A couple of days after their encounter with the bandits Jack and Nathaniel reached the snowy biome. The transition was very sudden, as to be expected from Minecraft biomes. Right as they crossed the biome border the temperature dropped sharply and snowflakes started falling down onto their heads.

They put on additional layers of clothes below their chain armor to keep themselves warm, they also had a warming potion for emergency use only. At night they cleared a small area of snow and lit a campfire. They still had plenty of rations packed so they didn't go hungry.

The snow biome was much quieter than the road they had walked on before, the snowflakes in the air muffled sounds from far away, if there even were any. The only thing the two of them heard were the sounds of their footsteps, their armor and their breaths. Trees were only sparse and the terrain was generally flat, there were only a few hills here and there so travelling was easy for now.

On the third day in the snow they came across a rock formation that stood inexplicably out in the open and looked too angular not to be man-made. Jack speculated about what its purpose might be. Maybe it was a waypoint or some kind of obscure monument, maybe it was a memorial to a war that had been fought here. From what little of the server's history Jack had heard he knew that there had been many of wars, especially in the early times. The rock formation could be any number of years old, decay was inconsistent at best on the server.

Most importantly though, the formation was marked on Jack's map and told them that they were a third of the way through the snow.

"A fourth." Nathaniel corrected. "We don't want to go through the Cauldron."

On the eighth day of their journey they woke up to an unusual amount of wind and an extinguished campfire.

"That's a snowstorm." Jack muttered.

Nathaniel said: "Yeah. We better get moving, we don't have the tools to build a shelter here so we have to find one."

Jack asked: "A cave or something?"

Nathaniel nodded.

Over the course of the next couple of hours the temperature dropped dramatically, the wind picked up even more and the snow was now falling so quickly that it almost completely obscured their vision. It also didn't help that the chain links of their armor went stiffer and stiffer as ice formed on them.

Over the howling of the wind Nathaniel yelled: "This doesn't look good for us."

Jack didn't bother answering. He had a hard enough time wading through the now knee deep snow while constantly hitting his chainmail to loosen the ice. Even though he did wear thick clothing, the cold was starting to get through to him, his fingers and toes were starting to get numb and his movements were getting sluggish.

He yelled to Nathaniel: "This would be a good time for the potion."

He saw Nathaniel nod.

Jack stopped and took his backpack off, undoing the ties was difficult with his freezing fingers. It turned out that while the ties were manageable, the screw plug of the potion however was not, they had never opened the bottle before and it was sealed completely shut and refused to budge.

Jack then desperately attempted biting through the glass of the bottle's neck, Nathaniel stopped him.

"That's Mencur-Besh made glass, you'll lose your teeth before it breaks."

Jack threw the bottle back into his backpack in frustration. He really felt the cold now and he could tell that Nathaniel wasn't doing any better. As his body cooled down further Jack could feel himself losing grip on his consciousness…

Only fragments of voices got through to Jack, mostly drowned out by the wind. He had the feeling of being moved somewhere, he was entirely numb. After what seemed like an eternity to him, the wind stopped and the voices were getting clearer, he felt a hint of warmth. Over time, the warmth increased and Jack felt the numbness in his torso and head subside, he still couldn't feel his limbs.

He opened his eyes, everything was blurry. The blurriness went away after blinking a few times. Jack saw a dark, wooden ceiling held up by a couple of interlocking logs. He couldn't move his head so that was all he could see. This was not the hacker's spawning building.

He heard a voice belonging to a man. "Look, this one's awake." Then again, this time directed at him: "Whatever you do, don't move."

Jack's jaw was still too frozen to speak so he tried to acknowledge by blinking.

The man leaned over him, he had short dark brown hair and a well-kept beard of equal length and color, his eyes were blue. He was holding the flask Jack had tried to open so desperately before losing consciousness. He gave Jack about half of it to drink. Almost instantly a wave of warmth flooded his veins, spreading from his heart outwards into his limbs. Sensation returned to most of his skin.

The man said: "You can slowly sit up now."

Jack did as the man said. He had been lying on a table. He then noticed that he was wearing only his lowest layer of clothing.

The man said: "Your stuff is safe and being dried right now." Then he added: "That might be your least worry right now though."

At first Jack didn't know what he meant but then he noticed a distinct lack of feeling in some of his fingers, as he looked at his hands he realized in horror that he only had half of them left.

Jack lacked the energy to properly panic, he just slowly asked: "Shouldn't that be hurting way more normally?"

The man nodded. "It should. But normally you don't get found by a healer either. Or at all."

Jack just said: "What."

"Give me your hands and brace yourself because this will hurt."

A pale light started radiating from the man's palms, Jack felt a slight tingle where his frozen fingers had broken off. The tingle quickly increased to a sting and only got worse from there. Jack clenched his teeth as he watched bones grow from the stumps, one digit at a time, the bones were followed by sinews, muscles and then finally skin and nails.

The man was visibly exhausted, he asked: "That is what your fingers looked like, right? It's the best I can do."

Jack was at a loss of words. He just nodded in disbelief and put his hands together, it felt like his fingers had never been gone. This was the first time he had actually experienced magic in person on the server.

As he turned around he saw that Nathaniel was also just waking up, a woman with long blonde hair and blue eyes was giving him the rest of the potion.

The man said: "I'm Daniel and this is my wife Lucy. I sensed you two out there and then noticed you getting weaker, we went and rescued you. It seems like we came just in time, your clothes were almost frozen solid and your bodies would have followed no doubt."

Jack didn't immediately say anything and instead inspected his surroundings some more. He was in a rectangular room in what looked to be a wooden house, the carpentry was expertly done. Two doors lead into the room and two windows were on the walls, currently the only thing he could see was a wall of snow. The ceiling and doors were unusually tall. The room he was in seemed to be the kitchen if the stove and the cupboards with tableware were any indication. The table he and Nathaniel had been lying on was also quite large, clearly made for more than two people. Two sides of the table had walls right behind them, instead of chairs there were benches on all four sides, which had blue cushions with red decorations.

Nathaniel sat up and said: "Thank you." After a short pause he asked: "You're from Rockhaven right?"

Lucy asked: "Did the clothes give it away?"

The greenish-brown clothing that Daniel and Lucy were wearing struck Jack as quite odd, his mind was unable to place it in any category other than "expertly made", he knew that he had seen something like it before but he couldn't recall where. After thinking for a few more seconds he remembered where. The man who had bought some sort of poison back in Redwater had been wearing the same type of clothes.

Jack and Nathaniel stood up and got off the table, then just looked at their saviors questioningly.

Lucy said: "The storm is still going on and won't stop for some time, we'll make you something to eat."

"Sounds good." Jack said.

Over the next hour Daniel and Lucy cooked up a stew with a variety of ingredients that Jack had not expected them to have. While it was natural for them to have meat, the range of vegetables surprised him, seeing that nothing would grow in the snow, they must have bought them off a trader who had taken the shortcut as well.

When the stew was almost done, Daniel sprinkled some kind of powder into it, a few seconds later Jack found out that it must have been a spice judging by the violent reaction of his own nose. They then sat down at the table and started eating, the stew was excellent if a bit too spicy.

Lucy asked: "So, what brings you into this area?"

Nathaniel replied: "We are mercenaries on the way to Rockhaven, or Rockhaven Port in my case."

Lucy laughed. "I used to be in charge of logistics in an army, so you could say that I'm familiar with the work. It was a couple of hundred years back but still."

Jack asked: "Used to?"

"The army disbanded after our enemy had been defeated. After that whole ordeal I had enough of the fighting and went to Rockhaven, which is where I met Daniel."

Daniel continued: "I used to be a professor at the Mage Guild's university, technically I still am but I prefer the life out here. I do miss holding lectures though."

Jack said: "This place is a bit large for just the two of you."

Daniel and Lucy looked at each other for a moment, then Lucy said: "We do receive visitors quite often, some from the Mage Guild, sometimes a few other friends stop by. We also offer shelter to travelers like you."

Jack nodded. "Makes sense."

After they finished eating, Daniel showed them the beds on the upper floor. This house really was quite large for being built in the wilderness and being only inhabited by two people. As Jack fell asleep he couldn't help but wonder what this house really was, he was certain that it was more than Daniel and Lucy let on. But for now he was content to have a warm bed to sleep in and to have all ten fingers on his hands.