole.
Her frozen wasteland dwarfed us anyway.
White extended for as far as I could see, amplifying the sun’s rays and making me squint as I stared to the northeast. The distant forest Wacław had scouted the night before was obvious now. It was leafless like all the others before it, but could this be the one I’d seen in Jaryło’s memories on the night Marzanna captured Dziewanna? Part of me wanted to hope. But I couldn’t. My hope had been beaten out of me by the combined efforts of Weles, Jaryło, Marzanna, Czarnobóg, and seemingly every other god and demon in the Three Realms. Spite drove me on now. To prove my enemies wrong, and to bring them Dziewanna’s wrath.
Wacław’s unruly blond hair and bleary-eyed face peeked out of the shelter. It was a short and narrow space, barely offering enough room for the two of us to lie next to each other. He liked that more than he was willing to admit. So did I.
“Hopefully that forest has some animals,” he said with a stretch before kicking himself out of the shelter with the grace of a newborn pup. “I’m starving.”
“You have enough žityje?” I asked, half-knowing the answer already.
He wiped the snow off his wide-brimmed płanetnik hat and put in on as he gave a tired smile. “Yeah, but—”
“Then you’re fine. Mortal hunger can’t kill us.”
His smile grew, and I resisted the urge to smack it off his face. “Remind me why Jaryło forced you to pledge that you’d marry him? A god like him sure as Oblivion would hate to miss breakfast.”
I smacked him anyway.
“Mention that bastard again and I’ll make sure your other cheek is red enough to cover your dark veins.”
Wacław’s eyes widened as he wiped dark demonic blood from his lip. I’d hit him hard, but in the emotions we shared, all the regret was his. “Don’t worry,” he said, thumbing the black dagger sheathed at his hip. Thunderstone, capable of draining žityje and killing a god. “I don’t need to speak his name to stab him the next time he shows his stupid golden face.”
To quiet his rage, I swooped in for a kiss before grabbing my travel bag and pulling up my hood. “Glad the demon left you some guts. We’ll need them if Marzanna knows I’m coming for Mother.”
“Think Czarnobóg is actually guarding her?” He shouldered his own bag. “It seems like a waste for Marzanna to free a dragon from Oblivion just to have him guard her unconscious sister.”
“I don’t know how much of Death’s Trial was real, but we have to be ready for anything. If Czarnobóg really was the first żmij, he’s as ancient as Perun and Weles.”
“And most of that time was spent trapped in Oblivion.”
A gust circled us as Wacław flexed his hands beside him. Eight winds, the grandchildren of the god Strzybóg, each with their own unique personalities. I’d spent enough time with Kyustendil, the northwest wind, to know that even the youngest gods had their surprises. I shuddered just wondering what one of the eldest was capable of—if Czarnobóg could be considered a god at all.
“Let’s go,” I said, taking Wacław’s hand. “It’ll be another hour before the moon shows up. I’m not waiting that long.”
He gave my hand a squeeze before leaping into the air. The gusts brought me with him, and I was grateful for the trousers beneath my slit dress as my skirt and coat flapped around me.
Using his winds to fly still unnerved me. End’s force pulled me with the moon’s power when I flew, controlled and direct, but Wacław’s winds battered me. Each time, I gained newfound respect for birds’ abilities to dive through the narrowest gaps with ease. Wacław’s too, as he didn’t hesitate or care about the winds’ shifts. He just pulled down his hat and stared at the path ahead. A master of the winds. With black veins crossing his skin and his fur-lined coat drifting behind him to expose Marzanna’s Thunderstone dagger, he surely gave the appearance of a storm demon. But his eyes held their bright blue. My Wašek was still in control, even if his demon had left its mark.
The winds carried us quickly over the forest. Starting at the bend of a north-flowing river, the trees crossed from its eastern bank to a second river. Here, the snow covered all but the tallest underbrush, but no tracks pierced its surface. We’d traveled far to the north. Were animals capable of living here in normal conditions, let alone the brutal terrain this land had become?
A howl answered my thought.
Wacław glanced at me for confirmation, and when I nodded, we dove toward the sound. Darkness crept over us with the descent. The wolves reveled in the night.
The winds silently caught us just above the snow, creating a surface beneath us that almost resembled solid ground. Wacław crept across it with ease. I moved slower. Each step felt like it could send me sprawling, but the winds held.
A short metallic sound broke the quiet. The last rays of light reflected off Grudzień’s jagged black Moonblade streaked in colors as Wacław looked ahead with narrowed eyes. Seven wolves gathered at the base of a massive oak, two pups nuzzling into their mother in a nook of the tree as four others broke into another howl. They hadn’t seen us yet.
Plenty of žityje for breakfast, I quipped to Wacław through our bond.
But he turned to me with worry in his gaze. “They aren’t Marzanna’s,” he replied. “No glowing blue eyes. These woods are nearly dead already without me slaughtering the last of its animals.”
They’re hunters like you. Mother said that’s the way of the wild, and demons are no different.
“Wolves rarely kill an entire flock of their prey. Neither will I.” He rose slowly, taking a long breath. “Stay here. I’ll go invisible and make this quick.”
The winds weakened beneath me, and the tips of my boots struck the snow as he took flight. Mortals and animals alike couldn’t see him when he chose to be invisible in his soul-form. The wolves noticed the gust, though. Heads raised, they sniffed the air. One growled as Wacław drifted nearer, and both wolf and demon lunged at once.
Grudzień found flesh in a single strike.
The wolf had smelled Wacław’s presence, but without sight, its teeth missed as Wacław tore through to its heart. “One,” his voice said in my mind as he devoured the heart and the žityje in its blood. “One is enough.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than me, and when he finished, I sensed the thrill in his soul for another.
Listen to your mind, not the hunger, I told him. The demon’s control is gone.
He looked at me with blood covering his chin and gloved fingers. A beast. I fought my instinct to believe that. A beast would satiate its hunger until none remained, but Wacław forced himself to show mercy, to control the demonic urges. They’d lessened ever since I’d taken part of his demonic corruption in Huebia. That couldn’t change what he was.
Most of the other wolves whimpered and backed away from the invisible threat. One advanced, and I expected Wacław to accept the second kill nature handed to him. Instead, he took flight and rushed upward, his winds dragging me with him.
We rose together as the sun disappeared over the horizon. Nightfall replaced it, and I grinned at the rush of power that came with the force of endings, bound to the moon. My skin released a dull glow. It rose from my fingers in white wisps that joined with End’s colored ones for each creature nearby—for now just Wacław and the wolves in a vapor that spiraled through the night.
I broke free from the winds and grabbed hold of the moon’s pull. It tore me upward, straight and faultless as I climbed ever higher. Breathing grew harder with each moment I climbed, but I needed to fly, to see Jawia from the above. This was the first time since we’d left Vastroth that clouds couldn’t obscure the view, allowing me to rise to the stars as another flickering soul in the night sky. Then I saw it.
Water. Water!
I nearly screamed in glee at the sight of the moonlight reflecting off the sea’s waves. The two rivers converged upon a bridge at the forest’s end before splitting again and pouring into a small bay. A ring of ice encircled the land after that bridge, and my chest ached at the memory of Mother lying in the black dragon’s shadow.
“We found her…” I whispered to myself before scanning the sky for Wacław. “Wašek! Come here! I see it.”
The winds rushed through my hair and coat as he appeared beside me, his eyes wide. “This is actually it? Where’s the palace?”
“Czarnobóg destroyed it.” Our words were distant. All I could focus on were the spikes of ice forming a dome over the place Dziewanna had fallen, where Mother was trapped. My hand found her bone Bowmark amulet hanging at my collar. I couldn’t breathe.
Wacław cupped my cheek, forgetting his bloodied glove and smearing crimson across my face. “Otylka, are… are you okay?”
I clenched my jaw. A spear of cold silver manifested in my open hand as I stared down at the fallen palace. The spear’s light pushed back the darkness and my fear, replacing it with a need for revenge. I didn’t care what kept her trapped there. I would kill it and free my mother, my goddess.
“Not until she’s free.” I met his gaze, and his eyes reflected my anger. Good. Let Marzanna see what happens when he’s unleashed.
We charged north without another word. Wacław knew I needed action. Reassurance would’ve only redirected my fury at him, and no strategy could prepare us for whatever lay ahead.
Whoever guarded the palace remnants would see us quickly as we approached, but it didn’t matter. Stealth was irrelevant. There would be no hiding within the circle of ice, and that was fine by me. I wanted nothing more than to tear apart the fiends that entrapped Mother, that kept her from me. She suffered.
So would they.
My power would reveal anything living, but there was nothing until a new puff of vapor appeared beside Wacław’s wisp. The soft brown of a willow’s bark, it drifted, slow compared to the excitement of the others.
It’s her!
I opened my vision to the Threads of Life. My bright green Thread wrapped around me before shooting in each direction: one strand binding me to Wacław, others heading southwest toward Ara, Sabina, and Father, another dropping to the rivers and Weles in Nawia, and a final one stretching toward the far end of the ice ring.
In the darkness, I couldn’t see her, but Mother was there. End’s force confirmed it.
I removed my glove when her wisp stopped before me. So many questions wrapped themselves around my mind, and my hand shook as I raised my fingers toward the wisp. Seeing other’s ends, both past and future, was jarring. To know I was about to see Mother’s own…
“You see her wisp, don’t you?” Wacław asked.
“I do.”
He held my spear-hand, offering a smile I knew was forced. “You can do this. I’ll be right here.”
I couldn’t return his smile. End could show me what’s ahead or give me some answer to what had happened to Dziewanna, to Mother, but did I want to know? Suffering lay in those visions—of what she’d endured and what battles would come. I’d seen the destruction brought by Wacław’s fall to the Płanetnik in Huebia and had been unable to believe it.
Mother’s wisp moved toward my hand as I raised it. I pretended she could see me, that she was reaching to touch me for the first time in over four years. Childish hopes. I clung to them anyway, but as my fingers met her wisp, End’s force didn’t tear me away.
Cold silence met me instead. Shooting from my fingers up my arm and into my chest, Marzanna’s frigid grip tightened around my soul. I recognized it from moons before. Wacław had cast out her curse through his Frostmark and now endured permanently frostbitten fingers as a result. But this time, her power held no sway over me.
I released a burst of žityje, repelling the chill in a blinding flash. When the light faded, my shaking hand drifted through empty space. Mother’s wisp was gone, and tears streamed down my face. No more willow brown. No more dynamic energy. Just darkness punctured by the light pulsing from my skin and rising in silvery strands.
I yelled through the night, my rage echoing for eternity. Then I dove toward my mother’s prison.
Spear in hand, I crashed into the blue ice dome, and its silver tip plunged through the barrier, shattering it the moment I struck. Power surged from the weapon. Light and endings both as dark wisps collided with me midair.
Screaming, the vapored forms of a hundred demons passed through me in search of escape. Each brought another onslaught of visions. Of their mortal death. Of the unnatural elements tethering their undead souls to Jawia. And of Marzanna’s promises to fulfill their desires for freedom. Oaths unfulfilled. Minds corrupted.
The towers of ice I’d faced in Death’s Trial rose above the ruins. Sharp and unnatural, they encircled me for over fifty strides in each direction. The moonlight above fractured through what remained of the dome. The ice and snow seemed a hollow gray with only the cores of the towers offering blue to break the colorless void. What unfiltered light remained covered me. My glow no longer pulsed, instead absorbing the moon’s power and growing with my anger. I’d kill Marzanna for what she’d done. I’d torture Czarnobóg for a thousand lifetimes more. Once I freed Dziewanna and restored her power, the dark gods would truly understand wrath when they faced mother and daughter together.
Yet the air hung still. Impossibly cold against my skin, it stayed, as if trapped in time. Wacław slowly descending to my side broke the motionless space, but the eerie sensation remained. End’s wisps had shown the demons within the dome. Where were they?
I opened my mind to the Threads of Life, but there was only a single source beyond the two of us. A figure lay in shadows at the ruin’s far end. Her dim Thread wrapped her body before stretching out in only a few directions. The brightest one connected us, and my tears began again as I stared down at Mother’s crumpled body. My power confirmed she lived, but what had Marzanna done to her? Why was she left unguarded?
“Czarnobóg isn’t here,” I stammered through gritted teeth. “Why? Dziewanna is the only one who can stop Marzanna.”
Wacław laid a hand softly on my back. His other still clutched the dagger. “I don’t know, but I don’t like this. Go to her. I’ll watch to make sure there aren’t any lingering demons.”
I dismissed my spear into a puff of light before dropping to the snow strides from Mother. Her appearance was the same as during the Trial, tearing at my heart. A few stray dark veins like Wacław’s crossed her pale face, and her crown of antlers was broken as her brown hair hung mangled over a ripped, deep green dress. Her skin and bare feet were bloodied when they’d once been unblemished. She was a queen stripped of her wild throne, a goddess drained and broken. She’d suffered here alone because of Jaryło’s betrayal.
She’d never be alone again.
As I approached, the shadow over her didn’t shift. There was no żmij. There were no demons. Marzanna had drained her and left her here to rot, and none of the gods had bothered to save her. Neither her father Perun nor her husband Weles could turn from their simmering war. Cowards.
“Mother?” I pled, kneeling beside her and taking her hand in mine. It was cold and limp. Her chest rose with each breath, but barely. “Mother, it’s me, Otylia.”
No reply came. Sorrow crept into my rage, forcing me to choke on my tears as I screamed and begged for her to answer. For years, I’d wished to just see her again, but now that I could, I was forced to watch her suffer Marzanna’s Curse for a second time.
“No,” I muttered. “I couldn’t save you before, but this is different now. I’m different now.”
I squeezed my Bowmark amulet like I had so many times, allowing its sharp ends to jab into my palm until blood seeped free. Žityje-filled blood. Holding my hand over her lips, I forced the trickle into her mouth and whispered a prayer I’d used as a szeptuchy to make sacrifices at her altar. The words in the old tongue spilled from my mouth, sloppy and ill-timed. Power flowed through them regardless, and Mother’s Thread slowly glowed stronger.
“Come back to me,” I told her. “You taught me to fight, and I haven’t stopped since you died. But I need you now. The wilds need you now. Please, Mother, wake up!”
With those final words, I pressed my hands to her chest and sent the force of a moonblast directly into her. The ground shook beneath us as the spell scattered snow and cracked ice. I sensed Wacław’s concern through our bond, but he didn’t intervene as my light faded slightly. My breaths became chilled, forced. Though the blast hadn’t taken everything, a cold sweat clung to my skin and žityje no longer flowed as freely from my fingers. It was a last effort to wake her—one that had failed.
“Uh, Otylka?” Wacław called.
I shivered, unable to reply as I stared down at Mother’s unmoving body. Light emanated from her core, but nothing changed. Then that light disappeared completely, enough to make me fall back with my knees tucked in like a weeping child. What else could I do? I’d Ascended and fought across two realms to save her, and none of it mattered. Without her, spring would never return. Jawia would perish, and everyone I loved would die with it.
What good is the end if nothing comes after?
Light burst from behind my tears. I scrambled to my feet, wiping my eyes as every part of Mother exuded radiant white light. The Threads connecting us shone brighter than any I’d ever seen, and her body lifted into the air as the air shook around me. I felt her power pulse with mine. A steady rhythm, it grew with every beat until she awoke with a gasp, dropping hard to the now snow-free earth and stumbling. I caught her, and her green eyes widened as she looked up at me with the smile only a mother can give.
“Otylia, my Otylia! You came!” She said, her voice raspy as she looked up at the ice towers nearby. “Did you kill them?”
“Kill who?” I clutched her as she squirmed. “Mother, Czarnobóg is gone.”
She tensed. “Not him. Them!”
My joy faded as she looked at Wacław. Dark, lumbering figures surrounded him. They crawled from the cracks in the ice with limbs broken and darkness swirling at their feet—demons, hundreds of them. And they were coming straight for us.