Spectres reached up from the reflection. Their arms flowed with a misty darkness. They swarmed around the Red Griffon's frozen body. They recoiled back at each of her gasps. They leaned over her blood. The smaller ones tracing strange runes and lines in it. They were reflections that moved without an origin. No one stood upon the glass ice-shelf but the frozen Red Griffon and the approaching drake. With a large pack bundled on his back and a lamp swaying on a pole hitched to his side.

The reflections' talons reached forth from their black bodies. Each of their claws gnarled and long with patches of ice pot-marked over them. They halted at her long breath, then clasped her reflection. They gripped mounds of cloth and feathers, pulling and ripping her robes open. They plucked her feathers and dabbed them in the blood. Her body was untouched, but the eyes of her reflection in the icy plane snapped open.

Her reflection moved whilst she laid still.

The Mirror-image seemed to squeal and flail as the claws turned violent. The black wraiths started digging into her. Tearing chunks of meaty mounds out. Her frost-bitten tail twitched as a tide of blood pooled from her wounds. The Mirror-image struggled and thrashed before its strength was drained away with its blood. Her reflection slumped as the blood spread outward, covering the ice. The head of the Red Griffon's reflection slammed against the ground in a perfect pose of its origin. Its eye was red with bulbous veins popping out. The eye stared at the Red Griffon's flickering eyelids and icy eyelashes before the blood crept along and concealed it all.

The drake began to jog, his heavy claw covers thumping against the ice. The lamp jiggled on his pole. The blood receded when he arrived. Slowly crept back into a normal mirror image of the Red Griffon's form. He regarded her for a moment, a shaky exhale escaping his cowl that drifted up in a small cloud. The drake knelt and felt her neck. The feathers there were stiff, and her skin was crusty with dried blood. He glanced around, not knowing fully why. It wasn't exactly conscious. The looking-glass plain stretched forever with the sky. It looked more like two, colossal mirrors slanted against each other than an iceshelf and a dreary, heavy sky. Anything that wasn't ice was visible for all eternity out here.

Yet still he glanced furtively with darting eyes. A tiny, niggling feeling deep in his bowels that warned him. There isn't anything too kind out here.

Dusk began to dip over the horizon. The clouds of grey blackened into dark soot and the lightning strikes became stark booms of light against the sky's membrane. A glimmer of light flickered at the mirror's meeting at the horizon as the sun sunk beneath the clouds. Like a sea mine dropped into the ocean. The temperature chilled and plummeted further into an icy depth.

He scrambled and unclipped his pack, it thudded on the ice and he feared a cobweb of cracks would jump into existence. But the iceshelf was thick. He unwound the pack and reached in, retrieving a slew of stocky and crumpled blankets. Splaying them out like a picnic he heaved the Red Griffon onto them. They were warm, as inside his pack he kept an ember of the white pyre in a copper jar. It burned eternal.

For a moment he panicked. She was grievously scarred, deep lacerations travelled over her right foreleg and back like she'd been whipped. To remove her robes and cauterise it would kill her with the freezing cold. He could start with her leg. Reaching into his pack he retrieved the copper jar and a large burner. It was wrought iron and heavy, but the drake was abnormally large and quite strong. He clamped the jar into place and slowly turned the lid loose. The ember of the white pyre crackled from within and already a hot vent of heat sizzled from the tip of burner. He inhaled before squeaking the nob on the slide slowly. It screeched with rust before the fuse inhaled air into the jar. The ember swallowed the oxygen and suddenly vented flame into a small jet on the top.

The white flame was searing hot, despite its size. Its pale glow shone brilliantly off the ice and reflected with powerful pillars up into the darkening sky. He carefully removed the tattered remains of her robe from her right foreleg. The marks of his brother's claw vandalised her flesh. He sparked with anger at his kin and himself. He plucked some of the ruined feathers from her arm and her pink flesh poked out around the wound. Holding the burner close he aimed the flame at the scar.

The stench of roasting pheasant assaulted his nostrils. He kept his talons stiff as he traced the jet of flame along her wounds. The flesh cooked immediately, blackened and charred. The canyons of blood sealed. That smoky stench wafted onto his tongue, he wiggled his nose. She smelt like chicken. But it was a revolting scent, making his stomach empty like a void and turn over like a barrel. He removed the burner and inspected his work. Two charred clawed marks appeared like cooled magma on her foreleg. The drake felt tears begin to form, he blinked them away as the air bit his eyes. He took her foreleg gently, handling it like a wounded rabbit, and wrapped it in a gauze. It was pulled tight and he clad it in a warm cloth. He sent a silent prayer. Thank the pyre she was unconscious, he wouldn't be able to continue under her squeals of pain and accusing eyes. She was in a catatonic sleep. He hoped she was dreaming of a warm bed.

The drake rolled her over flat on her stomach. He gasped as he saw not only her slashed back, but her tail. Half of which was shrivelled stringy. It was no longer a shapely, playful thing but a frozen piece of wood. The upper part wasn't frost bitten but already had pale purple bruises and orange stains that dirtied her brown coat. A pitchy moan escaped his throat.

A shroud of darkness began to enclose around them as the pale clouds dipped further under the iceshelf. Even the drake, bundled under robes and garments, wearing heavy talon covers felt an icy shiver scramble up his spine. He inhaled then set to the real work. Speed would have to do.

He tore off the ruined remains of her robe and inspected the extent of her lacerations. Four deep fissures scarred her back, inflicted by index claws, they were rosy red with pink chunks hanging loosely from their edges. The fifth, done by a thumb claw, ran deep from the back of her neck down to the end of her backside. A miracle that her tail wasn't sliced clean off. A miracle further that she had risen and stumbled on through the glacier for so long. Seconds ticked by and little crystals began blooming in her cherry stained fur. His huge claws moved deftly and expertly. He cleaned her scars with a rag and picked off the pink chunks. Taking up the burner again he brought it close. The tips of her fur singed and he almost reared away as the stench of burning hair hit him. Squeaking the jet's knob, he shortened its supply of oxygen. The heat receded as the white flame shrunk. Flipping it over he plunged it in her first scar like a spear. Again, burning pheasant and burnt chicken filled the air. He traced it quickly and repeated with the others. For the fifth, he squeaked the nob and gave it more fuel. The flame grew larger and he cauterised the thumb-claw's scar.

Placing the burner to the side he wrapped great linen cloths around her chest and body and down to her hindleg, covering the ugly marks. He bundled her up in one of his robes. For the Red Griffon it was like wearing a blanket. He tightened it with gauze.

Finally, his eyes wandered beneath her hindlegs. Poking out of her robe her dead tail laid listless. It was stiff and unmoving like a lead pipe. The top half still had blood coursing through it and could be saved. The bottom was a black wasteland. He took it in his talons, tears trickling down his muzzle as he felt how, dead it was. Thick and unmoving. The fur more like metal than a warm, natural blanket.

There was no time to prepare himself, the frostbite inched further and further up with each couple of seconds. He wiped his face. The drake scratched the ice with a single index claw. It skittered along, making the ground squeal. It left no mark on the mirror-land, which he regarded with a curious glance. But it was sharp.

Raising his claw high above his head he hesitated. A whimper, then he growled and brought it down, shearing the icy air apart with ferocity. His claw sliced through the dead meat with ease and the latter half dropped off and puffed onto the rug. Taking the tiny flame and burning the tip of what was left he wrapped the end in gauze and stuffed it in her robe.

He felt her neck, his razor claws clasping it gently. The weak blip that was her pulse was there. Darkness was heavy now and it enclosed them in a sarcophagus of black. The only light beating it back was from his pole lantern and the burner. Whiter than the snowflakes that began drifting around. They evaporated in little smoky puffs when they came too close to the burner's flame.

The wind howled and his frills pricked up beneath his hood. A ghostly hum wove under the breeze. It was soft and malicious, trying to be concealed. He clutched her talons and paws. Easily holding all four in his grasp. He blew hot air into his grip and massaged them, warming her freezing soles and claws.

As he did this he shied away from the edge and pulled them to the centre of their globe of light. Colossal walls of darkness rose around them. There were no stars against the sky. Only the screaming wind and that stealthy hum. There could be a prowling bear just beyond the barrier of black, no more then a metre away and he wouldn't see it.

Despite his size, his razor claws and his knife-like teeth he hugged the Red Griffon's body to his. She began to warm. He hugged her close like she was a teddy-bear. As children do in their rooms at night. As if this would somehow ward off the crouching and snarling demons beneath. He propped up his pack on the blankets and leant against it with her in his forelegs. His winding tail coiled up through her legs and onto his chest.

The tip of his nose felt numb. Could beaks suffer frostbite? He supposed they could.

They sat like that together for hours, entangled in forelegs, hindlegs and one long tail. The ghostly hum beneath that breeze kept him firmly awake. It was far, but not too far. Anything could see their bubble of light for quite possibly forever in this darkness. Anything could be slowly prowling on the looking-glass iceshelf. Lumbering closer and closer. Whenever these thoughts drifted in, his grip on her would tighten. Frosty patches slowly bloomed on their flittering robes.

He became drowsy and his eyes drooped and shut. Plunging him into a fearful nap. The ghostly hum seemed to grow louder, becoming a moan on the wind. They both slept, oblivious but in their dreams, they heard it. Underneath, arms of darkness reached up from a void blacker than black. Reaching up within the iceshelf. Around their hut of white light.