Skyrim, Chapter 1: Seven Thousand Steps

   Howling winds tore at Dovahkiin, threatening to rip him off the mountainside and send him plunging into the darkness below. His blonde hair and braided beard - what could be seen of it from beneath his steel helmet - was encrusted with ice and snow. The cold burned every inch of exposed skin, and even the thick bear pelt draped over his shoulders gave little protection against the vicious temperatures that threatened to freeze the blood in his veins.
   He forced himself to keep moving through the knee-deep snow on cold-numbed feet. He was not the first to brave the Seven Thousand Steps in order to reach High Hrothgar, and he would not be the last, but many never made it back alive.
    He had to watch his step. Night and flurries of snow took turns blinding him, and one false step would send him to join his ancestors.
   Yet despite the weariness of his body, his eyes shone bright and alive with purpose behind the dark steel of his helmet. He was a Nord, a true son of Skyrim. No mountain would best him.
   A brief flash of color in the white curtain of snow was all the warning he had before a grey mountain wolf came hurtling out of the darkness, fangs bared in a vicious snarl.
   It went for his throat, as he knew it would, and he brought his shield around in a vicious arc to catch the creature mid jump. The metal rim of the shield cracked against the side of the wolf's head with a sharp crack, and it fell to the snow in a bloody heap. He spun around in time to dodge the second wolf that had come up from behind him. It snapped at his legs as it leaped past, but there was no real spirit behind the attack. The wolf was wary now.
    He knew there were more of them out there, hidden by the darkness, but they stayed back. They had recognized a predator. He looked into eyes of the wolf standing only a few feet away from him. Bright yellow eyes seeming to regard him as one might regard a bull.
    The wolf disappeared back into the snowy night, leaving behind only one of its dead, blood already frozen on its fur.