“AXEL!” Rolf shouted, and the paladin made a grunting noise from inside his small tent. “AXEL WAKE UP!”

The paladin rolled over inside his tiny tent, and that was when Ezmeralda grabbed her staff, opened the ten flap, and struck the man. In an instant he had risen, shouting at the air and striking with his fists at the canvas for a few seconds before he realized what was going on.

“What!? What is it?!” he asked, confused. “What is going on?”

“I don’t know!” Rolf replied. “There’s something out there! Things! Things I’ve never seen before!”

Axel exited his small tent with his mace in hand. His night vision wasn’t that good, Rolf knew that, but it still wasn’t hard for him to see the creatures. The golems glistened in the moonlight, making them easier to see in the dark. Still, Rolf did not relish the idea of fighting such creatures, since they did not seem to have eyes, which meant they could navigate the darkness without the need for sight. He had encountered such creatures in caves before. Those creatures had been bugs and other animals with no eyes, and he also knew that bats did not need to see to navigate in the darkness.

If these creatures had been the size of bugs or bats Rolf would not have been afraid, but they were much larger. In fact, as they approached, he realized they were larger than the average human. Some stood a couple heads taller than Axel, who was quite tall to begin with.

“Ezmeralda…do you know anything about this? Are those things coming to hurt us?” Axel said.

Rolf looked at Ezmeralda, hoping for an answer. However she didn’t answer. She was looking out at the creatures. Rolf couldn’t see her features well in the dark, but he was almost certain she was curious, rather than afraid or concerned.

“Ez?” Rolf asked.

Bright red-orange lines suddenly began to appear across Ezmeralda’s face. They were in in the shape of complex patterns, symbols, and runes, like an elaborate tattoo. Rolf couldn’t decipher any of it, and the markings glowed like orange embers. He soon realized that the markings were not just on her face, but glowed from underneath her clothing as well, and in fact had appeared all over her body. The air began to feel warm, and Ezmeralda’s gaze hardened to one that was exuded confidence and excitement.

“Ez?” Rolf asked again, his voice quivering. Axel had backed away.

“I don’t know what they are.” Ezmeralda said. “But they are coming for us.”

As if on queue, the creatures stopped shambling forward and began to charge. They crashed forward, knocking through brush and trampling small saplings in their path. The ground behind them continued to be covered in snow and ice as they passed it, as if they were bringing the cold with them.

In contrast, Rolf realized that the air around Ezmeralda was now uncomfortably warm.

Axel took on his role of giving orders in an instant. “Rolf! Climb up a tree! Get your sling out! I don’t think your arrows will be very effective against ice. Shattering it with stones will. I’ll stay down here with Ezmeralda, and help her whatever she is planning to do.”

Rolf deftly did as he was instructed, swiftly finding a tree nearby and moving up it like a cat, before perching himself on one of the branches. He removed his sling from a pouch on his side, which also held five stones. He watched as Axel placed himself between Ezmeralda and the oncoming monsters. He thought he heard Ezmeralda say something to Axel, but he couldn’t make it out.

It wasn’t the time to worry about that though. He placed a stone in his sling and began whirling it round till it reached a high speed. Then, with a snap like a whip he loosed it out into the darkness.

It zipped out into the forest, and struck one of the incoming golems. The beings did not have heads, but they were humanoid, and the stone struck it dead center. The golem split in a shower of ice and slush. Its pieces careened through the snow and scattered everywhere. This did not cause its companions to falter though. They were fearless, and charged on without pause. Then, before Rolf was even able to loose another stone, the first wave of the monsters were on top of Ezmeralda and Axel.

There were perhaps ten or fifteen of the things, but Rolf couldn’t tell for sure in the dark. The first one to reach his companions, which was on the small side, tried to strike axel with a blunt arm of ice. However it was slow compared to the paladin’s reaction time, and was shattered by a mace strike before it was able to land a blow. The second to reach Axel wasn’t aiming to hit him with one of its limbs, and instead tried to tackle the paladin. Even though Axel managed to land a blow and smash the monster into pieces, he was knocked over by the golem’s momentum.

Another charged Ezmeralda, and one more jumped an inhuman height into the air, then fell towards Axel.

Twin flames erupted in the darkness, blinding Rolf with the brilliant light for a moment. Explosions followed the burst of flames, and chunks of ice and slush clattered and splashed through the trees and across the forest floor.

There was another blast, and then another. Rolf was positive her heard Axel grunt and shout amid the cacophony of crashes and explosions that followed, but he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t see anything, and his hearing was suffering because of the loud explosions as well. Thus, he looked away from the fight, since the flashes of light kept him from seeing anything significant, and focused on any other ice creatures that were oncoming.

He put a stone in his sling, and loosed it upon one of the few oncoming creatures, despite his difficulty seeing. It struck the golem on the shoulder, but the creature kept moving forward anyway. Rolf got another stone, and looked for a new target, since his old one had already entered the fray below. When he looked out at the creatures again though, he saw something interesting. The remaining eight or so monsters were waving about in the air at strange lights floating around them. The lights shot little puffs of flame at the creatures. He narrowed his eyes, and then realized what the little points of light were.

They were tiny people made of flame, little fire fairies. He had seen a creature like one of them long before, years ago as a child, when he had been exploring one day at the beginning of spring. He had never thought that he would see one again, and had come to believe that such fae creatures didn’t exist at all. Legends said they were harbingers of spring, and that if you saw one it meant that spring was coming soon, and that they usually showed up around dawn. However, those were just legends, and most considered all fairy creatures to just be mythical. Yet here they were, and as he glanced around he realized that they were rising up from the ground all around the small camp, hundreds of them floating in the air and attacking the ice golems.

He looked back down to the center of the fray. His eyes had started to adjust to the flashes of light, but it was still hard to see what was going on.

Axel stood back to back with Ezmeralda. She had long abandoned her staff, it was planted in the ground nearby and the green gem atop it was glowing with a bright light. The strange markings that had manifested all over her body were glowing just as bright as before, and gouts of flame sprung her hands in every direction she willed them to go. When the flames struck the ice creatures they exploded. Any that got close were struck down by Axel’s mace in a moment, and he kept them form rushing Ezmeralda from behind.

Rolf realized that he needed to be of use too, and put another stone in his sling. He loosed this one at the farthest creature away, but missed. So he loaded another stone into his sling, but as he looked back up from reloading to find a new target, he found himself lacking. The ice creatures at the edge of the camp were now swarmed by the fire creatures, and were melted away into nothing, while those within the camp were either blasted or smashed into pieces - sometimes both.

Before long, even those at the edge of the camp were gone, and the fiery creatures that had destroyed the monsters floated about aimlessly. After a moment of this they began fluttering here and there among themselves, as if they were conversing and interacting without words. An eerie silence hung over the area, save for the rustling of a cold breeze through the tree branches.