In the warm glow of the now closer storefront of the inn, stories were told, drinks were had, a younger sister was thoroughly embarrassed, and a generally good time was had by the women taking refuge from the outside world in the Sunset’s Rest.

  Well, everyone but Emily.

  Thanks to the stories Sally had been coaxed into telling, the youngest Queen knew far too much about the things that happened behind the scenes in a relationship.

  Who knew that taking care of a house required so much… well… everything?

  Her mother and father made it seem so easy.

  She also didn’t need to know how often or easily her favorite brother-in-law was outwitted by his tinkering wife. The smile on Sally’s face didn’t add up to that though. Even being a teenager and new to the world of romance, Emily had a feeling it was more of a give and take that he didn’t mind losing since it didn’t seem anything was really lost between them except points on an unseen scoreboard.

  Before she had a chance to voice her opinion though, the door opened, and in walked a familiar face.

  “Hope I didn’t miss too much.”

  Sally shook her head, about to say as much when Sammy rose from her chair, grinning ear to ear.

  “Athos! It’s good to see you!”

  To everyone’s surprise, the innkeeper rushed him, pulling the Wildkin into a hug worthy of the name bear. Even without a grunt from the world boss-level vanguard, it wasn’t hard to tell the force behind it. Still, he returned the hug and smiled.

  “Good to see you too,” Athos said.

  “You owe me six hundred, seventy-four bytes.”

  “Sammi!” Kana spat, ruining a perfectly good cup of the triple mint tea.

  Sally and Emily starred at the sheer audacity of the woman as she kept her arms wrapped around her husband, head buried into his neck as she did so.

  Sally couldn’t take it.

  From the bottom of her chest, through her lips, and out into the world, a laugh cracked the air and broke the aquward tension like a cat in a christmas tree.

  No one could stifle a laugh at that, not because it was a joke, but because she was deadly serious despite her tone.

  “Really? You couldn’t wait ten minutes, Sammi?”

  She shook her head as she let go of her friend and let the man return to his wife and sister-in-law. “If I did, I might forget, and isn’t this the best time to give?”

  Athos cocked a brow as he tried not to groan. “You mean when my family’s about to double in size?”

  “I meant the holidays,” Sammi chuckled, releasing him and taking a few steps back to consider his words. “But… when you put it like that…”

  In some ways, it was good that his friend never changed. “It’s nice seeing you too.”

  She gave him a warm smile. “You’re still paying.”

  Athos laughed.

  The rest of the night was spent as it came. Between friends, it was a peaceful, sometimes awkward, always loved time.

  It was something Athos needed more often in his life.

  Friends spoke, Emily listened to the stories told, and Kara and Sammi asked so many questions about the Wild Lands that the Aramis family could barely keep up.

  To Emily, it sounded like an amazing place.

  With the strange creatures, odd weather, and even odder people, the Wild Lands sounded… well…. Wild! It was everything her world of the farm, Oenus, and the Sea of Grass wasn’t.

  It made her long for the adventures her sister had with Athos and more.

  Emily sat, listening to their stories as intently as she had before, sipping her cooled tea and dreaming of how she’d accomplish anything nearly as amazing as fighting and surviving against a god and their minions.

  As the night went on and the parties settled into a comfortable familiarity, some of the ‘other’ stories began to be told, the stories Walter and Sandra wouldn’t tell around her.

  These were the unknown stories of Athos in combat with someone called Echo, dungeon raids into Priam’s territory to free captured Wildkin, Sally building machines of war, bastions, developing new ways to combat Unum and Priam, and more that the less mechanically-minded Queen couldn’t even begin to understand.

  Then, even stranger stories.

  There were the stories of Earth that Athos, Sammi, and Kara shared. They talked about things that didn’t make sense to her, though Sally seemed a bit more keen on the ideas being spoken of, even adding a bit here and there about a world she’d never know and only heard so much of.

  Time kept marching, and before she knew it, Athos was helping Sally up and smiling. “We better get going.”

  Looking at the clock and at her own interface, Emily whined while stifling a yawn. “It’s too early.”

  “I never said we were going home,” Athos said. “We have something else to do, so we can’t go home yet.”

  Emily’s fatigue went from about an eighty to zero so fast she almost got a whiplash status. “We can’t?”

  Sally smiled. “No, we can’t. We have one last item on our agenda.”

  Opening her window, Emily checked the time again. It was nearly ten and most of the events would be over until morning. What else could there… be…

  Sally smiled as the pieces fell into place.

  “No…”

  There was still one event that would be open all night.

  Athos grinned. “Yes.”

  One thing she’d wanted to do from the first moments she could walk.

  “No!”

  Adventure called.

  “Grape, we promised you a trip, and you did keep up your end of the bargain,” Sally said giving her a rather big hug. “We’re going to the Halls of Ice.”

  “No!”

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  “Yes!”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “I think you broke her, Sal,” Athos smirked, interrupting the feedback loop as he poked Emily’s nose.

  Emily’s face refused to fall from the jab, but Sally wouldn’t let that stand. Her big sister pinched Emily’s skin right under her arm.

  “Ow!”

  “Nah, she’s fine,” Sally teased while Emily swatted at her hand. “She’s just more like her dad than she wants to admit.”

  “I am not like Dad!”

  “You are completely like him, just like I’ve got Mom’s sense of humor.”

  “Mom doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

  “She does,” Sally assured, “You just need to know how to read it. It’s like when she said she’d stab Athos for calling her Grandma.”

  The comment made Emily pause for just a moment before pointing out, “I’ve seen her stab people.”

  “Yeah, but have you ever seen her stab family?” Emily shook her head. “Of course not, we’re another matter. She tries not to stab her family. Cut off our arms at our own request though…”

  Emily was confused, and Sally realized she may have said too much before Athos cleared his throat loudly.

  “Ladies, if we’re going to go clear the dungeon as a family, we need to get moving.” His tone dropped a bit after that, becoming more serious than he’d been a moment before. “And if you tell your parents we took you into a dungeon, safe or not, your mom might stab me.”

  “Oh, she’ll stab you,” Sally confirmed. “She’ll stab you twice at least.”

  “Sal…”

  “What?” she asked innocently. “It’s not like I’m going to tell her…”

  “Good.”

  “Yet.”

  ***

  Traveling to the center of Oenus was much easier from the Sunset’s Rest.

  With a goodbye from their friends, and Sally looking particularly happy with the results of trading a few Bytes for the rest of their Triple Mint Tea shipment, it was only a hop, skip, and jump to the literal winter wonderland that waited in the city square.

  Athos had only been here once back when Unum had been putting the Suit’s on trial for actions unbecoming of a guild, but without the stage and other dressings, he assumed it would look pretty normal.

  Well, his expectations would have been right on the mark if it weren’t for the giant snowman, the tunnel made of solid ice, the decorated trees, the singing Wild Kin, and the snow.

  So. Much. Snow!

  More snow than he’d ever seen in either of his lives flooded the square like melted marshmallow spreading in a cup of hot cocoa.

  If that wasn’t enough, as soon as someone trudged through the snowdrift in front of the winter wonderland and made a trench to go through, the path refilled itself for the next.

  Putting his hand into it, Athos realized that the waist-high snow drift wasn’t even that cold. If anything, it was more like a pleasant breeze on a hot summer’s day rather than a bone-cutting cold like it should have been.

  By coming up to Athos’s waist, it meant that the snow was well above Emily’s and halfway up Sally’s stomach. Which meant that Athos was going to be their pilot and pathfinder.

  A job he took to with gusteo as he began trugding forward, flinging snow this way and that as he happily waded into the mess of the square.

  He made good time, too, until Sally and Emily sprung their trap…

  “Now!”

  …and pushed him harder than he thought the two could manage.

  The sudden change in force staggered him and sent his windmilling body tumbling into the bank, leaving a perfect, Athos-shaped hole in the snow where he’d sunk in.

  The pair laughed as his upper body emerged, head, face, and shoulders covered in the white powder.

  However…

  Athos was smiling…

  “Athos…” Sally said with an uncharacteristic note of caution in her tone.

  But, it was too late.

  Even as she took a step back, vengeance arrived swiftly as the grinning, goggled madman that was her husband.

  “Let’s not do anything hastey…”

  “I won’t,” Athos promised.

  The sound of pressurized air filled the square, and their regret was near instantaneous as the world power’s attack came down on them like Grandfather Winter himself.

  “I’ve thought this through. You’ll be fine.”

  Shoving his fists into the ground, Athos cackled and snow exploded into the air and defying gravity for just a few moments as the onlookers watched the scene. Only when their fault was realized did the world reassert itself and the snowbank Athos had launched into the air came crashing back down onto the Queen siblings.

  But it never got the chance.

  Even with only a fraction of his strength and speed, Athos plucked the snow from the air as a blur and launched snowballs like a machine gun. Each snowball from the barrage hit its mark, impacting arms, backs, or shoulders, but nothing that would get him in too much trouble with his wife or her sister.

  The assault was relentless, hitting them a dozen times over before either could respond, until Emily dramatically threw up her arms after one hit the side of her neck and slid down her shirt.

  “I surrender!”

  Athos grinned, ready with a gracious acceptance speech for the pair as she worked herself back to her feet. At least, he was until a snowball hit the side of his face, comically sticking there for a moment longer than gravity should allow.

  He waited until it fell away to address the challenger.

  “I don’t, lover boy.”

  Sally stood, forming a new snowball as she smirked, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

  Athos looked confused for a moment as she stood defiantly, but of course she would.

  That was who she was, wasn’t it? The woman who stood up to anyone or anything that went against her.

  Even if he hadn’t loved her, he would have fallen for her again as the snowball flew straight for his face.

  He dodged, of course.

  In that moment, as the gauntlet fell, a dangerous smile replaced his bemused love-struck thought.

  “Emily?” Athos asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Ignore the words your sister’s about to use against me.”

  Sally’s smiled turned to a sneer as she threw a snowball towards his inflated ego. “Big words, Athos. Big. Words.”

  He moved his head, dodging the attack, and lowered his goggles. Red flashed behind the mirrored surface, and a new grin blossomed under the snow.

  It was still early, after all.

  They had time for a detour.

  “Bring it on.”

  ***

  Despite having earned a stay on the couch when they returned home for what Emily referred to as ‘unsportsmanlike conduct’, Athos was proud of his victory even as Sally warmed herself with her consolation prize of his jacket.

  It wasn’t cold even belly-deep in the snow as she was, but when Sally said her debuffs were kicking in, Athos felt it was the least he could do.

  Her smirking confirmed his thoughts about how she really felt, but he didn’t mind. She looked cute in his coat.

  “So, what are dungeons like?”

  Athos considered Emily’s question and began speaking before he thought. “Sometimes they’re death traps.” Quickly, he followed that up with, “And sometimes they’re like walking into a shop to buy some water. They just depend.”

  “This one should be easy, Grape,” Sally said, pulling the coat around her a bit more. “It’s supposed to be safe and holiday-themed. Probably a bunch of puzzles.”

  “I can deal with puzzles, but please, don’t let it be a fetch quest,” Athos groaned.

  “Probably,” Sally said, smiling. “If we’re lucky, maybe we get to be elves making toys.”

  “Elves making toys?” Emily asked, curiously.

  Sally shrugged. “It’s an Earth thing.”

  “It is?”

  “Ask Athos. He explained it to me.”

  Athos still couldn’t believe that with Earther parents, he had to be the one to explain Santa’s elves to them.

  Still, Incipere was a whole other world.

  As he spoke of reindeer, elves, dentists, and pancakes, the Queen and Aramis’ families moved ever forward through the white powder of the square.

  Sally took in the familiar stories with a small shake of her head while Emily took it all in with a confused expression.

  She’d read about elves from Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit on Athos’s recommendations, and now he was saying those same elves made toys? They killed orcs and protected forests. Why would they waste time making toys?

  Before she could even process how they traveled from forests to the North Pole, they’d arrived at the point of no return.

  Before them, the snow ended, leaving a large, open area near the entrance that lead to a path that led into a tunnel dug into the snowman’s lowest point as the rest towered above the world.

  Athos looked at the deep, icy path down into the snowman’s depths and examined the dungeon entrance. He’d seen plenty in his time, but this one at least had plenty of light, a well-kept set of rails, and hopefully the new prompt system he’d seen appear in the dungeons recently.

  “I’ll go first.”

  No one argued as he pushed out of the unnatural snow and into the space where the descending hallway of ice began. No sooner had he stepped a foot into it than the system’s informative dungeon prompt appeared.

  You are about to enter an instanced dungeon area.

  Halls of Ice

  Dungeon Difficulty: 1 -> 2

  Combat: Nonlethal

  Respawn: Yes

  PvP: No

  Party: Required

  Recommendation: 3-5

  Requirement: A party member below the adult milestone

  Does your party wish to enter the Halls of Ice?

  Continue walking under your own power to confirm your choice or turn back to cancel and lock out the dungeon for the next five minutes.

  “It’s safe,” he called back, standing out of the snow.

  Sally came next followed quickly by Emily, and the group continued down the into the depths, accepting the challenge set before them on this Christmas Eve.

  “Let’s do this!” Emily practically screamed as she hurried the others along.

  “Remember when you were this excited about dungeons?”

  “I was never this excited,” Sally countered, purposefully slowing Emily down the best she could. “Don’t rush the pregnant woman.”

  Despite her groans of protest, the group quickly crossed the threshold and met with a new message.

  Your party has entered the Halls of Ice.