The climb up the southern face of Dead Man's Pass was a nightmare of frozen granite, loose shale, and unstable ice slabs. On Leo's left, a sheer three-hundred-foot drop fell away into the dark abyss of Frost Gorge; on his right, the vertical rock wall was coated in an inch-thick sheet of clear, glass-like black ice.
Leo moved with methodical, professional precision. He kicked the front points of his steel crampons into the ice seams, driving his right axe into the frozen rock before hauling his body weight upward three feet at a time.
Every fifty yards, he would pause, leaning his chest against the cold granite to catch his breath while checking Astra's position on his wrist-mounted radar screen. Astra hovered thirty feet above the rock chimney, her powerful wings beating steadily against the eighty-knot headwind.
Her thermal sensory vision was locked onto a narrow rock fissure seventy feet above Leo's position. Inside the fissure, three distinct orange-red heat signatures were huddled together, their body temperatures dropping rapidly as the wind-chill reached minus thirty.
Astra folded her wings into a tight wedge, executing a controlled fifty-knot dive down the rock chimney. She pulled up inches above the fissure ledge, landing on a sharp granite spur directly outside the cave mouth. She let out a series of short, rhythmic whistles—a friendly, reassuring call meant to let the trapped students know help was near.
Inside the narrow rock alcove, seventeen-year-old Julian Vance raised his head from his knees, his face pale and crusted with frostbite. Beside him, his two classmates, Chloe and Mark, were shivering under a single torn emergency blanket, their hands blue from the extreme cold.
"Julian... look!" Chloe gasped, her voice barely a whisper above the storm. "On the ledge... it's a falcon!"
Julian stared in disbelief at the magnificent copper bird standing in the snow, her starlight-tipped feathers glowing softly against the dark granite.
"That's Astra," Julian breathed, a surge of hope flooding his chest. "That's Ranger Croft's search falcon! They found us!"
Astra stepped closer to the cave entrance, dropping a small pouch of instant chemical heat packs from her leg harness onto Julian's lap. Julian grabbed the heat packs with trembling hands, snapping the inner seals to activate the warm chemical reaction before pressing them against his classmates' freezing hands.
"Hold on, guys," Julian sobbed with relief, wrapping his arms around Chloe and Mark. "Ranger Croft is right behind her!"
Down below the ledge, Leo heard Astra's confirmation cry ring out through the chimney. He set his jaw, drove his ice axes deeper into the frozen rock, and pushed himself up the final thirty feet of vertical wall. He hauled his boots onto a narrow granite shelf, resting his weight against the cliff while securing a temporary anchor screw into the glacier ice.
"Hold tight up there!" Leo shouted up into the storm. "I'm climbing the final fifteen feet!"
The vertical granite wall of Dead Man's Pass offered zero protection from the roaring arctic squall. Ice dust coated Leo's shoulders as he hauled himself upward foot by foot. Fifty feet above, Astra circled the rock chimney in tight tactical loops. Her thermal vision mapped every crevice in the cliff wall, guiding Leo's eyes to the safest holds.
Julian Vance huddled close to Chloe and Mark inside the dark rock alcove, shielding them from the freezing draft with his own body.
"She's hovering right outside the ledge!" Julian whispered excitedly to his classmates. "Ranger Croft is climbing the chimney now!"
Astra let out a clear, ringing call that reverberated across the gorge, letting the freezing teenagers know that help was only seconds away. The vertical granite wall of Dead Man's Pass offered zero protection from the roaring arctic squall. Ice dust coated Leo's shoulders as he hauled himself upward foot by foot.
Fifty feet above, Astra circled the rock chimney in tight tactical loops. Her thermal vision mapped every crevice in the cliff wall, guiding Leo's eyes to the safest holds. Julian Vance huddled close to Chloe and Mark inside the dark rock alcove, shielding them from the freezing draft with his own body.
Astra let out a clear, ringing call that reverberated across the gorge, letting the freezing teenagers know that help was only seconds away.
The thermal column rose from the warm granite face of the southern ridge, carrying Aether high above the treeline on invisible currents. She circled the beacon peak three times before folding her wings and dropping into a controlled precision stoop.