Session 6

Kelvin’s Cairn had been a tooth on the horizon for the whole eleven‑hour push from Targos, a fixed shard of black against the sky that never seemed to grow closer. Standing beneath it now, the mountain was something else entirely. Well over five thousand feet, maybe seven by Raine’s reckoning, it loomed like the spine of some vast frozen beast, its upper slopes lost in spindrift, darkness, and screaming wind.

If Garret and his party were alive up there, the cold would not wait. This had to be up and down in a single breath.

The wind cut like wire. It found its way under collars and through stitching, snaked down sleeves, bit at wrists and necks no matter how tight the bundling. There was no such thing as warm — there was only moving or dying.

Raine worked the dogs fast and carefully, rubbing legs and pads after the hard run from Targos, then staking them in the lee of a boulder line with feed and wraps. Boy, Garret’s dog, would not settle. He paced, barked, and tugged at Felwar’s sleeve; eyes fixed on the mountain as if willing the party to move faster.

They stripped their kits down to the bone. Taking only rope, spikes, spare gloves, and a single healing potion. Everything else stayed with the sled. Then they climbed.

The first fifteen hundred feet were a grind. Boots bit into the slope, each step stamped for purchase, then heaved free again. Calves, thighs, backs, and buttocks burned. Breath tore short and white from their mouths, whipped away by gusts that scoured exposed skin raw. Sweat built beneath the layers, hot at first, then turning to a clammy chill that soaked straight through. The leader had the worst of it, breaking trail a foot at a time while the rest kept a steady, stubborn rhythm.

If Garret had been with them, he would have had them roped together from the first step. In his absence, Raine and the others watched their footing and each other, keeping a careful distance on the ice.

Miquitzil laboured the most, lungs burning in the thinning air, but the cold itself seemed to trouble him less than it did the rest. They did not know that the strange shard buried beneath his ribs — the same that had kept him alive as a child on the ice — now dulled the worst of the chill.

They reached a narrow shelf and paused. Hoods snapped in the gusts; loose lines rattled against packs and harnesses. Looking back, the Dale was nothing but darkness and blowing snow, with only a scatter of trembling lights where Ten‑Towns clung on. Bryn Shander was a steady glow. Targos was a hard glint beside the black and grey plate of Maer Dualdon. Further off, smaller clusters marked the rest. Of Dougan’s Hole and the smallest settlements there was no sign at all.

This was higher than any of them had ever stood. Kelvin’s Cairn still rose above — jagged, implacable, uncaring.

Owly, Thelonius’ new owl familiar, struggled in the thin air, wings buffeted sideways whenever it tried to climb. The little bird fought up the slope ahead, vanishing into the flurries.

The wind dipped for half a heartbeat. In that brief lull, sound carried clean — a harsh, guttural hrrr‑RAAWK that did not belong on a slope like this, the snap of canvas tearing in the gale, and the furious, hoarse barking of dogs.

Thelonius sent Owly onward. Through the familiar’s eyes he saw the camp over the rise — snow churned by paw prints and heavy claw gouges, two tents collapsed and flailing, fabric snapping like torn sails. Three sled dogs strained at their tethers, barking themselves raw. A fourth lay still on its side, flank ripped open, steam curling from the wound.

In the centre stood a snowy owlbear.

It was larger than any in common campfire stories. The pale-feathered mantle and frost‑crusted fur blending almost seamlessly with the storm. Black talons raked through a bundle of foodstuffs, scattering rations across the snow as it gulped them down, packaging and all. Its cracked yellow beak snapped shut with the sound of breaking timber. Each lunge threw up a spray of ice.

The dogs fought their harnesses, hoarse barks rising to frantic howls. They hurled their weight against the lines, claws tearing furrows in the snow, muzzles slick with blood where they had chewed at the leather. The hide was too tough — every bite just tore their gums further. They snapped at empty air, desperate to break free as the beast raged around them.

Thelonius cut the link to Owly and relayed what he had seen. They moved at once, hearts hammering from the climb and sudden urgency both — they had to reach the dogs, had to see if anyone still lived in the shreds of canvas.

Boy circled wide, unwilling to go near the monstrous shape, torn between fear and the pull of his pack. The snowy owlbear hunched over the torn supplies, massive shoulders rolling as it ripped at some frozen bundle.

Felwar spoke over his shoulder, voice raised over the wind. “Let’s see if it scares easy.”

He flung out a hand. A tiny glowing seed of force shot from his fingers and smashed into the snow at the creature’s feet. Light flared, ice and powder spraying up in a sharp burst.

The owlbear reared with a furious screech, towering over the wrecked camp, and its yellow eyes snapped round to lock on the newcomers.

Thelonius followed with his own magic. A bonfire roared to life beside the owlbear, flames clawing high into the black night. The heat licked at its flanks, singeing feathers.

The alpha predator did not back away.

With an ear‑splitting screech it lunged, circling the wreckage in long, powerful strides to get clear of the fire, a rag of tent dragging from one rear leg.

The fire howled in the wind, flames bent almost sideways. Shadows leapt and twisted across the churned snow, over torn canvas and broken poles. Sideways snow glittered as it drove through the light, each flake caught for a heartbeat before vanishing again into the dark. For a moment the camp was nothing but fire and storm, shapes crashing together in a flickering chaos.

Miquitzil’s throat opened in a deep, harsh chant that the wind struggled to tear away. A jagged witchbolt leapt from his outstretched hand — a shifting green‑white aurora that snapped onto the owlbear and held. Lightning crawled over its feathered hide in a tight, crackling web.

Felwar darted toward the sled dogs, Boy pacing anxiously just behind him. The big dog barked and whined, desperate but unwilling to run any closer to the monster. Felwar put his back to the fight as best he could and hacked at the bloody harnesses, freeing the panicked animals one by one while they flung themselves against the lines.

The snowy owlbear lunged through the camp. Felwar stumbled aside, ducking one crashing claw and then another, the air around him filling with snow and torn canvas.

Thelonius’ shape blurred and swelled, limbs thickening, clothes vanishing under fur. In heartbeats he was a brown bear, bigger across the shoulders than most men were tall. His roar cut through the gale as he thundered forward, snow spraying in waves before him. He slammed into the owlbear, claw meeting claw, teeth snapping as the two predators struggled for ground. Behind them the conjured fire howled and spat, throwing their wrestling silhouettes huge and wild across the slope.

Raine forced his way into the fight, footing treacherous, angles all wrong. It did not matter. He found his opening anyway. His greatsword flashed, slicing deep into the owlbear’s side. Hot blood sprayed across the frost as the beast recoiled with a ragged screech.

The witchbolt pulsed again, lightning snapping and crawling over the creature’s flanks. Thelonius‑bear crashed into the beast shoulder‑first, driving it back step by step.

The last of the dogs tore free and bolted downslope, swallowed by the dark and the pull of instincts that knew the way home. Boy alone stayed — pacing the edge of the fight, barking himself hoarse, throwing threat and fury at the owlbear but never quite daring to come within its reach.

Fire blazed. Lightning burned. Steel bit. Another predator tore at its throat. Surrounded and hurt, the snowy owlbear faltered. With a final enraged bellow, it turned, smashing through a tent and bounding down the slope, fading quickly into the storm until even its roar was swallowed by the wind.

For a heartbeat, only the gale remained — the crackle of the bonfire, the low groan of canvas, the rasp of their own breathing.

The camp was a ruin. Blood and torn canvas lay scattered along the slope. One dog lay freshly dead, and another behind a tent was nothing more than a half‑eaten carcass. Thelonius kept the bonfire burning against the dark while they searched the wreckage with brutal efficiency. Enough food for four by Raine’s eye. No bodies. No people.

Boy would not stop moving. He ranged up and down the slope, barking, then kept darting his muzzle toward higher ground as if trying to drag Felwar’s attention uphill.

“Right,” Raine said quietly. “We keep climbing.”

They followed the dog.

The path narrowed, the mountain wall on one side and a massive boulder rearing up on the other. Boy’s barking echoed between the stones as they rounded the bend — and ran headlong into a wall of wool and horn. Four mountain goats, each six feet at the shoulder, stood planted in the way, bleating their outrage.

Boy barked on, unimpressed. Felwar lifted his hands and tried to shoo them aside.

The goats turned instead, clattering effortlessly up the cliff and onto the enormous boulder. From the rear, Thelonius — still a bear — pressed forward, snow crunching under paws. Three of the goats bolted higher, scrambling away. One remained. It stood atop the boulder, square on its hooves, staring down at Felwar as he passed beneath.

It ignored Boy’s noise. Didn’t even flinch at the bear’s approach. Its eyes rolled back white in its skull.

It bleated once. Twice.

Then it hurled itself straight off the rock.

They watched it fall in stunned silence — small against the cliff, then smaller still, then gone into the dark below. The distant crunch of impact never reached them over the wind.

“Did you see that?” Felwar asked, voice thin with baffled disgust.

They had. None of them had an answer.

“What in all the frozen hells are we doing up here?” he muttered. “What kind of place makes goats kill themselves?”

Boy tugged sharply at his coat — up, his whole body said. Up. Keep moving. With nothing else to do, they went on.

Miquitzil was flagging now, breath ragged, each step slower. Raine gave him a measuring look, then jerked his chin at Thelonius.

“Climb on. We’re not leaving you face down on this bastard slope.”

The Ice Hunter did not argue. He slung himself across the bear’s broad back and wrapped frozen fingers through the thick fur. Progress quickened. Thelonius took the weight easily, ploughing on.

The path opened onto a wide, exposed slope — a smooth field of hard‑packed white that did not look half as dangerous as it was. Halfway across, Boy’s hackles went up. He barked once, then again, sharper, more frantic.

A heartbeat later, the mountain moved.

The snowfield cracked and roared, the sound like a thousand sails tearing at once. Beneath them, the slope broke loose, and the avalanche came down.

Owly wheeled high above, untouched, a dark speck against the spindrift. Boy bolted at the first judder, sprinting clear with the unerring instincts of something born to this cold.

Raine and Felwar both saw the fracture line in time. They hurled themselves sideways, battered and slammed by the edge of the flow but clear of the worst of it.

Thelonius‑bear and Miquitzil were in the centre when the world gave way. Snow and ice turned into a churning river beneath them. They fell, rolled, hammered end over end. The avalanche took them a hundred feet or more before swallowing them whole, burying them under ten or twenty feet of packed white.

In the crushing dark, Thelonius’ jaws clamped harder on Miquitzil’s jacket, keeping them pressed together. He stilled, forced his panicked lungs to slow, and reached through the bond to Owly. For a heartbeat his sight shifted — from suffocating black under the snow to the owl’s view above, looking down on a blank, freshly scoured slope and two tiny shapes digging like mad.

Owly dropped and landed on Felwar’s shoulder, feathers fluffed against the cold. To Felwar, it was clear enough. Thelonius was still there. Still alive. Just buried.

“They’re alive!” he shouted, jabbing a finger downslope. He whistled, sharp and urgent. “Boy! Help me find them!”

The dog only paced at the edge of the slide, hackles up, tail low, barking his worry but refusing to set a paw on the broken snow.

Below, Thelonius forced his massive head to move, shoving at the snow, trying to feel which way was up. Each breath burned. The air was stale and thin. He blew out hard and felt it come back hot against his muzzle. Up. Good. Miquitzil’s quiet throat‑song thrummed through the snow for a moment, then faltered as his air ran short. He shut his mouth, lungs screaming, trusting the bear to do the rest.

Above, Raine and Felwar ran back and forth along the slope, calling themselves hoarse. Nothing answered but the wind.

Time stretched. Hope thinned.

Then Felwar saw it — the slightest ripple across the pristine snow, like something pushing up against cloth.

“Here!” he shouted, dropping to his knees. He clawed with bare hands, fingers numbing almost at once. Raine tore his shield free and used it as a shovel, hewing great scoops of snow aside.

Below, Thelonius heaved, pushing up with the last of his strength.

At last, a dark muzzle punched through — then a snout, then the full, frost‑rimed head of a bear. Thelonius hauled himself out, gasping, snow sliding from his back in heavy slabs. Miquitzil followed, half‑dragged, hacking and coughing as the cold air tore into his chest.

They lay there a moment, all four of them gulping air, the slope around them silent but for their breathing and the distant, indifferent wind.

There was no talk of stopping. No safe place to crawl into. Higher up the mountain, Garret and his clients were still up there somewhere. Maybe.

“On your feet,” Raine said at last, giving Miquitzil a hand up. “We didn’t come this far to freeze on a halfway bloody ledge.”

They climbed.

They found Garret hunched behind a scraped‑together windbreak of snow blocks and a torn backpack, a makeshift shelter barely holding back the gale. A tiny fire of sticks and scavenged gear guttered inside its hollow. Through the frost crusting his beard and the blood dried at his collar, Thelonius recognised him from Keegan’s little painting — the taller man with the quiet eyes.

Boy reached him first. The dog bounded into the shelter, tail thudding, and went to licking his face. Garret tried to push him away, but his hands were weak and clumsy.

Up close, the damage was plain. Something with long claws had raked him across the chest, tearing coat and flesh both and snapping the strap of his pack. His nose was white with frostbite. His lips were split and bloody. He was breathing, but only just. Each inhale was barely a thin, ragged sip.

Thelonius conjured another magical bonfire, the flames cutting a small pocket of light and heat into the wind. Felwar stepped in after it, pressed a palm to Garret’s torn chest and murmured quiet words to the Summer Queen. Warm magic flowed, knitting skin and pushing the worst of the cold away from his organs. It was enough to close the killing wounds. Not enough to give back the strength the mountain had already taken.

“Three clients,” Garret rasped at last, voice little more than a cracked whisper. “A goliath — Mokingo Growling Bear, on some damned fool quest to find and challenge Oyaminartok. The second, his friend, a halfling woman, acolyte of Yondalla — Perilou Fishfinger. And the last, a tiefling wizard — Astrix. Quiet. Swears like a sailor.” He pointed up toward the summit.

He wheezed and begged them to find the others if there was still time. He talked bravely about making his own way down, but Raine only shook his head.

“You won’t survive ten minutes alone on this slope, let alone the day.”

Garret did not argue after that. He tried weakly to insist that he could not climb.

“Good thing you’re not climbing,” Thelonius rumbled through bear jaws.

They got him up once, testing the weight — Garret slung across the brown bear’s broad back, ropes cinched tight. The guide sagged there, clinging more from instinct than will, while Raine checked the knots.

That was when eyes flashed in the spindrift above the camp.

Two crag cats ghosted over the rocks — big as lions, white‑grey coats broken with faint rosettes, tails level, shoulders low. Predators built for mountains and bad weather, clever enough to test a line and slip away if the price looked too high.

“Off,” Raine snapped. Between them, he and Felwar quickly hauled Garret down off Thelonius’ back and propped him against a rock, looping a quick line around his chest to keep him upright.

Miquitzil dropped into whatever cover he could find. Raine, teeth gritted, snatched up a half‑burning stick from the guttering fire and, with a hoarse curse, hurled it at the nearer cat, sparks streaming in the dark. The great beast only watched it arc lazily through the air and hiss out in the snow, utterly unimpressed.

Thelonius‑bear charged uphill, paws churning the drift. His first swipe cut empty air as the closest cat sprang back, then darted in again. Its jaws locked on his cheek, teeth punching through fur and skin before it bounded away, leaving a bright line of blood across the bear’s face.

The second cat launched straight at Raine. He stepped aside at the last instant, the animal’s full weight raking down his shield, claws screeching against metal as it slid past.

“Don’t let them land on you!” Garret croaked, voice barely audible over the chaos. “They’ll fuck you up!”

Miquitzil flung out a hand, witch bolt crackling, but the first shot went wide, exploding harmlessly against rock. He swore in his own tongue, adjusted, and a second tendril snapped onto a cat’s flank, the lightning tether holding firm as he poured pulses of power into the beast.

Raine stepped into its angle and took a rake down his arm for his trouble, blood hot inside the glove. He answered with two hard cuts that opened the cat’s side and sent it reeling. Felwar moved in quickly, his conjured blade flaring as it bit into bloodied fur and flesh, leaving radiant cracks racing along the wound.

Teeth, steel and claws traded in the spindrift. Thelonius‑bear tore a grim line across the face of one cat while Raine harried the other with blade and shield, forcing them to spend more effort avoiding death than trying to deal it. Miquitzil’s witch bolt pulsed again and again, scorching fur. Felwar’s blade flickered bright each time it struck.

The crag cats were hunters, not fools. With a last hiss and spit they broke, bounding away uphill, then vanishing sideways into the storm. There would be easier prey. The darkness swallowed them as thoroughly as if the mountain itself had closed over them.

Breathing hard and unwilling to linger, they secured Garret more firmly to Thelonius’ back and moved on into the teeth of the wind.

More than an hour later the climb brought them to a shadowed cleft high on the Cairn — a cave mouth scoured by wind, rimmed with old ice and fresh spindrift. Felwar slipped along the wall and peered inside.

Skulls lined the natural ledges within, displayed like trophies. Goat. Dwarf. Something larger. Their hollow sockets stared out into the darkness. Long bones lay stacked among them, some gnawed clean, others still clinging with tendon and strips of blackened flesh.

On the floor lay the remains of a goliath. A split pauldron. The haft of a greataxe frozen into the drift. A heavy skull wedged into a cleft in the ice.

“Our goliath friend, I suspect,” Felwar murmured as Raine eased up beside him.

Raine gave a single, grim nod. Felwar hissed for the others to hold and began to edge back. No sense walking straight into a fight if there was another way.

Then he heard it — a female voice, small and cracked and stubborn, muttering Yondalla’s name in a ragged prayer from somewhere deeper in the cave.

Felwar slid forward again and risked another look.

A yeti tyke had a halfling curled in a tight ball, shoving and spinning her across the ice like a toy — the halfling woman Garret had named as Perilou Fishfinger. She was barely conscious, but alive. Her eyes were squeezed shut, lips moving in constant prayer, clinging to Yondalla with what little strength she had left.

Against the far wall, an adult yeti sat preening, long fingers combing through its thick white fur. It watched the “play” with cold, possessive eyes, claw marks gouged deep into the ice all around it. Blood smears and drag lines scored the chamber floor.

The cold here was different. Heavier. It sank straight into bone and stayed there.

Felwar gave one sharp hand signal to the others, set his stance, and moved. His first strike was the opening blow in the battle with the yeti.

Miquitzil and Raine hurried to untie Garret from Thelonius’ back and propped him against the cave wall. He sagged there, barely conscious, while Boy settled beside him, pressing in close to lend what warmth he could.

The adult yeti rose to its full height — twelve feet of muscle and fur. It roared, a sound that shook the cave, then hurled itself at Felwar. Its claws smashed into stone where he had been a heartbeat before, shards of ice stinging his cheek.

The tyke squealed in panic and bolted deeper into the chamber, leaving Perilou slumped against the wall, forgotten for the moment.

Thelonius‑bear thundered into the fight. He and the yeti crashed together in a blur of fur and teeth, the cave shaking with the force of their grappling.

Felwar pulled back and began to chant. A storm gathered around the yeti — not of spinning blades as he expected, but of hornets, wasps, and fat, furious bees. The cloud hit like thrown gravel, a living, buzzing wall that buried itself in fur and flesh. Stingers punched into soft places around the eyes and mouth, vanishing up into the thick pelt. White fur writhed under the swarm, streaked instantly red as the monster bellowed and staggered.

Felwar felt the wrongness of it — the twist in whatever answer his magic had given him — but the thing was screaming and bleeding, and that was a problem for later.

The yeti mother grabbed its tyke one‑handed and clutched it tight against its chest as it tried to retreat to the far side of the cave. Felwar moved with it, eyes hard, shifting the storm with a twist of his will. The swirling mass slid through the air and met the pair head‑on.

The child shrieked as it was torn apart in its mother’s arms, blood spattering the cavern wall and the adult that held it. The yeti’s howl was like nothing human — a raw tear of grief and fury that shook frost from the ceiling.

Thelonius had not been idle. Still in bear form, he planted himself behind Felwar, interposing his bulk as he called hoarsely for the halfling to crawl to him. Whether it was faith that her goddess had finally sent help, or just some half‑conscious scrap of survival instinct, Perilou finally nodded and scrambled across the ice to his side.

The adult yeti charged again, eyes wild, claws spread wide, all thought of anything but killing gone.

It crashed into Felwar and the bear. Raine met it on the flank, his blade cutting deep. Thelonius’ claws tore strips from its sides. Miquitzil’s lightning lashed it again and again, searing fur and flesh. Felwar’s conjured insects whirled and bit, carving through muscle and bone.

At last, the beast collapsed in the centre of the cave, blood spreading dark across the ice and freezing almost as it touched. The echo of its final howl faded into the storm.

Perilou pulled her sleeves over her eyes and pressed her hands together. “By Yondalla, please,” she whispered, voice shaking. “Find Astrix. She ran when I was taken. That way.” She pointed further up the mountain, arm trembling. “Mokingo… he tried to hold it off. He tried to save me.”

Garret lifted his head, pale and worn. “The peak is close now,” he croaked. “No more than a hundred yards. There’s nowhere else she could have gone.”

Raine stepped to the fallen yeti and drew his blade again. With practised strokes he split the creature from neck to groin, steam billowing as hot entrails slumped out into the frozen air.

“I thought they smelled bad on the outside,” he muttered.

Perilou turned her face away and prayed harder.

Raine hauled Garret closer and pressed him down into the hollow of the yeti’s opened chest, between ribs still radiating heat. “Come on,” he said. “Warmer in there. You’ll last a few hours like this. We’ll come back to dry you out and you’ll be right as gold.”

Boy whimpered, then lowered his muzzle and began lapping at the blood.

The others traded uneasy looks. Raine only shrugged.

“What? He’ll be fine,” he said. “It’s all meat to him.”

Felwar rubbed a hand over his face and turned toward the cave mouth. “Let’s go,” he breathed.

They left Perilou, Boy, and Garret in the yeti’s den and pushed back out into the wind for the climb to the peak of Kelvin’s Cairn.

They had known cold before. The mountain had taught them a new kind. The yeti cave had been worse again — a still, biting cold that knifed in without the wind’s help. Here at the crest of Kelvin’s Cairn, the chill felt like a thing with teeth. Life did not belong in places like this.

Beneath the vast, sail‑like crown of the Cairn, they found her.

Astrix sat slumped against the ice, arms wrapped around her knees, face crusted with rime and utterly motionless. She looked dead — a statue left as an offering to the mountain. Not far from her, a pair of blue boots jutted from a drift, legs vanishing under a hard crust, the rest of the body locked in ice.

“Astrix?” Felwar called, edging closer. Then, with a half‑shrug to the others, “Maybe we just shoot her.”

They were already shaking their heads, already pointing.

Her head moved.

It was slow and wrong, the sound of ice cracking in plates down her neck. Frost split and fell away as her eyes opened — glazed at first, then sharpening beneath the crust. Shards slid from her shoulders and chimed on the stone as the party tightened grips on steel and spell.

She rose with eerie calm, movements deliberate, unhurried. In one hand, she held a leather satchel. Astrix glanced at it, expression unreadable, then let it drop into the snow.

“I will not be needing that,” she said.

Her other hand stayed closed around something dark — a shard of black stone, many‑faced, its outline hovering between knife and dagger. The others could not place it. Raine could. His eyes widened.

She stepped forward as if to walk past them.

Raine caught her wrist.

Felwar, unsettled, crouched by the blue boots, chipping at the ice with the pommel of his dagger. “Did you kill this person, Astrix?” he asked.

She looked at him as if the question bored her. “No.” Then she turned back to Raine. “Let me go.”

“Give me that,” he growled, twisting her wrist so the shard lifted into sight.

For a heartbeat, he stared at it. The black facets caught no light at all. Something in it moved.

A voice punched into his skull — not heard but imposed. Cold, vast, impatient.

Let my child go, Raine. NOW.

His pupils widened. His breath hitched. Every instinct he owned screamed to hold on — and then that will was simply gone, crushed flat under something older and stronger.

He staggered back as if he had taken a mace to the chest. Astrix slipped free, the shard still in her hand.

“We must let her go,” Raine rasped, voice hoarse, unfocused. “There are powers here we should not test.”

The others stared at him, then at Astrix, then at the shard, unsettled and not at all sure what had just passed between them. None of them stepped in her path.

Astrix — who by all rights ought to have been a frozen corpse — walked past, breath fogging in the air just like theirs, boots crunching on the ice. She did not look back. She did not say thank you. She did not say anything at all.

“Impossible,” Thelonius muttered under his breath.

Felwar let Astrix go and turned his attention fully to the half‑buried figure. He chipped the ice away until a face showed beneath — bearded, heavy‑featured.

“A dwarf,” he said. “Male. Help me. We’re not leaving him up here.”

It was slow, savage work. The body was iron‑heavy with ice, every step down a labour shared between them. Miquitzil went ahead, lightest on his feet, while Raine and Felwar bore most of the weight, Thelonius back in his own skin and staggering beside them.

They were almost back to the cave mouth when the world in front of them moved.

The storm parted like curtains torn aside. A huge shape shouldered out of the white — white fur, old scars, a crown of icicles clinging to its matted mane. Bigger than the yeti in the cave. Bigger than any of them had thought possible.

Its roar shook the air and the ice under their boots. Teeth bared. Eyes burning with a hungry, deliberate rage.

The Beheader.

It meant violence.