As Pyro saw the wendigo emerge from the crimson shimmer they began to hyperventilate, sucking lungfuls of sour frozen air through the filter of their mask. The beast was like nothing Pyro had seen, it was dark, and cold, and bad. It brought forth things Pyro hadn't felt in years, things Pyro had all but forgotten the words for, fear, disgust, even sadness. That wasn't the part that truly horrified Pyro though, the part that shook Pyro to their very core was the whispering and snapping aura surrounding the beast, the aura that with reaching tendrils cut through the woods of frosted licorice and soft lilac sky, the tendrils that contained a dark world, a world of frost and cold, that had gnarled dead things, and no life in it besides the thing causing all this. This monster was trying to destroy the perfect world that Pyro lived in, Pyro had to do something, if they sat back the darkness might spread and leave this candy forest scarred forever. Pyro wanted to look away, they truly did, but they had to fight, they had to show the beast a little color, that was all, show the monster color and it will go away, just like every other thing that tried to ruin their world.
Pyro charged forward, flamethrower in hand, their feet passing through the fizzling and disappearing remains of the downed wendigo. By the time the team shook themselves from the stupor of seeing a wendigo decloak Pyro was too close and moving too erratically for others to fire without risking clipping Pyro, only adding the occasional snap of handgun fire when the opportunity presented itself. Pyro lit the beast up, dancing around it as the howling creature swiped at and tried to bite the firebug. Its joints creaked and groaned as the flesh sizzled into gristle around them. Pyro moved in closer as the beast began to slow, dropping their flamethrower and drawing their fire axe from their back, beginning to swing at the wendigo's flaming chest with a satisfying shwack accompanying each blow. Pyro could see the beast begin to kneel as its tendons burned away and its eyeballs boiled and shriveled, it couldn't see the long clawed hand sweep in from the side though, puncturing Pyro's torso, and with the last of the wendigo's strength lift the skewered Pyro to the beast's mouth and bite down.
Pyro's head fell from beneath the beast's jaws, all flesh melted away from the bottom of its mouth. The wendigo collapsed to the ground as the charred skeleton ran out of whatever hellish power kept it moving, the remains spluttering out in the snow leaving a cocoa dusted candy bones, its red and white striped peppermint teeth still touched to the Pyro's flesh. The team moved forward, as they saw the menace and their comrade had just fallen, Medic moved to inspect the skeleton of the beast, lifting up one of the elongated and warped limbs with interest. Heavy leaned down to respectfully tug the collar of Pyro's suit over a small sliver of exposed skin, waiting for respawn to take care of the rest. Spy made a beeline for the small black circlet on the skeleton's left wrist, he brushed some of the flaking carbon from the inviswatch and noted to the group, "'e cracked ze face, it shorted out when what was apparently my counterpart jumped in ze snow here. Now Miss Pauling, do you care to explain why it appears RED 'as made a rather… Unexpected appearance in this 'work retreat'?"
Miss Pauling watched the two bodies fizzle away to respawn for second before responding, "believe it or not four losses in a row don't earn you a vacation, no matter how poor the conditions. This was to serve as a test, first to see your response to meeting RED out of a battlefield, the second was to test your skills of improvised combat, which I am failing all of you on by the way. RED was shipped out here three days ago, we couldn't join them due to the storm that we passed through the tail end of, and unless you want to spend the night with me elaborating I'd suggest we rest up to figure out exactly what is going on tomorrow."
Demoman sat in the dark, looking out to the frozen scape surrounding them. It was his turn to keep watch as the others rested, as he had gotten some sleep on the way up. His ears were alert as he sat in the creaking rocking chair stiffly, nursing a now thawed beer out of habit if nothing else, one couldn't fully indulge in their habit up here, too much liquor would get you dead faster than going after Nessie with a fishing pole. He was nervous not because he had just seen two of his colleagues murdered in front of him, that was nothing new even if by a new hand, but because he knew almost nothing about the creatures they were facing. He considered himself quite the buff on the various spooks and ghouls of his homeland, it was frightening not to know just what to do, be it knock three times and stick out your tongue or touch some iron to it…
Then it hit him, the first beast had sucked up damage like a watered down glass of scrumpy, it had taken them blowing out its joints before they could repair, slowly getting sluggish, but as soon as Sniper started to whack it the wendigo gave up the ghost. Then Pyro, poor Pyro- God only knew what went through their head, managed to take that one down single-handedly. It made sense for such a wintery monster to be fearful of flames, but it should have healed and easily overtaken Pyro when they switched to their axe, but it got more and more rickety, whatever was pumping muscles back onto the charred bones up and disappeared as soon as axe met skin. It couldn't be blades, nothing that simple, but an old trick against fae in a neighboring country had been iron, and of course the catch all for spirits and spooks was a dose of silver, but what if that didn't carry to the new world's beasts? There was only one thing Demoman could decide on in a buzzed and paranoid state, steel was the wendigo's weakness.
However all the deduction in the world couldn't keep his eyelid from drooping at this point, he chugged the rest of his drink and clumsily weaved through the bed rolls strewn on the floor, doing his best not to jab a teammate in the side, and tapped Medic on the shoulder gesturing that it was his turn to keep watch and headed to his own roll for some well deserved rest.
"So what you're saying is that steel is tha trick? Aluminum won't work?" Scout said somewhat apprehensively, he was rather fond of his bat was reluctant to put it down for the small hatchet offered to him.
"If'n ya want to live it won't." Demoman turned on his heel carrying his Eyelander on his shoulder with a bottle in his free hand. He always acted a little funny with the sword, less interested in others than usual maybe, a touch hostile perhaps, of course the low and annoyed whispering emanating from the blade at the moment could have something to do with that.
Scout turned to Sniper and said, "ya know, that explains tha noise I heard in tha luggage on the way up."
"Really? I was too busy watching to make sure that git didn't crash me van and listening about spooks to do much listening to spooks."
They turned to look towards the erected dispenser on the porch behind them, the normal receptacle for miscellaneous bolts, bullets, metal had been removed to allow the metal arrows it now produced to drop to the ground, the shafts hollow tubes, making a tinkling sound as each dropped to the ground.
After Demoman had convinced the others of the wendigo's weakness they had gone about plotting their most efficient course of attack. Given that Sniper could work well with projectiles it was rather obvious to brew up some steel arrows for him to work with. Demoman had to get a bit more creative, his arsenal consisted of several smashed arrows bundled with a piece of string and stuffed into his grenade launcher. The others remained largely unchanged, be it their reluctance to leave their weapons or general inability to wield something befitting the bronze age, though Medic assured them that his bonesaw would suffice should it come to it.
Above the pre-battle hubbub Miss Pauling sat on the edge of the half-ruined roof. She held her phone with both hands, fighting to get a signal and with a series of voice menus that sounded suspiciously like the coffee boy she had disposed of for unknown reasons. The forcefully monotone voice buzzed out of the speaker, "accessing directory [Rose], press one to access battle statistics, press two to access respawn reco-" There was a sharp jab of a button and the voice continued to drone, "you have accessed the respawn records for team [Reliable Excavation Demolition], last respawn was accessed [2:37 a.m., today], subject [RED Spy]. Second respawn was accessed [2:25 a.m. today], subject [RED Sniper]." Here Miss Pauling expected to end the call and return to the opening choice but she sat through the awkward second of prerecorded silence only to hear, "third respawn accessed [12:05 a.m., two days ago], subject [RED Engineer]." From here she heard the voice repeat the final death toll from the last official match and she shut off the phone with a sigh of happiness to escape the repetitive and somewhat drugged sounding system; at least there wasn't any reason to access directory Violet, she knew BLU team's respawn statistics first hand.
She picked her way down the pile of lumber that was rebuilt at her request and after stopping to store her phone in the cabin lead the team out into the skeletal woods to where she assured them the RED cabin would be.