A/N:
Guys I actually did get a great deal of writing done since my last update. The issue has been 1 editing. Bloody editing. and 2 I've been really ill. I've been fighting some strange reoccurring infection for months. It was very like mono. I'm in the middle of another flare up right now, but it's not as bad as it was, thankfully.

But I have a ton of drafts done. So when I can actually sit down and think well enough to order them I might do that, type them up, and then publish them. Worry about editing them and making them pretty (sensible) later.

We'll have to see.

But at least the next 4-5 chapters are drafted. I need to write 2-3 more and then I have the rough drafts of 3 more chapters (small plot gap between what I have drafted.) That would double PoF and actually progress the story to a point where it might flow more easily. Where it would essentially write itself with some juicy twists I had planned well in advance. And some sexy stuff too, of course. I got some very nice drafts for both.

I had a huge conundrum with part of the plot coming up. I didn't want my ideas to be cliche or confusing. But I'm just gonna let them roll and be what they will be. A few readers helped me with that idea a while ago and I stalled out not sure if that's what I really wanted... In something this large... I really should stop agonizing over little details I guess. It's really not helping me. Or the people who give a shit about this fic. I'm gonna try to stop doing that, so that something actually comes out before the next decade, sound good?

Excuse the resulting errors please.

And please be safe out there.

She heard a sound, like a ceaseless wail echoing in her skull, bouncing off bone and reverberating in the core of her being. It felt distant but it felt a part of her. All of her felt distant. She reached up with gloved fingers and touched her veiled lips.

No, it wasn't her scream she heard.

Running her fingers against what she knew to be her face she felt the numb tug of skin telling her that her cracked lips were still frozen shut, pulling with the thick woolen cover of her face. The hand fell lifelessly as she trudged through the desolate frozen landscape.

Working through the snow were legs that could not feel, weakly shuffling along on makeshift snowshoes, powered by willpower more than anything else. She pushed herself along for nothing but her people. For her love.

No longer did she believe she would make it back to them but she knew she could not stop until she gave all that she could give.

She would give it all.

They had already lost more of her party than she could bare. The arduous journey, along with a strict ration of food, meant they were all weak.

They had hoped that there would be something up here. Something.

But there was nothing.

Just ice and rock and wind and pain.

The cold grew as they traveled through the barren lands. Colder than any cold they'd ever seen. And then colder still. Until it sucked the breath out of their lungs and slowly stripped them of their will to go on.

They were cold. Endlessly cold. Unimaginably cold. Down to the bone. Down to the very soul.

She had cried more times than she could count. Cried until her tears froze in her eyelashes. Day after day she cried until there were no more tears to cry. Now she could only weep from the inside. But even that pain was distant. Inevitably one more companion had not risen from their brief rest earlier. She couldn't say how long ago that was but she did know it was the most frightened she had ever been. Not of the death, she had seen much death. What frightened her was that, despite it sapping the strength she did not have, she wanted to cry and could not. Despite the pain she could muster no more tears.

All that was left to wonder if that meant that her own death would soon be upon her.

Or if madness would find her first.

Vaguely, distantly, she wonder if her remaining companions, few as they were, would bother to try to compose her body in the permafrost. It took them hours to scrape more than a few inches of the hard packed snow. They had long ago given up attempting to give their comrades to rest beneath the earth and instead simply placed a blanket over their frozen corpse. It was then adorned with a personal belonging; a sword, an amulet, a hat, something to mark the life that once was.

And then they moved on without a word.

They knew it did not matter. The words were for the living, not the dead. And they all knew that soon it would all be one in the same.

She hated death. Hated that it stole potential and possibility from a person.

More than that she hated that without the spark of life a person was no more than a sack of meat. A vessel to whither into little more than dirt.

Not that that would be the fate this far north. In this wretched place their earthly forms would stay forever. Forever frozen and forever empty. A macabre shell of life.

The one and only comfort she felt was that they suffered no more. They no longer felt the pang of hunger, no longer felt the bite of frost eating at their flesh, and no longer slowly lost their minds over the dull endless drudgery.

Lissandra wished she could be like them. Wished she could stop.

Wished she could lay down and let the cold embrace of death take her.

But she couldn't. She had made a promise. She would keep it.

A dim memory from what seemed a lifetime ago bubbled up within the fog of her mind. Skin pressed against her skin. Milky smooth legs and gentle fingers entwined with her own. Deep blue eyes softened with compassion and staring into her own. Soft lips brushing against her own with a feather light touch.

Wanting to weep yet more she trudged on silently, listening to that low mournful wail from beyond her.

She made a promise.

When she laid down on the frozen ground and fits of sleep fell over her she saw that face in her nightmares. Frozen, dead, and empty. She had seen many that looked just like it. But more than anything the image of that face haunted her.

On they marched. She didn't know what kept her few companions going. She wasn't entirely sure what kept her going anymore. She only knew that she couldn't stand to see that face stripped of life.

Whatever was hell in some realm this truly was the void of hell. The cold had long ago burned her flesh numb with painful pins that drove into her with each step. It was so distant though. She wasn't sure it was real anymore.

The wail of the wind grew in intensity. An ethereal sound, distant and unnatural, but somehow a part of her.

It was matched only by her heart crying out for home.

For Avarosa.

The thought that they needed her pushed her beyond her limits. Beyond her sanity.

That wail. That sound. It spoke to her.

The wind had stopped but the howling wail remained.

Dimly she wondered if she really had lost it.

And then the world went still in an ear shattering silence.

The wind spoke to her.

And frozen black fingers reached toward the voice.