"No plan survives first contact with the enemy anyway!"
"I say. Well hit. Nicely done Jazz. Very well struck indeed"
There is a brief, crystalline moment when the gargoyle seems almost to hang in midair, her escape assured. She slips your grasp and dodges blows. In the frozen time, you catch a glimpse of her face, gone from fear to triumph. The moment and the icy form shatter as Jazz’s massive weapon arcs through the sky, catching the ice at just the right place. It shatters like a miniature glacier, pieces tumbling through the air with glints of morning sunlight. Where the ice lands in the snow it quickly dissolves, no longer held together by whatever forces gave it life.
"Holy s%*#! I am not making fun of the crazy guy anymore! That was amazing!"
Certain things, it seems cross even the language barrier. Fang claps Jazz on the shoulder and nods at him approvingly. He then collects the bear skin rug.
William coughs, cleanng himself of the snow. "Well then, a shame we didn't get it alive, but not a bad outcome, all things considered. I assume Roger Lionheart will be returning the lady to the city, shall we follow after or check for this portal?"
"Nobody would believe us if we tried to go to the authorities. We'd just get locked up. Look at the good doctor, he hardly believes any of this and he has actually SEEN it all.
Lets try and find the portal"
"Well, at the very least I believe it's something fascinating, worth studying. I'll look ahead."
Taking out the rifle, Doctor Johnson starts moving forward, as inconspicuously as possible.
"Yeah, at the very least I wanna see what the hell it is."
"Maybe that ain't a bad thing. If this kinda s#%% exists, people need to know."
You move across the bridge and into the wood beyond. There appears to have been a fair amount of traffic between the bridge and whatever lies beyond. Even in the fresh snow you can find a trail leading along a ridge above the ravine. No snow falls this morning, but it is bitterly cold. You worry that you will need to warm yourselves, but at least you have bottles of kerosene and matches, so starting fires should be easy enough.
Perhaps a mile past the bridge, you see something surprising in the unrelenting white, grey, and green of the winter wood. Splashed across the fresh snow, you see bright red spotches as if something has stained the snow with blood. The trail of blood seems to lead into the thick boughs of a pine tree. Perhaps whatever is injured is hiding within.
Can Naajy tell from the trail what made it? Human, animal, other?
The tracks near the blood trail are confusing, but Naajy things the oversized tracks are from some sort of homemade snowshoes. They aren't very deep, and they have the dragging nature of snowshoes.
As Naajy looks, a voice comes from the tree branches.
"Just hold real still there, Chinaman. I don't know what sort of nefarious doin's bring you here, but I got a Winchester trained on yer Chinaman skull, so back up real easy like..."
As someone from the trees begins speaking, Fang shoutss something to them in Chinese.
"We have slain your guardian. Show us now the portal that it guarded!"
A Winchester means it's a human. A human means he could be reasonable.
"Now hold on a second here, mate! First, he's an Indian, not a Chinaman. The Chinaman is the one who just shouted as if someone here spoke his language. Second, we're not here for any nefarious doing of sorts, we are exploring this unnatural cold weather. Fancy lower your gun and have a talk instead?"
"I guess I should be grateful that he called me Indian and not WOG"
"Yes, let us talk. Violence is so unnecessary"
Snow falls from the burdened branches of the tree as a small man emerges from within the protection of the tree. He is barely 5 feet, dressed in jeans and a hunters jacket. His beard is a thing of beauty, though unkempt and spattered with blood. His right arm is loosely bandaged, as is his left leg. His rough hands hold a lever action Winchester rifle, a weapon that at least William and Naajy would be familiar with. The barrel of the gun seems huge as you look down it.
"Don't look like no Indian I ever seen, and I seen a few not an hour ago. You seem strange, but not so strange as some of the other things I've seen in these woods. Name's Kepp..."
As an injured Human exits the trees, Fang seems confused.
"Was he the one speaking to us?"
"Yes. We're seeing if we can talk to him. Please don't kill him unless absolutely neceesary. So far, he hasn't said anything interesting"
William briefly rolls his eyes. "Not Indian as in Native American, one from India proper. You want to blame someone for the homonym, blame Columbus. By the way, you appear to be hurt, and I'm a doctor. Would you mind terribly putting the gun down and allowing me to have a look at your arm? We mean you no harm."
"Big weasel got me arm. Shot it a time or two, but it loped off into the snow with one of my traps."
He sags a big as he relaxes, keeping the gun in his hands but lowering it toward the ground and shuffling toward Dr. Johnson.
Williams grabs the antiseptic and gauze from his bag, cleaning the wound to prevent an infection and bandaging it back.
"Given that the woods are not the best environment for healing, I did my best. It should be enough to prevent gangrene and other kinds of infection, but it will scar badly unless we get to a properly clean environment."
"And you did say that you were hunting strange things? We are too. What did you encounter?"
"Well, last week I found some huge tracks like some kinda weasel, a mink or something. I figured if I could trap it it would be worth a fortune. So I set some bear traps for the thing. Caught it in a trap, but it pulled the stake right out of the ground and dragged it away. I tracked it down and put a couple of shots into it, but it charged me. Musta been the size of a wolf.
"Then, after I got bit, it ran off. And then just a while ago I 'encountered' a trio of actual Indians, but maybe that was just a hallucidation. I think I have a fever."
His wounds support the notion that he was bitten by an animal with large and pointy teeth. He does have a fever.
"Where you live, buddy?"
"Got a cabin out by Pocantico Lake. Sort of an infermal gamekeeper like."
"You are feverish indeed, I suspect an infection. I have some aspirin, but unless you find shelter I can't guarantee for your life and health. There's a cabin that way where you can rest."
William points in the direction they came from.
"Well, thanks for the bandagin' then, Doc. I'll head that way and see if I can get some rest in a warm spot."
He begins trudging back along your tracks, occasionally using his rifle as a walking stick.
You move along the high ridge and then curve to your left, descending in to a small hollow. Heavy ice burdens the trees on either side of the trail, bowing their branches so many of them touch the ground or disappear into snow drifts. No tracks break the snow in front of you. You deduce that you must be getting closer to whatever the source of this cold is. The snow is 4 feet deep and extremely difficulty to move through. Up ahead, the trees open up into a clearing that backs up to the ridge. The snow reduces visibility, but through the gusts you can make out some details.
Within the clearing, you see four domes build from blocks of snow. Knowledge: Geography 10 might recognize them as similar to the igloo’s built by native peoples of the North. A well-packed trail of enormous foot prints passes between them, heading both into a cave that opens into the ridge and toward the oddity that lies within the clearing.
A bank of quill-like icicles spear outward in a ring, seemingly grown from a heavy sheet of ice covering the ground. A second ring of giant icicle-shaped monoliths stands inside the outer ring, surrounding a swirling cylindrical vortex ten feet in diameter. Icy winds and driving snow blast from the vortex, apparently the source of the wintry weather.
"Head for the cave! We won't last long without shelter!" shouts William, trying to overcome the storm with his shrill voice.
clutching the damaged bearskin rug around him like a cloak, Fang begins pushing towards the structures in the center of the clearing.
Naajy holds firmly onto Haamid, allowing Haamid to break ground while he follows.
Digger lets forth a stream of vulgarity that, with better visibility, may have actually turned the air blue. He also moves as far as he can.
As you move into the clearing, some of the swirling snow coalesces into a tiny blue man with grasshopper wings and long white hair. Despite the cold, he wears only a loin cloth. He holds what might be a sling, and wears a curved knife at his belt that is the size of a large earring.
None of this makes much sense.
Almost in slow motion, you realize that he has just release a pebble from the sling in his hand, and that the pebble is flying toward Naajy. The stone hits Naajy square in the forehead, exploding with a sound of thunder. The blue man hangs in the air at about eye level, his wings fluttering as they hold him aloft.
Fang moves forward against the wind towards the creature that is shooting exploding rocks at the party.
"Uh, Jazz? Fang? You got this?" Digger tries to get a shot in before the melee is too confusing.
Digger's shot barely misses the creature, passing through the space where its wings flutter.
Naajy shoots at the monster
for
"Haamid, if you would be so kind as to kill that thing please"
Haamid advances and tries to bite the little bugger
for
Naajy's bullet brackets the creature with Digger's, and Haamid's teeth snap on empty snowy air just below the strange being.
The fey zips backwards, reaching into a pouch on his belt. He withdraws some sort of sparkling powder or sand and hurls it at Fang. Somehow, even with the wind, the powder sails across the intervening distance and splashing across Fang.
Fang feels a strange pressure against his skin, but it quickly fades.
The tiny man's blue face screws up in delight for just a moment before turning to disappointment when nothing seems to happen to Fang.
Round 2