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Chapter Text

Aramat 1

Nothing Ever Goes Well

NOW LOADING….

I suppose I should stop being surprised when things go badly for me. I have a long history of that, apparently dating back to the day I was born. Making things worse, when things go wrong, they don’t go wrong just for me. A lot of the people around me tend to get caught up in it. First the entirety of Dundrasil, then the entirety of Cobblestone and now that I’ve got my friends, they have to deal with it too.

We had just defeated Krystalinda, saved Sniflheim and obtained the Blue Orb only two days before. The land around the city was slowly returning to its usual level of cold and Krystalinda had settled into the palace as Queen Frysabel’s… advisor? No one seemed happy about it, but Frysabel had insisted. Krystalinda had been kind to her while the queen was imprisoned in her grimoire and as far as Frysabel was concerned, if there was a chance the witch would repent her crimes and do some good in the world, she should get to try. I couldn’t say I understood, but she was the queen. At least, Krystalinda had supposedly lost the bulk of her magical power, so if she did start causing havoc again hopefully the Sniflheim guard could deal with it.

We were leaving the city to go to Arboria, a little village hidden in the shadow of Yggdrasil. Veronica and Serena had both come from there, and they were rather adamant that we all go to meet with their village headman. He was prone to visions of the future, which was what had sent them out to find me to begin with, and they were sure he could tell us how to get to the platform we had all seen in the vision granted by the Rainbough.

We left Sniflheim feeling like the end was in sight and nothing could bring us down.

I really should have known better.

NOW LOADING….

“Is the wind starting to pick up a bit or is it just me?”

That was Serena, raising a lock of her hair between two fingers and watching it twist in the air.

We all stopped and tried to listen to the wind. We were in the forest that covered the base of the mountains on Sniflheim’s eastern side, following the road that wound up the slopes of the mountains. The trees got thicker the further up we went, leading into something Veronica had called The First Forest, although she mentioned it would not really begin until we had gone past Arboria. The trees made it a bit hard to hear around us, but there was a definite whistling sound that I did not remember being there before.

“I think so,” I answered. “And those clouds are following it.”

I pointed up into the sky. Between the trees and the fact that the clouds were coming in from the north, we had not noticed before, but it definitely looked like a storm was coming.

“Ah, grand,” Rab muttered. “Another blizzard.”

“Let’s hurry and find a Goddess Statue so we can get the tent set up,” Erik proposed and we all agreed. I still remembered that blizzard we had suffered through while hunting down what we had thought was the witch’s familiar. I’d gotten separated from the party in seconds and they were only a few feet behind me.

The statues are usually placed near roads and paths frequented by travelers, so it’s just a matter of following the trail until you find one. The problem comes when frequent monster attacks, low light and bad weather make you lose your way. Sniflheim may have been freed of the ice spell cast by Krystalinda, but that had not done anything to curb the viciousness of the monsters that lived in the surrounding area. We had been fighting since setting out that morning, only stopping to travel another half of kilometer or so until the next attack, wherein we would fight again, then travel again, and so on and so forth. It usually was not a problem but combined with the cold….

“Does anyone have any more magic waters? I’m all out,” Veronica called as she cast a Sizzle at a group of Slimecicles.

We were running low on just about everything and everyone was getting tired.    

“Here lassie,” Rab called and threw one over to her. Long practice had her catching it in one hand, pulling the stopper out with her teeth and downing it in one big gulp.

“I’ve got the last them!” Sylvando yelled and cracked his whip. The Slimecicles that had not been melted to nothing shattered into dust and the fight was over.

“Is anyone hurt?” I asked. I’d been casting Frizz and Sizzle almost constantly, but I had enough left for a healing spell or two.

“Here,” Eric said and showed me his arm. Pushing up his coat and shirt showed where the ice spell had hit, turning his arm pale and cold. I cast Midheal and felt the last of my mana drain away. In retrospect, I should have just cast Heal or left it to Serena, but I could see the trees giving way to a clearing ahead of us and thought the Goddess Statue was waiting up for us ahead. Shows what I know.

“We should hurry,” Jade said softly. She was right. Snow was starting to fall from the sky and not gently either. The wind was blowing fast and hard, and the light was fading fast. We should have just Zoomed back a city, maybe Hotto, and waited a day for the weather to clear, then Zoomed back to our last campsite. But, there was the clearing and we had traveled all day trying to reach the next safe point. We marched up through the trees and stepped onto snow again for the first time all day. The trees had kept the worst of it off the road, but now we were crunching through it again. 

And the worst part?

“Oh, no,” Erik moaned.

There was no Goddess Statue.

The road curved to our right and disappeared back into the trees further up the incline. Ahead of us was a small space free of any plant life that dropped off sharply and gave us a spectacular view of the Snearfelt below us. Far off in the distance, I could make out the towers of Sniflheim Palace.

“This must a joke! We passed by a Goddess Statue somewhere around here on the way down, didn’t we?” Veronica asked Serena.

“I’m almost sure of it, but… wasn’t it on the other side of the road? I don’t remember seeing the Snearfelt when we camped,” Serena said slowly, trying to remember even as she answered.

“We have to keep going then,” Jade sighed.

“Ah, that might not be such a good idea, dear,” Sylvando pointed out. “I’m having a bit of trouble seeing all you lovelies even now.”

He wasn’t the only one. The wind had picked up almost twice as much in the time it had taken us to come to the curve. I could see Rab and Sylvando at the back, but their edges were blurry.

“Let’s just throw the tent up here!” Veronica shouted, throwing her mitten covered hands up into the air. “Or we could take it back into the trees, I suppose.”

“And have to keep watch all night for monsters? No thanks. I say we keep going for the Goddess Statue. The last one was all the way at the base of the mountain, it can’t be that far off,” Erik argued. He seemed to be doing the best out all of us, strangely. He hadn’t complained about the cold even once.

The way things usually went with an argument, I would be called upon to decide our final decision. Being the Luminary also gave me veto powers, I suppose. If asked, I think I would have opted to camp in woods and just have us sleep in shifts. We had done it before a few times. However, before things could get to that point, my bad luck kicked in hard.

Our first and only warning was a loud roar from the direction of the forest. While we were all still drawing our weapons, five Ursa Majors decided to charge us from the trees.

Veronica, Serena and Rab were still forming their magic circles when they reached us. I remember Sylvando cracking his whip in a wide arc that got them all in the face, but only two of them stumbled. Then Jade was burying the blade of her spear into the leg of one, while Eric and I stabbed the other. Sylvando had dropped his whip and drawn his sword to go after the one we had missed, while Veronica and Rab let loose two Sizzles on the ones who had fallen behind their monstrous brethren. Serena’s spell was only slightly behind theirs and I felt the Kabuff spell wrap around me like armor.

A good thing too, since the monster decided to go after me first and hit me with a paw so hard my feet left the ground. It wasn’t the first time that had happened, so I knew what to do. I relaxed my legs and spine, waiting for the ground to make contact with my feet so I could roll away some of the impact.

My feet did not touch the ground.

It was only when I was already halfway down the edge that I remembered we had had a cliff to our backs, something that had slipped my mind at the surprise of the attack.

By that point, I had fallen to certain death twice – once when escaping the prison under Heliodor with Eric and again when Hendrik cornered me in the ruins of Dundrasil, that time with Jade. It did not get better with repetition. That said, I had survived both times before without much more than exhaustion and a few scratches. The same could be said for both Erik and Jade.

Which was a really good thing, because the last thing I saw before I fainted in terror was the two of them jumping after me.

NOW LOADING….

I woke up and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was not dead. I was, however, very cold and I could not see more than a foot in front of me. The only reason I knew I wasn’t alone was because Erik and Jade both had a death grip on my coat and were hauling me through the blizzard, one on each side of me.

I got my legs underneath me and stumbled along beside them.

“HEY, YOU’RE AWAKE! MAYBE, DON’T PASS OUT NEXT TIME THIS HAPPENS?!” Erik yelled into my ear. Even at that volume, the wind was so high that I could barely hear him.

I wanted to respond, but I couldn’t. My side ached where the monster had hit me and trying to shout made it worse.

“NOW THAT YOU’RE UP, YOU HAVE TO ZOOM US BACK TO CIVILIZATION!”

I looked at Jade and shook my head, trying to make her understand. I was completely out of mana by then and Rab had been carrying the bulk of our supplies, including the Magic Waters. She didn’t understand though, only seeing that I couldn’t take us to safety.

To her credit, and this is one of the things I really like about her, she didn’t waste any time asking for details.

“ALL RIGHT THEN, WE’RE GOING TO KEEP PUSHING FOR SNORRI’S CABIN!”

“WHAT, WHY?!” That was Erik. I don’t think he’d heard what Jade had said to me.

“LESS TALKING, MORE WALKING! WE HAVE TO FIND THAT CABIN! WE LANDED NEARBY, I’M SURE OF IT!” Jade yelled back.

“HOW CAN YOU BE SURE?! I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING! AND IF THIS IS THAT WITCH’S FAULT, I’M GOING BACK TO SNIFLHEIM AND CUTTING HER GUTS OUT! I DON’T CARE IF IT MAKES THE QUEEN ANGRY!” Erik shouted.

“BECAUSE I SAW IT ON THE WAY DOWN! NOW MOVE!”

We held hands, Jade leading the way. I had no idea where we were going and could only hope she was right when she said that she did. We had fallen off a very, very tall cliff in the middle of a blizzard every bit as fierce as Krystalinda’s and there was no way the rest of our party was going to find us any time soon. Rab had been carrying most of our supplies, which included the Chimaera Wings as well as the Magic Waters, now that I was thinking about it.

All of that walk is just a big, white blur to me. The only things that existed were Jade in front of me and Erik behind me. I still don’t know how she kept her bearing. Eventually, and to my complete surprise, we did in fact find Snorri’s cabin. Well, Jade walked into it, but the point still stands. We had to feel our way around the walls until we found the porch and then the door, which was icing over. Jade gave it one good kick and we were in.

After Snorri being gone for a week, it was cold and dark inside. It was still an improvement over walking through the blizzard. The kick had broken the lock and we had to wedge a chair under the latch to keep the door shut. I collapsed against the nearest wall as soon as that was done and just listened as Erik and Jade fumbled around in the dark, looking for the fireplace or a lamp. Erik eventually found the hearth and, after a bit of cursing, managed to get his gloves off and pull out the flint from his pockets. Then he realized there was no wood. There was a further round of cursing until Jade dropped an armful of logs into the hearth and on Erik. It was dark, so I don’t think he blamed her.

Light grew slowly and warmth even slower. I guess I should be thankful that the chimney was clear after a week of no maintenance. Mostly I was just cold and hurting. It was Jade who got me off the floor and in front of the slowly growing fire, who made me keep walking until the chill was gone from my bones and all that remained was an ache. We slowly stripped off our heavier clothes as the warmth grew and by the time night had fully settled in, so had we.

We were stranded in a blizzard away from our friends with no way of getting out except to wait for the weather to clear, I was injured and out of mana, we had little to no supplies and no one knew where we were. To anyone else, that would be enough bad luck to last a lifetime, but again, this is me.

I shouldn’t be surprised that things got worse.

Chapter Text

Jade 1

Responsibility

NOW LOADING….

This was familiar territory to me, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Arriving at Snorri’s cabin meant I knew where we were in relation to Sniflheim and the mountain pass leading to Arboria. Fumbling around in a dark and cold cabin while lethal weather conditions conspired to kill the Luminary was also a recognizable situation. At least this time I had a bit of help.

“If you honestly think I’m going to stare at your mostly naked body when we’re in danger of freezing to death, you’ve mixed me up with the old man,” Erik snapped. “Now strip and jump, damn it!”

It was a serious situation, so I didn’t punch him. Erik had been the one giving us most of our survival advice ever since we walked off the boat and into Sniflheim’s frozen harbor. He shut his mouth tight when anyone asked why and, considering his previous occupation before meeting up with Aramat, we had come to our own conclusions. Erik had not spent his whole life in Heliodor, not with that accent, and there were almost certainly bad memories in a lifetime of thieving.

So, however much I was against the concept, I took off my heavy overcoat, my lower cape, my boots, my halter top, my socks and my shorts, because Erik had been right about the ice over a river being weaker than the ice over a lake, about how to find a burrow of rabbits for stew and how to orient yourself in a blizzard that had cut you off from your friends, so I trusted he was right about this. ‘This’ being the fact that our clothes were covered in snow from having landed neck deep in a drift after jumping off the cliff, followed by the trek through the blizzard to the cabin. Snow which was swiftly melting in the rising heat from the fireplace and soaking into our clothing and skin. Ordinarily I would just let it dry off while I wore them, but Erik was insisting that we had to be dry and warm and moving now.

So, I stripped and prodded poor Aramat into doing the same. He looked more asleep than awake, and Erik and I had to help him out of his overcoat, surcoat and boots. He seemed to manage the rest just fine, but he was moving very stiffly. I put it down to the cold until he got his tunic off and I saw his chest.

I’d seen the Ursa Major hit him, but it had not seemed that terrible compared to what followed. Naïve of me, in hindsight. The left side of his chest was deep purple from pectoral to shoulder and I could see a small indent in his flesh. No claw marks, so either it was a backhand or Serena’s Kabuff had absorbed that part of the damage.

“Erik, please tell me you have some kind of Medicine on you,” I murmured.

“No, used the last of it this afternoon,” he sighed, and I knew why he had that tone. Something like this was going to last for weeks unless we treated it with magic, which, given that we were not being Zoomed back to civilization and safety by our resident Luminary, was probably not going to happen. I had about the magical talent of your average rock and Erik’s only gift lay in earth magic. There was nothing we could do about it until Aramat had gotten some rest and the way he was looking, he probably would have trouble waking up from that.

Still, he was awake (mostly) and able to move (a bit), so I gently prodded him up onto his feet and towards the fireplace while Erik set about arranging our clothes as close to the heat as he dared.

“Just keep moving back and forth, all right? Erik says it’s important to keep our blood pumping, so no resting just yet.”

“Erik says a lot of things,” Aramat rasped. There were the beginnings of dark crescents under his mostly open eyes.

“And you should pay attention to every one of ‘em, because my words are gold, boss,” Erik said as he weighed Aramat’s purple surcoat in one hand and my half-cape in the other, evidently trying to decide which would dry faster if given the better placement. Mine eventually won and the purple surcoat was spread out further from the fire.

“That’s a lie. You tell horrible ghost stories and can’t sing.”

“I can sing.” He looked offended about it.

Aramat looked right at my face as we passed each other in our latest lap in front of the hearth. “Caaaaaaaan’t sing,” he said with a tired smile. “It was like having a crow try to squawk out Oh Heliodor, Land of my Heart.”

“You know I’m right here, Aramat. You’re hurting my feelings with your words.”

“Actually, the crow probably had more vocal range. Erik’s just like, aaaaaaaaaaa-AAAAAAAA-aaaaaaaa-AAAAAAAAAAAA-“

One of Aramat’s socks flew through the air and smacked him on the face. I pulled it off and flung it back towards Erik. It was very quickly becoming clear to me that I was the only adult in the room.

NOW LOADING….

Eventually Erik joined us in our pacing, swinging his arms in time with his steps. I mimicked him as best as I could, while Aramat kept up his slow shuffle, curled over his injured side as much as he could. Even as the color slowly returned to our skin, he did not seem to improve at all.

Erik finally pronounced us fit to stop, just as I was about ready to call it quits myself. Not for me, but Aramat was starting to sway with each step and I was afraid of what falling would do to his injury. I settled him down onto the bed and wrapped the two thick blankets around him as best I could. The bed was not terribly comfortable from what I could tell, being just a frame with three boards to supporting the mattress above a pull-out drawer for storage, but it was that or the floor.

“Just try and rest. We’ll need you to Zoom us out of here tomorrow, if things don’t change,” I said gently.

“Got it,” Aramat whispered. “Shame Erik sucks at magic so much, right?”

“I will put you back out in the blizzard!”

Aramat smiled and then was asleep in nearly an instant.

I left him and joined Erik in front of the fireplace. He was sitting directly in front of the flames and playing with his necklace. I got a glance as I sat down beside him and then he went back to staring at the fire like I was not even there.

“He’s not wrong about me and magic, not really,” Erik muttered. “He tried teaching me some spells back when it was just the two of us and the only thing I had any progress with at all was earth magic. If I could even manage a Heal, then maybe we –“

“ – would still be in this exact scenario,” I finished for him. “Erik, don’t think about how things could be different. You can go crazy doing that.” I knew.

He sighed. “Yeah, I know. Doesn’t make me stop wishing.”

I knew that too.

NOW LOADING….

We chatted until well after nightfall, or what must have been nightfall. All the shutters were tied tightly across the windows and we could not actually see the light. Aramat kept sleeping, and both Erik and I seemed well on our way to following him. It had been a long day even before our recent disaster, filled with mountain hiking and monster slaying.

“So, will it be warm enough for us to sleep on the floor?” I asked.

“As long as we throw a log on the fire every now and then, sure. Just can’t let the fire go cool for too long or we’re back to where we started. Why?” And he turned to grin at me then, that mocking half-smile I had first seen in the Octogonia arena before I kicked it off his face. “Feeling shy?”

I very deliberately did not blush. “It would be a bit… awkward, yes, sharing a bed with you and Aramat.”

Erik snorted. “Well, you’d better get used to the idea. We’ve only got so much firewood here and if the blizzard doesn’t let up before we run out, the only heat we’ll have is each other.”

“It can’t last much longer. It’s what, the very beginning of winter? Even the Snaerfelt won’t be cold forever.”

“Doesn’t have to last forever. Just long enough to get us. We’ve got no food or water either, remember? If Aramat can’t Zoom us out of here and the others don’t find us, we’re stuck.”

“His mana will have regenerated a bit by morning. He can get us out of here,” I said, with more conviction than I actually felt. I kept remembering that horrid bruise and how he had hunched over himself to keep strain off of it.

“Hope so,” Erik muttered and buried his face in his folded arms.

“He will,” I repeated. “He’s not got that spell down as well as he does Heal or Frizz, but he’s never mucked it up either, has he?”

“Guess not.” He was definitely breathing more slowly. Poor Erik was almost out for the night.

“…I can keep an eye on the fire for now, if you want to rest.”

“…Sure. Thanks, Jade.”

He slowly collapsed onto his left side, his head resting on a bag of wood shavings Snorri had kept as fire starting material. He was snoring softly barely a minute later.

…He really did not look older than Aramat like this. He had never given us his real age, like so much other personal information about himself that I received without asking from others in our group. I would have put him at nineteen at most, though. Only just becoming a man and already travelling the world to help kill a monster overlord.

I wondered if he still had his parents.

I wondered if they would be proud of him.

I wondered what my father thought of me.

NOW LOADING….

I’d said I would watch the fire ‘for now’, but ‘for now’ turned out to be most of the night. I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open, but Erik had been just as bad and I would have preferred at least one of us was fully awake by morning.

Aramat was still sleeping when Erik slowly crawled his way back to awareness. I tried not to be worried about that.

“Snow still coming down?” Erik mumbled, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of an arm.

“Let me check,” I said wearily. I had kept my spear nearby as a safety precaution and used it as a lever to hoist myself up. The cabin was fairly small, but it still felt like a lifetime passed before I reached the door. My head felt empty and my legs like lead. I had to lean against the wall to keep my balance while I moved the chair away from the door and opened it to peak outside.

The blizzard was over, yes, but the snow was still coming down in thick, if gentle, sheets. And the sun was nowhere to be seen, even through the thick clouds. It was still night.

Still, it was something resembling an improvement. I shut the door and wedged it closed with the chair.

“The snow is still coming down, but not as harshly and the wind has stopped.”

“That’s something, I guess,” Erik sighed. He got to his feet and began pulling on his mostly-dry clothes. Being heartily sick of having only my thin black shorts and top on, I did the same. Happily, most of my clothes had been closest to the fire on account of being so small and were free of damp.

I was tugging on my over coat when Erik raised the possibility of waking Aramat. “It’s been a few hours by now. He’ll have had enough time to get some of his strength back, right? Maybe we can meet up with the others if we get back to Hotto or Porto Valor.”

“You’re assuming Veronica would have cast that spell without us,” I pointed out. “If we had set up a meeting point beforehand for such an occasion, maybe that would be a possibility, but I can’t imagine them leaving without looking for us as much as they could. Especially since the blizzard only stopped recently.”

“You think there’s actually any chance of them finding us all the way out here? They’d have to climb all the way back down the mountain and then try to figure out which way we went after hitting the ground. We left no tracks and this cabin is pretty far off the beaten path.”

“I didn’t say that they were likely to find us, just that they wouldn’t leave without trying,” I reminded him.

“How long do you think that would take?”

“How long would you look until giving up?” I asked him, rather curious at his answer. The fact that he did not give one was rather telling. He just finished tying that ratty old sash around his middle and went to collect his daggers.

“Anyway, let’s see if we can get his Highness up and running,” Erik sighed.

Aramat was even less ready to get up than Erik. When I pulled the blankets back to look at his body, I saw that the bruise that had seem large in the cold had blossomed into a swollen purple and red mess that inflamed almost a quarter of his entire torso. More alarmingly, Aramat’s face was redder than it should have been, even in the warmth of the cabin. I put the back of my right hand to his forehead and hissed lowly at the heat that I found.

“What? What’s wrong?” Erik asked, picking up on my alarm.

“He’s burning up,” I answered, my left hand twitching for Medicine that I knew damn well was not in my pocket.

“Oh hell, it must be snow fever. He looked fine this morning,” Erik grumbled.

I had never heard of that before. Mind you, I had never been this far north before.

“Snow fever?”

Erik nodded, his face serious. “It happens sometimes when you experience a sudden change in temperature, more often in the weak and elderly. Going from freezing cold to toasty warm in a short amount of time can do it, but I thought the cabin was getting its heat slowly enough that it wouldn’t be an issue. It must have been that injury of his. Almost getting his chest caved in weakened him enough that the change in temperature gave his body a shock. You and I are in better shape, so it didn’t affect us.”

“Is it lethal?” I felt my body going cold again for entirely new reasons. If we survived everything up until now, only to lose the Luminary to a fever….

“Not usually, no. Just keep them at a constant temperature and wait for it to run its course. Which can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days.”

A few days?

Erik saw the look on my face and sighed. “Yeah, not really an option right now.”

“We’ll have to get moving on foot then,” I reasoned. “But, how are we going to carry him without making the injury worse?”

“We can’t. He has to stay here,” Erik countered. “You said the others would probably have stuck around, right? Go find them, bring them back here and I’ll stick around to make sure nothing eats Aramat.”

“That sounds like a bad idea. If something comes along and you can’t fight it off by yourself – “

Erik just waved away my concerns with pale hand. “Snorri wasn’t exactly a knight himself, but he did just fine here, yeah? I think monsters must not come by this area a lot. Really, you’re going to be in more danger, heading off into the tundra without any backup. Actually, maybe I should go and you stay.”

“I’m the better fighter,” I reminded him pointedly.

“Yes,” and to his credit, it was without a hint of shame. “But I know the area better. I can probably get back to the road faster than you. If I run into the group on the way, great. If not, I could be in Sniflheim and buying Medicine and Chimaera Wings in maybe seven hours. Another seven to get back and we’d be in a better climate before this time tomorrow.”

“Or you could get eaten.”

“Pessimist,” Erik laughed. Then he reached into one of his pockets and pulled an old Drasilian coin out. “Flip you for it? Tails, I stay. Heads, you stay.”

“Tails, I stay. And yes, I will take you up on that,” I said to the suddenly very nervous looking boy.

“Uh, wait, how about – “ I swiped the coin out of his hand and flung it into the air. It caught a bit of the firelight as it spun, not completely tarnished yet, and then landed in my upturned palm with the solid ‘smack’ that sounded like victory.

“Oh, look at that. Tails. I guess I get to go on a hike then, don’t I?” I said with my sweetest smile. I was not gloating, of course. That would be in bad taste.

Erik did not seem to agree. “How’d you know?” He ground out between clenched teeth.

I tilted the coin from side to side, admiring the rare double-sided wheat imprint that it bore. “Aramat, of course. You always seemed to win whenever you used your own coin instead of one he pulled, so he figured it out fairly quickly. Then he told me when I asked what the two of you had gotten up to before the rest of us met.”

Erik glared, well, daggers at the sleeping form of our friend on the bed. “Filthy traitor. Never did like him.”

I laughed.

NOW LOADING….

“Now, repeat it back to me.”

Erik was something of a mother hen, as it turned out. A nagging mother hen.

“Follow the cliff to the left of the hut south until I reach the rock bridge overhead. Then I either turn right to go to Sniflheim or left to get back on the road to Arboria. Keep moving until and unless I find a warm spot. Run away if I have the slightest inkling that what I am fighting is beyond my abilities. Erik, you do remember that I have been traveling likely longer than you have been alive?”

“You know what, sure, fine, go ahead, I don’t care,” Erik huffed, throwing his arms up in the air and then walking way to sit back down by the fire.

“I’ll be fine. Just take care of Aramat and I’ll be back before you know it,” I assured him, reaching for my spear. Getting up and moving about had loosened some of the stiffness from my body, but I still felt slightly woolen in the head. Still, it would not be the first time I had needed to keep awake and fighting day and night. Erik, although I had not pointed this out, was fresher than I was and probably did stand a better chance of winning a fight against me than he had a day ago. However, that was the exact reason I wanted him to stay. Aramat still had not woken up, even with the both of us shaking him gently and shouting loudly. Erik had not said it was a bad sign, but then, he had not really needed to.

I closed the last button on my heavy overcoat and then donned my leather gloves, followed by the thicker mittens that Erik had insisted we all wear. Even Serena and Veronica, who had been through these mountains before, had protested all the heavy gear he had insisted we buy. Erik had pointed out that they had started their journey in the middle of summer and it was now approaching early winter, so they were not getting an easy rip this time. I had to say, he had made a good choice. I probably would have collapsed from cold before ever reaching this cabin if I was just in my usual outfit.

I pulled the hood up around my face and tightened the drawstrings to pull it in close. “Right. I’ll see you soon. Tell Aramat to not worry as soon as he wakes up.”

“You know he will,” Erik pointed out. Then his face softened from its usual scowl and he said, “please be careful. There is a lot that can go wrong here.”

“I know. I’ll come back and we’ll find the others, one way or another. I promise.”

I took my spear in my right hand, opened the door with my left, stepped out into the cold and heard the door shut behind me, sealing away the last of the light and warmth within the cabin.

Right then.

Sniflheim, here I come.