The figure watched the light snow kick up at his boots as the wind howled around him, icy and biting. The blue-white glacier beneath his feet still radiated some of its former evil, but it no longer tried to drink his life.
    He could remember when it had.
    Looking around the frozen landscape with his haunted blue eyes, the man ignored the chill biting through his leather boots. He wore a heavy woolen cloak and robes, and he rubbed his leather-gloved hands together, a paltry defense against the all-consuming cold.
    “My world,” he muttered with a sad, soft voice. “This was once my world.” It had been called Mideorth, a land filled with life and beauty. But the name was meaningless now; all the joy had fled from it. For a moment he felt a tear coming, but he pushed it down. He had wept too often for his fallen homeland, and one more tear would be an admission of utter defeat.
    He remembered so much. He remembered when the world was green and full of life. He remembered the times when his spirit was filled with joy. He remembered the thousands of years...
    He blinked in shock. Had it really been six thousand years? Had it all passed so quickly?
    Forcing back another tear, he watched the sun begin to set over the luminous ice. Somewhere to the south he knew the ice ended for a short distance, but that little, free stretch was a wasteland of snow for most of the year. He had been back so often, seen the small settlements that remained of what had once been a great and noble people, watched as they tried to fend off starvation with what little they could grow in the mere four months they had before the harsh winter swept down upon them again.
    Even now, the source of the glacier remained a mystery. It had simply come and destroyed all that he knew, transforming a fertile world into a wasteland. And no matter how hard he tried, there had been nothing he could do to stop it.
    "I am Delgar, Magus Draconum!" the man shouted at the top of his lungs, listening as his words echoed for an eternity and then faded. "You will not destroy me!" he shouted again.
    The echoes surrounded him, a mocking reply to his challenge, and then all he heard was the empty howling of the bitter wind.
    Delgar gazed at the sun, watching it finally sink beneath the horizon, cloaking the world in luminescent darkness, the night lit by the stars and the glacier. How deep was the ice now? He seemed to remember it being two thousand feet deep. Or maybe it was three thousand; for some reason that memory eluded him.
    He drew his cloak closer around him and began to walk, the rough ice only slightly slippery under his feet. As he strode forward, he remembered.
    Six thousand years. It had been that long. And he recalled so much...