#ice wraith genji

[sunleaffe]

happy early holidays with gency in their winter skins!! ❄️❄️

i haven’t drawn much at all this year but i’ve always wanted to attempt mercy’s sugar plum fairy skin. turns out genji’s skin was worse LOL

[nitewrighter]

The Knight of Frost Part 3

Been a lot of gloomy weather in my state, got me thinking about... them...

CW for the Corpse Horse and also stabbing, and also an avalanche and claustrophobia, and also ice mummies, which are kind of like bog mummies, but for ice. Did you guys know several of the Franklin Expedition got mummified purely by the dry freezing conditions of the arctic? And did you know the mummy of one of those mummies, John Torrington, inspired Iron Maiden’s “Stranger in a Strange Land?” Because holy shit. Anyways, all research I do for my fics is relevant at all times.

Part 1, Part 2

----

She knew she sounded mad when she tried to explain it to Cole. A figure in skeletal armor on a horse patched by corpses. And as she had spoken the words, she could feel them cringing back in her throat. They had already said this place gave them to strange thoughts and dreams, why should this case be any different from the rest of the party’s? Cole had simply said, “We’ll discuss it when we break camp,” and went back to sleep. Mercy curled into her bedroll and pushed herself back into a shallow and fitful sleep, more for her body than her mind.

They woke, broke fast, and broke camp only two hours later. The entire party was silent. They hadn’t seen anything. She knew they hadn’t seen anything, but it nagged at her.  She was that pine in a dry place again, needs not being met, able to carry on, just a little bit angry. But it was the lack of eye-contact from Cole and Bayless that irked her more and more. 

"I know what I saw," she said, unprompted as they loaded their bedrolls and other camp supplies onto the cart

"I didn't say anything," said Cole.

"You don't believe me," said Mercy.

"I just think, strange armored figure on a corpse horse or no, the best thing we can do is keep moving."

"Out of its territory," Baptiste agreed.

"Weren't you the one saying 'believing in this shit is to invite it?'" Cole's head swung to Baptiste.

"I said knowing the thing is to invite it, and I'm not saying you invited it by having Miss Goatsrue tell the story, however the fact that it showed up only after the story was told--"

"Indicates the story may well have put it in our heads! Which, I'll admit: My bad. But the mules are spooked enough, we can't be spooked too!" 

Bayless just shot the three of them a dark look as he tried to get the mules hitched to the cart again. Mercy huffed and shouldered her pack. She exchanged a glance with Baptiste as he fingered the knife at his belt a bit longer and more thoughtfully than usual, and the two of them both gave a glance to Cole, who was fussing with the hang of his cloak for maximum warmth while still maintaining the freedom of this arms. There was Cole's 'belief,' which essentially boiled down to 'I'm agreeing with you to keep the peace but I've run into more than my fair share of superstitious locals in my travels,' and then there was Baptiste's belief—something she could feel him keeping as close and quiet and secret to him as the knife on his belt, dearly hoping he wouldn't have to draw it, for to draw it was to draw trouble. And of course there was Bayless, who in all likelihood misliked the idea of her coming in the first place but was keeping his mouth shut about it. Their party went silent again, with considerable more tension now. It was hard for Mercy not to feel foolish. The only woman—the hysterical woman--the thought of her presence drawing this pall on the group sickened her. She was better than this. And yet...

She thought back to the the figure on the hill, their nearly skeletal armor, their dark and steady stare. The party’s trek was taking them, once again, up a long, steady incline, with thankfully fewer switchbacks, until they once again crested to a snowy steppe dotted with boulders. The physical demands of the journey itself kept the party in an uneasy agreement of silence. No one wanted to discuss what had been seen further, and there was a weary sense of dread hanging over all of them, a question of, ‘If Mercy had really seen something, what could be done to stop it?’

“How does one expect to do anything against the long-dead and consigned to legend?”

That voice Mercy had overheard at the public house what seemed like ages back sent a shudder down her spine as they finally continued on their journey. She tried not to think about the armored figure (sometimes her mind slipped and called it a ‘knight’) as they went on, and instead committed herself to memorizing the list of herbs and other medicines she would need once they reached the capital by heart. Yarrow, she thought, her stomach tense as she noted there were no birds in the sky, no grasses stubbornly poking through the stone, Betony, hyssop, mandragora, wormwood, leeches, if I can get them.. if they could survive the journey... poor things. 

The sun hung low and cool and white in the great bowl of the sky as they continued on across the uplands. She tried to remember last time news from the capital reached their valley--most of the time the capital didn’t bother sending criers out unless the king was dead or there was a war. The former had happened when she was just a little girl living in her old mountain village, and the latter had happened when she was just a little baby. “They took your grandfather, father, and elder brother” her grandmother had told her, “None returned. The grief was too much for your mother, poor thing. I told my son she had too delicate a constitution, but he loved her, the fool. You don’t want news from the capital, girl. It’s never good.” Mercy couldn’t even remember if they had won that war--maybe that child-grief was too all-consuming at the time, or perhaps their village was so remote, it had never mattered. And yet, it had been so long...there ought to have been something... a census, or a tax, or a declaration of a marriage or something. Mercy wondered, briefly, if there still was a capital at the end of their journey, when the party came to an abrupt stop.

 The narrow neck of the main mountain pass, flanked on both sides by craggy peaks practically groaning with snow in the low moan of the wind, lay ahead. The mules hesitated, nickering and nipping at each other and their tack.

"Avalanche territory," Cole murmured, his eyes on the snow-laden cliffs flanking them. He gave a wary look back at the rest of the party and Bayless did his best to calm the mules. Mercy and Baptiste exchanged glances at each other and a look back to Cole. She straightened up with her pack and drew a long steadying breath. After a few seconds of murmured agreements to keep sound to a minimum, they carefully readjusted of the wagon and calmed and adjusted the tack of the mules to ensure they would be as quiet as possible as well. Perhaps it was the unified tension and focus upon silence that buffed away much of Mercy’s previous resentment. The armored figure on the corpse horse seemed a distant dream compared to the very real threat provided by their journey in and of itself. She and the men focused on guiding the wagon as quietly as possible, heads swinging from the wheels to the snowy peaks on either side of them. She pulled her muffler up over her nose and mouth, perhaps unconsciously in the hopes that it might be true to its name. 

They went forward, the cliffs rising up on both sides of them like the maw of a great beast snapping up from the earth. Forward they went, eyes forward, save for slow, careful glances upward at drifts of snow gently sloughing down by wind and gravity. She winced at the rumble of the cart, there was a fresh layer of powder to mute the sound but the weight of it broke through to the dense, crunching layers below. 

“What’s that up ahead?” a hushed question fell out of Baptiste.

“Shh!” Cole shushed on reflex, but he saw it as well. His eyes narrowed.

Mercy squinted forward through the mountain pass, hoping dearly for a point where the two walls of rock and snow on either side of them would finally open back up to the wide snowy moonscape of the uplands. But there was something... fluttering up ahead, with something twisted at its base. She squinted, trying to make the shape out better. Cole was moving forward, with Baptiste not far behind, and Bayless still urging the mules and cart on. Maybe it was a trail marker, or perhaps, a darker part of her thought, the remains of another expedition, maybe from another valley, or from some other village in these mountains that couldn’t outrun the cold in time. It didn’t seem completely natural, standing right in the middle of their path, that was for sure. She glanced to Baptiste and Cole, trying to gauge their thoughts on it, but they seemed just as unsure about it as her. She would have kept her eyes fixed on that fluttering thing with the twisted base but then she got a deep shudder down her spine, and a feeling she wished wasn’t familiar. Slowly, slowly, she turned her gaze upward once more.

She saw the armored figure again, at the top of the cliffs. They looked different in the daylight, still astride their part-corpse horse. The blue of their armor taking on an unsettling realness out of the glow of the moonlight. She could make out the chunks of human flesh out of the horse's flank more clearly, now, the lines of their chest plate seeming more rib-like and skeletal than ever. 

The cold keeps the flesh.

She hated the sensation of feeling watched by them when she could not see their eyes. What do you want? she wanted to yell, What do you want from me? What will it take to end this winter? To not see my people starve and sicken? But just as horrifying was the deep, dreadfully certain feeling that they were not the one behind this cold, that there was nothing they could do to stop it. Just as horrifying was the strange feeling that they looked upon her now with their own helplessness, like when a child brings you something dead and asks you to fix it. The sun had disappeared behind steel-coloured clouds, almost as if by the figure’s will, like he could not bear to be seen in its direct light. The figure kept staring at her, then their sight seemingly broke away, glancing down the mountain pass, down towards where they were headed, towards the--

The cold keeps the--

Mercy’s head suddenly swung away from the sight of the armored figure and back down to Cole and Baptiste, still approaching the crumpled, fluttering thing ahead. She nearly shouted at them to stop and then barely caught herself, instead hoisting up her skirts and sprinting as fast as the deep snow would allow. The snow squeaked and crunched with her boots as she ran, but the sound didn’t travel far, even with the stone walls around them. As she ran, she made out that fluttering, crumpled thing more clearly. It was a banner, stuck in some kind of cairn? Some crooked pile of stones? 

The cold keeps--

A corpse. It was a kneeling corpse, long mummified by the wind and the ice. Its gnarled hands, the flesh long-dried to strings on bone, were gripped around a pole bearing a standard, though it was a wonder the cloth was still there with how exposed it was. Much of the bulk of the figure was just armor, but how had the weight of it not collapsed the bones? Unless enough of the interior was frozen solid rather than rotted away. Cole’s own pace toward it had slowed, only slightly as he realized what it was. Out of caution, or reverence? Mercy thought, but it made her steps all the more feverish. She rushed past Bayless.

“What--” Bayless spoke at a normal volume before catching himself and the mules nervously nickered and he moved to calm them. She made it to Baptiste before Cole, he glanced over his shoulder from the crouching figure in the snow to see her and opened his mouth before looking back at Cole and realizing she was sprinting forward to stop him. Something like fear, but more of a grimace of reflex flashed across his face and he caught her arm. She grunted at his grip and then furiously flung her arm up with a pointing finger. Baptiste glanced up and he clapped a hand over his mouth to muffle a bellow of shock.

The cold--

The figure was looking down at them both, watching them patiently. By the crest of their helmet Mercy thought she could make out a slow shake of the head, before that head slowly turned away from her and she followed its gaze, back towards Cole. She knew he would stop if she called out to him, just enough for her to reach him, and yet she couldn’t. All that snow hanging over their heads, all that white crushing weight. She tore out of Baptiste’s grip but he hurried after her--not trying to stop her this time, she realized. 

“Cole--” The name left her, harsh and thick and breathy, as soon as she felt she was in a safe distance of audibility. And he stopped, and he looked back at her, and she realized something was shifting in his eyes. A horrified realization was settling over all of them, weight by weight, like the gentle shuff of a slough of snow slipping over from above: 

This was the main pass to the capital from their valley. Were it not for the winter that had caged them in, there was no way this corpse would be here---not because the cold couldn’t kill a man here, because it certainly could, but because of the fact that they could immediately tell, from the armor, from the fluttering standard it gripped, from the sheer age that had turned all its flesh to desiccated sinew and left its lips blackened and drawn back from yellowed teeth, that something this old didn’t simply lie in the middle of mountain pass roads. Certainly not roads that were traversed by all manner of merchant and traveler in years previous. This was a thing that should not be here. 

The horror of that, and the cacophony of questions that bubbled up and fell into a choral blur, made any words she might have had for Cole die in her throat. He looked at her, and then he looked up at the cliffs around them. 

The armored figure, she thought, jerking her head back up to the cliffs, He has to see the horse, he has to see--

But the armored figure wasn’t there. There was only the wind blowing a soft spiral of frost up off of the snow hanging overhead. She would have screamed out of sheer fury and frustration if that didn’t mean bringing tonnes of crushing snow down around them all. Cole seemed to be trying to gauge her face.

Please, please, you have to believe me, please---

But shuff. Another weight of snow fell once more with that same soft sound. And the helplessness settled on her. Even if he did believe her, even if he did see the horse and rider, could they go home? Go home to increasingly bare cupboards and stomachs that were just a little hungrier each night? Home to people who needed bones set and fevers broken who would only look upon empty jars? All the hope they had was in the capital. All the hope they had was going forward, and here was this damnable corpse in their path, on a mountain pass so laden with snow there was no other way around. Cole suddenly struck out an arm in front of her—stupid, chivalrous-- as his other hand crossed his torso to his own weapon, a flintlock.

Mercy wondered briefly if that fluttering standard was disguising slow and hidden movements from this crumpled corpse from the very moment it had first come into view, if it had been carefully watching them, regarding them as the armored figure had been. 

But now the movements were not slow and hidden—as if an invisible string attached to the top of its helm had suddenly been drawn taut, the corpse's head jutted up and swiveled toward them. "Hhrrr" she could hear the sound through its teeth, and something that looked like the breath of fog seeped through that black-framed cracked and yellow snarl, but she knew it could not be the fog of warm breath, but cold—colder than the cold already around them, from its dark and frozen core. 

She could hear Cole’s teeth grit, hear the breath draw sharp through them. 

Cole kept his hand on the handle of the flintlock. He cleared his throat. “Wraith of these lands,” he said, “We know not of the suffering that binds you to this form, we come here merely as travelers. We seek to disrupt no power--only to make our own way, and protect the livelihoods of those dear to us. Will you permit us through?” Mercy blinked, mildly impressed at this phrasing. This was a man who did respect local customs, because that was necessary to his travels. Even if he thought her fanatical and superstitious, placed here, now, in this situation, he understood the decree of decorum which was expected of him, even if the situation was itself fantastical and horrific.

Another “Hhhrrr,” escaped the corpse, seemingly more drawn out this time, and then a choking noise escaped it, a sound from the back of the utterly kippered throat that unmistakably rasped, “Liiiaar.”

 There was a moment when all the reflexes of fear failed to catch up to the comprehension of the mind, a moment when Mercy's limbs seemed as dumb and slow as if she were moving in a dream, despite the fact that every sense was telling her to run, to fight. This was the moment when the corpse struck out with an ancient, curved knife and caught Cole in the side of the stomach. A dense grunt fell out of him and on reflex he drew the gun.

“No--!” every fiber of her body told her to scream, but survival instinct dulled it to speaking volume at the last second. And in that last second Cole had flicked out the flintlock and fired.The corpse’s head exploded into ribbons of dust and shards of bone.

And even then, with the knife dug into his side, Cole knew his mistake, she watched, as even through the grip of pain and adrenaline, that surprise and regret washed over his features as well. The cracking roar of the flintlock echoed throughout their canyon, and there was a deep rumbling.

“Cole!” Baptiste suddenly rushed past her, not caring for volume because what was coming now was inevitable. Cole crumpled and Baptiste caught him with his own shoulder, “Move,” he said, “MOVE!” 

She did not look back. She knew there was already no time to look back. Everything was a roar behind her and great puffs of diamond dust flushed up from behind them that just made the cliffs on either side of them seem that much closer, that much more claustrophobic, made their opening up back into the uplands seem that much further. Bayless cut the mules loose from the cart and rushed them forward. Baptiste was already struggling to pull Cole ahead when Bayless came up alongside him and both hauled Cole up over the mule's flank. Cole scrambled, fingers clawing for purchase on the shaggy winter hide of the mule before managing to swing his legs aside and slumping against the mule's back, one arm around the mule's neck and the other gripping his wound. 

Get out of the pass and move to the side, she thought, out of the pass and move to the side-- 

The snow was already surging around her legs, she was practically bringing them to her chest to stay on top of it, and yank them out of it, the exhaustion she should feel from this movement only a mere suggestion amidst all her adrenaline, and she realized she still had her pack. Stupid— she thought, throwing it off behind her, Stay upright, stay upright, you're almost there--

Something caught on her skirts—the snow, doubtless, and she seized them and yanked them forward, meaning to bunch them up in front with one arm to free her legs more. The skirt tore, and she heard a terrible "Hrrhh" behind her. This, this was what finally forced her to turn around and she saw, among the pressing surge of white and blue-white and gray, yellowed bones and the taut yellow-brown of skin that would have rotted away long ago had it not been for the ice and wind—an arm was reaching forward from the snow, still clutching a tattered scrap of her skirt, and just behind it, staring at her with eyeless sockets, a face with blackened lips drawn back from yawning brittle teeth, pressing forward in the crushing, roaring, cascade of white.

And it was not the only one.

Maybe it was the avalanche itself that had awoken them, or maybe they were the avalanche, waiting and watching that whole time for them to make that fatal noise, that cry or that crack of gunfire, but they were there—none of them fully visible in body, just limbs and faces and scraps of armor and spearpoints sticking out amidst great spills of powder and crags of packed ice.

"They're in the snow!" she shouted ahead to the others, but the roar of the avalanche was drowning her voice out, "They're in the--"

And all at once she was swallowed up. She wasn't quite sure when the snow had gotten past her waist, but the desperate pumping of her legs no longer moved her forward any more than all the snow around her was already moving forward. And then it was up and past her waist, her skirt-gripping arm now pressed to herself with the weight of all the white around her. She was able to fling her free arm up, at first meaning to dig herself out, or at least keep it above the surface for the others to find her. She could feel a breeze on her fingers, and her scarlet cloak on the back of her arm--the cloth was jerked up vertically behind her like a hangman’s noose, but the weight of her muffler kept it at her shoulders.

 For some reason despite the near complete immobility, the claustrophobia here wasn't as bad as walking beneath all that overhanging snow had been. There was almost a relief in being trapped, like the worst had already happened. And the dead—even if she were sharing this frozen prison with the dead, at least they were just as trapped as her. They could not harm her. The others were ahead of her. If they had gotten out of the pass, they could have let the avalanche blow right past them and they could return to come get her. A long shot, but they would need their supplies as well. They had little hope of surviving the night without them, and they would need her all the more for Cole's injury... she hoped.

Air pocket, she thought, jamming her arm up from her torso and clawing at the snow pressing in around her face, Grandmother said always keep an air pocket. Don't panic. Don't waste your air. Wait until you hear the others calling for you.

Her bare fingers were pink and raw and bleeding in their nail beds as she clawed out an air pocket around her face, but at least the movement was able to loosen the snow packing her arm against her chest. Her reaching arm was completely immobilized and now asleep, whether it had been from the cold or from being stuck at an upward angle, she could not tell. All the same, she managed to wiggled and claw just enough room for her chest to expand with breath. and she closed her eyes and drew in a slow shallow breath as her hand kept clawing out space. Not so much to bring more snow down on top of her, but enough to cup itself out with the ice of her own exhalations. But then her fingers brushed against something that wasn't snow, and she opened her eyes.

"Hhrr..." 

This was not the same dead as the one that had clawed at her skirt. Its eyes had stitched themselves forever shut into wrinkled slits drawn tight across the sockets, and its lips were a sad crinkle of skin, barely parted so that colder than cold breath could thread against her own. Her breath shuddered and she closed her eyes, feeling tears bud out from her eyes and run only a half inch down the side of her nose and temples before they froze and cracked against her skin.

They can't move either. They can't move either. Keep your breath slow and wait until you can hear the others calling.

And then she felt a skeletal hand clamp around her ankle, and another tickling at her back, and still more at her legs and skirts and clawing at her sides.This was when everything broke through for her once more. This was when she screamed. And screamed. And sobbed. And screamed. Until the black at the corners of her vision swallowed her up like the snow.

----

The wraith's horse treaded lightly over the craggy surface of the now-packing-itself-down-by-gravity former avalanche. It did not bear the same weight on the snow that a normal horse would, and neither did he. The dead would keep the others busy. He knew this. He paced the horse over the surface before pausing at a pale hand and wrist, and a scrap of scarlet—not blood, cloth—sticking out from the snow. The wraith leaned down in his saddle and pulled Mercy up out of the snow by her arm easily, the snow yielding away from her like it was powder once more. Several arms of the dead were still clinging to her as he pulled her up, and they broke off from their bearers under the weight of snow and the force of his lift. He held her at arm's length, staring at her for a few seconds, before he jostled her and shook the skeletal limbs from her skirt like one might shake dirt off of a carrot they just pulled out of their garden. She dangled limply, her eyes closed, her lips blue from cold and hypoxia. Her nostrils flared as a cold breeze blew through and all of a sudden she drew in a deep, guttural gasp, her eyelids fluttering asymmetrically before she coughed from the drowning intake of oxygen and then moaned, Her eyes flicked around her surroundings dizzily, first taking in her feet dangling off the ground, then her arm, still numb but now with a gentle ache at the shoulder, then the gauntleted hand gripping her wrist, and then finally, at the faceless face of the wraith's helmet. Her eyelids fluttered again, and she drew in a breath that was too slow to be a gasp, the instinct to panic meeting an unyielding wall of exhaustion.

"nnh...no..." her voice was thick and she turned her face away from him, or perhaps she simply no longer had the strength to hold her head up, "Please..."

He said nothing, but pulled her in gently, settling her in front of him on his saddle so that he could keep her propped up in one arm and hold the reins in the other. She could barely keep her eyes open, but she felt him wrapping her scarlet cloak around her like he was swaddling a child. 

In the distance she thought she could hear Baptiste calling, “Miss Goatsrue--! Miss Goatsrue!” and a pained and grunting “Merce!?” from Cole, but her eyes closed and those voices fell away, along with the sensation of the horse galloping beneath her, and the careful pressure of the icy armored arm securing her in place.

[cybernightart]

Another random Genji headcanon thing I have which no one asked for!

Tldr: Certain Genji skins in game are actually some of genji's OCS

As I mentioned in my last headcanon post, I imagine Genji loves to draw even if he isn't very open about it. So building off of that ,he has OCS.

The ocs in question being Oni, Baihu, and Senti (he would have made these ones as a kid/teen) and then later on (like post recall) Cyberdemon! And maybe even skins like illidan, the birb, lava boi, bushi, ice wraith, and even the swordsman (even though it isn't an actual skin yet hopefully)

Also maybe he in turn made OC's which somewhat resemble people around him, starting off with like Hanzo and kiriko and then once he joined OverWatch, he eventually made characters which seemed very similar to a lot of them with probably Angela being one of the most common ones

So then he ended up pretty much projecting (more than he was already projecting on to them) his feelings for Angela he was burying and started shipping his character with new characters he made

For example: Baihu x Zhuque , Senti x Pink (the most obvious example probably tied with the next one), Oni X the witch or Oni X devil, cyber demon x miko, lava boi x moon, ice wraith x sugar plum, etc. And occasionally mix matching them depending on his mood

(and like most people) with him projecting so heavily on to these main OCS (mostly unconsciously) he used them to help work through emotions he was dealing with or situations he was in that he didn't have much control over. And we're almost like a comfort to him especially during blackwatch when he was at his lowest and felt like he didn't have anyone.

[yorusylph]

Session? Hah! Nooooooooooo

We have a stunning and eye-catching new skin on Genji

I just couldn't get past it. ( Φ ω Φ )

BONUS:

Seriously, besides the crown with the cat ears, you should only look at the tips of his antennae!! They look like tassels of ears, like a lynx or caracal >:з

[night-lie]

What can thaw a frozen heart?

[evilwvergil]

Ice Wraith Genji

[genshimada]

Ice Wraith Genji

[addictedtooverwatch]

Overwatch Events: Winter Wonderland 2021 Skin Announcements - Orisa and Genji

Alright, sorry this is a few hours late! I was helping run a Gingerbread completion with my school's German Honor Society, so I was at school until 5:30pm which is kind of late for me since I normally get home at 3:15pm. Now, onto the news.

It was announced that we will be getting two more legendary skins! During the 2021 Winter Wonderland event, as well as Sleighing D.Va, we will be getting Reindeer Orisa and Ice Wraith Genji. I'm really happy about the Orisa skin, it's exactly what I wanted and I like the Genji skin. The Winter Wonderland event will begin on Dec. 16th, 2021, and will end on Jan. 6th, 2022.

Anyways, I'll try to keep you all as updated as I can while dealing with school and I hope you all have a great day! ~ Nova.

[wellthebardsdead]

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ICE WRAITH GENJI GET IT BOOOOOOI!!! ~Bambi

[sazyarts]

Baihu 🤝 Ice Wraith

Blue catboy Genji skin

[sunleaffe]

a christmas gency wip!! haven’t drawn them in so long :’)

[nitewrighter]

The Knight of Frost, Part 2

Been playing a lot of Elden Ring and RDR2 and wouldn’t ya know it, it got me really inspired for this AU. 

Thinking about the inherent eroticism of running away hysterically screaming from Elden Ring bosses...

CW: For some Horse Body Horror.

Continued from The Knight of Frost

---

Mercy grew up as most girls from her time and place grew up--much as the people in her grandmother’s story grew: she knew long, harsh winters and bright, precious summers and springs, and autumns that seemed to cascade all at once in just a few short weeks. She grew taller than most girls, and with an odd grace and delicacy about her, unbowed by the drudgery of her day to day life. But there was a kindness at her core, perhaps fueled by that constant wrestling with the end of the story, the idea that out there was a knight trapped by a curse for no reason other than the strength of his heart and loyalty. She grew up cleverer than most in her village: with an excellent head for memorization that made her an ideal apprentice for the local midwife and apothecary, and steady hands that allowed her to learn to lance buboes and quickly take over the task for her teachers when gout gave a shake to their wrists and unsureness to their fingers.

 All this was paired with a no-nonsense personality that prompted little frustration from her teachers--they recalled beating her only three times--once when her daydreaming lead to idleness, another time when she directly contradicted them in front of a client, and a third time when they found she had been advising and examining in back alleys when her training was not yet complete but their clients had no coin for the apothecary’s consultation. The impressiveness of her fury and passion in defending herself in each case was only rivaled by the impressiveness of her stoicism as the birch met her backside. She was strong, and tall, and always just a little bit angry, like a lone evergreen in a dry place: needs that were not quite being met, but doing her best regardless.

 All the while as she grew, the winters seemed to get longer and longer, and leaner, as they started biting into what would have been planting time and wiping out seedlings with harsh spring frosts without warning. Mercy was 11 when most of those that farmed only grain and vegetables left their village in hopes of farming warmer climes, and when the grain left, the alehouse quickly went quiet and mean. Still the village stumbled on. For a while Mercy and her grandmother managed--the sheep of their farm still managing to find gorse and dried grass amid the frost, but even they grew leaner, gave less milk, birthed fewer lambs. The village was valuable enough to travelers going through the mountains for them sustain themselves on trade for a bit. They traded cheese and wool for wheat and barley, and Mercy honed her craft healing travelers’ injuries and even acting as midwife for a birth or two. But soon those creeping winters discouraged more and more travelers from their pass, soon, what reserve supplies there were in the village dwindled, and what few people remained were more or less planning out their own timelines of leaving themselves.

 Eventually Mercy and her own Grandmother had to plan for their own departure from the village, and Mercy’s grandmother’s plan amounted to “leave me to die here, I don’t care.” which of course Mercy would not accept, and that’s how Mercy ended up furiously pushing her grandmother in a wheelbarrow down the mountainside, her shepherd’s crook strapped to her back, with the entire flock of sheep in tow, bellwether bells clanking. Still determined, still just a little bit angry, and bright as a flame, her scarlet cloak billowing and pale hair whipping in the wind, and their very own snowy cascade thundering and baaaa-ing down the mountain.

They settled in a new town in the valley, sold most of their sheep for a new house, even got their footing by reuniting with some of their old neighbors. Mercy found work bonesetting, boil lancing, pulling teeth, mixing medicines, and midwifing, her grandmother focused on spinning wool from the three sheep that remained and keeping their little garden in her old age, and for a while, they were content. Mercy found even more business as more people settled into the town, driven out of their own remote villages by the cold same as her and her grandmother. She got a few offers of marriage, but her grandmother ended up scaring most of them off demanding a higher dowry, and eventually her own age got people to muttering and the offers quickly died down. She didn’t mind. Mercy was pleased to hone her skill more, and it was all she could do to let the busyness all her new customers lent her keep out the dread of more people pouring into the valley all the time--her apothecary jars and shelves getting barer and barer as she struggled to treat the influx of people. Also, deeply, quietly, Mercy and her Grandmother missed the grand vistas of their mountain village, and this town was decidedly smellier than that wide open mountain air, but it was a good enough life. 

Until the winter found them once again. Curling around the mountain peaks that framed their little town and sinking slow and cold into their valley with every sunset. Nervous mutterings rose up around town as frosts wiped out seedlings and travelers spoke of more routes through the mountains closing up and becoming too dangerous to traverse. Whenever the door would open at the ale house a freezing wind would rip through.

“It’s not right. Not natural. Something has to be done,” someone would mutter into their ale.

“How is wind unnatural? And how does one expect to do anything against wind and winter?” another would reply.

“It’s the old empress’s curse,” another would murmur, “The one from the legends.”

“Well how does one expect to do anything against the long-dead and consigned to legend, Bartleby? Answer me that!” said the second. And that would usually be the end of it. But one night, when Mercy was drinking away the memory of a particularly nasty boil-lancing, a new voice spoke up. 

“You could investigate,” the new voice drawled, and Mercy’s eyes flicked away from the foam of her own ale, her eyes falling on a tall figure in a wide-brimmed brown hat, “You head into the cold, you might be able to see what’s causing it. I’ve a right mind to gather several men and do just that.”

Mercy rolled her eyes and sipped her ale.

“And waste food and supplies on what may very well be a death wish?” the second villager, one of Mercy’s own displaced neighbors, scoffed a chuckle, “You travelers are always mad.”

“Maybe,” the man in the wide-brimmed hat conceded, “But... here’s the way I see it-- We go off on this trip, maybe we find out what’s making the winters the way they are, and we stop it, not promising anything like that, but if such an opportunity arises, you can be damn well sure we’ll take it. But ultimately, the goal here is to break through the old main pass to get to the capital city. From there, we re-supply, and come back here with food, more warm clothes, and, if everything’s gotten too bad... a safe way through the pass to greener pastures.”

Mercy’s mouth quirked at this. She hadn’t really thought of what moving again would look like. She could push her grandmother downhill in a wheelbarrow but finding a way out of the valley? When every path would be uphill? She sipped again, tentatively. If they made it to the capital city, she could re-stock on all the items she couldn’t forage here. Could she really trust such a retrieval to some errand boy?

“All I’d need is a handful of volunteers..” the man in the wide-brimmed hat said slowly, but everyone in the tavern gave him a visible cold shoulder.

Mercy gave a short huff into her mug before turning around to look at him.

“Would you be willing to pay for such a trip yourself?” she asked.

“It is in my interest, just as it is in everyone else’s interests, that those trade routes reopen. I have a bit of coin, I’ll pay for what supplies I can, but I know I can’t do this alone.”

Mercy thoughtfully drained the last of her ale in two gulps and set her mug on the wood of the bar. “I have need of supplies that can only be found out of this cold,” she said, not looking at him, “Is your expedition to be exclusively men?”

“I just figured only men were mad enough to go,” the man in the hat shrugged, “Is this volunteering?”

Mercy pressed her lips together. “Would I be the first?”

“The fourth,” his hat flopped a little with the conceding bob of his head, “But I can’t afford dead weight.” 

“Do you have a healer among you?”

“There’s Baptiste, but he’s a sellsword. I fear his knowledge of healing comes from just as much as what kills you.”

“You wound me, my friend!” a dark man with a bright smile called from the other end of the bar.

“Miss Mercy, surely you aren’t considering traveling with this vagrant!” one the tavern patrons touched her sleeve.

“Supplies are dwindling,” was all Mercy could reply. She looked back at the stranger in the wide-brimmed brown hat with a stern determination. “I’m trained in herbalism, midwifing, bonesetting, and several disciplines of barber-surgery. I don’t eat much and I have a strong back. Is that good enough?”

“Eh--” it took a moment for the man in the hat to regain his composure, “Y-yes, It’ll suffice.” 

“Then I’m coming with you,” she stuck a hand out, “Mercy Goatsrue, at your service.” 

“Cole Caisede, miss,” he clasped her wrist with his opposite hand and shook it, “At your service.”

--

In truth it took some convincing for her grandmother to let her go. And even then it was like “Go ahead, leave me to die!” and Mercy could only respond with, “You won’t die so long as there’s any opportunity to spite me further,” and her grandmother replied, “So you’d better not die then, you damned foolish girl!” And that was about as warm a goodbye as either of them would get. It was dark and very early in the morning when the party departed up the main path out of the valley. Mercy in her scarlet cloak, Cole Caisede looking every bit the rugged mountaineer in his hat and cloak, smiling, knowing Baptiste donning a veritable hodgepodge of clothes from different lands, and a towheaded man with wind-blistered skin who only tersely introduced himself as Bayless who provided two scrawny mules and a wagon for their supplies. It was far too early in the morning for there to be many people seeing them off, and much of the village thought the expedition was too mad to see them off with fanfare. It was quiet and gray, with slow-drifting flakes peppering the air. The path out of the village lead to an incline that started reasonably, but soon had to split into rocky, tedious switchbacks that took some convincing to move the mules along. It took them a day to reach halfway up the bowl of the valley, and they spent the first night trying to find and point out their houses and farms and the different landmarks below.

Finally, when they crested the lip of the valley, Mercy drew in a breath of the still and sparkling air. It was brighter up here, with the valley so prone to the shadows of its own walls and all the sinking cold and darkness that came with it, but that brightness did not mean warmth. Still, it was heartening for the party to feel such light as they had not known in some time. Baptiste scanned the skies, the seeming endless void of blue, the light itself rendered strange by a dazzling ring of light around the sun.

"...no birds," he said, as they pushed on through the snow.

"No seeds or bugs to eat," Mercy huffed. Her skirts had been kirtled and kilted to just below the knee, covering the tops of her boots and further insulating her wooly leggings, but the weight and wind forced her towards the back of the party. For several days the party trudged on, saying little, putting all physical and mental energy towards the seemingly endless trek forward, making camp and eating thin soups of barley and dried mushrooms by night, with their own exhaustion prompting little conversation. Eventually the gradual lightening of their packs, the long hours together, and their own adjustment to the toil of their journey prompted more words.

"Do you give any credence to those 'curse' whispers?" Cole asked as he poked at their campfire one night.

"My grandmother told me the story all the time when I was small," said Mercy, scraping up the last now-cold dregs of her soup, “It always frustrated me that it... always felt unfinished... but it feels dangerous to walk into a story that isn’t your own.”

"My logic has always been, the more thought one gives to a curse, the more power a curse has," said Baptiste, running his knife along a whetstone.

"But it ain't natural, we're in agreement there, right?" Cole propped his forearm up on his knee.

"Wasn't this whole expedition your idea?" Mercy set her bowl down and drew up her flannels around herself. 

"Well if the curse is real, that doesn't mean I'm just going to sit down and take it," said Cole, "But the quality of the light up here...the stillness, I must say it lends itself to queer thoughts and fancies."

"You are already naturally given to queer thoughts and fancies, my friend," said Baptiste, not looking at him but giving a lazy wave of his knife in Cole's direction.

Cole gave a wry, smiling huff at that, his breath fogging in the firelight. 

There was a braying and nickering and the three of them all glanced at Bayless, who was tending to the mules. Bayless was muttering things to them, not audible over the wind and the crackle of the fire.

“Everything all right over there?” Cole called.

“They mislike it here,” was all Bayless said, coming over to the fire.  

“Hm...” Cole poked at the fire, then glanced up at Mercy, “Goatsrue. You said you know the story?” he glanced up at Mercy.

“I can’t tell it like my grandmother,” Mercy shrugged.

“Tell it anyway,” said Cole.

“Cole...” Baptiste began warily.

“What? Maybe we oughta know what we’re walking into.”

“And sometimes to know a thing is to call its attention to you,” said Baptiste.

“You know, when you travel, you’re supposed to just nod politely at the local superstitions and move along--not carry them with you,” said Cole.

“It’s just a children’s story,” Mercy waved her hand, “It’s really not so terrible. I mean the giant spiders scared me but--”

“Giant spiders? Well now you can’t not tell it!” 

Mercy snorted and glanced at Baptiste, who simply gave a resigned shrug, and then she told the story. The mules fell silent as she spoke, and she told herself it was just that their own tiredness had finally overwhelmed their unease. Mercy scanned the faces of her not-quite companions, then. Bayless had finished his soup and tucked into his own blankets, Baptiste kept sharpening his knife as the fire died down, not heavily indicating that he was listening, but giving her a careful glance here and there. Cole rubbed at his stubble and listened intently, sometimes popping in with the odd question as she had done with her grandmother in her childhood. The fire had settled down to embers and Baptiste and Bayless had tucked into their own sleep rolls  by the time she finished.

“There weren’t as many giant spiders as I thought there would be,” said Cole.

“I said it had spiders, I didn’t say the whole thing was giant spiders.”

“...not exactly a happy ending, is it?” Cole was wriggling into his own sleep roll. 

“My grandmother said it wasn’t really about having a happy ending,” replied Mercy, watching the embers, “It was about doing your best even when all hope seems lost.”

“Sounds like a cheery lady,” Cole shrugged.

“I like to think the princess grew up and came back to rescue the knight,” Mercy murmured.

“Hmm... But if she had... do you think we’d be having these winters?” Cole waved a finger at her.

Mercy pursed her lips at him a few seconds before muttering, “It’s just a story,” and getting into her own sleep roll. She watched the embers as sleep closed up around her like flower petals she had not seen in well over a year.

Cole was right about the land lending itself to strange thoughts though, as her dreams were troubling and just a little too clear to simply be dreams. She dreamt of a blue-skinned hand with blackened, claw-like fingertips crushing a little corn husk doll in its grip. She dreamt of frost bristling along spider’s webs, of spikes and twisted spires of ice, growing, growing, closing in around her. And the sounds--she could hear those uncanny sounds, the low thundering, the cracks and zips and high-pitched creaks of water freezing over. Of icicle stalactites quivering above, threatening to fall as a distant chant grew louder and louder.

The cold keeps the flesh.

The cold keeps the flesh.

The cold keeps the flesh.

In her dream she was walking through that cave, the spikes and spires moving, as if leading her on through the tunnels. Her eyes fixed on the quivering stalactites above, the chant moving through the ice, echoing off the walls too strangely for her to gauge where it was coming from. They quivered with the chant. 

The cold keeps the flesh.

The cold keeps the flesh.

She couldn’t quite bring herself to react when that first icicle fell, much like anyone’s reaction time in a dream. A part of her was thankful that shatter and spray of ice in all directions was a shock enough to spring her back to consciousness, jerking awake in her sleep roll, her breath fogging as her chest rapidly rose and fell. Her eyes flicked around the camp--there was still the faint glow of embers on their fire, and the faint snoring of her compatriots, and just beyond the camp, the white landscape tinged blue by moon and starlight. She scanned the hills surrounding them, the way their crags had been buffed away beneath a blanket of snow, and that snow had been swept into smooth, curving, sometimes spiked looming shapes. She breathed as she looked around, trying to place herself in the moment.

You are on a quest. You have to cross the mountain pass and bring word of this winter to the capital city and plead for help. You need supplies to bring back to the valley. Yarrow and betony and hyssop and--

Her thoughts fell dead silent as her eyes fell on a distant figure on a hill, and she knew, in that moment that the figure was looking at her. She knew her own face as lit up in the dying embers of the fire, her head covered by that hood of scarlet for warmth, and she looked at this figure, distant and cold in all ways. They were in armor, dark and glittering and complex, taking on a bluish tinge in the moonlight much like the snow. Far too tight on them to glance off blows like normal plate. She wondered how they had even managed to get such armor on. In fact, there were ridges on the side that looked almost... skeletal. She could not see their eyes, but she could feel them, and her breath shuddered in her throat. 

 They seemed to be on a horse. An unusually large and oddly muscled horse, to be sure. Nothing like the tired but reliable old farm horses she knew in the valley. The eyes of the horse seemed off. She knew of the way animal’s eyes could be lit at night but there was a dullness to their paleness that made her stomach turn. The coloring of the horse seemed off as well--it seemed a piebald at first or perhaps that was the manner of tack in these parts?  No, they weren’t so far from the valley for it to look so--

The horse shifted slightly in the moonlight and a sound of horror fell out of her as she clamped her hand over her mouth on instinct. But what was the point? This figure already saw her. And she herself could not break her eyes away from them in turn. But the horse--the horse was not made of all a horse should be made of. She had read enough medical texts and done enough surgeries on suppurated flesh to know it when the horse’s flank caught the moonlight. This was a horse whose flank and back left leg had been reconstructed from the corpses of men. The chant echoed in her head:

The cold keeps the flesh.

Bile burned the back of her throat and tears welled in her eyes but she knew she could not spare either so she kept her hand clamped on her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut and silently begged what gods were watching to wake her up once more.

“Goatsrue?!” Cole had jerked awake at the sound she had made, “What is it? What do you see?!”

Her hand flinched away from her mouth shaking and she moved to point at the hill, but the figure and their horse were already gone.

[glysaturn]

blizzerds: this skin is called ice wraith and-

everyone in the comments: catboy genji catboy genji

[shouga-nai]

Ice Wraith Genji: I am the spirit of winter whose heart has long turned cold, whose blade brings forth harsh frost with a single swing, whose—

The fandom: CAT

Genji: ...n-no

[night-lie]

Ice Wraith Genji concept art by Yiming Liu & Qiu Fang

[begging-for-mercy]

Poll December!

Happy holidays everyone! c: Voting is available for patrons and can be done [here]. Options are as follows this month:

Reindeer Orisa x Dva’s Mecha

Moira x Mercy

Ice Wraith Genji x Ice Empress Moira