In her line of work, one quickly learned not to be bothered by the weather. She and her mentor had tracked their prey through festering swamps and down city streets, across burning wastelands and over freezing mountains. Cold sharpened the senses and quickened the mind, but as Liirah surveyed the crumbling ruins before it, the cold mountain air was cloying and insidious, worming its way through her padded leather armor and leaving her face and digits numb. The ruins hunkered on the edge of the precipice like the stony corpse of some great beast, its crumbling towers and walls fighting and losing a slow battle against time. Icicles menaced from its rooftops and windowframes, but when she shivered, it wasn't just from the cold. She could tell herself that it was just nerves from what the villagers had told her, that these ruins housed something terrible and dangerous, but there was no denying the air of malice that seemed to hang over the decrepit castle.<br/><br/>She had come too far to turn tail now, however. Where there were monsters, there were hunters, and according to what she had been able to glean, a man matching the description of her mentor had passed through about a month ago. Ignatius was a veteran hunter with decades of field experience, but in their path, anything other than a violent death was a rare end. Whether from mistake, misstep, or simply being overpowered, every hunter met their match eventually. The possibility of finding his desiccated corpse somewhere in these palatial ruins caused a knot of cold dread within her guts, but not knowing his fate was a thousand times worse.<br/><br/>She swallowed her apprehension, then bent down to plant a foot in her crossbow's stirrup and cock it to readiness, the familiar whirr-<i><b>clank</b></i>as the bolt was set lending her a bit of reassurance. Gathering her nerve, she stepped forward, towards the gaping maw of the palace's gate.<br/><br/>The inner courtyard was a place of snowdrifts and stone, with dead trees and rosebushes the only remnant of the grandeur this place had once possessed. Her steps rang out on the cracked cobblestones underfoot, and hazel eyes cast about warily. This place was vast, and despite the utter silence that enveloped the ruins, she couldn't shake a feeling of unease. Every shadow seemed to hide an enemy, and she could have sworn, once, that she heard sinister whispering on the breeze. Her nerves were strung as tightly as her crossbow, but she refused to back out now and end her search before it had even begun.