The Frozen Wood, in the season of air. Squint, lest your eyes freeze open. Pull your cloak tight around your shoulders, so when it goes stiff from the icy air it's close to your skin. Bandage your feet before you go walking, lest your toes snap off without you knowing. Walk on the streams and rivers without fear - they are frozen solid to the very riverbed.

The cold seemed familiar at first, welcome. The deeper Rannon goes, however, the more it bites. This winter feels unnatural to the Icewalker. No longer is it familiar. It feels too cold, too dead. Rannon's faithful wolf follows close by, its fur matted with snow that has frozen in place. They both move quietly and deftly through the snow in search of their prey: the undead.

Then you see it - bonesign. As you track through the icy woods, and pass over an icy river, you see tell-tale scratches in the surface. Not deep gouges, like wyldmutant claws, but a mere roughness in the surface. Like it was rubbed with bare, rough heelbones, scrabbling blindly across the surface, deeper in to the woods. On the track.

The duo both stop at the track. Rannon bends low to observe it more closely. Herron Kel sniffs the ground, ignoring the pain as the extremely cold air bites into his nose. The cold is too powerful to get a good sent trail, but the visual tracks are easy enough to follow. The barbarian grins as he picks up his pace into the woods. Hot on the trail, the two hunters find it hard to remind themselves to stay quiet. But the undead are stupid. They usually aren't hard to catch by suprise. Usually.

The trail leads through the inhospitable woods, up sheer slopes and down vicious cliffs, every icicle seeming to be honed to a cutting edge by the wind. The ground seems to slope down as you follow the trail, until finally it vanishes in to a craggy rift in the earth, death-dark and cold. You can't breathe, here. The air around the rift is too cold. You'll have to hold your breath if you want to enter this frozen cavern.

The barbarian takes a step back when the cold hits him so hard he can't breath. He looks down at his companion. It may be too dangerous for him past here. Motioning for the wolf to stay put, Rannon takes a deep breath, determined to punish at least one of the monsters. Memories of his tribe being massacred give him strength as a bit of fear of the unknown peeks through him. He draws his sword quietly as he continues.

Pulse pounding in your ears, your lungs leeching out their precious oxygen, you stride down in to the precipitous crag, perhaps ten yards to ground stable enough to walk on. The ice that coats everything here is so rough and barbed that you're more at risk of being ripped apart than of slipping and falling. Then you see it, and at once you realize you're in over your head. It looks back at you with it's empty skulls that stand arrayed upon rib-bones frozen together in a perverse candelabra of spines, femurs, and wind-honed claws. It is like a spider of bones held together by ice. It is ten yards tall and it is so cold that you cannot look directly at it. This is no mere undead. This is a monster from before the world. /Run/.

The savage's sword might have dropped from his hand if it wasn't frozen to his skin. He may have paused to consider the beast further if his legs hadn't started scrambling back up the crag. The image of that thing's legs carrying it up the crag behind him spurred him faster, out of the rift, past Herron Kel who quickly got the picture and fell in step, and back into the forrest. As he passes through the branches, the wind swiftly covers the pair's tracks with gentle gusts and eddies.