Snow.

Pristine. Beautiful. Gentle. Soothing. Fun. Adventerous. Dangerous. Slowing. Debilitating. Deadly. Cold.

Wind.

Piercing. Biting. Freezing. Siphons the breath right out of you. Tiring. Staggering. Killing.

Cold.

You feel it in your bones. Burning. Then not burning. 

Pain.

Teaching. Caressing. Tormenting. Destroying. Breaking. Building. Intolerable. Defying. Defining.

Will.

Unbreakable. Unbeatable. Undominatable. Unstoppable. Unrelenting. Uncomprimising. 

I would not back down. I would not give up. We had come too far to be stopped now. I swung my flail at Vlad once again, the numbness fighting against my feeble grip. Laboured breathing came heavily; the bitter cold crystallizing each breath before my face. The snow was fierce, assaulting me from every direction, even upwards. There was no visibility. There was no shelter from the unrelenting storm. There was no escape.

I connected with Vlad’s shield, the reverberations more than my body could handle. The flail broke free from my hand, immediately swallowed by the grave of the mountain’s snow drifts. My mount was wheezing almost as much as I was;  favouring her injured side. Grim news on a grim day.

Vlad had closed in on us at the base of the mountain. A mighty blizzard had awoken on our ascent; it’s anger evident to every rider. The first attack from Vlad came without warning. There were no camera drones as a precursor. I was blindsided by the attack. His sonic hammer smashed into my back and ribs without mercy, its pulse magnifying the damage dealt tenfold. Clothing and flesh were torn asunder, the ribs beneath splintered and shattered by the full swing of that first strike.  I staved off the second blow, but barely; and already the fatigue was setting in. The howling wind and hungry cold latched onto me, gorging on the warmth of my wounds, devouring my own body heat until there was precious little left. 

Vlad was known to be dirty, and he proved himself true once again. He hammered at the hindquarters of my mount, something blatantly illegal, but with zero visibility and no camera drones in sight, how could it be proven? My bear let out an anguished howl, pulling away from Vlad and his monstrous black mount, nearly toppling us over the side of the narrow mountain pass. He was playing for keeps. 

I cursed as I watched my flail leave my hand. I was weaponless. I was tired. Vlad lifted his hammer high above his head, winding up with as much energy as he could to deliver the final blow, the blow that would end my race; end my life. I needed to move. My mind urged my body to respond without success. I couldn’t even maintain my grasp on my mount’s fur. 

Time stretched itself for me in that instant. I watched as the sonic hammer began its fateful downwards arc towards my skull. There was nothing else for me to do but stare. I had been bested. I had been beaten. I was going to die. I heard the triumphant roar of Vlad, sounding as ferocious as a bear himself, deafening my throbbing, frozen ears. Time sped up.

It wasn’t Vlad; it was my mount. She had succumbed a moment before I was about to. She had been running at a full pace up this treacherous mountain for too long. Her front legs collapsed, throwing us both forward into a painful tumble, just as Vlad’s hammer found the space my head had been a moment before. 

We crashed over the lip of the pathway, plummeting forty feet to the snow covered rocks below. 

I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but I awoke with a start. My mount had survived as well, though her fur was covered in blood from the both of us. She lay on her side, her breathing deathly shallow, and I knew she wasn’t going to survive much longer. My own body no longer burned with the cold; my first and final warning that I was suffering from both hypothermia and frostbite. I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me; the blanket of snow covering everything in every direction. There wasn’t as much light as when I had blacked out; the temperature was dropping with the sunlight. The search and rescue drones would be hard pressed to find us. 

Every rider was required to carry an emergency pack for just such an occasion. I felt around my torso for mine. It was nowhere to be found, and could easily be buried under many feet of snow, even if it was in the immediate area. 

I was confident the race was over by now. I had lost. 

I was so very tired anyway. I just needed to sleep. 

So I did.