The Dragon Prince - Book 1: Cold War

Grim Tourism

Claudia

After five days in the wilderness, the rain finally let up. Claudia shivered in the improvised shelter as she prepared the ingredients for her tracking spell. In the few hours the boy-King so graciously granted her prior to banishment, she searched for ingredients that could be used to track her Dad... No, not her Dad anymore, the monster that became her Dad. She managed to find her father's crusty goatee comb. She plucked a few black strands from the tiny comb and dropped them into her mortar along with other ingredients for her spell. She couldn't move her head in time before a tickle hit her nose.

    "Ah-CHOO!" she sneezed into her work, scattering the ingredients throughout the shelter. Claudia yelled in frustration, wiping away the mucus from her nose.

    "Gesundheit!" said Soren, walking up the bluff face and into their shelter carrying a deer carcass on his shoulders. "Still fighting that cold, huh?"

    "Ugh! Shuddup! I need to concentrate and I just wasted what little strands of Dad's hair that we've got left," she said as she crawled on the hard pack dirt in their cave. She managed to recover some of the hair strands and brushed off bits of debris off tiny bristles.

    Soren lifted the animal carcass off of his back and went about placing some wood on the fire. "I thought you said the tracking spell would give us away?" he asked.

    Claudia scraped the ingredients into her mortar with the edge of her palm. She wasn't purposely ignoring Soren but she had little patience battling her cold, emotions and answering Soren's dumb questions. She ground up the ingredients using her pestle, careful this time to turn her head away lest another sneeze catches her unawares.

    Soren brought the fire up to a roaring flame, blanketing out their view of the surrounding wilderness and bathing them both in a warm, orange radiance. He began cleaning the animal and Claudia briefly watched him work, both impressed and feeling a little guilty at her early abrasiveness. She placed the prepared spell components into a glass decanter and sealed it with a cork topper. She marvelled as the fluttering lights inside the jar danced with a ghostly glow.

    She sat next to Soren, exhaling beside the calming aura of her brother's carefree existence. She was sometimes jealous of her brother's ability to let the worries of the world wash over him like water off of a duckswan's back, "sorry, Sor-Sor," she said. "Yes, the spell will give away our position but what other option do we have? The trail went cold days ago."

    If Soren was upset at his sister's earlier remarks, he didn't show it. He simply shrugged and continued preparing their dinner. He flayed the creature and strapped it to an improvised spit which he then maneuvered above the roaring flames. They both sat in silence, admiring the flames and the welcoming smell of sizzling fat.

    "Well!" said Soren standing up and dusting off his armour, "this is going to take a while so why don't we do your whole magic thingy?"

    Claudia smiled and stood up. She grabbed the glass jar and mortar and lead the way towards the trail that they had broken-in earlier that day. The trail lead from the cut in the hill which made their camp and up to the very top of the bluff. The hill top was clear of trees, giving them an ample view of the surrounding landscape stretching off into the infinite horizon.

    Claudia unfolded a map of the human kingdoms and placed it on a flat rock jutting up from the hilltop. She placed the mortar and glowing jar on top of the map to stop the wind from blowing it away. She then placed a few more strands of her father's hair into the stone mortar and with a flint, she lit the precious tiny link bit of her father on fire, letting the grey smoke rise. She focused her energies into the tiny plume of smoke, breathing in the sickly sweet plume. Claudia popped open the lid and exhaled the smoke into the jar, then with her focused energies, she charged the components releasing a tiny fragment of her soul as the spell catalyst.