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On the far side of the castle, in an area that had become much busier since the arrival of Nyrielle’s army, Ashlynn made her way through the crowds of people toward the guest chambers where Artificer Erkembalt and the sorcerer Aspakos had taken Hauke as they continued to study the curse that bound him.

Two days ago, they had sent word that they’d made significant progress, but they needed the help of a witch’s Severing Knife if they were going to make any more progress.

Any other time, Ashlynn would have rushed immediately to Hauke’s side, but at the moment, she had to prioritize Virve’s transformation and the transfer of her seed of witchcraft.

Even now, Ashlynn felt guilty for asking Talauia to watch over her newest witch as she underwent her transformation beneath the branches of the Ancient Oak.

She wanted to be there for Ollie, she wanted to be there for Virve, but there were only so many places she could be at once, and right now. .. right now it was Hauke’s turn.

Inside a large guest chamber that had clearly been sized for members of the Clan of the Great Claw or other large-sized Eldritch visitors, Ashlynn found herself stepping into what resembled a chaotic blend of magical laboratory and scholarly study rather than any kind of sickroom.

Slate boards leaned haphazardly against every available wall surface, each covered with intricate diagrams, some depicting patterns of chains labeled with the names of horrifying curses, while others illustrated the internal structuresof Frost Walker horns.

All of the diagrams were accompanied by dense mathematical formulas written in at least three different scripts, some in Erkembalt’s precise, angular notation, others in Aspakos’s flowing, feathery script, and a third that looked like it had been faithfully transcribed from directly from ancient texts, as if the person doing the copying was afraid that re-writing it in a more modern script would result in misinterpreting the original meaning.

The room’s central table, large enough for a party of four to dine at, had been repurposed as a research station, its polished surface barely visible beneath stacks of leather-bound tomes borrowed from Nyrielle’s personal library of texts pertaining to sorcery.

Many of the books were still open to pages marked with scraps of parchment covered in hasty annotations.

Loose pages of calculations and observations littered the floor around it, some half crumpled and left to lay wherever they fell when the ideas expressed on them proved fruitless.

Near the window, where the light was strongest, a collection of small braziers burned with flames in unnatural colors.

One emitted a pale blue glow that reminded Ashlynn of Hauke’s horn when he used ice magic to create intricate shapes, while another produced a green smoke that curled into the shape of glyphs associated with healing before fading away.

In the far corner of the room, behind a folding screen with panels of intricately carved cedar, lay Hauke himself, feeling less a patient being tended to and more a puzzle these two scholars were determined to solve.

Other than a small potted plant that had clearly been placed there by one of the maids in order to bring some life into the room, his bed was surrounded by measuring instruments, crystals that seemed to pulse and glow in different colors that correspond to the colors of Hauke’s iridescent horn, and even more slate boards covered with observations about his responses to the two men’s attempts to unravel his curse.

On the opposite side of the guest room, sitting as close to the hearth as possible, as if to avoid the faintly frosty aura that clung to Hauke even here, Artificer Erkembalt sat hunched over a game board, staring at a fiendishly clever arrangement of stones that Aspakos had set in his way.

Faint magical energy could be felt radiating from the game board, and glowing crystals embedded in the edges of the board itself flickered and pulsed as Erkembalt delicately reached into the arrangement to move a single piece.

Sitting opposite him, the darkly feathered sorcerer Aspakos seemed to have little interest in the game, turning away from it as soon as Ashlynn entered the room, rising smoothly from his seat and offering her a graceful bow.

"Your Dominion," the sorcerer said smoothly. "Thank you for making time to help us resolve this impasse. I know how busy you are with important matters."

"Hauke is a friend," Ashlynn said, looking toward the far side of the room where the young frost walker lord lay in bed. "This is an important matter," she added as she moved to his side. "And one I should have attended to sooner."

"I’m sure your young friend is grateful to have you here," Erkembalt said, his tail twitching in agitation as he realized he would need to give up on solving the puzzle Aspakos had set for him. It wasn’t the interruption that irritated him so much as the realization that he didn’t even know where to begin with solving it.

"You know that this old bag of feathers has been giving lectures to keep your friend entertained while we wait?" Erkembalt said, giving Aspakos a withering look. "I’ve had to endure his ’fundamentals of energy systems’ and ’unique sorceries of the Eldritch Clans’ lectures for the past several days as he prattles on endlessly. "

"I’m sure he appreciates your efforts," Ashlynn said as she stood beside Hauke, looking at the calm features on his face and the unblinking stare he’d worn since she severed the bind between him and the ancestral horns.

The young lord’s powerful physique had begun to loose some of its bulk as the days slipped by and the aura of frost that clung to him had faded to a shadow of its former self, though whether that was an affect of the curse or his absence from the frigid environment of the High Pass, Ashlynn couldn’t say for certain.

"I’m sorry for making you wait," Ashlynn said softly, gently stroking the soft locks of Hauke’s snow-white mane. "I promise, we’ll free you soon."

As she spoke, Hauke’s iridescent horn did something it hadn’t done the last time she saw him. The horn pulsed with a faint, bluish hue that carried a hint of icy resilience and determination, and for a moment, his eyes seemed to focus on Ashlynn before they clouded over once again.

"He heard that," Aspakos said with a warm smile forming beneath his cracked beak. "I think he’s eager to rejoin the world of the waking."

"Do you mean that you’ve been able to communicate with him?" Ashlynn said, her eyes opening wide in surprise. "In the High Pass, when he spoke to us, it seemed to take considerable effort just to say a few words, and he risked damaging his horn in the process."

"I don’t know that I’d call it communication," Erkembalt said, walking across the room to examine the condition of Hauke’s horn with a small monocle.

"We’ve worked as delicately as we can to widen the gaps between the curse that binds him and his horn, and we’ve worked out a rough system of sharing thoughts using the hues of his energy.

Simple things like yes and no, pain, danger, discomfort, fear. .."

"It hasn’t been enough to have a real conversation," Aspakos said, interjecting before Ashlynn got the wrong impression about the system they’d developed to communicate with their cursed patient.

"The most important thing was to understand if our techniques were making things better or worse, or if we were placing undue strain on him. "

"He’s a stubborn kit," Erkembalt snorted. "Far too willing to suffer for the slightest hope of progress. We had to threaten to stop treating him before he would admit when we were causing him pain."

"Don’t lie to her Dominion," Aspakos countered. "You threatened to cut off his horn to free him from the curse, since nothing seemed to cause him pain. That seemed to terrify him so much that he stayed up for two whole days answering Erkembalt’s questions, just to be sure my friend here didn’t reach for his bone saws again. "

"I can imagine!" Ashlynn said, giving the artificer a dark look. She appreciated everything he was doing for Hauke on top of her immense gratitude for the pair of weapons he’d forged from the horns of the Frost Walkers who had conspired against them, but his methods.

.. Perhaps the best she could say was that he lacked a good bedside manner.

"Then, let me do my part so you can move on to other things," Ashlynn said, feeling like the artificer would be happier in a workshop with his tools than he was tending to a single cursed Frost Walker. "Your note said that you needed my Severing Knife, so how can I help?"