The ship heaved mightily, the air a mixture of biting frost and salt spray. Nelson stood stoutly against the bulkhead, his face calm, expressionless, as the ship teetered atop the crest of the wave, and then glided swiftly down the other side. The spray battered them all, and from time to time a great plume of seawater lashed the deck like the tentacle of an enraged kraken. More than once Nelson had seen the water carry men away, the sailors falling into the black depths, their screams mostly unheard in the maelstrom.

The ship began to ascend the next swell, and Nelson readied himself, pushing his body against the bulkhead. There were several lengths of line wrapped around his massive arms. Deep in the trough, there was a moment when the great walls of water on either side of the ship hid the horizon completely, as though they were in a watery cave. The men to either side of Nelson glanced about with wide eyes, and when the great towers of water crashed down upon them and the ship was again thrust high into the sky, more of those men were gone.

The rickety vessel groaned and protested noisily all throughout, the only sounds to be heard over the frothing, angry sea. Still, Nelson remained calm, never rattled and never worried. He’d been through worse, on sea and on land. This would not defeat him.

It was, after all, his triumphant return from the Ice Wars. He’d battled the barbarian armies of the Northern Reach, he’d seen the unnatural blue sheen in the eyes of their waylaid commanders, and he’d locked eyes with the cold spirits within. Once the demons fully cast aside their masks and shed the masquerade, there were not many survivors left from either side. The battle-weary soldiers from the Free Baronies had mostly turned back, the unnatural blue fire hastening their departure. Only Nelson, with a band of fifty or so, continued on to where the wind bit colder and fiercer. For what good was an incomplete triumph, what good was it to only delay the inevitable? No, the job had not been finished, and deep down they’d all known this.

It had been a march through a cold, cold hell, day after day, trudging through icy waste and tundra, ascending harsh mountains and glaciers, and all the while eradicating the sick, demonic plague that had spawned there, the unholy beasts that had risen from the ice. A clawed hand would burst through the tundra, the sick roar of the monster barely distinguishable from the cracking of the ice all around their feet as it rose from the ground in a hailstorm. Its eyes were black and dead, its fanged mouth locked open in an endless scream. One look at the dead wight would stop the heart of most men.

They were no match for Nelson’s great ax.

Nelson, and those few brave companions that remained, trudged into the heart of the icy hell, and slew the very kingpin of such filth. The devil stood as tall as three men lying head to heel, and it wore its skeleton on the outside of its body, armored and plated, topped with a skull of twisting horns like that of a ram. When Nelson had swung his great ax into its chest cavity, the sound emitted had shattered the sheets and walls of the ice cave all around him, and the great chunks of ice began to fall. The avalanche had brought down the cavern of the beast, and most of the mountain above. It was a cataclysmic moment, and one that swallowed the lives of the heroes and the monsters alike, the scourge taking with it one last sacrifice on its way back to hell. That is, all except for one.

Nelson was the lone figure to emerge from the piles and slopes of loose ice and rock, holding the devil’s horned skull in his hand. He held it to the sky and screamed forth his triumph. Then, only then, did the sun emerge from behind the clouds, and the land finally permit the rays to fall upon it. Nelson had dropped the devil’s skull on the frozen ground, and with two precise swings of his ax, he sheared off the twisting horns atop it. The rest of the skull he’d kept as a souvenir, and it sat in his pack, on the deck of the ship that heaved to and fro in the maelstrom of the great sea.

Having survived the mad barbarians, the icy waste, the wights, and the devil himself, he knew—he declared—that the crossing of the Ice Sea would not finish him. There was still much to attend to. There was still a life to live. For deep within him, a human heart was beating. He often had to remind himself of this.

He knew what lay on the other side of the sea. It was a place he hadn’t been for several years—the land that was his home. He couldn’t remember much about it—not after everything he’d been through—but he did know it was a place he’d once been very fond of, a place of sun and rain, of warm air and green grass, where rivers rolled lazily and the days were peaceful. In time, more details would come back to him—once he neared his land, once he put more distance between himself and the ice. It was just as much about leaving behind the ice as it was returning home. Just as the sun melted ice, home would cure him of his ills, his trauma. It may be that he still had a family there. Perhaps there may even be people who could remember him. Perhaps they even awaited his return. And if the gods truly were good, she’d still be there, and he could see her once more.

But those were thoughts for a later day. Now, the Ice Sea dared antagonize him.

He stood tall and stared the angry sea directly in the face. In response, the ocean frothed and the ship groaned, and more men were lost. Thunder boomed, and when the walls of water dropped around him and thrust the ship up on a pinnacle, Nelson saw the twirling, spinning cyclones of water all around, each of them eager to claim a man’s life, should they strike with their biting, snaring winds. Nelson only tightened the lengths of line about his great arms, and finally broke his expressionless calm with a smile.