It was cold.

Jacaerys the Godseer could still distinctly remember the warmth of the flames as he stepped into them. He had been comforted by the familiar heat, had taken it as a sign that he was doing the right thing. Through the fire, the God of Purity would welcome Jacaerys into his unending halls. Or perhaps his spirit would remain bound to the mortal plane, and he would continue to guard this place from evils. But it had been warm, and now it was cold.

As he stood gingerly and acquired his bearings, the Godseer did not feel particularly like some sort of guardian spirit. He reasoned, then, that he must still be alive. But that, of course, could not be the end of it. Something felt deeply wrong somewhere within him, but Jacaerys could not exactly say what.

He walked a slow circle around the top of the tower, taking in the small discrepancies between his current setting and the memory that seemed moments ago. The tower's parapets, for instance, once all jagged edges of oily stone, were now worn and crusted with snow. And to think of snow, had the skies not been utterly clear? Now they were dark and overcast, and a harsh wind blew flurries across Jacaerys' back.

But neither of these observations lifted the feeling that he was not noticing something vitally and utterly important. [i]Aha![/i] he thought, finally noticing the lack of the accustomed weight of Lightwarden, his gift from the gods, in hand. Jacaerys turned and retraced the half-circle he had carved in the crusting of snow, until he stood back where he had first... reappeared? There, half-buried in a mound of white, the mace glowed faintly. As the Godseer took it back into his hand he was pleased to watch it flare truly into life, and he was no longer cold.

But wait. He was closer to the realization that was eluding him, Jacaerys knew that, but it still weighed heavily on his mind. Something was wrong. Tossing his weapon deftly to his off-hand, the Godseer plucked off one glove and reached down to touch the snow he had pulled Lightwarden from. It was warm, and as Jacaerys drew his hand back in confusion, it came to him that the drifts did not look very much like snow at all.

[i]Ashes.[/i] But that could only mean one thing, one utterly unthinkable thing. Half-frenzied, Jacaerys ran about the top of the tower, occasionally shoving his hand deep into the snow-drifts. Falling from the sky was certainly regular snow, and he soon came to realize that a thin layer of it sat atop the rest of the ash -- but whenever he reached down, there was heat once more, and the handfuls he pulled out had the smell of flame to them.

Impossible. The Godseer had performed the rituals himself, with the aid of the dozen remaining acolytes he had had on hand, and fed the corpses of the slain necromancers to the white-hot fire. Such a blaze should rightfully have burned for hundreds, [i]thousands[/i] of centuries. At least. And if this flame was out . . .

Such things were not even to be thought of. Jacaerys entertained, for a moment, the thought of prostrating himself on the ashes and praying fervently for guidance in such things. But instead he wiped the ash from his hands, and told himself that he did not fear that no answer would come. He had not been truly bothered by the cold, but now the Godseer shivered.

His stomach growled, suddenly, an abrupt reminder that he had perhaps spent far too long on this cold mountaintop. If the maps still held true, there was a small village northwest down one of the mountain valleys, into one of the very rare forests on this side of the Great Deserts. With any luck [i]it[/i] had not also shriveled out of existence. He held his weapon forward as though it were a torch, and began to descend from the tower.