This was it. This was the last leg of their journey. At the end was Machina and Jason's brother, or death. "All right, then," Ash said. "Lead on." The bobbing light that was the piskie led them towards the banks of the river, where the cold, slow waters of the Mississippi churned under a slate-gray sky.

Jason followed calmly although his twitching tail and faint white pulsing glow of his freckle scales came from his nervousness of what laid ahead.

The piskie led them over the vine bridge.

Ash walked beside Jason, their shoulders almost touching.

Jason noticed how close their shoulders where and tried to politely avoid brushing Ash in case the prince wouldn't like that. He blew a small burst of ice crystals into his left palm and then began playing with the shape shifting dragon ice with both his hands,nervous scales pushing through his skin into view. They actually ripped through his skin,and come to think over his shifts,they usually always ripped his body apart in order to snap the bones then crack them back into place. The only thing that never broke,only lengthened,was his spine. His wings usually burst from his rib bones and molded and broke and shattered,ripping and healing into shape. All the while the shifts where bloody,yet he still lived through them like it was nothing.

After a while of walking, a corrugated-steel building squatted behind a chain-link fence, a dark smudge against the sky. Seedlit jabbered something to Ash, who nodded gravely before she zipped away out of sight. She had brought them as far as she could go; now they were on their own. As they approached the gate, Ash hung back a little, a pained look on his face.

Jason looked to Ash with worry,then tossed the ice and caught it in his right hand as it became a fragile rose that glittered a beautiful soft ice blue and was faintly colored soft purple,faintly,all along it's frozen petals. "The gate isn't something you can safely touch I'm assuming?" He said softly,stroking the petals of the rose with a gentle finger.

He nodded. The gate had heavy chains that were wrapped around the entrance, padlocked together, and barbed wire coiled along the top of the fence. Ash's sword was supposed to freeze things, right?

"Hm....could you freeze it? If not I could crush the barb wire and pick the lock." He said,flicking a gentle hand and causing graceful leaf like shapes for along the fragile stem of the ice rose in his hands.

Ash shook his head."No, I can't. Watch." Ash unsheathed his sword and attempted to cut the padlock off. He grunted and jumped back, dropping his sword. He turned his palm up and showed her that his hand was now burned

Jason winced,crushing the rose in his hand and causing it to become gently glowing crystals. "This can help that,I'll handle the metal." He said,tentatively taking Ash's hand and placing the freezing cold crystals to his burn.