Drake the Dagger rubbed his hands together in a failed attempt to ward off the freezing night frost. It was a futile attempt. The acrid wind howling through the steep, snow-covered mountain pass around his caravan tore right past his best and pointless attempts to stay warm.

He didn’t bother trying to start a fire. Nobody did.

They weren’t that eager to die.

Ice Wretch Mountain didn’t allow for heat within its domain. The massive spire of ice and rock had existed for only the gods knew how long, and as far as any records went, not one person had ever so much as survived lighting a candle within its domain.

Some rumors said there was an ancient Great Monster slumbering somewhere within the mountain. Others claimed that the mountain itself bore an immense Master Rune. But, in the end, it didn’t matter.

What did matter was that Drake was freezing his precious bits off. The layers of thick fur that he had wrapped himself with were barely enough to keep the wind from slicing his chilled skin right open.

He was pretty sure the mountain was actively trying to freeze them to death. That wasn’t just a superstition. Just their mere presence — their breath alone — meant they were raising the temperature of the air around them by some infinitesimally small amount.

And that was enough for this damned mountain to do its best to make sure they didn’t survive the journey.

All this, just for a few damned crystals. Gods. Why didn’t I become a researcher? Why didn’t I join one of the factions and get some nice cushy job in the city?

Drake pressed his hands to the sides of his face. He knew the answer to that question already.

Legends.

He’d been fresh. Stories of great mages and adventurers who had discovered power and riches beyond their wildest dreams had ferried him upon their sweet, deceitful winds. They’d brought a bright-eyed man, barely an adult, to the doorstep of the Dragon’s Horde Caravan in hopes of seeing all the world had to offer.

And now, ten years later, he was still paying the price for the mistake.

And I still haven’t found any damned legends.

Just a whole lot of pointless fighting, godawful food, and shitting in holes.

Snow pelted into Drake’s face, battering the wrappings covering his mouth and nose. He suppressed a curse and wiped it away, squinting into the night as they marched on. There was only one thing keeping his feet trudging through the shin-high snow that was doing its absolute best to squeeze its way into his boots.

“March!” Torb, the Caravan Head, roared over the storm. Drake could barely make the man’s form out through the howling storm. He was just one more vague, blurred form dragging a sled piled high with goods behind him. “March, for warmth! Frostlake is only a few days’ travel away! But keep your asses trudging like this and we won’t see it until next week! Or are you waiting for the ice wyrms to rip you all to shreds?”

Nobody else responded. They couldn’t gather up the energy. Torb was the only Rank 6 among them. The rest were all Rank 5s — just skilled enough to get a job ferrying food that nobody wanted to steal, but nowhere near strong enough to manage anything better.

And certainly not enough to be an adventurer.

Not, at least, if they wanted to survive for more than a few weeks.

“Come on!” Torb roared. “Move, men! Move!”

Drake resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They were already moving. If ice wyrms were going to attack them, then it was going to happen whether they ran or walked. But ice wyrms weren’t just sport hunters.

He’d gone through this pass enough times to know that there were only two things that caught the horrid monsters’ interest. A worthy opponent or anything particularly shiny. Powerful Runes fit both of those categories.

Fortunately for all of them, neither took residence among the Dragon’s Horde Caravan. None of the mages here were strong enough to draw their attention, and their payload might as well have been garbage to the eyes of a monster. No self-respecting ice wyrm would ever bother hunting a group as weak as theirs.

They simply weren’t a challenge.

The ice wyrms were just a convenient way for Torb to push them to march faster. An earlier delivery meant his pockets got lined just a bit more — and it mean the rest of them got to rest a little longer before he dragged them out on the next job.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Drake gritted his teeth as the wind howled again, battering against him relentlessly. Ice Wretch Mountain had always been cold… but he didn’t remember it being this cold. Something had changed.

Did some idiot somehow piss the mountain off? Is it even possible to anger it to such a degree?

A shadow passed through the wall of howling white snow above Drake. He blinked and glanced up even through the stinging wind biting at his vision. His brow furrowed. The shadow was gone. It had gone by so fast that—

Another shadow flashed overhead.

Two massive wings and a huge, reptilian body followed by a barbed tail. He only caught a glimpse of the monster’s outline for a moment. Then it was gone, any sound made by its passing swallowed by the storm all around them.

Drake’s face paled. That was actually quite the feat, given how frosty his skin had already turned. There was barely any blood pumping to rush anywhere at all, but his body still managed it.

Ice wyrm.

By the time Drake’s mind had finished processing his realization, his body had already taken him a step further into the storm — and a scream of warning rose up from the men before him.

“Ice wyrm!” Drake roared, racing forward and drawing his weapon as he reached for his runes. There was no time for confusion. He didn’t have the faintest damned clue why the monsters were here. There shouldn’t have been anything to draw their attention. None of them were strong enough.

But that hardly mattered anymore.

When ice wyrms struck, they struck fast. The terrifying monsters didn’t leave survivors. The only way any of them made it out of here alive was if they gathered and readied their defenses immediately. Anyone left out in the storm would be picked off.

Yells rose up, swallowed just instants later by the storm, as everyone raced into a defensive position.

“Gather!” Torb roared. “Come to me! We’re…”

And then he trailed off.

Drake’s charge skidded to a halt as he drew up along Torb, only to find another massive shadow looming in the storm on the ground right before them.

There was an ice wyrm right in front of their faces.

The breath caught in his chest. His eyes went as wide as saucers. Drake was halfway through drawing on his runes when he realized that the shadow wasn’t moving at all. There was something wrong.

What?

Drake took a step forward. He squinted through the storm, edging closer to the hulking form of the draconic monster along with the rest of the guards.

They drew close enough that the snow could no longer completely obscure the body. And that was where they stopped.

The wyrm was dead.

It laid in the path, its huge body covered with massive gouges. Bite marks riddled it, surrounded by cracked scales and patches of frozen blood. Something had killed the wyrm.

No. Not just killed. Slaughtered. The wyrm’s face had been shattered, its fangs and body broken in so many places that it looked like it had fallen down the entire mountain to land in the path before them.

Drake stared in disbelief.

The ice wyrms were the primary predators in Ice Wretch Mountain. Nothing else was strong enough to survive the unforgiving cold. Nothing hunted here.

Nothing, at least, until today.

And then another shadow flashed overhead. It sliced through the storm just above them, so close that Drake was just able to pick up a hissing scream of terror. Then the wyrm slammed into the wall of the path.

A booming crash split the blizzard.

The monster tumbled to the ground in a flailing pile of wings and limbs, rolling once before falling limp.

Then the form of something humanoid pulled itself up from beneath the fallen monster. Drake couldn’t see anything more than its shadow. But a shadow was enough. The figure was short, standing a head below him at most, but bore a massive axe over one shoulder as if it were made out of paper.

But any thoughts of the figure possibly being human were instantly quenched by the delighted laughter that rolled out from their direction. There was something distinctly off about the sound.

That figure may have been humanoid, but any chances of them being human evaporated on the spot as he caught a glimpse of the two horns sprouting from their skull.

This wasn’t just a fight for fun. Somebody was hunting the ice wyrms… and they were enjoying it.

The small figure reached down, tearing a huge chunk of the monster’s scaled flesh away like it were pastry dough. It bit down, not even bothering to swallow as it ate.

Shadows flashed through the air as more ice wyrms cut through the sky. But, in that moment, a deeper chill passed through Drake’s already-frozen blood. The wyrms were heading in the wrong direction. They weren’t attacking.

They were running.

The figure grabbed its axe, rearing back and flinging it through the air in a blurred shadow. It slammed into one of the running wyrms, the crunch of its collision swallowed by the storm as the axe buried itself past the hilt, and the monster dropped from the sky, dead before it hit the ground.

Whoever, whatever, this thing was… it was powerful enough to scare an entire flock of wyrms. Strong enough to throw a huge weapon with such speed that it could punch through their scales like nothing.

Gods above. What have we stumbled into?

And then the figure turned in their direction, head tilting to the side and tilting back almost as if it were sniffing the air.

They’d been spotted.

Drake caught a flicker of large, hungry eyes, like those of a cat, peering at them through the storm.

“Run!” Torb screamed. “Fuck the caravan! Run!”

Nobody needed to be told twice. They abandoned the sleds and sprinted down the path, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the shadowy monster that dared to hunt ice wyrms upon their own soil.

Drake didn’t even dare glance over his shoulder.

It had been ten years since he’d set out to find a legend. Something worthy of a tale that would silence even the most grizzled of warriors.

Today, he’d borne witness to the birth of one.

And, as he would go on to tell people for the rest of his life, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.