Looking up, into the massive mountains surrounding them, Clavran could only shake his head. Just a week ago, he had been fighting in the Arena of the White Tower, fighting to entertain the masses and nobility. And then, all of a sudden, things had gone to the devil, when a small, oh-so-inconspicuous, notification told the entire World of Mundus that someone had decided to go all four horsemen on the world and call in the apocalypse, or something along those lines.

Given that the notification had all hallmarks of a major event, only one that seemed to be at least partially player-driven, the highly involved, and thus high-level, players had decided they wanted in on that, curious to see what truly was going on. Private messages had been exchanged and under the guidance of a few experienced Guild-leaders, people had been organised. While it was a bit of a surprise to Clavran that he was invited, he should have expected it. Sure, he was, most likely, the most capable duelist under the Travellers and one of the strongest general fighters but he hadn’t joined any of the Traveller groups. Instead, he had prefered to stay in the Arena and fight, testing the intricacies of the combat system and making sure everything was working as well as possible.

Not that the testing and the skills he had acquired in the hot sands of the arena were truly useful in this campaign. Just getting to the Mountains of Ice had been a small adventure, one that had shown him just how little he had actually seen of this World of Mundus and how little he understood. The people he had been in communication with had directed him to a small shrine, where a fiery portal had opened up, allowing him to make the journey from central Aletoma to central Arbotoma with a single step. There had been nothing on the forum indicating that such a feat was even remotely possible, to say nothing of the next step, where he, alongside thirty-nine other Travellers and forty natives acting as guides, had stepped into another portal, this one swirling green and somehow opening in a tree.

That second portal had brought them close to their destination, a chain of giant mountains, stretching high into the sky, snow-capped peaks partially obscured by clouds. The Mountains of Ice, as he had been told, where the Ice Queen had built her Citadel.

From there on, things had been a little odd. There was a strange sense of discongruity, a disconnect between the arduous journey and the mood people had been in, one was almost tortuous, the cold wind and difficult terrain hard to endure but at the same time, every Traveller had been, at some level, looking forward to the brutal and merciless fight at the end of the journey. The Natives had looked at their allies with some apprehension, seeing their companions possibly as utter lunatics but that hadn’t dampened the mood amongst the Travellers. Someone had even suggested a name for their group, their Raid, Korbal, apparently meaning the Unbeaten in some obscure fantasy language and everyone was motivated to see what this first, and likely last, Raid of the Road to Purgatory-Beta had to offer.

And how Morgana, who everyone was convinced had taken the role of “Ice Queen” was fitting in the whole deal, there had been rumours that Morgana wasn’t a normal player but had been directly guided by Pantheon Entertainment as a publicity stunt but Clavran wasn’t quite convinced of that. Either way, the discussions had been quite interesting, especially with the added objective to keep their communication out of the Forum, so Morgana wouldn't be tipped off. Not that it would help, if Pantheon Entertainment was actually supporting her, but it had been agreed upon to keep quiet and only post videos later.

After a few days of climbing through the mountains and getting annoyed at the local, mostly aerial, wildlife, the Korbal had managed to get close to the region their guides had declared as their destination, the Frozen Citadel.

“We will attack at dawn. We have little knowledge of the internals of the fortress, there is quite a bit of magic involved that keeps me from investigating, so we’ll have to do things the hard way. On a positive note, I’m pretty sure I managed to conceal our presence from these strange bird things we had seen the last two days, so there’s that. Everyone, rest for now and we’ll get going soon. This is going to be big, so make sure there’ll be no trouble elsewhere,” one of the officers by the name of Whisper ordered. The female was dressed in strange, flowing desert garb, completely out of place in the frozen mountains, but she made it work.

“Got it, Mags,” one of the other travellers replied, causing soft laughter, especially when Whisper gave the offender a withering glare. There was little banter after that, as everyone made sure that they would be able to play for hours on end, to challenge the Raid without issues.

In the first light of dawn, the Travellers marched off, leaving their native guides behind. The guides gave them a last salute, likely considering the whole thing a suicide mission, but that didn’t stop the Travellers.

It didn’t take long for the Frozen Citadel to come into view, oddly small walls of crystalline Ice, overshadowed by a massive tower in the middle of an Ice-covered valley, with strange arcs of power flowing from smaller towers to the central tower. It looked both intimidating and oddly beautiful, but the elemental beauty wasn’t why the Korbal had come. They were here to challenge the place.

And a challenge it was. Just overcoming the outer walls proved to be incredibly difficult, with repeated attacks from strange birds that shot razor-sharp projectiles of Ice at them, often accompanied by ferocious giant wolves that didn’t bleed but shattered. It was almost as if everything in the valley was made of Ice.

There were a few attempts to circumvent the wall but the Ice it was built on was impervious to the attempts some of the spellcasters made to control it and when one of the Valkyries tried to fly across, things got ugly. Instead of individual foes, the Valkyrie was suddenly targetted by everyone in the complex, hundreds of frozen projectiles saturating the area above and around her, forcing a quick dive to safety. When another tried to use some odd teleportation technique, he managed to stumble away with a deep cut in his neck and only the quick and efficient healing from another stopped him from leaving Mundus for an involuntary time-out.

However the biggest problem didn’t come from the harassing attacks but the guardians of the wall, massive, two-legged creatures of gleaming, crystalline Ice, with long arms that could easily push back everyone but the strongest warriors and, even worse, an ability that allowed them to throw multi-metre long Icicles as if they were throwing a simple Javelin. Over and over, until someone managed to engage them in melee and stay there.

Luckily, as powerful and threatening as these creatures were, they were incredibly stupid, almost reminiscent of an old, badly scripted NPC. Compared to the life-like natives of Mundus, these were truly dumb, holding the wall, attacking everyone who got too close or attacking those attacking them or the wall. That allowed for quite a bit of wiggle-room to exploit, with individuals drawing their attention, allowing others to concentrate fire as the creatures were distracted. Didn’t mean it was fun for the pure melees like Clavran, but it worked, mostly.

Their progress would have been even sweeter, if not for the ominous presence at the top of the tower, slowly swelling over the morning. As time passed, the various spell-casters were getting increasingly worried, muttering about the amount of power gathered there and what it might mean.

Regardless of those mutterings, a little before noon, the Korbal had managed to shatter the outer gates and were storming the inner courtyard, with multiple smaller fortifications but also the main tower. It took quite a bit of effort to clean a way and after a brief discussion, it was decided to take a stab at one of the outer towers first, to see what happened, before going for the main tower.

Just as the gathered Korbal engaged yet another of the Ice Collosi, now without the protective wall, the creatures had been hiding behind, a sudden change swept over the world. For a moment, it felt as if dusk was setting in, the entire valley shrouded in shadows. Somewhere, in the distance, a wolf was howling, the noise chilling their very bones and far above them, at the top of the tower, a deep, inky black sun was rising, the source of the darkness.

“That’s not good, is it?” someone asked, just as Clavran was pushed back from the Ice Colossus he had been fighting.

“Probably not, but we are here and we won’t go just because there’s trouble. Let’s get to it, we’ve got a tower to raid and an Ice Queen to kill!” another, the leader of their merry band, the Paladin Howardlight, announced as he led the charge against the damaged Colossus.

Soon after, they had managed to fall the creature and were now advancing on the gates, having decided not to attack the smaller fortifications first, not after the spectacle in the sky.

Something was brewing and none of the Korbal liked it.