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All Chapters of Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10
66 Chapters
Chapter One
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
January 2005It was a cold January night. The winter wind was blowing throughout the valley village of Ravenna. The nine-year-old Rowan was lying in her bed in her family’s cottage. The window by her bed was closed tight, but she could still feel the freezing wind creeping in and gnawing at her beneath her blankets. This hardly bothered her, however, as she had lived through many winters just like this one in her young life. In fact, Rowan often found the cold to be rather soothing, as it helped her to drift off to sleep, but she was having trouble closing her eyes tonight.Rowan sat up in her bed, keeping her blanket wrapped around her, and stared blankly around her room. It was dark; the only source of light came from a candle flickering somewhere outside her room. It was quiet in the cottage, as it was every night. Being the youngest of the family, she had been put to bed f
Last Updated : 2021-12-29Chapter Two
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
Delmar hurried off with his father toward the eastern edges of the village. Many of their people were running the other way, carrying what little they could as they made their way toward the mountains. Those who were running with Delmar and their Chief, however, were armed with what weapons they could gather. Delmar scanned his surroundings, trying to figure out what was happening. He looked straight ahead to the east and, to his shock, he could see an orange light beginning to grow. His first thought was an obvious one: their attackers were trying to burn the village. “The Outsiders!” the Chief called out over the noise of the mayhem. “They’re attacking our lands!” Delmar was speechless as he listened to his father’s words. It was only several months before that he remembered the young Morenno brothers arriving in the valley with their parents, the leaders o
Last Updated : 2021-12-29Chapter Three
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
January, 2012Somewhere in the north-centralregions of the Dark Zone Night falls early in the heart of winter, casting its shadow over the vast mountains with a deep blanket of darkness. To the eyes of a small child, the end of the day is terrifying and fills their young minds with nightmares of the unknown. However, there are some who have never been bothered by the dark; those who have been molded by it, and welcome the darkness each day as both an old friend and an unfeeling enemy. So it had always been to the people of the lost Seluitah tribe, and their descendents, the brave and passionate Ravennites.For many generations the Ravennites’ civilization thrived in a vast, secluded territory of the Adirondack mountains known to the outside world as the Dark Zone. The name was given to the Ravennites’ territo
Last Updated : 2021-12-29Chapter Four
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
As dawn approached, the cloudless sky above the tree canopies was tinted a deep shade of blue like the mystifying depths of the sea. The stars were still scattered across the night but were growing fainter as the morning sun was not far below the horizon. The winter air was cold and whistled through the trees along with the early morning gusts, but it hardly fazed the party of men traveling through the dark woods.Early in the morning, the Runners had awoken and prepared to head out into the frontier of the Dark Zone once again. Over the past few months, the Ravennites’ campaign had been on the offensive after they struggled to push Ramon Morenno further into the eastern territories. Sensing that they had him on the run, the Ravennites attempted to chase their enemies down and push them out of the Dark Zone for good, but the defensive circle Ramon managed to establish around the Domineers’ terr
Last Updated : 2021-12-29Chapter Five
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
They had been running for a couple of miles, stopping on a few occasions and only for seconds at a time to catch their breath. After training and fighting with his team of Runners for many weeks, Alex had built up incredible levels of stamina and endurance. The freezing air no longer bothered him as much as it had the previous winter. He had become so acclimated to the cold now that he almost felt as though he was a part of it as he ran across the snow as rapidly and stealthily as a deer.Alex’s focus was set solid on their objective to track down the Domineers, but at the same time, he thought about Rowan much of the way. While her brother, Delmar, maintained his authority at the Citadel, Rowan had spent much of these months out in the mountainous frontier with Alex and the other strong Ravennite warriors as they pushed the Domineers back. Delmar had certainly become more confident in his sister tha
Last Updated : 2021-12-29Chapter Six
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
Sure enough, the Domineers were not far away. The sky was starting to brighten as dawn approached, but it would be a while yet before the morning sun was able to illuminate the woods of the great Appalachians. The Domineers were hiking through the hilly, snow-covered terrain in the form of a party consisting of over twenty men, armed lightly but dangerously. Most of them were extremely anxious about crossing back into the vast realm of no-man’s land after all the Domineers’ encounters with the Runners.The majority of the Domineers in this company were originally grouped under Ramon Morenno’s command when they had been gathered in the southern regions of the Dark Zone, but that was before his younger brother had fallen. Ever since then, all of the Outsiders had regrouped under Ramon’s chain of command and moved back up north along with the newly reformed Ravennites. They had heard a
Last Updated : 2021-12-29Chapter Seven
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
Hearing the commotion from the base of the small cliffside, the hairs on the back of Rand’s neck suddenly stood up. The rest of the Domineers were jumping to their feet and murmuring anxiously amongst themselves again. “They’re here,” Rand muttered to himself. The messengers from the other Domineer party were growing increasingly on edge. Rand suddenly turned his attention back to his company. “What are you doing!?” he scolded them. “Spread out and find them! Kill them all!” With that sentiment of authority, the Domineers immediately drew their swords and hurried out into the woods.Rand stepped closer to the Domineer messenger. “Listen carefully,” he said as he surreptitiously removed one of the many pouches from his belt. “You say your message is very important, and the Runners are very dangerous, but if you listen to what I say, I can see
Last Updated : 2021-12-29Chapter Eight
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
The Dark Zone had become an incredibly divisive territory since the Ravennites’ resurgence against the Outsiders. After Ramon’s efforts to strike back at the Ravennites, following the death of his brother at the Citadel, had all but failed, he spent much of the later months of the year isolating the last of the Domineers in the east of the Dark Zone. He knew that the Ravennites would be coming after them if they perceived the slightest opportunity to run them out of the mountains for good, so Ramon did his best to establish a defensive circle around himself. His fortifications proved effective enough, until the Runners were formed and began to decimate his defensive strategy little by little.Over the course of the following winter, Ramon was losing his men’s morale faster than he could rebuild his defenses. In the far eastern corners of the Dark Zone, he had established his new base at t
Last Updated : 2021-12-29Chapter Nine
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
Caine knew that he had free reign of his actions in the south. When he departed from Ramon’s camp, he led his chosen team of Domineers directly south along a path leading through a gap in the Dividing Mountains of the Dark Zone. When he first proposed his plans to Ramon, he had been sure to take every element into account. He told Ramon that, given the events he witnessed take place at the Citadel, he knew what sort of strategy they would need if they had any hope of taking down the Ravennites before they attacked first.The first thing Caine took into account about the Ravennites’ Citadel was its fortifications. The fortress was perched at the top of a lone plateau and was encircled by a formation of mountains. The plateau itself was too steep to be scaled, and it was true that the only way in and out of the Citadel was across a narrow strip of eroded land that formed a natural bridge from the
Last Updated : 2021-12-30Chapter Ten
Ice Cold - Part Two: Winter's Bane/Taylor Caley
It took Alex a few hours to lumber back to the camp from which the Runners had departed that morning. He was exhausted from his shocking encounter with the psychotic, suicidal Domineer. His mind was cluttered with thoughts about his friends, who had all been abruptly slaughtered right in front of his eyes. Their crazed prisoner coated himself with gunpowder and attempted to kill them all in the blast so that they would not be able to track the Domineers’ messenger any further. Despite his efforts, Alex had survived. How it was possible, he did not know. He remembered being slammed by the sheer force of the blast as the intensity of it burned the side of his face. It was painful at first, but as Alex quickly applied snow to his face to cool it down, the presence of it had all but dissipated. It was a minor wound, and that was what concerned him the most. As the intense heat of the explosion knoc
Last Updated : 2021-12-30
