Fitch and Juno led the train of commandeered ponies up the caravan, each animal lugging one or two sleeping children on their saddleless backs. The carriages had been laid to rest for the night, and they lay empty and flapping in the harsh winds. It seemed that their passengers had migrated to the flats of the icy tundra for late night revelry of unknown cause. Speckled across the snow were large bonfires where people sat singing and drinking, their shadows long and thin across the ground. The phantoms of good smells and laughter carried themselves downwind to Juno and Fitch.

“What’s the party about?,” asked Juno.

Fitch turned to her, his expression bleak and weary. She didn’t look much better either.

“We can ask after we visit mother and father.”

And so they continued up the line in silence until they reached the carriage at the head of the caravan. Although, perhaps the word ‘carriage’ didn’t do it justice. It was more like a mobile estate, towering and beautifully carved with rich dark oak wood. Gold trimmings traced the structure’s ornate details, shimmering softly in the warm orange light that seeped out the windows. Too large to be pulled by a pony, domesticated Aurochs sat in their bridles, unflinching in the howling snow. Even ignoring the carriage they pulled, the blue chalk tattoos and gold ornaments adorning their massive horns spoke to the affluence of their owners.

Juno peaked through one of the windows.

“Looks like father and mother aren’t home. Probably partying.”

Fitch looked back at the sleeping kids.

“We gotta get the little ones out of the cold.”

She gestured him forward.

“C’mon. We can warm them up in front of one of the bonfires while we look.”

They cut back around and towards the cluster of fiery points in the icy desolation. As they approached, the smell of stew and alcohol wafted towards them in full force. The kids began to awake. One of them called out weakly.

“We’re hungry!”

Juno looked back. He looked nervous to speak to them.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you something to eat.”

They had the ponies stand out the outer edge of the ring of light cast by the bonfire. After grabbing a long empty provision sack, they went ahead.

“Have you seen Otto Albrecht?” asked Fitch.

But everyone at the bonfire was asleep. All except one. He tilted his head up, the firelight dancing across his glazed eyes. He had a pipe clenched between his teeth, but the magical herb stuffed into the pot was long burned away.

“Nuh. But if I had’n guess, he’d be somewhere yonder…”

The shaky finger was thrusted out into the black void beyond the fire. They leaned to look.

He was pointing at absolutely nothing.

“...I see. We’ll keep that in mind.”

They pivoted and glanced around. All across the ground, alongside sleeping party goers, lay plates of half eaten food, some toppled into the snow and others laying precariously on timber that had been rolled out as seats. They both looked at each other and frowned. Then, without a word between them, they began scooping up the food scraps with their bare hands and stuffing them into a bag.

When they returned a few or more of the kids had awakened. They were watching the two quietly, their firelit eyes wide and dim in dark.

“Here. We brought some food,” said Juno.

She grabbed a fist full of the scraps and went over to one of the ponies. The kid woke the one next to him and they both began picking at the fist full of food scraps like vultures, squeezing shreds of meat between their little fingers and eating them ravenously.

Fitch walked over with the bag to one of the ponies and pulled a fistful of food out.

“You too.”

But the single child just stared at him. He would not extend his hand, for he remembered Fitch’s return from the grave, his exposed skull and the steaming heaps of flesh that sewed themselves back together around it. The boy simply sat upright in the dark, rigid and unmoving.

Fitch looked as if he was about to cry.

The boy flinched as Fitch plopped the fistfull of food on his lap. Without a word he shambled over to the next pony and did the same.

After all the kids had eaten they looked a lot more lively, some even talking amongst themselves and pointing their little fingers at the scattered lights on the horizon.

“Let’s go find them,” said Fitch.

Juno just nodded.

They moved out into the dark. As they approached the next bonfire, music began to fill the air around them. Grinning fiddlers sawed away at their instruments while a group of dancers thrashed and swirled to the shrill symphony as if puppets on strings possessed, their forms primal and hellish against roaring fire. They moved such violence and chaos that one would think they were engaged in a battle with ghosts, so much so that Juno and Fitch were even apprehensive to approach. But eventually, they mustered the courage to begin asking the dancers questions, but none would listen, they would only dance. The two quickly retreated to the edge of the ring of light cast by the flame and stood disheartened.

Fitch looked to his right. It was so dark they hadn’t noticed them, but a mass of people lay in the snow. They were still as corpses, their wide and unblinking eyes pasted to the flame, as if hypnotized. If not for the small puffs of smoke that came from the pipes in their mouths, one wouldn’t even be able to tell that they were alive.

Just one was sitting upright. Their back was to the pair. Cautiously they approached. A woman, not much older than them. Finally, Fitch mustered enough courage to grab her shoulder, but the figure whipped before he could speak.

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She had massive gaping pupils, wide as coins. Fitch jerked involuntarily. She smiled broadly and stared. He managed to squeeze out a response.

“D-do you know where Otto Albrecht is?”

“No idea,” she croaked.

Juno leaned forward apprehensively.

“Can you at least tell us what the party is about?”

“Suuure...”

Suddenly the woman leapt up and embraced Fitch seductively, wrapping her arms around his stomach. But before either siblings could react, she sank her teeth into his shoulder. Fitch yelped as Juno ripped her off.

“You nasty bitch!!!” spat Juno. Fitch was too stunned to say anything.

To the horror of the two, the woman began to leap side to side while shrieking, like she had been possessed by hellspawn. Before they could say anything else she darted off around the fire and out of site.

“Everyone’s high off their ass!!!!” scowled Juno. Fitch clasped his hand around his bleeding shoulder. He was staring off to his left.

“Look.”

There lay a pile of weapons, ensanguined and glinting in the fire, as if ritual tools for some dark ceremony. Battle axes, spears, knives, halberds, crossbows.

“They must be celebrating a victory…” said Fitch.

But Juno did not respond. She walked over and pulled his clothes up over his shoulder. Blood began to drip down his arm from the deep teeth marks.

“Ugh, this is disgusting.”

“It’s alright. Something this small will heal. Hurts less than getting my head ripped off.”

She reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled a rag out, wrapping it tightly against the wound.

“I don’t want blood getting everywhere.”

They walked back off into the darkness and grabbed the ponies and the kids. They wandered from bonfire to bonfire aimless and silent, strangers amongst their own people. As they continued onward, the bonfires got bigger, the music louder, and the crowds larger.

Soon enough they stumbled across it.

The massive, rotting head of a drake. It sat on a large pyre, its mouth agape and its bulbous eyes bloated in its skull. Laid out in front of it like offerings were five dead men, their intestines hanging out their opened stomachs. Flowers and other strange adornments were placed carefully between the folds of the exposed guts, like some cursed church altar. Their mouths too, were stuffed with incense and trinkets, their blooded cheeks stretched and bulging. But these men weren’t part of the expedition, and this strange ritual wasn’t to send them off peacefully to the afterlife. Their raggedy clothes and facial tattoos told the two everything they needed to know: they were bandits, and this drake used to be their mount. This ritual was done in mocking.

“Juno?”

Their mother was laying in the snow right next to them, her eyes glazed and her blonde hair disheveled. The still smoldering pipe lay between her limp fingers. She looked up at them then frowned and rolled over.

“Uggghhh. Is that bastard child is with you again!?” she groaned.

"Don't call him that."

"I thought I told you to exile him long ago...!"

Juno looked like she was about to pop a vein.

“Get the fuck up.”

She snatched up her mother by the rib of her greased chainmail and ripped her to her feet. Next to each other, they looked more like siblings than daughter and mother. Despite being in her forties, Juno’s mother could pass for being in her twenties.

They began to shamble across the snow as a group, Fitch taking the initiative to lead the pony train as Juno lugged her mother around. But the woman began to try to pull away from Juno while groaning incoherently.

“What the hell is your problem!” hissed Juno.

She pointed at Fitch, her face twisting into a scowl under the harsh firelight.

“He is! That… that cursed thing slithered out the cunt of that nasty foreign whore, and now thinks he can leech off our—!?”

Juno gripped the back off her moms head and thrust her to the ground at the ponies' feet. They whinnied and kicked, the children on their backs huddling together in fear. Juno was so angry she couldn’t even speak. She stood huffing and staring.

But their mother did not move.

The shadows of the firelight shifted across her splayed out body. They both looked at each other with fear in their eyes, and finally Juno knelt down and put a finger to her neck. A Heartbeat. Juno hung her head in relief. They sat in silence for a long while before Juno spoke.

“I’m so tired, Fitch.”

Fitch squatted down and picked Juno’s mother up from under the armpits. He threw her onto one of the ponies, a single kid forced to share his ride with the unconscious woman.

“We’ll let these kids sleep in the carriage with us. Let’s just find dad tomorrow.”

Juno nodded and started their way back through the tundra once again.

§

Eventually they came back upon the very first bonfire they visited. The carriage was a mere hundred feet away.

“Finally! Sleep!” groaned Juno.

Fitch looked back at the first partygoer they had spoken to. He sat slumped with the same beer bottle still in his hand, his body pointed towards the fire and the void beyond. Fitch walked around the fire, and stared off into the dark.

Juno raised an eyebrow.

“Fitch, what are you doing!? Let’s go inside.”

He stared off into the pitch black darkness. Then he saw it.

Sparks.

He saw the striking of a flint, and the momentary illumination of a massive, naked, pale man in the frigid wastes beyond the fire. Again it happened. The man let the sparks fall onto his bare thighs and groin, smiling as they burned out on his skin. He was well over eight feet tall, and his blonde hair was long and disheveled.

"Father is out there."

They both watched in complete silence. The scene felt primal, like he was engaged in some uncivilized ceremony that's true function could be understood by him alone, by one who existed beyond the protection of fire light.

“...Should we go talk to him?” whispered Juno softly.

“I think we should at the very least. He will want to know where she is… Right?”

They shooed the child off the pony that carried their mom and led it into the black expanse ahead. Their father stood naked and pale and smiling, having long noticed their presence. His skin was phosphorescent under the lantern light. He never stopped smiling the entire time.

“Juno, Fitch. You have returned mostly unscathed I see. Good.”

They nodded. Juno pointed to their mother, who hung limply off the horse.

“She drank and smoked herself into a stupor.”

He just stared at his wife then nodded. The group immediately fell into silence, the wind howling in the empty space. Somehow Fitch mustered the courage to ask.

“What are you doing out here?”

He looked down at him.

“Feeling, Fitch. Sometimes I just need to feel things.”

Juno and Fitch shot each other a glance just for a moment. Otto chuckled.

“You need worry for me, my children. To tell the truth, I’ve never been happier in my whole life. Never.”

This just made them more confused.

“I-I see…” said Juno nervously.

He just continued on smiling.

“Anyhow, I am truly glad you came to see me upon your return. I stationed a servant at the carriage to inform you of your next quest, but seeing as you came to me with Helga, he must have abandoned his post during the night's revelries. Worry not, his punishment will be proportional to the severity of his affront.”

The two just nodded.

“In his stead I shall tell you what your next quest is: to help in the search of the Zweiter family. The Duke, Duchess, and their eldest son have not returned from their scouting trip north of the wagon train. It has been a week now. Depart two days from now in search of them. If you find them deceased, take any wealth they may have died with. Upon your return show a valuable for each dead family member so that the surviving siblings may grieve, then pocket the rest discreetly. If they are alive, escort them back to the wagon train. Please take note of the terrain as you search for them, for if they are dead they will not be able report on the geography ahead. Any questions?”

They shook their heads.

“Good.”

He just kept smiling and staring as they walked back with the pony and their mother. The cold wind cut into their skin as they moved, white gusts curling off the snowy ground.

Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.

Fitch looked back. The man was still smiling and watching him, the sparks of the flint bouncing off his massive, pale body and into snow at his feet.