He woke up in an empty void, surrounded at all sides by inky darkness.
"Where am I?"
The man stood up and began aimlessly walking on the pitch-black ground.
Surveying the surroundings, he found a white spark lighting up a fraction of the darkness. Without any other purpose, he began walking towards the spark.
As he approached, he soon realized that it was far more than just a simple spark. Spires of ice stretched seemingly infinitely into the sky, shrouded in frost and shattered ice. A sole star lit up the spires, casting cold light down on the snow and ice.
Walking up to a spire, the man extended a hand, lightly brushing his finger across the surface.
Cold.
It was the first sensation he had felt since he woke. It was an unpleasant sensation, and yet soothing, in a way. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that he had felt it a thousand times before.
Something in those towers of ice was calling to him. Venturing deeper into the spires, the man ducked under a low-hanging spike of ice, before tiptoeing around a wall of spikes growing out of the ground.
It only got colder as he moved on.
Inevitably, he reached the center. Taking a moment to rest in the cramped clearing, he looked up. A white-haired bunny-girl floated in the center, tendrils of ice snaking from her body and constricting around the surrounding spires.
"Hello?" Words he knew, but never remembered saying.
No response.
Standing up, he walked over to the girl, before lightly tapping her shoulder.
A wave of unbearable cold came over him, and he fell to the ground. The world rushed to him in an explosion of color.
Frostnova was having a very bad day. She had been shocked awake by some strange sensation tingling through her body, and her Arts were acting up again – and to top it off, she had a splitting headache.
"Great." With a flick of her wand, her Arts abated slightly, and she set to work making herself some breakfast. After a few attempts, she soon had a roaring fire, and hanging a dinged-up pot above it, she began cooking a soup.
Hastily dumping half of the vegetables in, she walked away and let the fire do its work. She didn't want a repeat of last year's "Ice Cube Incident".
She let out a light chuckle at that. Petrova had great fun trying to coax the carrot cubes out with an icepick.
"Hello?"
Shocked, she turned around. Nobody there, just empty tundra. Her Arts flared up, further chilling the frozen landscape. "Who are you?"
"I'm not so sure myself."
"Where are you?"
"In your mind?"
"Well then get out!" Frostnova almost-yelled.
"If I knew how, I wouldn't be talking to you now."
Frostnova sighed. As if barely surviving out in the tundra wasn't enough, now she was going psycho.
"Do you know anything?" Frostnova took a deep breath, calming her Arts a little. It wouldn't do for Patriot to give her another lecture on overusing them.
"For one, I know that if you project your thoughts, I can hear them. No need to talk."
"Why didn't you tell me that earlier?" Frostnova sighed.
"I'm figuring this out as I go along, okay?" It sounded exasperated… somehow.
"What kind of dumb ghost or whatever you are has to 'figure things out as they go along?'"
"Me, apparently."
"You're useless."
"You're useless." The girl "said".
Great, so now there was a very angry girl bearing down on him. Somehow, he felt like he had heard those exact two words so many times before.
"Should I shut up now?"
"Yes."
No longer trying to communicate with the girl, the man busied himself with trying to understand the body he was stuck in. He could feel everything; sounds, sights, smells, and the permanent frost that seemed to surround the girl – but he could influence nothing himself. Interestingly, there were some stones of some sort embedded in her.
Out of the corner of his – her eyes, he could see a small cast-iron pot hanging over a weak wood fire, bringing its contents to a boil. It was a simple station, and he had seen it so many times-
A round pot hanging over the fire, painstakingly tended by a dozen servants. The roaring fires grew at their ministrations, flames carrying with them the smokey scents of the wood.
-and it came rushing back to him, bits and pieces of forgotten knowledge returning. Hours of experience, condensed into seconds. A thought struck him. This could be useful.
"Frostnova? I may be able to help."
"Excuse me, what? Why?" Her eyes narrowed.
"I… know how to cook."
"The hell… Fine, help me with the soup." Through her eyes, he could see the girl walking back over to the soup pot.
"What do you have?" He hoped there was something useful, though he could make do with very little.
"Carrots, celery, bread, and a ton of melted snow."
"No salt, condiments or tools?"
"We've got snow, snow, and more snow."
"Okay. What are you doing right now?"
"Just throwing it all in a pot under the fire."
"I'll see what I can do." And soon, he was giving out instructions, which the girl followed surprisingly dutifully.
After the soup was finished, she sat down to eat, pulling out a spoon and eating straight from the pot.
"This is pretty good. Perhaps you can be of some use after all." Well, at least she wasn't yelling at him now.
"Thank you. Is there anything else you need?"
"What's your name?"
"Uh…" He ran through a mental list of names, before settling on one that just felt… right. "Andrey?"
"You don't even know your name? Fine, you're Andrey now."
"Sorry… What's your name?"
"Just call me Frostnova."
As the minutes passed, Andrey studied their camp through her eyes. All he could see were small tents, all tattered fabrics and rusted iron, with the occasional fireplace between them. On some of the tents lay weapons of various kinds; a crossbow laying in front of a tent, a curved longsword resting on the ground – in various states of disrepair, but still serviceable.
A… militia of some sort? He remembered the word, from… somewhere.
Beyond the camp there was only snow-covered plains, the occasional hill in rising from the ground. No other civilization, as far as he could see – the only other life present the patches of small shrubs.
"Sister! We've received the battle plans from Patriot!" A man, dressed in a hood and heavy winter garb, ran up to Frostnova.
"I'll be there right away. And have the remaining soup, it'll freeze soon anyway."
"Thank you, Sister!"
Frostnova began hurrying towards a large tent near the center of the camp, but Andrey's attention wasn't on that. Rather, it was on one word – "Patriot."
It felt familiar. Had he known this "Patriot"?
Frostnova walked towards the command tent, keeping a brisk pace. As long as her Arts didn't act up, her body was still perfectly healthy; something she felt Patriot often failed to realize, what with her repeated assignments to the rearguard.
But that was another problem for another day. Right now, the problem at hand was that her adopted father's battle plan had finally reached their camp, and they could finally begin their attack on the local mines.
The local mines had recently received an influx of Infected. Combined with the relatively low presence of Infected Patrol in the area, Patriot believed that the Yetis and the Shieldguards could bait the Ursus forces into an ambush, allowing them free reign over the tundra.
It was a risky plan, but if it worked, the payoffs would be immense.
Soon, Frostnova parted the flaps of the tent and walked in, taking her position at the back of the room – far away from any other Yetis. A prop-up wood table had been hastily assembled, and a large map made of crude fabric laid on it.
One of her Yetis – Dimitri – pointed towards a large X on the map. "This is the mine that Patriot is planning to siege. While he sieges the mine, we are to ready an ambush in the nearby forest – he moved his hand slightly north – here. Do you think there are any problems, Sister?"
"I trust Father's plan." Frostnova walked over to the map and studied it. "It'll take us a week to get there, and another to set up an effective ambush. If we move now, we have enough time."
Andrey suddenly piped up. "It won't work."
As the map came into his sight, the hidden puzzle pieces clicked into place.
An elegant scroll opened in front of him, displaying its contents proudly across the ornate wood table. He chuckled.
"The Last Wendigo… An impressive name."
Sitting down, he began to sift through the files.
Another deluge of information reached him, and the words slipped out of his mouth before he had a chance to stop them. "It won't work."
"And why won't it?"
He was slipping… somehow. Swirling red filled his vision and mind, as something else took control.
Something felt… strange.
"The Infected Patrol will not move out." Frostnova flinched, almost losing her balance as tendrils of red snaked into her eyes. "The current Infected Patrol is weak, stagnant and corrupt. They would much rather terrorize the citizens of whatever town they are stationed in then move out.
The voice was like an insidious snake, curling around her mind and strangling it. It took all of her willpower to stay standing, let alone resist whatever it was.
"Patriot is relying on outdated information. When he still fought alongside the Infected Patrol, decades ago, they were war-hungry, zealous warriors of the Empire." A pause, before it continued. "Not anymore. Likely, the Infected Patrol will do nothing, and your guerilla group will waste supplies on a futile attack."
"Who are you?" Frostnova struggled out.
And just like that, it was gone, the pressure on her mind rapidly disappearing and being replaced by the usual cold.
Andrey slowly awoke, finding Frostnova now standing among piled-up boxes of supplies.
"Since when did you become a military genius?" Had she been speaking, her voice would be dripping in sarcasm.
"What?"
"You very nearly knocked me out with those Arts."
"That wasn't me."
"You're telling me there's two of you in there?"
Andrey sighed. "I don't know. What happened?"
"It restrained my thoughts somehow, then gave some pretentious speech about how the plan was a waste of time."
"…Okay."
"So?"
"Well, go ahead with your plan, I suppose. I don't think that thing can be trusted. And even if you change your choices, it doesn't matter now."
"…"
"And I am truly sorry."
"…Fine. Apology accepted. Just try not to do it again."
As Frostnova busied herself with packing up their camp, Andrey was left alone once again. Instinctively, he wrenched himself from her senses and returned to her mindscape. He was tired.
It was cold there, and he was left terribly alone.