The Price of Winter

=Kinsen stood on the wall over the gates of Icehold, guantleted hands resting on the cold stone as the night began to fall. The cold wind blew around him, but he did not feel it. The white armor seemed to glow in the sunset, shimmering like ice in the splayed reds and oranges.

The black cloak was thick and heavy, needlessly draped over his shoulders where the hilt of his family blade peeked. At his waist was Winter's Kiss and a cruel mace, a long dagger strapped to his calf over his greave.

His black hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, tied with a white ribbon. His silver eyes stared hard into the sunset, the silver-runed snowflake on his cheek seeming to glow in the cold air.

As the sun sets and the darkness enroaches, the silver shine from his eyes is still visible, the tattoo on his face still glowing as well. As th stars became visible he continued to watch. Soon he was alone with the darkness, and his thoughts.

Duty. Honor. Sacrifice.

Where, now, did he stand?=

=Not entirely alone.

Catona stepped from the shadows of the gatehouse door, where his chambers were. Dressed in his armor, an exquisitely made crossbow was held, loaded, in the crook of his arm, a pair of blades at his sides. His crimson cloak falls down his back, his only concession to the cold.

He steps beside Kinsen with the silent grace of a hunting cat, his own breath coming out in slow white puffs, a slow, steady rhythm. He knew the sacrifice the man beside him had made, and the new one now was marked plainly across his new features: Kinsen had given himself entirely to Winter. He had done his duty. That was something Damien knew quite well; the cost of duty.

He allowed the silence to drag on, thought it was not tense or uncomfortable. it was the silence of two men who did not need to speak. Silence was theirs for now.

His green eyes, even in the darkness, were sharp and alert, catching the vague movements of wolves in the snow, off in the distance. He let the silene stretch on, still, content to wait for his companion to voice his thoughts.=

=Kinsen felt the figure step next to him, intuitively knowing who it was. he smiled thinly. The man never seemed to sleep, nor did he seem to notice the climate, nor the strenuous nature of his position. His men were likewise well-trained: perceptive, capable, dutiful, and deadly. In a thought, Kinsen wondered though, why he had never seen Catona at the training yard. His men learned from the artillerists. His archers and crossbowmen learned from the ranks of the footmen. They learned blades and axes and spears from Dragon knights and Wulfgang. Yet Kinsen could not recall having seen Catona at swordplay, or the archery range, or even with his pole axe. He looked sideways at his companion, still in a sense awed by the man's presence and the legends surrounding his death.

He had no doubt the man could use the weapons; he would not be in his position if he could not. Still, he wondered at how he kept himself in shape and practice. He also wondered, idly, where he was from, and how he had come to be in Aurora. That he was a foreigner was undebatable: he was more slender in build, more delicate in his features, and his skin was darker; he tanned under the sun.

The reprieve from his self doubt was welcome as he considered his companion in silence, looking back out over the winter landscape. His own breath did not steam the air, and he felt no cold. His sharp eyes, heightened now to a sense of his lost heritage, traced the same movements as Catona's, albeit in more detail.

Letting the wind blow around him, he closed his eyes, allowing the sensation to enter him in a way it never had before. His heightened sense picked subtle nuances of sound: the cracking of a torch on the wall; the faint breathing of the next man down the line on sentry duty, though he knw normal senses would not hear it.

The changes were so much, so fast: his body, his mind, his emotions...they had all been fundamentally altered, now, by the choice he had made. He had given himself over to something for the sake of a friend; for the sake of his queen. Verily, he did now suffer the cost of his decisions, and gladly. Still, already, he could feel the strangeness. He could feel the coldness of death tickling his fingertips, dancing across his skin, because to touch Mother Winter was to touch the edge of darkness.

And he had embraced her. He had felt her chill fingers digging into his flesh, her nails raking furrows into his back. He had tasted her lips, the purity of frozen water, the scent of cold death. He had died again, he felt, and been thrust back into the world.

So now his duty had changed. His very nature had to alter to meet this new paradigm, or all would be lost.

His brow crease in worry, doubts flashing in his silver eyes as they open to the world.

He had become an instrument of Winter; an instrument of death. But could he embrace it?=

="You look lost, knight of Winter."

The words were quiet, blown to Kinsen's ears on the wind. Damien's eyes did not move from their intense vigil of the snowy fields. =

=Kinsen hears the words, and he nods once, still staring into the distant landscape. He lets the silent drag again, hunting for words through the crashing waves of feelings. After some few moments he sighs, nodding again. "I feel lost, my friend. I have become unlike myself. Aye, I have done my duty, but at what price?" he shakes his head, dismissing the doubts as much as he could.

"I do not regret my decision. I did what I must, for the sake of my duty. For the sake of a friend. But I feel now, as if the cost may destroy me. This cost, it is a sort of death I was unprepared for. A different sort of lingering death. it is a death of the spirit. There is very little place for my paradigm in the dogma of our Winter Mistress, and she is less forgiving of doubts."

He lifts his hand up, looking at the pale white armor. "I no longer feel cold. I do not, though, feel warmth. I have tasted death again, and this time I drank from the dregs, and it was more bitter than I had been prepared for. She is inside of me, now. I am hers, and I know well what she may ask of me. I am not sure I am prepared to give that to her. And thus would my rebirth end; a third death, for the sake of not living up to a duty I had no choice but accepting."

He curls his hand into a fist, the snow forming into small shards of ice around it, and slams it onto the stone crenellation, the sound of ice shattering ringing out as the razor-diamonds smash into the stone around his fist. For a moment his fangs bare in a silent snarl, and in that moment he looks for all the frozen world as a hand of death, silver eyes predatory.

"I did not die simply to be reborn into death. However, some parts of me, perhaps must die at the hands of my honor. I made the choice. I gave my blood and my life to Winter, and cannot rescind. I will not. And thus, come what may, let it not be said I would not do my duty as best I could. And if I must die some little death, so be it."

His voice is seemingly choked with emotion, hands still clenched into fists. Ice shines on his face in the moonlight from frozen tears.=

=Catona drags the silence on after Kinsen finishes speaking, scanning the horizon in the darkness. His metallic arm glinted faintly from the distant torchlight, and the pair were thrown into shadows, though the pale of Kinsen's armor would stand out starkly in the half-light. The biting wind blew across his skin, but he showed no notice.

"You are not less than you were before, Knight of Winter. You are simply finding another facet of yourself. You have done your duty, and made your choice. And so now you must live with it." the words are quiet, measured, and even-toned. There is little inflection: it was stated simply as fact.

As Kinsen gathers himself in anger, and smashes his fist down, Catona feels the chill in the air. "It seems you are perhaps more even than you had expected. But you have chosen your battle, and now must fight it. We know well, the cost of our honor. Aye, and perhaps we know too well the cost of failure. Do not become what you fear to be."=