The outcrop was maybe two hundred metres up the pass. I moved at a steady pace with the four of them close behind, my eyes running the ridgeline for movement, the wind cutting sharper by the minute.

Tom kept slipping on the loose snow. Kira caught his elbow twice before he could go down. Edgar was tucked in behind Lena, one hand on the strap of his bag, his breathing evened but shallow.

The path bent left around a lip of rock.

I stopped short.

Three white bears stood in the snow ahead of us.

They were massive. Two and a half metres at the shoulder, thick through the chest, their fur the same pale white as the snow they were standing on. Only the black points of their noses and the wet-black lines of their claws broke the colour. The lead one was bigger than the rest.

All three noses lifted at once.

The lead one’s black eyes locked on us.

"Get behind me."

The four of them scrambled. Kira grabbed Tom by the shoulder and pulled him back. Edgar side-stepped so fast he almost went down in the snow. Lena moved with them without asking why.

The lead bear rose onto its hind legs, then let out a massive roar of fury.

Its height grew to at least four meters. Its paws hung out to the sides, claws splayed. The two behind it followed a beat later, their shoulders rolling as they came up.

Kira drew a small dagger from her belt with a hand that shook once and then steadied. Edgar’s fingers came up with pale wind gathering between them. Tom had a baton out that he was holding like a man who’d been shown a baton once and had never held one in a real fight.

"Ash, we can help, just tell us—"

I lifted my right hand.

Heat ran down my arm. Gold light gathered in front of my palm in the shape of a palm print, fingers splayed.

The gold palm shot forward across the snow.

It hit the lead bear centre-chest.

ROAR!!

The impact folded the animal around the strike, lifted it off its hind legs, and drove it backward through the air ten meters before its body hit the slope with a wet crunch that shook powder loose from the ridge above.

[+30 SP]

The other two dropped onto all fours in reflex.

The first one turned toward me with its jaw open. My fist came in under its chin at a full drive and I felt its bone break under my knuckles.

Its head snapped up from the strike. Before It could recover, I hooked my other hand behind its ear and twisted, and the neck came around with a crack that carried across the pass. The body slumped sideways into the snow before its legs had finished processing that it was dead.

[+30SP]

Seeing the other two bears die within seconds, the third turned to run with its tail between its legs.

"Where do you think you’re going."

I closed the distance before leaping on it. My hand caught the base of its skull mid-run and drove its head down into the packed snow hard, then twisted its neck the way I’d twisted the second one.

The bear went still.

Silence fell in the pass.

I stood up straight and rolled my shoulder. It was a good warmup fight.

[+30 SP]

The four behind me hadn’t moved yet, or better put, never had the chance to.

Kira was still holding the dagger out in front of her at chest height. Edgar’s wind had dispersed in his fingers without releasing. Tom had the baton half-raised, his mouth slightly open. Lena was staring at the third bear’s corpse in the snow like she was working out whether it was really the same fearsome animal that had been standing there just seconds ago.

Tom lowered the baton by degrees.

"We didn’t... we didn’t do anything."

"I noticed." Edgar let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. "You killed a pack of white bears. In mere five seconds."

"Something like that."

Kira slid the dagger back into her belt sheath without looking at it. Her eyes were on me, smiling.

Whatever hope the badge had put in them, the corpses in the snow had multiplied it.

I crossed to the lead bear first. The chest cavity was cracked open where the palm had landed, the ribs splintered inward, but the fur was clean. I opened the storage ring on my hand and let the body dissolve into the pocket dimension.

The second went in after. Then the third.

"The meat will keep us fed for a while in case we run out of rations. The fur is thick enough that we can strip some off for insulation once we find shelter. Wrap it around the parts of us the cold is getting through fastest. Hands, feet, face."

I clipped the ring closed and turned back toward the outcrop.

"Let’s keep moving."

Luckily or not, we didn’t run into anything else after the bears.

We climbed the pass in a loose line, me at the front, Kira three paces behind me, Tom and Edgar in the middle, Lena bringing up the rear. The wind hadn’t let up. If anything, it had picked up a fraction as the slope steepened, and the grey sky had darkened.

Thirty minutes in, Kira’s eyes widened.

"Look. Over there, that’s a cave!" She lifted her hand and pointed at a spot halfway up the slope on our left, where a dark seam broke the white line of the mountainside. I followed her finger.

The opening was small. Maybe a metre wide, a meter and a half tall, the entrance framed by a lip of dark rock that had shed most of its snow. From where we stood, twenty metres below, it looked like the kind of gap a person could slip through sideways.

I climbed up to it first.

The other four followed at three paces behind me, careful with their footing on the slope. Snow crunched under my boots. When I reached the lip, I crouched and ran a hand along the inside of the frame. Cold stone. Dry to the touch. The opening ran deeper than the outer angle showed, angling down into the rock.

Just the right size for us to fit through.

Which was the problem.

I stood back up and turned to face them.

"There might be something inside. It will be very dangerous if we enter, since we’d be weakened by trying to fit in. Anything sitting in the dark past the bend has the drop on us the second our shoulders clear the frame. We come in one at a time, and whatever’s in there tears us apart before the second person makes it through."

Kira nodded. Tom nodded. Edgar and Lena were slower, but they got there.

Tom’s teeth chattered around the words. "So what do we do?"

"Simple."

A small grin formed at the edge of mouth. "Lure whatever’s hiding inside out to us. We’ll have the advantage out here in the open."

"How do we do that?" Tom’s eyes went back to the cave mouth. "Do we make a sound or something?"

"Let me show you."