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The snow had stopped, but the sky reray, not a hint of the sun to warm them The cold was a secondary concern,es they had passed through during the su north She prayed they’d found safe harbor before the snows, that the ot far froirl in one of the toho had been blessed with a powerful water gift--had she and her family been taken in behind Orynth’s thick walls?

Lysandra caught an updraft and soared higher, the horizon revealing es of light and shadow under the cloudy sky Getting the arht near here before They undoubtedly knew the path through, despite the snowdrifts piled high in the hollows

The wind screa south Begging her not to continue

Hills croith stones appeared--the ancient border ered until darkness fell She’d fly until night and cold rendered her unable, and find so at dawn

She sailed farther south, the horizon bleak and empty

Until it wasn’t

Until she beheld what marched toward theht her how to count soldiers, yet she lost track each ti across Adarlan’s northern plains Right toward the foothills that spanned both territories

Thousands Five, ten, fifteen thousand More

Again and again, she stuher into the sky Higher, because winged ilken fleith the all that passed below

Forty Fifty

Fifty thousand troops, overseen by ilken

And aprinces Five in total, each coain Thrice

Fifty thousand troops Against the twenty-five thousand they had gathered

One of the ilken spotted her and flapped upward

Lysandra banked hard and swept back north, wings beating like hell

The two armies met in the snow-covered fields of southern Terrasen

Terrasen’s general-prince had ordered theions To let Erawan’s hordes exhaust themselves on the foothills, and to send an advance force of the Silent Assassins to pick off soldiers struggling amid the bumps and hollows

Only so princes swept ahead, devouring all in their path

And still, the Fire-Bringer did not blast the Valg to ash Did nothing but ride at her cousin’s side

Ilken descended upon their ca soldiers with their poison-slick claws before escaping to the skies

They ripped the ancient border-stones frorassy hilltops as they passed into Terrasen

Barely winded, unfazed by the snow, and hardly thinned out, Morath’s army left the last of the foothills

They rushed down the hillsides, a black wave breaking over the land Right onto the spears and shields of the Bane, theprinces at bay

It could not stand against the ilken, however They swept through it like cobwebs in a doorway, soic