A Perfect Storm (IC)

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Thur's Day, 12 May 2011

The bicycle courier timed his breathing to the drum beat of the heavy metal song pouring in from his iPod's earbuds as he pedaled through Midtown. The streets cut a path through the hotels and condominiums like a river canyon through a mountain range. Halfway down a hill, the bike courier saw his light turn green, so he relaxed his fingers off his brakes and let himself coast. He took a moment to inhale the crisp spring air and glance up at the Goodman Building. The sky-scraper home of Doctor Atom and his brood glistened brilliantly in the unobstructed rays of the mid-morning sun. It was the last thing he saw before the SUV ran over him, and as far as last views go, he could have done much worse.

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The aspiring tycoon cupped his Starbase latte in his left hand, while talking into his wireless earpiece, punching buttons on his smartphone with his right hand, and guiding the steering wheel of his sport-utility vehicle with the tips of the fingers on his left hand (that's right, the one holding the coffee cup) and the top of his right knee.

"...I'm having lunch with Paul Allen today at Dorcia, and once he sees the numbers, I think he'll have our back on this one. That union pension fund is like a piñata. Once we get a controlling interest and break it wide open, we're talking pure profit. Get rid of the entrenched management, outsource the manufacturing to Korea for pennies on the dollar, and hock whatever isn't worth shipping for scrap, and we're talking a license to print money. I'm emailing you as we speak with the-..."

His attention focused less on the road or the lives he was about to ruin and more on how much more wealthy and prestigious ruining all those lives would make him, he failed to notice the red traffic light, or the cyclist. By the time the honking horns of the oncoming cars broke him free from his revery, the would-be robber-baron was already halfway through his left turn, wondering if he'd just run over a very big dog.

Unfortunately for him, his choice of vehicle wasn't rated any better for taking corners than it was for fuel conservation, and the "sport-utility" moniker was, on this generation, vestigial at best. The act of running over the bike messenger sent the SUV spinning and rolling out of control across the asphalt. It half-flipped, half-skidded into the oncoming traffic. The screeching, first of breaks, and then of twisted metal, echoed across the neighborhood as cars and trucks started crashing into each other. Seven vehicles piled up together before the rest skidded to a halt.

The broken, contorted businessman whose eyes were on his own rising career rather than the road in front of him lay crushed between the pieces of his own vehicle, in a rapidly-expanding pool of his own blood, tears, and voided excrement. His last view was far less impressive than that of the bike courier, split as it was between his own panicked reflection in the shards of his rear-view mirror, and the cell phone his fingers frantically tapped at with his dying spasms. As different parts of his body gradually ceased functioning, one or three at a time, he could think of nothing save to deny the reality of what he was experiencing, to scream with a mouth that could no longer speak that it wasn't happening, that it couldn't be happening. He begged a god not to let him die, and indeed, thanks to his own actions, there was now a god nearby, if not the one he invoked. But she could not hear his silent prayers, and even if she had, she had neither the power nor the clout to bring back to life that which was already dead.

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When the wheels of the businessman's SUV crushed the bike courier, they also crushed the parcel in his backpack. The deceptively humble and tragically ancient clay jar had been packed well enough to survive had the cyclist simply fallen, or dropped it, but there was no way it could stand up to this sort of direct punishment. The scholars at the F.C. Historical Museum would have only its shards to study now. They would be disappointed, but were the piece intact, they never would have understood its true significance anyway. For they were anthropologists and historians, not theologians, and the contents of that jar defied everything that humans know about science or logic.

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A glittering point of white light erupted from the bike courier's backpack, like a star fallen from the night sky. It spun in place on an invisible axis, and then split in two. The pair of wisps chased each other in a quickly-expanding orbit around the shattered jar, growing larger and brighter with each successive revolution. They picked up speed with each rotation, and after a few seconds, they finally broke free from their path, their inertia throwing them in opposite directions several blocks away from each other, passing through people and people alike as if they weren't there. Once they broke free, the wisps glided toward the ground, bounced a few times, and then exploded into showers of sparks.

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One one side, those sparks coalesced into the form of a pale young woman kneeling upon the sidewalk, her tightly-braided golden hair shining in the sunlight. She wore dyed linens of azure and amber under gleaming silver mail, solid plates over a bed of interlocking chain. Each plate was lined with runes, etched into the metal and then filled with glittering powdered gemstones. A massive battle axe rested on a hooked baldric at her back, the head over a meter wide, also lined with etched runes.

A small crowd of pedestrians and shopkeepers quickly accumulated around her as she rose to her feet, but they quickly withdrew and gave her a wide berth as the thick ebony haft of her giant axe flipped into the air of its own accord and fell into her waiting grasp. The crowd gasped as arcs of electricity danced and crackled along the blade, and then the haft of the axe, and then along the woman's arm, back and forth with every movement, every clenching or relaxing of her considerable muscles.

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On the other end, those sparks coalesced into the form of a gigantic white wolf. His eyes and mouth belched forth clouds of mist with every breath he took. Three of the people now pointing and screaming and fleeing could have stood upon each others shoulders and not quite reached the great wolf's ears, and his body stretched almost as long as the city bus full of gawking, open-mouthed commuters driving alongside him. When one took into account the nearly four meters of tail with which he knocked that bus over as he absent-mindedly swung it back and forth, the great wolf's length won out. A parking meter bent and tore free from the pavement when his massive paw tread down upon it. His arrival had attracted as much attention on his block as the warrior had on hers, but while her attention took the form of wonder and awe, the wolf inspired only terror.

The wolf found the warm spring air unbearable, and so he quickly took action to remedy the situation. He inhaled that horrid scent of pollen from blooming flowers until his entire torso had expanded as far as his lungs and his muscles would allow, and then he half-growled, half-heaved, pushing forth from his massive jaws a gale-force chill wind. Once it left his maw, the wind took on a life of its own, ripping through the entire neighborhood. In its path, windows frosted over and water froze in cups and pipes alike. Within seconds, the skies over Midtown dumped so much sleet and snow down onto the streets that every surface, every person, was covered in a glistening white blanket. The instantaneous blizzard raged on without any attention from the great wolf who had unleashed it. The winter wolf faded from view, seemingly at one with the very snow he had summoned. He sniffed at the air as he crept through the snow-covered streets, hunting.

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The young woman reached out and grabbed the nearest onlooker, which happened to be the owner of a nearby delicatessen. Her fingers clamped around the top of his apron like a mechanical vise and pulled him forward. She towered over the middle-aged Greek immigrant by about half a head, so she inclined her gaze slightly to meet his. [bg=#0000BF]"?!"[/bg] she commanded in the tongue of the ancient Norse peoples. [bg=#0000BF]"?! ?!"[/bg] Her nostrils flared as she bellowed.

The hapless, wide-eyed Greek stammered, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. "I...I don't...what are you saying? I don't understand...I didn't...I don't know...what?"

The young warrior's eyes narrowed as she studied the man. He mumbled and whined for a few more moments, and the words he spoke sounded oddly familiar to her ears. [bg=#0000BF]"AH-HAH! THE TONGUE OF THE SAXONS!"[/bg] She released the shopkeeper from her grasp, letting him fall back on his heels before slapping him across the bicep and grinning. [bg=#0000BF]"MIDGARD, THEN. OF COURSE! WHAT LAND IS THIS? FURTHER SOUTH THAN EVEN GERMANIA, IT MUST BE, FOR NEVER HAVE I HEARD CELT NOR SAXON SPEAK AS STRANGELY AS THEE! LOKI'S TRICKERY HAS INDEED DRAGGED ME FAR FROM HOME!"[/bg] The Greek staggered under her assault, but she compensated quickly, catching him as he stumbled. She squeezed his shoulder, much more carefully this time, then released him.

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Thrude's gaze wandered to the towers of stone and steel and glass surrounding her in all directions. [bg=#0000BF]"BUT CAN THIS TRULY BE MIDGARD? WITH SUCH GRAND PALACES AS I HAVE ONLY EVER SEEN AMONG THE GODS? WHAT COULD MORTAL MEN AND WOMEN HAVE OFFERED THE DWARVES IN EXCHANGE FOR SUCH WONDERS?"[/bg] She glanced back at the crowd, evaluating each person individually in rapid succession, and raised an eyebrow. [bg=#0000BF]"YET MIDGARD IT MUST BE. FOR NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEE LOOKS FIT ENOUGH TO DRINK OF HEIDRUN'S MEAD!"[/bg]

The people's expressions of wonder faded to quizzical glances as the icy winds began to blow and the snow began to fall. Thrude's eyes narrowed into a glare at the sky. She turned back down toward the gathered crowd. [bg=#0000BF]"FLEE TO YOUR CHIEFTENS, MORTALS! TELL THEM TO RALLY THEIR FINEST WARRIORS AND BEG TO WHATEVER GODS THEY KNOW, FOR THE DIRE WOLF, THE TRICKSTER'S FOUL GET, NOW STALKS THIS LAND!"[/bg]

The crowd stood motionless, shivering and whispering to each other. They stared, at both the freak blizzard erupting in their midst and the screaming woman who looked and sounded like she belonged on stage at a Renaissance Faire. "Is this for a movie? Some kind of viral marketing campaign...?" More than one onlooker held aloft a camera-phone.

Sparks shot out of Thrude's eyes. [bg=#0000BF]"QUICKLY, NOW, LEST YOU ALL MEET HEL TONIGHT!"[/bg] She hefted her mighty axe into the air. The blade was now coated in frost, the runes along the edges glowing as lightning crawled between the runes. She smashed the axe down onto the sidewalk, carving a groove several inches deep and sending chunks of charred, flash-frozen concrete into the air. [bg=#0000BF]"FLEE, YOU FOOLS!"[/bg] Those people who had not already sought shelter from the falling snow now ran from the goddess's wrath, even if they did not comprehend her warnings.

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Thrude raised her enormous battle axe above her head, the blade pointing to the sky. The wind blew even harsher, sending her braids shooting up around her where a moment ago they were merely floating and bobbing gently. With preternatural speed, the clouds rolled and stretched, rushing to cover the sky. They shifted from white to grey, then darker grey, and then almost black, the darker colors spreading from the center outward, like oil dropped into a pool of water. In unison, every cloud in the sky over Midtown opened up and started carpet-bombing the earth with raindrops, flooding the streets. Thunder roared across the sky. Bright blue and white bolts of lightning leapt from the axe blade and slid down the length of Thrude's body, spiraling down her limbs to punch divots in the concrete beneath her feet.

Thrude closed her eyes, tilted her head to the sky, spread her arms, and grinned from ear to ear as she felt the sting of the wind and the rain across her cheeks. She inhaled deeply, a pleasant chill running up her spine. Then she took off running, far faster than any human, almost a blur. She leapt from the tops of parked or abandoned cars, bounded up to lampposts, swung up to grab the windowsills on the sides of buildings, pushed off from there back to the roof of another car, all the while scrutinizing her surroundings for any sign of the white wolf's passing. She happened upon several of the hulking iron carts that had been turned over, their pack beasts released or fled, and some of the strange metal trees that lined the streets of this palace had been smashed and torn from the ground. But the Fenrir himself eluded her gaze.

She shouted a challenge above the howling wind and thunder. [bg=#0000BF]"FOOLISH SPAWN OF LOKI! YOU WOULD DARE SUMMON A STORM AGAINST THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORM-LORD HIMSELF?! WILL YOU SHOW YOURSELF, AND FIND THE HONOR IN DEATH THAT YOU NEVER KNEW IN LIFE?! OR WILL YOU CONTINUE TO COWER UNDER THE SKIRTS OF THE MORTALS LIKE A SICKLY PACK RUNT BEGGING FOR SCRAPS?!"

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The combination of the fatal traffic collision and the unseasonable weather had gained the attention of the mainstream media, but it would be several more minutes before they mobilized to give the day's events their direct attention. The grass-roots, "man-on-the-street" coverage, on the other hand, was both immediate and intimate. Most of the Freedom City denizens who happened to be working, walking, or driving by when the inattentive driver smashed his SUV into that cyclist and caused the pile-up in the oncoming lane, or when the "Ren-Fairy Viking supergirl" and "the giant wolf, seriously, like freaking Gigantosaur" appeared out of nowhere "like they just beamed off the Enterprise" had taken whatever shelter they could find from the storm. But there were a few too brave or curious or merely attention-hungry to be deterred even by "a hurricane" that "no joke, just dropped right in the middle of town." Those few braved the storm, using camera and cell phone, huddled under jackets or improvised trash bin liners, to document the events unfolding before them. Blogs and social networking profiles erupted into a flurry of reports and responses.

One such intrepid, if amateur, reporter had a camera trained directly on the street where Thrude stood upon the overturned bus as she shouted her challenge. He muttered to himself in confusion and disbelief, and then jumped back and nearly dropped his camera when a giant pile of snow that he'd assumed covered a row of parked cars suddenly stood up and started walking. He tried to shout a warning to the woman with the giant axe, but by then the mountain of snow was already charging. The cameraman had, in his adult life, laid down and made snow angels smaller than the hoofprints left in the dire wolf's passing.

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The wolf's massive jaws snapped shut around the young goddess, row upon row of teeth as long and sharp as swords crunching and clanging against her silvered-steel armor. Fenris effortlessly lifted his snout back up into the air, seemingly oblivious to the weight of Thrude's body trapped between his teeth. For the most part, rune-etched plates covering her body held up under the wolf's assault, refusing to be pierced or even dented as jaws that could crush diamonds into powder squeezed and tore at them. But strong though her armor was, it was not all-encompassing, and one of those porcelin spears found a gap, plunging into the bare flesh under Thrude's arm. Fenris shuddered when he tasted the first drops of her blood fall upon his tongue.

The warrior-goddess flinched, grimaced, and struggled to pry the wolf's mouth open. But only her arms below the elbows, her legs below the knees, and her head could feel the open air, so overwhelming was the great beast's maw. She strained and flexed and slammed, but she had no leverage. Fenris would open his mouth just enough so that he could grind his teeth over each other, trying to saw Thrude into bits. Another fang found its mark, slashing open a gash in her thigh. The beast's freezing breath cooled her blood, slowing down its release, but still it flowed.

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[bg=#0000BF]He's killing me.[/bg] Thrude would have spit the words upon the ground if she had said them instead of merely thinking them. [bg=#0000BF]A battle against the great beast foretold to be the doom of the All-Father himself, that would be a fine death. But not without having even left my mark upon him. And I simply don't...want...to lose! Not to HIM![/bg] She clenched her fist around the ebony haft of Vendrvapn and gritted her teeth. [bg=#0000BF]Remember what he taught you...usually, you "push" the power...but sometimes...sometimes you have to..."PULL!"[/bg] A ball of lightning erupted, not from the clouds or even the great runed axe, but from inside Thrude's own heart. Pulsing blue and white bolts pierced first her flesh, and then the Fenrir's, slithering around the fell beast's head. The wolf whimpered and howled, more from surprise than pain, shaking his head rapidly from side to side. Every window on the street rattled. Growling and glaring, Fenris whipped his head to the side and released his grip, sending Thrude flying into the stone wall of an apartment complex halfway across the street. He threw her with such force that her body punched a hole through the second-story wall. The impact shattered the adjacent window, covering the living room floor in shards of glass and chunks of broken masonry and drywall.

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Laying on the living room carpet, Thrude felt no pain. Her father had taught her the way of the berserkr, how to stop resisting the pain and the terror and the rage that welled up inside all living things when their lives were at stake. How instead to pull open the floodgates, to not just let the waves crash but to ride those waves to victory. With the wild-eyed stare of abandon which only crosses the faces of most modern humans while riding a roller-coaster, she stabbed the haft of her axe into the floor and pulled against it, dragging herself to her feet.

Thrude raised Vendrvapn above her head once more. She slipped into her native tongue as she taunted the great white wolf. [bg=#0000BF]"?!"[/bg]

Another series of thunderclaps rolled across the sky, and a column of electricty as wide as a townhouse burst forth from the clouds and cascaded down to the ground. Unlike a normal bolt of lightning, which appears in an instant less than the blink of an eye and then vanishes, these clouds poured down a waterfall of electricity for several seconds.

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Fenris dropped to his belly and rolled to the side with surprising agility, but the lightning altered its course in mid-air to match the great wolf's movements. The bolt speared him through the chest and turned the road beneath him into a smoking crater, which rapidly filled with a slushy mixture of the rain and snow which still bombarded the streets. The white wolf staggered under the heavenly assault, oblivious to the world around him or even the raindrops bouncing off his fur as he clawed at the slush-covered pavement to keep his footing. Twin patches of fur on his back and belly, circles as wide as cars, were scorched black, the skin under them burned raw and bloody, and his vision blurred into twin images of everything he saw.

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Thrude loosened her grip on the haft of her axe and playfully twirled it around in her hand for a moment, then gripped it tightly once more and jumped out of the whole where someone's living room wall used to be and landed in a crouch on the snow-covered sidewalk below. Kicking her way through the snow, she roared incoherently and sprinted toward the colossal beast. [bg=#0000BF]"YAAAAARRR!!!"[/bg]

The Fenrir's vision coalesced back into a coherent image just in time to see the wild-eyed Nordic warrior leaping up over the crater her summoned lightning had blasted into the street, swinging her great runed axe with a single hand in reckless abandon. The axe sliced through the air as she jumped, up around her head, behind her shoulders, and back upward toward his chin in a full 360-degree arc...

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Another thunderclap rang out across the city as Vendrvapn connected, carving a bloody canyon up the wolf's throat and under his chin across his jawline. A spray of thick, oily, cobalt-colored blood splashed across Thrude's armor, the wolf's fur, and the snow-covered ground below. The impact as Thrude slammed her axe up under the wolf's head cracked his jaw in several places, broke several of his many teeth loose, and knocked his entire titanic bulk up into the air. More windows shattered, letting the torrential winds blow rain and sleet into the adjacent condominiums. The giant white wolf flew feet over head over feet across the street, smashing an entire corner off of an apartment block before breaking through the street-facing wall of an adjacent restaurant. Upper floors from both buildings collapsed down onto the levels beneath them. Water gushed down from torn-open pipes but froze before it hit the ground. Fenris groaned and rolled onto his side, sending shards of glass and slabs of brick and drywall falling to the cracked tile floor.

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The Fenris Wolf rolled over onto his belly and heaved himself back upright, growling the whole way. He rotated his torso and head rapidly back and forth to shake the debris and blood from his fur. Then, to the great surprise of what few witnesses remained, and despite his lupine anatomy that should have prevented it, he spoke, though not in a language any of them would understand. [bg=#000000]""[/bg] His dark blue blood continued to drip onto the snow beneath him. [bg=#000000]""[/bg]

Fenris lunged down at an abandoned station wagon and clamped his mighty jaws around it. His fangs tore holes in the doors and the hood. The windshield cracked and the frame bent under the pressure. He lifted his head into the air, jumped into a turn to his side, and then flung the wrecked automobile into the air like a catapault toward Thrude.

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The impaled station wagon tumbled through the air, rotating nose to end as it sailed toward Thrude. Rather than ducking or weaving to the side, or turning around and fleeing, she sped toward the improvised projectile, dragging her axe along the ruined asphalt behind her. The blade sliced a trench several inches deep into the pavement as electricity danced between the runes lining the edge. As the car began to lose momentum and descend, Thrude jumped up directly into its path, bounding over three meters into the air.

At the last fraction of a second before goddess and automobile collided, Thrude grabbed the haft of her axe with both hands and swung the massive blade down. She didn't even look at the car, staring instead directly into the white wolf's hate-filled eyes. Rending steel and shattering plastic, Thrude sliced the station wagon cleanly in half.

The car hit the ground in two pieces and kept on rolling for several meters behind her. Thrude landed on her feet, her left arm tucked against her chest while her right arm held her axe outstretched. The wind still raged, and the snow piled upon the ground nearly reached her knees, but neither did much to muffle the sound of her feet slamming into the ground. Her glare at the Fenrir never wavered for a moment.

[bg=#0000BF]"The people of Midgard will remain under the protection of the Aesir. Their best and brightest will continue to fill our ranks. And the gleaming halls of Asgard will stand strong and proud, a shining beacon of hope to all the Nine Worlds, long after I have cast your broken corpse back down into oblivion where it belongs, with the rest of The Traitor's foul get."[/bg]

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Still holding Vendrvapn outstretched behind her, Thrude took off running, her glare still transfixed on the white wolf's ice-blue eyes, each one of them more than a meter across. Trails of her own blood flew into the air in her passing, still flowing freely from the punctures inflicted by the wolf's fangs, but she was oblivious to the chill wind stinging her flayed flesh, and the blanket of snow covering the streets did more to hinder her passage. The great wolf snarled, baring his fangs, and dug his massive paws into the snow, bracing himself to meet her charge. Once more she leapt into the air to face the giant on his own level, but the cunning wolf anticipated her attack, dropping to his belly at the last second. The swipe of her mighty axe sliced a few feet off the top of his fur, but the white wolf's flesh was left unscathed.

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The Fenris Wolf snorted, inhaled, and half-howled, half-hissed. A swirling cyclone of snowy wind erupted from his maw. The cloud of shimmering ice crystals flew over a hundred feet, expanding outward. Everything in their path was frozen in giant blocks of ice, like mosquitos trapped in amber. Thrude, having over-extended herself when she missed her swing, was left off-balance. She dropped to the ground and rolled to the side away from the blast, leaving a small canyon in the snow. But the fell frost had already fallen upon her. The light dusting of snowflakes upon her flesh expanded into giant ice crystals, the points rising in all directions, interlocking with each other, solidifying into a web of solid ice stronger than steel, harder than diamonds. The ice enveloped one of her arms, fused her leg to the ground. The great white wolf laughed, then raised his front paw up under his chin to wipe away more of the cerulean blood that continued to pool underneath him. His chuckle turned into a flinch and a growl. He lazily crept toward his embattled foe.

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As Thrude struggled against the fell ice which now rooted her to the ground, she felt her berserk state evaporate like the morning dew. Suddenly the entire world came rushing back in, like being greeted with a the roars of a cheering crowd after coming up from under water. The stinging pain of her wounds, the aches on her bones, the ice so cold its touch burned even The Daughter of Storms, the previously ignored sensations threatened to drown her. Her shoulders sagged. She smashed the fist of her off-hand into the ice still expanding around her, but succeeded only in tearing open her own knuckles and painting the ice with her own blood. She brought one frozen limb down against the other, but it refused even to chip.

The wolf's mocking laughter infuriated her. [bg=#0000BF]""[/bg]

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[bg=#000000]""[/bg] The Fenris Wolf exhaled again, unleashing another frozen plague. The crystals enveloped the goddess completely this time, encasing her from the neck down in solid ice. Every muscle in her body was tensed, and the ice was so thick and unforgiving that she lacked even the room to relax them. [bg=#000000]""[/bg]

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Thrude inhaled as deeply as her icy corset would allow, and grunted, pushing and pulling against her crystal prison with all her might. But the battle had taken its toll on her. The ice did not so much as crack. She lifted her head, grinded her teeth together as tightly as she could, tucked her tongue up against the roof of her mouth, and smashed her chin down against the ice. Her golden braids flailed up and down as she kept hammering her chin down on the ice. The skin over her jaw split open in a dozen tiny cuts, but the fell ice held firm. [bg=#0000BF]How many thousands upon thousands of humans, men and women and children alike, will die in terror and pain in that monster's gullet if I fail this day...how many will drown in blood if I am weak?[/bg] Thrude gulped, opened her mouth wide, and bit down on the ice beneath her chin. The ice would not give. She kept biting, changing angle and location as rapidly as she could, trying to bite even a small chunk free.

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The Fenris Wolf loomed over his foe, snorting in derision at her continued efforts to destroy the icy prison with which he had trapped her and laid her low. "" The white wolf slowly inclined his head until his nose lay within a foot of Thrude's face. Then his jaws snapped closed around the upper corner of the icy stalagmite, biting a chunk free. He missed Thrude's hand by inches, but with a tug he tore Vendrvapn from her grasp.

The fen-dwelling wolf of legend thought briefly to throw the massive rune-etched battle axe to the four winds, so that his foe would know just how hopeless her situation truly was. But he did not think to remember that a weapon such as this could only be lifted from the ground by one who proved worthy of it. And Fenris was anything but worthy. The moment he pulled Vendrvapn from Thrude's grip, the axe plummeted to the ground like a stone sinking into still water. It had been wedged between two of his teeth, and those teeth broke in half under the axe's pull, clattering to the ground in a shower of blue blood. Fenris howled and screamed at the heavens, frantically licking at his torn gums, pressing his cheek against his shoulder in a futile attempt to numb the pain.

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Thrude took a short break from her efforts to laugh heartily at the great wolf's misfortune. [bg=#000080]"And just how many pieces of himself will 'Death' bury in that grave with me? Mayhap I should merely stand aside, and let your own incompetence be your undoing? How can I kill you, Wulf, when your own incompetence seems so intent on striking the death blow?"[/bg]

The white wolf's ill-fated maneuver had finally proven that the ice was formidable, but not invincible. Thrude's right hand tasted open air once more. As she taunted the wolf, Thrude twisted and flexed her wrist, bending her fingers down to finger the cracks in the ice around her arm, desperately trying to pry them apart, to pull even the smallest piece free.