"I mean, maybe you in fact do not know how she signs her correspondence but I think you could be telling us more. Better by whose lights?"

She considers.

"His, I think," she says, pointing at Jojo.

Jojo looks mildly perplexed.

"...oh...kay. Sharp right where the path diverges."

"Right," Dharvana says cheerfully. "That is, correct."

"I felt very discomfited by the way that woman looked at me," Jojo confesses as they trudge through the snow. "It felt like she knew me entirely too well."

"If that's the worst thing that happens to us down here..."

"Well, yes," Jojo admits. "It does seem rather unlikely. But still."

"Deekin mostly wondering what kind of spooky lady other spooky lady want us to find," Deekin muses. "Deekin not know that many spooky ladies until this adventure start."

"Well, let's get moving, it gives me the illusion that I am successfully taking actions about the cold."

On they move. They take a sharp right at the turn, and find the cave in pretty short order. Inside, it's dark (not that any of them are bothered by that) and slightly warmer for the shelter, but still deathly cold.

Jojo steps inside, then stops dead. "Aribeth?" he whispers.

Before him kneels a statue of a woman, carved out of ice. Or - it seems that way at first, but her eyes are alive. They look forward, her face frozen in an expression of anguished fury.

Her mouth is slightly open.

"...I don't suppose it's normal for Aribeth to be made out of ice - I don't know how to fix this -"

Deekin rummages in his bag for the berry that the Sensei gave them, then looks at it dubiously. "Probably Velox berry, right? Dharvana not just give us cranberry or something for laughs?"

Jojo snatches the berry away and pushes it between Aribeth's frozen lips.

"Come on - I can't - you can't -"

"I doubt she can swallow it but maybe if it sits in her mouth long enough it'll - warm up her throat? -"

"y," Aribeth says, her lips still unmoving. There's a sound like water trickling through a gutter.

After a few more seconds, the frost begins melting from her face, leaving translucent spirit-flesh behind, and her expression turns from furious to merely bleak. "Why," she whispers.

"Why - what?"

"Why save me."

"Do you know who I am?"

"Jojo. The little beastkin acolyte. The Hero of Neverwinter. My - my friend."

She gasps in a breath as her chest starts to melt. "You shattered my blade, and told me to give myself to Neverwinter's justice."

"They killed me, hero."

"I know."

Tears gather in Jojo's eyes, freezing on his lashes and in the fur on his face. "I know. They - they killed you - Nasher killed you - for justice, for vengeance - I didn't - I didn't know they would -"

"You knew. How could they ever not?"

She stands, her legs shaking slightly from disuse.

"Why kill me then and save me now?"

"You were cold, so I warmed you."

He sounds like he's reciting a poem. Or a prayer.

"I'm a traitor, will you trust me? I'm dead, will you return me to life? I'm hated, will you love me? I've lost my innocence, will you find it?"

She stares at him, her eyes dead. "There are some things you can't get back."