The harsh wind kissed Zanir’s face, as each footfall created an ever satisfying crunch, leaving behind a print in the white blanket. He began to watch his feet closer and closer as the end of his ascent drew nearer and nearer, trying to look ahead being a futile task. He spotted a small rock, peeking out from under the snow blanket. He was overjoyed to finally see a different color than white. Stopping next to the rock, he peered over the edge of the natural spire. He frowned, seeing a never-ending wall of mist. He focused his attention back on the rock. With the tip of his boot, he nudged it over the edge, watching it fall, fall, fall, and fall… He never heard it hitting the ground. He looked back to see what ground he had covered, though …show more content…
Sleep deprivation, a common occurrence for him, had taken its toll; the normal, neat set of footsteps were replaced by a chaotic disarray of lines caused by his dragging feet. Focusing on the cold was blocking it out of his mind, but now the hammer had come down on his head. A good night’s rest hadn’t come in bordering on a fortnight. Sleep was a wonderful and rare commodity, one that he could not afford to use at any time. The hammer came back up, and down again. Eyelids just about to close the distance, a one-thousand ton weight on his shoulders, every single drag of the foot through the snow bringing him closer and closer to collapse. His eyes closed, the amount of ground he was covering shortening as the agonizing seconds went on. Panic shot through his mind as he lulled; what if there was somebody nearby? He looked from right to left, a long, wide, twitching gaze on every drift. He was as vulnerable as he could be, on top of a mountain, exposed to the elements, destitute of rest, …show more content…
Zanir eased into opening his eyes, adjusting them to this new locale. He looked about the room; a blazing torch on the wall, rows and rows of books on a shelf, the contents of which could not all be studied in a lifetime, and a man. His heart skipped. Action on reflex, he used the ground to push off, sliding back onto his rear and into a wall, sending the pillow that had been supporting his head off to the side. His hand smacked his left side, searching for the familiar grip of his sword’s handle. “Easy, there,” a frail voice said. It did not come from the main he was now staring at with intent, but from his right. His gaze shot to the source; a soft faced, robed man. His eyes darted from the robed man to the man who had been standing over him, his chest a drum. “I want to know exactly where the fuck I am,” Zanir said. On the next round of his eyes running about in his eyeballs, he caught the robed man taking a step toward him, “stay the fuck back, or I’ll...” The robed man stopped in his tracks, acting as if a row of archers were taking aim at him, “listen, we found you, out bloody cold in the snow. As if somebody had just left you there. We brought you in with