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Squinting against the driving snow, Reeve glanced sideways at Millie. Her friend's fur-lined hood was pulled tight around her face, and her head and shoulders were slumped forward into the wind. "You OK?" Reeve called into the storm.

"There's nothing to point my staff at."

Reeve nodded in understanding. The snow through which they waded was light but deep, nearly to her waist. Flakes stung her eyes as she risked a glance at the view ahead, which, thanks to the snow and weak twilight, stretched only a few dozen yards before becoming a uniform gray.

Drifts of snow. Followed by more drifts. That was, as far as Reeve could tell, pretty much it at the moment. If Dawn was following a trail, Reeve did not know how. They hadn't seen a tree or object identifiable under its snowy cover for more than an hour.

"Does it ever stop snowing here?" Reeve shouted toward Dawn's back.

Dawn turned her head to be heard, but her voice was still nearly lost in the wind. "Not during any of my forays."

"You've spent much time here?"

It was a moment before Dawn responded. "More than a year in sum. Closer to two."

I'm not sure I'd keep coming back for this, Reeve thought. "So, what's this 'loose thread' we're following?"

"I owe an acquaintance a visit."

Reeve frowned. "Good weather for a house call," she said and glanced at Millie, but her friend's face remained downturned.

Reeve cast about for something she could do to distract herself from the biting cold and the unbelievable monotony of trudging through a landscape that didn't seem to change. What she really wanted to be doing was experimenting with her new legendary bow. Well, bowstring, to be precise, but that didn't have the same ring. As soon as they had emerged through the crumbling stone arch of the abandoned outpost in which Dawn had established her hidden cache, Reeve had unshouldered the bow and begun attempting to mentally select the nature of the arrow the bow would materialize when drawn. Despite her excitement, her attempts were more frustrating than rewarding, and Dawn had assured her that she would become more successful as the Attunement strengthened. Before her fingers became so numb that they couldn't feel the tension in the string, Reeve had managed what might have been a fire arrow, identifiable only by a thin trail of smoke quickly swept away by the wind, and an exploding arrow, which did explode but with the force of only a small firecracker. She wanted to experiment more with those and other similar arrow types, but she was most excited to work more with the last category of arrow she'd managed right before succumbing to the cold and reshouldering her bow. Dawn had told her that she could use materials or items from her Inventory to imbue conjured arrows with novel properties. Drawing the bow, Reeve had thought of a bioluminescent liquid she'd once harvested from a giant lightning bug. When the arrow materialized, it glowed bright and, when released, sailed like a greenish-yellow tracer round into the night.

"Next time you do that," Millie had said, clearly annoyed, "give me enough time to read its sigil before you shoot it, OK?"

Trudging through the indistinguishable drifts, Reeve smiled to herself as she remembered the feeling of conjuring an arrow that was probably unlike any that'd ever appeared in this game. In this world, she thought. She remembered the glow of the arrow as it had grown into existence. Because she was so fixated on the memory, it took a moment for Millie's loud cry to snap Reeve back to the present and realize that white light was blazing into existence ten yards in front of them. Backlit by the painfully bright light, one of the snow banks in front of them was expanding. Reeve shielded her eyes with her right arm as she drew her naginata over her shoulder with her other. Dawn took a few steps to her left, and Millie took a step back, leveling her staff at the morphing snow bank.

"Well, now I know the sigil for polar bear!" Mille shouted. She held the staff still a moment longer. "Correction. Colossal Polar Bear. This is a Colossal variant. So, that's good."

Still struggling to see anything through the snow and light, Reeve made out the rough shape of the beast's torso, as well as its forelimbs and head, which towered above them. Fully upright, it was easily twice her height. The light was emanating from behind its head, and Reeve gripped her naginata with both hands and took a broad fighting stance before she realized the bear had a rider, and the rider was casting the light from one raised hand. No sooner had Reeve realized the presence of the rider than they swung down the beast's side and took two steps forward to stand between the bear and them. The rider tossed the light aloft as though it were a ball, and at its highest point, its flight halted, and it hung above them, casting light across the scene.

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The rider wore a cloak similar to the ones Dawn had provided—a shade of white easily lost in the snow. From within the darkness of the cloak's hood, they seemed to assess Reeve and Millie for a few seconds before making a cast so quick Reeve did not have time to shout a warning. All of the snow around both Reeve and Millie flowed toward their legs, becoming denser and quickly settling into rough blocks of ice that prevented any movement below the knees.

"We are literally frozen in place," Millie said with disgust as she examined the ice. She looked back at their assailant. "I think I'd like them to be a little less unrestrained, too." With one hand, she threw her own quickly formed cast at the rider.

The rider leaned to one side and made a motion as though to deflect Millie's attack upward, and almost instantly the light above them brightened.

"OK, gonna need a second to process that," Millie said.

"May not have a second," Reeve said. "I'll distract, you try again, 'K?"

Not waiting for a response, Reeve used both hands to throw her naginata, shaft still sideways, as hard as she could at the rider's chest. As soon as the naginata had left her hands, she started to unshoulder her bow, and Millie began to recast her entanglement spell, but when the rider caught the naginata, Millie's spell hand fell still, and Reeve let her bow fall to her side. Instead of being pulled to the ground by the irresistible weight of the charmed weapon, the rider bounced the shaft in their hands for a moment and swung the blade through a series of practiced arcs before driving the butt of the staff through the snow to strike firm ground.

"But that should've…" Reeve said, turning to her left.

Dawn stood to the side, arms crossed, staring at Reeve and Millie.

After a few seconds of confusion, Reeve cleared her throat. "Not a random we're running into on the road?"

Dawn shook her head.

"Could'v'e said something," Reeve said.

Dawn shrugged her shoulders.

The rider strode forward through the snow, pulling back their hood as they came, and stopped a yard short of Reeve and Millie. He was a brown-skinned man whom Reeve guessed to be about Dawn's age. His dark hair looked as though it might have been cut without the aid of scissors, or a mirror. The wind's frantic attempts did little to add to its disorder. An earring hung from one ear, and though hard to make out as it was thrashed by the wind, the earring looked to be the clipped tip of an iridescent feather. The man's eyes moved from Reeve to Millie and back, and he reclined his head slightly.

Reeve pulled her own hood back and returned the man's gaze.

The man's eyes narrowed, and his lips pursed, and he turned and looked at Dawn. Dawn nodded. The man raised his brow and nodded in mild surprise. He turned back to Reeve. "Reavyr," he said, "I hoped to meet you someday."

He did not shout to beat the wind, and his raspy voice was barely audible above it, but Reeve noted an even rhythm in his words and something unfamiliar that marked most vowels. IRL, Reeve might have guessed Eastern European or Scandinavian.

He turned to Millie. "You are?"

"Stuck in a block of ice," Millie said. She tapped the end of her staff against her restraint.

The man nodded and tapped the butt of the naginata first against the ice at Millie's feet and then against that at Reeve's. Both began loosening into snow that quickly became indistinguishable from the rest swirling around them.

"Gyl," Millie said as she shook one of her boots to test her refound freedom.

"Gyl, Reavyr, I am Eero." He bobbed his head. "It is good you travel with the most powerful sorceress in the realms, for you seem poorly prepared for Wyste."

Reeve frowned. "Yeah, I've been getting a lot of feedback on my level of preparation. But we've been surviving the weather so far."

Eero shook his head firmly but seemingly without judgment. "The weather is not the danger in Wyste."

"What is?" Millie said.

Eero gave a small shrug. "Everything else. Now, we should go. My light will be a beacon that draws unwelcome interest." He swung the shaft of the naginata up so he could hold it horizontally with two hands. Reeve began to extend her own hand to receive it, but instead of offering the weapon, Eero began sliding the encircling fingers of his left hand up the shaft toward his right hand. The shaft did not emerge from the sliding hand, such that when his hands met, only the blade remained visible to one side, the shaft missing from where it should have appeared on the other side. He twisted his hands to point the blade into the air and released the shaft with his stationary hand, and the blade fell through the circled fingers of the hand that had just caused the entire shaft to disappear. And then Reeve's weapon was entirely gone.

"Nice," Millie said. "That'd be a proper magic trick back where we come from."

"I," Reeve said, "am very attached to that blade."

"And you will be reunited," Eero said. "But best not to carry weapons that might accidentally prick Kuura while she bears us." Eero rolled his eyes up at an angle, and Reeve and Millie's eyes followed the gesture and were reminded that a colossal polar bear was standing behind the odd caster who had just outmatched the two of them and disarmed Reeve entirely.

Millie punched Reeve in the shoulder. "Riding a polar bear rather than walking was an option?"

Reeve frowned. "You'd have to ask the greatest sorceress in the world."

Eero turned and walked toward Kuura.

"And 'bears us.' You catch that?" Millie said.