Looking down at his hands, Shango was trying to get familiar with the changes that had taken place with his gauntlets. It took him a while to realize it, but the old woman had left him quite the gift, despite her telling him to figure it out himself. Unknown knowledge was floating around in his head. It did not seem like a lot of information, but it still took him some time for him to fully understand it.

After a while of organizing the information in his head, a wide smile appeared on his face. “Old lady, when we finally do meet, I’m going to tongue you down for sure. The gift you have given me is just too good.” he said as his smile grew wider.

Shango was pretty pleased with what the old women had given him. It was a set of simple skills that was best suited to a Knight like him. Now that he had some form of self-defense, he was happy and looked forward to the challenges that have been set out for him.

Jumping up and dusting himself off, he said, “All right, let’s test these bad boys out!” He knocked his fist together and walked across the border with a lot more pep in his step. As soon as he stepped into the frozen area, a frightening chill ran thought his body; it was cold, freezing.

Just as he was about to turn around and leave, he felt his gauntlets shake before a warm feeling flowed from them and engulfed his whole body.

Realizing what had happened, a smile appeared on his face. “Now that is what I call a multi-purpose tool.” he said feeling damn good he had picked those gauntlets as his artifact weapon. Who wouldn’t want a sugar mama that gives them neat things?

“Now, where are you, my little ice serpent?” He began to look around, trying to locate the ice Serpent that he had to defeat. After spending close to 10 minutes looking for the ice serpent, he became quite confused. it was nowhere to be seen, like it disappeared into thin air.

“Damnit, I take my eye off that thing for a little while and it just disappears.”

Not being able to find it, he explored the area some. Besides the ice serpent, many other ice creatures caught his interest, namely the big hairy herd of monsters. They looked like a group of the abominable snowmen.

Observing the monsters from afar, it seemed like they had just finished hunting or battling something. Many of them were wounded and red was mixed in with their white fur. Sounds of pain and anguish could be heard all thought out their little group.

They were all surrounding the corpse of the monster that resembled a large tiger with two heads. You could tell the beast was very strong; even though it was a cold corpse now, it still gave off a very intimidating presence. It seemed it took the group of about 17 abominable snowmen to take it down, but the price they paid was quite heavy. The once large group now cut nearly in half, and the remaining members were quite injured.

The biggest of the snowmen had large black horns on its head. Its fur was more gray than white and it had old scars all over its body, likely the leader of this group. It was the most injured among the snowmen remaining.

It was laying down right next to the head of the monster, both its legs missing. Its time remaining in this world was not long. Reaching out, it seemed to be calling for one of the other snowmen. After a while, one of the snowmen came forward. It was much smaller than the dying snowmen, probably the smallest snowmen out of the group. It seemed it was the most worried about the dying snowmen.

Looking at snowmen, Shango felt it was quite feminine. The chance of it being a female was quite high. Putting two and two together, Shango figured the dying snowmen was the father of the small snowwoman.

The way the dying snowmen looked at the small snow woman was filled with pride, worry, and guilt; pride that it raised such a good daughter, worry about her future, and guilt for something it was about to do. Shango did not know how, but he could somehow feel the emotions of the father/daughter pair. The dying snowmen reached out its hand and begun rubbing its daughter head, and tears seemly begun to fall from the snow woman’s eyes. A low growl came from the big snowman’s mouth and more tears started to fall from the snow woman’s eyes. It seems it had to do something, something it did not want to do. Seconds passed and the snowwoman did not move.

“ROOAAAARRR!”

The dying snowmen let out a loud, terrifying roar, and used it lone arm to firmly grab the snowwoman’s shoulder to look at her. As the snow woman looked into her father’s eyes, she knew his time was running out. Steeling herself, somewhat of a smile appeared on her face as she looked at the dying snowman. Realizing his daughter was ready, he nodded.

Then like an alligator biting into its prey, the snow woman bit into the neck of dying snowman. The snowmen that had its neck bitten into did not make a noise or flinch in the slightest. It seemed it was trying to lessen the burden for his daughter. As the life started to leave the snowman’s body, something amazing happened. A blue light began to flow from the dying snowman into the snow woman. On top of its head, two small horns slowly started to emerge from the snowwoman. The more the blue light flowed into the snowwoman, the larger her horns grew until they were about the same size as her fathers. Looking closer, they may have been a bit bigger.

After a while, the blue light started to fade. The snowwoman slowly removed her fangs from her father’s neck. He was not gone yet, but the time he had left was not long. Looking at his daughter, who now had horns on her head, a sense of overwhelming pride took over him.

Realizing there was nothing left for him to do, he slowly closed his eye, never to open them again. Realizing that her father had left this world, the snowwoman could only bury her head in the chest of her now-dead father and cry.

Shango did not realize it, but tears were also falling from his eyes. He had thought about trying to lure one of them away to test out his new abilities, but that thought quickly vanished after watching such a moving scene.

Those guys have already suffered enough, he thought as he turned in a different direction to search for the ice serpent.