The Frostscape — The Everfrozen Land.

  Located in the northernmost region of the continent of Gebaten, the arctic region stood as the only bridge between the continental shelf and the Icing Boundary — A fortress of unbreakable ice that marked the borderline between the remainder of the habitable continent and the great glacier at the End of the World.

  A bridge that more often than not led to death.

  Filled with omnipresent snow, the landscape shone with pale white, tricking passers-by into believing they had lost the capability to discern colors beyond hues of white, shades of brown belonging to man-made structures, and the very tones of dawn and dusk.

  A dusk like today’s.

  With a sky canvas painted in pale magenta and grayish blue, every southerner would insist that they are witnessing the twilight of day, and in some form, they would have been right. But in truth, it is just one hour past afternoon.

  The Frostscape’s inhabitants were not precisely blessed by the blazing sphere’s presence — eight hours of daylight was the best they could wish for.

  And talking about inhabitants, not all of them were of the civilized kind.

  If any, the domain of the everfrozen lands did not pertain to humans or orcs.

  Beyond the pines clogged with snow, the bushes shook with quick movement, and the frosted branches snapped with the weight of muted footsteps.

  The shadow of bipedal beasts zigzagged between trees. Their hisses, rock grinding against iron. Their honks were akin to those of rabid geese.

  They bore a curved talon at their feet, useful to gut those lying flat under their predatory gaze, covered from knee to forehead in feathers, up to the end of their snaking tail. They moved through the snow as if their claws were sleds, their two-hundred-pound bulk moving along the thick snow without hindrance, not slowed at all by the terrain.

  Ersatzverns or ‘fake wyverns’ for the explorers of old; dinosaurs for the bookworms. They were the only ones of their clade that could survive the harsh weather of the Frostscape. Specifically, those running around were named ‘nyphanychus’ by scholars, but the locals refer to them as ‘raptors.’ Southerners, however, had other titles to address such animals.

  “Snow chickens…” Muttered a lone cloaked individual.

  It was natural for the raptors to attack in packs; however dimwitted these kinds of ersatzverns could be, they knew they could not bite off more than they could chew.

  But a catastrophe befell nights ago, and nature went mad. They were not hunting or defending their territory.

  They were just shaken in fear by a major power, rendered unable to control themselves, and driven into actions that bordered on suicidal.

  “How many of you do I need to kill so you turn tail and get lost?” the figure asked to nobody in particular as he sprinted through the snow-painted vegetation.

  The person was a human wearing an odd leather coat with a hood over his head. An unusual pelt made of what seemed to be an amalgam of two textures — fur trim running on the collar, and scales along the length, the hem standing considerably worn and torn into strands.

  An elongated item hung on his back — a length nearly two-thirds of the human’s height and wrapped in mocha-colored textiles.

  The man was no native of this region of the continent, alien to everything deemed frigid but far from new. His faintly sunkissed skin and charcoal-colored hair were proof of his outsiderness. A warrior from a young age, a witness to a hundred battles, a traveler with no passion for adventures.

  As he rushed through the snowscape, the faint but hasty sound of crunching snow rang out from behind the trees and shrubs. The dull animals failed to get his message — he killed one as a warning, then another to make his message clear, but it had been all for naught.

  Amidst their mental commotion, the raptors recognized no threat, backing off to no danger. The lone warrior was simply an amorphous shadow for the creatures’ senses, one that awakened their primal fear and killing instinct.

  The adventurer had no choice but to engage in battle — their stubborness would lead the raptors to create a hump made of their dead flesh. The chances of perishing in battle did not cross his mind.

  From the bushes, a raptor pounced on the cloaked warrior, or tried to. Against what one would have expected, the man was not surprised, only annoyed.

  Silvery ax in right hand, the warrior half spun and faced the creature, slicing through most of its side; the ribs and muscles opposed no resistance against the gleaming blade. The animal carried its pounce even in its final moments, crumbling as it jerked a few times on the snow before immersing in eternal slumber.

  “Would that be enough?“ More nearby honking answered. “Guess not…”

  The sprint resumed several yards until the axwielder stopped in a clearing surrounded by pines. He could keep the running pace, but the man had no desire to give the chickens the possibility of getting him ambushed, as small as that possibility might be.

  Let’s finish this charade, shall we? The fighter stared at the bushes, ax handle creaking as the grip of a gloved hand hardened, waiting for the first bird-brained animal to charge at him.

  The wait was short-lived.

  A fake wyvern revealed itself from where the man came from, too anxious for subterfuge.

  No difference.

  The man swiveled around and sank his ax where the raptor’s jaws met, enlarging the cavity of its maw. Momentum remained unaltered, and the raptor kept its leap’s trajectory, landing on the spot where the next animal manifested.

  The axwielder did not turn around this time. Out of the corner of his eye, he detected the attacker and sidestepped.

  The dinosaur turned around in a quick but clunky motion, far from finished; it barely got to veer in the man’s direction when the sharp point of a dirk lunged into its eye.

  With his left hand, the now-daggerwielder warrior twisted the blade inside the eye cavity, raptor dropping dead after releasing a sibilant wheeze.

  The warrior hardly inhaled when his side was tackled by a new feathery assailant, his form sent staggering a few feet away, forced to leave his dagger impaled in the skull of his latest victim.

  The man stifled a grunt, lips contorting. The damage had been minimal, but it was been the fact that the attack connected that frustrated him. The human was in a hurry — every minute he fought was another pack arriving. However skilled he might be, he cannot defeat maths, at least not without shedding blood.

  Unhindered by the long load on his shoulder, the man rolled on his back, absorbing the impact he had just taken, and quickly stood back to his feet, waiting for the reckless chicken to charge in his direction once again. This time, its twin decided to join the battle from the sidelines, but with amusing results.

  It turned out dumb, scared raptors had no pack tactics expertise, and the two predators collided with each other, one stumbling to the snow while the other hardly kept itself standing.

  Too much for teamwork, the fighter sighed.

  The axman welcomed the about-to-trip-over raptor by slightly shifting his weight to his left, striking as soon as the fibrous neck stood exposed. The ax swung and off with the head.

  “Wishing you were the one that stumbled down, eh?” He humorlessly remarked before moving his gaze to the prone animal, ready to get rid of another nuance. A throaty sibilance from his back told him another beast had other plans.

  With no time to appropriately defend himself with his ax, the human wrapped his coat around his arm and used it to shield himself from the toothy jaws. The fangs sink into the fabric, eliciting a feeble moan from the man. Notwithstanding, the beast was not rewarded with red liquid as no teeth pierced the skin.

  “Like my coat, chicken?” the warrior jested. “Careful, this hide is worth a carriage’s worth of your feathers.” In a swift motion, the fighter swung his ax at the dinosaur, slicing off the slender arm and cleaving a rift along the side and back. The animal shrieked in agony, freeing the fighter’s arm from its mouth.

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  The warrior prepared a counterattack, but then he saw the prone raptor picking itself up. “No, you don’t,” he back-swung his ax, smashing the head of the dinosaur with the blunt end of his weapon, sending the animal back to the icy soil.

  Turning back to the cripped chicken, the warrior plucked a new dagger from beneath his cloak and stabbed the raptor’s neck, the latter releasing a wheeze as soon as the blade unsheathed from its flesh, plunging to the ground immediately after.

  He was about to finish the annoying raptor once and for all when another series of honks echoed from beyond the vegetation.

  “Give me a break…” He murmured in irritation; two other two-hundred-pound ersatzverns rushed for him, one coming from behind and another from his front. The axman stepped toward the raptor writhing on the floor and used it as a stepping stone to jump up, covering several feet and moving out of the way of the attacker’s path, which ultimately crashed against its teammate.

  They must have an unresolved matter since the two animals started growling and scratching at each other as soon as they recovered from their collision, oblivious to the human they both tried to kill a scarce instant ago.

  The man could not contain a huff.

  His amusement lasted short as the splayed dinosaur rose to its hind legs, the way its lips peeled up to flash its teeth revealed that it now held a grudge toward the jerk who had used it as a springboard.

  “Resentful, chicken?” He taunted.

  Using the turmoil of his psyche as a weapon, the raptor charged ahead and unleashed a series of brutal strikes, combining both foretalons and jaws. But what could such an unrefined onslaught achieve to harm this expert fighter? The result was obvious — no attack hit the mark.

  When talons and fangs had no success, the dinosaur resorted to tail swipes, a movement that made one human brow drift up; it did not come without its reward, as the tail connected with the fighter’s hip.

  But for the beast’s misfortune, the tails of its kind were unsuited to deign blows, their use intended for balance; the fighter not only took negligible damage but also grabbed the limb under his left arm, pinning the animal into an uncomfortable stance. An effortless pull laid the animal embracing its favorite bed once more.

  “You should have stayed sleeping in your lair, chicken. It’s obvious that you wanted to lie down the entire day,” the warrior bantered before diving its ax into the animal’s abdominal zone. The creature roared in his death throes, the cloaked axman missing no beat to turn around and tend the other raptors, whose run-in seemed over, and now they strode toward him.

  He spun in the attackers’ direction and, without a second thought, he threw his silvery ax at one of the dinosaurs. The missile, spinning like a cyclone of metal and stardust, reached its target, vertically splitting the dinosaurs’ jaws. The raptor stumbled and rolled through the snow, dead way before the pirouetting stopped, glowing ax shining deep into its skull.

  With only one raptor left, the adventurer decided to drop his defense, even if a little, to rush with a dirk in hand toward the remaining assailant.

  Right before tasting the raptor’s natural weaponry, the human performed a last-second slide, passing past the animal’s side and poking its thigh, leaving the steel sticking up on the flesh. He planned to cripple the raptor, but the beast barely growled in anguish, seemingly unhurt.

  Not that it made any difference — the outcome was settled.

  The adventurer had no desire to use it now — its use was reserved for a matter of life and death or to refill his vitality. But given he stood unarmed and the ax’s magic had not activated, he opted to use his other weapon. No reason to drag out this senseless conflict further.

  Recklessly, the raptor rushed at the warrior, animalistic madness drooling through the gaps of its fangs. The fighter reacted clock-smooth, greeting the raptor not with an ax or a dagger, but with a longsword.

  Eliciting an aura of malice palpable to even those foreign to magic, the longsword glowed in the arctic dusk with a reddish-black hue, the cervid skull embedded on its chappe giving off its cursed nature.

  A sane raptor would have hesitated in the presence of such an otherworldly item, but its own chaotic mind blocked it from identifying threats. Even if it could, it was too late to withdraw.

  A rapid lunge brought the sword at the creature’s gaping mouth, sinking all the way through its throat, the keen length piercing through the neck until it popped out at the neck’s base. Wide-eyed, the dinosaur spasmed before perishing, collapsing with a thump after the warrior had unsheathed the blade from its body.

  After an encounter of no more than ten minutes, the Frostscape fell back to natural quietness where only the air’s whistle chimed around.

  The now-swordsman glanced around, checking for another beast eager to bust his back, but no other threatening noise was perceived. He checked his body, or more accurately, his teeth, not for injuries but for the secondary effects of his magical blade.

  No sharp fangs. That one raptor did not trigger the bane of the ebony-red sword.

  Relieved, he stared at the corpse holding the ax in its skull. “Always taking your sweet time to make your magic, don’t you?” He sighed in dissatisfaction, moving towards the enchanted blade. He knelt in front of the carcass and extended his arm, but before he could lay his hand on the handle, a spoonful of snow landed over his hood.

  His brows tensed closer, and a tongue ran along his lips.

  Slowly, he drifted his sight up, avoiding any sharp movement as he surveyed what loomed over his head.

  When his eyes finally saw the pine branches up high, he discerned a feathered figure staring — predating — upon him. It seemed not all raptors went mad, or perhaps this one had already recovered and took advantage of the havoc to sneak into a hiding spot, waiting for the exact moment to pounce on the man.

  That time was now.

  Clever one, the human mused, a lour swelling on his face. The monsters of this place.

  The feathery ersatzvern let out a screech, using the branches to propel itself down at the adventurer like a hawk diving into a critter. Only the sword was available for defense, but given the situation he found himself in, chances were that he would take some injuries before the raptor was slain.

  He simply hoped that they would not hurt so badly.

  The dinosaur had already covered half the distance between itself and its human prey. Nonetheless, it would not fall an inch further.

  Another feathery creature, whiter than the raptor’s winter plumage, blurred by speed itself, tackled the plunging aggressor, hauling the animal out of its trajectory and dragging it along the snow as soon as it plummeted.

  Growls and hisses thrummed as the two creatures brawled in a curled mess of feathers and talons. The fighter took the arrival of the new adversary to retrieve his ax and roll to safety, but the moment he shot a look where the two beasts fought, the battle was already over. The final thing he heard was the familiar noises of a dying dinosaur.

  Then, the sound of tearing flesh and cracking bones flew to his ears.

  Wary, the warrior approached the gruesome scene, his unblinking eyes gazing at the potential new foe. He could only survey the creature from the sidelines, which was covered by a great mantle of snow-white feathers.

  He did not need to take a better look to identify the monster — he already knew what it was.

  The axman stopped in his tracks, keeping his ax on hand in a defensive stance.

  “So… dogging my steps, eh?” The cloaked man said with an inquisitive tone, not expecting a response.

  The beast caught his words, and its ears — canine-like ears — perked up, twirling in his way. In short, the entity folded its wings to its back, revealing its animalistic face as it unnaturally gyrated its neck all the way behind at the human’s direction. A piece of flesh, wet with blood, hung from its curved beak.

  The monster regarded the human for a while, just as the warrior was doing so, observing with orbs that shone like blue steel, an unreadable expression printed in what could be described as an owl mask.

  Without breaking eye contact, the fighter sidled toward one of the dead dinosaurs with the intention of taking his dagger back. The monster followed the man’s walk, its head gyrating as if it were that of a ball-jointed doll.

  Needless to say, he had no intention of retrieving that dirk.

  As the adventurer got back his weapons, more honks rang out from beyond the wooden columns. Another pack of dinosaurs was approaching.

  “Oh great…” The human groaned, knowing he might have no choice but to prepare for another not-so-endearing activity with the chickens. The winged monster was not unaware of the incoming animals, its ears jerking in the direction of the noises.

  One feathered animal stepped into the clearing, flaring through its nostrils and lips rippling as it snarled. But unlike the other raptors, this individual hesitated on its steps, halting at the sight of the chimera. Its threatening visage on its muzzle thinned until it disappeared.

  More dinosaurs approached, likewise stopping the moment they noticed the owl monster, not even batting an eye at the human.

  The axman glanced back and forth between the fake wyverns and the owl creature, evaluating the current situation, trying to come up with a plan, uncertain of how the presence of the manticore could change the flow of an incoming battle.

  The human’s analysis was cut short by a loud shout, a cry halfway between a howl and a shriek that boomed out of the winged beast.

  The yowl was almost deafening; high-pitched, yet it carried a lilt similar to one belonging to a bird’s song. It was also heavy with that weird countenance — that feel of neither wonder nor fear, but an air of prominence.

  Whatever it sounded or felt to the human, the animals interpreted it differently; way before the hybrid howl finished resounding, the fake wyverns hastily turned tail, not even bothering to leave a final warning to their apparent enemy. In a matter of seconds, their already faint steps could no longer be heard.

  The howl echoed no more, and the wintry chant reigned anew. Once again, only two souls filled the clearing.

  “What are you?” The monster heard the human say, and after considering him for a few blinks, it turned back to feast upon the dinosaur’s carcass.

  “Should have known best you would not answer…”

  Once the surge of action no longer ran through his veins, and after confirming no more raptors were coming in his way, the cloaked warrior dropped his defensive stance and turned around.

  He might dislike the way of the chickens but, just like the pack of animals, it was his turn to revert and turn away from the monster, not even bothering to look back and check whether the creature would follow his steps — he suspected that it would, as it had been doing since the battle with the wargs.

  What got the wheels of his head rolling was that the chimera was not tracking him to hunt him down — that had been something corroborated during the previous night. Then what? What did the eccentric creature seek in him? That and many questions escaped his wits.

  “The monsters of this bloody place,” the adventurer coolly stated as he advanced through the cold landscape.