They camped under a small stony outcropping that shielded from the worst of the snow and wind. Ollie managed to pile and freeze snow on one side of it using his magic which blocked the icy wind that seemed to be whipping out toward them constantly. It was all coming from the same direction, and seemed relentless.

“It’s definitely not natural,” said Lance stoking the fire a bit and tossing a few more magically dried twigs onto the pile. “I’ve seen some strange weather, but this is beyond being out of season. It feels like we’re nearing mid-winter out here.”

“Could it be magic? Some kind of weather control?” asked Davi.

“I’ve never heard of any magic that could affect the weather to this extent. Maybe in the old days of the united Humelands there were some mages with this kind of power.”

“Could that be it? Some mage found an old piece of magic? Is that a thing?” asked Pyotr.

Lance shrugged. “I’m not sure, all the history I studied was… Stent specific.”

“It’s not like spells here use books,” said Francesca. “If a mage wanted to affect the weather like this he would just need to understand the principles of it and have the magicka to make it happen, right?”

Ollie frowned. “Most spells have to be cast within a… bubble? Field of magicka that surrounds us. We can extend that field pretty far when we focus, but I don’t know… maybe with a group of us with the right knowledge it would be possible. I don’t think this is that though, I can usually tell what’s a spell or not by feeling the magicka press against my own field, and I’m not picking any of that up at all.”

Michael listened to their conversation quietly as he ate a bit of rabbit that Marcus had managed to shoot. It was good. He hadn’t ever had rabbit back on Earth, but found it very flavorful. His old taste buds may not have appreciated it as much, with how much sugar and salt he was used to in his meals, but he really enjoyed the more subtle flavors of things in this world now that he had a ‘hard reset’ of sorts.

There was a slight break in the chatting as everyone moved to check on the state of their equipment and supplies after the bounty hunter’s attack. Davi managed to convince Francesca to sit still while he made a valiant attempt to draw her despite shivering fingers and heavy winds.

Michael finished his meal and tossed the bones into the corner where everyone else’s were laying. He closed his eyes and said several short prayers. One to Seras, the goddess of protection for helping him to protect Ollie, one to ‘the’ who had helped him to beat the bounty hunter, and one to the divine in general and all the gods he’d had yet to meet or even hear a whisper of. When he was done he drew his bedroll and blanket from his pack and went to sleep for the evening. They would have watches, but Michael usually took the second one through to morning since he needed so much less sleep than the others.

The next day they bundled back up and started walking again. Michael had noticed Davi and Francesca’s bedrolls had been very close together the previous night, but chose not to say anything about it. It was a bit difficult to not give Davi a high five though, in spite of the more than sixty years of life, there were just some things you wanted to praise a friend for.

The wind and the snow were biting as they moved, but even when they attempted to move a bit more north or south on the trail there was almost no difference. They were all as bundled up as possible, with blankets tied around armor like cloaks and several of Ollie’s floating orbs of heat rotating around them to dull the worst of the cold.

“There is one good thing about this,” said Marcus as they moved.

“Oh?”

“It’ll be a lot harder to track us with all of this snowfall.’

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Michael nodded, his helmet clanging a bit from the motion. He was feeling anxious as they moved. At first he thought it was just the unending snow with no reason behind it, but as the anxiety built to dread he realized that wasn’t the reason behind it. It was the same feeling he’d felt when he’d approached the rift with the horned men inside of it. A powerful sense of wrongness that made him want to turn back.

“It’s a rift,” said Michael as they continued to trudge their way up the road. “That’s what’s causing the cold.”

“How?” asked Davi.

“No idea, but I can feel that we’re getting closer to one. Keep your weapons ready and your eyes open. Who knows what may have come with the cold, or even brought it.”

They all took his warning to heart and undid the clasp on their weapons, their eyes sweeping across the vast whiteness around them as they moved. It wasn’t long until they saw a number of wooden buildings arrayed ahead, the darkness of their walls contrasting sharply with the heavy snowfall around them.

They all began to make their way to the village and moved quickly, their footfalls gaining a bit of energy now that there was a visible destination ahead of them rather than endless whiteness. Once they were there Michael noticed that a number of the buildings had large rends across them, clearly made by claws. He gestured to the others to show them, and drew his sword as they walked through the center of the town. He knocked on the door of a home.

“Hello! Is anyone there?” There was no answer so he moved down to the next house, and then the next. On the third one he finally received an answer.

“Please! Don’t draw attention to my home! They’re still out there.”

“Still out-” He whipped around and started to look more closely around. He wasn’t the first one to see them, instead it was Marcus who whipped around and fired off a shot into the whiteness above one of the houses. There was a shock of crimson, as a small white-furred creature fell off the roof and into the ground, blood dripping from a hole in its malformed skull.

Three more of the creatures revealed themselves at that moment and leapt down at them. Davi caught the claws of one on his shield as he moved to protect Francesca, and Ollie blasted one of them back with a wall of force before it could fully land. Lance and Pyotr narrowly avoided one that attempted to rake its claws across their backs, and Lance managed to slice at its claw as it tried to follow up its attack.

Michael moved to attack the one that Ollie had knocked backward, but two more moved to intercept him. He focused, feeling the heat build in his hand and the golden light spread from his hand to his blade as golden flames. The beasts recoiled from the light of his blade, but the nearest of them wasn’t able to move before he carved through it, his blade gliding through the beast and lighting it aflame as it struck. He moved to attack the next one, but only managed a glancing blow on its back as it tried to run away. In spite of the lightness of the attack, the creature burst into flame. It screamed as it rolled on the snow attempting to put it out, but the snow couldn’t quench the holy flame and it burned to death.

When he turned to help the others with their fights, he saw that Lance had already finished one off, Marcus had dropped another, Ollie had somehow bisected one, and the rest were running away, bloody and beaten in the direction of the ever-blowing icy wind.

He took a closer look at the creatures. They were four or five feet tall at the largest with hunched over bodies, and elongated arms that ended in large claws. Their eyes and claws were the same white color as their fur which let them blend almost perfectly into the snow around them.Their features were hard to read, but seemed simian.

Michael muttered a prayer as he let the righteous fire on his blade fade from it. He could see cracks and breaks in the steel. It would almost certainly shatter the moment he struck something with it again. He carefully slid it back into his sheath.

He raised his hand and started to heal everyone, but luckily the warning the villagers had given them had allowed them to avoid any major injuries. Still, he sealed some scratches, bruises, and tears to make sure everyone was as close to a hundred percent as possible. When he was done he moved, not back to the door he’d received the warning from, but instead the door to the largest building in the village.

He knocked on the door. “Hello? We cleared out the white-furred beasts. Could we please come inside? We don’t mean any harm to you.”

“And we’re freezing out here,” said Ollie, his hands less than an inch from one of the floating orbs of warmth he’d summoned.

There was a stir from behind a door a bit further away for the largest of the buildings in the village, and a small slat was removed showing dark brown eyes.

“You’re certain they’re all dead?” asked a feminine voice.

“Well, some of them ran, but the rest are dead, yes.”

There was the sound of the door being unbarred and some furniture being moved before it swung open to show a short old woman wearing thick wool and a scowl on her face.

“Hurry in. I’m freezing my damned tits off.”