---

Eearwaxx’s dreams were full of cogs, spindles, clockwork mechanisms, and magic as his subconscious mind worked on the puzzle of Dzaan’s amulet. Slowly but surely the pieces slotted into place until he suddenly woke with the solution crystal clear.

“A construct!” he gasped as he jerked awake, his tiny dragon hissing at the interruption. “Forty miles to the north-east.”

“To borrow Arlington’s turn of phrase—what are you talking about?” Morgan asked softly, the only other awake.

“The amulet controls a shield guardian construct, made by a Ythryn wizard! A magically created mechanical creature bound to a controller—this amulet!” Eearwaxx beamed, swinging the amulet freely. “They are very powerful physical creations, imbued with magic that allows them to regenerate—and even store spells! Which I think they can cast? If I tell it to?”

Morgan considered the idea of Eearwaxx being in control of something that powerful and shuddered. But he hid it well. “Wonderful. Let’s tell the others when they wake.”

---

“A what now?” Arlington asked several hours later. Eearwaxx patiently explained once more. He was champing at the bit to get moving, certain that the guardian would still function despite the centuries that had passed.

“And can you summon it?” Jankx asked warily.

“No, I need to get closer to it to activate it. We should go!”

“And you say forty miles, son?” Arlington said. “That would put it squarely buried within, or at the foot of, the Reghed Glacier. There’s nothing else out that far.”

“That’s also the direction Vellyne was heading,” Morgan reminded everyone.

“Quite the coincidence,” Octavian mused. “Why would she be going toward the thing that you just got?”

“It’s a good question,” Morgan nodded. “We need to get moving, but first let Ezra quickly check the Spire in the aftermath of the arrival of that abomination.”

Everyone agreed this was a wise course of action, so Morgan sent his brother forth, eyes milky-white as he watched through Ezra’s eyes.

The illusion chamber was near-destroyed, the runes on the walls and ceiling-roof shattered and cracked. The disc itself was still intact. “I doubt very much the magic will function,” Morgan muttered to his companions.

Ezra floated down the hole the beast had emerged from, finding himself in a roughly hewn dark chamber that must be the tip of the spire—barely a room. “It must have been there for a long time, a very long time,” Morgan said.

“My only question is what was it doing at the tip of the Spire?”

“Nothing. There are no other tunnels leading to or from it, it was just in there.”

“So it was part of the Spire when it hit the ground?” Arlington said sceptically.

“It’s a magical thing,” Eearwaxx shrugged, “Think of it as a mutant created by the mages. Like my dragon, but much worse.” The dragon was perched on Eearwaxx’s shoulder, observing everyone in a slightly unnerving way.

“Or it was attracted to that location,” Jankx shrugged.

“I understand all that, but what was it doing? "

“Lurking,” Eearwaxx said. “There are things that crave magic—remember it attacked me first? It might be a thing that loves magic things, and activating the illusion chamber woke it?”

“It might have been a guardian,” Morgan nodded. “But all I really know is that’s where it was.” He returned his focus to Ezra. “Check the wizard’s bedchamber, then return.”

Ezra stepped warily into the only unexplored room, remembering the spectre. It was gone, no doubt destroyed by the Tomb Tapper. “I can’t see anything,” Ezra reported. He was convinced there was nothing here, and Morgan tended to agree. Just a dead wizard. No ancient god-killing weapons, or spell-books full of spells that could break worlds. Empty.

Morgan’s vision returned. “Nothing to see. Let’s go.”

---

“Speaking from a knowledgeable perspective, in the lower reaches of the river will be easier to travel, where the upper reaches of the untravelled lands it will be far more vertical,” Tarquin offered. “We’ll arrive at the headwaters if we follow the river.”

“That’s exactly what I was about to say,” Arlington coughed.

“And Eearwaxx’s amulet can triangulate the position,” Octavian added.

“That too,” Arlington nodded.

Tarquin collapsed the igloo, Morgan prepared the axebeaks, and the company set out once more into the wilds.

Eearwaxx took a last look at the Spire. “I am coming back here,” he vowed, “This is everything I want. A real wizard’s tower.”

“And a rather unique one—upside down and buried in the ground,” Tarquin grinned.

Arlington led the troup up the inexorable course of the river. At each fork of the river he searched for signs of passage, finding a likely trail each time. It wasn’t clear the tracks were Vellyne’s kobolds, but something had passed this way in the past several days.

“I’m not worried about where we’re going, I’m worried about how far behind them we are. These tracks are cold,” Arlington said, pushing the dogs as hard as he could.

The choices aligned with Eearwaxx’s directions, confirming each choice. It was hard to rouse him from his study of the books from the Spire, both he and Octavian heavily absorbed forcing Arlington to stand and guide the dogs. Eearwaxx muttered a constant monologue of his findings: “Wizards of the Hollow—Galen, Kayla, Taran…Mystra is the Mistress of Magic and Mother of Mysteries who guides the Weave of magic that envelops the world…Ajamar the Illusionist, Veneranda , Sabreyl, Iriolarthas the Arcane…”

Two rest stops were deemed wise, Octavian using his innate senses to warn when true-night approached. Tarquin’s igloo was put to good use, and Eearwaxx even created a second for the animals to protect and rest them as much as possible.

The going was slow, the cold becoming more intense the closer the Glacier drew, despite everyone sporting the best cold-weather gear Caer-Dineval could provide. The river narrowed such that it was almost more effort to use the animals than it was to leave them and continue on foot. Tarquin had been composing the continuing story, regaling the company with highlights to keep spirits high, but the cold eventually became too much and he was forced to focus on simply staying upright.

Finally the company crested the final ridge. The overwhelming edifice of the Reghed Glacier towered ahead, the scale defying belief—and yet there it was, equal parts awe inspiring and terrifying. Sheer cliffs rose to the mass of the glacier proper, an impenetrable shelf of impassable ice rising hundreds of feet into the overcast sky.

Eearwaxx called Horseradish and his dragon to attention. “Can you fly ahead, and see what you can see? Fly high though, my dears, because it’s dangerous out here.” Octavian raised an eyebrow at ‘my dears’, wondering once again how exactly Eearwaxx’s mind worked.

“You could take a look too, Octavian?” Arlington suggested as Horseradish and the dragon flew away.

“I can’t just fly ten miles in a blizzard up a glacier,” Octavian complained.

“So you’re more like a chicken than a hawk.”

Octavian glared, drew his hood close around, and hunkered down into the sled.

A snow-laden hollow lay at the toe of the glacier, ice covered trees scattered about the terrain. And there was something else, an irregular assembly of a dozen or more objects that look artificial more than natural, hard to make out in any detail from a distance. “Not igloos, more like trees but made of ice,” Arlington squinted. “Let me take a moment to explain something about glaciers. They don’t move forward, as a rule—this one is probably static in it’s extent. What happens is the front falls off it and turns into water and runs down those rivers. So things that have been up it a long way slowly get exposed at the face of the glacier. Perhaps that is what those things are.”

Tarquin scratched his head. “Well here’s the thing…is this glacier receding or moving forward under the conditions we are in? This cold is not normally and I remember hearing tell that even under normal conditions some move forward and some back—you just can’t tell. I would suggest the Reghed is growing, not shrinking.”

Arlington waved a dismissive hand. “Even when they are moving forward, they are still exposing the stuff that was behind.”

“That changes with the seasons,” Tarquin countered.

“All I want to know is what is down there. Has it been exposed from the glacier, or has it come to the front from somewhere else,” Arlington said, rather exasperated with Tarquin’s faux-knowledge.

“Or someone built something,” Octavian suggested.

“Morgan!” Arlington called, tiring of the debate.

“Yes Arlington?”

“We go down into the dell to find out what those things are down there.”

As everyone prepared to descend a shadow passed slowly over the company. Tarquin looked up into the winter sky and gasped: a dragon! Enormous, majestic, terrifying, slowly beating its massive wings as it headed toward the upper climbs of the glacier. The faint morning light reflected a flank of metallic white scales—and a rider—and then it was gone.

“Arveiaturace,” Tarquin breathed softly. “Raise the sails, lads.”

“That should be you pinned to a deathless body on the back of that thing,” Octavian mused. “What a story that would be.” Tarquin glanced at Octavian, his mind racing as he hurried out a small poem.

Morgan led the company into the basin, and it soon became clear what the objects were: a collection of ice sculptures. Drawing closer revealed that the sculptures were of bears, elk, wolves, yeti, remorhazes, and other creatures of the North. The closest was a yeti, completely faithful to its subject, beautifully crafted and impeccably maintained. Each was mounted in a natural plinths, carved rocky outcrops and boulder’s, all made of ice.

“Creatures turned to ice this time, not stone,” Octavian said, thinking back to the Spire.

“Before we freak out too much about ice-medusas—how many animals frequent this part of the world?” Arlington wondered. “Could they all really be animals turned to ice?”

“Or are they coming from somewhere else?” Octavian pondered.

“All I’m saying is it’s unlikely that this amount of fauna was in this little dell.”

“And there is only once of each,” Jankx observed.

“Like they have been wrapped up,” Octavian nodded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, these are wonderful renditions,” Tarquin said, staring at a wolf mid-leap. “I would have expected these to be chipped and damaged, but they are perfect—and fantastic,” Tarquin said.

“Are they made of ice or are they frozen creatures?” Eearwaxx asked. He walked over to a sculpture of a dragon whelpling that reminded him strongly of Calcryx.

“They’re just statues!” Tarquin said. There was no sign of a creature trapped within the ice, though Eearwaxx and Octavian did have a point.

Arlington decided to find out. He pulled his boar-spear out and cracked the back into the yeti, breaking off a chunk of ice.

Instantly a cold snap enveloped the dell, as if frozen night had fallen in an instant. In the centre of the field of snow a seven-foot tall woman with the head of an horned owl coalesced out of a swirl of snow and ice. She lifted a clawed finger and pointed at Arlington. “Defilers!”

For a moment everyone felt that they too were transformed to ice such was the cold that flooded through vein and flesh. No-one could resist it: everything seemed that much colder, that much more punishing, that much deadlier. Then the figure dissipated into snow, vanishing as quickly as she had appeared.

Arlington shivered, looking around hoping no-one had noticed the chunk of ice at his feet. Everyone had. It really was cold.

---

The immense, glistening wall of dark ice stood at the far side of the vale. It looked impenetrable, until Octavian pointed out a lighter-coloured stripe that glowed sky-blue and nearly bisected the wall. “It looks to be glowing with light from within,” he said.

“There’s something over there too,” Eearwaxx said, pointing to the north of the fissure. The glacier appeared to have swollen around a misshapen bulge, still as grubby and dirty as the rest of the glacier, as if the ice had grown over something. “The amulet is leading me there,” he added with excitement. Before venturing ahead he checked in with Horseradish, but it had nothing to report. Eearwaxx grinned and started heading off across the dell.

“Where are you going, Eearwaxx?” Tarquin said.

“I’m going to get my Guardian!”

“I’ve just seen, and feel, a great sense of impending doom,” Tarquin called after Eearwaxx, “But you seem to be immune to it!”

Morgan groaned and did his best to catch up, trying to stay ahead of Eearwaxx in case of trouble.

Octavian lingered behind, not ready to abandon the mystery of the sculptures. He moved over to the remorhaz statue to study it. It was staggeringly lifelike. The level of detail and precision was beyond anything he had ever seen, and it wasn’t a frozen beast. It was crafted. He was struck by a thought that sent a shiver down his already frozen spine: No mortal hand could create such wondrous works.

It suddenly made sense. The snow creature. The assembly of statues, only one of each creature. A key tenet of the Frostmaiden’s faith was Preservation: “Every flake of snow is unique, and that which is unique must be preserved.”

“I don’t think this garden was created by mortals. This was Auril’s work!”

As Octavian’s words drifted into fearful ears the landscape ahead suddenly exploded as two dozen hulking goliaths burst free from beneath the snow with a battle-roar that to Arlington sounds remarkably like that of a Tiger. Before he had time to process that incongruity the reason became clear: an enormous sabre-toothed tiger bared its not-inconsiderable teeth and loped forward.

“Reghed!” Morgan yelled as he freed his weapon and summoned Ezra. He remembered tossing a Reghed barbarian out of the Northern Light in the before-times, taking care of business for Allie and Cori. But that was only one—there were twenty or more here—and a sabre-tooth.

The barbarians were led by a massive muscled woman who cried out as she approached. “We defend the Frostmaiden to our death, or yours!” She hurled a spear at Eearwaxx but he managed to step out of its path. She growled with frustration and charged ahead, swinging her greataxe. This time there was no avoiding the blow. “For Auril!” she cried as a surge of cold flooded down the blade into Eearwaxx.

---

The tiger beside her leapt through the air and landed atop Morgan, digging its claws into his chest. Morgan was knocked prone under the weight of the huge beast.

Tarquin spun to face a cluster approaching from the south, quickly speaking a spell that caused the time to slow around a group of six attackers, stymying their charge. But there were too many incoming and he was struck several blows as the barbarians swamped him. Jankx avoided two spear thrusts, Morgan parried one but not the next, and Arlington stepped around his foe, using his boar-spear to deflect the incoming blow. “Forget the drones, kill the cat!” he yelled.

Morgan reacted with deadly efficiency. He plunged Iceblink through the cat two times, and Ezra added a third. Bright red blood sprayed over the snow. “Grava!” the barbarian leader cried in fury as the tiger staggered.

Eearwaxx misty stepped away from the threat, vanishing and appearing thirty feet closer to the glacier. He turned to face the battlefield and held his index finger aloft. It burst into raging flame and he grinned in anticipation. Finally. A bright streak flashed from his pointing finger and blossomed with a low roar into an explosion of flame over Tarquin’s slowed barbarians.

They all died a horrible death, melting in the furnace-heat of the fireball. In an instant, a third of the attacking force was gone. Morgan and Tarquin felt the intense heat of the fire, a little too close for comfort and a little too hot to enjoy despite the cold.

Eearwaxx was slightly shaken, a little bit shocked and a little bit happy. He knew it was a big spell but he hadn’t realised quite how big. He blinked twice, then turned and ran toward the bulge in the glacier, pulling the amulet free as he did. It glowed with power as it drew near to its match.

Octavian sprinted forward and summoned a withering bloom from his staff. Another half-dozen warriors dropped under the choking assault, grabbing their parched throats as they hollowed out like husks and all life was drained from them.

The tiger was still alive, so Jankx lined it up with a precision bolt. It rifled into the skull of the majestic beast, which arched its back as it died with a forlorn howl—matched by a cry of despair from the leader whose eyes burnt with the rage of revenge.

Arlington wasn’t going to let that happen. He loosed two bolts into her, piercing her chest. A shadow passed over her face as she realised her time drew near. Cries went up from surviving barbarians. “We will avenge Grava, Bjornhild!”

The attacked as best they could, one striking Arlington with a glancing blow. Jankx avoided one attack but was pierced through the thigh by another. Morgan took another strike but barely felt it.

Tarquin decided against helping the injured, feeling that the tide of the battle had turned with Eearwaxx and Octavian’s work, and the tiger’s death. He pulled the Dirgeblade free and jabbed it toward the leader but missed in his excitement. He cursed and called again on the luck of the bards, but they turned their back on him this time. “Luck, I tell you!” he cried as he stepped through the mists to avoid any retaliation.

“You will not break the Frostmaiden’s seal!” Bjornhild cried with desperation, seeking out Jankx who had just killed her companion. She swung her massive axe, but the red rage of grief caused her to misjudge her swing and it thumped harmlessly into the trunk of the tree Jankx sheltered behind. “Noooooo!” she cried.

Morgan spun and slashed the back of Bjornhild, slashing once from the right shoulder, once the left, and once down the spine. She cried out in agony and staggered forward. Jankx watched in shock as Morgan stepped behind her, grasping his sword with both hands and plunging it through her back so it emerged through her chest, then shoved it home. She choked on a flood of blood that gushed from her throat and collapsed dead into the snow as Morgan withdrew Iceblink.

Jankx had never seen anything like it. Five brutal attacks in the space of a few seconds. He swallowed hard. Morgan looked impassively, ready to seek out his next victims.

Eearwaxx landed a second fireball on the other group of attackers, accidentally catching Ezra in the flames, who smirked before vanishing. Another third of the barbarians fell.

“Step back, Arlington!” Octavian cried as he unleashed a strike of lightning into the few remaining attackers. Arlington obliged, breathing in the aroma of charred flesh as the ground ahead of him lit up. “I love the smell of lightning in the morning,” he smiled.

There was only one barbarian left, his eyes terrified as he looked around and found his entire tribe destroyed. Jankx showed no mercy, pinning the lonely Tiger tribesman to the tree with a bolt through the neck. “Done,” Jankx muttered.

“I warned them we were coming,” Eearwaxx reminded everyone, remembering his sky writing from Caer-Konig.

“I’ve never seen all of our powers used at once,” Jankx said. “I was worried for a moment, but that was quite something.”

Arlington picked up the pipe he had dropped and walked toward the glacier with not a care in the world, his hair at a rakish angle from the static of Octavian’s strike.

A moment later another cry sounded from the slope behind the valley. Another dozen warriors appeared hollering war cries—this time the growl of a bear emerging from a gigantic polar that accompanied them. But the incoming tribe skidded to a halt as they saw the carnage that lay ahead, eyes wide with surprise.

“They’re all dead?!” their leader cried, a large man draped in a bearskin cloak.

Arlington turned and stared. “Go home!”

“You’ve killed them all! We came to help, but it seems you don’t need it,” the man grinned.

“Thank you,” Octavian said wryly. Eearwaxx had raised his flaming finger, but on hearing their words he lowered it and hurried toward the glacier.

“I am Hengar Aesnvaard of the Bear Tribe. How did you defeat an entire tribe? There’s only six of you?!”

“We didn’t kill an entire tribe did we?” Arlington asked nervously. “I didn’t kill anyone,” he added, backing away.

“The Tiger tribe have been tracking you, waiting for their moment. Ice in their veins to spill your blood. And that’s happened is you’ve spilled theirs.”

Tarquin stepped forward to fill the gap left by Arlington’s withdrawal. “Hail mighty Hengar, I am Tarquin.”

Hengar nodded in welcome. “Our great shaman, Bili the Primal Bear, sent us here. He had a vision that a great crossroads approaches (a phrase taught him by one of his Hellbound companions) and that you six would be crucial to the path that was taken. Auril’s cold destroys us all, or it does not.”

“‘Primal Bear’ you say?” Octavian scoffed. “Sounds like a hag-fucker to me.”

Hengar frowned, but before he could take offence Morgan came to the rescue. “Should we not speak to this shaman, if he had a vision?” he said quickly to Arlington.

“If you wish we can escort you to him,” Hengar said, “Though it would be quite the trip—the Spine is no easy journey.”

“How long did you travel to get here?”

“We have been on the move for a week—and we would travel faster than you, no offence,” Hengar smiled. “Bili had a message to pass on to you, if you are willing to hear it?”

“Of course, sir,” Arlington nodded.

Hengar tilted his face to the sky and his eyes clouded over as he intoned Bili’s message in a voice that wasn’t his.

“I have seen terrible things, and wonderful things. I am the Father-Mother, the maw-demon Releaser, the Survivor of the Underworld and the Rescuer. In return for a life, I spared one who has since turned her back on that redemption. Beware Hedrun.”

Morgan nodded slowly. “We know that name.”

“What name did I speak?”

“Hedrun. We have encountered her.”

“Ah. Hedrun, the Ice Witch. Bili has talked of her often, of his journey of revenge that became something more. Our tribe has warred with her in the dark past. If she is back, like Bili suspects, that is not good news.”

Tarquin smiled, ready for the story that lay ahead. “Hengar—what is this place?”

The barbarian looked toward the crystal column in the glacier. “It is the gateway to Auril’s Temple within the Glacier.”

“Excellent,” Morgan grinned.

“That would explain the vision we saw when a statue was broken,” Tarquin said, “We were confronted by a white maiden made of snow, who cursed us.”

Hengar made a sign of protection. “That would be Auril,” he said softly. “You must not touch the statues.”

“Only an idiot would do that,” Octavian deadpanned.

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Tarquin smirked, glancing at Arlington. “But for now we could do with a hot meal!”

“That’s something we can assist you with,” Hengar grinned, directing his troops to prepare a feast. “We came to rescue you, but you do not need it. The fate of the Dale rests upon you.”

As the meal was prepared, Morgan cut the teeth out of the tiger. Arlington had wanted the entire head, but had to accept it was perhaps too large to carry into the glacier.

In the distance Eearwaxx commanded his Guardian to emerge from its frozen cocoon. The bulge of ice at the front of the glacier shuddered and shattered as a nine-foot tall armoured construct burst free.

---

It was a little worse for wear from centuries of being frozen, but it towered over Eearwaxx as it flexed its limbs and looked down at him.

“Master.”

---

Session played: August 21 2023

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