Chapter Text
KALTENLOCH
IMPERIAL SUBMARINE BASE
50 MI SE OF ICEHAVEN
There’s something damning about standing on the topside of a submarine, something inherently wrong about it. It’s the feeling of in-between-ness; the suffocating iciness; the quasi-stillness.
It’s the waiting.
Floating there, cold and untethered, waiting to sink.
Wondering. Wanting. Fearing.
Two people are standing here now, looking out over the surface of the lake. They cut a strange silhouette against the grey sky and dark water. One is tall and thin with rust-red hair pulled back into an elaborate braid, the end of which hands far past his high collar. His robes are buckled tightly across the chest but billow out past the knees and elbows to flow with the wind. The other is much shorter but seems somehow more substantial; less likely to be carried away with the wind. Like the man, her robes are long and elegant. Unlike the man, her uniform is hooded. Yellow eyes gleam from within the shadow cast across her face, and her long, green ears poke out from her hood.
A single horn blast sounds.
The man’s shoulders slump as if the epaulets upon them have suddenly increased in weight and size. He sighs, but the sound is quickly swept away by the swirling air.
“It’s time,” Nott says, quiet, from her place at his elbow.
A moment passes. Nott’s breathing is hitched in her chest, hesitating against the harsh mist, wet and cold from the spray.
“I know,” the man replies, and the descent begins.