“Take the students. I’ll handle this!” Falar said, voice cracking and whistling.

Two skeletons approached us. I lowered my stance and Grit raised her hands before her, palms out. They had nothing but empty bone for brains, so we should be able to—

A zombie flew sideways into the skeletons and swept them away. The three undead flew into one of the tents, snapping tent poles as they went.

“Away, I said!” Falar shouted, spewing black smoke from his mouth. He straightened after his throw, waving a hand down the mountain. “I’ll follow soon!”

“Leave the armchair!” Jextor shouted.

“I won’t!”

“We’ll come back for it later!”

“Stop it!” I screamed, dragging Grit behind me. It was time to get out. Walking away was the most important part of any fight.

“The Bursar is going to have our hides,” Jextor said, eyeing the crates and tents left in the snow.

“It’s your own fault for bringing so much crap!” I shouted. I ran past him and grabbed his sleeve. He didn’t start following me immediately, and I almost wrenched myself off balance pulling on the sleeve.

“Will he be okay?” Grit asked, glancing back as we ran.

“Of course,” Jextor said, turning to run. “He’s going to blame himself for this, so he’ll appreciate the opportunity to take it out on the undead.”

Jextor seemed to have no trouble talking while stomping through snow. Maybe it was because he only had to take one step for two of ours. A bone landed on his head, bouncing off with a clonk.

“He must have done that on purpose,” Jextor said, rubbing his head.

“We’re really going to just run? Through the snow, across half a mountain?” I asked, starting already to breathe heavily.

“You’d rather stay?” Grit asked.

“Well…”

“The power has our scent,” Jextor said. “Falar is holding its focus for now, but it won’t stop just because there are none of our undead left for it to break free. There are a lot of dead things buried in the snow, that much is certain.”

“Why are there dead things buried in the snow?” I shouted. “I don’t want to be on these mountains anymore!”

“Shh, shh,” Jextor said. “Without the zombies and all the gear slowing us down, it’s not that far back to the Academy. We’ll be there for breakfast! Lift your knees!”

---

I stopped to pant, leaning both hands on my knees. The smell of mold hadn’t thinned at all, from what I could smell from the taste of copper in my mouth. I felt like I would threw up at any moment.

“We need more distance,” Jextor said, standing straight and peering behind us. “I might need to buy you more time.”

Grit’s breath came in ragged gasps. “We can’t… run… through the whole night,” she panted.

A dark shape flew at us from behind. It flapped and warbled, trailing air so cold it made my eyelashes freeze. Grit shrieked as it grabbed her, lifting her into the air.

“Tarrying isn’t acceptable,” Falar whispered. “Hurry.”

He reached a hand toward me and I fought the urge to slap it away, throw myself straight into the nearest ravine to avoid his touch. His skin was dry and yellow like old parchment, nails rimmed with black.

“What about me?” Jextor asked. “Will you carry me as well?”

“Hah,” Falar said, and the laugh sounded like a cough. He grabbed me under his arm, pulling my feet off the ground. “Try to protect your face.”

“My f—?“

He blasted into a run, flying over the path. The snow and stones flickered past, from what I could see through the freezing gale in my eyes. My hat was pushed off my head and flew behind me, disappearing into the darkness. Tears froze and snapped off my face. Grit squealed something, hair flicking in the wind.

Jextor was left behind. “Be safe!” he shouted, his voice only barely reaching us.

---

It hadn’t been more than ten minutes when Falar crashed.

He spun in the air, rotating to hold me and Grit to his chest, when his back slammed into the ground. His grip loosened and I flew clear through the air. I twisted myself so I landed on my side instead of face first into the snow.

Grit grunted as she landed next to me on her back. Her legs flopped over her and she flipped to come down on her hands and knees on the snow.

“I’m going to throw up,” she said.

I stumbled up, arms and legs shaking. My face was streaked with ice, and the snow had got inside my coat and my boots. If she could speak, she was fine. Falar lay as a black heap in the snow, face down.

Had Jextor really told us to be safe? He was the one left alone with the undead now. I poked Falar with the tip of my boot to see if he was dead. It was hard to say. I turned him around and shivered as the cold went right through my mittens. He radiated it, face sickly white and lips blue. Black ichor ran down the side of his mouth.

“Is he okay?” Grit asked, walking over unsteadily.

I shook him by the shoulder with both hands. “How am I supposed to tell!”

“Stop it,” he whispered, eyes closed.

“What’s wrong with him?” Grit shouted, shuffling towards us.

Falar’s eyes shot open. They were bloodshot and had flecks of black swimming in them. ”Stay back!” he shouted, but the shout made him cough, spitting something black to stain the white snow. “Couldn’t… balance it well enough. Too hasty.” His words came in rasps and gasps.

He had spoken about this when I had nearly killed myself. “How much did you overdo it? Are you radiating death again?”

Falar tried to scoff, but it turned into another wet cough. “I’ll deal with it.” He started drawing symbols into the air above his chest. I didn’t know the exact runes, and the lines wobbled with the shaking of his hand. Coratorus had described the way to fix the imbalance, even if the runes had been way too complicated to memorize with the time I’d had with the book.

I stood up and dug a clump of snow out of my boot. Snow had got inside my collar, but it had already melted. I couldn’t do anything for Falar now. If he took it easy, he wouldn’t even need to shred himself, like he had done to me. I watched him draw the runes and told myself that I should get the book again and learn the process. Just in case.

A hint of mold wafted in the air, following us. Books would need to wait.

“What can we do?” Grit asked, sitting on her knees next to Falar.

He had his teeth clenched, gums shiny black. “Allow me to work.”

I put a hand on Grit’s shoulder and nudged at her. “Come on. We have other problems.”

She was about to say something, when ice cracked behind us to our right. The snow pushed itself up into a mound.

Grit stumbled up, taking a step back. “What’s that?”

“Other problem,” I said. “They said there are dead things buried in here.”

Falar’s hand had stopped. The rune flickered in the air, faltering as the wind pressed on it.

“Focus!” I shouted at him. “We’ll handle it!”

It was an insane claim. I had no idea what we would be trying to handle or how, but we’d need him up again to have any chance of getting out of here alive. It would take half a day to reach the Academy and we were cold and the path we had stomped into the snow had half disappeared already. My ears felt like they were getting frostbitten.

Snow fell off the thing in clumps, revealing grey flesh that cracked as it moved. The shape was some sort of animal, a large cat or a massive wolf or a bear. Tufts of white fur jutted out here and there, stuck on what skin was left. It shook its head, as large as my torso, throwing snow to fall around it. The skull was missing half of its lower jaw, but the single tusk remaining on the left side was scary enough. Its point reached almost up to where the thing’s eye had been.

“A bear,” I whispered.

“A tiger,” Grit whispered.

Well, how should I have known? The thing was huge. I was sure nothing like it was alive anymore. Who knew how long it had been frozen under the snow?

“Behind you,” Falar gasped.

Skeletons were clawing their way out of a pile of stone. I had thought it was just a tall cone of snow, but boulders rolled off one another as the skeletons pushed from the inside, breaking whatever tomb they had been buried in. They looked brittle, not clean and solid like the Academy skeletons, but real, old corpses, rotten cloth and tattered flesh clinging to stick-thin limbs.

Grit opened and closed her fists, mittens hiding her stone-like palms.

“Handle those,” I said to Grit, turning back to the tiger, if it really was one.

Palms wouldn’t help against a thing like that. I circled it as it prowled forward. Its frozen muscles snapped as it moved, cracking to reveal blueish purple flesh inside. I didn’t even have the palms. What the hell had I been thinking?

It lunged at me, swiping a claw toward my face. I dodged it by stepping to the side. The tiger crashed into the path next to me.

It didn’t move like an animal. I had killed a dog back in Tenorsbridge and it had been awful. The dog had been so quick, frantic, desperately vicious.

This thing was nothing. It smelled of mold and moved in straight lines. It wrenched its head back awkwardly, trying to gouge me with its tusk by reaching over its shoulder. I kept dodging toward its back. It would have to turn to get to me.

Grit reached the skeletons as they were still pulling their legs away from the rubble of the collapsed tomb. She smacked one on the shoulder hard enough to break its arm clean off. She would handle it.

The tiger lurched, crashing its rear flank into my shoulder. I slipped back on the ice, but lunged forward and punched the thing in the ribs to regain my balance. It felt like hitting a hairy sack of grain. The sound was a hollow thump and the cold spiked through my hand even through the mitten.

The thing lumbered forward one step and I dodged behind it. Maybe I could climb on? I had once seen a horse kick someone behind it dead, but this thing didn’t feel clever enough for that. The moldy pressure swam all around me, and I smelled the currents reaching down at the tiger. It reminded me of a puppet, yanked around by invisible tendrils of rot. Pure malice, no guile.

I was getting pretty angry myself. This goddamn mountain.

It turned around, movements jerky. It didn’t need the frozen muscles clinging to its bones. Instead, they were making it harder for it to move, as it had to fight against its own flesh, stiff with ice. I backed away, creating space between me and its front paws. It made no sound except the cracking of its flesh, jaws hanging open, waiting.

I hissed at it, and my voice sounded like a knife. It rasped in the cold, almost like Falar’s. The cold was creeping into my bones, and I let it.

It pounced. I dove forward.

The tiger sailed over me, massive and grey and cold. Its front paws landed behind me. It crashed into the stone face first, teeth snapping and scraping against the ice.

Not clever, but damn it was fast. I kicked to the left. The tiger reached back under itself with one of its front paws.

It caught my leg.

The claws shredded through my pant leg and the skin and muscle beneath. One claw stuck, shaped like a fishing hook, scraping against something hard inside my ankle. I screamed at the pain as my flesh parted in two. My face hit the snow, bouncing off the stone below. My vision sparked black, eyes and mouth full of snow.

“Student!” Falar shouted.

The tiger’s right front paw was stuck on my leg, every jerking motion scraping the claw against bone, shooting a new flash of pain through my whole body.

I spat out the snow. “That’s… it,” I growled.

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