Yesterday, 06:02 PM
[[This is a thread for the snow storm, and anyone who was at the carnival during it. I know most of the carnival chars are busy in threads elsewhere atm, so if you don't want to post you can assume they are there in the background somewhere. To keep in line with other threads, the snow hit bad at around 1pm]]
The message had come through a stranger on Ezekiel’s phone, but Dominik hadn’t questioned it; his cousin had always had an uncanny understanding of weather.
Moscovite winters were exactly the sort of unnecessary endurance that had once sent the carnival packing for fairer winds. It was their third winter here by the river, but experience didn’t make it any easier to bear. They’d already spent weeks shovelling the walkways ahead of the evening performances, until there was little more to do other than hunker down and accept it. It’d be spring thaw before they properly opened their doors again. But the past few days had been unusually difficult, even for what was expected.
Renáta had already ordered all the heavy equipment arranged into a tight, fortified perimeter; the semi-trailers, generators, mobile homes and concession trailers. Marek had dropped the canvas on the big top so the poles couldn’t snap and cause an accident if the winds got worse, and heavy vinyl tarps had been lashed to the trailers to cover the gaps between vehicles. Steel rigging provided shelter overtop, reinforced in haste over the last week. Anyone living in flimsy campers had been redirected to the most structurally sound spaces within, and everyone was living piled on top of one another, the animals and all. Portable propane heaters had been hauled inside, and bottled water stored alongside food stock and battery banks. They furiously ran the exhaust pipes upwards to avoid the carbon monoxide. It was a little more fraught than usual, but such measures had always seen them through before.
His mother frowned at him when he repeated his cousin’s warning to her. He used the same word the woman had.
Buried.
It was just shy of midday, and the snow was falling in steady soft clumps, but it had been doing that for days. Even if they’d wanted to, by now it was far too late to hit the road and outrun it. They’d made the decision to fortify and survive, and the ice had long since penned them in. Zeke had told them to evacuate. But go where? Vik wasn’t going to leave the snakes, nor the other keepers their own animals. Nothing here could move quickly even on a fair weather day, to say nothing of the oldest generations who were barely leaving the caravans at all in the cold spell. Exposure would kill them.
“We’ve survived bad weather before,” she said to him quietly. He couldn’t tell if she believed it. But he knew she couldn’t share her trepidation. Neither of them could. Her chin lifted, and her voice lifted too, pushing through the howling wind to crack sharp and commanding.
"Get inside! Everyone into the reinforced rigs, now!"
Many were already there, where it was safest and warmest, but at this time of day many weren’t. There were always jobs that needed doing. The call carried along as the order passed outward, and people began to move quickly.
Renáta was finishing the roll call, and Denes was shoving the last of the stragglers into the steel structures. His father’s jaw was tight. He wouldn’t look up at the sky.
Dominik’s heart was thumping hard in his temples, and his stomach had turned to water. He wished Roza was here and was also glad that she wasn’t, but if she had been here he couldn’t help but wonder if with the guardrail of her music they might have been able to do something to better protect themselves. Beyond, the sky had ceased to exist. The snow wasn't falling anymore; it was pouring, a solid, suffocating avalanche dropping out of nowhere, piling higher than was possible in only a matter of minutes. It was coming so thick he felt fear lodge tight and immovable inside himself, his thoughts ringing over and over with the woman's warning.
Buried.
This wasn't going to hold. But it had to. He looked toward the outer perimeter, a last sweeping check as guilt and responsibility warred inside – and then his heart stopped.
Through the blinding, horizontal wall of white, he caught a flash of darkness, and recognised the form. Kai. She was fifty yards outside the circle of trucks, half-buried to her waist, dragging Erzsi by the arm.
"Kai!" Dominik yelled, the wind snatching the sound straight from his throat. She didn't hear him. She couldn't. Even if she did, she wouldn't let go of Erzsi.
A deafening crack echoed from the left. The roof of the bunkhouse trailer caved in under the impossible weight of the snow. People inside screamed.
And suddenly Dominik realised he no longer had a choice. He couldn't wait, and he couldn't run, and he didn't want to, but he had to.
So he closed his eyes and reached.
It didn't trickle in. It detonated.
A raging torrent of liquid fire and razor-sharp ice slammed into his mind, roaring like a thousand collapsing dams. The sheer volume of the Power was staggering, a wild, venomous beast trying to tear his consciousness apart and burn him to ash from the inside out. Dominik gasped, dropping to one knee in the freezing mud as sweat instantly broke out across his skin.
Control it, he thought desperately, wrestling against the torrent. He'd never allowed himself to hold it like this. Not without Roza to guide. Don't let go. If you let go, everyone dies.
With zero grace, just pure, terrified brute force, Dominik shoved thick, clumsy ropes of air and earth outward. There was no elegance to it. In pure desperation he threw up a massive, jagged dome of solidified air over the entire carnival perimeter, slamming the edges down into the dirt and anchoring them into the bedrock beneath the fairgrounds. A concussive wave boomed outward. Tons of snow that had been seconds away from crushing the trailers slammed against the invisible barrier instead with the force of a freight train. Above Dominik’s head, the air shimmered violently like heat haze over summer asphalt, groaning under the immense, unnatural weight piling onto it.
He had bought them seconds. Maybe a minute.
Through the translucent, rippling wall of his own power, Dominik saw Kai stumble. A fresh cascade of snow, deflected off the side of Dominik’s dome, crashed down directly onto her and Erzsi, burying them completely.
Dominik’s focus fractured when he realised what he'd done.
The dome flickered. A massive section of the ceiling sagged, and a torrent of snow broke through, smashing the side mirror and hood off his mother's truck. People inside the rigs pressed their faces to the glass, wide-eyed and terrified, staring out at Dominik kneeling in the center of the yard.
Gritting his teeth, he forced the dome back up, then tried to do something he had never even attempted: he split his focus.
Leaving a narrow, ragged gap at the southern edge of the shield, he shoved a thick, blunt spear of air and fire outward into the snowbank where Kai had vanished. He didn't know how to measure the heat. He didn't know how it was even possible to thread a needle with a sledgehammer. The weave of fire erupted too hot, too fast. Outside the perimeter, a fifty-foot tunnel blasted through the packed snow in a cloud of hissing steam. The edges of the snowbank melted instantly, and the wooden ticket booth standing near the edge of the lot burst into sudden, roaring flames before the falling snow smothered it.
At the end of the steaming tunnel, Kai was on her hands and knees, coughing, her dark jacket smoking at the hem where the stray heat had scorched it. She stared down the impossible, shimmering corridor of warm air that had just materialised out of nowhere. At the far end of it, framed by the circled trucks, was Dominik, fallen on his knees, shaking violently, blood streaming from his nose.
Kai didn't waste time. She grabbed Erzsi under the arms, hauled her up, and ran.
Hurry, Dominik pleaded silently. His vision was swimming, black spots dancing across his eyes. Holding the massive dome while keeping the tunnel open felt like trying to hold up two collapsing buildings with his bare hands. Every second felt like an hour. The Power was screaming in his head, begging him to draw more, to let it burn right through him just to make the strain stop.
Finally Kai lunged through the gap in the perimeter, dragging Erzsi across the mud just as a colossal shelf of snow broke loose above them.
Dominik didn't think. He slammed the gap shut.
The barrier sealed with a sonic boom that rattled the teeth in everyone’s skulls. Looking up, Dominik saw the translucent dome bowing inward, the sheer weight of so many accumulating meters of snow was too much for it alone. He couldn't hold it forever. The moment he let go the barrier would vanish, and the mountain above them would crush them flat.
He had to turn the snow itself into a roof.
Summoning the last of his strength, he unleashed a wild, desperate wave of fire across the entire inner surface of his dome, flash-melting the bottom layer of the snowpack pressing against his shield, followed half a second later by a violent, freezing surge of water and air. A deafening crack-boom echoed through the enclosed space as thousands of tons of slush froze solid in an instant.
Dominik let go.
The torrent vanished, leaving behind a ringing, hollow silence. Then he collapsed face-first into the freezing mud, gasping for air, his muscles twitching uncontrollably. Above them, there was no more howling wind. No more falling snow. Only a massive, cavern-like dome of thick, translucent blue ice – hundreds of feet wide, holding back a hundred feet of white oblivion. Before the blackness finally pulled him under, Dominik heard the heavy crunch of boots running through the mud, and felt Kai’s warm, trembling hands grabbing his shoulders, pulling him out of the slush.
The message had come through a stranger on Ezekiel’s phone, but Dominik hadn’t questioned it; his cousin had always had an uncanny understanding of weather.
Moscovite winters were exactly the sort of unnecessary endurance that had once sent the carnival packing for fairer winds. It was their third winter here by the river, but experience didn’t make it any easier to bear. They’d already spent weeks shovelling the walkways ahead of the evening performances, until there was little more to do other than hunker down and accept it. It’d be spring thaw before they properly opened their doors again. But the past few days had been unusually difficult, even for what was expected.
Renáta had already ordered all the heavy equipment arranged into a tight, fortified perimeter; the semi-trailers, generators, mobile homes and concession trailers. Marek had dropped the canvas on the big top so the poles couldn’t snap and cause an accident if the winds got worse, and heavy vinyl tarps had been lashed to the trailers to cover the gaps between vehicles. Steel rigging provided shelter overtop, reinforced in haste over the last week. Anyone living in flimsy campers had been redirected to the most structurally sound spaces within, and everyone was living piled on top of one another, the animals and all. Portable propane heaters had been hauled inside, and bottled water stored alongside food stock and battery banks. They furiously ran the exhaust pipes upwards to avoid the carbon monoxide. It was a little more fraught than usual, but such measures had always seen them through before.
His mother frowned at him when he repeated his cousin’s warning to her. He used the same word the woman had.
Buried.
It was just shy of midday, and the snow was falling in steady soft clumps, but it had been doing that for days. Even if they’d wanted to, by now it was far too late to hit the road and outrun it. They’d made the decision to fortify and survive, and the ice had long since penned them in. Zeke had told them to evacuate. But go where? Vik wasn’t going to leave the snakes, nor the other keepers their own animals. Nothing here could move quickly even on a fair weather day, to say nothing of the oldest generations who were barely leaving the caravans at all in the cold spell. Exposure would kill them.
“We’ve survived bad weather before,” she said to him quietly. He couldn’t tell if she believed it. But he knew she couldn’t share her trepidation. Neither of them could. Her chin lifted, and her voice lifted too, pushing through the howling wind to crack sharp and commanding.
"Get inside! Everyone into the reinforced rigs, now!"
Many were already there, where it was safest and warmest, but at this time of day many weren’t. There were always jobs that needed doing. The call carried along as the order passed outward, and people began to move quickly.
Renáta was finishing the roll call, and Denes was shoving the last of the stragglers into the steel structures. His father’s jaw was tight. He wouldn’t look up at the sky.
Dominik’s heart was thumping hard in his temples, and his stomach had turned to water. He wished Roza was here and was also glad that she wasn’t, but if she had been here he couldn’t help but wonder if with the guardrail of her music they might have been able to do something to better protect themselves. Beyond, the sky had ceased to exist. The snow wasn't falling anymore; it was pouring, a solid, suffocating avalanche dropping out of nowhere, piling higher than was possible in only a matter of minutes. It was coming so thick he felt fear lodge tight and immovable inside himself, his thoughts ringing over and over with the woman's warning.
Buried.
This wasn't going to hold. But it had to. He looked toward the outer perimeter, a last sweeping check as guilt and responsibility warred inside – and then his heart stopped.
Through the blinding, horizontal wall of white, he caught a flash of darkness, and recognised the form. Kai. She was fifty yards outside the circle of trucks, half-buried to her waist, dragging Erzsi by the arm.
"Kai!" Dominik yelled, the wind snatching the sound straight from his throat. She didn't hear him. She couldn't. Even if she did, she wouldn't let go of Erzsi.
A deafening crack echoed from the left. The roof of the bunkhouse trailer caved in under the impossible weight of the snow. People inside screamed.
And suddenly Dominik realised he no longer had a choice. He couldn't wait, and he couldn't run, and he didn't want to, but he had to.
So he closed his eyes and reached.
It didn't trickle in. It detonated.
A raging torrent of liquid fire and razor-sharp ice slammed into his mind, roaring like a thousand collapsing dams. The sheer volume of the Power was staggering, a wild, venomous beast trying to tear his consciousness apart and burn him to ash from the inside out. Dominik gasped, dropping to one knee in the freezing mud as sweat instantly broke out across his skin.
Control it, he thought desperately, wrestling against the torrent. He'd never allowed himself to hold it like this. Not without Roza to guide. Don't let go. If you let go, everyone dies.
With zero grace, just pure, terrified brute force, Dominik shoved thick, clumsy ropes of air and earth outward. There was no elegance to it. In pure desperation he threw up a massive, jagged dome of solidified air over the entire carnival perimeter, slamming the edges down into the dirt and anchoring them into the bedrock beneath the fairgrounds. A concussive wave boomed outward. Tons of snow that had been seconds away from crushing the trailers slammed against the invisible barrier instead with the force of a freight train. Above Dominik’s head, the air shimmered violently like heat haze over summer asphalt, groaning under the immense, unnatural weight piling onto it.
He had bought them seconds. Maybe a minute.
Through the translucent, rippling wall of his own power, Dominik saw Kai stumble. A fresh cascade of snow, deflected off the side of Dominik’s dome, crashed down directly onto her and Erzsi, burying them completely.
Dominik’s focus fractured when he realised what he'd done.
The dome flickered. A massive section of the ceiling sagged, and a torrent of snow broke through, smashing the side mirror and hood off his mother's truck. People inside the rigs pressed their faces to the glass, wide-eyed and terrified, staring out at Dominik kneeling in the center of the yard.
Gritting his teeth, he forced the dome back up, then tried to do something he had never even attempted: he split his focus.
Leaving a narrow, ragged gap at the southern edge of the shield, he shoved a thick, blunt spear of air and fire outward into the snowbank where Kai had vanished. He didn't know how to measure the heat. He didn't know how it was even possible to thread a needle with a sledgehammer. The weave of fire erupted too hot, too fast. Outside the perimeter, a fifty-foot tunnel blasted through the packed snow in a cloud of hissing steam. The edges of the snowbank melted instantly, and the wooden ticket booth standing near the edge of the lot burst into sudden, roaring flames before the falling snow smothered it.
At the end of the steaming tunnel, Kai was on her hands and knees, coughing, her dark jacket smoking at the hem where the stray heat had scorched it. She stared down the impossible, shimmering corridor of warm air that had just materialised out of nowhere. At the far end of it, framed by the circled trucks, was Dominik, fallen on his knees, shaking violently, blood streaming from his nose.
Kai didn't waste time. She grabbed Erzsi under the arms, hauled her up, and ran.
Hurry, Dominik pleaded silently. His vision was swimming, black spots dancing across his eyes. Holding the massive dome while keeping the tunnel open felt like trying to hold up two collapsing buildings with his bare hands. Every second felt like an hour. The Power was screaming in his head, begging him to draw more, to let it burn right through him just to make the strain stop.
Finally Kai lunged through the gap in the perimeter, dragging Erzsi across the mud just as a colossal shelf of snow broke loose above them.
Dominik didn't think. He slammed the gap shut.
The barrier sealed with a sonic boom that rattled the teeth in everyone’s skulls. Looking up, Dominik saw the translucent dome bowing inward, the sheer weight of so many accumulating meters of snow was too much for it alone. He couldn't hold it forever. The moment he let go the barrier would vanish, and the mountain above them would crush them flat.
He had to turn the snow itself into a roof.
Summoning the last of his strength, he unleashed a wild, desperate wave of fire across the entire inner surface of his dome, flash-melting the bottom layer of the snowpack pressing against his shield, followed half a second later by a violent, freezing surge of water and air. A deafening crack-boom echoed through the enclosed space as thousands of tons of slush froze solid in an instant.
Dominik let go.
The torrent vanished, leaving behind a ringing, hollow silence. Then he collapsed face-first into the freezing mud, gasping for air, his muscles twitching uncontrollably. Above them, there was no more howling wind. No more falling snow. Only a massive, cavern-like dome of thick, translucent blue ice – hundreds of feet wide, holding back a hundred feet of white oblivion. Before the blackness finally pulled him under, Dominik heard the heavy crunch of boots running through the mud, and felt Kai’s warm, trembling hands grabbing his shoulders, pulling him out of the slush.