Marche Au Supplice II: Coma White
Shinsou hated Salvar.
Sure, the town of Knife’s Edge wasn’t so bad, but undertaking any task further north became a stupid and dangerous affair. And of course, the further north you went, the worse the conditions became. The nights would start to go from lasting hours, to days and then to months. The days were just as erratic and long, and before you knew it the hours would tick by until your only sense of the passage of time was how long it took to get hungry again. The threat of frostbite and hypothermia would become permanent fixtures in your life as the sheer cold ate at your skin. Your eyes would be assaulted by a constant sheet of white, and any sort of detail on the terrain ahead would warp until the mountains simply disappeared to leave just a flat white blanket of hopelessness in every direction.
So, when Shinsou discovered that a splinter of Brotherhood forces loyal to the late traitor Arius Mephisto had migrated to Salvar, and been looting houses at the fringes of the city to survive, he was initially hesitant to accept. In the end, only his desire to stamp out the remnants of Arius's rebellion against him convinced him to go through with it. The core of the task wasn’t an issue; though the Telgradian was more than capable of wiping out this band of traitors single-handedly, the terrain was too volatile and the people he would be agreeing to chase were now likely more familiar with the frozen wastes. If they were even half-smart, they would inevitably lead him north, daring him to pursue them through twilit skies in a land where the sun never rises and just squints over the horizon. Even using stars for navigation would prove futile; their progressions were the very definition of madness.
It was the kind of environment that could drive a man insane in a matter of hours. Civilization couldn’t prepare people for this, and this land chewed up civilization and spat it back out again.
Now a couple of days into his mission, Shinsou Vaan Osiris was having a difficult time. The winter twilight had come to Salvar’s north, a time where the sun fizzled out in what seemed to be a matter of moments and the moon chundered through clear skies unopposed. It wouldn’t be long before those months’ worth of night were about to take hold in this gods-forsaken place and there was nothing the Telgradian or anyone else could do about it.
The cutting wind had died down, leaving the sound of Slepnir’s hooves pounding the snow as the only audible note. The ride was only just steady and incredibly monotonous, interrupted only by the snorts of Shinsou's white horse. He was a tough bastard for a stallion; the young mount just kept on going no matter what he was put through, so much so that Shinsou had almost fallen asleep on his back several times without incident.
Crunch, crunch, crunch…
Maybe, if Shinsou had thought to look back over his shoulder, he might've spotted the very people he was hunting riding right up behind him.
Smash!
Some time later, Shinsou woke up to find himself looking up at the sky, with half of a horse leaning over him. His vision was completely blotted by tangled, frozen hair and then by his blood. He struggled to his knees momentarily, forcing his fingers to open into palms, then wiped at his forehead. It was dark out, the moons hung low in the sky. Everything was silent. They were alone. The only sounds in those seconds were the gentle crackling of his breath on the night air, and the hushed intake and release of Slepnir’s breath next to him. With the cold numbing everything else, Shinsou’s balance failed him as he lost consciousness and landed face down in the snow.
