They stared into the wall of snow, ready for the dragon to burst out and launch its icy breath against the party. A shriek sounded from the cloud, but no dragon appeared, only the end of its tail which for a moment snaked free of the wall before pulling back. For a full minute they waited, watching the cloud of snow filter out.
Hennet stared at the empty field ahead of them, puzzled. "I scared off a dragon?" he asked in disbelief. "I scared off a dragon with a web spell?"
"You shouldn't have attacked it at all," growled Regdar. "Remember what Sonja said before? On the wing, it could have killed us with ease."
"Hey," shot back Hennet, "I saw a monster, and I reacted. Let's not forget that I was the only one who thought quickly enough to save us back there."
"You wouldn't have needed to if you hadn't put our lives in danger to begin with," protested Regdar.
"I think we're missing the larger issue here," said Lidda, still perched on Regdar's shoulders, which were now heaving with anger. "Why didn't the dragon attack us? It looked pretty angry to me."
"Perhaps it saw a family resemblance," Regdar muttered.
Lidda ignored him. "Something made it retreat, and we should figure out what. Sonja?"
The druid's brow furrowed. "It may have been acting on orders."
"Orders not to kill us?" asked Hennet.
"Maybe just orders not to let itself get distracted," Sonja explained. "The most important question would be, who's giving the orders?"
"Frost giants?" asked Regdar. "Are we talking about frost giants?"
"By all the gods, I pray not," said Sonja. "My parents very rarely fought frost giants directly. They're fifteen feet tall and have legs like tree trunks. With the combined powers of us four, we might be able to defeat one of them. But," she added, "they very rarely travel alone."
Sonja's words left the party demoralized. Hennet took it on himself to put things right. "Remember why we became adventurers and not merchants or tanners or cobblers. We all had a choice. Let's remember why we chose this."
Lidda smiled slightly, and even Regdar was inexplicably cheered by Hennet's insight.
"So let's get moving," the sorcerer said. "These towers of ice can't be very far now. The gods know it cannot get much colder than this."
Lidda rested on Regdar's shoulders as they plunged through the snow, covering her eyes to protect them from a barrage of hard snowflakes. She considered this undignified, the kind of thing humans did with toddlers, but it was necessary for the moment. She recalled an old fable that her grandmother once told her. It concerned a young halfling named Burrowling. Burrowling feared the cold more than anything in the world. When winter rolled around, he'd lock himself in his room and refuse to come out until the spring thaw. He barricaded himself in with supplies enough to last the season and never even poked out his head to see what was going on. He was utterly convinced that the cold would be his death. Burrowling missed out on playing with his friends, going to school, learning his trade. In the summer he was a friend to everyone, but in the winter he never set foot outside of his home.
One year, Burrowling met a beautiful female halfling named Endra, whose skin was white as snow. They fell in love. But as he felt the days growing shorter and the wind growing colder, Burrowling realized he didn't want to spend another winter locked in his room, so far away from her. Knowing that Endra would never agree to spend the winter in his room, he suggested they leave the village and go south to a place where it was never winter. Endra agreed, and they set off.
Burrowling gave up everything he ever knew when the two of them went south together. They walked through human and dwarf lands where halflings were regarded with amusement or slim tolerance, and they continued on. Ultimately they came to a sunny land called Calandra where the locals swore that winter never came. There they settled down. Burrowling built a house for Endra and hoped they would be happy for all time.
When the first day of winter came, it was as balmy and warm and sunny a day as Burrowling ever knew. Endra asked him for the first time why he was so scared of the cold. Burrowling admitted that he didn't know, which made Endra weep.
"Why are you crying, Endra?" asked Burrowling. "Is it because you are so far away from your home and your family?"
"No," Endra said. She put her hand against Burrowling's cheek. It was cold as ice.
"I am the cold," Endra explained. "I took halfling form to wander the world, and I fell in love with you, the halfling who fears me more than all things. Why? Why do you fear me so much?"
Burrowling cried, and his tears froze. He clutched Endra's cold form in an embrace, and together the two of them transformed into solid ice. Their house changed into ice, and the ice spread over all the land. No longer the hottest of lands, Calandra felt its first winter, and its cold lingered ever since. The frozen forms of Burrowling and Endra, fused together for all time, stand there still.
As a child, Lidda had been greatly puzzled by the story of Burrowling and Endra. Perhaps its meaning was that people shouldn't be afraid of the cold, but the image of Burrowling and Endra transformed into ice made Lidda fear the cold more. Many years had passed since she'd thought about it, but now it came back to her. Probably it meant nothing and was only a tale to entertain listeners. She wondered if she should share it with the others.
They heard a heavy, stomping noise in the distance. It was a series of hard clomps, one after another, emerging loudly from the snowy gloom. The haze was so thick they could hardly see in front of them, and the reverberations caused the snow to tremble all round them.
"Our dragon?" asked Hennet, "back for more?"
"No," said Sonja. "It's something on the ground. It sounds a little like a mammoth, but something that large couldn't pass easily through these stumps."
"So what could it be?" asked Lidda.
"Shh…" said Sonja. "It's coming closer. Get ready."
Regdar swiftly strung his longbow and readied an arrow. On his shoulders, Lidda did the same with her crossbow, while Hennet prepared to launch an arsenal of magic at whatever might appear from the white veil in front of them.
When it did arrive, the image was so nightmarish and unexpected that all of them hesitated. Even Sonja stared openmouthed at this new threat. A great scorpion was approaching them from the snowy gloom.
Lidda was the first to react as the monster scuttled forward. She fired her quarrel. It struck the frost-encrusted scorpion on one of its pincers but bounced off harmlessly, barely having made a mark. Regdar's arrow struck harder and embedded itself in one of the creature's legs but didn't slow it at all. Hennet launched a spread of magic missiles, but these, too, had no apparent effect on the advancing monstrosity.
As it drew closer, they could see that this was not a giant scorpion coated in frost. Rather it was actually composed of solid ice.
"What do we do?" Hennet asked Sonja. She shook her head.
"I have a suggestion," said the sorcerer. He pulled the wand from Atupal off his back. "Fire should do the trick."
"Everyone get back!" the druid shouted.
They needed no more urging to speed away from the giant ice monster. Regdar clutched Lidda's ankles with one hand, pinning them around his neck to keep her from being jounced off his shoulders. Looking back over her shoulder, Lidda saw that their foe nearly matched their pace. Its eight legs carried it above the tangled stumps at surprising speed.