It was a quiet morning, though a casual onlooker might think otherwise due to the relative lack of light. The gray clouds hung heavy and low above the featureless snowy landscape, and despite being past sunrise it was dark enough that someone could easily mistake the time of day for twilight. The only sound to be heard was the soft whisper of a breeze sweeping unbroken across the expanse. Were it actually sunny, the landscape might have been described as beautiful, or picturesque. The clouds drifted slowly, and there was no life in sight. It was quiet, it was calm.

Suddenly, a shout of surprise followed by a string of curses broke the stillness. A robed figure appeared in midair, seeming to float effortlessly. Unfortunately for the figure, however, gravity disagreed. He promptly found himself hurled into the snowbank, smothering his exclamations of surprise.

He lay there stunned momentarily, before floundering around in an attempt to extract himself from the snowbank. Just as it seemed that he’d finally managed to free himself, however, three more robed figures appeared above and fell down in a manner similar to his arrival, knocking him down and burying them all further into the snowbank.

One of them, whose name was Dorian, had slept in and had the misfortune of being in the middle of brushing his teeth when he suddenly found himself in that snow covered tangle of limbs.

Thankfully, he was on the top of the pile. Dorian spat out his toothpaste and the snow that had found its way in. He pocketed his toothbrush. “Um. What the hell?”

The pile of limbs wiggled, and he heard several muffled responses.

He carefully untangled himself and rolled off the side of the pile and into the snow. He lay there a moment, staring at the gray sky that was most assuredly not the ceiling of his dormitory bathroom. He jumped to his feet, or at least tried to before sinking further into the snow. He glared at the pile, affronted. “Is this a joke? What is this? Who are you?”

The three were students, for Dorian recognized them as students from the same academy as he. After a moment they managed to separate themselves, all looking confused and angry, much like himself.

One of them, a boy with orange irises, shouted back at Dorian. “I could ask the same of you! All I know is I was minding my own business in class, and now I’m in a snowbank!”

Another spoke up, gesturing at the horizon with her hand. “I think it’s safe to assume that none of us are the cause of whatever… this… is.”

The first snorted. “So what, some upperclassmen or a third party just abducted four students and chucked them into a snowbank?”

“It might be an illusion. Someone could be practicing on us. I know divination, give me a few moments to check.”

All heads turned to the third student as he attempted to stand up, falling over again due to the soft fluffy snow.

“Here, lemme help.” Dorian reached out with his mind, forming a spell construct and sending his mana down its pathways. It took a moment, but the snow under the four sunk down and compacted, enough for them to stand.

“Thanks,” the third student said as he again stood, this time successfully. The others followed suit, sick of sitting in the cold snow. Dorian watched his eyes shift rapidly through all the colors of the rainbow as he altered his sight with a spell that allowed him to actively perceive mana. The student then cast some kind of divination spell, frowned immediately after. He cast several more, muttering and frowning deeper each time the spell returned information he was apparently displeased with. After a minute or two, his eyes returned to their normal color.

“So?” The first student challenged the third.

“Well, as best I can tell, this isn’t an illusion. Furthermore, wherever we are, it’s not a location that’s on any of the maps I know, and I’ve memorized quite a few.”

The rude boy, or as Dorian had decided to call him, Orange, snorted again. “No problem at all, then. We can just use the emergency stones to broadcast our location, and the Academy can assemble a team to retrieve us.”

“Yes, lets.” The girl punctuated her agreement with action, reaching up to her neck and pulling a smooth stone densely covered in spell channels. It pulsed with light as she channeled mana into it, trying to telepathically connect to an identical, if larger, Academy wardstone.

Nothing seemed to happen. They all watched anxiously as the white pulsing gradually changed to red.

Orange was frowning now. “Yours is obviously defective or something. Let me try mine.”

After some waiting, he had achieved the same result.

Dorian brought his out now. The stone pulsed as he channeled mana into it, successfully connecting to his mind. When it tried to then connect to the Academy, however, the connection continually failed. Dorian watched with a rising feeling of dread as the light of his stone faded from white to red.

The recovery stones were a work of art and engineering, a true masterpiece. They acted as a mental bridge for a student in distress, allowing them to contact the Academy from anywhere on the planet, even through heavy wards. If the Academy was to be believed, the stones had never failed in connecting. The Academy’s track record for student recovery in emergencies was flawless. Was. He wasn’t sure exactly how they worked, but if the stones weren’t functioning now, it implied to him that whatever situation they’d ended up in was probably a bit above their ability to handle.

There was a moment of stunned silence. The stones were working just fine, and everyone knew it. They’d worked, and yet they were unable to connect. The four students were on their own.

“What do we do now?” Dorian asked, unable to keep the unease from his voice. “If this is all real, doesn’t that mean we’re basically dead? I don’t know about you guys but I’m not good enough at magic to somehow make up for the lack of food or water in this frozen wasteland.”

The boy who knew divination suddenly cursed, reaching up with one hand. Though Dorian’s mana sense was still very rudimentary, it was strong enough to allow Doarian to feel as the boy’s mana reached out, grasping at something that Dorian couldn’t quite see but felt like a dissolving mana construct.

The boy cursed again. “I was too slow. Or maybe the spell was too fast. Or I was too confident in the recall stones. I don’t know. I should have tried to scan the spell that brought us here right away, before it began dissolving. It’s already mostly gone, but I was able to somewhat sense the structure of whatever brought us here, and it’s a real work of art.”

He sighed. “No use worrying about it now, I suppose. I think even if I’d managed to study an active version of the teleportation spell, I wouldn’t have any hope of understanding it.”

Silence filled the group again. It was at this moment, as the initial shock of being thrown into a snowdrift wore off, that Dorian realized he was cold. Very cold. His eyes stung, his nose burned, and his hands and feet were already going numb. Dorian reached out with his mana, connecting to the enchantments woven into his student robe. He moved to turn on the heating enchantment, and found to his dismay that it was already active.

“Hey, is anyone else getting really cold? At first I wasn’t worried because I just thought maybe the heat hadn’t turned on, but my robe is active and I’m still losing feeling in my hands and feet.”

Dorian watched as the others checked their cloaks in a manner similar to him.

“Mine is active.”

“Mine, too.”

“Me as well. How cold does it have to be to overwhelm the enchantments?”

Dorian spat. A chunk of spittle flew through the air, frozen almost before leaving his mouth. “Apparently, very cold. I repeat my previous question. What are we supposed to do? Wilderness survival isn’t something I ever learned.”

The girl spoke up. “Combat mage training involves some generalist education and wilderness survival is included in that, but...” she trailed off, looking around helplessly, “The first step is to stay still so search and rescue can find you, and the second step is to search for shelter.”

She waved at the vast expanse of twilit snow surrounding them. “Help is unlikely to find us and I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t exactly see any shelter nearby.”

Divination boy spoke, stuttering somewhat as he involuntarily shivered and his teeth chattered. “I m-might be a-able to f-f-find shelter, b-but I’d rather s-solve the f-f-freezing issue f-first.”

Orange puffed up. “You’re in luck, then. I, Jørgen, heir of Noble House Barden, am an expert in controlling heat.”

Before anyone could react, Jørgen had released a pulse of mana that he quickly fashioned midair. It was almost too fast for Dorian to follow, more akin to unstructured magic than a proper spell. The effectiveness was undeniable, however, as moments after the spell barrier snapped into place around the group, the air around Dorian immediately warmed.

The whole group relaxed their shoulders somewhat as feeling began returning to their extremities. Divination boy smiled. “Ahh, much better.”

Jørgen grinned smugly, then stumbled as a gust of wind blew all of the heated air away, and the heating spell aggressively drew on his mana pool.

“This won’t work, not for long term. The wind will just keep blowing the heated air away.”

Divination boy turned to Dorian and the girl. “Are either of you good with barrier spells or weather magic?”

“I could, I’m studying to be a weather mage. What do you want me to do?” Dorian asked as he eyed the boy.

The boy turned to Jørgen. “Are you good enough with this heating spell of yours to let someone else cast on top of it?”

Jørgen snorted. “Of course.”

He turned back to Dorian. “Could you put up some kind of barrier or air filter spell that will keep the freshly heated air with us and just filter out enough to let us breathe?”

Dorian thought for a moment, scratching his nose. A lot of the magic he’d learned so far was theory, but an air filter of some kind should be doable. He could just do a physical force barrier with some intentional holes, but that wounded his professional, err, student, pride. After some consideration, he decided instead that a constant effect that simply tugged warm air towards him should do just fine.

He nodded. “Yeah, should be doable.”

Dorian reached out with his mana and began shaping the spell. Normally overlapping spells such as these would interfere with each other, but this was an area of skill that academy training covered early. As Dorian’s spell began to take shape, Jørgen rearranged his spell to allow Dorian’s mana to flow uninhibited. After Dorian finished weaving his spell, the two then worked together to bind the spells together such that they would reinforce each other with no further needed attention.

Jørgen immediately sighed in relief as the drain on his mana dropped drastically.

Divination boy smiled. “Thanks guys, I can actually think now.”

Dorian smiled back. “Call me Dorian.”

“Thanks Dorian, I’m Hilmar.”

At this moment the girl jumped into the conversation. “You can call me Eira.”

Hilmar nodded. “Nice to meet you all.” He shifted on his feet. “Alright, let me try something now.”

Dorian felt more mana permeate the air as Hilmar closed his eyes and began weaving divination spells. After about a minute, his eyes snapped open.

“Hey so I‌ didn’t notice until now, but the ambient mana around here is incredibly high. Like, more so than at the academy, and I‌ was unable to sense any significant Underground near us. This isn’t an isolated occurrence, either. I scanned out as far as I‌ could in any direction, and it’s all like this.”

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Eira frowned. “I didn’t notice either, but now that you mention it, I‌ can’t stop feeling it. It’s like an itch I‌ can’t scratch.”

Hilmar nodded. “I’d assume none of us noticing is probably a result of us spending all our time at the academy with its similarly high levels of mana, but that guess could also be completely inaccurate.”

He scratched his arm. “But that’s a mystery for another time. I managed to locate a mana hotspot relative to the ambient, over in that direction.” Hilmar waved vaguely to his left. “I was unable to actually determine where North is despite having known those spells since first year, which probably bears investigating, but for now that’s beside the point. Typically societies settle by mana wells, which you probably all knew already, but I’m stating regardless. Of course, if there are any people, they might not bother living above a mana well due to the ambient mana everywhere.

“This is, unfortunately, the best I’ve got. We haven’t learned any kind of mass detection spells yet as stuff like that is generally restricted to most non military mages, so if we head in any direction, that’s the one I’d recommend. I can’t actually detect or track people, only make an educated guess.”

He tilted his head, looking at Eira. “That is, if we even want to move from here?”

She shrugged. “I mean, I guess? Between the four of us we could probably make and indefinitely heat a shelter, and there’s plenty of water just waiting around. But what about food? Even with magic, I can’t think of any way to create food.”

“Y’know, this all doesn’t feel real.” Dorian scratched his chin, frowning. “Especially now that I’m no longer freezing. Thanks for that, by the way.” He nodded to Jørgen, who nodded back.

“I guess that’s kind of a good thing, that it hasn’t sunk in. But why are we acting all normal? Seems to me like panicking would be an appropriate response in this situation.”

Jørgen stood up, snorted, and crossed his arms. “For you maybe, but not me. Members of Noble House Barden are trained to be ready for any scenario, and panicking wouldn’t help anyone.”

He started walking in the direction Hilmar had indicated. “I don’t know about you three, but I don’t have time to stand around talking philosophy. I’m off to find that mana well.”

So saying, Jørgen strode off the edge of the solid platform that Hilmar had created, and promptly fell into the snow, floundering. There was a cry of surprise, after which he promptly crawled back up onto the solidified portion.

Dusting himself off, he looked at Dorian. “I don’t suppose this platform trick you did is very cheap? The snow will be essentially impassable without snow shoes of some kind or a solid surface.”

“I mean, I guess? If we walk single file it shouldn’t be too bad, especially if someone else can manage the air gathering spell.”

“I can handle it.” Said Eira, smiling slightly. “Shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

Dorian nodded. “The spell itself is pretty simple, though the effect isn’t. Just be sure to repair it as the spell boundary decays and there won’t be any issues. You and Jørgen should probably walk in the middle of the group, since he’s heating and the air bubble will be centered on you.” He turned to Hilmar. “That puts you in back, since I’ve got to make the path.”

“Works for me. Plus that way I‌ can keep casting divinations without worrying about slowing anyone else down or stepping on their toes. Just make sure I‌ don’t fall behind too much, yeah?”

“Of course.”

With that, Dorian began walking in the direction Hilmar had indicated, calling upon the mana within him to compress and solidify the snow as he walked. He stopped after a few steps, and turned back to Hilmar momentarily. “Do try to notify me if I start going to the side, please.”

A nod was his response, upon which Dorian began walking again, the others following in the order they’d discussed. So far, his mind had been moving too quickly to really process what had happened, and Jørgen’s heating magic only further served to isolate his mind from the reality of what was occurring. Now, however, as they walked in silence, he could no longer avoid thinking about the deep trouble they seemed to be in.

Stranded in a snowy wasteland far colder than any previously known locations on the planet with jammed distress beacons, little training, no supplies, and an average of two years of schooling between the four. If even a trained professional would struggle to survive in an environment such as this, what could four students hope to accomplish? Their best and only plan was to ‘walk to the mana well,’ for Korana’s sake!

Dorian was determined to not make the others feel worse by showing his distress, but the more he thought about their predicament, the more hopeless he felt. It didn’t help that the monotony of walking on hardened snow was only broken irregularly by Hilmar telling him to walk more to the left or right, leaving plenty of time for Dorian’s worries to feed upon themselves and grow.

They walked mostly in silence, shielded from the intense cold thanks to Jørgen’s spell and the enchantments on their robes. Dorian was broken out of his ruminations when Eira tapped on the shoulder from behind.

“Hey Dorian, you okay?”

“I… don’t know.” Was he okay? He wasn’t sure. “Probably not, though. This whole situation is insane! This morning I was just brushing my teeth and getting ready for another day of classes and studying, and now I’m trudging through a snowy, frozen wasteland with three students that I’ve never met besides passing each other in the hall. Should I be okay?”

“You’re handling it remarkably well, for a noncom student.”

“Thanks, I guess. Noncom?”

“Non combatant. Combat students like Jørgen and I go through a lot of mental training for situations like this in our first two years, before we even start learning any actual combat magic. You, however, are training to be what, a water mage?”

“Close. Weather magic, or I guess the proper term would be climatology.”

“Impressive! And that just proves my point. I have it on good authority that climatology is an incredibly demanding course from day one, meaning you probably don’t leave the academy much, if ever. You’ve just been taken from the only place you’ve known for the last, what, three years or so?”

He nodded. “Yeah, three and a half years.”

“Exactly! You’ve been in the same location for over three years, and this morning you were spontaneously thrown into a snowbank. The fact that you aren’t curled up on the ground right now crying or muttering to yourself is a point in your favor.”

“Y’know, I think in some roundabout way you managed to call me a shut-in while simultaneously making me feel better.” He turned around, giving her a wry grin. “I’ll take it as a compliment. Thanks for making me feel better.”

She smiled back, at which he turned around again lest he risk tripping and falling face first into the snow.

They spent some time walking in silence, Dorian focusing on his solidification spell. Eventually he found the courage to speak again. “I guess I’d be a lot worse off if I was actually freezing, like my brain keeps telling me I should be. Since I’m not, a part of me is still convinced this is an illusion of some kind, regardless of what Hilmar says.”

Dorian stopped and turned around, making eye contact with Hilmar at the back of the group. “Hey Hilmar, tell me something.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me you’re sure that this isn't an illusion.”

Hilmar met his gaze squarely, and looked right back. “I’m sure.”

“Thanks.” Dorian turned back around, and resumed walking.

Silence reigned as the group continued hiking towards their distant goal. Several hours passed before it happened. One moment, Dorian was warm, and the next, a gust of wind cut through his clothes like a knife, making him shiver. The steady rhythm of footsteps shattered and he turned around just in time to catch Eira by the arm as she stumbled forwards.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah.” She straightened up as she wiped some sweat from her brow, a classic sign of mana depletion. “I was running the spell on minimum power, and a sudden gust of wind shattered the spell structure. I think the weather’s getting worse.”

Dorian looked around and found he suspected the same thing. The dark clouds hung lower than before, and were certainly moving faster across the sky. He shivered as the wind cut through the group again. It, too, was certainly faster than before they’d started walking.

“I can recast it, but do we maybe want to consider stopping and making a shelter of some kind?” He pointed at their goal, a distant smudge on the horizon. “It’s been several hours already, and whatever we’re walking towards is only just now beginning to be visible.”

“Well, that’s the real gamble,” said Hilmar, slightly out of breath. “If it’s a mountain than we’ve made little progress, but if it’s something like a small village then we are probably quite close.”

“How easily can we make a shelter, though?” Eira turned to Dorian. “I’m empty and I’d imagine Jørgen is probably running pretty low, too.”

Jørgen was bent over hands on knees, panting heavily. He’d been mostly fine before Eira’s spell collapsed, but now the knives of cold wind were rapidly depleting his mana. He looked up, sweat beading his forehead.

“A Barden never falters.” The words were almost a gasp, coming out as a rush of air as Jørgen breathed quickly.

“Yeah, we’re taking a break, at least a temporary one.” Dorian smiled at Eira. “As to how we’ll make a shelter? Leave that to me.”

Ignoring the cold for the moment, Dorian flexed his hand and began pouring out a stream of unshaped mana from his palm. For a moment nothing happened, but then the snow in front of him began rapidly deforming.

The progress started slow, but sped up quickly. The snow compressed and moved to the sides, formed compact walls and a series of steps downwards. As Dorian began descending into the tunnel he was digging, the snow in front of him continued moving.

Eira was impressed. Just by watching Dorian she could tell that he was currently using an unstructured spell to shape the snow. Exchanging glances, the others followed Dorian into the hole he was excavating. His snow shaping continued at an impressive rate, leading them down something like thirty stairs. Eira noticed, as she followed, that even though he was performing such a large unshaped working, his control was fine enough to leave ridges in the stairs so no one slipped.

Once Dorian judged they were deep enough he instead walked forwards, shaping out a fairly large room. Once the others were inside, he closed off most of the entrance, leaving some space for ventilation.

Jørgen then cast his heating spell again, warming the room up to just below freezing. While still a very cold temperature, Dorian found it was enough to allow the heating enchantments on his robe to function as intended.

He shaped a table and some chairs in the middle of the room, and sat down. The others followed suit shortly after.

“I’m hoping we’re deep enough to be safe from the freezing wind, thoughts?” Dorian looked at Hilmar.

Hilmar closed his eyes and cast a spell of some kind. There was a moment of silence, before he announced his findings. “We’re pretty far down, it should be good.” He looked at Dorian. “That was seriously impressive, how’d you do that?”

Eira nodded. “I was watching. You didn’t use any proper spell, just unstructured casting. How is your control already so impressive; I thought you were a student, not some archmage! As you probably know, combat magic puts a high importance on shaping skills. Even so, I think it unlikely if I could do anything even remotely like this with a pile of snow on my palm, smaller scale or otherwise.”

Dorian smiled somewhat uneasily. “It’s a pretty big secret, can I get a promise that if-when we get back home, you guys won’t tell anyone?”

They all nodded, though Jørgen snorted. “I can’t possibly imagine you have a secret bad enough to make me blush. I live in a noble house, remember.”

As if you would let us forget. Eira thought to herself. She normally thought of herself as pretty easygoing, but even in this, or perhaps especially because of, this situation, she found her patience rapidly running out for the snooty noble of their group.

Dorian simply inhaled deeply before speaking. “My first experience with spellcasting wasn’t the Academy, you see. A local hedge wizard taught me a little of what he knew when I was very young, how to sense my mana and such. The only shaping exercise he knew was this one, moving snow around, compressing it and melting it and such. I’ve always been a pretty stubborn person and so I set my mind to ‘learning magic’ even if my conception of what magic was was pretty off. So what you saw just now wasn’t the result of 3 years of schooling, though that certainly helped. It was 8 years of stubborn muleheaded determination.”

They all understood immediately. Though the Academy was at least officially an independent organization, it nonetheless largely took its orders from the officials of Manemir, whose royal house was very anxious to prevent unregistered mages from springing into existence. It was illegal to teach someone magic outside of the Academy’s tutelage, and they were, at the behest of Manemir, very zealous in ensuring this law was obeyed. If Dorian’s hedge wizard was to be outed, there was potential for things to become very unpleasant for everyone involved, Dorian included.

Dorian received a series of assurances that the others would keep his secret, though Jørgen still seemed amused for some unknowable reason.

“Switching tracks here, is anyone thirsty?”

More nods. Dorian spoke again. “Do any of you have empty bottles or anything?”

Hilmar and Eira turned up empty, but Jørgen proudly revealed that his custom house robes came with a small pocket dimension sewn inside, and that he had a number of bottles filled with various alcoholic beverages.

“Which one is your least favorite?”

Dorian took the indicated bottle, pouring it out on the floor. Jørgen jumped up with an indignant yelp. “Hey! Do you have any idea how much that bottle was worth?”

Dorian smiled at him innocently. “I didn’t damage the bottle. And besides you said you didn’t like it.”

Ignoring Jørgen’s spluttered protestations, Dorian walked over to the wall, liquefying a portion of it and stowing it in the bottle. He took a drink from it, shuddering at how cold the water was. After refilling it the bottle passed around the group until everyone was sated. It was refilled once more before being passed to Jørgen to store, who shook his head sadly at the loss of a fine vintage.

Eira leaned forward. “Now that that’s dealt with, let’s talk survival. Thanks to Dorian, shelter and water are covered. Our combination of skills is enough that we can safely traverse the snow. However, I can’t think of any way for us to make food. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that generally known to be impossible to do with magic alone?”

Nods all around. Hilmar sighed heavily. “We’ve got a day, maybe two, before lack of food weakens us enough that travel becomes impossible. It’s up to me to find some sign of civilization or life, even if its just wild animals, before then. No pressure, right?” He smiled weakly.

“Y’know, I already talked to Dorian about this, but what about you?” Eira made eye contact with Hilmar. “How are you holding up?”

He spread his arms, shrugging. “I’ve always been pretty ‘come what may.’ Rather than trying to figure out what happened and why, I’d like to just survive the experience.”

She nodded slowly, once. “...admirable, I suppose.” There was a moment of silence before she turned back to the rest of the group. “So. Do we want to travel some more today? If we can only cover three hours per day travelling, we’re probably stuffed.”

Jørgen just shook his head. “It depends on the weather. If it’s still like it was when we stopped, we’d be dead anyways.”

Dorian looked to the entrance, opening it so they could hear. The four were immediately greeted with a harsh whistling sound as an incredibly strong wind, unbroken by any trees, roared past the entrance to the tunnel. “Nope.”

He closed the tunnel, turning back to the others. “Oh! Something just occurred to me. While we may not know where we are in the world, we can conclude that we are roughly situated to the North or South of the Academy, as it was morning when we fell in the snowbank, both at the Academy and here.”

Hilmar frowned. “Interesting observation, but I’m not sure that’s helpful. After all, we are unlikely to get back to the Academy on foot. The world is pretty big, and that would take a very long time.”

Dorian’s face fell, matching Hilmar’s frown. “Ah, you’re right. S’unfortunate, I thought I was onto something there for a moment.” A sigh escaped his lips. “I guess we’ll be trapped in here for a while, I’ll try to see if I can make some comfortable beds somehow.”

The group mostly fell into silence, Dorian working quietly, Hilmar scanning the area, and the others quietly pondering. Unfortunately, Dorian’s attempts to create furniture out of nothing but the all pervasive snow failed utterly beyond the most basic things such as chairs and tables. As time passed the light trapped in the walls of the shelter began to fade, so Jørgen manifested some miniscule yet illuminating flames around the room.

“Is there something we could be doing to signal any people who might be nearby?”

The others started to Dorian’s question suddenly breaking the silence. Hilmar was the first to respond. “There are certain things I can do if we are going to stay in one place for awhile, but any of the spells I know of are rendered useless by the weather on the surface simply because no one would travel in those conditions. It is certainly something to consider when the weather improves, though.”

“Which reminds me.” Eira glanced at Hilmar. “How is the weather up there now? You can do remote sight, yeah?”

Hilmar shook his head sheepishly. “Actually I can’t. Divination is a minor focus mainly intended to supplement my enchantment, so I never learned spells like that.” He turned to Dorian. “Could you open the entrance for just a moment?”

Immediately after the snow at the entrance was peeled back the group could see that the weather had not, in fact, improved. There was no light whatsoever coming from outside, and despite the relatively small size of the staircase’s entrance, the room was chilling rapidly.

Dorian sealed up the door, stifling a yawn. “I guess we really are stuck here until tomorrow, then.”

Hilmar nodded, yawning himself. “Indeed. Unfortunate that you couldn’t figure out how to make a comfortable bed.”

It took a moment for Dorian to process the sentence. “Yeah. I could make the room smaller, and we could sleep back to back. That might work?”

No one responded to the question. Hilmar began sliding out of his chair sideways, chuckling. “Hey Jørgen, nice work on the heating. I feel so warm right now! Also, why are you sideways.”

Jørgen, too, was falling out of his chair while chuckling. “I’m not sideways, you’re sideways!”

This declaration was swallowed by the void as soon as it left his mouth, heard by no one.

The other three were already on the floor unconscious, and beginning to turn blue. Jørgen looked at the others even as he fell onto the floor, something akin to mild alarm marring his visage before his eyes closed and he reluctantly embraced the darkness.