Snow fell in blistering torrents.

The wind howled and screamed from peak to peak of the Belt-Doral, dragging down sheets of snow that smothered a hundred myriad slopes. A flame flickered helplessly on the Bell Mountain, light drenched by the storm. The torch that fueled it seemed set to shatter.

Olivier stood atop a snowdrift, barefoot, dressed in a short, sleeveless white dress, crimson hair whipped in erratic arcs by the wind. She shifted the torch from right hand to left and shook her head, fighting to keep her vision clear for even a second. After a moment, she held out her free hand and pushed, and the air around her rippled as the wild currents of snow started to avoid her. Unfortunately, the surroundings still didn’t present any convenient landmarks or indications that she was close.

“Almost there?” asked Sherry.

“No idea. But I think so.” Olivier turned her attention away from the torch. “Mantidrake. Are we still on Corelli’s trail?” A small head tapered like a sharp, fuzzy beak poked out from the neck of her dress, nodded, then disappeared again.

“I thought you knew where we were going.” Sherry pressed, “This is a lame vacation.”

"Shut it and keep the torch lit."

“That’s not really under my control, you know.”

“Just do it.”

"I'm not calling you boss or anything," came the annoyed reply. The torch flickered and grew imperceptibly. In actuality, it didn’t seem that the torch was in danger of burning out. It looked to be constructed from some sort of metal with a sheen that could only be described as flickering dark - a colourless displacement.

Olivier continued to look around from what vantage the snowdrift offered.

She ought to move along, but her feet remained rooted there just long enough for fatigue to set in her mind. A deep sigh crawled its way up from her throat.

“You okay?” asked Sherry in an almost genuine show of emotion.

Olivier didn’t answer immediately. She shifted the torch back to her right hand, and the snow began to swirl against her again.

“Yes… It’s a long cry from just hearing the stories a thousand times. That’s all.”

She forced one foot forward. Then the other. And again. Until she gained momentum and was off the snowdrift.

She continued to walk.

Another hour brought no change to the storm’s energy, but sudden wriggling inside her dress brought her attention to a suspiciously shaped mound of snow.

She nudged the squirming shape. “Is this it?”

The fuzzy head emerged just long enough to nod confirmation.

Olivier inched closer to the mound, circled it, until she came across - almost tripped over, really - a line of silver bells lying on the snow - tiny, each no bigger than her hands. The bells were held together by a string that vanished into the snow, towards the mound. They didn’t seem to even shake in the wind. She bent over, took hold of the string, and tugged sharply. Snow catapulted away from the mound as a metallic hatch swung open from underneath, revealing a candlelit stairway beyond. If it creaked as it opened, it was inaudible over the storm.

Olivier let go of the string of bells and stepped inside, closing the door behind her, cutting off the wind’s roar with a clang.

The air was stiff but no warmer inside, and there was a subtly bitter tang to it. The stairway was narrow, and the walls were matte black, lined with nooks, candles burning softly within, the light bouncing off of a dusting of snow that had found itself inside. Olivier looked closer. Something strange was going on with the wall - something not quite… real. Her hair glowed faintly - a strand likely beginning to pale - as she focused Third Sight.

Stolen novel; please report.

A brief moment of nothing.

Then, phantasmal imprintings rose to the surface, symbols with a metaphysical instructionality to them.

Lava os.

“That’s extremely early,” she muttered.

“What? What’s going on? Where are we? Aren’t you the knower of important things?” Sherry pried.

Olivier slowly brought a hand to her forehead as she mentally catalogued some thoughts. “Faction magics don’t tend to infuse this early on, so this might be unfamiliar for me too.”

“Okay. I’m demanding an explanation soon.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Condense it for me,” Sherry insisted.

“…”

“Eventually.”

“Eventually,” Olivier agreed. She unfocused Third Sight. Something else was beginning to listen in.

The staircase was short. At its foot, she entered into a chamber - large along all three dimensions - starkly bright, although the light somehow didn’t reach into the stairway. The walls of the chamber were lined with the same nooks and candles as the stairway, although almost everything - floor, walls, ceiling - was a clinical white.

At the center of the chamber was a raised platform, an ornate flower with fourteen petals carved into it, its lines composed of glittering mosaic tiles. Two figures were on the platform. The one that was sitting had her back to Olivier. She had shoulder-length silvery hair and wore a plain red robe tied together with a dark grey rope at the waist. The robe covered her feet, even while she sat. Wen, likely.

The other person lying before Wen was Corelli, a slight young woman clothed in a white dress almost identical to Olivier’s, her hip-length white hair scattered like a bed of hay beneath her - still unconscious from her first time moving amongst ghosts. Well, first-ish, anyway.

Idiot.

Wen had apparently already noticed Olivier. She stood wordlessly, stepped, and then…

A ghostly silhouette blossomed out from Wen’s form, and the shape of an immense, pale, serpentine creature grew to fill it - the apparition gaining a sudden solidity and weight, punctuated by its clawed feet crashing into the ground.

And that was practically confirmation. Wen. Dragon. More appropriately named than in most cases.

Wen took a thundering step toward Olivier, the air growing tight as clouds of frost streamed from her mouth.

“Who dares-“

“Wen. I had a feeling it’d be you.”

The dragon paused as her show of intimidation dissolved into an unbalanced posture of confusion. She craned her neck forward, turning to let a single eye to scan Olivier’s features.

“I’m… sorry…?”

The inquiry faded unanswered.

“Excuse me,” Wen repeated, a little too loudly, “Do I know you?”

Olivier shrugged and shifted her back foot.

“Don’t think so. But you do have my friend there.”

“Sherry, stay lit!”

“Not my -!”

The torch flew from her hand into a random corner of the room. She dug her foot back and burst forward and upward, twisting her other knee hard into Wen’s proffered eye. This didn’t seem to be the trade Wen was expecting judging from the screaming that followed. Olivier continued her arc, kicking her initial foot out so that it caught on the dragon’s spined nose, letting the pained recoil of Wen’s head carry her forward. As the dragon’s head crested, Olivier let the momentum fling her as close to the ceiling as possible.

She centred, and felt herself abruptly halt as she began to float in a meditative position - frozen in midair. She let her resolve reach out to her discarded torch, stoking it.

Wen blinked furiously and turned upwards to face her. The dragon’s head snapped forward, jaws wide.

And immediately stopped as Olivier pushed against space, warping the distance between herself and the dragon’s reaching jaws.

“Defense mechanism, Wen," she explained, "I expected more from you.”

Wen snarled and disengaged toward a further corner of the room, launching meteors of snow from her mouth.

Olivier exhaled. “I had my fill of this outside.”

The meteors melted away as great arcs of flame burst from the torch in the opposite corner, guided by her careful focus.

Wen launched herself upward in a blind rush again.

A whistling.

The torch whirled through the air and snapped back into Olivier’s waiting hands.

“Sherry. Burn.”

The torch shuddered.

Then it exploded like an inferno and engulfed Wen in flames. Olivier watched - the heat only a caress against her skin - as Wen roared and toppled back, the form of the dragon receding to that of a silhouette before vanishing, leaving only the red-robed, silver-haired woman to fall to the ground with sharp impact.

Olivier stopped focusing, letting herself drift to the floor from her midair roost. She hadn’t expected much more than that - maintaining the form of a dragon was more trouble than it was worth. She looked over to make sure Wen wasn’t moving, before dashing over to Corelli. She strapped the torch to her dress and knelt beside her fallen friend.

“Hey there. Where have you been?”

Corelli groaned from the ground.

“Can you stand, Corelli?”

More groaning - clearly not in response.

“I don’t know what that means, but let’s get you out of here. I can’t stand the air in this place.”

She hoisted Corelli onto her shoulder, ignoring the groaning and feeble flailing of her arms. Mantidrake darted from her dress to nestle into Corelli’s hair. Olivier looked over at Wen. Probably worth keeping her around. She walked over, grabbed Wen’s arm with her free hand, and began dragging her toward the exit, adjusting Corelli's positioning several times.

She took a careful look around. They’d be back. But there were still four other stops to make.

At least four, anyway.