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Clurie could do little else but wobble for balance in his cradle of fingers, falling back onto his shoulders and rolling from side to side from the strength of the woman's fast and determined sway as she strode to the front gates. It took a few determined wiggles until he was able to shift onto his knees and lung forth to grasp onto her fingers, peering out ahead of the suddenly quickly moving world around him. With his cheeks hot with worry, a dim and cold glow, he peered out at the cold dawn peering in through the frost smeared windows.

To his immediate demands for answers, there was silence, which left a sullen and spongy kind of worry in his gut, something damp and growing cold with every passing moment that made him feel like he were being weighed down. He bit his lips, made a frowning face back over his shoulder at Sage in confusion and worry, and then lost himself in the swish of the cold windows as they passed by. He saw such struggles before in his brother's face, moments of weakness, quickly and stubbornly wrestled back against clamps and chains, moments that he knew he wasn't allowed to see. He supposed he wasn't allowed to see her moment either.

Then she spoke, speaking words that he couldn't quite make sense of. See things? He wondered to himself, not quite grasping the connotation. He could see things too, things he shouldn't see, and things that he always could. He didn't know what made it so special for her to see. Clurie squinted around. Perhaps she could see things now? Things that he should be seeing?

Through the windows, in the snow that was a dusty shade of gray against the cold of the night, he could see the sparse leafless trees, the walkways and oil lamp lights that made up the grounds of the Fellowship. Among it all, were two shapes, not walking on the pathways, but just out of it, out in the middle of the snow, still specks, struggling along and slumped over.

"I can see things too," Clurie said, pointing to the windows, in the direction of the front gate, "Are those the things you're seeing?"

There was a moment of silence after Clurie pointed out the figures far away against the palette of gray in which Clurie could hear himself breathe. Then, a word: "Them".

Them?

Clurie's heart jumped into his mouth, and around the same time that Sage kicked off from the ground in a mad dash towards the doors, the little Plague was submerged in a shell of black, his stark and bright little voice squeaking in confusion. "Them? Who, them? Them like Chauhn? My brother and Sloane? Do you see them? It is my brother? Chauhn! Chauhn!!" He thought to give struggle in her hands, to try and pry himself a window in between her fingers to see, but he was bounced and jolted about by her quick and desperate saunter into the snow far too much to gain proper anchorage. Instead, he balled himself as much as he could, protecting himself from the ride, and from the sudden and intense cold that filtered in through the gaps in her fingers, all the meanwhile, shouting his brother's name.

* * *

It had been a long and painful trudge through the thigh deep snow, about four hours in length. Chauhn didn't really fathom that they were at the Fellowship until the sound of crunching snow came closer to them from a building that seemingly sprung up out of the gray. With snow laced lashes, he blinked at the sight, lifting his head just barely from where he had been tucked against the nook of Sloane's side, using strength he didn't have to support the gigantic man. His snot and blood and tears were frozen in oddly colored streams over his face, making it hard for him to show much more expression than the haggard and tired gape he had been stuck in for the past three hours. His shoes, which were soaked beforehand with blood, were now just frozen solid bricks, it seemed, attached to the stumps of his legs, and his hands, which he could no longer move, were a swollen and bloody mess. His three fingers were bent and purple, crooked into odd shapes and directions, wrapped tightly around Sloane's waist. Bitten by frost, it almost looked like he were wearing black gloves on his hands.

At the sight of the shape coming to them, Chauhn paused, thereby pausing Sloane's step, and he squinted at the blurred shape. He couldn't see clearly, he discovered. All too quickly did the person come into focus: It was Sage, determined and strong, a soft figure that he had not seen for what seemed like ages. Someone good.

Chauhn nearly broke into tears again if he had but tears to cry. He gave a terrible hitch of breath, "...'elp."

There.

A small broken sound, scratching in a way like no other voice could utter, muttered that simple plea, the spark to the suddenly raging fire of worry that consumed Clurie the instant he devoured that sound.

"BROTHER!" Clurie screamed, his voice torn between ecstatic joy and overwhelming fear. But before he could do so much as scramble in a particular direction, he was uncovered to the bite of the cold before he was quickly and sloppily dropped onto Sage's clothes and chest. The ash Plague fumbled, sliding down the fabric until he was nestled at the apex of the vest, his legs kicking himself more stuck between the wrap of Sage's vest and the push of her breasts behind him. He wiggled uselessly for a few moments, before he reached and flailed his arms for Chauhn, his own voice a mockery of sobs that he couldn't really cry, "Chauhn! Chauhn, what happened to you? What happened? And Sloane! Sir Sloane, what happened? He can't be beaten, he's a knight! He's a hero...What...What happened to my brother? Why are his hands all black? Chauhn!"

The overwhelming amount of red painted on both the bodies of the hero and his apprentice was hypnotizing, trapping Clurie's attention with a terrible horror. He knew stories well, he knew of the trials, and he often acted them out with toothpicks and silverware, but...To see blood, in that amount...It made Clurie rush into a frenzied breathing, in between which he would sob his brother's name.

Chauhn, awkwardly freed from beneath the fallen knight's weight, slumped fitfully to the side, too used to the feeling of the heavy weight to easily adjust for himself in his sorry state. He could hear Clurie's little voice, calling for him, and he was filled with such relief that he didn't know how else to react. He gave a stifled gasp for air that was meant to be a sigh of relief. He fell to the side in the snow, held up by the snow, so that it only looked like he had leaned to the side to catch his breath. To be relieved of Sloane's weight was a weird sensation, in that he wasn't sure if he was happy to be on his own now or if he desperately needed to be pressed up against something living to reassure his own barely breathing self.

After a few moments of bracing against the blistering cold, overwhelmed and shaded with shadows of a morning that still refused to wake, Chauhn decided that it was the latter. The feeling of foreign hands upon his body, the cold leather, the rough grip of his shoulders and the tickle of the voices, were still imprinted upon his senses, like footsteps into white snow. He remembered the kiss of the Cultist upon his hand just before the memory of touch was split with the length of the dagger. Daggers that he had still, tucked into his waist band against his lower back. Blinking his frosty eyes at the woman, Chauhn saw her then, as someone that could save him from those memories, someone who could hold him close, and he wanted nothing more than that, to have those discriminating and foul touches from the Cultists erased from his body, which seemed to stubbornly recall them despite the fact that he was numb to the bone.

Ignoring the hand offered him, Chauhn stumbled around the front of the good Knight, and fought to push his knees through the snow so that he could press himself against Sage. Raising his hands to knead pathetically at her stomach, for they were little more but frozen stumps, swollen and broken, stabbed through and frostbitten, he tried to clutch onto her clothes, tripping over his breath which still smelled like earth. Because of his small height, when he tucked himself to her front, his cold cheeks smooshed up against her chest, and he felt no shame in trying to press himself closer. He wanted the warmth of another human body, the softness of security, and he demanded it then, his only comfort in the last taxing twelve hours of garish horror.

Clurie wedged himself free then and jumped from one body to the next, clawing his way onto his brother's forehead, and then using his hair to skate down to his terrible cold and frozen cheeks. Clurie looked up at Sage, terrified, and piped in concern. "They're frozen completely solid! Both of them! What happened to them? They're so cold, it hurts me. They're too cold."

Chauhn just curled into Sage's front, forgetting entirely that they had to move forward. He just wanted to be with another warm body that could hold him, and sob with the memories about the winter demons that abducted them in the night.

For some reason, the last hundred steps of snow they had to push through to get to the wide open doors of the castle were far longer than the journey from the Cultist base to the Fellowship grounds. Knowing that he was safe slowed him down, made each heavy step more lethargic and clumsy than the last, and for being trapped so long in a state of endless fear, it almost seemed unreal to be caught again in the arms of security. Chauhn savored the brief moment of comfort from Sage, and the enduring worry from his brother, as he was guided towards the building, and during their journey, he could only mumble half-hearted attempts at answers for his brother, who was pestering his ear with words and the warm touch of his hands.

"Sloane's 'urt real bad," he mumbled to no one in particular, "'E's really hurtin'...'E...'E took 'em all on...All those bad guys...'n'...'n' 'e's bleedin'...'e's bleedin all over...there's blood everywhere..."

Clurie, for once, after hearing the nonsensical reply of his brother, couldn't muster something to say. He made worried squeaks of sound, rubbed his hands together and tried to melt and wipe away some of the frost that had layered itself on his brother's cheeks, as if he, alone, with all his two inches of physical energy, could rid all traces of ice and cold from Chauhn's face. He coughed up ash into his fist, and tried to keep himself working to paint the color back into the chilled lavender blue slate of the boy's cheeks. Before he could do much to aid him, though, the guards came and gently peeled him from where he was pressed against Sage's waist and Clurie was plucked from his shoulder. He watched as Chauhn, weeping fresh tears over his frozen cheeks, was carried away from him in the arms of an unfamiliar guard, his red gloved hands folded atop his chest, and mumbling with incoherent fear. Of the words easy to understand was a desperate and warbling call for the White Knight.

"Brother...Chauhn! Chauhn, come back! Take me back to him! Why are you taking me away? Why can't I be with him now? I want to be with him now! He needs me!" he shouted at Sage, kicking his legs and clapping his hands together in a ferocious display of embers and ash. Despite his struggle and incriminating shouts, she held him firmly in her hands until the hallways grew quiet again with only the presence of the cold to fill them. Clurie breathed with ragged gulps, looking up at Sage who now turned her attention to him with his mouth drawn in a haggard gape. He understood what she told him on an elementary level, but as for the deeper understanding, he only received the notion that he had to be separated from Chauhn for a while longer yet, and that, in and of itself, broke Clurie's heart. With shoulders quaking about his neck, he asked in a small hacked up voice, "Sloane is a knight. He saved my brother before. Why couldn't Sloane save him this time? He's supposed to be a hero."

Snaps like wood popping underneath the heat of fire burst between the little Ash Plague and the Sword's Grimm. Clurie's cheeks heat up with the frustration boiling up in his chest, and his mouth trembled with hurt. Hearing it from an adult, that heroes were nothing more but played at fantasy, was a severe blow to his young philosophy, something that crippled his foundations of thinking and seeing the world. She hadn't exactly claimed that there weren't any heroes, but Clurie took it as such anyway. If heroes weren't what he thought they were, then they wouldn't be heroes at all! And if there were no heroes, then what was good in the world for? Cannon fodder against the forces of evil? What other reason was there for big men with soft hearts like Sloane than to save boys like Chauhn from wrong-doers like the Obscuvians? It all fit together like a firm handshake, so why did Sage, whom Clurie and Chauhn both looked up to, so firmly deny it? Had she not heard the stories often weaved by fireplaces and candlelight?

At the frantic pace that his little mind spun, Clurie could only splutter a couple frantic words in response to Sage's cold declaration, his raspy voice a sharp and meaningful question:

"But stories of heroes are made on people like your Sloane. If he can't then who will?" The Ash Plague straightened his shoulders, glaring at her with determination, a firm refusal to give up in his beliefs and fairytales, "...Isn't a sword meant to protect and slay evil? Isn't that what Sloane is? A sword? He's meant for nothing lesser than that, being a hero, and all!"