Safe for a moment, he gazed around the strange cavern in awe. The waterfall captured his imagination. Steam rose from the chasm, adding a surrealistic flavor to the spectacle. The stream poured over the drop, most of it continuing on its way through a small chasm, barely a crack in the floor thirty feet below at the base of the fall. The droplets that cleared the chasm, though, solidified as they separated from the main flow of the stream and bounced away in all directions as they hit the cavern’s ice floor. Not yet completely hardened, the cubes stuck fast where they landed, and all about the base of the waterfall were strangely sculpted piles of broken ice.
Aegis-fang flew over the drop, easily clearing the small chasm to smash into one such sculpture, scattering shards of ice. Though his arms were numbed from the icicle slide, Wulfgar quickly rushed over to the hammer, already freezing fast where it had landed, and heaved it free of the ice’s hardening grip.
Under the glassy floor where the hammer had cracked away the top layers; the barbarian noticed a dark shadow. He examined it more closely, then backed away from the grizzly sight. Perfectly preserved, one of his predecessors had apparently gone over the long drop, dying in the deepening ice where he had landed. How many others, Wulfgar wondered, had met this same fate?
He didn’t have time to contemplate it further. One of his other concerns had been dispelled, for much of the cavern’s roof was only a few feet below the daylit surface and the sun found its way in through those parts that were purely ice. Even the smallest glow coming from the ceiling was reflected a thousand times on the glassy floors and walls, and the whole cavern virtually exploded in sparkling bursts of light.
Wulfgar felt the cold acutely, but the melted blubber had protected him sufficiently. He would survive the first dangers of this adventure.
But the spectre of the dragon loomed somewhere up ahead.
Several twisting tunnels led off of the main chamber, carved by the stream in long-past days when its waters ran high. Only one of these was large enough for a dragon, though. Wulfgar contemplated searching out the others first, to see if he might possibly find a less obvious way into the lair. But the glare and distortions of light and the countless icicles hanging from the ceiling like a predator’s teeth dizzied him, and he knew that if he got lost or wasted too much time, the night would fall over him, stealing his light and dropping the temperature below even his considerable tolerance.
So he banged Aegis-fang on the floor to clear away any remaining ice that clung to it and started straight ahead down the tunnel he believed would lead him to the lair of Ingeloakastimizilian.
The dragon slept soundly beside its treasure in the largest chamber of the ice caves, confident after many years of solitude that it would not be disturbed. Ingeloakastimizilian, more commonly known as Icingdeath, had made the same mistake that many of its kin, with their lairs in similar caves of ice, had made. The flowing stream that offered entrance to and escape from the caves had diminished over the years, leaving the dragon trapped in a crystalline tomb.
Icingdeath had enjoyed its years of hunting deer and humans. In the short time the beast had been active, it had earned quite a respectable reputation for havoc and terror. Yet dragons, especially white ones who are rarely active in their cold environments, can live many centuries without meat. Their selfish love of their treasure can sustain them indefinitely, and Icingdeath’s hoard, though small compared to the vast mounds of gold collected by the huge reds and blues that lived in more populated areas, was the largest of any of the tundra-dwelling dragons.
If the dragon had truly desired freedom, it could probably have broken through the cavern’s ice ceiling. But Icingdeath considered the risk too great, and so it slept, counting its coins and gems in dreams that dragons considered quite pleasant.
The slumbering worm didn’t fully realize, though, just how careless it had become. In its unbroken snooze, Icingdeath hadn’t moved in decades. A cold blanket of ice had crept over the long form, gradually thickening until the only clear spot was a hole in front of the great nostrils, where the rhythmic blasts of exhaled snores had kept the frost away.
And so Wulfgar, cautiously stalking the source of the resounding snores, came upon the beast.
Viewing Icingdeath’s splendor, enhanced by the crystalline ice blanket, Wulfgar looked upon the dragon with profound awe. Piles of gems and gold lay all about the cavern under similar blankets, but Wulfgar could not pull his eyes away. Never had he viewed such magnificence, such strength.
Confident that the beast was helplessly pinned, he dropped the hammer’s head down by his side. “Greetings, Ingeloakastimizilian,” he called, respectfully using the beast’s full name.
The pale blue orbs snapped open, their seething flames immediately apparent even under their icy veil. Wulfgar stopped short at their piercing glare.
After the initial shock, he regained his confidence. “Fear not, mighty worm,” he said boldly. “I am a warrior of honor and shall not kill you under these unfair circumstances.” He smiled wryly. “My lust shall be appeased by simply taking your treasure!”
But the barbarian had made a critical mistake.
A more experienced fighter, even a knight of honor, would have looked beyond his chivalrous code, accepted his good fortune as a blessing, and slain the worm as it slept. Few adventurers, even whole parties of adventurers, had ever given an evil dragon of any color an even break and lived to boast of it.
Even Icingdeath, in the initial shock of its predicament, had thought itself helpless when it had first awakened to face the barbarian. The great muscles, atrophied from inactivity, could not resist the weight and grip of the ice prison. But when Wulfgar mentioned the treasure, a new surge of energy blew away the dragon’s lethargy.
Icingdeath found strength in anger, and with an explosion of power beyond anything the barbarian had ever imagined, the dragon snapped its cordlike muscles, sending great chunks of ice flying away. The entire cavern complex trembled violently, and Wulfgar, standing on the slippery floor, was thrown down on his back. He rolled aside at the very last moment to dodge the spearlike tip of a falling icicle dislodged by the tremor.
Wulfgar regained his feet quickly, but when he turned, he found himself facing a horned white head, leveled to meet his eyes. The dragon’s great wings flexed outward, shaking off the last remnants of its blanket, and the blue eyes bore into Wulfgar.
The barbarian desperately looked around for an escape. He pondered throwing Aegis-fang, but knew that he couldn’t possibly kill the monster with a single strike. And, inevitably, the killing breath would come.
Icingdeath considered its foe for a moment. If it breathed, it would have to settle for frozen flesh. It was a dragon, after all, a terrible worm, and it believed, probably rightly so, that no single human could ever defeat it. This huge man, however, and particularly the magical hammer, for the dragon could sense its might, disturbed the worm. Caution had kept Icingdeath alive through many centuries. It would not close to melee with this man.
The cold air gathered in its lungs.
Wulfgar heard the intake of air and reflexively dove to the side. He couldn’t fully escape the blast that followed, a frosting cone of unspeakable cold, but his agility, combined with the deer blubber, kept him alive. He landed behind a block of ice, his legs actually burned by the cold and his lungs aching. He needed a moment to recover, but he saw the white head lifting slowly into the air, taking away the angle of the meager barrier.