Until one night you got eaten by a polar bear.
Sullivan tensed as the gigantic white beast came lumbering through the snow. Even with the magically summoned snow storm, it was still far too bright to be the middle of the night, but it was surprising how close the animal got before he saw it, and Lance wasn’t even trying hard now. The polar bear’s face was dripping red, and much of its dirty white fur was stained pink.
“Got ’em. You should’ve seen their faces,” Lance said through the animal. The bear seemed unnaturally happy, not that Sullivan had ever had a conversation with a bear before. Did the animals Lance controlled still experience things like joy? He’d have to ask Lance later, assuming he didn’t freeze to death first. “Four men, and she put them down before anyone could even fire a shot. Polar bears are great like that. Her nose says that’s it for the perimeter. You’re clear rest of the way in.”
“Good work,” Sullivan said through chattering teeth.
“Work? Hell. My body’s back on the Traveler warm and toasty, sitting by a heater vent. Follow her tracks and I’ll take you to the door. Stick to the tracks. There are crevices all over the place.” The polar showed all its teeth in a terrifying smile, then staggered to the side and ran away. It was invisible within two seconds.
He was wearing a mask, but the cold had already leached through and his face was numb beneath it. It was so cold that his eyeballs were freezing in their sockets beneath his goggles. Sullivan’s nose had filled with snot and frozen so bad that it wasn’t until after the bear was gone that its foul, musky odor finally registered. Turning back, he could just make out the next few men, crouched, weapons ready. He signaled for them to follow. The first man who reached him was wearing so much clothing that he was simply unrecognizable. Sullivan repeated what Lance had said about sticking to the tracks, had the knight repeat the words, and then had him pass it back down their single-file line. The last thing he wanted was to lose a man by something stupid like falling in a hole. They should’ve tied ropes to each other like Heinrich had suggested.
The snowfall was so thick he could barely see the bear’s fresh tracks. Each step was treacherous and slick. They’d brought snowshoes, which had been a good bit of planning, but he’d underestimated how damned hard it was to walk in the things without practice. The muscles in his legs burned, which made him sweat, which then simply froze on his skin, making for a truly miserable situation. Luckily for Sullivan, he could cheat and alter his own gravity a bit, so he quit sinking so deep with every step. He could have made himself light as a feather, but didn’t want to burn through too much Power. There was no telling what exactly they would face inside the Imperium base.
He should have taken out the Spiker armor. It had spells engraved on it to regulate the wearer’s temperature. But it was big and weighed a ton, and the last thing he wanted to do was clumsily fall off a cliff. Sure, he would probably live, but then everybody else would’ve had to get him unstuck, and that would’ve just been embarrassing.
Always being the experimental type, Sullivan decided to try using his magic to increase the density of just his skin. It seemed to work at holding his body heat in, but it took quite a bit of Power, so he let it drop. He’d have to play with that more later. It could come in handy if he fought another Icebox. And while he was thinking about not having enough Power, it made him think of the spell he’d copied from Bradford Carr’s spellbook, which was hidden beneath his bunk. With that thing on his body, he’d probably have Power to spare, but that spell had such a dangerous track record, he’d only try it if he had no other choice.
Cold made the thoughts wander, so Sullivan got his head back in the game.
Toru hadn’t known much about the polar stations other than the fact that they existed, and that all Imperium soldiers dreaded being assigned to such a godforsaken hellhole. Twenty years ago, the Chairman had built them, one in the Arctic and a second in the Antarctic, as an early warning system for a Pathfinder’s arrival. For whatever reason, his Cogs had declared that they needed to be built as close to the poles as possible. This was one of the last bits of solid ground in the region, so one of the many companies secretly owned by the Imperium had bought the land from the Canadians. It wasn’t like they were using it for anything.
The station’s magic was untested. It had been nearly fifty years since the last Pathfinder had come, so it was unknown if it would even detect the creature. The Iron Guard hadn’t been counting on them working well, if at all. This type of magic was odd and untestable. However, when it came to understanding spellbound items, the Grimnoir had a secret weapon…
Sullivan’s goggles were fogging up, which was making it even harder to follow the tracks. He was thankful for Lance’s Beastie magic, because running into a patrol of soldiers conditioned to this would have been a nightmare. He never wanted to get into a gunfight when he was wearing gloves too thick to work a trigger, assuming his BAR’s action wasn’t frozen solid anyway.
There was a lump ahead of him, and the tracks led right over the top of it. He was already at the top before he realized that it had actually been a wall at one point in time before the wind and ice had simply devoured it. On the other side was a big lump of snow… No. That’s a building. There were other lumps nearby, probably smaller buildings.
Someone joined him on top of the wall. “We’re here.” And he could only tell it was Heinrich because of his voice. He was indistinguishable from the others in his masked mound of furs. Heinrich’s goggled head scanned across the smaller buildings. “I bet those are their antiaircraft batteries.”
“It would’ve taken them half an hour to chip one loose. I’m thinking we could’ve just parked right on top of this place and been fine.”
“Yet we would have missed that wonderful nature walk.” Heinrich looked back the way they’d come. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”
Sullivan looked back. With Southunder’s magical obscuring snowfall, there really wasn’t much to see. Dead City must really have set the bar low. “You say so.”
“I am glad we were able to come during the spring.”
Another shape joined them. This one was easily identifiable even before he said anything. Only Toru was strong enough to make the trek carrying that many weapons. Sullivan figured that he was only hauling the big metal war club and the sword to prove some point to the Grimnoir. “I am cold.”
“No kidding… What do you think?”
Toru studied the compound. “Their cannons are obviously inoperable. If I had inspected this station, I would have ordered the commander executed for dereliction of duty. This is unbecoming of Imperium military.”
“You sound disappointed,” Heinrich said.
Toru might have grunted, but it was hard to tell in the wind.
Sullivan counted the figures as they appeared through the snow. They were clumping up, huddling together for warmth. A dumb tactic in case the Imperium had eyes on them, but he was so cold he couldn’t rightly blame them. It looked like they’d all made it. Good.
“I see an entrance,” Heinrich said. The polar bear had walked right up and over the mound of the building. There appeared to be a depression where the last patrol had dug their way out with snow shovels.