My name is Whitmore Latimer, and there’s plenty for me to regret in my life. I should’ve done one thing, shouldn’t have done another… such is the way of being a mortal, flawed as any. There is one thing I can never regret though, and it was leaving that cursed city of Luskan and taking my brother with me.
I hold no sentimentality for that garbage heap that calls itself a town. No one should ever subject themselves to such a life, in constant fear of violent gangs deciding to destroy everything you own on a whim, with no protection from a non-existent governing body, a hive of anarchy unchecked. The legends say the city was once much larger and under a sturdier oligarchical government, but I doubt it was any more or less filthy to the core. The people were simply able to hide it a little more easily. All the Spellplague ever did was show their true colors. What remained was what they truly were deep down.
No surprise my immediate “family” hails from the place. Might’ve been better if my grandfather hadn’t survived the Spellplague. Maybe then I would’ve been born to loving parents. Luskan itself was garbage, but if you knew when and where to hide, you could get through each day, usually with your stuff still in your possession to boot. What really pushed it beyond bearable limits was my upbringing. The man who called himself my father wasn’t of noble heritage. He was the illegitimate son of a pirate and his favorite prostitute, but from how he spoke you might believe dear old dad was the rightful king of the realm. So much misplaced pride… and when he married and had children, he expected us to be running the entire port town by the time we came of age. He made that clear to me, every time he beat me over the head with increasingly heavier blunt instruments when I went out of line. Mother didn’t help any, because she ran off, without bothering to take her children. My younger brother, Norfire, was spared the abuse for a time, because he was still too young, but father didn’t show him any sort of love or compassion, just neglect. It was only a matter of time; he was going to eventually face the same abuse I’d gone through for years… and I couldn’t stand the thought. I kept promising myself that I’d run away, since before Norfire was born, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But then the day came when father finally tore away his façade and slapped my brother across the face. The simplest in his arsenal of corporal punishment, but it finally pushed me over the edge. It was bad enough when he did it to me, but not Norfire. Not my little brother.
I had to take action that night. Not only was I concerned that I would have simply killed the old bastard if I simmered in my rage any longer, but that night was the same one of every tenday where he spent the evening getting drunk at the pub until dawn. He always threatened to find me and beat me to an inch of my life if I ever tried to run off, and the threat had done its job for many years, but not that night. By the gods… I remember it all so much more vividly now… is that a gift or a curse? I suppose either way I can be as forthcoming as possible about it…
I ran up to Norfire’s room, he was quietly laying there, staring out at the cracked window, fogged up and smattered with dirt and debris. He could never get away with cleaning it, but he always made an effort to look outside beyond the muck, just to see more of what was out there. It wasn’t melancholic for him, not at such an innocent age, he did it purely out of childlike wonder… but I knew what would happen if I did nothing. I knew what would happen if I remained passive to father’s beatings and aggression. That wonder would change to depressive pining soon enough.
“Norfire… we’re going,” I’d said, quickly moving to pack the few necessities he could carry by himself.
“Going? Going where?” He asked tiredly as he pushed himself off his ratty excuse for a mattress. I wasted no time in handing him the makeshift bindle I’d scrapped together, taking his hand and scrambling for the door.
“I… don’t know,” I’d said, and I really didn’t have any idea. I’d never really thought to plan for something like this. The motivation to leave was never enough for me to plan things until that breaking point came about. All I knew was we were running off and not looking back. That old drunk wouldn’t have the heart to chase us if we were out of town, much less so if we went up north. If he somehow did pull off any attempt to retrieve us, he’d assume we’d have headed southward, the temperate regions of Faerun, not the frigid northern outskirts. He wasn’t the danger to us any longer, I knew it for sure when we stepped out of that city and a wave of freedom seemed to wash over me with every successive step. That being said… there was a new danger for us, perhaps not as oppressive, but, arguably much more dangerous.
The roads leading into Icewind Dale are treacherous for even the most adept adventurers, to say nothing of a couple young, malnourished human children. We got lucky those first few days, nothing seemed interested, or perhaps they were waiting for us to keel over and scavenge the remains. Unfortunately, I hadn’t exactly had much in line of food, I only had the chance to pack some scraps before we set off, and we were fresh out by then. Worse off, the closer we got to Icewind, the colder it naturally became. Our one saving grace was that we were still in the midst of the summer season, so occasionally the air wasn’t agonizingly freezing. That all just served to give me a little more time to figure out how to hunt for food… or so I rationalized.
I was foolish, a literal child, with no experience in surviving the harsh wilderness. Necessity or not, I’d never hunted once in my life, and the best weapon I could muster up was the stick that carried my bindle. Even under my youthful naivete, there was a part of me that knew I was going to fail. Still, I didn’t have the nerve to just sit prone and wait for my brother and I to freeze. I had to try. I didn’t want to risk Norfire getting hurt in my efforts, so I simply had him lay low near the road we were walking along until I came back.
It appeared that daring to defy such odds upset some god of karma, as the one creature I managed to find in my search was a yeti of all things, and it wasn’t too happy that a sniveling little human child had found its hiding spot in the tall grass. Ignorant child-me also made it a point to look the monster right in the eyes, leaving me completely paralyzed and just ripe for slaughter. That should have been it, the end, “nice try, hope you have some better luck in the afterlife, kid,” but I guess fate had its fill of screwing us over. Before the yeti could strike, something sharp slashed across its neck, and its head came tumbling down, the rest of it following suit.
Standing adjacent to the spot the vicious primate once stood, with Norfire standing right beside him, was an elf, still wielding his sword, the blade freshly dripping with the blood of his recent kill. He was draped in hide and leather armor, his skin was a light cerulean, and that color seemed to bleed into his clothing, along with his weapons and gear, making him almost look like a living statue of opaque aquamarine. He looked down at me, then over at Norfire, who looked about as traumatized as I felt regarding the near-death experience… with the added bonus of seeing something else get killed right before our eyes. I was helped back onto my feet as the paralysis steadily faded.
“You are the brother to this one?” The elf asked me as he motioned to Norfire. I gave him a speechless nod, something he mimicked as if putting together the pieces regarding our situation.
“You children will not last in such unforgiving lands… Are you without guardianship?”
“Y-yes…” I managed to stammer out a verbal response that time, and the elf nodded again with a sort of grunt to accompany it. We all stood there quietly for a moment, said moment feeling a whole lot longer than it likely was. This elf was pondering something, but I couldn’t hope to guess what thoughts were going on in his wizened mind.
“I shall offer you a choice, young human,” he eventually spoke out, kneeling down to speak to me at my level. “There are caretakers in the nearest settlement that may take you and your brother in. I can take you to one of them, or I can teach you how to survive in this land myself. I must warn you such lessons will be dangerous and toilsome, but if you can manage, you will know how to fend for yourself in the harshest of climates, and nature will become something you will happily embrace instead of merely looking upon its wonders in fear. Relative safety, or enlightenment, it is your decision to make.”
So, here’s a window into what I was feeling at this particular moment: I was embittered by how poorly my attempt to hunt played out, I liked the idea that I could one day have the strength and knowledge to venture anywhere I wanted, and I found something inexplicably trustworthy about this strange elf offering to look after me and my brother… Oh, and I was riding off the high of surviving a yeti encounter, let’s not forget that. With all of that in mind, at the time, this otherwise life-changing decision ended up being pretty easy to make.
“If you can teach us, sir… I think that would be best,” I had said, and this elf, who radiated an immensely somber aura, with gloomy eyes that seemed to perpetually shed frigid tears, gave a light smile that seemed to contradict every other feature about him, yet seemed no less genuine.
“Very well. Henceforth, I shall teach you the ways of the ranger, but for now, we mustn’t stay here much longer, lest we incur the wrath of any more yetis. You were quite lucky that I managed to behead that one, usually they require quite a bit more to put down… Lesson one, children, mind whose homes and hiding-places you might be trespassing.” At that, he swiftly took the snow-monster’s pelt with a few cuts of his sword and took us away to where he’d set up camp. Just as he put it, our lessons pretty much began that very moment. Of course, one of the first things he taught us was just who he was supposed to be, since our introductions were pretty unorthodox.
Auglathla was what he called himself, as I’m sure some of you already know. “Winterbreeze” in the common tongue, and I suppose it’s well known in some elven circles as a venerable surname, but it was essentially the only name he went by. For a time I never got an answer out of him regarding why he had such a dominantly blue hue, he would always tell me I had to figure that one out for myself. Well, eventually as our training continued, I did finally come across the answer, and it was a pretty surprising one, I have to admit… Few can say they’ve ever met one of the Fey Eladrin up-close, let alone have one for a master and caretaker. Guess that’s one of the reasons you fellows took an interest in him as well, huh? I mean, considering his natural abilities, he must’ve fit right in… but you aren’t here for idle chitchat, I know…
I’ll sum up some of the interim years… Just like any new thing, it took me and Norfire a while to adjust to this new lifestyle; braving the wilds, navigating, understanding the various flora and fauna, standard ranger stuff, and that was all it was. Not until the very end were we given any hint that Auglathla was a part of anything more than what the usual hunters and beast-masters were up to, protecting the worlds of man and beast from each other and everything in between. Taking that a step further, we weren’t even taught to hunt for what had to have been at least five years. Either he would supply the food or he’d have us forage for edible plants and mushrooms. His reasoning was that it would keep us from becoming wasteful over-hunters if we started with a well-ingrained understanding of what we were a part of, with the proper respect for what we were hunting. Even afterwards, he never relented with the nature-lessons, and so many of his teachings would generally revolve around how, as nature was ever-changing, we had to similarly change along with it… Funny, in retrospect… Being what he was, he had the capacity to change his own physical appearance based on the other seasons, but he never did… Guess he didn’t believe his motto needed to be taken literally.
Norfire, being seven years my junior, tended to struggle catching up to my own progression, and that frustrated him at times. He always feared being the weak link, no matter how much Auglathla and I attempted to reassure him. That’s something my little brother never really got over… He always feared being the millstone, a burden to others when he wanted to be a benefit. Seems silly really, the kid ended up absolutely dwarfing me where strength was concerned as he grew up, and his ability to pick up one weapon style after another was extraordinary, but he never saw it that way… because he was more concerned with his weaknesses. Socializing with outsiders left him stammering at best, completely mute at worst, and when it came to learning Elvish, well, that tripped him up a lot. To say nothing of when we started learning draconic… I think it’s telling that he was particularly fluent in the profanities of that language more so than anything else… but he gritted his teeth through it all. Still, it always irked him when he had to put in more work than me to figure something out. There will probably always be that competitive drive within him to not hold others back. Frankly, I worry about how that will play out for him…
We grew up as nomads, the outside world was the home we came to understand. Icewind Dale, for all its dangers, can indeed be livable if you know where to go and what to do, and thankfully our mentor had succeeded quite effectively in teaching us such things. With our knowledge we became defenders of sorts to the outskirts of the Ten Towns, working alongside the men of the tundra to ward off threats, though sometimes we would be at odds if some of them got too greedy with their hunts. Few recognized our efforts, we weren’t really seeking glory after all, but some of those few knew us well enough to give our trio a name, as if we were a mini-tribe of sorts… The Icewind Ternary, that was what they called us.
Years after my passage into adulthood, I still continued to work alongside Auglathla, as he had much yet to teach me, but more importantly, I wanted to make sure Norfire became a full-fledged ranger in his own right. He was still an apprentice, and in fact, barring the hunt of feral beasts, he hadn’t even been placed in a position where he had to kill. I knew that day would come around, what with our ongoing mission being the way it was. I wanted to know he’d be ready to strike when he had to… That first time, taking the life of a being with thoroughly complex thoughts and emotions, no matter how justified, it can be pretty scarring.
I fret that inevitable moment left a much bigger scar than expected…
See, one more thing worth mentioning is that it was around this point that Norfire finally learned the truth, that Auglathla wasn’t merely training us to be scavengers and guides through the frigid expanse. We were being brought up to follow the ways of the Horizon Walkers, to one day fight the threats to the very material plane itself. I’d been fortunate to get plenty of time afterwards to really ruminate on this, to understand what that really meant… Norfire didn’t get that chance.
Yes, we’re at that point… I feel there’s little more I can add in the way of building up to that moment, and ultimately, that’s what you really wanted to hear from me, isn’t it? Just what happened? Well, I shall tell you… Unsettling as it is, perhaps there will be some peace to come out of letting others know.
It was a cold midafternoon, the tundra seemed nearly empty. The place is often quite barren on any average day, but even then, there was something quite unsettling about just how sparse everything was… how quiet everything had become. Auglathla believed something was amiss as well… He claimed it was as if Nature was giving us a warning… and it took limited exploration on our part to find out just what the warning was most likely about. We found the creature standing in a ring of slaughtered tundra men… Its snow-white scales were stained with their blood, and it was letting out this hideous roar in victory, as if relishing every minute in which it bathed in human viscera. Its appearance initially hinted at being a Dragonborn, but Auglathla was keen to point out the tail it possessed, and furthermore, the very build of the creature was different in more subtle ways. I won’t bore you with the details, but I assure you, by some horrid union, this was the product of a white dragon and an orc, and the offspring seemed more than happy to take after the violent tendencies of both of their parents. Taking down so many well-trained barbarians at once made it just as clear that this was far from their first slaughter.
“Foul abomination…” I remember my master cursing out under his breath. “We cannot allow this fiend to amass such slaughter again. I’d bet my life they will set their sights on one of the Ten if we leave them be.” That was an unsettling thought indeed. Sure, a town like Easthavin or Caer-Konig would’ve been able to eventually bring such a monster down with their combined forces, but if they wandered into a small hamlet like Dougan’s Hole… well… it’s not so convincing to think that a bunch of simple fishermen would have the capacity to stop a half-dragon… and certainly not with a town left over.
The half-dragon hadn’t noticed us, but they were just about done reveling in the wake of their carnage, so we had very little time to plan an attack out. One thing was for sure, we needed to get a chance to strike first, and Auglathla had a plan in mind. Positioning himself, he pulled out the one remaining electrum coin in his possession and lobbed it over to where the draconic hybrid was situated. Though there wasn’t much noise to be made with frosted grass as a surface, the glimmer of the setting sun reflecting against the coin caught the creature’s eye and their instinctual desire to claim such a shiny valuable kicked in. They looked down, eagerly seeking the coin, and leaving themself open.
Swiftly as always, Auglathla vanished from where he knelt, reappearing behind his target and already thrusting the blade of his sword into their back, but where that might be a killing blow for a fleshier being, it only seemed to be a relatively painful surprise to our scale-covered foe. They turned around at a lightning pace, their claws flashing across the spot where my Eladrin mentor stood, just barely managing to phase into the ethereal plane before the slash could gut him across the middle. He reactively fell backward to manage some distance, his sword still lodged in the half-dragon’s back. They reached back and pulled the blade out with little more than a deep growl, grasping the weapon in such a way that inferred this wasn’t an unfamiliar tool of combat for them. Auglathla wasn’t so foolish as to only have one weapon on his person, drawing his flail and getting ready to continue the fight… That was as good a signal for me to step in as any.
I cast misty step and instantly appeared behind the half-dragon in hopes of worsening the injury they already sustained, but unfortunately I wasn’t so precise and my strike did little more than glance off the creature’s hide. I was left having to roll away from their near-instant retaliation, but that at least gave Auglathla a chance to get another attack in. From there it was 2-on-1. Norfire, still inexperienced with such dangers, was left watching the struggle, as was our master’s demand when faced with a threat of this magnitude. Of course it was also stressed that he cover some distance as to not risk getting caught in the chaos of the battle, but he was less inclined to follow that rule.
Auglathla’s natural ability to phase in and out of the material plane was working like a charm in disorienting our foe, and though I wasn’t quite so evasive, I was still managing to get a few hits in, but no matter how much we toiled away at this beast, they just wouldn’t seem to fall. Worse, we weren't the only ones doing damage. Even while minding my vitals, I couldn't avoid every attack cleanly, and Auglathla was getting pretty battered up trying to keep most of our opponent's focus on him.
I could feel the fatigue beginning to set in and the injuries mounting as minutes of continual combat passed, and I was all but devoid of tricks. I took one single moment to catch my breath… and it was the worst possible time. I thought they were focusing entirely on Auglathla at that moment… I hadn’t realized they could hear the sound of my exhausted breaths and subsequently act upon that so suddenly. Before I knew it, a massive blizzard, condensed into a single beam of pure cold, was hurdling in my direction. I tumbled away to evade it, but I only managed to get about half-way out of the vicinity of the blast. I collapsed into the ground beneath me… Half of my body couldn’t move, the same half covered in a layer of ice. The bastard had me half-frozen; I was completely debilitated.
The half-dragon, thoroughly sliced up but still standing, saw an easy kill and wasn’t going to wait to take it. I could see the death in their eyes as they neared me. My sword hand was useless now, and the sword itself was laying in the opposite direction of my remaining arm, impossible to reach. There was nothing to be done… and what was worse, I knew my mentor wouldn’t just stand there and do nothing about it… With one last bit of his own nearly-spent magic, he managed to appear in front of me and slam his flail so viciously into the half-dragon’s shoulder that I could plainly hear the sound of bone shatter from the impact. It had cost him enough of his dwindling strength that he couldn’t hope to avoid the set of claws that tore into his back. With that, my master fell, blood pooling beneath him, and the half-dragon, though thoroughly weakened and with only one working arm, still had an ample opportunity to finish the job.
Then there came a single shout… “Hey!”
I remember hearing this and feeling nothing but dread… There was Norfire, rapier in hand, the one I’d dropped for that matter. His shout had gotten the half-dragon’s attention, as he’d no-doubt hoped.
“Get away from them… You’ve still… You’ve still got me to deal with…” He sounded terrified, looked like he’d already shed a few tears, but considering what he’d just watched befall upon his brother and his mentor, he had more than a few reasons to be upset.
“Norfire…” I could hear Auglathla groan as he struggled in vain to pull himself up. He had nothing left, neither did I… Helplessly we just had to watch, but Norfire, nervous as he was, stood his ground as the beast limped their way towards him. Steadily my little brother’s fear-stricken face seemed to harden into a glare, sword at the ready. He was resolved to see this fight through. The half-dragon, with only their own claws for a weapon, their breath weapon spent at my expense, and one functioning arm, looked thoroughly vulnerable, and despite all the anguish I’d felt, literally and mentally, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hope through it all. He had a chance… I had to believe he could do it.
It wasn’t the prettiest fight, as you could likely imagine. The half-dragon wildly swung their good arm but rarely risked actually connecting, and Norfire, hesitant to close the gap, would only land glancing blows at best. Even while greatly injured, that creature’s hide wouldn’t be affected but such light hits. I could see Norfire was getting frustrated as he realized this, it looked like he was fighting a second battle in his mind, to make that last push forward and take that chance. As the old saying goes, something had to give. Norfire drew back, as did the half-dragon. They both let out a scream as they charged one last time at each other.
Sword thrust.
Claws swung.
It was difficult to tell the outcome at first, but then I saw Norfire pull his sword back, the blade thoroughly bloodied as the half-dragon slumped lifelessly into the grass. Their claws had torn his coat, but they hadn’t managed to go any further. He survived it… but the same couldn’t exactly be said for Auglathla and I. His injuries were bleeding him out fast… and that cold breath, well… aside from it not being the only injury I’d acquired in the skirmish, the ice was taking its toll, everything was starting to go numb.
This whole thing just had to happen at a time when we were truly in want of supplies… No potions, no kits, not even some tinder to light a godsforsaken fire… and seeing as we had no magic left for spells between the two of us who could actually cast, there really wasn’t anything Norfire could do, not with the limited time we had. I saw him scrambling for a while, panicking for some kind of solution that didn’t exist, and Auglathla worked up enough strength to plead for him to stop.
“But… but we gotta do something, I gotta get you guys to a healer, yeah, I’ll ah… I’ll carry you both to the nearest town,” he tried to reason, ignoring the fact that said nearest town was still a mile off, hardly a distance he’d be able to make in time while trying to drag along a full-grown elf and human with him.
“Norfire… please… do not waste your efforts on us… I’m afraid it is too late.”
Naturally, Norfire didn’t want to accept this at first, but as he was about to protest, Auglathla spoke up again. “Please, child, let me speak while I still can,” he said. Norfire reluctantly obeyed and knelt beside our mentor to hear him out. I didn’t hear any of the specifics but I figured I knew what they were talking about… He was making it clear that Norfire had to carry on. He'd have to make the decisions on his own now. More than likely he was pleading for him to not give up his Horizon Walker training, assuring him that he'd be ready to take that next step by himself. I know my master well enough to know he'd want to make such a point clear to his surviving pupil in his last moments.
Not long after, he merely placed a hand on Norfire’s shoulder for a moment and smiled before turning over to me, giving one last sympathetic look… but beyond that, there was something else… It was the look one gave, not so much to one’s ward, but to a fallen comrade, and equal… We were hardly equals, my master was always leaps and bounds ahead of anything I ever accomplished, yet at that moment it was as if that didn’t matter… and it gave me some semblance of comfort to see before I watched the one real father in my life breathe his last. I knew it would only be a short time more before I would follow.
Norfire, grieved as he was, moved over to where I’d been, taking my unfrozen hand in both of his, though by then, I had lost all feeling in that one as well. It was a struggle to talk, but I wasn’t going to just go silently, I’d be damned if I didn’t say something before we parted.
“Guess this… makes you officially in charge now huh?” I said, trying to chuckle but letting out little more than a faint wheeze.
“Don’t know how you can joke around like this… Where the hell am I supposed to go without you guys?” Norfire asked. It hurt seeing how helpless he clearly felt, so I mustered up as much energy as I could to try and reassure him while I had the chance.
“You’ll figure it out… You’re gonna be a Horizon Walker, brother… You’ve been trained by one of the best, haven’t you? You’ll make it… I know you will… It’s about time you started believing it yourself…”
“But…” No, none of that, I wasn’t going to hear it.
“Look at what you just did… You were terrified weren’t you? But you… you brought that bastard down… You did that…” Though my vision was failing, I noticed something glimmering on the ground near me. A couple scales that had been dislodged from the fallen half-dragon, still in good condition and everything. “See those? You take those… You keep them… Remember what you can do… when you resolve to get something done.” He took the scales and observed them for a moment, still with one hand holding mine. Once more I saw that same resolve, not quite as intense as it was before, but it was there… If ever there was a moment where he truly became a ranger, that must’ve been it.
“…Then I’m doing this for the three of us, Whit…” He told me, and for a moment, maybe it was just my dying mind playing tricks, I don’t know, but for the faintest moment, I thought I could feel the warmth in his grasp. I knew… I knew beyond anything else… I had nothing to regret in bringing him out here. Nothing to regret in running away from that nightmare in Luskan. My little brother was safe… and he was going to be okay.
“You’ll be alright, Norfy…” That was my old nickname for him. Annoyed him half-to-death whenever I used it, so, being the older brother that I was, I used to use it all the time. Figured if he was gonna call me ‘Whit’ at the end I wouldn’t let that slide. If anything I think I saw him actually smile in amusement at it for the first time… right before everything faded away.
That was what happened. It’s what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it?
You have indeed fulfilled your end of the deal, yes.
Good… then I trust you’ll do the same.
The younger Latimer will receive our guidance, Mr. Whitmore. If you want the truth, we planned to do so from the moment Auglathla set to train you both. It will be sooner than we expected however… We had only just prepared to begin training you before the unfortunate outcome… We were lucky to head your spirit off at the pass. Your perspective of those key moments in time has enlightened us greatly. We shall not delay your passage to the afterlife any further. May your god welcome you with open arms.
He won’t let you down, I know it.
Your confidence is duly noted, Mr. Whitmore. We will begin his training forthwith. If he has the potential you claim… then we will see it soon enough.
I hold no sentimentality for that garbage heap that calls itself a town. No one should ever subject themselves to such a life, in constant fear of violent gangs deciding to destroy everything you own on a whim, with no protection from a non-existent governing body, a hive of anarchy unchecked. The legends say the city was once much larger and under a sturdier oligarchical government, but I doubt it was any more or less filthy to the core. The people were simply able to hide it a little more easily. All the Spellplague ever did was show their true colors. What remained was what they truly were deep down.
No surprise my immediate “family” hails from the place. Might’ve been better if my grandfather hadn’t survived the Spellplague. Maybe then I would’ve been born to loving parents. Luskan itself was garbage, but if you knew when and where to hide, you could get through each day, usually with your stuff still in your possession to boot. What really pushed it beyond bearable limits was my upbringing. The man who called himself my father wasn’t of noble heritage. He was the illegitimate son of a pirate and his favorite prostitute, but from how he spoke you might believe dear old dad was the rightful king of the realm. So much misplaced pride… and when he married and had children, he expected us to be running the entire port town by the time we came of age. He made that clear to me, every time he beat me over the head with increasingly heavier blunt instruments when I went out of line. Mother didn’t help any, because she ran off, without bothering to take her children. My younger brother, Norfire, was spared the abuse for a time, because he was still too young, but father didn’t show him any sort of love or compassion, just neglect. It was only a matter of time; he was going to eventually face the same abuse I’d gone through for years… and I couldn’t stand the thought. I kept promising myself that I’d run away, since before Norfire was born, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But then the day came when father finally tore away his façade and slapped my brother across the face. The simplest in his arsenal of corporal punishment, but it finally pushed me over the edge. It was bad enough when he did it to me, but not Norfire. Not my little brother.
I had to take action that night. Not only was I concerned that I would have simply killed the old bastard if I simmered in my rage any longer, but that night was the same one of every tenday where he spent the evening getting drunk at the pub until dawn. He always threatened to find me and beat me to an inch of my life if I ever tried to run off, and the threat had done its job for many years, but not that night. By the gods… I remember it all so much more vividly now… is that a gift or a curse? I suppose either way I can be as forthcoming as possible about it…
I ran up to Norfire’s room, he was quietly laying there, staring out at the cracked window, fogged up and smattered with dirt and debris. He could never get away with cleaning it, but he always made an effort to look outside beyond the muck, just to see more of what was out there. It wasn’t melancholic for him, not at such an innocent age, he did it purely out of childlike wonder… but I knew what would happen if I did nothing. I knew what would happen if I remained passive to father’s beatings and aggression. That wonder would change to depressive pining soon enough.
“Norfire… we’re going,” I’d said, quickly moving to pack the few necessities he could carry by himself.
“Going? Going where?” He asked tiredly as he pushed himself off his ratty excuse for a mattress. I wasted no time in handing him the makeshift bindle I’d scrapped together, taking his hand and scrambling for the door.
“I… don’t know,” I’d said, and I really didn’t have any idea. I’d never really thought to plan for something like this. The motivation to leave was never enough for me to plan things until that breaking point came about. All I knew was we were running off and not looking back. That old drunk wouldn’t have the heart to chase us if we were out of town, much less so if we went up north. If he somehow did pull off any attempt to retrieve us, he’d assume we’d have headed southward, the temperate regions of Faerun, not the frigid northern outskirts. He wasn’t the danger to us any longer, I knew it for sure when we stepped out of that city and a wave of freedom seemed to wash over me with every successive step. That being said… there was a new danger for us, perhaps not as oppressive, but, arguably much more dangerous.
The roads leading into Icewind Dale are treacherous for even the most adept adventurers, to say nothing of a couple young, malnourished human children. We got lucky those first few days, nothing seemed interested, or perhaps they were waiting for us to keel over and scavenge the remains. Unfortunately, I hadn’t exactly had much in line of food, I only had the chance to pack some scraps before we set off, and we were fresh out by then. Worse off, the closer we got to Icewind, the colder it naturally became. Our one saving grace was that we were still in the midst of the summer season, so occasionally the air wasn’t agonizingly freezing. That all just served to give me a little more time to figure out how to hunt for food… or so I rationalized.
I was foolish, a literal child, with no experience in surviving the harsh wilderness. Necessity or not, I’d never hunted once in my life, and the best weapon I could muster up was the stick that carried my bindle. Even under my youthful naivete, there was a part of me that knew I was going to fail. Still, I didn’t have the nerve to just sit prone and wait for my brother and I to freeze. I had to try. I didn’t want to risk Norfire getting hurt in my efforts, so I simply had him lay low near the road we were walking along until I came back.
It appeared that daring to defy such odds upset some god of karma, as the one creature I managed to find in my search was a yeti of all things, and it wasn’t too happy that a sniveling little human child had found its hiding spot in the tall grass. Ignorant child-me also made it a point to look the monster right in the eyes, leaving me completely paralyzed and just ripe for slaughter. That should have been it, the end, “nice try, hope you have some better luck in the afterlife, kid,” but I guess fate had its fill of screwing us over. Before the yeti could strike, something sharp slashed across its neck, and its head came tumbling down, the rest of it following suit.
Standing adjacent to the spot the vicious primate once stood, with Norfire standing right beside him, was an elf, still wielding his sword, the blade freshly dripping with the blood of his recent kill. He was draped in hide and leather armor, his skin was a light cerulean, and that color seemed to bleed into his clothing, along with his weapons and gear, making him almost look like a living statue of opaque aquamarine. He looked down at me, then over at Norfire, who looked about as traumatized as I felt regarding the near-death experience… with the added bonus of seeing something else get killed right before our eyes. I was helped back onto my feet as the paralysis steadily faded.
“You are the brother to this one?” The elf asked me as he motioned to Norfire. I gave him a speechless nod, something he mimicked as if putting together the pieces regarding our situation.
“You children will not last in such unforgiving lands… Are you without guardianship?”
“Y-yes…” I managed to stammer out a verbal response that time, and the elf nodded again with a sort of grunt to accompany it. We all stood there quietly for a moment, said moment feeling a whole lot longer than it likely was. This elf was pondering something, but I couldn’t hope to guess what thoughts were going on in his wizened mind.
“I shall offer you a choice, young human,” he eventually spoke out, kneeling down to speak to me at my level. “There are caretakers in the nearest settlement that may take you and your brother in. I can take you to one of them, or I can teach you how to survive in this land myself. I must warn you such lessons will be dangerous and toilsome, but if you can manage, you will know how to fend for yourself in the harshest of climates, and nature will become something you will happily embrace instead of merely looking upon its wonders in fear. Relative safety, or enlightenment, it is your decision to make.”
So, here’s a window into what I was feeling at this particular moment: I was embittered by how poorly my attempt to hunt played out, I liked the idea that I could one day have the strength and knowledge to venture anywhere I wanted, and I found something inexplicably trustworthy about this strange elf offering to look after me and my brother… Oh, and I was riding off the high of surviving a yeti encounter, let’s not forget that. With all of that in mind, at the time, this otherwise life-changing decision ended up being pretty easy to make.
“If you can teach us, sir… I think that would be best,” I had said, and this elf, who radiated an immensely somber aura, with gloomy eyes that seemed to perpetually shed frigid tears, gave a light smile that seemed to contradict every other feature about him, yet seemed no less genuine.
“Very well. Henceforth, I shall teach you the ways of the ranger, but for now, we mustn’t stay here much longer, lest we incur the wrath of any more yetis. You were quite lucky that I managed to behead that one, usually they require quite a bit more to put down… Lesson one, children, mind whose homes and hiding-places you might be trespassing.” At that, he swiftly took the snow-monster’s pelt with a few cuts of his sword and took us away to where he’d set up camp. Just as he put it, our lessons pretty much began that very moment. Of course, one of the first things he taught us was just who he was supposed to be, since our introductions were pretty unorthodox.
Auglathla was what he called himself, as I’m sure some of you already know. “Winterbreeze” in the common tongue, and I suppose it’s well known in some elven circles as a venerable surname, but it was essentially the only name he went by. For a time I never got an answer out of him regarding why he had such a dominantly blue hue, he would always tell me I had to figure that one out for myself. Well, eventually as our training continued, I did finally come across the answer, and it was a pretty surprising one, I have to admit… Few can say they’ve ever met one of the Fey Eladrin up-close, let alone have one for a master and caretaker. Guess that’s one of the reasons you fellows took an interest in him as well, huh? I mean, considering his natural abilities, he must’ve fit right in… but you aren’t here for idle chitchat, I know…
I’ll sum up some of the interim years… Just like any new thing, it took me and Norfire a while to adjust to this new lifestyle; braving the wilds, navigating, understanding the various flora and fauna, standard ranger stuff, and that was all it was. Not until the very end were we given any hint that Auglathla was a part of anything more than what the usual hunters and beast-masters were up to, protecting the worlds of man and beast from each other and everything in between. Taking that a step further, we weren’t even taught to hunt for what had to have been at least five years. Either he would supply the food or he’d have us forage for edible plants and mushrooms. His reasoning was that it would keep us from becoming wasteful over-hunters if we started with a well-ingrained understanding of what we were a part of, with the proper respect for what we were hunting. Even afterwards, he never relented with the nature-lessons, and so many of his teachings would generally revolve around how, as nature was ever-changing, we had to similarly change along with it… Funny, in retrospect… Being what he was, he had the capacity to change his own physical appearance based on the other seasons, but he never did… Guess he didn’t believe his motto needed to be taken literally.
Norfire, being seven years my junior, tended to struggle catching up to my own progression, and that frustrated him at times. He always feared being the weak link, no matter how much Auglathla and I attempted to reassure him. That’s something my little brother never really got over… He always feared being the millstone, a burden to others when he wanted to be a benefit. Seems silly really, the kid ended up absolutely dwarfing me where strength was concerned as he grew up, and his ability to pick up one weapon style after another was extraordinary, but he never saw it that way… because he was more concerned with his weaknesses. Socializing with outsiders left him stammering at best, completely mute at worst, and when it came to learning Elvish, well, that tripped him up a lot. To say nothing of when we started learning draconic… I think it’s telling that he was particularly fluent in the profanities of that language more so than anything else… but he gritted his teeth through it all. Still, it always irked him when he had to put in more work than me to figure something out. There will probably always be that competitive drive within him to not hold others back. Frankly, I worry about how that will play out for him…
We grew up as nomads, the outside world was the home we came to understand. Icewind Dale, for all its dangers, can indeed be livable if you know where to go and what to do, and thankfully our mentor had succeeded quite effectively in teaching us such things. With our knowledge we became defenders of sorts to the outskirts of the Ten Towns, working alongside the men of the tundra to ward off threats, though sometimes we would be at odds if some of them got too greedy with their hunts. Few recognized our efforts, we weren’t really seeking glory after all, but some of those few knew us well enough to give our trio a name, as if we were a mini-tribe of sorts… The Icewind Ternary, that was what they called us.
Years after my passage into adulthood, I still continued to work alongside Auglathla, as he had much yet to teach me, but more importantly, I wanted to make sure Norfire became a full-fledged ranger in his own right. He was still an apprentice, and in fact, barring the hunt of feral beasts, he hadn’t even been placed in a position where he had to kill. I knew that day would come around, what with our ongoing mission being the way it was. I wanted to know he’d be ready to strike when he had to… That first time, taking the life of a being with thoroughly complex thoughts and emotions, no matter how justified, it can be pretty scarring.
I fret that inevitable moment left a much bigger scar than expected…
See, one more thing worth mentioning is that it was around this point that Norfire finally learned the truth, that Auglathla wasn’t merely training us to be scavengers and guides through the frigid expanse. We were being brought up to follow the ways of the Horizon Walkers, to one day fight the threats to the very material plane itself. I’d been fortunate to get plenty of time afterwards to really ruminate on this, to understand what that really meant… Norfire didn’t get that chance.
Yes, we’re at that point… I feel there’s little more I can add in the way of building up to that moment, and ultimately, that’s what you really wanted to hear from me, isn’t it? Just what happened? Well, I shall tell you… Unsettling as it is, perhaps there will be some peace to come out of letting others know.
It was a cold midafternoon, the tundra seemed nearly empty. The place is often quite barren on any average day, but even then, there was something quite unsettling about just how sparse everything was… how quiet everything had become. Auglathla believed something was amiss as well… He claimed it was as if Nature was giving us a warning… and it took limited exploration on our part to find out just what the warning was most likely about. We found the creature standing in a ring of slaughtered tundra men… Its snow-white scales were stained with their blood, and it was letting out this hideous roar in victory, as if relishing every minute in which it bathed in human viscera. Its appearance initially hinted at being a Dragonborn, but Auglathla was keen to point out the tail it possessed, and furthermore, the very build of the creature was different in more subtle ways. I won’t bore you with the details, but I assure you, by some horrid union, this was the product of a white dragon and an orc, and the offspring seemed more than happy to take after the violent tendencies of both of their parents. Taking down so many well-trained barbarians at once made it just as clear that this was far from their first slaughter.
“Foul abomination…” I remember my master cursing out under his breath. “We cannot allow this fiend to amass such slaughter again. I’d bet my life they will set their sights on one of the Ten if we leave them be.” That was an unsettling thought indeed. Sure, a town like Easthavin or Caer-Konig would’ve been able to eventually bring such a monster down with their combined forces, but if they wandered into a small hamlet like Dougan’s Hole… well… it’s not so convincing to think that a bunch of simple fishermen would have the capacity to stop a half-dragon… and certainly not with a town left over.
The half-dragon hadn’t noticed us, but they were just about done reveling in the wake of their carnage, so we had very little time to plan an attack out. One thing was for sure, we needed to get a chance to strike first, and Auglathla had a plan in mind. Positioning himself, he pulled out the one remaining electrum coin in his possession and lobbed it over to where the draconic hybrid was situated. Though there wasn’t much noise to be made with frosted grass as a surface, the glimmer of the setting sun reflecting against the coin caught the creature’s eye and their instinctual desire to claim such a shiny valuable kicked in. They looked down, eagerly seeking the coin, and leaving themself open.
Swiftly as always, Auglathla vanished from where he knelt, reappearing behind his target and already thrusting the blade of his sword into their back, but where that might be a killing blow for a fleshier being, it only seemed to be a relatively painful surprise to our scale-covered foe. They turned around at a lightning pace, their claws flashing across the spot where my Eladrin mentor stood, just barely managing to phase into the ethereal plane before the slash could gut him across the middle. He reactively fell backward to manage some distance, his sword still lodged in the half-dragon’s back. They reached back and pulled the blade out with little more than a deep growl, grasping the weapon in such a way that inferred this wasn’t an unfamiliar tool of combat for them. Auglathla wasn’t so foolish as to only have one weapon on his person, drawing his flail and getting ready to continue the fight… That was as good a signal for me to step in as any.
I cast misty step and instantly appeared behind the half-dragon in hopes of worsening the injury they already sustained, but unfortunately I wasn’t so precise and my strike did little more than glance off the creature’s hide. I was left having to roll away from their near-instant retaliation, but that at least gave Auglathla a chance to get another attack in. From there it was 2-on-1. Norfire, still inexperienced with such dangers, was left watching the struggle, as was our master’s demand when faced with a threat of this magnitude. Of course it was also stressed that he cover some distance as to not risk getting caught in the chaos of the battle, but he was less inclined to follow that rule.
Auglathla’s natural ability to phase in and out of the material plane was working like a charm in disorienting our foe, and though I wasn’t quite so evasive, I was still managing to get a few hits in, but no matter how much we toiled away at this beast, they just wouldn’t seem to fall. Worse, we weren't the only ones doing damage. Even while minding my vitals, I couldn't avoid every attack cleanly, and Auglathla was getting pretty battered up trying to keep most of our opponent's focus on him.
I could feel the fatigue beginning to set in and the injuries mounting as minutes of continual combat passed, and I was all but devoid of tricks. I took one single moment to catch my breath… and it was the worst possible time. I thought they were focusing entirely on Auglathla at that moment… I hadn’t realized they could hear the sound of my exhausted breaths and subsequently act upon that so suddenly. Before I knew it, a massive blizzard, condensed into a single beam of pure cold, was hurdling in my direction. I tumbled away to evade it, but I only managed to get about half-way out of the vicinity of the blast. I collapsed into the ground beneath me… Half of my body couldn’t move, the same half covered in a layer of ice. The bastard had me half-frozen; I was completely debilitated.
The half-dragon, thoroughly sliced up but still standing, saw an easy kill and wasn’t going to wait to take it. I could see the death in their eyes as they neared me. My sword hand was useless now, and the sword itself was laying in the opposite direction of my remaining arm, impossible to reach. There was nothing to be done… and what was worse, I knew my mentor wouldn’t just stand there and do nothing about it… With one last bit of his own nearly-spent magic, he managed to appear in front of me and slam his flail so viciously into the half-dragon’s shoulder that I could plainly hear the sound of bone shatter from the impact. It had cost him enough of his dwindling strength that he couldn’t hope to avoid the set of claws that tore into his back. With that, my master fell, blood pooling beneath him, and the half-dragon, though thoroughly weakened and with only one working arm, still had an ample opportunity to finish the job.
Then there came a single shout… “Hey!”
I remember hearing this and feeling nothing but dread… There was Norfire, rapier in hand, the one I’d dropped for that matter. His shout had gotten the half-dragon’s attention, as he’d no-doubt hoped.
“Get away from them… You’ve still… You’ve still got me to deal with…” He sounded terrified, looked like he’d already shed a few tears, but considering what he’d just watched befall upon his brother and his mentor, he had more than a few reasons to be upset.
“Norfire…” I could hear Auglathla groan as he struggled in vain to pull himself up. He had nothing left, neither did I… Helplessly we just had to watch, but Norfire, nervous as he was, stood his ground as the beast limped their way towards him. Steadily my little brother’s fear-stricken face seemed to harden into a glare, sword at the ready. He was resolved to see this fight through. The half-dragon, with only their own claws for a weapon, their breath weapon spent at my expense, and one functioning arm, looked thoroughly vulnerable, and despite all the anguish I’d felt, literally and mentally, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hope through it all. He had a chance… I had to believe he could do it.
It wasn’t the prettiest fight, as you could likely imagine. The half-dragon wildly swung their good arm but rarely risked actually connecting, and Norfire, hesitant to close the gap, would only land glancing blows at best. Even while greatly injured, that creature’s hide wouldn’t be affected but such light hits. I could see Norfire was getting frustrated as he realized this, it looked like he was fighting a second battle in his mind, to make that last push forward and take that chance. As the old saying goes, something had to give. Norfire drew back, as did the half-dragon. They both let out a scream as they charged one last time at each other.
Sword thrust.
Claws swung.
It was difficult to tell the outcome at first, but then I saw Norfire pull his sword back, the blade thoroughly bloodied as the half-dragon slumped lifelessly into the grass. Their claws had torn his coat, but they hadn’t managed to go any further. He survived it… but the same couldn’t exactly be said for Auglathla and I. His injuries were bleeding him out fast… and that cold breath, well… aside from it not being the only injury I’d acquired in the skirmish, the ice was taking its toll, everything was starting to go numb.
This whole thing just had to happen at a time when we were truly in want of supplies… No potions, no kits, not even some tinder to light a godsforsaken fire… and seeing as we had no magic left for spells between the two of us who could actually cast, there really wasn’t anything Norfire could do, not with the limited time we had. I saw him scrambling for a while, panicking for some kind of solution that didn’t exist, and Auglathla worked up enough strength to plead for him to stop.
“But… but we gotta do something, I gotta get you guys to a healer, yeah, I’ll ah… I’ll carry you both to the nearest town,” he tried to reason, ignoring the fact that said nearest town was still a mile off, hardly a distance he’d be able to make in time while trying to drag along a full-grown elf and human with him.
“Norfire… please… do not waste your efforts on us… I’m afraid it is too late.”
Naturally, Norfire didn’t want to accept this at first, but as he was about to protest, Auglathla spoke up again. “Please, child, let me speak while I still can,” he said. Norfire reluctantly obeyed and knelt beside our mentor to hear him out. I didn’t hear any of the specifics but I figured I knew what they were talking about… He was making it clear that Norfire had to carry on. He'd have to make the decisions on his own now. More than likely he was pleading for him to not give up his Horizon Walker training, assuring him that he'd be ready to take that next step by himself. I know my master well enough to know he'd want to make such a point clear to his surviving pupil in his last moments.
Not long after, he merely placed a hand on Norfire’s shoulder for a moment and smiled before turning over to me, giving one last sympathetic look… but beyond that, there was something else… It was the look one gave, not so much to one’s ward, but to a fallen comrade, and equal… We were hardly equals, my master was always leaps and bounds ahead of anything I ever accomplished, yet at that moment it was as if that didn’t matter… and it gave me some semblance of comfort to see before I watched the one real father in my life breathe his last. I knew it would only be a short time more before I would follow.
Norfire, grieved as he was, moved over to where I’d been, taking my unfrozen hand in both of his, though by then, I had lost all feeling in that one as well. It was a struggle to talk, but I wasn’t going to just go silently, I’d be damned if I didn’t say something before we parted.
“Guess this… makes you officially in charge now huh?” I said, trying to chuckle but letting out little more than a faint wheeze.
“Don’t know how you can joke around like this… Where the hell am I supposed to go without you guys?” Norfire asked. It hurt seeing how helpless he clearly felt, so I mustered up as much energy as I could to try and reassure him while I had the chance.
“You’ll figure it out… You’re gonna be a Horizon Walker, brother… You’ve been trained by one of the best, haven’t you? You’ll make it… I know you will… It’s about time you started believing it yourself…”
“But…” No, none of that, I wasn’t going to hear it.
“Look at what you just did… You were terrified weren’t you? But you… you brought that bastard down… You did that…” Though my vision was failing, I noticed something glimmering on the ground near me. A couple scales that had been dislodged from the fallen half-dragon, still in good condition and everything. “See those? You take those… You keep them… Remember what you can do… when you resolve to get something done.” He took the scales and observed them for a moment, still with one hand holding mine. Once more I saw that same resolve, not quite as intense as it was before, but it was there… If ever there was a moment where he truly became a ranger, that must’ve been it.
“…Then I’m doing this for the three of us, Whit…” He told me, and for a moment, maybe it was just my dying mind playing tricks, I don’t know, but for the faintest moment, I thought I could feel the warmth in his grasp. I knew… I knew beyond anything else… I had nothing to regret in bringing him out here. Nothing to regret in running away from that nightmare in Luskan. My little brother was safe… and he was going to be okay.
“You’ll be alright, Norfy…” That was my old nickname for him. Annoyed him half-to-death whenever I used it, so, being the older brother that I was, I used to use it all the time. Figured if he was gonna call me ‘Whit’ at the end I wouldn’t let that slide. If anything I think I saw him actually smile in amusement at it for the first time… right before everything faded away.
That was what happened. It’s what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it?
You have indeed fulfilled your end of the deal, yes.
Good… then I trust you’ll do the same.
The younger Latimer will receive our guidance, Mr. Whitmore. If you want the truth, we planned to do so from the moment Auglathla set to train you both. It will be sooner than we expected however… We had only just prepared to begin training you before the unfortunate outcome… We were lucky to head your spirit off at the pass. Your perspective of those key moments in time has enlightened us greatly. We shall not delay your passage to the afterlife any further. May your god welcome you with open arms.
He won’t let you down, I know it.
Your confidence is duly noted, Mr. Whitmore. We will begin his training forthwith. If he has the potential you claim… then we will see it soon enough.