Jade shielded his eyes from the falling snow and looked back in the direction of Ahn-Tivan, not seeing much due to the city's lacking presence on the surface. It was quite silly of him to expect to see anything else than a frozen plain that was above the underground city, but he had never been further away from home, feeling the thrills of an adventure, an itch he could not get rid off since the moment he had left for the quest.   

  They had climbed into a considerable height already and were about to reach their first stop on their journey, the group of three that liked to consider themselves pioneers and explorers of the unknown, but the reality was much darker than the nice picture he liked to paint for himself inside of his head.

They had been chosen for a quest, everyone knew what that meant.

  From the moment he had been born, Jade could rely only on the color of his eyes that gave birth to his name, while all his ancestry had been forgotten that same moment. The society worked that way, he with his white fluffy ears, long tail and jade eyes had been born and left in the care of many uncles and aunts who could not bother who were his actual parents and he considered it ordinary as it was the norm among the catkin of the frozen lands.

"Jade come, we are almost there." He heard a male voice carried on the wind and touched his ear. It was cold, he immediately wrapped his white scarf tighter around his neck to keep himself warm, holding his ear for a while to warm it up.

"Coming." He shouted, but not overly loud, he was careful of the threats that their voices might lure out of the mild snow storm around them.

The true reason they had been chosen for the quest was quite simple, overpopulation.

  Ahn-Tivan was a great underground city that contained many, but even the bounties and gifts of The Earthmother were limited. With the lingering tribal nature of his kind, sexuality was something ever present in their society, it was even grounded in religion and to have a lot of children had always been considered a blessing and the assurance of his people's future. As the result, high birthrates led to many young that could not be contained within the city, thus a ritual of adulthood had been devised. When someone became a mage able to wield the powers of magic or reached the age of fifteen, they had to embark on an exploration quest issued by The Earthmother.

Well, if they displeased her priests, it was the same, but that was not the case for the three of them.

  While deep in thought, he had fallen behind. Jade held the tip of his hood to prevent the harsh wind from blowing it away, exposing his face to the biting icicles flying through the air and hurried to catch up to the two in front of him. They were all catkin, as was normal in Ahn-Tivan. There were different races, but the birthrates of his kin left for them the place of marginal freaks and combined with good resistance to cold, there were not many races that could compete. If it had not been for The Earthmother, some more predatory species would have surely prevailed instead, but she preferred them for some reason, protecting their community with her formidable golems in the most dire situations. The priests believed that their race had been chosen and in his opinion, they were right.

Loud noises interrupted his thoughts as he was nearing his companions.

"Oh come on, are they at it again?" Jade whispered and shook his head, but subconsciously licked his lips.

  In some distance away form him there was a whirling ball of fur, snow and hands. Jade's companion clearly wanted to mate with the lone female in their small group of three, but he could tell that she considered him subpar. Most of his advances had ended the same way as this one.

"Ja, there it is." Jade could not help but cover his crotch with one of his hands, when he saw the state of his daring companion.

  In their society, most of the times raping was not a problem, although females tended to be a little smaller than males, they were fierce devils when someone tried to force them, not yielding no matter what if the male was not up to their standards. Well, he could not say much with his measly romantic experience. He had always been on the leaner side and could not compete with older adults for mates, not speaking about the short period of time he had been sexually mature, as he was just fifteen, the same age as the two in front of him.

"Keep your little cock for yourself, you immature puppy." The female jumped up from the ground and barked at the male that rolled in pain on the ground.

"You should jerk off your children to the wind where they belong, pathetic wimp." She perked up her ears when she heard Jade coming and looked at him directly, her piercing red eyes focused on him for a second and he immediately dodged her gaze, looking to the side.

"An ugly idiot and a coward, really a bunch of puppies." She snorted, her left ear twitching, moving the strands of gold and white fur. With a sharp motion, she turned around and left to continue in their journey without the supposed rest.

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By The Earthmother, they were not ready for this demoness, could the priests not have chosen a more timid girl to pair up them with?

"Ugh, you heard her, you can start right away, I do not expect you to even try anything." By this moment his companion was able to stand , but his mood was bleak.

"Sure, wanna join?" Jade gave him a lecherous look.

"Ugh, fuck off . Get away from me!" He looked like he was about to vomit and Jade had to say the face he made was worth the indecent joke.

"Just wait you pretentious bitch, one day you will be mine!" Jade looked at his comrade, who was trying to smooth out his fur. It was grey, but unnaturally long with a tendency to curl. The curls looked messy and its gray color was not helping to improve the impression it gave off. It looked like a dirty rag if left for just a day without a proper care.

Which meant it looked like a very dirty rag right now.

  The guy called himself Blaze, but Jade suspected that it was just a fancy nickname that he presented himself with to hide the less than glorious real one. Blaze was a little rash and horny, obviously, but other than that he was not a bad guy. Jade had been worried to get himself entangled with some scheming sleazy people that might stab him in the back at any point in time. Considering it from that standpoint, Blaze was harmless.

"We should not skip on our rest even with her temperament, there is the danger zone up ahead." Jade frowned and followed Gol'tha's golden-white tail with his pupils as it was fading into the sea of snowflakes

"Man up, do not tell me that you are scared of monsters out of bedtime stories for kids. Or are you really a coward as she has said?" Blaze looked at him derisively and jabbed him with his finger. Not waiting for Jade's response, he went after Gol'tha like a dog tracking the scent of meat.

  Oh dear, Jade thought that he could be in trouble with a hot headed female and a guy with testicles in place of his brain. Did they not understand how many had died on these kind of quests? Before they had embarked, he had done his homework and researched the region they were supposed to go in. Well, he considered himself foxy smart and had to play his part, right? Also, he could not deny that he had been a little scared when he heard how many had not returned home from the last quest that had been issued. Jade reached into his pocket and withdrew a piece of crumpled paper with their official assignment.

Investigate The Frozen Throne.

And that was it, had the priest relaying the message of the goddess been drunk or what? Was it really all there was to it? And why would The Earthmother name a lump of ice The Frozen Throne? It was beyond him.

What he did know was that the area they were supposed to investigate was a tall spire of ice in the middle of one of the largest danger zones. He felt shivers just thinking about it.

Yeah, Blaze woould surely call him a coward for saying it aloud, but there were . . things stalking about the area, making people disappear, turning them into frozen corpses. Most people considered it just rumours, but why else would all the expeditions gone missing? Unfortunately there were not many that survived the encounters, causing the reports of the deranged few to be brushed off as rants of crazy people that deserted their comrades.

  He sneezed and cursed the everlasting cold weather. He had heard that the weather used to be warm with mild rains instead of snowstorms, but then an endless winter had come, burying everything under the crust of snow and ice. Honestly, he was unable to imagine anything else than the biting cold around him, he had never experienced anything else. It were probably just musings of dreamers that gave up on reality.

"I should hurry or . . ." Jade made his way in the direction of the two that had left, but his inexperience caused him to make an error in his judgement.

"I can't. . Where are they?" To his horror, he found out that the thick curtain of snow had already covered the tracks of his companions, making him unable to follow them.

Damned snow! What should he do now? Should he follow them blindly or wait here? If he waited, he could be even accused of abandoning the quest leading to exile, he had no illusions about what would happen next, it would be a slow death considering how harsh the outside world was and his inexperience with survival.

"Maybe the idiot was right, I need to man up." Jade pulled his clothes tighter to his body and set off in the direction the others had disappeared, hoping that his bad luck could not be inexhaustible.

  Step after step he followed the path that must have formed naturally along the slope of the mountain, as there were not many animals that could have created it. The only upside about their quest was that although the area was mountainous, it was possible to avoid all dangerous climbs, if they made their way in between the mountains or along the slopes of the ones that were not steep.

  Strangely, he could already see their final destination towering on the horizon. A tall spire that seemed to be made of ice in its entirety, he had a feeling that it was reflecting too much of the sparse light that made it through the thick clouds, it felt abnormal, almost making him suspect the spire of having a glow of its own, its blue luster mesmerizing his eyes, as if the spire was trying to put him under a spell.

"Ouch!" Jade gazed at his distant target for too long and tripped over something under his feat, falling on his one knee. He felt pain due to hitting a rocky protrusion under the snow that bit into his knee, but the snow saved him from any serious injury and he could see only a tiny rivulet of blood flowing down his leg when he inspected his injury.

Wait.

  Jade looked more carefully at his knee and found the injury strangely regular, given the culprit should have been a rock. He decided to dig up whatever had injured him and began to work his both hands, the snow flew left and right until he found the object he had injured himself with.

It was a cold piece of iron, a rod with sharp edges covered with rust.

"Is it a makeshift sword? Then what have I tripped over up there?!" His imagination ran wild. Promptly, Jade jumped to the place where the hidden object was buried and fell back on his butt when he uncovered enough snow to recognize what it was.

It was a leg. He had tripped over a frozen body an fell onto the rod it was still holding even after its death. A shiver ran through him when he saw a nasty wound on the body's chest and the expression of horror in the dead catkin's face.

"By the goddess, I should never have come here." Jade made a similar face as the body and the light from the distant spire seemed to gain a unique, ghastly quelity.