Salvar. Home. Its stark landscape stretched on for miles upon miles, the horizon shielded from sight by only mountains and antediluvian forests, themselves shrouded by mists and the haziness of incredible distance. Its cruel ecology battered the body for want of heat and food, its unfeeling majesty battered the soul for want of nurturing and a sense of self-importance, and its stark whiteness battered the eye for want of contrast.

It was punishingly cold, but Flint did not wear sleeves, hat or hood. Salvar loathed defiance, but only respected strength. It pressed down on everyone and everything in a search for the strong, crushing and killing the soft so that only the worthy were left standing. This sense of his home was the closest thing to spirituality Flint had, so the winter silence did not seem to stem from death. Not for him. For him, the silence was holy: the chill wilds were a sacred place. The howl of the wind over the rocks was his pipe organ, the stinging bite on his cheeks like the kiss of incense. Starvation and hypothermia were his entheogens.

He was Salvar's priest, come to lead mass. He had sacrifices to make, blood to spill and to drink. Bones were his bread to break, and the ice was his altar, goose pimples and snow his vestments. The icy crucible was the only salvation Salvar understood.

Flint ascended a stout, snowy hill, pounding his boots through the cold, unbroken white blanket and the dormant foliage beneath it. From the top of the hill he could see two figures some distance away, and he did not hesitate. On the descent he recognized Aurelianus first, and he flexed his fingers. There was pain in store for him now, he knew.

Flint knew, logically, that he was getting bigger - taller, broader, heavier and denser. All the logic in the world didn't help his perspective, though. For all he could tell, everyone else was just getting smaller, more frail. But was it just perspective, this time? Flint narrowed his eyes as he approached, wondering. Something seemed off about his old rival, in a disquietingly familiar way.

A deep, low crack echoed over the white expanse from somewhere underneath Flint's feet, and he smirked within his beard. Beneath him was ice, thick but young beneath a thin sheet of fresh powder - he was walking across a frozen lake. Cleverly chosen, this place. It would be difficult and risky for him to build momentum here.

Between the tiefling and the ice, Flint's consideration of the third threat was a little more limited. It took him until he was within speaking distance to place her face, and he muttered to himself as he finally stopped walking. He looked at Aurelianus, blinked slow, and then looked at Madison.

"You," he said in a baritone rumble, accent as thick as molasses. "You are different. Both of you. Good. Perhaps you will not be as easy to break as I feared."