“It would seem that’s it’s about to rain,” said the man, who was now several meters away, pointing towards the sky.

Rusty looked up to see dozens upon dozens of icicles above of where he currently was, as well as several meters around him in all directions. Confident in the durability of his self made armor, Rusty ran towards the man as fast as he could. Once Rusty had halved his distance to the man he reeled his right arm back and preformed a running jump. As Rusty was in the air for the brief moment he shot his arm forward which shot out an extending spike towards the man, who moved to the left, dodging the spike effortlessly.

Just as Rusty was about to turn the spike into a sword to cut the man in half, the man in half, the man said to Rusty, “Haven't you paid attention to anything I've done this fight you barbarian? Do I simply not matter to you?!”

At that moment Rusty hesitated and quickly looked behind him, then forward again to make sure the man didn’t move as well as process what he had just seen. From behind Rusty the dozens upon dozens of icicles that were in the air were now all turned towards him. Rusty quickly retracted the spike he had shot out earlier and forced a blood shield at his backside to block the icicles as they came rushing towards his.

“How foolish,” Rusty heard from behind himself. Rusty turned to see that the man was now right in front of Rusty with his sword raised. Before Rusty could create something from his blood to defend himself, the man's sword produced its spear-like tail and smashed Rusty across the head, knocking him unconscious.

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“Are we there yet?” Chase Asked Cloud, who was leading their group with a map.

“For the third time, we still have over an hour left to travel. I told you it would be a two-hour walk from Feather fall at the least, and it only been half an hour.” Cloud replied passive-aggressively.

The blizzard from before was now simple light snow, which would make their journey go faster than Cloud’s original estimate, not by much, but Chase held out hope that they would get back to Northguard sooner rather than later. Behind Chase and Cloud were Boomer and the captain who was trying to get some more information from Fanari, they weren’t pushing her into saying anything though, just subtle questions that didn’t always get an answer, like “how many people lived in the village,” that one didn’t get a response. The only new information they’d managed to get were that nobody in her village had been to Northguad in over two weeks as the village only had people go to the town once a month to buy and sell wares for the village, although people from other villages and Northguard came to the town regularly, which was pretty normal for the other towns and villages around Northguard did the same, which was one of the reasons why it was on the road to becoming the northern capital for the lions tea parties.

Unlike other nations, the nation known as the Lions Tea Party has, or...had four different capitals. In the east was East-Rixon, which was and still is known for its lively market and natural resources because the city and the areas around it make their profits off mining its rocky terrain, although their mountains are smaller when compared to other nations, the mines bountiful nonetheless. In the south part of the country was the southern capital city of San. Its name is based on the fact that it's located right on the edge of the Tabalten desert but not quite part of it, hence the removal of the d in the word sand. The Tabalten desert makes up almost the entirety of the nation of Tabalten. In the west is West-Rixon, which is surrounded by a flat plain terrain which is used as farmland for the nation with trees scattered about, and like East-Rixon, the city has a lively market. At the center of the nation was the city of Meridea where the nation's leaders ran the country from and were responsible for transporting water to where there wasn’t any as the city itself was surrounded by lakes.

Before the great altering, there was never a need for a northern capital as the kingdom didn’t have anything important in the north, and even though Northguard had a strong reputation for training skilled ice mages, with no threat or asset to the kingdom to the north, there was never a reason to officially make it a capital city. But after the great altering, with the kingdom losing contact with some of its father settlements in the chaos that the great altering brought for such a long time, with the northern settlements untouched in the crisis but also unsupported by the kingdom, the king of the lions tea party felt it appropriate to name the town as the capital city of the north to inspire confidence in the kingdom to those who resided in the north. The official ceremony was supposed to take place two days before Chase and the rest of the squad was sent to Northguard to investigate, but the leader of the town was supposed to go to Meridea for the official announcement, but the town's leader never showed up, causing their team to be sent to Northguard.

Other questions were asked of the girl, but none yielded anything of use. The group continued to walk along for several more minutes before Cloud stopped moving forward and started looking between the map and a small farm far in the distance directly in their path forward.

“What is it?” Asked Chase.

“That farm isn’t showing up on the map we brought, but are map is a copy of the one in the main temple of Northguard, so it should be here”. Cloud said puzzled.

“Let me see the map,” Chase said as he snatched the map out of Cloud's hands and took a look at the map. The map itself was rather large, but as Cloud had already said, from Feather fall to Northguard there shouldn’t have been a building in that direction. Chase then decided to make paths in other directions from Feather fall to see if they had gone off course.

After a moment of silence from Chase, he turned to Cloud and said in a disappointed tone, “I know where we are in the map.”

“What? Where?” asked Cloud as he took a step towards Chase to get a better look at the map.

“You see the path we’ve been walking from Feather fall to Northguard?” Chase asked him pointing to the top of the map where Feather fall was, to which Cloud nodded, “Well let’s say, hypothetically we went southwest instead of just south like we should be doing,” he said moving his finger rather far diagonally downwards to the left, “What, my friend would we run into?”

“A small farm,” Cloud said still puzzled.

“And what exactly is directly in front of us right now?”

As Cloud let out a noise of realization Chase smacked the back of his helmet and shouted, “We’ve been going in the wrong direction you idiot!” As Cloud rubbed the back of his head under his helmet where he was smacked, Chase said aloud, “Dammit, if we had gone in the right direction then we’d be able to see Northguard by now.”

“What's wrong Webs?” asked the captain from behind.

“Clouds been leading us in the wrong direction.”

“Well, then let's head in the right one then!” The captain said with enthusiasm.

“Alright, let's go...” Chase said as he looked at the map and then to the left of the building,” That way,” Chase said as he started walking in the right direction with the rest of the group following him.

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Rusty woke up feeling cold with a slight weight overtop of him. As he got off of the ground snow fell off of his back and head.

“So you're finally up,” said a voice in front of Rusty that made him stop in his tracks, “You put up the best fight among your people so far, so I’m betting that you’re their leader. Well, I got news for you, leader of the barbarians!” The man said as he kicked Rusty in the gut, who was on all fours on the ground at the time and honestly didn’t feel it much because of his armor which was still on him, “I, Sabbath Frostwalker! I am about to avenge my people!” The man called Sabbath yelled as he kicked Rusty in the gut again, “Do you remember all the people in my town that you killed? Do you?! I was out of the town when you attacked, and when I got back, everyone was dead and you all were celebrating at your camp, which was located right underneath us. That’s right! I killed all of your people for their crimes! I Formed an iceberg above your Whole camp and crushed them! And now that I've found you, their leader, I can finally end this!” As Sabbath finished, he unsheathed his sword and the tail of the sword came forth and smacked Rusty, sending him flying a few meters away, after which Sabbath began to laugh hysterically into the sky.

“The man was crazy”, Rusty thought to himself, nothing the man was saying made sense to him. Rusty looked up to see the man still laughing with Northguard in the distance. As Rusty got to his feet he prepared to both fight the man and run to the town, but with Sabbath in the way, he would first have to fight. Rusty didn’t care about the man’s story, he didn’t care about getting justice for what he did to Lawrence, all Rusty cared about at that moment was how he was going to get out of this situation and survive.