Author's Note: This is a story not meant to be accurate, it is meant only to give a tale. And it is my first "Forgotten Realms" fanfic.
Prologue
Origins
Arkan awoke in a cold sweat. His shortsword sparked blue right beside his bed of winter wolf's fur. The light blue color of his skin was pale in the campfire's light and the cliffside view of Icewind Dale from Kelvin's Cairn was quite a site as dawn broke. He glanced around admiring the area before focusing down at his shortsword, a gift from Auril the Ice-Goddess.
He grasped it into his hands and softly asked as he gazed upon its intricate runes across the blade's face, "Are you a blessing? Or a curse?"
The dream came to him, as it did nights before. His people being slaughtered at the hands of Auril's minions. Arkan could not remember why it was so, it was distant in his past. He was only a mere boy back then, around his thirty years of elven age. Yet his people who were great in ice-enchantments and ice-magics could not withstand the might of a group of Frost Giants which slaughtered them all.
"You're having that dream again," a girl -young in elven years as he was, sat across from him cross-legged and observing her friend. Calm as always, Katryna was waiting for him to awaken ever since just an hour earlier. Her light blue complexion also seemed pale in the fire-light but the dawn soon dispelled that illusion. And in that sunlight her long white hair and snow-blue colored gear gave her an elegant look, for an elf thief and all.
"Our heritage is of secret, telling of it to anyone but another frost elf would seal our fate at the hands of Auril and her allies, Talos and Umberlee." He dusted off his snow-blue tunic pants, leather belt, girdles, and all other brown leather armor from snow that fell from the recent night. Then he rose and turned to roll his bedding, tying it with a leather roped and harnessing it around his back.
Katryna stood up and used snow to douse what remaining heat came from the burning embers. Then tied her hair which reached down to her waist, with an iron clasp. She nodded to Arkan, signaling she was going ahead.
He sighed. She was good in advising him. Arkan had spent two days contemplating this dream, two nights now had he replayed it in his mind unwanted. Arkan replayed it in his mind again...
He was running down a path from Reghed Glacier in the east. His small village which defected from Auril only recently was set upon by a snow-storm. Slowly his surroundings were thrown into a haze of gray with spots of white shooting every which way. His companions Argos and Katryna held hands while they approached Arkan through the storm.
"We're not going to survive this, we have to head far north for the hills," Argus shouted through the blizzard. A strong current blasted a wooden shelter away, the family inside cowered as they were slowly engulfed unto the winds. Arkan was about to go save the child that hung on to a tree, but Katryna had stopped him, "You won't make it, the currents will get stronger and we'll all die if we stay here."
He considered the values, if he was try for the child, he would be lost also and two deaths were not going to make things any better. So he nodded solemnly. Katryna taking his hand, she guided both of them into a shelter where many of the others hid.
An older boy, Katryna's brother, Jethri, walked up to the three from the tunnels to the shelter chamber. "Sister, our parents are still out there. They have gone to Auril's Shrine for forgiveness," he said in a grim tone.
"What?," she said incredulously, letting go of Arkan and Argus. "I'm going back, they will end up bringing about our destruction if their prayers reach her. Did you not tell them of Auril's cold-heartedness? Did you not stop them?!"
Arkan and Argus exchanged glanced and shook their head, a grin across their faces. They both had a feeling they knew what she was going to do to Jethri.
And as Jethri shrugged in response to Katryna, tears brimmed in her eyes which soon coursed down her cheek. Frustrated and angry with Jethri's carelessness, she raised her right hand and slapped him hard across the face, leaving a purple mark.
The storm was getting worse. While Jethri tended to his bruise and the others in the shelter chamber, Arkan and Argus stifled their laughs at the sibling's exchange. Katryna did not mind any of them, nor was she about to walk out into the storm to meet Myrkul, the God of Death. She sat back against the limestone walls of the tunnel, holding back her tears as each passing minute gave her worry.
Argus kneeled beside Katryna to comfort her. The couple had been together for nearly a decade, they were good together. Pulling through hardships and pains, experiencing serenity and joy together. Arkan admired them, the love was there. But then after a few moments, Argus suddenly vanished.
The tunnel and everything around him faded away into grayness, Arkan was plummeted farther into the dream and ahead of time.
From a distance, behind the wreckage of a house. Arkan observed his past self and the other survivors continuing to rebuild their village after the storm had passed, two days later.
Jethri and a few Wild Elf Scouts in the region had come back to report their findings at the Auril Shrine. There was nobody at the Shrine, but the remnants of a battle between a few larger foes was present -blood and burn-marks all around. The shrine itself stood, but everything around it, including the pillars of ice that held the chamber up had all been broken. The chamber remained stable and intact, something was holding it up yet no one could identify who or why.
Then a bright blue nimbus of light lowered in the center of the village before Jethri and the scouts could speak with Argus or Arkan. All turning with arms raised to help filter the bright light from their eyes, all frost-elves knew what this was. And from this nimbus formed a female dressed in a frost colored dress ornate with jewels and a skin-tone that resembled her herald race.
"You all have betrayed me... the drow have gained strength in the area, driven the Frost Giants out, and you flee instead of fight," her voice was soft yet had a heart-stabbing coldness to it that caused a few to shiver if not from the cold. Auril turned around to face Jethri and his allies, "Your father is not amongst you any longer, he lead the retreat from battle... I have gifted your people with power, and you flee in fear! A weak race you all are!"
Katryna rushed out of a nearly built building in hearing Auril's words of her father. She tensed as she saw the cold look and hatred Auril cast upon her people. With fists clenched and eyes narrowed, she made her way towards Auril. Argus noticed his lifemate and held her at the shoulders, but a sudden force back him off suddenly where he saw none.
From a distance, Arkan noticed that Katryna had this fluctuating aura that began expanding in conflict with Auril. And that conflict was what made Auril turned her focus immediately to Katryna in shock.
"You!," Auril's nose wrinkled up in some disgust as she gazed upon the young frost elf, backing away in shock, "Katryna Bal'Thalas, daughter to that infidel Sultheraz. Be gone! Wretched being!" She screamed and disappeared. Everyone around was left confused, most were staring at Katryna.
Then time shifted forwards half an hour later. The earth raged, thundered, as from the icey haze, twelve heavily armored titanic creatures emerged -the Frost Giants. Arkan winced in remembrance of what happened next... and so he left the images alone.
At the base of Kelvin's Cairn, Arkan saw Katryna dismiss a heavily robed human just before she caught her friend looking at the exchange. She walked up, trudging through the thick snow in her winter-wolf fur boots in her dull expressionless look. Arkan slung the fur bedroll over his left shoulder and nodded to his friend.
As they walked into an underground cave at the outskirts of Termalaine, a town that is just one of the many small communities that stretched around Icewind Dale that made up Ten-Towns, Arkan sensed it was calm enough to ask, "Katryna, remember when you faced Auril years ago?"
She continued down the cave tunnels, using her low-light vision to guide her through the darkness, "Yes."
"You never answered us when we asked you what you did to scare Auril away," Arkan said calmly to her.
There was no comment from her, just as she was all those years ago. She was hiding something, Arkan suspecting a greater power involved since he played the events through his head. Whatever this power was, he was sure that it would influence their lives once again. Katryna stopped at a solid limestone wall which seemed impenetrable without pounding through hard enough that it would collapse the entire passage.
Without hesitation, they both walked through the illusionary wall. Arkan beginning to be a bit agitated since Katryna refused to answer, played his fingers across his sheathed blade to ease his thoughts, his frost-enchanted blade as cold as death in touch.
"The Loremaster has already begun," Katryna gave Arkan a sidelong glance as they emerged into a massive glacial chamber. Stalagtite formations of ice littering the ceiling as the stalagmites did on the ground. A group of young frost elf children gathered around an aged one who semed to be weaving a tale from what Arkan could make of the man's moving lips and hand-motions to the children.
Arkan himself sat where the children did, avid to learn of the history. But that was long ago, before he was ever able to learn of the Frost Elves' history -before the massacre of his people. And it was now that he expected to learn of his heritage, before he set out into the world to search for the others that escaped; one being Argus, the other being Jethri.
"Our people were the progeny of elves that existed far beyond the material plane," the old Loremaster said with closed eyes. Unaffected by time, he seemed only around the age of thirty in human years, but was really thousands of years old. He displayed a shimmering sphere before him, within the sphere were smaller spheres that were connected by translucent wires. "This, young ones, is the map of the Planes." He pointed out a marble near a blue one, this sphere of a hazy blue color. "Our ancestors were from this plane, of immortality and ice."
Arkan stood behind one of the children, while Katryna lay against a stalagmite formation nearby. Never did she truly care about the Frost Elven history, Katryna was advanced in her class. She had mastered the Ice Magicks long before either he or Argus managed to master Ice Enchantment on weapons. He half-smiled and shook his head a bit, Arkan knew she was disturbed by something, something changed her inside. Whether it be that cursed visitation by Auril before the massacre or the massacre itself, this change was not for the better it just scarred her attitude in relations to everyone around her, yet it still had not scarred her wisdom.
"With decades of careful planning and smuggling of powerful magic materials, Auril had obtained the way to travel and siphon beings from this plane of ice. Ice Elementals, Ice Trolls, Frost Titans, Frost Giants, and Frost Elves. The mass of creatures that were never meant to cross planes had come into the Prime Material Plane."
"I thought the Frost Giants were already existent in the Prime Material Plane?," asked a small young girl dressed in winter wolf fur.
The Loremaster smiled at the girl's intuitive question, a bit suprised at her keen knowledge. "Yes they were, but the more powerful of Frost Giants have the blood of the Pureblood Frost Giants. For all Frost Giants had an origin of power, that being the Plane of Ice."
A boy far to the right of the Loremaster, raised his hand before speaking which caught the old man's attention. "My father said the Plane of Ice does not exist. And he is one of the few respectable mages in the area."
Chuckling at the comment, the sage shook his head. "Your father is Erielus, is it not?"
The boy nodded slowly, not catching the point of the question.
"Your father was stubborn," he snapped at him, then laughing and slapping one knee. "Never had he listened to anything I have said, at least not taking it by heart." He calmed before giving his response to the boy's comment. "The Plane of Ice is hidden, a shadow of the Plane of Water. It took a Tiefling Sorcerer, a DemiGod, Lich, and a Silver Dragon to properly decipher its true location over an expanse of a century. But even then, it was lost at the hands of Githyanki, a violent race of planar pirates."
And the mass of listeners were silent. They knew the story much afterward, the strife between species, ultimately the information ended in Auril's hands. An enslavement by her followers' hands after a century of war that defaces most of the their homeworld. The arduous trek across the planes into this world, to serve Auril without question as her primary heralds next to the Frost Giants under her command.
A man, only a few decades younger than Arkan, rose up to ask, "And with all of our magicks, why not could we best Auril's minions in combat?"
The old one simply put out a hand in reason, "Because Auril was not the only god that battled for us. Our magicks were powerful, yet we were not the targets of death. Two other gods of ice from other worlds had hoped to seize our powers, and their battles had weakened the effectiveness of our spells."
"And our Plane imploded on itself after our mass exodus."
Everyone turned their head to Katryna, who did not look back, just lying back against the formation with a emotionless and lifeless look to her. The tone in her words was of eerie calm, none would expect a statement from her during history lessons since she refused to comment, yet now it shocked them all not only to hear her comment, but to know something they did not.
"I see you have been taught well," the Loremaster smiled.
Nodding slightly to no certain person, Katryna rose away from the stalagmite she was resting on and gave a two-finger salute, "I was taught by the best."
Gathering his arms under his robe-arms of blue and gold, Loremaster Trei'Des nodded to the young elven girl with a smile of agreement. "A shame your father is no longer with us, he was one of the first, our blessings go with him."
She didn't think much of the comment, she was already making her way into another tunnel parallel to the entrance of the chamber, which led downward. Arkan trailing close behind her, he wondered what she expected to find in the Arcanic Archives below if that was indeed where she was headed.
The magic illuminated walls of the Arcanic Archives gave a slight tint of light-blue across the stone bookcases. Thousands of books filled a massive chamber fifty feet all around, just short a couple levels more books compared to the Candlekeep library south of Baldur's Gate. Arkan began to feel the cool breeze now, colder than the frost of the surface above. The chamber was magically adjusted to the temperature, to the same temperature of that back in the Plane of Ice. The reason for this change in setting was because the archives were all secured documents of the ancient Frost Elves and had writings about all the planes and their denizens, Arkan could only guess that Katryna was here to research on Auril, even if he knew that she had known more about the goddess before.
Katryna disappeared between two bookcases, too focused on her objective to even notice Arkan following closely after her. Tracing her fingers over the spines of the icy tomes, she attempted to allocate a volume she remembered glancing at before. Stopping over a silver tome, its words shimmering at her touch, it read "Crafting Artifact Replicas" and that exactly what Katryna was looking for. Tightening her fingers around its spine, she drew the tome out and lay it on her right hand, while opening it with the other. A smile spread across her face as she looked through pages of wonderous artifacts that were easily copied, stopping on a page containing instructions for a Planar Amulet.
Arkan approached and looked upon the subject of her scrutiny, his brows furrowed in sight of it. Deeply concerned of what she was planning, he took the book in his own hands and snapped it shut.
"What do you think you're doing?," she screamed in protest.
Giving her his usual sly smirks, which everyone knew meant "Its for your own good!" Katryna ignored him and took the book back. Her eyes narrowing dangerously at Arkan. Katryna's wrath was legendary throughout their small clan, if any would even get into an argument with her, she had this energy which drained the remaining warmth from a person's body, which was not a good thing since Frost Elves had very little body-heat.
Withdrawing from further interruption to what Katryna was trying to do, Arkan folded his arms and lay back against the bookshelf. It would be a couple hours before they were actually done there, Katryna did some heavy research into the arcane, for reasons still unknown to the frost elf male.
"Alright, let's go," Katryna finally announced as she replaced the Arcane Metallurgy book back in its shelf. She seemed much more in a better mood than earlier, it seemed that throughout her readings she found something that peaked her motivation and emotions.
"Let's? As in we?," the thief asked, cocking an eyebrow in suspicion.
Grabbing him by the arm, she started dragging him with her. "I need your help, I think I know how to get Argus and Jethri back."