Bundled up against the freezing weather, and already missing Shella’s frostlock spell, Slade headed south across the vast plain.  Holding the blanket together with one hand and periodically stopping to rest the rifle against his body so he could use the other hand to rub his nose occasionally to keep frostbite from setting in, he took one long stride after another.  Now, without Shella, he could really walk, not just because of occasional conversations but because she was not as tall or fast as he.  Settling into a mile-eating pace, he walked the rest of the day.

As night fell, he considered going on further.  The sky was clear, and the moon full.  In fact, the moon looked an awful lot like Earth’s moon.  For a second, he wondered what history had led to this Great Ice, but there were so many possibilities that he put it to the side.  All he needed to know was this was his chance to toughen up in order to fight the Frost Giants during Fimbulwinter at the end of the worlds.  So he continued on late into the night, walking onward until finally he stumbled.  Catching himself before he fell, he saw that the snow was deeper here.

Digging himself a ditch in the snow, he lay down out of the constant wind, and slept.  He woke before dawn, with the aurora borealis dancing in his eyes before clouds blew in.  But although snow fell, not much did, and he set out again going further south.  This day he found another creek, and drank icy refreshment, refilled his bottle, and ate raw fish of the kind he had named glacier trout.  It was rubbery, but after getting over the initial queasiness, he felt new strength in his muscles.  Taking another drink, he wiped his mouth clean, shook off the snow off his blanket, and wrapped it around his shoulders again.

Walking south, not as late this night, as the clouds hid the moon, he kept pushing himself.  If Shella had been here, he would have taken it easier, but for himself alone, he set a brutal example of indifference to cold and ice.  The third day–was it the third day? he wondered–the day was gusty, but he kept on.  Nothing for it, but get it done.

A wolf, possibly a scout from a larger pack, ran past him by a dozen yards.  He turned and faced it,  hoping it would come back.  Some meat, even if bitter, would be nice, and a wolfhide would help warm him.  By his attitude and posture, the wolf seemed to have got the idea very clearly that Slade was the apex predator.  No wolf pack descended on the lone traveler.  Walking on alone, he continued south.

Getting terribly thirsty, on the sixth day he resorted to melting snow in his mouth.  This drained heat from him, but gave him liquid which he needed even more.  Pushing onward, on the ninth day he came to a low ridge of mountains.  The vast plain was behind him, and now as he closed on the mountains he saw they were not rock, but ice.  Perhaps somewhere under them was rock to hold them up, but reaching he did not see a way to cross easily a five hundred foot rise of mostly smooth, glistening ice.

Disliking the idea of getting up high, he nevertheless put his flintlock musket up on his back.  Out of  his backpack, he produced his grappling hook and prybar.  Looking at the set of spiky ‘hills’ of ice, he searched for a more gradual path up.  Going to the west, he came around to more of a ramp that led up and east.  That took him forty feet up for a cost of five hundred feet walking.

Another shallower ramp led more directly up, and he took it, using his prybar to smack divots in the ice for his leather boots.  This was particularly hard as he could barely feel his toes, despite the multiple sock layers.  Ignoring the pain, he used them, not wanting to lose a toe to frostbite.  Reaching the top of that ramp he came to a vertical cliff, but it was only four feet tall.  Taking a chance, he leapt and scrambled atop it, using the prybar again to keep from sliding off and back down the ramp.

Shaking a bit because he really did not like  heights, he pushed onward.  Sometimes he used the grappling hook, and other times the prybar.  More than once he had to go back to find another way up and over.  As he got near the top, he realized he should have started earlier in the day.  The great, glowing sun was going down, casting long orange glows across the plain behind him, and he was close to passing over to the other side, but there was no way he was going to chance crossing at night.  He was deeply tired, more so than on other days as the day of climbing had been particularly difficult.  Finding a good spot in a small crevice, he took out his hammer after hooking the grappling hook into the ice, and beat the prybar into the icewall on his other side to form a cage for him with rope so that he would not fall in the night as he slept, or when winds battered him, which he could already tell was going to be worse in the hills than on the plain.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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