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"This fish is quite marvelous, and it goes very well with the wine." the lady Uria commented as she ate.

"Yes, the wine is indeed very good." Larin added, stroking his mustache with one hand, a glass of wine in the other.

"I always do look forward to this event!" the innkeeper Elothorn added, face red from imbibing the alcohol, clearly enjoying it.

Those were just some of the many little conversations which went around the table during their dinner concerning wine, their occupation, or just anyday things.

However, as the last of the guests finished their dinner and the plates were taken away, the monks would start clearing the tables and setting up glasses for service of the wine which made the monastery so popular in the first place.

At each table, a bottle was placed and used to fill the four glasses with the monastery's specialty ice wine.

This wine was made by a special and carefully watched process. The overripe berries are individually selected for this wine, and harvested and pressed when frozen. This produced a very concentrated wine of fruity acidity and sweetness. A german term for this process is called eiswein, but what made it truely remarkable was the environment the grapes were grown from, which produced its distinct taste.

"Nope, s'not my first time here." the man answered, words slightly slurred as he was partially intoxicated, though enough to know when to stop. "I've been here twice before." he added, which would indicate that he had been around long enough and in business to be rather successful in the tundra.

"I like it." the woman said, inbetween swirls, sniffs, and tastes, going through the actual process of tasting the liquid.

The man, Larim, said nothing as he tasted the wine.

At the end of the event, the guests were allowed to have a small chat with the abbot and the head of the vineyards, commenting, giving praise, or just thanking them for the event before they went to their rooms and retired for the night, getting ready to return home on the morrow.

"Eh?" The abbot Jarred quirked an eyebrow at her words. He was a rather old man, his hair greying and his eyes grey themselves, and when he quirked an eyebrow, the qrikles of his face were clearly visible. "Very well." he said as he began to walk off towards a corner. Luckily, most of the other guests had already said their thanks, and the few that were left were occupied with the master of the vineyards.

"What do you want to know?" he asked.

"None of us know where he came from. None of the villages in the tundra had even met the man or knew of his existance, and neither has any of the ships that transport passengers or goods from the rest of the world. He just appeared one day, from nowhere, a mystery, an enigma." the abbot replied, unsure himself of how that was possible. After a short moment of silence in thought, he asked another question, "You say you know this man? Then will you take him with you when you leave tomorrow? I am told he is on this world to learn, and there is not much that can be taught him that he hasn't already learned in the tundra. Besides, he makes the others uneasy." he added, clearly anyone in his prescense could feel the odd aura he emitted. "And if you know him, then perhaps you can help him, he might even be partial to your company." he added with a shrug. Persuasion to get rid of the odd monk who came from nowhere.

But that was always the woman's decision she had to make herself.

The night would pass as quietly as any other, but the morning afterwards would be much different. The guests would be awoken by a violent shake, sort of like an earthquake, as small bits of frost would shower down from the crystaline ceiling before it abruptly ended. This was followed by the sounds of chaotic shouting and the scrambling of footsteps which seemed to come from the main hall. It seemed that something was going on this morning.

She did not have to look very far to see what was wrong. Right by the narrow stairway, where only one person could fit through at a time, stood that man, Larim. In his left hand, he had a gun, at his feet, there was a strange device, and in his right hand, he held a controller of sorts.

Lucind would enter just in time for his boring speach and evil schemes. "I was looking very forward to coming here" he began, "As the chief wine supplier of the south, I became very rich, and now, I will destroy this place, and then I will also become the chief wine supplier of the north when my products are shipped here as well. I will rule this business, and the only thing that stands in my way is this monastery! Hahahaha!"

It was obvious that anyone who tried to stoip him would be met with a bullet, as he was in a rather secure area, against the doorway where nobody could get at him from the sides or the back, just the front, and then he continued.

"This bomb I have with me," he stated as he nudged the odd circular device with his foot, "Creates a supersonic shockwave of sound, which in this case, will crumble the ice and destroy the monastery, burying it in these frozen wastes." He gave another evil laugh as he finished telling everyone around about his evil plans.

With all the murmuring of all the other guests, outraged or fightened, the man would not be able to hear Lucind, and then he clicked the button on the controller to activate the bomb. The bomb would start to vibrate as it let off a hum, a red light on it began to flash rather quickly as if it gave a warning to detonation as the man laughed an insane laugh. Everyone in the room fell quiet.

And then the bomb hissed and quited down. With a few sparks, it just seemed to stop working. And then one voice filled the entire room.

"NNNOOOOOOO!" he screamed, his plans ruined because of some bad engineering.

And before he could say anything or do anything else, he was tackled by a few of the monks and guests who were close by, wrestling the gun out of his hand before being taken away to be dealt with. The bomb and controller were smashed and taken away so that their electronical parts might be used to make something useful, and if not, then it would be discarded as we..

The guests returned to their rooms to get ready for the journey home, the little incident forgotten, and one by one, as they filed out to the main hall, up the stairs, and out of the monastery, they would each be given a basket full of the monastery's products, be it plain white wine, their specialty ice wine, or brandy made from their wine.