Snowfall on the Edge of the World

3 - THE FALL

I awoke in the snow. The blizzard raged around me, battering my form. Groggily I started up, feeling for my armour and clutching at sodden ground with gauntleted fingers. Dazed and confused, I raised my stiff fingers to my head and felt them clunk against my helmet, snow and ice cracking off the frozen surface. My vision adjusted, but all I could see was snow in an endless vortex of cold.

Why was I wearing my armour? I was sure that I had taken it off before I went to sleep, but then again, I also seemed to remember being in a house as well so the situation had clearly changed.

"Magic." I grumbled disconsolately, desperately cold once again and pulling my cloak close to prevent some of the buffeting snows. I spun, looking every which way and I could not determine where I was. Indistinct shapes floated menacingly in the distance framed by clumps of snow the size of fists and a sickly yellow light. I frowned, looking down at my feet.

Sitting there, right where I must have been sleeping was a flickering and cracked Hypatian lamp nearly entirely covered with snow. Wavering and psychedelic, it seemed to struggle remaining alight, occasionally turning on with completely incorrect colours. I squinted at the half-submerged lamp and saw a small piece of parchment stuck to it.

I picked it up, pulling up my visor to get a closer look.

The parchment itself looked to be in remarkably good form for a piece of paper that had been in the snow for an undetermined amount of time, still dry. In the not-quite-light I could make it out.

HONOUR IS A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR LIGHT, PLEASE ACCEPT THIS. I WISH YOU LUCK.

I grumbled; I had never trusted the gifts of wizards but in this case, I couldn't refuse a gift such as this. I heaved the lamp out of its trench and attached it haphazardly to my arm with what was left of my shield straps. I was quite annoyed by the poor state this lamp was in, and I figured that this was probably another chiding from the old man. I was over this by now, the old man had a dim view of honor and based on his reading list a heretic besides. At least he had the courtesy to give me the lamp.

I pulled the lamp tight to my arm, thin beams of light spearing out of hairline cracks in its odd shaped glass base. It seemed to me that the person who had blown the glass had hiccupped.

Using the light provided, I tried to get a bead on my location. In the distance, I saw a large black peak. The Black Mountain, Nerovuoto. But, at that distance...? I must have travelled well over fifty miles from the old man's house!

Magic, I thought again, but my musing was more favorable.

I raised the lamp hesitantly, wary of the lurid forms cloaked by the raging blizzard. I dropped my visor and pulled my sword free from the cracking scabbard and took a few steps forward. I felt a shifting beneath my feet and quickly kicked away some of the thick snow to reveal the icy floor of this place. Cracks spun like spiderwebs from where I stepped, groaning ominously under the ponderous weight of my plate mail.

My eyes flicked back to the cracked lamp I had attached to myself and I realized with mounting dread that the wizard had done this on purpose.

A mage's gifts always take more than they give, The Knight of Fire had warned me. Gods, would I ever learn? I raised the note to my face again, trying not to shift my weight. Frowning, I checked the back of the parchment.

P.S. I WOULD DODGE TO THE LEFT

My eyes widened as I heard rapid movement, feet slamming and cracking the surface of the ice. I leaped to the side as the great form of a Yurthjorn barely missed me, it's heaving mass howled at the misfortune.