The cold was driving Vex'ahlia mad.
Native to more temperate climes, she had only barely been getting used to the crisp chill of the air in Whitestone, a chill that never quite subsided no matter the season. And then the curse had taken her friends, her family, and the cold got personal.
Quite literally, Taken them. It happened like this:
Vox Machina had gone to investigate an apparition reported not far out of Whitestone, an entity of snow and wind, swirling through fields and glades in an eldritch miniature blizzard. Grog had been the first one taken, rushing in a rage to slice through the white maelstrom of snowflakes. As the first flakes made contact with his axe, the snow coalesced into a figure, almost humanoid, almost feminine, fingers outstretched to the blade itself. A second wispy hand seemed to beckon, and Grog froze. Literally, froze. The blizzard swirled up to encompass the goliath's massive form; seconds later, the winds died down again, the snow withdrew into the smaller swirls they had first confronted, and where Grog had stood they saw in his place - well, a snowman. It had some resemblance to the fierce barbarian's features, but his snarl, his hulking shoulders, even the massive axe still swinging around to meet the wind, all were crudely sculpted from snow that had come from nowhere but the tiny tempest itself. Around its snowy boots, the grass of the glade still grew green.
Everything had happened rather quickly after that. Pike had descended upon her snowy friend with a shout and a clatter of armor, stretching out a hand with a spell of restoration readied. Vax had appeared from the shadows, poised to unleash his daggers upon the snow-being as soon as Grog had distracted it. Keyleth had rushed forward even as she began shifting into the form of a fire elemental, straight into the heart of the snow storm, ready to melt it from within. Scanlan had hopped down from the rock where he stood singing out something presumably meant to be inspiring but now rather unintelligible as the wind picked up again, howling as the snow swirled wider and wider, filling the whole glade, and the four of them all converging upon the snow-Grog had vanished in an instant behind the curtain of whirling white flakes.
And again, within seconds the winds died down. The snow swirled tighter and tighter back into the figure that had seemed to beckon to Grog. Around this bizarre sprite, now five snow-figures stood. The snow-being turned in a slow circle, taking in its handiwork. Then the thicket of flakes that should be its head seemed to tilt up towards Vex. Even with no sign of eyes in the depths of the snow, Vex could have sworn something within had caught and held her gaze for a moment. Flakes floated behind it like tendrils of ghostly hair as the figure raised a hand, beckoning once again. And then with a final gasp of wind, the snow swirled once more and disappeared from the glade, leaving only the snowmen behind.
Vex, high above the battle on her broom with Trinket still secure in her necklace, had looked around in the sudden quiet, wide-eyed, wild-eyed, frantically searching for signs of life. She had seen only Percival, standing distant near the tree line, with Bad News to his shoulder, its tip now drooping slightly from his aim, his eyes as wide as hers, his mouth agape as he took in the snowy scene. Vex flew down, clattered from the broom, and grabbed his arm.
"Percival!" she shouted until he looked at her. "What in the nine hells just happened here?"
Percy glanced beyond her to the snowmen, the grass still green beneath their feet. "I think…" he said finally, "I think this might have more to do with the Feywild, than the Nine Hells."
Relief (he knew something! They weren't completely in the dark) and frustration (could he just come out and say what he knew, for once, without the whole mysterious I've-had-a-terrible-thought act?) had flooded her in equal parts. "What?" she gasped. "Please tell me we aren't going to have to go to the Feywild again. Oh, balls, how are we even going to get there? Keyleth is -" And then it hit her. "She's not...they're not dead, are they?" Vex let go of Percy to run into the glade, towards the snow form that had been her brother.
She stopped just short of him - it? - the crouching sculpture, his hooded face somehow seeming less formless than the rest of them if only because the hood made it easier to imagine that she could actually make out the familiar face in the snow beneath the shadows. Or perhaps she saw only her own image reflected on the smooth and shiny surface. Shiny - ice. This close, she realized that the snow forms were already hardening to ice, light glinting off the frozen daggers of ice in Vax's hands much as it would from the real weapons.
"Wait!" Percy's hand caught at her shoulder, belatedly holding her back as he caught up to her. Vaguely annoyed, she shrugged away; couldn't he see she had already had the sense to keep a safe distance?
"I'm not going to touch anything," she assured him testily. Of course, now he was advancing closer than she had dared, adjusting his glasses for a closer look.
The sunlight glinted off the lenses as it had from the snow-daggers when he turned back to her, and Vex shuddered involuntarily.
"I am - reasonably sure," he said, fingers trembling as he lowered his hand from his glasses, "they're not here, but they're probably not dead either."
"What?" Vex squeaked, taking a step to the side to inspect snow-Vax from another angle. "Then what are these?"
"Placeholders, I think," Percy said in that placid and detached voice he liked to adopt when being rational meant being calm. "I recall stories, growing up here. She always had to leave something behind in exchange for those she took."
Vex turned to grab Percy's hands. "She? Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the Third, what do you know about this? And I don't want to hear stories, either. Just the facts. Tell me quickly."
"As quickly as I can," Percy sighed. "There's quite a lot. Let's...let's go sit down, Vex."
The stories said, she came from the mountains.
The stories said, she took the wanderers, the lost, but never the ordinary: the young and fair, the bright and brave, the charming and clever inevitably disappeared in her sudden snows. (Vex snorted, wondering a little if she should be offended at being left behind.)
"For her court," Percy had explained.
"What is she, some sort of queen?" Vex had scoffed.
"Of a sort?" Percy ran a hand through his hair, dislodging a few snowflakes that had been well hidden in the white strands. For a second, Vex's heart felt like ice at the thought of that hair, the glasses, the guns and his beloved coat and all the rest of him suddenly shaped from snow like the rest of their friends, their family. "She'd like to think so, anyway. I suppose she takes people just to have someone to feel like she's queen over. Whitestone's history blends with legend at some points, but anytime someone went missing, people would blame it on Lady Winter."
Vex scoffed again. "Lady Winter. That is so cliché."
"Well, I didn't name her. I'm just telling you what the stories say."
The stories said, for every soul she took, she left something behind. Statues of ice and snow that failed to melt. Bounties of winter wheat and berries piled where the footprints in the snow ended. A cruel largesse, offering much needed sustenance in the leanest months but at a cost those left behind were loathe to pay.
The stories said, those she took never returned, presumably living out their days in the comfortable decadence of Lady Winter's court, never again to suffer from the cold and famine she had taken them from.
"Well, bugger the stories," Vex spat, gripping her bow tighter. "We're getting them back."
Percy had nodded, standing from the log they'd shared for this debriefing and offering her a hand. "Of course, dear."
It had all happened so fast, but if the stories had anything useful to say, it seemed Percy and Vex had the luxury of time in getting the rest of Vox Machina back. The moment of danger was past. Lady Winter's captives would be trapped somewhere in the mountains, wherever she kept court (the stories were infuriatingly vague on that, Vex noted, as she questioned the residents of Whitestone about the legends while Percy pored through what remained of the castle library), and without Keyleth on hand to send them through a tree, it was going to take days, if not weeks, for the two of them to hike up there and search.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Percy said as they climbed through the foothills that first day after they'd completed their research, gathered their traveling kit, donned their warmest clothes, and set off toward the mountains, "if time passes differently in her court. It's most likely connected somehow to the Feywild, even if it exists on this plane."
"So...it might be like no time's passed, however long it takes us to find them?" Vex asked.
"Either that, or they've aged years while we walk for a week," he shrugged.
"Brilliant," Vex huffed. "I can look at my brother and see what I'll look like when I'm old and grey."
Percy flashed her one of his rare grins. "Still stunning, of course."
Vex looked back to him with eyes narrowed and a question poised to leave her lips - You talking about me or my brother? - but he was already moving ahead of her with his longer strides. Not before she caught the hint of a flush to his cheeks that might or might not be from the exertion of the walk, though.
Interesting. He was always hard to read, this one. Vex herself was so accustomed to flirting as merely another tool in a negotiator's arsenal (how often a well-timed wink had been the key to getting her way!) that she tended to read little significance into others' charming words. Percy always had plenty of those to go with the little gifts he'd made her; she'd taken that as a matter of course. He could certainly be charming when he had a mind to, but the thought and care that went into upgrading her arrows, adapting her broom, meant more to her than any honeyed words. Besides, she'd watched the man flirt with grass (hilarious, and actually fairly impressive for its results). After that encounter it was hard to forget how purposefully this young noble could choose his words.
But in the absence of the rest of Vox Machina, Vex realized as their trek into the mountains continued, Percival grew daily bolder in his flirting. With no spying ears but Trinket's to hear, courtesies and endearments, mingled with sly compliments, slipped more and more regularly into their conversation. Her heart warmed even as the air grew colder and colder, but she found herself stumbling more often than not over her efforts to flirt back. It was one thing to manufacture a wink at a shopkeeper if it might save her some of their hard-won gold. It was another thing entirely to fake her usual flippancy when her heart was bursting with sincerity.
It was also so very hard to express that sincerity. My heart, darling, has been yours for some time now. In the cold northern air, her voice froze every time she tried to say so.
So on they hiked, until the foothills gave way to the genuine mountain path, soon buried in snow. And the cold was driving Vex'ahlia mad.
They'd made camp under an ancient oak tree one night, its spreading canopy leaving a patch of grass beneath free enough from the snow for their bedrolls. In the middle of the night, Vex woke shivering despite Trinket's bulk at her back. Leaning up on an elbow, she glanced around to see their small campfire burned down to embers and Percy sound asleep on the other side of it, one arm flung over his face.
Vex burrowed closer to Trinket, drawing her blanket tighter around herself, but it was still bloody cold on this mountain, damn it. She shivered for a few more minutes. Then, with a sigh, she stood, wrapping herself in her blankets, and nudged Trinket to follow.
Percy did not stir when Vex dropped down beside him, nor when Trinket bellowed a complaint practically in his ear. She had to shake him gently to get his eyes to blink hazily open with a muffled "Wha-?" as his arm flailed away from his face.
"Make room, darling," Vex whispered.
"Vex?" He blinked at her, his hand stopping just short of her face as if to verify that she was corporeal and no dream. "What are you doing?"
"Freezing," she said plainly.
"Oh." He drew breath in a deep yawn, half sitting up and looking around. "It is rather chilly, I suppose."
Vex snorted. "Northerner. You're just now noticing?"
"To be fair, I am more accustomed to this climate than you."
"Well, I've convinced myself that's because you've got body heat to spare. So I'm here to avail myself of your surplus," she said airily, grateful for the darkness concealing the blush that rose to her cheeks when he raised his eyebrow at this.
"Fine," he said after a moment, somewhat stiffly. "Here. If we're going to do this, we may as well do it properly." He straightened the blanket he'd been lying on, spreading it out to accommodate two bodies, and then helped her arrange the rest of their combined blankets in a heap over them both.
Vex'ahlia lay very still as Percy stretched out beside her at last. "Comfy?" he asked, not quite looking at her as his hands hovered for a moment over the blankets before finding safe haven folded neatly on his chest.
"Very," she replied much too quickly.
"Well," he said after a much too long pause. "Sleep well, then."
On her other side, Trinket lowed quietly in her ear (echoing what Percy had just said, Vex imagined) and rolled onto his side against her flank. Vex smiled as she buried a hand in his fur for a moment. Warmth and loyal familiarity on one side. And on the other…
She snuck a glance at Percy. He was still lying perfectly still on his back, hands clasped to his chest. Against the faint light of their nearly dormant campfire, she surreptitiously studied the lines of his profile. Without his glasses, she thought, his nose looked entirely different.
"Vex," he said after several minutes, without turning or, as far as she could tell, opening his eyes, "are you staring at me?"
She grinned. "Yes, dear."
"Are you quite warmed up yet?"
"No, not really."
He looked at her then, eyes barely opening. After a moment's consideration, he raised his arms. Without pause, Vex scooted closer to snuggle into his embrace. She felt his faint sigh as his arm closed around her shoulders. "Better?"
She thought. "Almost." At her back, Trinket shifted, closing the newly opened distance to warm her again from that side.
"Almost?" he echoed, the stubble of his chin brushing against her forehead as he turned to see her better. "I hesitate to ask what you yet lack."
"Tell me a story, Percy."
"A story." There was a smile in his voice and a wisp of wistfulness. "Last time I mentioned stories, Vex'ahlia, you insisted on 'just the facts'."
"That was different. Besides, I don't want to hear about Lady Winter now. I'm sure I would get no sleep after that. Tell me a happy story."
He was silent for a minute. "Happy stories," he admitted at last, "are...rather far from my memory, these days."
"That's a shame," she said in a very small voice. Her hand on his chest rose and fell with his breathing till she realized her breaths had fallen into the same rhythm. "Happy stories are very important in times like these."
"I always found them rather less interesting than the stories where everything went wrong."
"Oh, perhaps. It's just an indulgence and a distraction, anyway."
"Distractions serve their purpose. If it's a happy story you want, I shall do my best to indulge you."
"Oh?" She smiled. "Making it up as you go, are you?"
"Well, I'll try. Scanlan would be better at this."
"Pity he's currently a snow-gnome."
"Yes. Well. We're going to rectify that, my dear."
"That would make a good story, Percy."
"Ah, yes. How could I forget that one? The legend of the last Lord of Whitestone and the Baroness of the Third House, assailing the mountains themselves in pursuit of their lost comrades?"
"Succeeding against impossible odds, of course," she said breezily.
"Well, to be fair, we don't know what the odds will be like until we get there."
"Don't be so literal, darling. In a story, they must be impossible."
"Fair enough. Against impossible odds, the Baroness persuades the Lady Winter to set free the newest denizens of her court."
"What, as easy as that? Percy, there ought to be some semblance of conflict. Don't we get to fight anyone?"
"Is this Vex'ahlia asking for a story, or Grog?"
She shoved at him lightly with the hand resting on his chest. "Oof," he grunted. "All right, then. Lady Winter is persuaded only after the Baroness, seated on her broom, rains down death from above on the fairy queen's minions."
"Oh, but what about Trinket?"
"Ah, of course. The noble bear...er...bites off the head of Lady Winter's war chief, I suppose."
Vex giggled, her fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt. "But surely His Lordship didn't let the Baroness go off into battle alone."
"The bear doesn't count?"
"No, I mean yes, I mean, I'm sure His Lordship was raining down death from the broom as well."
"Vex, your broom seats only one."
"In a story, darling, it doesn't have to!"
His sigh was as fond as it was longsuffering. "Fine, then. But that's not a strategy we're going to actually be able to carry off when we get there, you know."
"All the more reason to enjoy it in a story while we can."
"If you insist. It is...I'll admit...an enjoyable image."
"Oh, is it?" Vex smirked.
Percy coughed. "Anyway, despite this slaughter of her minions, the Lady Winter graciously releases her stolen subjects and everyone returns home safely, none the worse for wear except possibly a few years older."
"What about a kiss?" Vex spoke without thinking, then froze in the stillness of Percy - of both of them - holding their breath while her words echoed in their ears.
"Er - what?" he finally stammered.
"I mean, you know," she said quickly, "happy stories often end with a kiss. But this is, um, a special case, that's all right, it doesn't -"
The gentle pressure of his lips on her forehead cut her babbling short. Startled, Vex tilted her head up just in time for Percy to transfer the kiss to the tip of her nose. She stared until, with a faint grin, he drew her tighter against his chest and laid his head back with a sigh. "Go to sleep, Vex'ahlia."
Vex trailed a finger over his cheek, tucked her head back under his chin, and smiled. "All right, darling."