Frost Thornborn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Frost Thornborn spread his skins across the cabin floor and found the one empty space. He had hunted for the great beast for three winters. His suit was nearly whole now, stitched from wolf, snow cat, and ice fox. Only one hide remained to be taken, the beast every hunter spoke of and none had killed. But Frost had a problem no sharpened spear could solve. He had never seen the creature. He knew only stories, and the stories did not agree. He sat by the fire and listed what he had heard. Some said the beast walked on two legs. Some swore it ran on four. Some claimed it haunted the high passes, others the frozen lakes. If he chose wrong, he could waste seasons chasing a ghost while the real quarry slept somewhere else. Guessing was not hunting. He needed someone who had seen it. Outside, his pack bear lifted its white head and growled low. A fist struck the cabin door three times. Frost opened it to an old man leaning on a walking stick, snow caught in his white beard. A long scar split his face from brow to jaw. Frost knew him. This was the one trapper in the frozen wilds who had met the beast and come back breathing. "Aldric," Frost said. "I thought you were dead." "Many did." Aldric pushed past him toward the fire. He eyed the half-finished suit on the floor and snorted. "So the rumors are true. You mean to finish it with the last pelt." "I do. But every story I hear points a different way." Frost poured him a cup. "You saw it. Tell me where it hunts." Aldric drank before he answered. He touched the scar on his face with one crooked finger. "I gave it this. It does not walk on two legs or four. It swims. It lives under the ice of the deep lake, north past the three peaks. It comes up through the cracks to feed." Frost leaned forward. "Under the ice. No wonder no one finds it." "They look up when they should look down." Aldric set his cup aside. "I will draw you the way. But hear me. The ice there is thin where the beast breathes. Step wrong and the lake takes you faster than the teeth do." He dragged a burnt stick from the fire and marked the floorboards. Three peaks. A lake beyond. An X where the ice ran thin. Frost watched every line and fixed it in his memory. For three winters he had chased smoke. Now he had a place. When the old man finished, Frost rolled his skins and began loading the bear's saddlebags. The guessing was over. His quarry had a name, a shape, and a home beneath the ice. The hunt he had dreamed of could finally begin. So could the way it might end.