The incoming white tsunami washed over the Wrathful Death first, a bulging wall of snow and shattered cornice that swallowed sky and ridge alike; for an instant its broad face, all iron plates and furnace cracks, vanished beneath a churning froth of ice-dust and tumbling boulders. Though it hurled its shoulder into the rush, audaciously bracing as if it could force the mountain to obey, it was immediately blasted sideways, body corkscrewing, the long rents in its armor flaring a bloody red that steamed in the cold.
Ludwig, on the other hand, was not someone who'd wait for death with open arms. The shriek of the avalanche filled the air like tearing silk a thousand-fold; the sting of needle-snow bit the Davon skin; frost-laden wind slapped at his cape and made the edges crackle. He squinted into the white and, almost laughing at the sheer madness of the thought, angled his body to cut the slope rather than ride it under.
