Go far enough north and strange things start happening. Nights stretch for months, days just as long. The hours slip by until the only way you can count them is by how long it takes your stomach to feel empty. Numbness becomes a discomforting fact of life as the cold eats at your skin and snowblindness takes a seat on the horizon and dares you to look away. Details fade and warp until the mountains behind you look as if they're falling out of the sky, and eventually even that's gone. Just flat white in every direction.

Sometimes, the moons of the world chase each other through twilit skies like great hunters gone wild or ineffable dancers motioning poetry. The sun never rises, it just squints over the horizon and stares into you. Stars are out all night, and their progressions are a definition of madness. It's the kind of environment that can drive a man insane in a matter of hours. Civilization doesn't prepare people for this. That's why Berevar is known as the Wilderlands. There aren't too many animals this far out, but there don't need to be. Berevar is wilderness incarnate.

In eons past, this land chewed up civilization and spat it back out to the laughter of a Winter Lady. What remains are a few scattered tribes of barbaric humans -- the only people insane enough to live here -- and the barely more numerous clans of savage orcs -- the only people durable enough to live here. Lights and spirits riot in the skies, ribbons lashing and phantoms singing. The aurorae come and go, unreasoning and uncaring of those below.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Two weeks into his journey, the Wizard called Blueraven was having a hard time not caring about them either.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

It was the autumn twilight, that time where summer sun winks out and the moons chunder through the skies unopposed. Six months of night were about to take this land and there was nothing Caden or anyone else could do to stop it.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Steady was the sound of hooves beating the snow like hammers. Steady and monotonous, broken only by the occasional snort and bleat of Caden's mountain ram -- the first of his steeds to actually survive this long, and the only one who could've ever taken to this kind of environment.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Charger knew not rest, not hunger, not thirst. The ram just kept going. Its stride was such that Caden had fallen asleep on its back several times, clutching the reins to his chest and burying his face in stark white fur as he tried to ignore the growling of his stomach or the parched dryness of his throat. Charger never stopped, and the scenery never changed.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

It was like the ram was being driven by some higher power.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

And maybe, if Caden had thought to look back over his shoulder through the frost-coated lenses of his goggles, he might've spotted the white-and-pink dotted mushrooms springing up in Charger's wake.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Or the ink stains freezing into mathematical formulae around them.

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Chuff, chuff, chuff...

Chuff, chuff...

Caden woke up to find that the ram had stopped and his vision was completely blotted, first by hair and then by frost. He struggled momentarily, forcing his fingers to release the reins, then wiped at each lense in turn. It was dark out, the moons were like a pair of mismatched eyes peeking up over the side of the world, and the night sky was a war of celestial whips and witnesses. All of it was silent. The only sound in those seconds, measurable only by a sixth sense that Caden could never truly rid himself of, was the gentle crackling of torches. The hushed intake and release of breath. And with the cold numbing everything else, all the Wizard could feel was a subtle pressure of attentions.

He lowered his gaze from the sky and saw the landscape change before him. The endless white wilderness had been interrupted - not truly changed, just interrupted - by a set of tents and freshly iced holes. Some of the snow was colored a deep, vivid red, and all the tents were made of hide and bone. Caden didn't have to enter any of them to know that all bore makeshift floors of layered rugs, and memory alone was enough to tell him that the insides still stank of burning dung. There was a single fish spitroasting near one of the tents; something big and awful looking with stumps where tentacles had once ringed around its mouth and empty holes where the eyes used to be. Most of the scales were gone, and so were the fins and the spines that should've been lining its back and belly. The stalk where a glowing sphere should've hung like a lure was missing too.

Next, the Wizard saw people. Human and Orc in near-equal number, most of them flesh and breathing but a single one that looked like a construct of faded red and white silhouettes, barely opaque enough to make out any details at all. All of the natives wore hides and furs that made them look twice their right sizes, and only the ethereal figure had his face uncovered. Three dozen and more sets of eyes focused on him in utter silence, indicative of a larger gathering than this place had seen in years. Axes and spears of bone shimmered with frost in the starlight, and Caden's numb ears finally registered hushed, unfamiliar words spoken in a language he only barely recognized after so long.

"He stinks of ink and mushrooms."

"I can hear a rustling from him."

"A scent like nothing I've known."

"Call the Wizard."

"Call the Wizard."

"Call the Wizard-"

Caden looked up from the group surrounding him, and more of the scene unfolded before him. This came with a terrifying sense of finality.

First were the blocks of ice-covered stone, gleaming like obsidian beneath glass in the night. They were the stuff that giants could not move, each one a tower in its own right, and not a matching pair among them. Some were taller, some were rounder, one was a perfectly carved rectangle and another looked strangely like an hour glass in shape if nothing else. Above them but not touching them was a ring of solid, perfectly crafted lime stones. All were the same shade of yellow and each one seemed to join into the next by virtue of sand flowing between them. There were words and numbers shifting across every surface, and Caden knew that if he stared too long he might start to understand them.

So he forced himself to look back down. And by then, the tribesmen had split into two groups around an almost empty pocket of space. On the one side of it stood the red silhouette, familiar enough that Caden would've called its name if his throat weren't raw to the point of muteness. At the center stood a man.

He was tall and bald, with a thick gray beard clumping with ice and snow. His eyes were Salvic blue, and his skin had the tan of an arctic sun. He wore the tattered remnants of a white and blue robe over heavy Berevaran hide, and carried a staff of solid white liviol decorated with bones and teeth hanging by half-frozen sinew. He carried a bone-framed lantern fashioned from a fish's glowing lure, and a heavy tome slapped audibly against one of his thighs with every other step, hanging in place by a solid steel chain. His features were strong, almost blunt, and his face looked as if it hadn't smiled in a very long time.

He wore a Hat. It had been pointy once upon a time. Now it more closely resembled a commoner's ushanka. Parts were white, most of it was still-

"Greyspine," Caden rasped, clutching at his own throat.

"Blueraven," spoke the older Wizard, unaffected by the cold.

"You...know...why...I'm...here," Caden said, wheezing out each word as his vocal chords tried to flex and stretch and work again. He hadn't spoken a word in weeks.

"I do," Jolstice said. "Which is why you should know what I'm going to do next."

Caden choked on an incantation. Jolstice had no such hindrance. The senior Wizard raised his staff and shouted, a sound immediately echoed and amplified by better than three dozen tribesmen. He brought the staff back down and Caden barely managed to draw his wand and aim it when Charger lunged forward.

The ram crashed head-first into a wall of ice. Caden flew off, over that ice, and landed face down in the snow. He didn't remember anything that happened after that.