"W-who are you?" The first to find her voice was the woman at the front. The hard leather of her jerkin creaked as she squared her shoulders, a travel-stained coat flapping around her legs in the knife-cold wind. Frost had webbed itself along the edge of her hood and lashes.
She drew a dagger that had seen a lifeti of quick decisions; the blade was nicked, the grip wrapped and rewrapped in darkened cord. A quiver rode her back, half full, fletchings crusted with ri, but there was no bow in sight. Mislaid in the panic, or snapped under the charge; Ludwig could guess either from the way her hand kept twitching to her shoulder as if to reach for what wasn’t there.
Ludwig let his breath ease out, a white plu that the mountain air tore apart. He let the pressure bleed from him as if he were loosening a fist, willing the red haze to gutter and draw back. The rampaging aura that had set the snowfields murmuring slid off him like a cloak falling from a peg. With it went the harsh, crystalline horns that had erupted above his brow and the glassy plates of hardened force that had crawled along Oathcarver’s spine. Frost crackled in the sudden quiet. The wind reclaid the space his presence had filled.
"? Call Davon," Ludwig said, voice unhurried, almost conversational. Like a man greeting neighbors at a well rather than strangers standing on the lip of panic.
The group exchanged looks with the language of people who had traveled too long together: a sharp lift of the chin, a narrowing of the eyes, a question answered without words. Snow squeaked under their boots. Finally the oldest of them, a burly, bald man with a beard like braided rope and a chest that made his worn cuirass groan, cleared his throat. "You’re the Davon from Tulmud?"
"Tulmud?" Ludwig tilted his head, as if searching for sothing misplaced on a shelf. "Yeah, I’ve been there. Only once, though. How do you know ?"
"He’s lying." The verdict ca hard from a lanky youth near the rear, cheeks wind-chapped, one gauntlet missing and the other too big for his hand. He shifted the sword he carried as if it were still unfamiliar weight. "Davon the Hero is dead."
"The hero?" Ludwig blinked as though he’d missed a festival and soone had told him the fireworks had been lovely. "When did that happen?"
"See? He doesn’t even know." The boy’s mouth went thin with certainty. "He must be lying. Davon died five years ago, when he pushed back the Guardian into the rift."
"Wow," Ludwig said, a little softly, as the asure of years slotting into place changed the taste of the air. "It’s been five years. Sure." He scratched at his jaw with the back of a knuckle, feeling real skin pull and settle, a sensation that still felt like stolen luxury. "But I didn’t die..." Inwardly, he counted, the way a man turns stones in his palm: once, twice, a hundred, then the heap too large to hold. ’Well. I did die about three hundred and eighty tis, give or take, they shouldn’t know that though’ he thought, and did not let the smile touch his mouth.
"Can’t trust him," the youth muttered, knuckles whitening around his hilt. "Please leave..."
"Stop. Everyone." The woman’s voice cut quick as her dagger. She lowered it a fraction, not out of trust, but because her eyes could asure consequences. "If this man wanted us harm, all he needed do was not help us. We would be at in the snow." Her gaze slid back to Ludwig, searching his face for seams. "We’ll be more than willing to believe you’re the sa... hold on...what’s that on your chest?"
"This?" Ludwig pinched the face of the badge and brought it out where the wan light could find it. The tal was scuffed and dulled, but the stamp held. "Oh. My Adventurer’s badge." He tipped it so the letters caught. "It says Davon right under. S-class." A small, crooked smile.
The posture of the group loosened by degrees, suspicion stepping back to make room for caution. The burly man grunted, decision settling on his shoulders to maybe believe the man
"You should probably help that guy first before we keep interrogating you." Ludwig pointed turned, and the burly man’s gaze followed the gesture to the man slumped between two comrades, coat ripped, lips blue, a dark stain frozen stiff along his ribs.
"Right." The big burly, dragged a satchel around and snatched at glass. "He’s our cleric. Got hit first. Would have been far easier if he wasn’t the one struck by those stupid bone projectiles..." He wedged thick fingers against the stopper, popped it with his teeth, and poured the potion between chattering lips.
The sweet-iron scent of the draught lifted, then vanished into the cleric’s throat. After a mont, the pallor of his skin tinted from chalk to the mory of flesh; the pinched lines at his mouth loosened. A tremor ran through him that wasn’t shivering.
"Anyways," Ludwig said, letting the mont hold. "It’s been a while since I got stuck here, and I was wondering if you can tell what’s been happening since before I left..."
"How about we discuss this over there, there’s a cave we can use for shelter" the burly man said, squinting into the blown white. He jerked his chin toward a black mouth cut into the mountainside, a smudge of shelter against the cold’s open hand.
"Sure."
They broke into a trudging line. Leather creaked; a pan clinked against a pack. One of them, the youth, kept glancing back at Ludwig as if expecting him to vanish and take the world with him. Ludwig let his hands fold behind his head as he fell in at the rear, boots whispering in dry snow. The air stabbed at his lungs, clean and thin; the cold nipped ears and nose, needling through seams, but he savored the bite as a man savors spice after a long fast. Breathing ant sothing again. The figured weight of it thrilled him.
By the ti they reached the cave, the light had gone from pewter to iron. The entrance crouched low, a lip of ice clinging to rock. One by one they stooped and stepped into muffled dark.
Ludwig halted at the threshold. The black pressed close, and beneath the whip of wind and the soft drip of ltwater he felt that sothing wasn’t right. The air that slid across his tongue was rank with the sour-tal tang of old rot and a musk like damp fur rubbed on stone. The hair along his arms prickled.
[You have entered the Blood Yeti’s Dungeon]
"You guys think this is a cave?" Ludwig asked, voice low.
"Yeah." The youth’s tone sharpened defensively. "It’s been used by adventurers who seek shelter. Why?"
Ludwig drew in the cold and let it settle. He didn’t need to sniff, not anymore, but habit had a way of feeling like ritual. "This is a dungeon," he said, every syllable placed with care.
"What?" The word echoed once off ice and ca back smaller.
"I would be quieter if I were you." He cocked his head, listening to the faint grind beneath the stone, the weight shifting so corridors back. "Yes. A dungeon. And there are monsters hibernating inside. Don’t be too loud."
They looked at one another confusion warring with embarrassnt that tasted like insult. The place had a local reputation, clearly, a way-station with a roof and a single choke of stone at the back that made whatever lay beyond feel safely walled off if there was anything there in the first place.
"Right..." one of them murmured, as if agreent could unmake danger, though there seems to be more ironic suspicion in that word. "Anyway, you’re saying you’re Davon, but we know for a fact that he fought against the Guardian. Well, more like gave his life to push it away from Tulmud’s capital. And if you’re saying you’re Davon that ans you survived five years in the mountains of Solania... no one’s going to believe it. Especially with how terrible living conditions are here, and how scary the Guardian is."
"He’s dead," Ludwig said. The words left his mouth calm as a snowfall. "And don’t call him Guardian. He is anything but. That’s a monster."
"What do you an dead?" The woman spoke. Dagger forgotten at her side, voice rising like breath over coals.
"Sigurd. Calm down," the burly man said quietly. "You’re being too loud if the ’Yeti Dungeon’ part is true."
"Sorry, Gehrman," she breathed, though her eyes didn’t leave Ludwig’s face. "Right. What do you an dead? The Guardian."
"Wrathful Death," Ludwig corrected, the na smoothing across his tongue with the weight of a title and an epitaph.
"Right, that." Sigurd set her jaw. "Well, it’s been here longer than the empire ever existed. How is it dead?"
"I killed it," Ludwig said.
Silence went through the group like a blade. Doubt returned, heavier this ti, tinged by the insult of impossibility. But mory was stubborn: they’d seen what he did to the creatures on the slope, the way the mountain had seed to bow around him. The two truths wrestled and did not settle.
"Nevertheless," Ludwig said, letting their disbelief sit; it was not a thing he needed to pry from their hands. "It took five damn years." He rubbed at his forearm absently, as if he could scrub ti loose. "I wonder how everyone is doing..."
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