Kolin: Glacial Grace by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Kolin-Glacial-Grace-1307249119

Kolin: Glacial Grace ANIMATION

Hounds of the Shattered Sky

At the edge of the charted world, where the compass needle spins in frantic circles, the night sky does not merely shine; it hunts. The expedition had been traveling for nineteen days across the Ross Ice Shelf, an endless expanse of fractured white, when the firmament began to sicken. The caravan consisted of three gargantuan, steam-powered tread-crawlers, their heavy iron tracks grinding the ancient glacier into powder. They carried thermal cores, desperately needed by the deep-ice outposts, and they carried Kolin.

She stood on the aft observation deck of the lead crawler, entirely unbothered by the brutal, sweeping winds. While the crew bundled themselves in layers of treated animal hide and heavy wool, peering through condensation-fogged goggles, Kolin wore a meticulously tailored, high-collared coat of pristine white. A matching ushanka rested atop her blonde hair, though it was a matter of fashion rather than necessity. Her pale, striking features held a serene detachment. To Kolin, the cold was not an enemy. It was a subservient ally.

"The barometric pressure is falling entirely too fast," grumbled Captain Rurik, stepping out onto the deck. The massive, bearded man had to shout over the roar of the crawler’s twin engines. He kept his gloved hands tucked deeply into his armpits. "And the magnetic field is fluctuating. The navigator’s instruments are completely useless. We are driving blind."

"We are not blind, Captain," Kolin replied, her voice a soft, melodic chime that somehow cut perfectly through the howling gale. She did not turn to look at him. Her crystalline blue eyes remained fixed on the heavens. "The path is illuminated. Though I admit, the light is somewhat… unstable tonight."

Rurik followed her gaze upward and shuddered. It was not a physical chill, but a deep, primal revulsion. The aurora borealis was usually a majestic, undulating curtain of emerald and violet. Tonight, it was stagnant. The bands of light hung in the sky like bruised, necrotic tissue, pulsing with a harsh, sickly neon glow. As they watched, a massive ribbon of green light cracked with the sound of a shattering glacier.

"What in the blazes was that?" Rurik demanded, taking a step backward.

"A collapse," Kolin murmured, a faint smile touching the corners of her lips. It was not a smile of joy, but of cold fascination. "The magnetosphere is bleeding. The energy is seeking a grounding point. It is seeking equilibrium."

"Energy doesn't crack like ice," Rurik argued, his breath puffing in terrified white clouds.

"Normally, no," Kolin agreed, finally turning to face him. Her beauty was arresting, sharp and immaculate, a stark contrast to the rugged brutality of the frontier. "But we are in a place where the rules of your meager sciences are stretched thin. The sky is breaking, Captain. And the fragments are falling."

She pointed a slender, gloved finger toward the frozen horizon. Rurik squinted into the gloom. At first, he saw only the swirling snow. Then, the anomaly registered.

Great flakes of luminescent plasma were drifting down from the shattered aurora. They did not extinguish when they touched the glacier. Instead, the radiant, violet and sickly-green energy began to pool, hiss, and coalesce. The ambient temperature around the crawler dropped so violently that the steel handrails let out a high-pitched, structural groan.

"They are forming shapes," Rurik whispered, his voice entirely drained of its former bluster. "Kolin… what is happening out there?"

"Nature abhorring a vacuum," Kolin answered calmly. She unbuttoned the top of her coat, a deliberate, casual movement that seemed entirely insane given the absolute zero conditions descending upon them. "The collapsing aurora is pure, starved energy. It lacks form, so it mimics the most efficient predatory shape known to this frozen wasteland. It is making wolves, Captain. Spectral hounds born of dead light."

Down on the lower tracks, a mechanic named Volkov was trying to chip away a buildup of blue ice from the primary drive gear. He never saw the light coming.

A creature entirely composed of undulating, spectral green plasma leapt from the snowbank. It made no sound. It had no physical mass, but as it passed through Volkov’s chest, the mechanic’s scream was cut instantly short. The creature absorbed his body heat in a fraction of a second. Volkov did not bleed. His eyes widened, frost instantly crystallized over his pupils, and his entire body turned into a br
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