When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in

Leliana
The path does not get easier, the further she goes.

It does not reach an incline, does not force her to push upward as she had when getting to the mountain, but it fights her for every inch. She tucks her chin into her chest, ears flattening into the muss of her mane and trudges onward, ignoring the coughs and the blood that crusts in the corner of her mouth, ignoring the exhaustion that creeps into her muscles, ignoring the sweat that makes her neck slick and cold. The snow piles around her, blinding her for a good portion of the way, but she continues, buoyed by the thoughts of her family and her loved ones and all of those she leaves behind—all of those she will return to.

She almost doesn’t notice when the path begins to get easier, when she is able to move straight through instead of needing to constantly find new paths through massive drifts. She almost doesn’t notice when the bitter cold begins to abate, when the weather rises and she shivers less, the land around her beginning to come into more focus, the faint outlines of others growing more clear. She stumbles forward, grateful for the sight of the blue-black water and the massive tree that oversees it, before she hits her knees.

She feels the other bodies around her, and she wants to ask more questions—wants to figure out where she is, what she is doing, what they are meant to do from here, but her tongue grows thick and her mind grows slow and before she knows it, sleep overcomes her and her world goes dark.

***

When she wakes, it is to the sight of the icicles above her, the glittering edges of them bright and crystal and glinting dangerously in the watery light that filters into the area. She groans low in her throat, the beginning of a headache forming in the back of her mind as she rolls and gets to her lacerated knees. She can feel the skin protest against the harshly cold ground as she pulls herself upward, her body protesting.

She coughs and shivers as she looks around, concern etching itself onto her features as she watches those who have journeyed here alongside her begin their attempts at gathering the icicles to carry home.

She latches onto the sight of two others, a male and a female, and walks over to them, her crimson mane clinging to the elegant curve of her neck. “H-hello,” her teeth chatter. “I-I don’t think I can do this alone.” Her hazel eyes are bruised as she looks around, at a loss of what to do. She turns her head back to the south, lips pressing together in thought as she spins through one idea after the other.

“W-w-we will need something to carry it,” she says, finally, before thrusting her chin in the opposite direction. “I-I-I think we may have better luck finding something f-f-further south.” Even though the very idea of leaving to walk into the cold again, to walk further before even starting, drains her of energy, she knows that she will have little, if any, luck trying to carry it on her own—and she has to try something.
Illum
He stays so stupidly at her side, the curve of his jaw tensed and pressed against her ribs to catch her when she stumbles through such treacherous, uneven footing. She doesn’t say a word to him, doesn’t even glance back, but it is enough for him that she doesn’t step away, doesn’t move out of reach. It surprises him how quickly he grows attached to her, to that shade of soft brown fur peeking out at him from beneath the clusters of white and clear snow glazed to her skin - like spring reaching out from beneath the cover of winter, brown and earthy and beautiful.

They battle on like this through a storm that defies all sense of time and logic. Goes on endlessly, relentlessly, leading them off the path and into loose snow that gives way beneath their feet, sending them tumbling down a false ledge in a tangle of aching, frozen bodies. Through that dull numbness, he can feel the sharp teeth of pain across his hip and his shoulder, his knees and along the cheek he had pressed to her side - and when he looks over at her with a grunt, he can see that she didn’t survive it much better.

But he can see her face, too, and damn if it isn’t a nice one. His mouth twitches, the corners lifting infinitesimally for a reason he cannot name, an explanation he does not have - and then they’re climbing to their feet again, his lips against her cheek and her shoulder and her hip as they turn themselves around and climb back to the last place they had felt the worn path beneath their shuffling feet. He walks closer now, shoulder to shoulder and with their hips brushing, resisting the urge to reach out and touch that face again, taste the cold and the snow and the woman beneath.

He tells himself it is just a distraction from the cold, just a way to make the time pass more quickly. He is good at pretending.

Neither of them notice when the storm breaks and the world around them is suddenly gray and void, empty of everything but them, of distant ghosts - horses cloaked in the brittle crust of snow-glaze and frost. Faceless and soundless, meaningless in their nothingness. It isn’t until something unfurls like a spreading shadow beneath the horizon that they draw to stumbling halt along the ridge with the others.

Though, looking around, Illum realizes with a shiver that their numbers have easily been reduced by half.

He doesn’t remember climbing down the ridge, but he must have, because he’s suddenly blinking the sleep from those dark, weary eyes. There is a second, an instant, one single beat of his heart where it tries to tear out of his chest because where is his nameless companion, all soft brown and stubborn willfulness. But she’s right there beside him, safely tucked at his side, and he makes no effort to stop himself from reaching out to brush his lips along a spot on her jaw just beneath a raw, angry wound. “Come on.” He says, and the gentleness in those gritted words is like a long forgotten echo from a past self.

He has enough time to stand and muffle a grunt at the aches and pains that have also woken with him before a third is crossing the way to join them. She is softer than his companion, fragile and beautiful, a rich brown like smooth mahogany with points of fiery red that he suspects would suit someone else better. She seems to be many things - poised, focused, delicate in that strange way that ice is also strong. But he doesn’t see fire in her. She would be better suited to those soft earthy greens of leaves and forests and spring meadows.

She is speaking again, he realizes belatedly, his gaze sharpening on her face. Wanting to work together to gather the stems of ice to bring back to the mainland - and though he is reluctant, generally self-reliant, he is also not stupid enough to turn down this offer of help.
Wallace
She awoke to silence. Deadened silence like the rest of this merciless, dead land.

It even smelled white. And cold. The air felt as though it was piercing through her nostrils, as if they may bleed at any moment to return some moisture to them. She tried not to breathe too quickly. She didn't want to bleed any more than she already was. It was there cold and thick on her cheek, her knees, and likely other places she hadn't registered yet.

Her head lifted with a soft sigh, and she considered if she'd fallen unconscious from hypothermia. It was possible. She remembered shivering before as the two of them forged a difficult path through the storm. Her movements had gotten a little clumsier, another sign of it, and she'd slipped down snowy slopes or climbed over fallen trees stacked on top of each other.

She hadn't even known where she was going besides forward. She wasn't sure she would have made it this far without him, but she would never admit it.

Now she was here, staring blankly at dark water as still as solid glass. Maybe it was frozen and only looked fluid. It took longer than it should have to remember where she was, and why. It took longer than it should have to register the warmth pressed all along her side and that the new touch to her jaw just then should be unwanted.

"Come on."

She blinked and looked at him, sullen brown eyes in a bed of more muddy brown. He had made her blush nearly constantly as they'd partnered up. It had been out of necessity, she knew. Survival, only. The brushes of his skin or his lips over her body had not been from attraction, but a share of warmth in this unforgiving cold. His assistance had surely been to better his chances that he'd return home to a gorgeous family she knew he must have. They were equals though, and she stole his heat too. It was only fair.

He raised himself to his feet and she wasn't really ready to follow. She wanted to lie here and sleep, drift into the snow and let it take her. It would probably feel warm after a while, like an insulated blanket. The cold could numb her after a while and she could just rest. She could feel peace.

His gaze was gone as someone new approached; a woman of rich chocolate dipped in decadent dark raspberry. Wallace's eyes dimmed more and hardened subtly, checking that her walls were in place because she would be alone now. He had found someone else, someone actually beautiful and helpful to be his companion. Her heart sank further as she recognized her, one of the healers of the Island. She nearly hadn't remembered without those attractive wings the woman usually had draped over her elegant sides.

So someone else from the Island had come for a cure, someone more suitable for a dangerous quest. Someone far more capable. Wallace felt immediately useless, more foolish. Why had she ever thought she could do anything worthwhile? What had gotten into her? She should turn back now and just go home, let this woman take care of it.

A small dose of energy seeped into her from her own bitterness.

She tucked her feet beneath her, standing by sheer stubbornness not to be on the ground at their feet as they stood over her. Her teeth clenched and she turned, a quiet sharpness in her eyes as she watched them and listened. The fool man was distracted by the woman's beauty and had to refocus on her face. Wallace nearly rolled her eyes. So typical.

Well, she certainly wasn't too dumbfounded to speak.

"I'm Wallace." Names would help. "To the South?" She frowned, glancing that direction and spotting the trees far off in the distance. That route would mean they were traveling farther, wearing themselves out even more. Why on earth would that be appealing? Was there not a better way to do this without adding more to their agenda?

She turned back to study their situation and the tree of icicles before them. If she were doing it alone...

Whatever. What did she know, anyway? This woman was far more prepared for this. So, fine.

She nodded shortly and began walking south. If they could add it to their journey and still make it out alive then so could she. And she didn't need any magic to do it. She never had.
Leliana
She feels a sharp feeling of intrusion as she nears them, a bitter ache in the way that they curl around one another so protectively. She curses herself for forcing herself into their duo, but it’s too late now to back out and so she only regards them with apology in her eyes and in the slight frown that curves her lip. She turns her head toward the mare, studying the wounds that inflict her and not for the first time, she feels a horrible loss, an emptiness where her healing should live. “I can help,” she says softly, hoping to make a bridge between herself and this other mare with guarded eyes. “When we go back. I can help heal you.”

But it is a promise of the future and not now—the only thing she can offer.

At their reluctant, hesitant acceptance of her plan, she nods, tucking away the doubt that blossoms in her chest. Maybe it was a horrible plan. Maybe it was foolish of her to suggest it, but she has no other options now—nothing with which to replace it—and so she sets her shoulders and turns with them.

The trip is not easy. None of this has been easy and she accepts this as a truth of what it is meant to be as they fight the cold and the snow and the wind that picks up, blinding them further as they go. Her companions are quiet as they travel and she works to give them their space, trying to not intrude further than she already has. It is only when the snow beneath them begins to fade if only slightly, the ground turning rocky but the air remaining bitter cold that she lifts her gaze and begins to search, hunting through the trees that begin to populate further, some blanketed in snow and others completely bare.

The trees here have more variety than the singular cedar up north and were she to know their name, she’d be able to say that they now stand within the heart of a grove of poplar trees. Their branches are harsh and stark against the glittering winter sky and, for a moment, she thinks of how beautiful they look. What she doesn’t know, couldn’t know, is that they have managed to stumble upon trees prone to decay, prone to death that hollows them out, while almost remaining remarkably light. Light enough to float.

“We need something to hold it,” she repeats, her mind whirling as she tries to find something. Something that will work as a container to carry the icicles—but there’s nothing. She almost apologizes. Almost. Until Wallace points out a fallen tree on the outskirts of the grove. Leliana takes a deep, steadying breath, ignoring the steel in the other mare’s eyes and the group of them makes their way toward the log. It is clearly from a younger tree, large enough to hold icicles and yet small enough that it will not overburden them completely. “Thank you,” Leliana whispers, although it’s not clear where it is directed.

Illum peels off from the group, hunting for branches to help drag the log, while Wallace and Leliana begin to work together to seal one edge of the log. They nudge dirt into it, along with rocks and branches, whatever they can. They use the hardened snow, the same snow making her feet ache and her legs shake, to pack it together, the snow and the mud and the dirt and the rocks forming together and hardening.

The rest they push into the log but don’t pack hard, letting it rattle around, hoping enough will survive the journey home that they can seal it once it has been filled with the icicles themselves. When Illum returns with the branches, they used their dirt-smeared faces, already worn with exhaustion, to push the log onto it and then grab the ends with their teeth and begin to drag. In a way, Leliana is grateful for the work and the silence and the way she can throw herself into it, focusing on the muscle tremors racing down her sore back and the way her jaw locks up around the frozen branch in her mouth as they pull and pull and pull—

All of this to just get started on the true work they need to do.
Illum
They turn to go and he frowns, falls into step beside his companion - beside Wallace, she had called herself. He’d had no intention of sharing his own name, no intention of taking off this mask of unknowing he had chosen to live behind, but the second time he felt his hip brush hers, he said, “My name is Illum.” As though she had asked, as though either of them had.

But they are mostly quiet, mostly resigned to their work and this strange task they had accepted by coming here. And, certainly, too exhausted to speak as they pick their way along invisible paths in a world washed with white and ice, unremarkable in every way but for the trail they leave behind in the snow to mark their passing. Eventually, the white gives way to brown, and the brown gives way to the dark green of pine and smaller cedars. They stop when they come to a cluster of trees with long, bare branches reaching up to a sky that is only cold and empty. It’s Wallace who has found something, a felled tree they can carve empty with the stone of their hooves. Fill with snow and rock and root like some strange thing meant to trap and carry winter. It seems impossible to him, but he follows their directions without question.

By the time they have finished and are heading back along the path they carved, dragging this thing behind them in all its strange wrongness, he can feel (and not feel) each and every muscle in his numb, sluggish body aching in protest. He wants to sleep, wants to dig out a bed in this snow and hunker down inside where the wind can’t reach him and perhaps the cold won’t find him. But they are so far from done, so far from finished, so he hunches his shoulders and leans into the ache, leans into this weight he drags by the branch wedged and splitting between his teeth.

“It looks like the lower branches have been picked clean while we were gone.” He notices once they’ve returned to the massive cedar, to the impossible stillness of her heart-shaped companion. That pond of dark water, too dark to know what could possibly lay within. He’s dropped his dragging-branch, all marked and flayed by his teeth, and the other two have done the same. Each one of them with heads hanging a little lower than they had been before, eyes just a little duller. He moves toward the tree, and his hoof strikes something hard and ringing at the middle of a snowdrift. With jaw clenching, teeth gritted together, he digs it out, unsurprised when the glint of something crystalline and beautiful winks back up at him. His gaze whips up, immediately picking out several more places where the storm had built piles of snow in the wild winds, creating soft places for the heaviest icicles to land when the branches shook them free. “The drifts.” He says, reaching down to harvest his find, taking it between his cracked, aching lips to bring back to their sled.

He doesn’t need to say anything more for the two women to understand this discovery, and soon each of them are digging through the snow banks, unearthing those frozen spears of ice. Some are still whole, with bits of branch and dark green fauna trapped inside their widest ends. But others are in pieces, shattered by impact, shattered by the wind before they ever fell, shattered by feet that had not even noticed they were there at all. He isn’t sure, but he collects those, too. They each do. They work until they have a pile of fragment, of winter made liquid, made solid, made so beautiful despite the way it has burned their lips and broken their skin, prying off the top layer each time the heat of their mouths melted and froze to the icicles.

It seems poetic irony that each of them have blood smeared across their lips now, not so unlike the plague-bearers they work to help.

They pause for a beat, wanting to rest but feeling too uneasy about the journey yet to come, the ocean looming between them and the mainland, the distance between here and the mountain. How was it that each task they accomplished felt like such progress until he compared it to what still lay ahead. Wordlessly one of them shifts, shuffles in the snow, and the other two follow suit like a painting suddenly come alive, life breathed back into each of them. Leliana empties some of her sled, makes room for the ice they’ve gathered while he and Wallace pick what they can bring, what will fit once they pack this thing back up and seal it tight. Too much will make it too heavy to carry, too awkward to balance. Too little might mean there is nothing left when they get back if the ocean manages to seep in through the cracks in the wood.

In the end, they leave some behind - and maybe there will be others that come, others to find their salvage pile and bring it back with them. So they take only what they feel sure they can carry, layering ice within the snow again and again with mouths that tremble with exhaustion, with the effort of being too precise, too careful. They do it until there is only enough room to fill the rest with what Leliana had emptied. Picking up dirt in cracked mouths, rocks between teeth chipped and worn at edges that had been so smooth.

They work until the ice is sealed so quietly in its strange tomb, and then they rest - or they would have had Wallace not reminded them how much worse it would be starting out again if they gave these aches and pains a chance to settle deep in their bones.

So they bury everything that makes them mortal somewhere deep inside, pull from whatever is it that brought them here. Their families, each of them. They take their branches in their teeth again, bite down against the rough bark laying across their tongues, the sharp pain migrating through teeth and jaws not meant for this kind of labor. It doesn’t matter though, this pain, not to any of them. They are each so very different, and yet somehow completely same. Almost as though they’d gravitated towards one another for a reason, been thrown together for this purpose.

He prefers that it had been chance.

It is the smell of the ocean that greets him first, the cold, metallic tang of ice in the wind rolling off the waves. For the life of him, he does not want to go back in and feel that cold death soaking against his bones, doesn’t want that dark nothing dragging at his heels. He’s already forgotten he deserves it, that this is what he’s earned from life. He’s grown so good at pretending.

He spits the branch out of his mouth when they stop along the shore, the waves breaking white against their hooves. Glances over at Leliana, brow furrowed and jaw tight, resenting every goddamn ounce of concern he feels for both of them. They should be strangers to him, meaningless, but somehow they aren’t anymore. His lips press to Wallace’s shoulder, linger a beat too long as he savors the heat he feels beneath her sooty fur. “See you both on the other side.”
Wallace
A makeshift container of their prize dragging behind them made her want to feel like they were nearly done, they were almost there. It was a lie, though. They'd only done what was perhaps the easiest part, in her mind.

They'd added a small trek to their already long journey to fetch the materials that would house the icicles, then packed it and placed them all in, insulating them with more firm snow and ice crystals, some added dirt, bark, and needles. She'd taken a moment every few minutes to examine it closely, inspecting any areas that needed altering or building on. Only when she was completely satisfied did she return to fetching another spear of ice, oftentimes gravitating to the smallest ones.

They held her reflection so tiny that she didn't have to see it.

Besides that, she just felt attracted to them for some strange reason, as though they were just as important as the larger and more beautiful ones. They were rough little ugly nubs beside the elegant and glittering. Hardy and withstanding.

She wasn't drawing parallels.
She would never be important.
They were just cute.

Across the ocean was her most hated part. They stood at the shoreline staring out, dreading it. She hated the water. Beyond that was an entire world of walking they still had to do. It made her wonder why the other two had even taken this on. What was the goal driving them through this hell? Probably something far more selfless than wanting to return her family back to their home. She didn't care about helping complete strangers, not at least until she returned to Ischia where they belonged - without getting sick and dying.

She would have asked them, but she didn't want to see the judgment in their faces when they learned how completely selfish her motivation was. It didn't matter. It kept her going, working just as hard as they did.

So they crossed.

Illum waded their vessel out, guiding it high over the women's shoulders after they'd sunk to their necks in the water. At least this path through the sea was far shorter than the one she'd taken to get to the frozen island. They had to go slower, more carefully, and every so often Illum would slip closer between them to nudge it gently back higher on them to avoid as much water damage as they could.

He allowed them to catch their breath when they reached Nerine's shore, scouting ahead of them and retrieving small branches with chipped of twigs jutting out in a little hook. He wedged it beneath their icicle-carrier, tilted them slightly so they snagged firmly into the outside, then they took turns gritting them between their teeth and dragging. Just as when they'd taken their swim, they kept two of them in front and one in the back to push and guide.

Nerine seemed far too vast. She hated it. Would it never end?

It did though as they pressed further and further south. When darkness and trees loomed ahead, Wallace slowed. She was used to the wide open beach, small clumps of palms or jungle trees. Nothing like a real forest. It was worrying, shining with a hint of fear in her eyes that turned to a blush when Illum pressed in to touch her again. He should not do that, read her that way as if he knew her.

Then again, the three of them had already gone through so much together. It was a new and strange sort of bond, but the connection was there nonetheless. Even between her and Leliana, and Illum and Leliana. All of them. Each time one began to get sluggish and disheartened, the other two would step in and cheer them on, comfort them. Leliana was much faster at it, better at reading it. Wallace was really great at stubbornly ignoring it because how could she possibly motivate someone else?

She was glad that spread through the Taiga had been brief, though. They made it to the river between the dark, misty forest and the mounds of Hyaline, following along it in a silence that saved their energy for all the pulling. It was nighttime when they trudged quietly around the valley lake and continued on following the small river as the Mountain gradually got larger and larger.

There was a growing hope in their eyes when they finally reached the end, or so very near the end. They even seemed to feel more energized, which they would need, as they balanced this chest of ice and made the dangerous journey to the last place they'd seen the ones that sent them on this terrible quest.

About halfway up, Leliana stumbled. Wallace threw her shoulder against her to steady her, her worried gaze flying to examine her and leaving Illum to suddenly bear the weight of their storage box with a grunt. He was fine. He could handle it.

Damn, she just wanted to be home.
This wasn't even going to be worth all this trouble, but she was going to sleep for DAYS if she survived it.

When they finally reached the summit, they shifted their efforts into clear view, each one panting from exertion and trembling with exhaustion. Wounds were scattered all over them, visible and bleeding. Every muscle screamed for rest and their eyes were red and burning. She was near to tears with how badly she just wanted to go home and knowing she likely wouldn't leave this Mountain for weeks as she recovered.

Her weary brown gaze slid to what looked like a shallow nook carved out of the side of the rock wall. There. That was where she'd fall asleep and maybe never wake.

That’s what this storm’s all about