I have heard older humans boast of the hardships they endured when young. The phrase “in ten inches of snow, uphill, both ways” has come up more than once. Never could I have related to this more than when we shivered and trudged toward the little chick’s home on the top of the icy mountain. She was slightly more gregarious now that she was fed, and although she rarely spoke in more than single-word sentences, we learned that the town was called Pengoon Peaks, quite sensibly.

To say it was cold would be a gross understatement, like saying that dogs prefer it somewhat when their humans return home. A sliver of the truth, so insufficient that it may do more harm than good. My poor paws were numb from plunging them ankle-deep into snow with every upward step. Ice crystals thickened my fur and accumulated at the corners of my nose and mouth. The chill was in me, and it was me. I could only imagine how the humans fared, ungraced by a fur coat. Helmgarth’s breaths came in puffs of visible steam. He seemed used to this weather and I had long suspected he hailed from colder climes, but could not quite put my paw on why. He also benefited from long sleeves and slacks, and must have been building up considerable body heat as he limped uphill with so much extra weight on his back.

Commander Zideo, on the other hand, shivered violently in shorts and a dirty, tie-dye t-shirt. I wished I could give him my heat, donate it to him so that he could be more comfortable.

I guessed that the fire was not the good kind of fire. I am told that in colder realms outside of Airy Zone, people maintain and tend controlled fires in their homes. This is done through something called a “hearth,” which is difficult for dogs to tell one another about because it sounds like any number of words in the dog lexicon. This often leads to a confusing “who’s on first” type of conversation in spoken Dog. For example, “Arf arf bark hearth arf” means “To curl up by the hearth,” but it really loses a lot of the cozy connotations when transcribed.

The smell of this fire was not that. It was uncontrolled and unwanted, too fiery altogether. I smelled more than wood burning in that fire, and we hurried as much as four cold beings—well, three, as the pengoon rode comfortably in Helmgarth’s pack—could hurry. Into the forest we crunched, each new step as steep as a stair. I thought back to the way the land had organized itself in front of me, or else how my mind had, and noticed few alternate routes. The chill was affecting my thinking. I was too cold and too shaken to really take in the potential around me.

Not only that. The conversation had chilled as well, now that everyone had time to sit with what had happened. I noticed the same gloom settle over the countenances of both humans. They cast annoyed glances toward one another, but neither said anything. There hung that kind of pointed silence that sometimes appears between humans after they bark at one another over a dinner table.

I knew Helmgarth would break this silence first, forewarned by the quiet clearing of his throat. “I have thought about how we left things, chum,” he announced, “and have decided that I will not require an apology. Even though I do not think it was right.”

Zideo stared at him hard, confusion writ plainly on his face. “What are you talking about? If anybody owes anybody an apology, it’s you.” He blinked. “Owe me one, I mean.” Then, just to be sure, he added, “an apology.”

“Well,” said Helmgarth, taking off his hat, the top of which had disintegrated and charred blacker than its felt surface. “I say. That’s quite a statement, after what you called me.”

“Called you?” said Zideo. “Called you what? When?”

Helmgarth straightened. “You know very well, I’d say,” he said. “When we landed. You called me a ‘addle-pated gollumpus.’ At the foot of the mountain.”

“Huh?” said Zideo, too distracted by his bewilderment to shiver. “I don’t even know that word. Plus, can you blame me? You told me to go with that snow-lunatic. You told me he knew where to find the sun!”

They glared at one another, and the same realization crossed both of their faces at the same time.

“We got played,” said Zideo.

“Indeed,” said Helmgarth. “Oh,” he continued, struck as it were by a series of realizations that came cascading down. “Oh no.”

“The shapeshifter,” said Zideo. “The one that impersonated Shiori in the tower?”

Helmgarth shook his head. “I’m afraid one of us has not been… one of us, old bean.”

“Holy crap.” For what seemed like a long time, I heard only the crunching of our feet in the snow. “So who was it? How long?”

Helmgarth blinked himself back to the present. “Well, he could not have been either one of us when we infiltrated Fort Weepus.”

“Or else there would have been a repeat.”

“Quite right.” Helmgarth flipped the hat twice by its brim, and looked like he was going to toss it aside. But a man with a backpack of that size is not a careless discarder of possible supplies. I sensed that he had been through rough times and learned to hoard as many mammals do. “Which means it was either Addrion or DuChamp.”

I recalled the impact shape of the huge, wrestler-bodied mayor, and the too-small, limping footprints leading out of it. I understood then, with great embarrassment, that I had judged Helmgarth too harshly, and that it had been our enemy who had swiped at me with the cane. I tentatively restored one of Helmgarth’s Dog Points. My skin prickled to know that we had been tricked so brazenly.

“Which also means that he was likely present for the gathering… the founding. He knows about the Game Fellows, and that her majesty is staging one last desperate attempt to save Ludopolis.”

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Zideo began shivering again. “Now back it up, fam,” he said. “Desperate?”

I recalled the “mayor” flicking my ear in the under-tower.

The seneschal handed the hat back to the pengoon, saying, “Be a doll and find a pocket for this, would you?” She took it with her flipper, and placed it on her head. It was entirely too large and sank over her eyes, a black beak jutting out beneath the black brim.

She angled her head back to afford herself some small visibility. The pengoon pointed uphill. “Hurry!”

We hurried as best we could. Zideo did not look away from her as we exerted ourselves uphill. “I have a question,” he stated.

“Haven’t you learned better, chum?” said Helmgarth with a smirk.

“No it’s about the… what’s your name?” he said, addressing the chick directly and clearly.

The chick tipped the hat up an inch or so at the point of a flipper to look at him. “Peligrosa,” she said.

“Badass,” my human muttered under his breath. “But, why didn’t you get trapped by the book? If I understand it correctly, and I don’t… it should put a freeze on everything and everyone.”

Helmgarth shook his head. “I do not think pengoons are the kind of creature that suffer a Pause,” he speculated. “It’s rather their whole thing. They need constant attention and maintenance. Some would not credit them as a g-word at all.”

“Look!” said Peligrosa, pointing ahead. Fire raged ahead, thankfully in a clearing among the trees. Bright flames cast the trunks of the forest in black.

Pengoon Peaks was, indeed, burning. Smoke rose in pillars from the tops of homes, and not from their chimneys, which is where the hearth directs smoke outside—at least in human homes. Roofs of thick thatch blazed freely, and little penguins fled and fretted in a central town square. Peligrosa disembarked (another word that confuses dogs) and scampered toward others in the town. The townsfolk were, generally, a bunch of anthropomorphic penguins of different breeds with approximately one affectation of clothing each. Rather than a natural gradient of ages, they could be classified in distinct life stages—either chicks like Peligrosa, or taller youth, or the slow-waddling elderly. One woman, a pygoscelis antarctica with a frowning gray beak and the telltale chinstrap marking, had a distinctly human hairstyle. Indeed, she wore a full head of auburn hair up in curlers, and clutched several eggs and counted and recounted them with her flippers, relief plain on her face.

Despite our fatigue and cold, we ran to follow Peligrosa, who turned to us and ejected a series of frowning face icons into the air.

“Is everyone alright?” asked Helmgarth.

Pengoons huddled around Helmgarth and Zideo, shouting. “Human!” and “Human help!” The cluster became a crowd. I wished there were a dog among them to give me the full story. They largely ignored me, bumping and pushing past to get to my human.

Zideo and Helmgarth conferred with the little creatures. Pengoons were not incredibly articulate, although it may be the case that their language is much more intricate than they let on—perhaps they, like all canines I know, were pandering to human sensibilities to achieve their own aims. These little avian creatures did not beat around the bush, that’s for sure. They declared what they needed or felt at all times, and sometimes what they saw, if it was of interest.

Based on this admirable but limited human English vocabulary, I gathered that most of their kind had gotten out of the houses safely, but their livelihoods were vanishing before their very eyes. Their reports were an inchoate mess of single-word analyses, and like Peligrosa, they were desperately “hungy” and called all food “hamburger.”

Zideo, up to his knees in the pawing flippers of needy pengoons, asked Helmgarth if he had anything in his pack that might quench the flames. The seneschal dropped to one knee, soaking his black slacks as he knelt, and removed the backpack, his hands flying through knots and latches and clips. He swung it before him and the pengoons jumped back. He began to rummage through it.

He had a canteen of fresh water which he would have freely offered, but not nearly enough to dowse the burning buildings. Zideo asked him about the stash of red potions, and Helmgarth acted as though he had not heard. I doubted there was sufficient liquid among them to put out fire, anyhow.

“Anything magic?” said Zideo. Scores of wide eyes stared hopefully at Helmgarth. “How did you fight fires in Thendrac?”

“We rarely had to,” said Helmgarth.

“I guess fires didn’t usually catch in Gleam’Blade (20ǂ1).” He did a double take and pointed toward the window of the largest building, which still wasn’t very large. “Somebody’s in there.”

Pengoon heads turned. “Mayor,” said Peligrosa.

The door was a crumpled pile of wood and ash, blazing hot. Commander Zideo’s head turned from roof to roof. I knew that he was looking for a way in, and as his eyes focused, I saw another look come into his eyes. He was feeling the strange effects of this peculiar Shard, recognizing footholds and distances. He was plotting a route. Just as I had begun seeing walkways and obstacles where moments before I had only seen a chilly snowscape, he too knew the physical allure of Platformia. It was getting into his brain, no doubt.

“Look, there’s a hole in the ceiling,” he said. “There’s a crate there, and if I get up to that roof there, I could make it across.”

“M’lord,” said Helmgarth. “My good man. Don’t risk it.”

“You got a fire protection potion in there?”

Helmgarth shook his head.

Commander Zideo was climbing up to the top of one of the homes. I barked at him in protest, but he did not reply. He made the gap from one house to the next, his pink and blue hair framed by a wall of black smoke. His final jump was not long enough, and the thatch overhang punched him in the stomach upon his landing. “I’m okay!” he wheezed. His Jordan-shoes flailed and dangled, and he slid down, but negotiated his weight onto the roof, kicking clumps of thatch and shingles off the edge.

I could not see anyone through the window, only a glass statue of a dragon wearing spectacles.

Zideo waved at us, took a deep breath, held his nose for some reason, and dropped into the larger of the buildings. Flame gouted from the door, and I heard wood splinter and snap within. The pengoons looked to one another. Peligrosa threw off her hat and took a step forward. It looked like she would have gone in after him, and the flames be damned. With the benefit of hindsight, I now know that wasn’t the half of it—she would have pulled the house apart to save him.

We heard nothing but the billow of smoke as the blaze devoured wood and plaster. Then a voice, roaring. Commander Zideo crashed out through the window, followed by a red and orange dragon who tore ragged, burning lumber out of his way to get outside. Zideo slid, digging up a dark groove in the snow. I licked his face to see if he was alright, but he sat up and pushed me away. “Rude!” he said, but I did not think he meant me.

“Now is our chance, pengoons!” shouted the dragon, adjusting its glasses and pointing with a gnarly looking claw at my human. “Seize that there shapeshifter!”

All of the residents turned to my human. If you have never seen penguins swarm, I must say I cannot recommend it.