Death On Ice IC

[Tome]

You wake, a biting chill greeting your return to consciousness.

Beneath you, the ground is cold and somehow yielding. Your first twitching motion confirms it with a soft crunching sound - snow compacting. You can feel the cold seeping quickly into you even as the snow begins to melt.

At the very least, it soothes the pounding in your head.

No, not just your head. Every part of you, inside and out, is touched by the awful ache that seems to have been driven into your very bones. Your limbs feel heavy and leaden, weary in a way that seems strangely alien to you.

As the chill takes the worst edge of the ache, you feel four others nearby. You are not quite sure how, but they feel familiar. Safe, to a certain extent. Allies, at the very least.

You hear the wind stir, and the added chill makes you acutely aware of your lack of possessions. Including clothes. It really is most terribly cold, lying face down in the snow like this.

No matter how much the pain in your head insists otherwise, you will need to move soon, lest you freeze to death.

Painfully, you open your eyes. The glare of reflected sunlight blinds you for a moment and you shield your eyes until it passes.

Looking warily about, you take stock of your surroundings. A clearing of undisturbed snow lies about you, bound at the edge by a dense forest of snow-covered trees. Mostly pines and other evergreens. The sun hangs above you, cold and distant in a mostly cloudless sky.

Somewhere nearby a crow caws.

Where are you?

You cannot remember. Nor can you remember where you were before. Or anything at all. You cast your mind back, trying to recall something, anything, of your past, who you are, where you came from or how you came to be here, but it as if your past has been scoured clean. You look, and there is nothing.

No, there, at the edges of your dimmest recollection, is the faint murmur of something. A word? A name. Is it yours?