1

The sun was still but a faint blue glow in the western horizon when the orders to get up and ready were sent around the camp. The expansive fields of Amalkan stood deep royal blue before the coming dawn, the land slightly lighter a shade than the sky. The air was so cold as to feel solid, and inhaling too deep stung the throat and lungs. Stepping out of the comforting warmth of the tents into that boundless freezer was a hellish experience, albeit inescapable.

Barely had Izumi gotten her boots on and wobbled out of her teepee, when she was shanghaied for the first important task of the day—breakfast preparations. The supply team cooked oatmeal for the crew in their big pot, to be served with tough sourdough bread, and a cupful of strong black tea. Once everyone was fed, had refilled their water bottles, and the pots were cleaned, the camp was disassembled and packed back into the sleighs, leaving only a bit of trampled snow and the remains of the campfire to mark their stay. Then the journey was ready to resume, right on time for the sunrise. The snowmobile engines’ noise, which the travelers had already begun to miss, rang out again, chasing away the disturbing quiet of the land, and all lingering sleepiness and chill was cast aside in favor of the thrill of the ride.

The new day proved in most ways a close to identical rerun of its prequel. With only sparse breaks, the company drove on, and did their best to get comfortable in the awkward, cramped transports.

Unlike how it had seemed the day before, this arctic wonderland was not entirely lifeless. Gazing around, as if watching an extended episode of a National Geog****ic documentary, Izumi witnessed several peculiar lifeforms over the course of the day.

There was a pack of great, alien mammals, between sixteen to twenty-four feet tall, a bizarre blend of mammoths and giraffes, with long necks and thin legs, covered all over in fluffy, dirty-gray fur. Thanks to their natural camouflage, they blended into the background with uncanny effectiveness until viewed from a closer distance. Lammastars, the men called them, and there were eight adults and about a dozen offspring in the same pack. As the snowmobiles drew closer, the lammastars took to run and cantered across the field southwest with their long legs at bewildering speed.

Odd flying beasts were seen as well, resembling the long-extinct pterodactyls of Earth’s ancient past, with elongated reptilian heads and thick, muscular tails. But instead of scales, all were coated with a dense layer of ashen feathers. No one spotted the creatures until they were barely a hundred yards away, as they kept nestled close to the ground, their wings spread wide to absorb the light and energy of the rising sun. There were about fifty or so of them, and alarmed by the approaching caravan, they suddenly darted up to the sky, slowly scooping wind with their vast, clawed gliders.

Fortunately, none of the sightings turned out particularly threatening in the end, and posed no obstacle for the travelers. Neither would they experience noteworthy mechanical setbacks, allowing the expedition to cover ground with encouraging swiftness, keeping the morale tall.

More positive signs were encountered early in the afternoon. Shortly after a lunch break, the crew happened across a peculiar rock formation right in the middle of the otherwise spotless, level plateau. From a distance, it had seemed but a random pile of rubble, only strange for its solitary distance from the mountains, but a closer examination revealed it to be more than it seemed.

A cone-like assembly of rectangular stone blocks, each larger than a man, the structure reached the height of sixty feet, bearing distinct signs of artificiality. The top part was straight and symmetrical, with even sides; a tall monolith with a slim, 0-shaped hole punctured near the climax. The structure had to have been incredibly old, heavily corroded by the arctic winds, yet even now it whispered to its viewers in muffled voices of the presence of past intelligent life. Any lingering suspicion that their destination was but a baseless fairy tale was effectively dispelled now.

The rock formation held very close likeness to a shape depicted also in the Dharves’ old map, set near the midway point between Dharva and Eylia in the mountains. From here, the travelers were expected to turn steadily northeast and seek out a specific dale between the mountains, across which the fjords would lead them to the site of the lost city. Claiming they could practically smell gold already, the mercenaries resumed the journey in a great hurry, and only the coming of another night forced them to a reluctant stop, some eight hours after.

This time, the final stop came reasonably early.

One of the snowmobiles exhibited performance issues, which the technicians later identified to be due to excess frosting. Aft and Till, and a few deft volunteers were busy late into the night cleaning the engine chambers, patching the openings, and maintaining the transports to prevent the problem from repeating.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew raised the tents again with better experience, lit fire, melted snow to refill their water supply, and prepared for another winter night.

To keep the teepees properly insulated and guarded against sudden storms, the men shoveled snow onto the hems and trampled them tight. Some felt less than motivated to carry out these menial little chores in the dark and cold, when sleep beckoned, and unprecedented riches supposedly awaited already tomorrow.

“Put your back to it, Elvir,” Gubal advised one of the younger Dharvic mercenaries, who was leaning lazily on his shovel.

“Nah, it’ll hold one night-time,” the man called Elvir retorted, kicking light snow over the tent corner for show.

“That’s your spot there then,” the Estuan told him.

“I don’t mind a little draft, old man. Last night was too steamy for my tastes.”

A short distance away, Izumi and Waramoti were setting up the campfire, when Acquiescas came to meet them.

“My friends!” the scholar exclaimed, his face shining with joy and excitement. “Have you enjoyed the adventure thus far? I must admit, our ease of progress has exceeded even my most deranged fantasies! All thanks to Dharvic ingenuity! If we keep this up, we shall have the splendors of the Precursors’ dwellings before our eyes well before tomorrow night, I believe! Ah, I can hardly wait!”

“That’s nice,” Izumi replied. “It really is a dream come true for you, isn’t it?”

“Truly,” Acquiescas nodded. “And I am particularly glad that you are here to share it with me. Naturally, I have a bottle of most exquisite brandy from Cotlann saved for the occasion. The ‘58 vintage. A bottle my own professor once gifted to me. He is sadly passed away now, but he believed in my dream til the end. I shall see to it that you get your share, dear friends. After all, if you weren’t there that night at the tavern, I’d be now following my old mentor’s footsteps into the Halls of Deuránn.”

“The pleasure is all mine!” Izumi replied. “I might prefer brandy to ancient ruins, to be honest with you.”

“Ahahaha!” the professor laughed brightly at her words. “I thought you might, my lady. But, how old were you again, Sir Bard? Don’t you tell your mother I let you drink something that strong, all right?”

Waramoti replied with a strained smile,

“Rest assured, neither of my parents held much concern for such things.”

“That so?” Acquiescas said, giving the ex-mercenary a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “Oh, but I should go now. I’d like to give the map one last look before bed. We can’t let the past days’ success get to our heads yet, oh no! There’s still a considerable distance left to cover, and anything can always happen.”

“Have truer words ever been spoken?” Waramoti muttered in a grim tone, as the scholar hurried away, stumbling in the snow in his excitement.

“Hm?” Izumi made a sound. “Think there’ll be trouble?”

“I’m not all-knowing, obviously,” the bard replied, “but all the herbivores we’ve seen today would also suggest the presence of carnivores. Local beasts won’t know to be wary of men this far from the inhabited lands. And among all available prey, our camp site is an—”

“—All-you-can-eat midnight buffet,” she concluded the sentence.

“I have no idea what that is, but I trust you’ve captured the point,” he said. “Stay on your toes. I can only hope and pray our watchers stand particularly vigilant tonight.”

As he spoke, Waramoti turned to glance at the less motivated Elvir with his idle shovel, and the bard’s expression showed little faith in their companions.

2

In spite of the minstrel’s ominous prophecy, the night fell without anything remotely threatening or even faintly suspicious in the horizon, and a drowsy peace befell the encampment.

Those who didn’t have a watch shift on the previous night were on duty tonight, while the others could rest undisturbed. Fantasizing about a hot bath, Izumi wriggled deep into her sleeping bag and fell soon into slumber, with little care for whatever should happen. She shared the tent with Faalan, Waramoti, Hrugnaw, Minsk, Taun, and Onslow the dog. Beastly Hrugnaw’s steady deep breaths sounded like a passing commuter train. It was a little nostalgic.

Between the central pole and the other support rods, among an oil lamp and the cheruleum radiator, the travelers had set up thin wires, where they could dry their clothes. Thankfully, the snowmobile ride had mostly spared them of the various discomforts that accompanied more conventional modes of travel, such as wet socks and trousers. Considering the temperatures, such seemingly mild inconveniences might have come to cause frostbites and even necrosis in the long run, so everyone had to take care of their equipment.

As on the night before, the tents were arranged in a semi-circle around the campfire, the snowmobiles parked for cover on the other side of it. Northmost was the command tent, with the leaders and researchers. The other lodgings were mainly divided by clans. Izumi’s tent was in the very middle, and south from there was the tent with Elvir, Gubal, and the men from Rawround and Knobout.

The pair of Elvir and Weller had their watch shift second to last that night, somewhere between three and four in the morning, only a few hours before sunrise. It was an ungrateful shift, with hardly enough time left at the end of it to get any proper rest before the wake-up. Returning from watch, Elvir didn’t even bother to kick off his boots, but dropped straight down on his sleeping bag, hugging it with a weary sigh.

“See anything?” Gubal asked him, fastening his scimitar on his belt. The Estuan and Ethys had the last shift of the night.

“Yeah,” Elvir replied without opening his eyes. “A shitload of snow and dark.”

“Chin up. We’ll be rich tomorrow.”

“I fucking wish.”

Gubal and Ethys exited the tent and peace returned. Elvir continued to lie, his head near the warmth of the radiator and feet towards the outer edge, but sleep wouldn’t come. He tossed and turned, annoyed by how comfortably the others slumbered.

A vague discomfort kept him awake. He thought to perceive an ambiguous tension in the tent, like he wasn’t actually the only one awake, but surrounded by a watchful audience following his every move. Elvir was a warrior, even if not so motivated as one, and his training had attuned him to that particular tension, which always preceded bloodshed. Though it made no sense here. What could have possibly threatened them, hundreds of miles from all organized life?

None of the other sleepers appeared to share Elvir’s unease. It had to have been his imagination. The bleak environment was getting to him. Rolling around, Elvir sighed deep and flexed his aching shoulder, briefly opening his eyes.

Then something odd caught his attention.

He thought he saw something move below, on the edge of his vision, though it couldn’t have been right. There was nothing but the tent wall there. Elvir reflexively lifted his head, nevertheless, to prove to himself that he was only seeing things.

He wasn’t, and what he actually saw made his jaw drop. At first, he couldn’t even tell what he was looking at, a bad dream, terrible, hideous sorcery conjured by subconscious terror, but the horror shook the sleepiness from him, and his confused mind soon realized what it was.

But by that point, it was already too late.

Elvir thought to shout, to scream, but before he could make a sound, his leg was pinned in a thorny vice and with a swift yank, the man was pulled out of the tent, from under the loose edge that he had failed to pad properly.

Into the howl that now escaped him were mixed both alarm and agony.

“HYAAAAAEEEEGGGHHH—!”

The rest of the crew awoke to this shriek. Gubal and Ethys, having only just started their watch, were the first to react, picking flaming sticks from the fire and rushing past the tents to follow the voice of their panicking comrade. The view that awaited them made even these hardened mercenaries pause in dismay.

Elvir struggled in the snow, his left leg in the jaws of a canine beast. The animal had the powerful build of an earthly hyena, perhaps five feet long, with thick neck and slim, bony legs. It was covered in glittering, silvery fur, the torches’ flames mirrored brightly in the countless crystals of ice attached to it.

“Shit! Frostwargs!” Ethys cried.

These demibeasts were a menace familiar to the Dharves, if not so much to the foreigners among them. Not an insurmountable threat alone, perhaps, and quite possible for sturdy warriors to chase away. Sometimes they were seen near the detached settlements of Dharva, but were cowardly in nature and scared away by crowds.

The real problem was that in the wild, frostwargs hardly ever moved alone.

There were no less than three of them trying to get their share of poor Elvir, while the man had to fend off their hungry jaws with only his bare hands. Luckily, Elvir hadn’t stripped his clothes after returning from the watch, and his thick overcoat protected his arms and sides from the beasts’ fangs. He struggled with all his might to keep them from biting his vulnerable neck or face, even while they dragged him away from the camp site.

As much as they wanted to, Gubal and Ethys couldn’t easily go to his rescue.

Certainly, even three frostwargs were likely not a match to these hardy men with their weapons. Unfortunately, the enemy’s head count didn’t stop at three. Only a short distance away, kept at bay by their instinctive fear of heat and flame, were more frostwargs. Gubal did his best to contain his nerves and count the force they were dealing with, but more and more kept entering his view, until all of the dark plateau behind the tents appeared to swirl with glittering beasts.

It wasn’t just Elvir—they were all in a grave peril, surrounded by an unfathomable horde of monsters.

Smelling blood, the frostwargs became further agitated and some turned to the two watchmen, bearing their fangs, overcoming their fear of the torches. Fight looked unavoidable. Resolving to save their comrade or die trying, Gubal and Ethys drew their blades. However, before they could charge into this hopeless battle, they received unexpected reinforcements.

“HRRAAAAAAWR!” Hrugnaw suddenly dashed out from between the teepees with a loud roar.

The crulean’s great frame and monstrous demeanor drove back the line of frostwargs, and he quickly reached Elvir. With his huge hands, Hrugnaw picked up and cast aside the animals brazen enough to remain in his way, his thick hide impervious to their comparatively small fangs. Supported by Gubal and Ethys, they recovered wounded Elvir and carried him back to the bonfire’s protective light.

“TO ARMS!” Gronan Arkentahl’s commanding voice then sounded in the night, while the rest of the warriors rushed out of the tents. “TAKE FIRE! MAKE A CIRCLE!”

The mercenaries scrambled to do as instructed, forming a loose ring around their camp and the snowmobiles, using their weapons and makeshift torches to hold the swarming animals at bay. As soon as the defensive perimeter was assembled and found holding, Gronan shouted again,

“Alelard! Rawround! Take down the tents! Get our stuff in those sleighs! Leave nothing behind and make it fast! Aft, Marcus, Vikland—get the snowmobiles running! Make some noise!”

The men of the named clans put their weapons aside and hurried to pack away the tents, after which they threw also everyone’s backpacks and other belongings on board, in a rather disorganized manner but pressed by the circumstances.

The warg alphas carried out random attacks to test the defenders, but were so far repelled. Part of the circle, Izumi surveyed the nightly battlefield enhancing her night vision with the Rune of Perception.

“Oh my, this could be a bit bad,” she commented aloud.

Izumi saw movement as far as her magically improved vision could carry. What they faced was nothing as innocent as a simple wolf pack, but a gathering of hundreds of four-legged beasts. It was as if the wintry land itself had come to life, and assumed the shape of a bestial mass of unnumbered fangs and insatiable bloodthirst. If all those monsters decided to charge at once, the defenders would’ve been overrun in an instant.

Fortunately, the frostwargs were not particularly intelligent or accustomed to dealing with this type of prey. They detested the presence of heat and fire, and their cowardly scavenger nature saved the expedition from guaranteed annihilation. As the snowmobiles’ firm roar drowned out the wargs’ incessant growling and barking, the gap between them and the defenders quickly widened.

For a moment.

Even that unnatural noise was incapable for driving them away permanently, and finding themselves uninjured, the beasts soon regained their courage, compelled by their perpetual hunger. But perhaps enough time had been bought.

The tents and equipment were packed away. Next was the passengers’ turn.

One clan at a time, Gronan called the crew to board the sleighs, leaving his own last. As the defenders’ numbers lessened and their circle shrank around the vehicles, the frostwargs followed along. Soon, the crew was perfectly encircled, the animals barely an arm’s length away in every direction around the vehicles.

“Get on,” Faalan told Izumi now, as there were hardly any others left beside them.

“You’re the VIP, after you!” she replied.

Dharves weren’t strangers to the chivalrous principle of “women and children first”, but Izumi had ignored the urging of others and declined to leave before Faalan. Of course, since his death meant the failure of her mission and losing the sole reason of joining the trip in the first place. The sight of her wide-bladed greatsword made the others respect her will. Every frostwarg to get too near the woman was quickly flung away, and those who saw her handiwork had to wonder if she weren’t a legitimate freelancer, after all. Faalan, meanwhile, as one of the most able combatants around, refrained from leaving the line until ensuring that everyone else was safe.

For this, it was beginning to seem that escape was beyond them both.

“If I leave before you, I will embarrass myself before all the warriors of Dharva,” Faalan told the woman.

“Escort missions weren’t ever my forte,” Izumi retorted, not budging. “I’m not taking any chances this time!”

“Unless we leave now, we are all going to die. I will be right behind you, so go.”

“You’ll drop dead the second I turn my back on you, I just know it!”

“You’re risking the entire expedition for no rational reason.”

“Then get on and we can go!”

“Quickly now, there is no time to waste!”

“Why are all you elf-people so stubborn!”

“You are fully human, are you not?”

“—Argh! I can’t watch this!” Hrugnaw was one of the few left with them. Now, the crulean seized Izumi, lifted her easily off the ground with one arm, and tossed the woman over the side board into the nearest sleigh. The passengers were ready and caught the adventurer, pulling her in before she could even think to resist. “Go!”

The snowmobiles started on, one by one, last of the warriors climbing onto the moving vehicles, and together they cleared a path across the uncaged zoo of famished carnivores.

“There! Our turn now!” Hrugnaw told Faalan. The two turned their backs on the horde and dashed after the last remaining vehicle, aboard which the passengers were frantically waving at them.

“Come ooon!”

“Faster!”

That was the trigger.

The instant the last defenders turned to flee, the floodgates were opened, and the whole avalanche of silvery beasts rushed at them together. The snowmobile driver had no choice but to accelerate, or else everyone aboard would be buried by the wave.

With a brief leap, Hrugnaw caught the back board of the departing sleigh and climbed half over, turning to reach out his hand to Faalan. Lacking the crulean’s leg strength or stride span, his boots sinking into the broken, powdery snow with each step, Faalan had been left several feet behind and struggled to reach out.

At that moment, one warg leapt up from the side and tackled the man, flooring him.

In an instant, Faalan’s figure was left completely under the frantic beasts, which flocked to him like locusts. His distancing comrades could only look on in shock as the hero disappeared from view, his end an unquestionable certainty.

“FAALAN!” Gronan roared from the vehicle further ahead, leaning heavily onto the side board, unable to believe his eyes. Though he already knew it futile at heart, he turned to order Marcus to go back, to risk their lives in the effort to reclaim the body.

Fortunately, there was no need for them to go that far.

One among the passengers had not yet lost hope and took action.

Standing up in the sleigh, Waramoti leaned on the edge, raised an arbalest in his hands, took careful aim, and fired into the darkness.

Yesterday, Tordith and Orik had tied ropes into a number of bolts, hoping to catch hares during the ride without having to stop. They hadn’t seen any edible prey that day, but the bolts discarded in the sleigh now served a different purpose.

The heavy arrow flashed through the night, near to where the beasts were tripping and climbing over one another in a frantic effort to catch but one mouthful of their victim.

All of a sudden, the mound of frostwargs scattered.

Or rather—exploded.

Dissected chunks of meat, severed legs, decapitated heads, ribs, and guts burst apart in one great, blood-soaked cloud, opening up a gap right in the heart of that ravenous maelstrom. From somewhere in the revolting depths of that pit of gore, a pale arm reached up and caught the passing shaft midflight, as well as the rope tied onto it.

“There!” Waramoti exclaimed, threw away the arbalest and picked the rope bundle. “Pull with me!”

The other passengers hurried to grip the hempen string, tightening it.

As the snowmobile drove on, the other end was swiftly pulled out of the pile of wargs, the weight of a human figure attached to it. The ferocious, yowling mass of beasts chased after that hanging bait as fast as they were able. But by now, the fleeing vehicles’ speed had become more than a match for them and the hero held firmly on.

Reeling in the rope with all due haste, the mercenaries helped Faalan up into the sleigh, away from the pursuing predators’ fangs. The half-elf was coated in blood all over—but not that of his own. To everyone’s shock and amazement, he was still in one piece, with only minor scratches.

No heavenly blessing had saved him from that horrid meatgrinder, where an average person would have been devoured to the bone in an instant, but his deft swordhand alone. Even after such an outrageous feat, Faalan appeared no different from his usual, nonchalant self, setting his saber aside, taking a seat, and wiping his face in his sleeve. The other passengers whacked his shoulders and back with congratulating pats, laughing, and searched a towel for him.

“Alright!” Izumi cheered, following the events from the vehicle ahead. “Nice save, kid!”

It was still too soon to celebrate, though. The snowmobiles with their heavy sleighs weren’t fast enough to escape the frostwargs entirely. Neither were they so slow as to be caught. Sustaining this nerve-wracking equilibrium, the pursuit went on uninterrupted through the early hours of the morning, keeping the crew on their toes, the constant yelping, barking, and howling of the beasts in their ears. And no one could pretend to enjoy this early awakening.

3

Sunrise brought no change to the restless ride. The frostwargs remained glued to the expedition’s trail, awaiting any solitary mistake or an accident to cripple them, and yield the pursuers their hard-earned feast. The passengers followed in horror and disgust the wide flood of beasts pour after them. Peppering the warg horde with crossbow bolts produced no discernible results. Where a hole appeared in the mass, it was soon filled, and the beasts showed little empathy or respect for their fallen. Neither would they stop to devour their own, but pressed on with unshaken vigor.

“Don’t they ever get tired?” Waramoti pondered in disbelief.

“They’re demifiends, half magical in nature,” Gronan answered him. “They’ve learned to feed not only on flesh and blood, but on raw vitality. Either that which seeps through the ice, from the slumbering earth and its furtive dwellers, or that which fills a living man. The latter being vastly preferable to the former, I would reckon. We won’t lose them until we reach the mountains.”

Fortunately, the drivers made no critical mistakes and shelter appeared to be at hand.

Driving through the morning without stopping, the caravan departed from the vast open plateau northward, and the rocky slopes of the ranges of Kashyk now stood tall before their eyes. The snowmobiles rode up a wider, rough-walled dale, a notch cleaved into the side of Mt Serbaot, as though by a giant axe. The journey continued up a snow-coated, frozen-through river, which bare, jagged cliffs lined.

The majestic mountain view would have been well worth a pause to savor, but the relentless frostwargs allowed them not an instant of respite. Everyone was beginning to wonder if the creatures would actually ever give in, but keep on hunting them with the tenacity of the arctic winter itself, to the bitter end. A couple of hours more into the warming day, and the engines would overheat, bringing about the final act of this desperate game.

Then, the furred tsunami abruptly ceased.

The mass of frostwargs split in the middle, turned around, and left the way they had come, not like living animals at all, but like a dispassionate tide that is compelled to by the equally mindless, mechanical planetary forces. Less hurried and willing was their retreat than their chase, but no one was sorry to see them go. Rather, the men laughed and jeered loudly at them, finally freed from the stubborn pursuit.

Their relief proved premature, however.

BA-DOOM——!

A heavy, low-tone impact sounded out, making the travelers shrink down on their seats by reflex. The earth jolted, hit hard by an unknown weight, and the shock could be felt even aboard the sleighs. The frozen river cracked with a deep bang, which echoed along the barren banks and made everyone fall dead quiet. The tremor was much too brief to be an earthquake, and it had come from somewhere close by.

Turning to look ahead, the crew could soon identify the cause.

An enormous boulder had fallen seemingly out of the sky. It had landed a bit shy of forty yards from them and remained crumbled on the thick ice, reduced to a sizable pile of smaller rocks.

Where had it come from?

Not from outer space, certainly, or else likely nothing would’ve been left of the explorers. Dumbstruck by the mystery, unable to explain it, everyone sat still and silent, making frowns and trading confused glances. Then, all their eyes were drawn to the sky, where—to their collective astonishment—another similar projectile curved in their general direction.

A hunk of brown rock the size of a mule cart dropped barely twenty yards away from Gronan’s lead vehicle, faithfully reproducing the earlier blast with its weight. The river ice was further fragmented by the second impact, creating a fissure across their path, and Izumi’s sleigh took a nasty jump crossing it. Thankfully, the river had frozen through to the bottom over the centuries, and there was no chance of a bath.

The second volley served to reveal the origin of the falling rocks. Not even in this world of might and magic would lifeless mountains attack people on their own, although the actual attackers appeared no less incredible in the eyes of the woman from the other world.

Looking up, Izumi saw tall figures detach from the otherwise lifeless scenery around the fjord and move to intercept the riders. Eerily humanoid, they had long, slender arms and legs, with great hands to grip things, and unnaturally thin bodies, coarse and gray as the terrain they moved on, as if shaped directly out of stone. The heads, however, were no more than featureless clusters of rock shards, lacking eyes or mouths, making one ponder what they ate and how.

All the beings resembled closely one another, being between twenty-five to thirty feet tall. The only visible differences were like those between two objects made with the same mold, after being subjected to the random, corroding forces of nature for a very, very long time. There should have been no way for those obviously inorganic, lithic forms to move about, yet this they did, in great strides. They used their simplistic hands to break off large chunks of the coarse cliffs, with which they bombarded the incoming explorers.

The visitors were not wanted—less surprisingly.

Izumi had seen the distant cousins of these fiends before, in Luctretz and Felorn, and regardless of their natural affinity, none of the elementals held much love for the humankind, who had chased them away from their Gods-given habitats of old.

“Titans!” Marcus exclaimed. “They’ll crush us! We have to turn back!”

“No!” Gronan shouted in answer. “They’re too slow to catch us! Keep going! We must break through!”

There were about fifteen titans along the fjord, some of them on the west bank, fewer on the east. With sluggish steps, yet unquestionably foul intentions, they moved to block the snowmobile’s path up ahead, where the frozen river grew more narrow, occasionally pausing to pick up new ammunition. But there was a considerable wealth of room to maneuver, and the travelers held the advantage in mobility.

“Split up!” Gronan hollered, standing up to signal the other drivers with his arms. “Don’t drive in a line, make curves!”

The five snowmobiles spread apart and did their best to hinder the titans’ aiming efforts, moving randomly left and right, drawing serpentine curves in the snow. More rocks rained down on them at increasing frequency, digging large craters into the river’s surface, forming pitfalls on the vehicles’ path and throwing around deadly shrapnel of ice and stone. But the drivers were alert and skillfully navigated around the danger. The helpless passengers could only grit their teeth and entrust their fate to the men at the vehicle controls, while the land around them was hammered by the barrage of inhuman forces.

Some titans took no active part in the bombardment, but hurried to block the way ahead. It became soon evident that they wouldn’t get through in time to avoid them all. One stepped up right in front of the lead vehicle with Gronan on board. Marcus was forced to slow down, trying to look for an opening. Bending its rocky frame with unexpected flexibility, directed by an instinct unrelated to any earthly senses, the titan reached down to pick up the approaching snowmobile.

“Divines help me!” Acquiescas cried, lifting his satchel above his head for a feeble shield, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

No Divines heard his plea, or even if they did, they made no active effort to come to his rescue. Instead, another snowmobile curved in from the side at full speed. It was the one with Hrugnaw on it. The crulean stood up, lifting his gigantic war hammer high, while the others held onto him, doing their best to keep him from falling off. The snowmobile drove close to the titan’s right leg, and as they passed, Hrugnaw swung with all his might, bashing at the elemental’s knee. Together with a heavy clang, the crulean smote through the stony limb, knocking off large chunks of it. What was left could not endure the leaning titan’s overbearing mass anymore, but broke completely.

“Go!” Gronan shouted. Marcus accelerated without delay and they escaped from under the falling titan by a hair.

The downed monstrosity now posed an obstacle for those coming from behind, forcing them to make sharp turns to get around it. Enraged, the other titans grabbed whatever they could get their hands on, and more rocks and ice rained down on the fleeing party. Having passed the ambush point, with no time to look back, or any mirrors on their vehicles, the drivers had to depend on the passengers to tell them where to go. And frantic instructions were shared without rest.

“Left, Ames! Left, left, LEFT! That’s not left!”

“Faster, drive faster—No, no, no, go slower! SLOW DOWN!”

“Watch it! Look out!”

Following any sort of instructions became exceedingly difficult with thirty people shouting them at the same time. Nevertheless, barring a few very, very close calls, major disasters were avoided, and it seemed that the expedition was going to escape this peril as well without losses.

Until the last salvo.

The bombing appeared to already subside when one more boulder came flying from an incredible distance, all its sender’s primal rage behind it. By its tall trajectory, the horrified witnesses could soon tell that it would score a direct hit with the third sleigh.

The transport wasn’t fast enough to get away, nor could it decelerate quickly enough to let the meteor pass over. Going sideways was the only option, but there were differences in opinion in regards to which way was best. Some yelled at the driver, Vikland, to go faster, some to go slower, to go left, to go right, and in that cacophony of panicked yelling, Vikland himself couldn’t hear a thing. His attention was fully occupied with simply driving straight.

Tanking a missile of that size was going to mean instant death to the tightly packed mercenaries in the sleigh, terrible injuries to the survivors, and the total destruction of the transport itself.

Most of the men in the other sleighs chose to avert their faces from the unavoidable tragedy. Because of this, only a few saw how, at the last possible moment, one person jumped up from among the cowering passengers, facing the incoming rock head on. Planting her foot on the back board for support, Izumi gripped her greatsword firm with both hands, and muttered one word.

“Gram.”

Then, she cut at the falling rock face. Even those closest to her on the sleigh could only think she had gone mad. Though her sword was fairly large indeed, it might as well have been a toothpick before the tons of frozen earth that were about to land on them.

But that was where things turned really strange.

GONG—! A deep sound akin to a church bell rang out.

Izumi’s horizontal strike cleaved the falling rock in two, exhibiting impossible might. The broken halves were further fragmented by the force of the impact, and split around the sleigh, their momentum dramatically diminished. Only some smaller bits reached their mark, raining lightly down on the perplexed passengers, as if to assure them that what happened was real. With a quick twirl of her blade, Izumi turned and sat back down, her expression hidden by her voluminous muffler and ski goggles, and the golden glow that had briefly veiled her faded.

Many had entertained a vague thought before that the odd woman, as well as her weapon, were not precisely what they seemed to be. But exactly how far outside the scale of common sense she really was left them in open dismay, nevertheless.

Even as her co-passengers dismissed their doubts in favor of gratitude for the timely rescue, choosing not to look at the gift horse in the mouth, not all the witnesses of this miracle viewed Izumi’s stunt with only open-minded admiration.

Further ahead, aboard the front sleigh, Gronan Arkentahl narrowed his dark, hawkish gaze, his relief and joy rivaled by darker thoughts.

“Your mother is full of surprises,” he remarked aloud to Faalan, who was seated close by.

“So I’ve noticed,” Faalan replied.

“Makes you wonder about the daddy, eh!” Marcus interjected.

And so, with humor was buried the foreboding tension that had begun to gather between the ranks of the expedition. Though it would never fully vanish.