The only thing keeping me from blowing Ikterwal’s self-satisfied face wide open was that I was as likely to hit Maeve now as I was him. I completely lost my mind.

Seth: “Useless!”

I tossed the weapon to the ground and ran for the dragon’s maw like it was a finish line. I had no plan. I would make it to his jaws, and then…

Once again, Wolfgang held me back.

Seth: “Let go of me, damn it!”

But he wouldn’t. All I could do was slam my fists against his solid frame as I wracked my brain for the scenario by which Maeve could possibly survive. Tears formed in my eyes, threatening to freeze if they should fall. Then Wolfgang flipped me around and pointed at Ikterwal.

The dragon’s mouth was seizing up. A moment later a blade of frozen blood cut through the top of his snout and from the gore rose an ‘inside out’ Maeve, an icy tendril in each hand and all of her eyes narrowed at her would-be predator. She spoke in a chorus of alien voices, all of them in perfect sync with her own.

Maeve: “Forget the damn flaw... I’ll just bury this fossil!”

I let the relief hit me like a bullet. Maeve leapt to the top of Ikterwal’s skull, swinging her blades in a frenzy. The dragon roared, slamming his head into the ceiling and causing chunks of rock to fall. Maeve jumped just in time, blades spinning rapidly through his scales on her way down. Xenna used her orb to fire the fallen rocks like cannonballs into Ikterwal’s face. Wolfgang jumped onto one such missile in motion and used it to reach the dragon’s snout, slicing into the wound Maeve had emerged from with his bone claws.

Ikterwal snarled, finally freeing himself from the mystical ice that had held him in place. Wolfgang nimbly leapt down before the dragon backed out into the snow. Part of me hoped he would simply fly away, but instead he slammed his considerable weight into the side of the cave, causing the whole thing to begin to crumble. 

Maeve skittered toward Zyturak and I, grabbing the holstered Cenotaph weapon on the way. She lifted us up and tossed both us and the weapon out of the cave before we could protest.  Xenna tried desperately to keep the ceiling together with aether, but it was an impossible task. Fresh tendrils shot out of Maeve’s body, lifting her up and then firing out in every direction, causing her to scream as she somehow kept the whole thing from collapsing. Wolfgang took the opportunity to scoop Xenna up and run, practically skating on the icy floor. When they were finally through the threshold, Maeve released her hold and lunged for the entrance - but Ikterwal intercepted her, and her bottom half was crushed entirely by cold stone as the cave finally collapsed.

Seth: “Oh god, Maeve!!”

Even I struggled to believe she could bounce back from this. Ikterwal wrapped us up in his tail and took his time with his prey, inching painfully slowly towards the dying Maeve, who to her credit refused to look away from him.

Ikterwal: “Just what are you, little vermin? Nothing has escaped my maw before…”

He laughed coldly as Maeve struggled to breathe, let alone answer him. Even still, she stared him down defiantly.

Ikterwal: “Barely human, that’s for sure… and surprisingly difficult to kill. You remind me too much of the Scar. In fact, you just so happen to represent everything I hate in this world.”

Maeve: “...me.”

Her voices were now entirely out of sync. Some sounded like they had died already.

Ikterwal: “Oh? Are you begging for your pathetic life now?”

Maeve: “Kill me…”

Hearing her ask for death took all the fight out of me. I slumped over in Ikterwal’s grasp, unable to watch. The dragon shook me violently back to attention, and I didn’t have it in me to resist. Unable to accept the scene before me, I forced myself to believe that Maeve actually had some kind of plan beyond allowing Ikterwal to finish her off.

Ikterwal cast an evil eye back at us, breaking out in a sadistic smile. 

Ikterwal: “I’d better give her what she wants!”

He moved his reddened claw toward her skull, intending to spear her all the way through. She wasn’t looking at her impending doom, however...

Maeve: “Found it!”

The moment before he made contact with her, Maeve’s body became engulfed in darkness. She raced up his nail as if she had become entirely boneless. Ikterwal roared in disgust, but couldn’t shake her off. She made it to a particular spot under his chest and reformed, chittering in ecstatic joy as she plunged tendrils of black blood into the flaw she had found.

In his rage, the dragon started to crush us with his tail, but all at once his grip loosened. As we got to our feet, we saw that it was over. Ikterwal’s blue blood seeped out from the flaw, and Maeve stood before us ‘right side in’, once again without a single injury. By now, I knew better than to ask how. Thanks for another miracle, Bedlam. Keep ‘em coming.

Wordlessly she came to stand beside me and I leaned a thankful head on her shoulder. The five of us stared at the now extinct dragon for a long while.

Wolfgang: “I really wasn’t sure at first about coming here but… this was for the best. Not only did Ikterwal want to die, it was right that he be put to death. Still, I can’t help but feel some sympathy for this once noble beast, if his story was true... ”

Wolfgang knelt beside the dragon’s face, putting an arm over his maimed snout.

Wolfgang: “I think... you understood that this would be your end. You knew all along that it was only a matter of time before humans hunted you down, just as they had hunted every last one of your kind before you. And that was why you told us all that you did, despite the great ire you held for us.”

As Wolfgang spoke, he let his tears fall freely.

Wolfgang: “We of Ptarmigan will not forget the dignity of the dragons in their prime, Ikterwal. At the very least, I will promise you that.”

Xenna went to Wolfgang’s side as he spoke prayers in his native tongue, and we all shared the myriad emotions that came with the reality of what we had done. I put an arm around Maeve as she fought her own tears. The guilt was already weighing on her. As if in response to Ikterwal’s death, a howling wind had slowly been building up. A real snow storm seemed to be on its way.

Then Wolfgang rose, nodding his thanks that we had partaken in his ritual. Xenna suddenly went completely rigid.

Xenna: “The Anchor!!”

We looked at the massive pile of debris where the cave had been.

Maeve: “And our supplies...”

We shared a worried look.

Zyturak: “Let’s not panic just yet. There’s a reasonable chance the hoard was kept deeper underground - after all, we saw nothing in the chamber we were in.”

He didn’t mention the supplies issue but hey, one problem at a time, right?

Wolfgang: “Leave it to me. I will ask for the land’s wisdom.”

Wolfgang closed his eyes and knelt down in the snow. I took the time to find the fallen holstered weapon and sling it over my shoulder again. It hadn’t exactly been of any help yet, but with the rest of our supplies destroyed and it having been a gift from Maeve, it seemed silly to leave it behind out of spite. After a few brief moments Wolfgang stood again and led us to a patch of snow about fifty meters from the debris.

Wolfgang: “We should find what we seek down there.”

Xenna took a few shaky breaths to calm herself down, then shifted her aether orb fire aspected. We huddled around her while the heat built up, enjoying the relief from Ptarmigan’s relentless cold. Then we backed away as she melted the snow to reveal cold, hard soil. Xenna shifted her orb’s aspect to earth and began to excavate until finally, she hit stone, and her orb drilled a hole into a very deep chamber. She then lowered her orb further and its fiery glow allowed us to see inside - it was filled with treasure.

Maeve: “I’ve got this.”

She held me in her arms as her tendrils reappeared, carrying us down the walls of the large treasure room.

Maeve: “A lot weird stuff down here, huh? That dragon really was losing his mind…”

There was a bit of everything. Human bones, Cenotaph artifacts, even scales from his own kind that had been kept to a polish. There were a lot of weird masks hanging from the walls that were making me feel extremely uncomfortable.

Seth: “Yeah. I just want to find the thing and get out of here…”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A black ring inlaid with blue lights. As I took hold of it I could feel the Soul magic still pulsing through it. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and slipped it around my wrist.

Seth: “I found it! We’re good to go!”

Maeve excitedly ran to me, checking out my new bracelet. 

Maeve: “Nice! You know, it suits you somehow.”

I blushed at the observation simply because it came from her. 

Maeve: “Alright, let’s get the hell out of here before we end up touching something cursed!”

Maeve hoisted us back out of the hole, and everyone was glad to see The Anchor was here after all, Wolfgang more than anyone. I would have felt even more terrible if we had rendered Ptarmigan’s sacred beast extinct for nothing.

The dogs, who had never entered the cave to begin with, were returning now, curiously sniffing the dragon’s corpse. The sleds and all of our supplies, however, had been destroyed. 

Seth: “Wolfgang… can we really make it back like this?”

One look at him was all it took. But despite the obvious answer, he cast his face to the sky and laughed.

Wolfgang: “Ha ha ha!! On my honour as a Ptarmigan, every one of you will make it out of this alive!”

We were exhausted after surviving our encounter with Ikterwal, and on top of that we’d never had a proper night’s rest. But with our choices being ‘sit here until we die’ or ‘try to survive’, we began trudging through the knee deep snow. At least we could trust that Wolfgang knew where he was going. 

We wouldn’t have made it an hour without Xenna to warm us every few minutes - once again, we had the two of them to thank for keeping us alive. I hadn’t noticed in Xindelle when we had been limping along, but now that we were in a pretty dire spot again I realized I didn’t feel nearly as hopeless as I should. Zyturak had also been keeping us going this whole time, hadn’t he?

I walked close to Maeve, trying to keep a conversation going so we didn’t have to focus on the sheer cold, but despite our best efforts the blizzard was making that all but impossible. We went for another three hours in silence before Xenna fell over.

Wolfgang: “Oh, Xenna…! “

He knelt beside her, taking off his heavy furs and wrapping her in them. Then he hoisted her over his shoulder, shaky determination in his eyes. 

Without Xenna, we were starting to go numb - especially Wolfgang, whose skin was now completely exposed in places to the cold. He wouldn’t listen to our pleas for him to take turns with the remaining furs, soldiering forward on stubborn pride alone. I tried to match Wolfgang’s endurance, but I just couldn’t. I faceplanted into the snow and my body refused to move. Maeve tried to carry me with her tendrils, but they froze too quickly, snapping off as soon as she balanced me on them. She reached down, cradling me in her arms, and cursed. Wolfgang looked on grimly. Before I lost consciousness, I heard him try desperately to make light of the situation.

Wolfgang: “I t-t-told you… that Pt-Ptarmigan was much harsher… than that little s-sandbox…”