Mode: Exploration
Location, Time, and Weather: Unknown, daytime, and in frozen hell
Location, Time, and Weather: Unknown, daytime, and in frozen hell
All was white...
"Blizzard Sounds" by Stardust Vibes
As your senses slowly and agonizingly returned to you, you found yourself knee-deep in howling white snow. Under it lay either rock or ice or something equally uncomfortable or so your sore muscles told you. Your teeth chattered as the cold whipped around you. Your hands and feet felt coldest of all. You were quite alone...
... or so it first seemed.
One by one, you could faintly see most of your comrades slowly sitting up from their prone positions. One did not stir. The ache and the chill wrathfully grappled each of you. Snow covered each and every one of you so much you could not even see your armor and clothes.
Vanished was the warmth and security of Ben & Misha's. Equally dissipated was the safety and grandness of Highwind on the mountain. All that remained was part of your team, a horrible drop off of a cliffside behind you, and a mirthless gathering of frost-laden trees before you.
Then realizations began to set in.
Terrible realizations.
The snow pulled at Brendoran, giving him a harder time than he had ever been used to. He felt a bit frail in this evil winter's grasp, but somehow, he also felt brighter than he had ever been! His mind was as clear as a reflection off of still water. And yet, the son of Sarabina felt a great sense of loss. It was as if a thing had come and filched from him something beloved to his very being. Filched while he lay unconscious. And yet, Brendoran could not for the moment place as to what it was. Memories of dear Shalin began to whisper in his brain, but those whispers were, as always, silent. Despite his shivering body and limbs, Brendoran could not shake the feeling that things had changed drastically and his very survival depended on finding out what they were and righting them!
The snows held Nivirea jealously in their grip. Chilled from head to toe, the woman from Summerset felt her teeth chattering. In addition to this, there was a terrific sense of intellectual freedom that she had never known. Her brain was a thinking thing, strong and vital, filled with a great many new things, but.. something was terribly wrong! She felt robbed! She felt dulled somehow, like a blade that had fought a thousand battles without the touch of a whetstone. She could not put her finger on what precisely it was - it was enough to drive a woman mad with anger!
All of you felt strange and curious absences and gainings...
Oreleth had felt the chills of more cold seasons than any in her fellowship, perhaps more than all of her company combined. But the feeling of timeless experience had evaporated - somehow replaced with a physical vitality few elves had ever known. She felt so very healthy. Yet her eyesight seemed darkened a touch, her hearing not quite right. There was a stirring in her very being and that stirring was a stranger. Her natural alacrity seemed a touch slower, but that could have easily been attributed to this wind and snow. Yet there was a part of her that felt all too welcome in it. Still, there was an awful feeling that something was not right at all. This was solidly combined with the wonder if it would ever be right again. Fear crept upon Oreleth's mind as it had not in long years.
Luna, too, was covered in great blankets of oncoming snow. As she fought to get them off, she tried to fathom what had happened, but upon doing so - there came a tremendous shock! Her beloved familiar, Sparkle, was gone! Not just physically removed, but completely absent from her mind! So too did Luna feel a crushing weightless weight upon her brain. It was so hard to think to her proper proportions! It was as if an ogre had clubbed her in the skull. She felt differently, oh so differently, as if free to do as she pleased, beyond the reach of normal women. For Luna also knew of a great and personal energy she had never knew existed before. And yet, a black sensation, the sure presence of this awful disturbance came over her. It hung upon her more dreadfully than all of the snow here combined.
Otiorin woke to senses he did not know. He also felt the absence of senses he had always known. Immediately, he felt as if his very soul had been toyed with by something far greater in power than he. Toyed with and stained. His reflexes were more than he remembered having, but he coughed terribly for a moment. He experienced a vulnerability about him he had not known since he was a mere boy. The cold was a cackling demon on his back. It bit into him and threatened to steal his very life. But yet, there was a hardiness to his spirit that was not there before. Above all, he knew something had come into his life and torn out things precious to him. But... what? Try as he might, Otiorin had no answer.
Bria's form lay face-down in the snow. Bits of her brown hair and one outreached hand stuck out from the pile of whiteness that had threatened to bury her. She had willingly taken the fullest impact of the magical snow globe and now lay in the frost like a dead woman.
Only one thing was of certainty here - wherever here was...
...to stay here was to die.
Far from home. Far from everything good and warm and right.
To die here was to give Loviatar's unnamed priestess and Gerran the Vile the victory they so dearly wished to see.
All you had to do was sit and wait for the end to come...
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