The Jaws of Winter

[Khaela Mensha Khaine]

Blackness, all around him. His pale eyes turned skywards as the snow drifted elegantly down. Far, far above was a faint, shifting shimmer of light, but the heavens seemed somehow blurry this night. Confused, his bluish brows slowly descended into a bemused frown. His mind was sluggish, his body heavy, his white lips pursing into a frown. Perhaps it was the cold. It clung to him like a parasite, leeching his strength . . and yet he did not feel weak. Only motionless.

In his bemusement his chin slowly tilted down, gaze searching the impenetrable darkness as if it were due to recede. It did not. The ground was flat, translucent. Ice? Yes, it was ice. Ice, stretching out as far as he could see in every direction. He focused on it for what seemed like an eternity, until slowly it began to shift before his feet. The ground rippled and shimmered as it rose in staggered spots, shimmying like a living being and, gradually, it took form.

The trepidation wrenched his heart in the opposite direction; every fibre of his being ached to flee. Those blue brows were risen, his pale eyes wide. Agony shot up his leg as it cramped the moment he tried to battle his inexplicable paralysis. But even in his pain he could not move, could not force himself to move, and now the ice had become a conscious entity.

Once again his gaze was lifted, but where before only blackness had greeted him, now there was a colossal wolf, crystalline and majestic as it was terrible to behold. Its' breath was a mist so frigid that it burned his face as it washed over unprotected skin. Its ridged and jagged body looked like a deadly imitation of messy fur, a line of stalagmites like hackles down its spine. Its eyes were blue flame, staring at him unblinking. Its maw was permanently curled into a snarl.
It did not advance slowly, it did not show any indication of motion beyond its slow, rhythmic breathing. But then it sprang. All he saw was those two frozen lights flash and grow before him, and the maw open impossibly wide as it lunged. In a flashing moment he felt the urgency of his plight lending him the strength to move his frozen limbs, but it was too late.

Teeth like giant icicles pierced his body. He pushed at the powerful jaws, tried to hold its mouth open. Its breath poured against his back, freezing his spine. Only desperation aided his strength as he fought and strained, pushed to stop those teeth from eviscerating him, but he felt his arms trembling with the effort, and what hidden reserves of inner power quickly depleting. He was lithe and frail - no match for this woken effigy of frost.
As he battled the great wolf, murky images emerged in the dark, at the fringes of his vision. Orcs, baying for blood. He recognized their shapes beyond doubt . . but they were odd, oily eidolons, their movements stuttered and hazy. They were all around him, he knew now. They were cheering, raising their meaty fists in the air and howling, exultant over the prospect of an ignoble, humiliating death for their nemesis, their hunter.

The reaction was rage. His strong jaw clenched so hard he felt his teeth might crack as both of his arms pushed at the wolf's maw, but it availed him nothing.

It was then that he cried out. His mouth parted and he screamed his fury to the blackness, to the wolf, to the taunting orcish horde. He screamed and he pushed, thrashed against the merciless cold. There was no sound emerging from his throat, but it didn't matter. He screamed and he pushed, soundlessly growled and snarled and spat and even tried to use his legs to push back that ever-closing maw.

Then, bizarrely, it all stopped. There was no pain, there was no crushing feeling. He wasn't thrashing anymore, or pushing, though he was still caught fast by the wolf. Cautiously his pale eyes opened, then they widened. Before him stood the Seldarine, resplendent and glorious in their stoic uprightness. Garbed in glittering robes of moonlight, they taciturnly regarded him, ignoring the yammering of the orcs - now spitting their own indignation - just at their backs.

Except for one. Slightly smaller than the others, he was not bedecked in glorious robes. His tunic, his boots, his gloves, his hood - everything he wore was black as starless night. In his hand a simple bow, at his back a quiver of shadowy arrows; their tips alone shining like silver. Smoothly but purposefully he strode across the slick ice and stood before beast and prey.

Then without a word he nocked an arrow and fired it straight into the wolf's eye.

It shattered into countless shards of ice and fell all about him like fragments of glass. Then the entire scene faded away, warping to one side, pulled away from his sight and replaced again with blackness.

Stagheart coughed up water and then fought for breath. Through squinting eyes and lapsing consciousness he saw snow and trees. No more ice, no more wolf. He was vaguely aware of being jostled around uncomfortably, the unpleasant scent of a horse that had not been bathed in a good while not far off. Everything felt numb, but not so numb that he could not feel the bite of the cold, or that all of his clothes were soaking wet. Everything in him screamed for warmth, any warmth. Then he felt himself being roughly picked up and the scent of the horse grew more pungent.

As he was thrown over the stallion's back he began another hacking cough, spitting out more dirty, icy water. He tried to cling to the mount dumbly, but his battle for consciousness went just like his battle with the wolf; he lost.