Well, whatever they were doing was one thing.
What he would do, that was another.
Nagrak was stuck. He hung there, muscles clenched and spasming from the cold that bit deeper with every ragged breath. His body trembled, not in panic, not yet, but in that slow, creeping way that exhaustion brought on when the body began running out of heat, out of blood, out of options. His arm was entirely numb now, not just from the awkward angle or the weight pulling at it, but from the frostbite steadily creeping upward — or rather down, given his freefall position.
He needed to get free. If he was going to get out of this, it would either mean dropping into whatever waited in the dark below, or hauling himself back up and through the ceiling above. Unfortunately, both directions presented the same core issue: there was nothing. No handholds. No edges. No grip. Just cold stone above, slick with mist, and a darkness that stretched in both directions, up and down.
He had already run through every idea that might have worked if he had so much as a decent tool to his name. But his staff — gone. His belt — gone. The dagger — gone. Even the pouches stitched to his trousers had torn free during the fall, leaving him with nothing but frayed fabric and empty loops. Among the things he had lost, perhaps the worst was the frostheart — a mere pebble by some standards, but to Nagrak, it was so much more. It was the most valuable thing he had ever owned. It had been a promise. A splinter of the mountain itself, entrusted to him by the orichs, who in turn had been chosen by the Albweiss to wield its unfathomable power and will, just as he would.
Of course, Nagrak’s frostheart had been nothing like the gems Bayazak or Tergak had embedded in their staffs — no, theirs glowed, pulsed, yes, beamed with magic. His had only shimmered ever so slightly, cold and quiet. An ember of power waiting to be stoked, as Bayazak had said. Just like Nagrak himself, he had said.
Well, Nagrak would very much like to feel a little warmer about now.
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