There’s a man in the snow,
He’s been there forever,
His lips are blue,
And his clothes are frozen stiff,
He was found by the Ice Wolves,
Outside the village walls,
And now we know why we don’t go out alone!

***

Verse 1
Ice Wolves
- Origins Unknown –
A children’s nursery rhyme sang in the Ice Desert

***

Chapter One

The last time the remote town of Bebren had seen the sun was outside of living memory. In fact, only the eldest of residents could just about recall their parents laughing about an uncle or such fainting at the sight! Although none ever mentioned the cult that had begun that day.

Probably for the best.

The old gods had been terribly angry at the heresy at play, even if it was technically their own fault. Garlgoh really should have known better than to bet sunlight in a card game against his brother. That fateful card game left Bebren in the middle of a snow storm that seemed to believe itself heavier than it should. It did give an attempt at hail every other hour in an attempt to be intimidating. 

The snowstorm outside was almost as boring as the holes in Klaus’ thick trousers. Klaus himself, of course, was not boring. That may have had something to do with his lack of shirt rather than any intrinsic quality. At least he had reason to be shirtless and was not some type who was shirtless merely to show off his chest. 

Klaus emerged onto the factory floor from a barely hidden door opened by a rather odd-looking young boy whose only job was to open said door. The factory floor was crowded with workstations as much as it was people. A giant central engine that looked ready to burst and had done for the past 100 years, spewed out heat.  Not quite as bad as the mines Klaus had just exited but more than could ever be deemed comfortable. 

Klaus was a rather unfortunate young man; perhaps had he been born in Elsewhere he would have been something more. Yet he wasn’t, so this was all he ended up as.  Though to the people of Bebren he was definitely something more than nothing. Eyes followed the young man in constant scrutiny throughout his route around the shaking machinery that carved up the factory floor. The deep groaning sounds of the cogs easily drowned out the mutterings of the other workers, the cogs attempting to keep the peals of smoke shooting out through the chimneys. 

It wasn’t the nice sort of smoke either. 

The kind that smelt of cedar or other pleasant pine-like smells that spread warmth through to the soul inside. Rather it was thick and grainy in every grey inch. It was the kind you would only breathe in if you had no choice, and Bebren was one of the unfortunate places where choice was almost completely inexistent. A clang ran through the factory, from just a few feet to Klaus’ left. Echoing off the metal walls.

“Korva switch with Garth! These cogs need cleaning!” The matron of the factory floor, an elderly lady who wore her fists on her hips and had a rather unfortunate face, to go along with her rather unfortunate name: Ugik Mudrack. It may have once been perfectly normal, but decades of scowls and angry grimaces had warped the face. Matched with shrewd eyes that were too pale for the rest of her she made a rather formidable-lookingwoman. Her shrill voice was nothing to sniff at either. 

Such was Ugik’s reputation that someone, who must have been Korva, pelted across the short space, his long fluffy rabbit ears trailing half a foot behind him. It wasn’t just the rabbit-like features that caused the younger man to be easily found, but it certainly helped.The bright white fur of his legs that blended out into alabaster white skin may have been able to help him out in the middle of the Ice Desert, but not within the gloom of the factory. His heavy footfalls dislodged tools from their belts and boxes with each bounding step. 

Korva was not by any means the only Kidel residing within Bebren, his family having infiltrated several generations back. However, he was the most clumsy and loud in his movements. Such as his sliding into his new workstation and knocking the tools off the bench and scattering them across the floor. 

Garth to his credit was much less annoying to those around him. 

And a tad more forgettable too!

“Kokil, can you pass me the wrench?” Even Garth’s monotone voice did little to make him more rememberable to those around him. Indeed, the young girl he addressed turned towards him blinking owlishly as if she had never seen him before. Klaus was glad if only for a moment that Kokil was no longer staring at him open-mouthed. 

Much like the view outside of Bebren’s walls, of the vast expanse of the Ice Desert, because the only blot in an otherwise pristine white landscape going on for miles, was Bayor. A towering mountain that began a few miles West of Bebren, though no one really knew how tall Bayor was. It was hard to tell really when the heavy snow clouds surrounded it. Some inhabitants suggested there was no peak to Bayor, instead there stood a large palace to the Gods. However, as no one dared go near the mountain, no one would ever know. So, the myth only seemed to gain momentum, as myths often do. 

Bebren was overrun by myths that made no logical sense. Perhaps it was because Bebren was the most Northern town in the entirety of the Ice Desert, let alone the whole of Anywise! Or rather the most Northern human town, though the couple of Kidel colonies that lay further north did not truly count. After all, a system of burrows underground was not a true town. It is a well-known fact that every town needs a marketplace, and Kidel’s were well known for their lack of markets.

“Kokil! Eyes on your work girl!” The shrill shouts of Ugik snapped all within the factory outside of their own heads, and back onto whatever piece of machinery, they were attempting to work on. Klaus decided he would take this small reprieve to deliver the last few batches of coal. 

“Here Lise, last of the day.” Klaus’ gruff voice pierced through the groans of the largest engine that dominated the furthest part of the factory. Lise, a beanpole of a girl, the kind who knew herself to be pretty, smiled as if looking at a particularly unpleasant bug before nodding to the basket to her right. If there was a part of his route, he loathed it was delivering to Lise, but all Klaus was able to do was scowl and scurry off as quick as his legs could carry him to his last drop-off. 

Klaus paused as he reached the last and only vacant workstation, placing the last of the coal into the basket beside it. It wasn’t necessarily unusual to find the station empty, but he could normally see the heavy-set boots Penn usually wore peeking out of the bottom of the engine, or perhaps a precarious ladder leading to the top of it. A low gruff huff escaped from between his chapped lips as he turned his face upward.

If he could not see Penn, there was only one place she could be. 

The hum of the factory floor faded near the top of the precariously tall factory. The interweaving metal beams and the copious number of wires weaving around the various chimneys helped to cushion the upper beams from the hubbub of the factory floor. There, sat atop the highest beam was Penn, her legs swinging on either side of the beam as she once more attempted to unravel the world around her.

One thing it was important to know about Penn, was that there was absolutely nothing ordinary one could say about her. From her eyes to the tip of her bronze foot. Both of which she happened to like, thank you very much. In truth, what Penn was, was a mismatch of parts. Perhaps anywhere else she would be considered more, perhaps even beautiful on a good day. But as it was, within the Ice Desert she was a mismatch of parts that one could call striking if attempting a compliment. Her nose was a good couple of sizes too small for her lips, and her eyes slightly too large for the rest of her face making them all the more unnerving. The flat ice blue irises seemed more at home on an apex predator than a young human woman. If one were being kind you may wish to call them interesting, but humans, and many humanoids for that matter, rarely wish to be kind. 

That was all before you even arrived at the unusual glint seen whenever the light caught her left leg. The bronze appendage was a real oddity, most of the metal within Bebren was a deep purple colour, but never bronze. The only other bronze could be found only in the old pre-war weaponry that the people of Bebren used for mending cracks in the factory floor. Penn may have forgotten to tell the townspeople that she was taking some of the weapons for herself. It had taken perhaps two afternoons, and a lot of words not for quoting for Penn to create the complex pattern that blended almost seamlessly into her skin. 

All in all, she was the sort of person you cannot help but look at.

Beside her, a decidedly less striking form sat reclined against the join with an intersecting beam. Unless you counted the two horns peeking out atop his curls. Not that this was such an odd sight in Bebren, his own at least were a dashing deep purple rather than therather boring grey others dealt with. His long legs stretched out in front of him, with his arms folded behind his head. The young man’s name, for he couldn’t really be considered a boy, was Tarquin. An unusual name for an otherwise mostly average man. Tarquin was nothing like his silent companion: for starters, he was several inches too tall even for her oddly tall height. Oh, his looks were certainly above average, especially in the small town of Bebren, possibly even in the whole of the Ice Desert. 

Tarquin had a wide-set jaw, the kind that demanded a soft hand to stroke it. Even his perfectly unblemished umber skin was a clear point in his favour. Though the rest of his face may not have lived up to this high initial praise. Unsettlingly deep yet somehow sweetly intense, his dark eyes were set on Penn sitting astride the beam opposite him. The kind of eyes that looked vacant at first before you realise the deepest holes look vacant themselves at first glance. Though his roman-like nose which almost certainly came from his mother’s side of the family helped to offset his prominent brow. All of this was framed by tight dark chocolate corkscrew curls, that fell to just above the line of that chiselled jaw.

His unsettling gaze continued to follow Penn as she moved forward to lay flat on the beam, chest pressed against the cool metal, her face tilted ever so slightly to watch the factory floor below. She was just able to make out Klaus winding his way back to the mines’entrance. 

A low sigh escaped her chapped lips as he disappeared from view, her companion merely shaking his head so his curls bounced against his features. Watching, as he always did, as she returned to her usual position of staring out of the sole window in the factory. Out at the raging storm, the dancing snow and the peals of smoke. Watching the show outside while Tarquin watched her. 

Together they made quite the pair. 

At this moment, Penn tilted her head to the right her body tilting toward the gigantic window before her. In answer Tarquin shifted himself out of the comfortable position he had made for himself, shifting along the beam until he could see what Penn was pointing her body towards. 

“Get to work you useless layabouts!” Ugik yelled once more, her shrill voice echoing off the metallic surfaces until it distorted almost unrecognisably to Penn and Tarquin. That did not stop the shiver down Penn’s spine however, she had heard that tone directed at her one too many times to ever be comfortable hearing it. 

Her short, panicked pants left visible white trails in the air.

“Huh.” It was almost a word for sure, but not quite a word with any real meaning behind it. Penn spun around on the beam to stare at Tarquin who was staring intently out of the window. 

The silence shattered to the floor beneath them. 

Penn had enough sense in her to realise this was a breaking point. There was a coldness to her bones, the kind that only comes from deep-seated fear. 

The silence could never be stitched back together now.

Years of Tarquin’s fingers brushing her shoulder to draw her away from her work, following him up the weaving rafters to their favoured spot. Or the rare days he simply caught her hand mid-air and led her up the rafters, his grip just about verging on too tight.Tight, not painful. Such as this particular day, when he had caught her a few hours before. 

“Eyes on your work!” Ugik’s screech rattled the machinery around her. Even from the rafters, the sound of her voice alone was enough to send shivers of fear throughout Penn’s lithe but emaciated form. Her ice blue eyes had lost all focus, and stared down unseeingly at the barely visible floor below, while memories that should have been buried long ago whirled inside her mind.

Perhaps it was for the best that she was so caught up in her internal storm, as it meant she missed the whispered curse uttered from her companion. However, she didn’t miss Tarquin shifting along his chosen beam towards the window, eyes trained to the sky above while the beam groaned under the shifting weight. Penn followed his movements a few seconds behind.

“It’s getting worse, how is it getting worse? It’s usually waning by now...” Tarquin drifted off, his brain running out of words to send to his mouth. Indeed, he was correct in his observation: the storm clouds had darkened to a thick muddy black, bombarding snow and hail only a little smaller than a child’s fist, down into Bebren. Twice the size of the previous worst storm several years before. Penn tore her gaze down from the clouds above and did something she had never done in her time within the town of Bebren: she let out a sharp hiss.

A beat of silence.

“The roads are getting flooded… I do not think the factory can handle this.” Penn had made her decision it seemed. If the silence was truly broken between them, Penn was not going to ignore it. Her words were stilted or too perfect, with a thick accent that hadn’t been forced out of her yet coating every word. An accent unheard of within the town of Bebren outside of her, it immediately showed her as other in a way only noticed by her. 

“The defences are failing. How?” Tarquin shook his head, dark curls bouncing round his cheeks as he did so, and getting caught on the tips of his horns. Yet, the evidence was undeniable: the snow had engulfed the boundary walls themselves.