Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Scramble

The ice surrounding us cracked with deep, blue fissures as the rock collapsed onto it.

"Go!" Asund, holding me with one arm like a cat, grabbed Ormiss and flung him onto the vines. Rock and ice cracked, splintered behind us.

Korr, in dragon form, scrambled up the vines. Asund shifted into war-form and scrambled up the vines as the tunnel behind us made a terrible sound.

"Ormiss!" I shouted as Asund scurried up the vines.

"Go!" Ormiss shouted, scrambling up the vines as fast as he could. Ethat chirped to him and waved his tail.

Korr tried to weave magic and vines below us to stabilize everything, but Asund, as Asund crawled past him, growled and swiped. "Go!"

Ormiss was almost to Ethat. Below us, dust and ice and stone plowed into the bottom of the shaft where we'd just been.

Asund kept going, easily getting to the stop of the shaft. Itek scooped me off his back and Asund jumped back down into the shaft for Ormiss and Ethat. The ground trembled under my feet, and the ice cracked and packed snow began to shed off buildings in dusty falls.

Itek hauled me off the frozen mineshaft as all the ice started to crack and slip, about to collapse in on itself.

"Ormiss!" I tried to shove off Itek. "Asund!"

Korr tried to re-freeze all the collapsing ice back together, and Ethat tried to hold the shaft open with his vines, but the entire thing was crumbling.

A claw shot out over the edge just as the entire thing crumbled. The claw slipped backwards.

Ethat's vines snaked out and grabbed the claw. Itek let go of me and vaulted up onto the crumbling mass, ducking under and around the vines in gryphon form, moving as a gold blur, and his wings churned more dust and ice as he hauled Asund and Ormiss out of the crumbling mineshaft.

A column of debris shot out of the shaft, then collapsed as everything caved in around it. Below us, the mountain shook hard enough to rattle teeth in jaws. Bits of stone and structures rattled around the plateau. Huge sheets of snow shed off the sides of the mountain and thundered into the chasms below.

I grabbed Ormiss with one hand, and Ethat with the other. They both looked dusty and a bit scraped up from falling debris, but seemed otherwise fine. Ormiss gave me a cocky smile while the world shuddered around us. "Were you really worried?"

"The mountain is collapsing and I'm not supposed to worry?" I retorted.

Ormiss glanced down. "You are the one who pulled the horn out."

I looked down at my hand. In all the chaos, I had somehow managed to keep my grip on the unicorn horn. It was still beautiful in the sunlight, with its unique luster intact. So everyone would always know it was a unicorn horn, not some strange construct or fake or forgery.

But the magic of it was gone, along with the final bits of the unicorn's soul and anguish.

"I suggest we head to high ground," Asund said as dragons swarmed the plateau and streamed out of the palace. "If those of you who fly could assist?"

Ormiss tossed me onto Itek's back and smacked the gryphon on his haunch. Itek smacked him with his tail, but then leapt into the sky. Korr and Ormiss and Ethat and Asund led the way to a peak beyond the palace, which was not in immediate danger of anything collapsing onto it. It gave us a relatively safe view of the shuddering inside the mountain that housed the plateau.

I still had the horn in my hand.

Below us, dragons swarmed all across the plateau, while the Lord-Dragon and Lady-Dragon bellowed orders, and a dozen different types of magic to try to hold the mountain together. Glowing wards appeared under the castle and all along the mountain peak that housed it, flaring brightly in the dawn sunlight. Tether lines manifested like chains, running from points of various structures down to anchor points on the mountain, and a complicated network of lights appeared in the sky over the peaks, like strands of light... except they were all magic.