At least Eva quickly managed to focus despite her hangover. With the ghostly flames floating around them for some warmth, and a clear route back, the two of them were in high spirits, despite the lack of daylight.

Though after the first time she got stuck in an unexpectedly deep patch of snow, the Kitsune also brought a flame up before them. With a path melted into the snow, their progress sped up somewhat.

As they made their way through the frozen forest, Eva thought she had heard a strange crunching noise, but every time she looked for its origin, she found nothing that could have caused it.

Marching on through the cold winter landscape, their progress soon slowed as they were guided further and further uphill. After 30 minutes, or maybe 2 hours, Eva could not tell the time at all with no clear view of the sky, and no daylight coming yet, they had to start climbing over some small rocky outcroppings where the snow had not found purchase.

Not too long after that though, they were back to hiking through thick snow melted by Eva’s flames. As they finally reached the mountain’s peak, the duo was greeted with the first rays of sunlight glittering across the snow all around them. Spreading out down below them in the valley, was the lake the resort had been located in.

But as they continued following the path her magic showed Eva, they soon noticed dark clouds rolling in around them. Just as the clouds finally covered the sky above them again, the two reached a strange structure. Sticking out of the mountain was a bundle of bamboo stems. With all of them looking quite reminiscent of the pipes used in the pools they had rested in that morning. It was held together by weathered ropes with little bits of torn and shredded paper on them in semi regular intervals.

Sitting above this whole structure was a simple wooden roof, though here very fresh looking scratches cut through all the moss and discolorations the wood had gathered other the years. Giving them a closer look, Eva quickly realized that the spacing and grouping of those scratches matched up to claws on a paw. And considering they were supposed to now climb down this structure to get back, it slowly dawned on her just how they had gotten up here. Not that it explained how they pulled that off while utterly smashed.

“So you think you’re up to climbing down this thing?” She asked Kurt hesitantly. While she’d be fine, after all she’s been walking up straight walls for a while now, her friend had less magical paws.

He gave it a long look over, his head turning to try and follow it as it separated more and more from the ground. When he noticed how high a drop it became he slowly shook his head in response.

“Okay. So let’s just head down the mountain. Once down in the valley we can just follow the road.”

After nodding in response, Kurt began to lead their way down the mountain.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Only moments later though, the clouds opened up, and the wind began to howl. It started with a strong snowfall, but within half an hour, it developed into a blizzard. The snow fall was so dense that Eva lost sight of Kurt right before her. Only her magical ability to find her way to anything she could define concrete enough let her get close enough to grab onto the tip of his tail. And while her flames did nothing to help their visibility, she still kept them around and close to the two of them to fight off the biting chill of the wind and the freezing wetness of the snow gathering and melting in their fur.

The howling of the wind made any attempt at communication mute, and so they trotted through the blinding whiteness following their best guess as to which way downhill was. With Eva tugging at Kurt’s tail every now and then when she thought he was going the wrong way.

But after the second time they bumped into that weird bamboo construction at shoulder height, they both silently concluded they had managed to get lost utterly. No longer trusting their ability to accurately judge which way was down, the two instead huddled together, curling their furry bodies around the quartet of flames Eva had conjured.

A short while, or maybe an eternity, later though, a deep predatory howl set them on edge. Before they could get a grip of themselves, another howl followed, louder and closer, piercing through the shrill winds. As if a switch had been flipped, the animal instincts of their current shapes took over. With their minds filled with a red haze their bodies did the one thing they could, run away from the larger predator.

But no matter how fast or far Eva ran, she never seemed to get further away from the hunter after them. If she had been able to form the thought, she might at least have been relieved that the thing after them wasn’t gaining on them either.

In their panic, neither of them could keep track of the time, nor where they were running towards. They did not even realize the howls behind them had stopped until they realized they’d been walking on asphalt for a few steps.

While it was still snowing heavily, down here in the valley the wind was soft enough to let them see somewhat through the snow. They had, miraculously, reached the parking lot at the foot of the mountain where they had turned off of the road the morning before.

After a few minutes they had safely crossed the road and found the pier. As they stepped close enough for the illusions hiding the resort to fade, a concerned looking oni girl was revealed. Wearing a heavy straw cloak over her kimono and carrying an umbrella against the snow, she approached them, and pulled out a pair of woolen blankets from under her cloak.

“Oh so good you found your way back, we have been searching for you since you missed dinner.” She said as she put the blankets over the two of them. “We were just about to send someone into the mountains, but then this blizzard hit.”

“Thank you. Can you just show us to our room though?” Eva asked, and when she heard a couple of sneezes from Kurt, she continued. “And maybe prepare some hot tea for us please?”

“Of course, of course. Oh and do not worry, we found the one that got you into this predicament. You will be relieved to hear they have been forced off premise, and been banned from our establishment for the next century.”

“Wait what happened?”

“Well as far as we could figure out, a guest, appearing as a human woman, put something in the sake that had been served to you in the baths.”

“I see.” Eva mumbled as they followed her across the bridge.