Skull-Racing Championship

The heavy earth shook without warning, as if in an earthquake. The mammoth herd, quietly foraging, seemed to have encountered something indescribably terrifying. Led by their chief, Blood-Colored Ramsdell, they shielded their calves in the middle and charged frantically south.

Kas woke almost the instant the mammoths set off the tremors. He threw off his blanket, pulled a burning log from the campfire, and hurried to the edge of the slope.

Even with his many honors, Ramsdell was little more than a blurry dark-red silhouette in the night. Like a fortress of war, he charged at the very front, pulling ahead of the twenty-odd mammoths behind him.

But they weren't fleeing. They were smashing everything in sight that might impede the calves' escape, clearing a path for the herd through the gloom.

"Vooooo!"

Kas had never heard of any creature that could make Blood-Colored Ramsdell flee as if from a natural predator.

A herd of twenty adult mammoths was practically a tank army in the Sorrow Mountains.

The only things that could disrupt their advance were dragon-hunting crossbows with bolts as thick as a man's thigh—and natural disasters.

At the edge of the horizon, a haze as pale as ice crystals drifted slowly toward them. Countless blue specks, like flickering fireflies, shimmered and swayed together. Blue petals scattered in the wind, while a murky shadow stretched south beneath the moonlight.

"Winter Vanguard? Damn it, and I just had to run into one!"

Kas cursed under his breath.

The Winter Vanguard was an unpredictable magical storm. Those blue specks that flickered like fireflies were actually the crystal skulls of Ice Demons.

When it came to the most infamous monsters in the Sorrow Mountains, the Ice Demon family was at the top of the list.

From deformed Ice Demons as scrawny as wild dogs, to Wailing Ice Demons that hungered for flesh, to Extreme Cold Ice Demons as big as mountains, they were all names for monsters that attacked people in winter.

They were rumored to be incarnations of the anger and hatred of those who had frozen to death, though the shamans had never accepted that explanation. These magical creatures that appeared with the winter were among the greatest threats to the Rishiman People.

The Winter Vanguard referred to the natural disaster that struck before winter arrived, when Ice Demons gathered and encroached on warmer lands. In its wake, nothing remained but ice chips—and shaved ice.

Even a herd of mammoths as powerful as a tank army had to lower their proud tusks and run for their lives when faced with Ice Demons from Wintergrad.

Some said the Winter Vanguard was a secret weapon left behind by the ancient Thunder Titans. It had been created near the end of their war with the Rishiman People, unleashing endless storms of natural disaster against every Barbarian who might set foot in their towering homeland.

But the truth meant nothing to Kas now. He could feel the storm coming, and the burning log in his hand was about to go out in the gale.

He hurried back to camp and ordered in a tone that brooked no argument:

"Leave anything that'll slow us down, including the food. Follow me!"

Her animal instincts kicking in, Seneya reluctantly dropped the dried meat and hurried after Kas.

Only Isidore, still wrapped in his blanket and unaware of the danger, froze when he heard them.

"I don't think I can..."

"Do you want to die now or later? Isidore, if you want to survive in the Sorrow Mountains, you need more than a healthy body. You need a little luck and determination, too."

"Then I'll die later." Isidore let out a long breath. He knew that if he hesitated any longer, his chances of survival would be slim to none.

He had only heard the rumbling of the mammoths running. He didn't want to guess what had made Kas so nervous, afraid that learning the truth might make him lose the will to survive.

The mountain trails were rugged and unfamiliar, one moment sloping uphill, the next uphill again. The first sign of the Winter Vanguard was a gale caused by a sudden, drastic change in air pressure.

A tomb dug into the mountainside was blasted open by another gust that swept through a crack in the mountain. The soft soil exploded outward in a savage torrent, like the eruption of a hippopotamus-sized dung heap.

Clods of earth spun through the air, carrying dozens of skeletons, dried out and stripped down to scraps of flesh, bursting out of the cold tomb with them.

"Whoa! I'm flying!"

"Get out of my way! I'm in first place, damn it!"

"Ha! Flying feels amazing!"

Kas, leading Seneya and Isidore away from the area in the Winter Vanguard's path, looked up with a strange expression.

He watched skulls whiz overhead, wailing like ghosts as they shouted about holding a high-speed race.

They seemed eager to escape that cold, dark world. Huddled together, they rolled around with mud and insects clinging to them, racing toward the edge of the known world.

Kas glanced back at the panting Isidore and pointed to the skull that had just sailed over his head.

"Did you hear them talking?"

Isidore braced his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. He looked at the skulls rolling down the slope, his face full of question marks.

"You—you should become a shaman. Why not ask them where we should go?"

Kas nodded. It seemed like a pretty good idea to him.

He shouted at the wailing skulls in their race, hoping that the dead, fellow Rishiman Barbarians might point them in the right direction.

"Hey, buddy! Is there anywhere on this mountain where we can get away from the Winter Vanguard?"

"There's a cave running through the mountain on the left, hidden by vines! Damn Winter Vanguard's frozen my brains solid. It's cold as hell!"

"You've been dead for hundreds of years. Where'd you get brains?"

"Oh, so the thing that's been rattling around in my head was insect eggs! I knew something stank...

Wait, I've been dead for hundreds of years?!"

The skulls sped straight into the Winter Vanguard's haze, leaving behind a calm Kas and an equally calm Isidore.

"You heard them this time, right?"

Isidore nodded, starting to grow numb to it all.

He stopped viewing the strange attitudes toward life and death in the Sorrow Mountains through the lens of the civilized South. At least those wailing skulls meant no harm and had no intention of hurting anyone.

The Southerner took a swig of strong liquor, then suddenly spat it out. He needed a little fire in his belly to get moving.

As they ran, owls that had taken flight at dusk beat their wings and cut through the frigid sky, as if trying to escape the shadow of the Winter Vanguard. They rose and fell, sometimes landing on the cliffs. The animals' chirps and calls echoed through the wind, seeming to turn a desperate black in the silent darkness.

Following the direction their new friends had pointed out, Kas soon found a vine-covered rock face in an inconspicuous ravine.

Darkness filled the gaps between the vines, with no gray outline of rock or earth in sight. He drew his battle axe and chopped them down. With a forceful tug, he pulled the vines aside like curtains.

He glanced back at the foot of the mountain, already coated in frost. Knowing the Winter Vanguard was almost upon them, he urged Seneya and Isidore to hurry inside.

Grabbing the severed vines, Kas tied them in a tight knot. He figured they might at least slow the Ice Demons down—or maybe the creatures wouldn't enter the cave at all.

A dark shape suddenly sprang out from behind him. Morse Ironbone, who had been holding himself back for a long time, could no longer contain himself. He shot through the vines just as they were about to close, like a cannonball.

He shouted excitedly, "Kid, there can only be one champion in this skull race, and it's me—Morse Ironbone, the racing king of the Pierce Arena!"