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Cold weather has blown in over night and Emmrich is all too happy to see the ice blooming on the barren trees and all the puddles frozen to solid blocks. Manfred, enthusiastic as always, has already stomped outside and is tapping the ice cover on the water barrel next to the lodge.
Lucanis is less enamoured. He’s only been willing to come outside bundled up in a fur-lined cloak and with enough knitwear to make two Nevarran grandmothers happy. Emmrich wears the green scarf his surly assassin has knit for him and a hat with ridiculous flaps, but the most important accoutrements, of course, are the blades.
They wander down the slope, frozen grass crunching underneath their boots, towards the lake. It’s just the right size and so still that it has formed the perfect fresh, black ice.
“I can’t believe you’ve never learned to skate”, Emmrich teases the sniffling Crow. “It seems like a perfect fit for balance training. It even involves a pair of blades!”
“Oh, we learned to keep our balance on ice”, Lucanis grumbles into his night-blue scarf. “Just not with those things on our feet. You sure it’ll hold?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve measured the temperature and calculated the ice thickness.”
Before he’s got a chance to explain further, Lucanis moves out onto the ice and slides along gracefully on the soles of his boots, arms spread lightly like a bird testing the wind.
“Show off!”, he yells after him.
Manfred hisses happily. “Ice!”, he croaks and walks onto the frozen lake, only to immediately land on his thankfully metal-bound coccyx. His jewel eyes stare straight ahead while he gets his bearings.
“Fell”, he says.
“Yes, it happens”, soothes Emmrich and gingerly steps onto the ice to help his ward up. “I bet even Lucanis fell when he first tried balancing on ice.”
“I did, in fact.” The Antivan menace comes gliding back - taking a short run to then slide across the glass-like surface and bump softly into Emmrich. “Although my teachers were less forgiving.”
“Dearest …” Emmrich disentangles himself from Lucanis and helps Manfred to take a few wobbly steps without falling. “It’s too early for traumatic childhood stories.”
“Not too early for ice-skating though. Me, blades, and cold. What did you expect?”
Emmrich sighs, but he can’t but also smile.
“Fine, let me be a forgiving teacher then.”
He steps back onto solid ground and sits down to tie the skates to his boots. They’re made from wood and antler with thin metal blades set into the finely polished material. “You bind them like this”, he instructs and Lucanis, meticulous as ever, follows closely. Manfred, in the background, is whooping and windmilling his arms as he slips and slides across the lake. A few disgruntled ducks watch from under rime-covered willow trees.
“Now, a few things. Don’t go near the places where there’s something disturbing the ice. The cold was harsh enough and long enough to give us a solid sheet over most of the lake, but where there’s dead wood stuck in the ice or something similar, it will be thinner. And honestly, drowning under ice is one of my nightmare scenarios about death, so please be careful.”
Lucanis arches a brow while he gingerly gets back on his feet and clacks out onto the ice.
“I will”, he promises. “Now show me.”
Emmrich follows the assassin and then gives a short instruction, moving deliberately slow and talking throughout. “See, you move your weight from one foot to the other and lean forward while you move the blade outward at a slight angle - and then you change to the other foot. The gliding motion …”
Lucanis is already off, skating smoothly and easily across the dark ice.
“Will you please take it slow!”, he yells after him. He only gets a low cackle that sounds dangerously like Spite as an answer.
Emmrich follows, skating at a more sedate pace, enjoying the eerie, musical sound the ice makes under the blades. It’s a rare pleasure since he’s not visited this lodge in years and years. The university holds the keys and offers it to professors as an incentive, but he’s been so busy, working, studying, teaching Manfred - and saving the world.
Lucanis comes whizzing by and now there is definitely a purple gleam in his eyes.
Like flying ! whoops Spite’s disembodied voice.
“Yes it is, I guess”, he laughs. Then he looks for his less acrobatically inclined student.
Manfred is trying to get closer to the ducks, digging in the stack of books and bundles in his empty midriff for the seeds he brought. Taash has been a bad - or maybe good? - influence and the skeleton has taken to feeding birds everywhere, if they’re interested or not. Him happily throwing sorghum at a very nonplussed vulture in the Anderfels will forever live in Emmrich’s memory as one of the stupidest and most cherished moments of his life.
“How do you slow down?”, Lucanis asks from somewhere behind him and Emmrich snorts, but then he focuses back on Manfred, alarmed. There are several branches stuck in the ice where the skeleton doggedly tries to slide and stumble along and his ward wasn’t close enough to hear his warning words about unsafe patches.
“Manfred!”, he yells, but at that moment there is a dry crack and then a very wet splash and Manfred disappears into the dark water, bird seed spilling everywhere. Emmrich gasps and for a moment his mind goes blank before he can think of any magic or even think about the fact that Manfred will be soggy, but fine, being a spirit bound to a skeleton.
Lucanis, it seems, takes less time to think. Or maybe not think at all.
Spite is yelling for Curiosity, howling with fear, and the assassin glides past Emmrich as quick as a bird in flight, ducks, slides lying half down on the ice and then disappears, too.
Emmrich is frozen in place, unbelieving. This cannot have happened. But there is the slowly bobbing patch of broken ice, the nearly black water happily going gluck-gluck-gluck in tiny waves where his spirit friend and his human friend both fell or dove into a death trap.
“Nooooo”, he catches himself wailing. Oh he’s imagined this kind of death while lying awake with anxiety, the cold, the shock, the disorientation and then, when he finally finds the way up, there is only ice and he cannot find the hole where he entered …
A pair of purple wings burst from beneath the water and Lucanis grabs on to the splintering ice, spitting and hissing like a cat while holding on to Manfred’s backpack with the other hand.
Emmrich, shocked out of his panic, lies down flat and scoots towards them, grabbing Lucanis’ wrist.
“I’ve got you!”, he blubbers. “I’ve got you!”
And then, more helpful: “Swim with your legs, try to lie as flat as possible. Spite, help!”
Lucanis bares his teeth in a grimace and does as he’s told. Spite is screeching in disgust. Cold cold cold! but beats his wings, moving them onto safe ice.
Together, they heave Manfred out of the water, too. Emmrich is now clear-headed enough to use his magic to levitate him a little.
He also keeps babbling tiny half-sentences like “a little further” and “you’re doing great” while herding his flock of half-drowned spirit vessels back to the safe and dry land.
There he grabs Lucanis’ shoulders, looks into the slightly glassy eyes of the cold-shocked Antivan and yells: “Are you INSANE?”
Lucanis looks at him, bewildered. His lips are blue. “I …”, he begins, but the rest of the sentence never comes.
“Manfred is a SKELETON Lucanis! He could have walked out of there and used his MAGIC to burn a way through the ice!”
“Didn’t think”, Lucanis admits. “Cold”, he then says and begins to shiver violently.
“I bet”, scoffs Emmrich, but helps the other man to his feet. “We need to get you inside and out of the wet clothes right now. Manfred, please help.”
The skeleton ducks under Lucanis’ right arm and hisses apologetically. Under the watchful eyes of the unimpressed ducks, they weave and stumble back to the lodge.
Emmrich dumps the nearly unconscious Lucanis next to the fireplace and begins to undress him hastily, unwinding all the soggy and heavy layers of wool, knits and leather while the Crow tries weakly to beat his hands away and do it himself with swollen, icy fingers.
Manfred keeps dragging the wet items of clothing away and brings a new throw or blanket each time he returns so when Lucanis is down to his smallclothes, Emmrich just has to take off jacket and sweater and burrow down into a warm cocoon, pressing the far-too-cold body of his Crow to his own.
Lucanis hums and snuffles closer, butting Emmrich’s chin with his still wet and cold head. “M’sorry”, he mumbles. “Was stupid.”
“You are impossible”, Emmrich chides him. “Never do that again.”
“Was worried. Manfred must have been so afraid.”
“Manfred is fine.”
The skeleton in question throws another blanket on top of them and then a handful of logs onto the fire.
“Thank you”, Emmrich says. “Can you make us … tea? Or hot chocolate, even?”
“Cook!”, Manfred exclaims and bustles off to the kitchen.
Lucanis’ shivering gets worse and he jams his icy fingers under Emmrich’s armpit which nearly makes him squeal. He bites down on the mousy sound and rubs up and down on Lucanis’ back. “You’ll be fine”, he promises over the hiss and pop of Manfred heating water with magic. “We were quick enough. But the shock of the cold could have killed you.”
Lucanis begins to answer and then stops himself. Emmrich looks down. “What is it?”
He can see the sly smile on the Antivan’s face.
“Promised not to tell any more childhood horror stories”, he mumbles. “But … yeah I know about cold shock.”
Emmrich sighs and puts his chin back on Lucanis’ head. “This world needs to change”, he says. “But first things first. Hot chocolate.”
Manfred comes back and presents the steaming drinks. They disentangle two hands from the cocoon, praise the spirit for his excellent work, and drink. Spite hums contentedly. And for a wonderful, lingering moment, everything is warm and soft and nothing hurts.