To Feel Frostbite Creeping [Quest / Josh]

Vladimir looked over to Josh, had they not been in Ikana at the same time? Perhaps, but maybe they had been. The Sheikah Clan in Ikana typically kept a good look out of who entered and left in case they caused trouble, but maybe he was too young or didn't care enough to get involved in their shit. Rubbing the back of his neck, he shrugged.

"Happy to educate you?" He looked over to him, raising an eyebrow. The events in a certain experience with Garo were one his brain was trying to repress. He had had plenty of encounters, yes, but that particular one was bugging him. He gladly let himself grow distracted by what Josh was looking at though. "Good eye." he told him, stepping a little ways back into the cave to squat down and carefully handle the page.

He was used to handling old and crumbling texts, or texts damaged by water or more. With careful gloved hands, he pushed the snow off the page, piled atop the page like dunes moving past and exposing a ruin, got rid of the small layer of ice and walked back to Josh to hold it between them.

The page is in relatively good condition, but brittle. "I knew it wouldn't be long. It wouldn't be long at all! I finally got to see the full body of the beast! Or at least what I would think to be a beast. It seemed to... shimmer. Like it wasn't there! But it was there! I knew it was! It had to be! It looked right at me. We locked eyes and I felt a chill run down my spine, like it froze me in place! Then it just disappeared! Gone like the snow mixing into the ground at my feet! It was almost like it was never there... but I know it was. Frostbite is real, I know it is."

Vlad just made a face, thinking, then looked to Josh, expression of thought still on his face. What the fuck did the Zora just send them up against?

deltra of gangnam style

"For my Kingdom...

For my people... I need to do this."

TEMPLATE MADE BY MIDNIGHTBLOOM!

"This doesn't sound like a Gibdo or Redead..." He knew too much about those damn things. "I've never heard of one acquiring the power to summon or create white wolfos either." He sighed again, carefully putting the brittle page away after skimming over it one more time.

"Gibdo and Redead are capable of sentient thought, but... they're obsessed. It's a point of obsession for them. Other than that, it's easy to see them as mindless, only wanting to feed off the living." He knew about Gibdo all too well. His personal experience went much deeper than he'd prefer.

"Perhaps a frost spell, some type might have struck the Zora?" Vlad speculated, moving onwards and deeper out into the frozen fields that opened before them. If not for the blizzard, it would be easy to see the dip in the landscape that signified they were nearing the lake.



The cries of White Wolfos surrounded them, never seeming to be in one place, always moving and never mocking the last position. Vladimir tensed, looking around to try to see anything, but in the white snow, the shimmers of white among white were brief, and rarely visible. The howls, yips and cries continued up until something big moved. A large shadow flitted about the snowstorm, seeming to have leapt over a few obstacles before coming to a stop, the air heavier and colder the closer it got.

It was hard to tell how far away it was, but a large glowing eye watched them from whatever distance was held, the shadow shimmering like a mirage before letting out a low, distorted cry and disappearing itself, the yips and howls of White Wolfos fading out, taking the colder air and suppressing aura with it...

Vlad's eyes were fighting the urge to widen in shock, his eyebrows raised under the heavy hat that kept his head warm, green eyes looking all around them before resting on Josh. Had he seen that too? He had to have. Even if they were spirits of a sort, that presence was too strong.

deltra of gangnam style

"For my Kingdom...

For my people... I need to do this."

TEMPLATE MADE BY MIDNIGHTBLOOM!

The creatures had ran and left, the aura remaining gone, and the longer the aura and howls were gone, the more his shoulders relaxed. "What... was that about?" Of course, they couldn't stop here, but it was perfectly reasonable to take a moment to try to wrap your head around the odd confrontation that just happened.

The creature they were dealing with was much smarter than a frothing at the mouth beast. He looked to the lake in front of them, then looked around him the best he could. No hints of shimmers, they were gone for sure. "I... guess we should be more careful moving forward then..." Because standing out in the harsh winds was not good for you.

deltra of gangnam style

"For my Kingdom...

For my people... I need to do this."

TEMPLATE MADE BY MIDNIGHTBLOOM!

Vladimir looked around in the snow and tried to fathom a Nayru or Demise mage that could pull this off. A mage far above where he was, but not impossible. Still, a part of Vlad couldn't shake that it wasn't quite human. "I... don't know. Monsters have been doing wild things lately. We're seeing more of them." Though Josh helped him, he couldn't quite shake the cold either.

"We should keep moving, apparently there isn't a cave too far past the lake ahead. That'd be the best place to stop if we did." Rather than out in the open. What trees were here on the ground appeared to be mostly collapsed, and with how the snow had been whipping with the winds, it was best to get as much coverage as possible.

Either way, they had to keep moving. Whatever was out here, especially if that was Frostbite, knew they were here. Was it checking them out? Was it letting them know they knew? Vlad crossed his arms and continued walking past fallen logs. On one of the logs though, a off white corner could be seen. "Look."

Very much possibly another page, well, there was no possibly. It definitely was a page by it's shape, pierced by wood and covered by snow.

deltra of gangnam style

"For my Kingdom...

For my people... I need to do this."

TEMPLATE MADE BY MIDNIGHTBLOOM!

Vlad nodded to Josh as he picked up the page. There wasn't much time to look at it and Vlad's scrawny ass was going to become a popsicle at this rate. He'd never been this cold outside of Snowhead, the worst cold he had dealt with where the Valley and Canyon winters they suffered in Ikana.

But he carried on leading them, eyes able to cut through the darkeness a wee bit better than most just from his ninja training alone. That didn't stop him from taking careful steps though, having found the place where snow leveled out, the ice beneath their feet too thick to break, and barely made a sound.

From there, it was just walking across, listening to the distant howls that suddenly cut out upon stepping onto the frozen lake. They were being watched, hunted maybe, but definitely watched. He looked at the ice as he walked to see if he could note anything, the only thing to truly be noted was the combat area to the side of where they walked.

There were abnormal gouges in the ice, some that didn't belong to any known monster and some that looked like they belonged to larger Wolfos... Vladimir kept moving, but it didn't stop him from looking over at Josh at the sight of the gouges. The eerie silence gripped the snowstorm around them. No sounds except their own breath and footsteps. The wind whipped, but nothing else moved, it was as if they were the only life in a wind filled void as they moved across the lake.

Vlad was used to the silence, but silence like this meant something was wrong, and in Ikana, when something was wrong... you stayed silent.

---

It wasn't until they crossed the lake that a lone, deep howl could be heard. Vlad gave a moment for something to happen before looking to Josh. "Got a bad feeling too?" It was eerie. The silence upon the lake, the fact they were surrounded by unseen beasts, and the unnatural gouges in the ice. They were so close to the cave but on that hillside they finally ran into something that wanted to fight.

Three White Wolfos burst from the snow with force, wide maws opening as a threat towards them before closing into growls, sharp teeth showing. Vlad took a stance, his hands swirling with wind as two of the Wolfos dashed towards one of them each, and the third disappeared back into the snow.

deltra of gangnam style

"For my Kingdom...

For my people... I need to do this."

TEMPLATE MADE BY MIDNIGHTBLOOM!

Vladimir spread his feet, feeling the winds around him cut and form a berth, gathering some of them into a more focused orb in the palm of his hand as he watched the White Wolfos dash and weave through the snow around him. Agile, like a Sheikah in the shadows, trained to move with stealth and speed. He knew that he'd need top reflexes for this, and the cold was making that hard.

Still though, Vlad was a hard one to deter, and as his Wolfos tried to pounce him from behind, Vlad spun about on one foot, dug into the ground with the other, knee deep in the snow but not stopping him one bit, he pressed the wind orb right into the Wolfos's wide maw, blasting it backwards where it sprawled before disappearing back into the snow.

Josh's Wolfos knew though, that blades hurt, and they hurt quite a bit, but that wouldn't stop the speedy creatures. Fast and difficult to see, they both continued to circle, Vlad's disappearing into the snow before Josh's took one more lunge, this time in a sporadic zig-zag pattern towards him.

deltra of gangnam style

"For my Kingdom...

For my people... I need to do this."

TEMPLATE MADE BY MIDNIGHTBLOOM!

The Wolfos Josh had struck had done the same as Vlad's flying backwards and disappearing into the snow. It took a few moments of silence, of Vlad feeling the air around him and listening to shifts before he saw the where the three Wolfos popped out in front of him, an eerie cry drawing them back into the snow, granted two of them were limping.

And then all was silent once again. The howling and yipping ceased and Vlad let out a breath. "C'mon, to the cave. There shouldn't be snow for them to hide in there." They were getting so close to the end. One more cave and they'd reach that damn clearing on his map.

Vlad led the way, easily moving through the snow and into the hillside cave, letting out a small shudder at not the chilling wind they got out of, but rather the blast chiller of a cave they had to go through. If they thought the first cave was bad, this one was coated thickly in ice, the sounds of Keese reverberated throughout the cave and they had two icy passages in front of them.

One had the sound of Keese, the other was silent. "Looks like it forks, but... it should take us to the same place." He closed his eyes, feeling a very slight wind from both tunnels. "They both have exits at some point along them."

deltra of gangnam style