PBJ in the Snow

The Yeti turned the rescue into a battle before anyone had time to decide whether the bears were enemies, victims, or simply guarding their home.

Nick met the creature first.

He did not fight cleanly. He fought effectively. Flame rolled over him, his scythes came out, and the Yeti learned very quickly that the party's newest arrival was not just comic timing and bad explanations. Nick cut into it with burning force while the others scattered through the den, trying to survive the bears, the cold, and the chaos of a fight happening around Virgil's unconscious body.

The Yeti answered with cold.

Its gaze locked onto the party and froze Jonah in place. The bear nearest him took advantage immediately, tearing into him while he could not move. Jonah went down beside the creature that had already nearly killed their rescue momentum.

Then Nick broke the Yeti open.

His scythes tore through it, leaving it barely standing, and Ash finished the work with a clean strike. The Yeti fell, singed and broken, and Ash spent the last of what he had to bring Jonah back from the edge. The Creator spoke to Jonah as he woke, another private divine interruption in a day already crowded with them.

But the den was not finished.

The polar bears kept fighting. Victor, still learning how to survive with a glowing wooden stump and one working arm, was mauled hard enough to drop. Nick went down too, only to gasp back to life on the strength of sheer luck. Jonah, barely upright again, threw himself in front of Nick and healed him, taking the next punishment for it. Maine moved through the cave like someone determined to be useful from behind cover, sending force and fire where it mattered.

One by one, the bears fell.

The last was killed as Maine came sliding around the rock and sent fire into it, ending the visible threats in the den. The cave went quiet except for the wounded, the dead, and another sound from the east: a small, frightened noise.

Nick followed it.

In the snow, curled beside a pouch, he found a surviving polar bear cub.

The victory soured at once. The party had not only cleared a den. They had killed the adults and left something behind that did not understand why the world had changed. Nick, still warm with fire, approached the cub carefully and comforted it until it stopped crying. When he picked it up, the cub settled into him, scared but soothed by the heat.

The den had taken a lot from them.

But it gave Nick something too.

A consequence with a heartbeat.

He would call the cub PBJ.