Mirage

Unknown place on the map, just a big toundra around Icebound and the lake!
For you, @Zharko <3

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A wretched creature, a prisoner of the cold—its flesh hardened, desiccated, a frozen carcass. It was the only thing that could pass for a meal, the sole offering of this merciless land to Azamora, who had long since lost her way in the great white expanse, as a novice might lose themselves in the desert.
She was freezing. Her short fur was ill-suited to such punishing temperatures, but life had never been kind to her, and hardship had forged in her a resilience that refused to yield. She had swallowed far worse in the name of survival, and though the bite of the cold gnawed at her bones, it was nothing compared to the torments Asaad had inflicted upon her—wounds that ran deeper than flesh, scars both seen and unseen.

The fugitive flung herself upon the pitiful heap of flesh, entrails, and bone. As she tore into it, her gaze fell upon something unusual—scraps of fabric, leather, twisted metal. People had lived here… or perhaps they had died here.

Beyond the swirling gusts of wind and ice, behind that veil of pale oblivion, strange shapes emerged—jagged rocks, frozen mounds, shifting figures that seemed to waver and breathe. The desert had its mirages, but so did the tundra. She glimpsed monstrous, formless colossi moving behind the storm, only to watch them dissolve into the endless white. The wind, the cold, the hunger conspired against her senses. She no longer paid mind to the fleeting silhouettes on the horizon, knowing they would all be devoured in the end by the abyssal frost.

Instead, she turned her focus back to the wretched scrap of frozen flesh, its sinews so stiffened by ice that even her fangs could barely pierce it. In frustration, in exhaustion, she flung the thing away, watching as it tumbled to a stop at the foot of yet another looming shape—another mirage, no doubt.

And so, without a second thought, without the faintest flicker of caution, she stepped forward to reclaim her meager prize.
the staff team luvs u