Cold.
By His Immenseness, it was cold.
The hunter stops a moment and digs around in his pack, pulling from it his salvation; a glass flask of a viscous, red liquid. He unlatches the stopper and steels himself as he brings it to his lips. The drink hits his tongue, and tears well up in his eyes instantly. The mixture of immeasurable heat and unrelenting bitterness was like drinking rath marrow. However disgusting the beverage is, it is key to his survival in this unforgiving locale. He chokes down every last drop of the foul substance, suppressing one final retch before replacing the flask. It takes a moment, but at last a warmth begins to radiate from his core, the chills that wracked his body before gradually subsiding. He double-checks the mooring of his boat and his supplies before heading out. Now he could focus on the task at hand: surveying the frozen seaway hunting grounds. It was no short jaunt from base camp on the distant ice floe to the shore, but the Guild wanted to minimize the risk of any monsters taking up residence in it or destroying it. Finally the hunter made landfall, stopping a moment to take in his surroundings. To his right, more ice that followed the contour of the shoreline. Ahead of him, a sheer cliff with a flat top that slops upward to unknown heights, its apex obscured by low-hanging clouds. To his left, the yawning maw of a cave and what seemed to be signs of a lynian encampment. Nearby, a small herd of woolly popo trundle through the snow toward the floes that cling to the shore, unperturbed by the biting wind.
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>Up

The cliff is far more imposing as the hunter stands at its base, doubly so at the prospect of getting a grip on its icy face. Suitable handholds and footholds end up few and far-between, and the ascent tries the hunter's patience just as much as his body as he's forced to backtrack repeatedly whenever he runs out of holds before he runs out of cliff. Exhausted, he barely manages to heave himself over the lip of precipice and lies in the snow a moment, catching his breath. He turns and sizes up his next obstacle: A steep, snow-blanketed incline, entirely devoid of vegetation or other cover from the elements. A steady wind keeps the loose snow aloft, melting the sky and slope into an indistinguishable, swirling mass ahead of him. He sets his jaw and forges ahead through the drifts. The cliff and shoreline below quickly disappear as the flurries intensify into a blizzard, his world soon reduced to a turbulent gray and white. A deep cold begins to seep into his chest and he shivers; time for another dose of the fetid fluid. He finds a flatter spot to sit a moment and chug a hot drink and assess his situation. Night is starting to fall, and his carried supplies are enough to get him through another day of travel before he has to be back at base camp or scavenging his own meals. Deciding that trying to continue through the night in these conditions was foolhardy at best, he removes his hammer from its sling and sets to work hollowing out a cave in the snow. A distant screech, like metal-on-metal, cuts through the howling gale and sends shivers up the hunter's spine. The wind begins blowing erratically, nearly sending him tumbling backward down the incline. He peers down the slope to see a great black silhouette racing toward him, plowing through the deep snow effortlessly. He dives onto his hammer and turns to face the interloper, ready to counterattack, but is sent reeling by a blast of coarse snow as the shadow sprints past, as if it hadn't seen him at all. Shaken, the hunter walks back to find his shelter utterly trampled, a wide path carved through the snow in its place. With a sigh of combined frustration and relief, he gets back to digging, this time leaving his hammer on his back.

A fitful night's sleep is brought to an end with the sun's half-hearted attempt to shine through the tempest. The hunter groans and sits up, a thoroughly unappetizing breakfast of a hot drink and a Guild-prepared ration his only solace. Stepping outside and squinting against the glare of the snow, he sees the path the monster made smoothed over by wind and snowfall, but still very visible. He hops into the track and continues his ascent, finding the shallower snow easier to traverse and hoping that it would lead to a more substantial shelter against the elements. What felt like days passed as he stomped up the slope, but a promising increase in visibility and thinning snow on the ground motivates him to push on. The slope levels out, and the hunter finds himself on a flat ridge, another cliff face ahead of him with what seems to be a sheltered hollow at its top. The monster's path leads straight into it, the icy facade marred with deep gashes where it clawed its way up, which made for convenient climbing handholds. He makes his way cautiously and quietly, knowing the monster could still be residing there, and peeks over the edge. His face drains of color and a pit opens up in his stomach; laying atop the ice shelf was a beast clad in a shell of rust, an elder dragon known as kushala daora. They are said to have an almost supernatural control over the wind, bending it to their whim to devastating effect, and their hides are covered in steel-like scales that can deflect even the strongest of weapons. As they outgrow their armor it rusts and flakes off, the fresh layer reported to have an unrivaled shine by the scant few who've borne witness. Especially vulnerable during this shedding phase due to its relative immobility and soft state of its new scales before they fully harden, a molting kushala tends to be reclusive and extremely aggressive if encountered.

This kushala seems to be distressed, feebly attempting to scratch off the ragged, rusted hide against the far wall of the grotto. Its wings were painfully crumpled near its body, looking too small for the rest of the creature, waving helplessly in their attempts to break free of the rusty shackles. It groaned and cried, growing more frustrated at its lack of progress. It finally resigns and collapses into the snow, breathing heavily. The hunter watches the scene unfold, almost pitying the dragon. His arms begin to ache, and he has to make a decision; climb back down and possibly face more of the raging winds he had dealt with the night before, or try to pull himself up without being noticed and see if he can find another cave to set up camp in for the night. Realizing there was really nothing for him below, he takes his odds against the weakened dragon, figuring it could be dealt with or fled from if worse comes to worst. He slides one hand through the snow on the ledge, followed by the other, careful to minimize any sounds when he put his weight on them, followed by his torso and legs. He spies a lip of rock that follows along the mountainside near where to kushala still lays, and a quick survey proves it the only way out besides down the cliff face again. He takes a deep breath and sets out toward the ledge. A meager few meters lie between him and the elder dragon when he hears a deep, angry hiss. He turns to find the kushala staring him down, its exhausted posture betraying its fearsome expression. The hunter steals a nervous glance at his goal and the dragon follows his eyes, seeing the egress. Pausing a moment as if to think, it picks itself up and steps between him and the path. The hunter begins to second-guess his decision, drawing his hammer and holding it at the ready. Undeterred by the gesture the kushala hisses again, sitting on its haunches. In one final, audacious bluff, the hunter mashes his hammer in front of him, making the ground shake, but it's only met by more defiance as the kushala lays down fully with a huff, issuing an unnaturally strong gust of wind that nearly knocks him off his feet. The hunter slowly backs away, keeping his hammer between him and the dragon, only to be caught off guard by something drastically different from the monster; a cry with a desperate edge to it, directed at the hunter. The kushala looks up to its wings, which give a pathetic half-flap, and back to him. He feels a pang at his heartstrings and is conflicted; elder dragons are highly intelligent in comparison to most other monsters in the world, which proved incredibly dangerous to human and wyverian settlements when combined with their borderline mystical abilities and nomadic lifestyles, but never before had an elder dragon sought aid from a human. He knows that if it's stuck in its old shed long enough for its new skin to harden underneath, then it would surely be crippled and die from starvation.

The hunter felt crazy for actually feeling sorry for a monster that's been known to spread turmoil wherever it roamed, and feels even crazier when he slings his hammer back behind his shoulder and approaches it again. The kushala lowers its head to the ground in an amenable manner, but still keeping a careful watch on the hunter. He finally reaches its side, and stretches a careful hand toward it and feels the rough, gritty exterior. It lowers its wing and gently taps him on the top of the head, as if telling him where to start first. It recoils slightly when he draws his carving knife, but settles once again as the hunter delicately sets to work. He runs his knifepoint around the limb and backward across its body above and below the membrane until the cuts meet in the back, after which he grabs the outside of the wing and begins working it up and down, quickly causing the area around the cuts to crumble away and showing a glint of its shiny interior. Next he cuts through the leading edge of the wing from shoulder to tip, goes around behind, and pulls on the molt's membrane. The kushala instinctively pulls forward, visibly wincing, the shell sliding free and revealing an enormous platinum wing. It stretches the liberated limb and gives it a few strong wingbeats before standing up, turning around, and laying back down on the ground, eagerly awaiting its other wing to be freed. Having picked up on the method, the kushala helps expedite its remaining wing, also successfully breaking the shell on its back away in the process. Next he moves to the head, working with exceptional care to peel away the rust from its eyes, mouth, and neck. As he finishes around its collar the kushala turns to him with a grateful look in its eye before startling him with a solid lick up his side. The chest and belly plate fall away after freeing its front legs, the bulky, rough husk giving way to a lithe and lustrous frame. Next came its back legs. He creases them at each joint and cuts away each section, revealing a shockingly shapely pair of thighs. His loins stir and shakes his head, quickly moving on to removing the tail. The molt slides off effortlessly and he goes to clean up around where it meets the kushala's body. Plucking away errant flakes that stubbornly cling to its hide, he finds himself back between its uncomfortably feminine legs, a single sheet of rust still refusing to let go. He pulls up the edge with his knife and grabs hold, slowly peeling it back. The kushala shudders, the final piece falling away from the flustered hunter's grip. Between its legs, the scales became finer and finer as they approached the center line, until each side came together in a smooth crease at the center, a single rivulet of a clear fluid dripping from it. Catching the him gawking, the dragon casts a sly look back at him and abruptly takes a long step back, knocking the hunter down beneath her. Face to face with her leaking womanhood, a raging erection pushes against the front of his undergarments. She slightly lowers her haunches toward his face, an expectant growl confirming her desired course of action. He reaches up and gives her thigh a squeeze, it surprisingly soft and doughy in his grip, then raises his face to her crotch. He teases around the outside and lips of her slit with his tongue, kneading and groping her thighs and buttocks with he free hand. His tongue runs along the crease before diving into her folds, inducing another shudder and a lustful moan from above. He works her insides, sliding up and down, in and out, placing his lips against hers and sucking, and giving some love to her now-erect clitoris, womanly juices flowing down his chin. He wraps his arms around her thick thighs and pulls himself hard into her, pushing as deep as he can muster and an orgasm wracks her body in response. He falls back to the ground, arms and jaw tired from the impromptu session. The kushala stands up again and turns around, tracing her tail all the way down his body as she does so, and positions her head at his crotch, giving his thigh a nudge with her snout. The hunter jumps to his feet, unties his faulds and drops his pants to his ankles, erection throbbing impatiently. Her broad tongue is soft, pleasantly warm and slick as it begins working over his member with surprising finesse and she locks eyes with him. She stops a moment, moving her head closer and gently nuzzling his torso, and in one smooth movement delicately clasps her precarious carapace around his shaft. Her tongue deftly teases, wraps, strokes, and suckles on its tip, an overwhelming wave of ecstasy nearly knocking his knees out from under him. Unable to withstand any more, throws his arms around her head and thrusts his hips forward, and without skipping a beat her tongue begins diligently massaging out every last drop of of his seed. The kushala gently lowers him to the ground and cleans him thoroughly before swallowing in an exaggerated fashion and licking her chops. She circles around behind him and flops on her side, inviting him to rest with an outstretched wing. He obliges and cuddles up to her side, her steady, deep breathing lulling him to sleep.