The thunderous noises became more common right after Los'en's message, then began to slow down. A series of loud cracks that seemed to get louder and louder replaced them, then a man made of lightning zoomed towards the collapsed ruin from the horizon. He wasn't either as fast as lightning or as loud, but he was definitely the source of the last set of thunderous noise.

The man made of lightning seemed to pause when he saw the collapse, then zipped loudly over towards the clogged entrance. He circled it twice, then did a larger circle around the entire site before he turned and sped towards his origin point.

Sophia frowned as he left. "That was Los'en, wasn't it? I thought we were trying to hide?"

Dav shook his head. "I think he's trying to give an excuse for knowing about the collapse and hurrying back here with their prey. I doubt they'll be long, now. Do you want to watch while I go get Lan'ti or do you want to make the run?"

"I'll go," Xin'ri interjected. "I've done as much as I can up here anyway, so I might as well stretch my legs. You two are better up here than I am, anyway."

Sophia frowned at the craftswoman as she disappeared deeper into the bunker. Xin'ri sounded almost happy to leave, but as if she wasn't content watching their surroundings. "Do you think she's nervous?"

"Impatient, at least," Dav agreed. "We can't do much until sunset, so I get the desire to move."

Sophia nodded. She wasn't feeling particularly anxious, herself; she felt angry more than anything else. As it happened, the new access tunnel was a better way into the underground than the old difficult-to-climb path, but the fact that they needed someone else to open it sucked.

True to Dav's prediction, the hunting party returned to the campsite less than an hour after Los'en's visit, with two large reindeer on the sled they used to transport meat. Lan'ti joined the duo waiting on the overlook long before that, but no one had much to say.

Neither Ci'an nor Taika had found any sign of a watching enemy, but they couldn't trust that. There clearly had been someone in the very bunker they were using as a lookout when the collapse happened; the fact that they could find no traces of that person meant only that they were good at hiding, not that they weren't there.

They had to wait several hours for sunset while the returning hunting party set up a new campsite a little ways away from the collapsed region. Several of them also spent some time with the horses; Sophia couldn't tell what they did, other than groom them, but she could tell that the horses seemed less anxious afterwards.

Everything seemed calm despite the destruction.

It was enough to make Sophia feel a little paranoid. Did the enemy, whoever it was, already know they'd escaped the trap? For that matter, was it a trap at all? It wasn't like their enemies had set it up; they'd only taken advantage of the fact that they were inside to collapse the entrance.

Without Othala and Scout, it would have been a trap. They wouldn't have had an easy way out. More than one way out, even; Sophia expected that once they repaired the interspace conduit, they'd be able to exit that way as well.

Without Othala, Sophia didn't think they'd have known what the conduit was. Xin'ri might have been able to figure something out, but Sophia knew she wouldn't have been able to. It was far more likely that they'd have had to either reopen the stairs or figure out another route to the surface, and Sophia wasn't sure digging through the ceiling was a good idea. They also wouldn't have known that the stairs were deliberately collapsed. With that knowledge, Sophia thought they might have used a different set of stairs, but without it … it was hard to say.

No, their enemies definitely thought the ruins were a trap. Sophia didn't know what they wanted, but that didn't change the obvious. Collapsing the entrance made them enemies.

Taika had to return before nightfall, when his ability to manage Invisible Ink ran out. Ci'an came back not long after that, but her return was to carry a message to Lan'ti instead of to sleep. Los'en was going to have the hunting party openly search the area in the morning. He planned to "find" the bunker about midway through the morning and have everyone move in. That way, people could rotate back to the more comfortable camp below to sleep without making it obvious they weren't trapped. It would also hopefully keep their enemies away from the new tunnel.

According to Ci'an, Los'en was certain their enemies were Templars from the Broken Temple in Izel.

Lan'ti was not so certain; he suspected that it might be someone from the previous expedition into the Wilds. After all, how else would they know where the ruin was? He seemed to dismiss the thought that anyone could have followed either group from Izel and then stayed hidden for weeks; it was far more likely that whoever it was had arrived recently. After all, why would they wait?

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Sophia didn't have an answer to that, but she didn't see much reason to worry about who they were. They were enemies and that was enough. Who they were would be important after they were no longer a threat.

Lan'ti sent Ci'an back with a description of his plans for the overnight search. Ci'an didn't return after that, which meant Los'en agreed.

By now, daylight was relatively short, but that still meant a long time from midmorning when the ceiling over the stairs collapsed to nightfall. Ci'an returned early in the afternoon and declared that she'd do the rest of the search after dark; she'd done as much as she thought she could during the daytime.

It was strange. The only tracks she could see in the snow anywhere were either wildlife or their own horses, and the snow on the ground was three days old. Tracks should have been visible, along with anything else their enemies cleared as they watched, but there was nothing. There wasn't even any sign of a shapeshifter.

Whoever was hunting them had to be excellent at concealing their presence. Sophia wanted to think that meant there weren't many of them, but it could just as easily mean that they were a group that had trained together and were all skilled at moving unobtrusively. It made Sophia think of Larryt, the Cloud Clan member who guided them through the Spirits of the Woods Challenge. He was able to walk invisibly without affecting the world around him. It had some downsides, but an ability like that would completely prevent Ci'an from finding them.

That night, Xin'ri was able to ward a ring around the bunker after Ci'an and Sophia thoroughly searched it. They finished by having Taika set up an illusion of undisturbed snow over the areas they'd moved through; there was no other way for Xin'ri to lay down her protections and have them not be seen.

They didn't find anything or anyone, but that was what they'd expected. They knew someone had been there, but unless they found a place to start, they couldn't track whoever it was. The best they could do was stay aware and catch whoever it was the next time they attacked.

The next morning, it started to snow, which grew stronger and stronger through the day until it was a full blizzard. The storm derailed all their plans; there was no good way to search the area through the blinding slow. It would have been the perfect time for Xin'ri to place more of her alarms, except that she couldn't safely move in the snow.

That was where things stood for all of that day and into the next morning, when Sophia complained to Dav about not being able to go outside.

"I can Invoke Winter Variants of my Vestiges," Cliff rumbled softly in Sophia's mind. He didn't elaborate on what that meant, but he didn't need to. A winter-based vestige ought to be able to search the area. It might even be able to place Xin'ri's alarms for her. Even better, the worst that would happen if the winter vestige ran into trouble was that Cliff would need to invoke another.

It didn't completely solve the problem. Xin'ri couldn't just hand over a completed alarm ward to someone else and let them use it, even with the knowledge that it would only alert Xin'ri. She had to activate it for it to work at all. As it happened, though, Xin'ri already had the solution for that: she could sense where all of her active alarms were even when they weren't triggered. That meant she could eliminate the biggest threat of a blizzard: becoming lost even when you were near safety.

She couldn't really move in the snow, but that was easy enough to solve. Cliff's winter vestiges could. She just needed something big enough to ride. Cliff suggested a winter variant of the spiked turtle they'd killed soon after they entered the Skylands, but Sophia didn't like that idea; a turtle in the ice just seemed too odd. No, they needed something that could fly and be mistaken for a bird, even an odd one. That made the choice easy: the same thing Taika rode earlier, more or less. An ice-based winter version of Sophia's Echo.

They had to search the area, too, and even though Cliff could summon multiple vestiges, he couldn't summon more than one of the same variant of Sophia's Echo. A ground-based search made a lot of sense, but Sophia still didn't want the turtle. She wanted something that wasn't as obviously out of place, and that meant something that lived across a wide range of territory. One particular species stood out to Sophia the moment she saw Cliff's list: beavers. She wasn't the best at history, but she did remember that they'd been hunted all across North America back in the settlement days, so that meant they had to live in areas that snowed every winter.

Cliff had no trouble summoning several Winter-variant beavers, though he did warn Sophia that they were still Rage Beavers. It was simply a rage that burned cold instead of hot. That was fine with Sophia as long as they did what they were told, and that didn't seem to be a problem.

The beavers were surprisingly cute, with surprisingly long, shaggy fur. Sophia didn't think that was normal for beavers, but what did she know? She wasn't a wildlife expert. All she really knew was to leave wildlife alone, and that was exactly what she planned to do with the Winter's Rage Beavers.

The beavers searched for several hours without finding anything before Sophia had Cliff Invoke the Vestige: Winter Echo. The ice-dragon was mostly silver-colored with horns, wings, and a tail tip that looked like they were made of clear ice that refracted what light there was. Sophia worried that the ride would be uncomfortably cold or simply uncomfortable, because the pony-sized dragon had a row of spikes that ran down the middle of her back, but Xin'ri reported that they were more like tufts of thick fur than actual spikes and the dragon's body was surprisingly warm, warm enough that Xin'ri compared her to a heated blanket.

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