Chapter 6: Deconstructed

            The old stone bridge was going to fall apart someday soon. Very soon in fact, if she succeeded in her task. She had located beforehand the weakest, most crumbling areas in the decrepit old thing. The weathering of time was her greatest ally at this moment. It wouldn’t take much to bring the entire structure down into the water.

            He would survive, she knew. His blood still ran with their people’s heritage, even when he had been banished from it in their hearts and minds. If she fell short in her task and he did die, then he deserved it for his weakness. 

***

            Something felt strange about this river. The rush of rapidly freezing water screamed underneath the bridge in a manner than reminded Kaed eerily of the maelstrom style of spells that the Overland Lords could summon. Could one have followed him even here, such an incredible distance away?
            He couldn’t pick out the telltale sensory feelings that their spells invoked, but he had grown too careful to let his judgment fall to absolute knowledge. He didn’t like how the river gushing under the bridge felt, as if it were desperate to destroy him.
            He would have to find a different route to Dieth. Self-preservation always overrode expediency in his book, no matter how minor or seemingly unnecessary the sense of danger.

            As he turned to leave, he felt rather than saw a shadow flit onto the pathway across the bridge. As he whirled back around, a gust of freezing wind hit him, carrying with it the agonizingly familiar psychic scent of his former people.
            The river roared louder and a flurry of snowfall whipped through the air on the sudden wind, obscuring the appearance of a small, undoubtedly feminine figure standing at the opposite edge of the bridge. An incredibly long mane of white hair swirled around her, blending with the snow and thwarting his attempt to see any other defining physical feature. She raised one hand and a light, rosy voice wove through the downfall.

            Kaed’s curious study was cut abruptly short as an inordinately powerful instinct he wasn’t aware was present finally hit through his shock. Danger, immediate and fatal. He suddenly recognized the lethal words of a Ckhnuli incantation, and how the water beneath was responding violently to the spell. Whoever she was, she had obviously been waiting for him to walk straight into her clawed embrace.

            He jumped back around, intending to sprint away as fast as his abilities would allow, to flee that cursed rive, but never got the chance to start.  A violent, thrashing wave of icy water broke hard against the bridge. Boulders, ice blocks, and trunks that flew up with the water pounded and cracked against the age-worn stone.
            The bridge held for a fraction of a moment, making one last stand in its centuries-old battle against decay, then collapsed in a rain of stone into the fiercely raging tumult beneath.

            Kaed had no time to register any of this, no time to cry out or scream as his fell amongst the bone-crushing rock. Had no time or chance to sense of being dragged under the cruelly frozen river before his overloaded consciousness abruptly shut down.