Snow continues to swirl, wind continues to howl, and the storm rages on. Shadows hidden amongst the white remain hidden, protected and alone together while they wait. Safe, at least for now, they simply listen.

They had started with the captain: Caathyn aLlaanmuu. She is the one who first heard them listening, sensed the danger, set her ship and her people on a course to find them. Now, they feel as if they know her as well as they might: strong, capable, supporting, determined-- crushing, controlling, demanding, and obsessed. A balance of good and bad, a flip side to each coin in her collection, and the leader.

Now, they turn their listening to the other woman in the collection of three-- such a small number, three; it seems wrong, somehow. No matter, they can ponder the meaning of such a small number later. Now, they focus on Zyrshaa uDaassoon. There seems, on the surface, nothing to focus on: the woman is empty, still as a single snowflake on the ground, without a breath of wind to make her fly. If the sun should shine on her, will she melt? Surely not, and there is more to her-- but they do not see it yet.

The third member of the collection is not so opaque, nor so still. A circling eddy of wind and sleet is Aashuryn aVuny, freezing all he touches, including himself. The shadows listen to him while he drives himself in his circles, watching, moving, always watching, always moving. Fear and determination and hatred and more fear drive him around and around, like a tornado of stinging wind. He is fascinating, and well worth the listen.

After all, there is not much else to do while sitting in a snowstorm and waiting for rescue.

~~~~~

A shrill buzzer sounded from the nearest panel of lights, buttons, and speakers. Aashuryn dropped his staff with a start, swore softly, and stooped to pick it up before pacing over to the console to see what the message was, picking up a towel to rub dry his bare, sweating, scar-crossed hands as he did so. He scowled at the text scrolling across the screen, though he should have expected it: he had felt the tell-tale shudder through the ship an hour ago that said they had stopped, and the same mere minutes before that had signaled starting again. The message was not surprising: reconvene for further briefing.

He should have been pleased at the thought of a Hunt, a break in his boredom and the oppressive, watching silence of the ship, but this one seemed so futile, purposeless, and, he expected, bloodless. Rescue the group of half-breed mages, avoid confrontation if at all possible, escape with their lives if they could... their shrunken, weakened Hunt was good for very little. Aashuryn missed the intense surveillance, the coordinated planning, the exciting attacks of the past. He knew that nothing would ever live up to their last true Hunt, but he kept looking for something that might, and it was certain that nothing they'd done since even came close. It was frustrating-- though, he had to admit, a bit of a relief to only have two Hunter-mates to keep track of, rather than five. If only Searchers saw more action, he might transfer-- though Searchers might see more action than his own half-Hunt, it seemed.

With an irritable sigh, Aashuryn ran a wet comb through his hair to reorder it, pulled his shirt and gloves back on, and strode for the exit from the practice room, staff still in hand. Beside the door sat his scabbard belt and twin swords, and he buckled those back on as he left the room. Just down the hall, through an open doorway, was the conference room, already full with the intense presence of the ship's captain, Caathyn, seated in her customary chair at the round, six-seating table. All the empty chairs were just another reminded that nothing was as it was supposed to be.

Zyrshaa stepped into the room as silently as ever, a moment after Aashuryn, and took her own seat. Aashuryn deigned seating himself, as always; whenever he sat at that table, his skin crawled with anxiety that someone could step up behind him, take him by surprise. Caathyn, at least, never forced him to do so, at least not after the time he'd nearly gutted her husband for walking behind his chair. That was one good thing about their reduced Hunt: Aavayl no longer wished his wife's company, and so no longer traveled with them. Aashuryn had never liked the old man. He always felt like the old sneak was up to something, and that something would undoubtedly be malicious.

Of course, he tended to expect that of everyone... just quiet, old-fashioned Aavayl more than most.

"All right," Caathyn began without preamble, interrupting his thoughts. His eyes, which had left her only briefly to watch Zyrshaa drift suspiciously into the room, settled back on her. "I've pinpointed the location of the group who sent out the call. It's on the sixth planet in the largest system, unnamed as far as our records know, and it's a cold one. Inhabited mostly be dragon-like creatures-- sentient but feral, according to the records. We're not likely to run into any."

Aashuryn made an effort not to be disappointed. Zyrshaa, as usual, wore no expression at all except frigid detachment, as if this mattered no more than what set of shoes she decided to wear any given day. Perhaps, to her, it didn't; she was always a strange one, and Aashuryn mistrusted her deeply. When one didn't wear their emotions for all to see, then they obviously had something to hide, and that always made Aashuryn suspicious.

Caathyn continued. "We're taking the shuttle down, making landing in a tree-less gully just to the south of where the call originated. It seems like the storm is still going strong, so we'll have to bundle up." Then she said what Aashuryn had been expecting: "Under no circumstances are we to seek out confrontation with whoever is threatening these mages, not until we have more information and the refugees are safe aboard the ship."

"And later?" Aashuryn asked.

"We'll see; it depends on what they have to say. Any questions?"

"Weapons?" Zyrshaa queried.

"Always, but nothing too obvious."

"Plan for if we do run into trouble? You did say you think someone is looking for these mages," Aashuryn reminded her.

"The usual." That, and the glance she flicked at him, made him smile grimly. "The usual" meant he got to do what he did best, creating cover for the others to escape with the refugees, while Caathyn provided gunshot cover for him.

"Any more questions? No? Meet in the shuttle launch in one hour, then. Dismissed."

An hour and a half later, the shuttle had landed, and the three Hunters suited up wordlessly in warmth-spelled suits and cloaks. Aashuryn checked his blades reflexively, testing their draw; Caathyn made sure her various guns were loaded and ready. Zyrshaa, pulling the green-tinted goggles down over her eyes, didn't have to check her equipment. Nothing had changed since she'd put herself together before meeting the others at the shuttle: a whip coiled on each hip, one with sharp edging and the other blunt; a packet of loaded syringes in her two largest pockets, all organized by habit and feel according to what their contents did; several packets of dusty mixtures in tiny pockets all over her person; a single long, poisoned dagger strapped to the small of her back, the sheathed blade resting against her spine between her shoulder-blades. She was as ready as she ever was to exchange the safe, sterile environment of her rooms for the wild, unknown world beyond the ship.

Though Zyrshaa had taken her second life as a chance to make a difference, make her own decisions rather than let someone else make them for her, she expected-- with the lack of emotion she had grown accustomed to-- that she would be better suited to staying behind and playing with animals, botanicals, and chemicals, forever isolated from the world with its judging and suspicious eyes. This was what she had chosen, however, so this is what she would live with. She had a captain who she could respect, and who respected her, and a single Hunter-mate to deal with, whose suspicious glares and paranoid arrogance she could safely ignore.

Caathyn led them out into the snow, and they trudged uphill towards the grove of trees she'd said contained the hiding mages. Zyrshaa let her body work automatically while her mind went over what little they knew, without any interest. Three minds, Caathyn had decided: three people on the run from some vague, unknown villain-- a "collector", Caathyn described this villain, but not even she seemed to know why she had plucked that word from their quarry's minds. "Minds" seemed a little vauge, as well, as Caathyn found them decidedly odd. Zyrshaa suggested the use of a drug or a spell to alter their perceptions somehow, and Caathyn had admitted that the suggestion had merit. So, among the various poisons and drugs she carried, Zyrshaa also had a small pharmacopoeia of antidote, revival, and spell-breaking mixtures, just in case she was right.

They reached the trees at last, fighting the wind the whole way-- and yet, the relief that being within a natural windbreak did not come. If anything, the wind and flying snow seemed to pick up, stinging even Zyrshaa's thick skin. The temperature seemed to drop, the snow grow more blinding, the storm more powerful-- within the grove. It made no sense. Zyrshaa felt a prickling of interest in the back of her mind, a twinge of curiosity, to wonder just what would cause such a thing.

Then they broke through into a clearing at the exact center of the grove, and the storm suddenly died to nothing. Zyrshaa absently recognized that, somehow, they'd entered the eye of the storm, the singular place of calm around which the storm raged. It was even colder here, though the wind no longer threw her braids into a tangle or fought with her cloak. They all stopped, Caathyn in the lead point of their three-point formation. In the strange mix of cloudy murk and snowy brightness, there sat a ring of children, all identical, all facing outwards, eyes closed. There had to be twelve of them, fifteen even. Yes, fifteen. Zyrshaa felt curiosity twist into something more painful, memory, and promptly buried emotion behind the chill of impassivity.

"I thought you said there were only three of them," Aashuryn muttered, hand twisting on the staff he'd brought for probing the snow as if it were a weapon.

"There are," Caathyn replied firmly, though her eyes were moving from face to face with a worry her tone could not completely bely. Zyrshaa refused to take interest. "I just don't know which ones they are. It's like they're all sharing the same three spirits...."

All fifteen heads turned, fifteen pairs of eyes fixed on them, and fifteen bodies rose to their feet-- exactly the same. The howling of the wind through the trees around them suddenly died, snow began to settle, and the storm quite suddenly ceased its ferociousness. Zyrshaa looked around without curiosity; weather magic, she thought now, used as a smokescreen behind which the children were hiding, which was hardly something to wonder over. So they had more refugees than they expected. They were small; they could share rooms. They needed to get them on board their shuttle and back to the ship as soon as possible, before the drop in the storm led whoever the children were hiding from right to them.

Caathyn stepped forward, dropping to a crouch, when no one else did, and held out one hand. "We heard you," she said simply. "We're here to take you someplace safe."

~~~~~

The shadows watch the Hunter captain as she kneels down to them. Her words are strange, but they understand them anyway. For a moment, they weigh them, listening as always for their collector, and hearing nothing of her in Caathyn aLlaanmuu. Then they smile, as one, and step forward, leaving the icy shades of them to melt into nothing, and put three small hands on hers.

Chapter Three

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