In Due Course

[Sören]

Air hissed passed gritted teeth. The snow numbed his face, cooled the edges of the pain, but did not cure it. Only there was no time to lay mewling on the ground like a mortal. Sören let the ice fall, blinked razors, saw hazy blackness. He yanked one of the scarves from around his neck, pulling impatiently when it tangled with the amulet's chord. Then he stretched the fabric taut over half his face, swaddling the offending eye shut.

He would deal with it later. Contemplate the sacrifice. The repercussions.

Of the blindness.

I paid the price willingly.

He pushed himself up, testing an unsteady balance. Closing his fist made the pain an exquisite decadence, but he needed both the alertness and the strength of his gift. The power trickled through his veins, re-fortification, but it was lapped by the warning of exhaustion. He spat bloody phlegm on the snow, then stalked away to discover what Declan was shouting about.

At the drained lake's edge, the beast's body lay on his blind side; he paid the damned creature not one whit of attention. Bone and ice crunched underfoot as he picked his way down. The black maw of an entrance greeted them at the basin's centre. Even through his furs Sören could feel the icy chill within, a place bereft of human life for thousands of years.

"Then lead on."
His voice was gravel, laced through with pain. His jaw clenched with it, unable to return the grin of victory. But the fever in his visible eye was fierce; he was as eager as Declan to descend.