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Thunder Peaks, 1372 DR. 21st day of The Fading.

The air in front of them turned brighter than the sun for the barest moment. It was accompanied by a sound like tearing paper or crashing cymbals, louder than anything he'd ever heard before. For a second Aiden thought he could see a jagged line of purest white rising from the ground to the heavens. The air flashed twice again, leaving him surrounded in darkness. A line of brilliant purple and orange danced in front of him wherever he looked.

He'd never been so close to a lightning strike before in his life, not even in the bandit raid nearly two months earlier. The ringing in his ears was just as bad as if he'd been struck in the head. The strangest part was the overwhelming smell of burning air and stone.

Scruff cowered next to him, practically lying on the ground, whites of his eyes clearly showing. Aiden knew the dog wouldn't move, and yelled at him, "Get up, Scruff! Come on!"

Aiden began to hustle as best he could while carrying nearly half again his own weight in gear. The mix of freezing rain, hail, and wind just got worse as he went on. By the end of the next few hundred feet, his chest felt like it was on fire. He was so cold it was hard to think.

Aiden saw Silvia break off the side of the trail going uphill, jumping over small rocky precipices and making her way around boulders. He yelled to her "Wait up!" and hoped she could hear him over the noise. She apparently could as she stopped and turned around. His arms felt like leaden lumps from carrying the bear-hide sack for the past few hours. He dropped it on the ground as he reached her and bent over trying to catch his breath. Aiden saw Silvia bend down to try to pick up the hide, but she could barely lift it.

"J-just give m-me a m-moment," he gasped out, "I c-can carry it."

He waited long enough for his pulse to cool a bit, but his lungs wouldn't stop burning. He bent down and picked the sack back up again. He was completely exhausted, and the hide-wrapped provisions felt like they weighed more than he did himself.

Silvia went around another rocky pinnacle and he trudged along behind her, nearly tripping over rocks that littered the path. To his relief, a dark opening loomed up ahead. Scruff immediately darted ahead to the cave and ran in. Silvia ran over to the cave and peered in. She turned around and said "It's empty! Hurry up!"

It was an enormous relief to get into the cave and out of the driving hail and icy cold wind. Scruff had shaken himself off as soon as he'd reached the cave, spotting the walls with drops of water. Lightning still flashed outside, periodically illuminating the inside of the cave. It was no more than perhaps ten feet deep, and barely tell enough for him to stand upright. It was only about five feet wide at the entrance, and narrowed to a crack at the back end of the cave. The walls were rough gray granite and looked jagged enough to tear skin. He set his pack and the the hide sack down with great relief a few feet inside the overhang of the cave. Silvia was standing near the back of the cave looking at him. "Hrast! You look frozen to the bone! Get out of those clothes, quickly, before you catch your death!"

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The boy stood there a moment, swaying a little. He looked so tired that he was going to collapse, Silvia thought. As Silvia watched he leaned his back up against the wall, slowly sliding down it. The wolf of his whined and reached up to lick the boy's face. Silvia watched as the boy tried to lift a hand to brush the wolf away, unable to get his hand more than a few inches off the ground. The dog continued to whine and lick at his face.

Silvia took a few steps and knelt down next to the boy, fumbling with the laces on his shirt. The laces he'd tied at the front of his shirt were soaked through and took her a few moments of picking at them with her nails before she managed to get the knot undone.

She pulled the laces open and then looked up at him. The boy's eyes were closed and his head tilted to the side. His lips had turned purple from the cold. She couldn't get him undressed by herself, and he'd freeze if he didn't get on fresh clothing. She turned his head to face her and slapped him. His eyes opened at that. "WAKE UP!", she yelled. "You need to get your clothes off or you'll freeze!"

The boy leaned forward at that and began tugging his soaked shirt off. His skin was pale and turning purple near his hands. Silvia was worried he might get hypothermia or pneumonia, either of which could prove fatal. She turned to the backpack and took the bedroll off, taking it out of the leather slip that covered it and throwing the wool bedroll open on the ground. Thank heaven it was big enough for two people. She almost wished for a moment that she'd gone back to the caravan to get her own bedroll.

Then she remembered the sight of the guards getting cut down, blood spraying everywhere as the bestial orc-things slaughtered them like pigs. Father helping her out of the wagon and yelling at her to run. She'd turned to help him out, when something flickered, and he'd fallen into the wagon. Ducking behind the wagon so that she didn't get shot too. Then the boy had come around the wagon too, collapsing on the ground writhing like he was possessed. She'd watched his face twisting like something was moving under his skin. Watched in horrified fascination as black and white fur grew out of his skin. For a moment, she couldn't move, couldn't breath, her chest was tighter than any corset could have made it. Somehow she managed to scream. She did as her father told her. She ran.

No, there was no way she was going back to the caravan. She knew her father was dead, but didn't want to believe it. Couldn't believe it. Not until the boy had told her. Silvia could only hope that the boy had sufficient supplies to last them over the mountain trail and into Tilverton. If she could find a moneylender or a guild representative, she knew she'd be able to withdraw some of the money her father had stored for her on an account with the merchant's guild.

She then opened the pack of his and began pulling stuff out, starting with the blanket and then a pair of clothes. The wolf grabbed the blanket and dragged it over to the bedroll. At first she was going to grab it back, but thought better of it. She kept watching as the wolf dog began unrolling it with his nose, grabbed the corners with his teeth, spreading it out over the bedroll. Silvia was impressed, remembering some of the trained animals at the circus in Amn, many years ago. None of the circuses in Cormyr had shows with trained animals, though she'd seen several exotics in cages.

She turned back to the pack and pulled out more things until she found the rations that the boy had mentioned earlier, identified by their waxed paper wrapping, and took them out. It looked like several very dense cakes of some kind with fruit and nuts baked into them. Those would do, until they could find dry wood.

When she turned around, the boy had managed to pull off his belt and was struggling to pull off his soaking wet trousers. He hadn't even had the forethought to take off his boots. She sighed.

Silvia closed the pack and moved over and told him to wait a moment while she undid the laces on his thick leather boots. The leather laces had swollen a bit from the rain and were quite difficult to undo. He stopped struggling with the pants, probably when he realized that he had forgotten his boots.

She swatted his hand back when he reached down to help, and finished undoing the laces, then pulled one boot off, then the other. The poor boy looked like he was practically dead, she thought. For some reason she couldn't remember his name. Aten or Adam. Something like that. All she could think of was his face from the night before. The face of a tiger.

She grabbed his soaked pants around the bottom and yanked at them. It took a bit of effort, but eventually she got them off. The skin on his chest was covered in goosebumps, and his arms and legs were an ugly shade of purple that she didn't like at all. Apparently even weretigers weren't immune to cold.