The Count of Frigost stood atop the remains of his Water Clock, bandaged hands gripping the damaged parapet in paralysed tension. As always, a fine powder of snow dusted over the landscape, the Count included. When this coat of unending white was left undisturbed, it looked almost lovely, like icing sugar sifted over a spice cake. But the biting cold of it burned and numbed you, the wind always seemed to fight you, and all the smells of Frigost's forests fell dead in the winter air.
Lovely, it was not.
There was something... dead... about the snow, in Harebourg's mind. Some intangible trait that made it more forbidding than picturesque...
Harebourg believed that feeling of unwelcomeness was a deliberate inclusion on the part of the winter's creator, Djaul. A cold designed to punish and weaken the mind. A cold designed to swallow up any sources of comfort in its icy maw. A cold designed to drive one to madness.
Frigost had become a hell disguised as an idyllic snow globe... one which the Count was sure Djaul shook up roughly each day before setting it back on his mantelpiece.
Fingers tightened their grip. Why had he allowed himself to make such an error? It stung to be tricked. Especially when one prided oneself on their ability to see through the schemes of others and turn them to one's own advantage...
He, the one who pulled the strings of even the most willful of his marionettes, had been made to dance along to Jiva's song without even knowing it. A rictus grimace spread beneath his cowl. She'd given him her word... Oh, how could he have misjudged so badly!
When the demon had come, all he could do was stand there, stunned into stillness. He'd opened his mouth to, ha ha, to reason with the beast; to use the opium words he used to manipulate mortals. Jacquemart turned his head to the side in a cringe. How foolish to even consider it! Not that he'd even gotten a word out before being struck down, buried under a cold so heavy with cursed magic, it nearly consumed him...
Fingers unclenched slightly as the Count drooped. He remembered waking at long last within his icy prison, the desperation and panic of breaking free... then to look out across Frigost, the fruits of his labour laid out in white and tasting the ozone stink of magic that still hung thick in the air, freezing time and the island in place. That moment haunted him, the realisation that he'd escaped one prison, only to discover a worse one. One every citizen of Frigost must share with him. Guilt bubbled in him... was it right to blame Jiva, when it was he who had believed what he'd wanted to hear? More guilt, a desire to act. Yet... it was all much too late now.
Jiva would not come. Xelor did not answer him, if indeed he listened at all.
The Count laughed a little, humourless and a little light headed. As for him, Djaul's spell had crippled him- to even attempt to use the Dofus in his state was futile; his magic unwilling or unable to gather at his command. There would be no help.
Frigost, abandoned by all those with the power to bring aid, was lost to the winter.
Fingers slide off the parapet and fall to his sides, disturbing the snow that had settled over him. Jacquemart looked out across the icy expanse of frozen wasteland that his beloved Frigost had become and sunk deeper into despair.