The Golden dragon was a crystalline white, that shade of white that is so hard and cold that it is almost blue. It was covered with hoarfrost, so when it moved its skin broke and crackled as the crust on the snow crackles beneath a man’s boots, and flakes of rime fell off.

Its eyes were clear and deep and icy.

Its wings were vast and bat-like, colored all a faint translucent blue. Adara could see the clouds through them, and oftentimes the moon and stars, when the beast wheeled in frozen circles through the skies.

Its teeth were icicles, a triple row of them, jagged spears of unequal length, white against its deep blue maw.

When the Golden dragon beat its wings, the cold winds blew and the snow swirled and scurried and the world seemed to shrink and shiver. Sometimes when a door flew open in the cold of winter, driven by a sudden gust of wind, the householder would run to bolt it and say, “An Golden dragon flies nearby.”

And when the Golden dragon opened its great mouth, and exhaled, it was not fire that came streaming out, the burning sulfurous stink of lesser dragons.

The Golden dragon breathed cold.

Ice formed when it breathed. Warmth fled. Fires guttered and went out, shriven by the chill. Trees froze through to their slow secret souls, and their limbs turned brittle and cracked from their own weight. Animals turned blue and whimpered and died, their eyes bulging and their skin covered over with frost.

The Golden dragon breathed death into the world; death and quiet and cold.

An icebound village stood alone among fields of deep snow, fields that had been turned barren by the dragon's cold breath. It had once sat on the shores of a small lake where village children fished and swam. No longer. The lake was no longer visible under the all-consuming whiteness of the snow.

In this village, few people remained and even fewer came to town of their own will. There was the family of an old, retired warrior, who refused to leave because they had lived here well enough for the better part of a century. There was the sculptor, who mostly stayed inside her house all day creating small statues from stone and ice. And there was the carpenter, a pragmatic man who believed the dragon was only a myth and that this cold spell, like others, would fade away in time.

Then there was the young man who rode into town wearing silver armor. He rode a big black horse whose breath streamed from its nostrils like smoke in the cold. A white falcon perched on his shoulder, sharp eyes surveying the dark homes from beneath its hood.

He knocked first on the door of the inn. When no one answered, he went next to the carpenter's shop. After a few tedious knocks, the man opened the door.

"Who goes there?" asked the carpenter. He noticed the stranger's armor and his eyes widened. "You must be so cold, wearing that cold metal!"

"It is silver," said the stranger, "and it takes the heat of the sun and stores it within itself. It has kept me warm so far." He stroked his white falcon's feathers absentmindedly. The bird squawked and flapped up to the rafters.

"What is your business in such a desolate town?" asked the carpenter, although he feared he knew the answer.

The stranger confirmed it for him, unsheathing a sword from his belt and laying it on the table before him. "My name is Ilya, and I come from a distant land. I am here to slay the Golden Dragon."