The Arctic is hardly a forgiving place; with year-round sub-zero temperatures, fracturing ice floes, and a few vicious predators, few humans have ever gone there. The cold can kill an unprotected human in less than an hour, and if said human fell in frigid water, he'd die in half that time. Many explorers have perished in an attempt to explore the frozen wastes, and whole teams have gone missing in the ice and snow. It was a place never meant for humans... but that wasn't going to stop Mark Haumann.
With a specially outfitted Jeep, a set of heavy winter gear, and a specially crafted drone, he was out to get some premium photos of the Arctic. A hired boat had dropped him off on the ice about a day ago, and he'd been taking pictures of everything: glaciers, snow dunes, ice caves, just about anything that looked pretty. After a few hours of going all-out, it finally started to get dark, and he swiftly retreated back to his Jeep with equipment in tow. The vehicle was big enough to serve as a home base, with the back seats removed to make room for a living area of sorts. Mark got all the pictures transferred to his hard drive, had a meal of canned peaches and jerky, then bunkered down for the night in a cushy sleeping bag. He loved coming out here, and when he slept, he dreamed of tomorrow's trek through the snow.
He awoke to the dim light of dawn shining through the windows, and after taking a second to stretch himself awake, he got up and started brewing a pot of coffee. In the meantime, he looked through all the photos he'd taken the previous day. Most were lame, especially the ones he'd gotten on foot, but there were some great shots from his drone that he moved to a folder of favorites. Once the coffee was finished, he played a quick game of chess with the computer; the machine always won, but he often measured himself based on how far he'd gotten.
Eventually, he got his heavy winter gear back on, left the cozy safety of the Jeep, and stepped out into the cold. Shards of frost clawed at his face as soon as he opened the door, and he was about to pull up his scarf when he noticed something in the snow. Upon closer inspection, it looked to be some kind of footprint, pressed deep into the snow by something big and heavy. The foot that made it was long and wide, with five clawed toes that looked like they could do some severe damage up close. Mark quickly recognized them as polar bear tracks, and fear quickly sprung up in his mind, suppressing the fact that there were no forepaw tracks. He thought about getting the twelve-gauge shotgun he kept by his sleeping bag for just such an occasion, but his rational mind quickly dismissed the idea; whatever bear had made these tracks was probably long gone, and he thought any person with a working set of legs could easily outpace a chunky, lumbering polar bear.
Without any more hesitation, Mark made his way back to the trunk and popped it open. From it, he hauled out the big, boxy case that his drone came in, then closed the trunk so as not to lose heat. It took him a full five minutes to get the drone prepped; everything had to get checked: the rotors, the battery, the camera gimbal, the memory drive, the antenna, the internal heating system, even the landing gear. He wasn't about to lose over three thousand dollars of drone because of a loose rotor or something. Once the drone was out on the snow, he flicked the controller on, stuck on his tablet, and went through his little start-up ritual: sticks down, test the camera, throttle up, test the rotors, and... liftoff!
Mark had the drone circle around once before heading out, checked again to make sure everything was in working order, then flew off toward a little cave he'd spotted. Along the way, he got some decent pictures, standard landscape stuff that he could sell as stock photos. Maybe he'd catch a glimpse of the polar bear who'd been by this jeep, he thought; he might be close, especially if this was in his territory. In his territory... maybe he should move the Jeep, find somewhere without an apex predator lurking about... nah, he already had the drone in the air, and he could quickly get to his gun. Something as massive as a bear would surely be easy to hear coming, he thought, so there was no way one could sneak up behind him.
As he turned his attention back to the drone's camera feed, he noticed something that was far more interesting than what he'd been expecting to find: a sort of idol made from what he assumed were seal bones. It had two significant shapes to it, an S with a really short bottom end and a right angle for a bottom curve, and a T with short arms. The symbols were crossed over one another and mounted on some kind of pole with crude leather straps; he quickly realized the pole in question was a huge icicle. Mark brought the drone down closer to it, and promptly saw there was something below the S and T. It seemed that something... or someone... had piled up the snow in a makeshift altar. On the altar were some scraps of meat, a few extra bones, and... a dagger. The meat had stained the snow red a bit, but was otherwise uninteresting; the dagger, however, was incredibly odd. When he zoomed in on it, he found it to be covered in symbols and carved patterns, seemingly done by a not-so-dexterous human. None of them were recognizable, except for one thing: a star cut into the very center of the blade. Well, either a star or a pentagram, he couldn't be sure. He took a bunch of pictures of the mysterious offering and the weird idol, all while wondering who the hell had set them up. Was there some race of super Eskimos up here that no one knew about?
It was then that he noticed something else, right in front of the altar: a big tangle of tracks. When he looked closer, he saw they led off in a bunch of different directions, and where they were dispersed he could see that they belonged to... polar bears? "What the hell..." Okay, he thought, so if polar bears came through here, were they looking to take the meat from the offerings? Maybe... but the meat looked old, and whatever bear came by his Jeep should have easily been able to find it. Plus, there weren't any human tracks, so either whoever put it here took the effort to cover their tracks, or... the polar bears left the offering.
Jesus, Mark, he thought to himself, what the hell are you thinking? Polar bears don't even have thumbs, much less the brain capacity to worship stuff. Maybe there was some other explanation, something that... hang on. Something moved. He only caught the barest hint of motion, but something had moved. He began to pan the camera around to see what it might have been, but there was nothing, or at least that's what he thought before he saw something lying in the snow beside the altar. At first glance, it looked like some random chunk of rock, but as he zoomed in, he saw it looked sharpened. Not only had most of the edges been filed into blades, but that same star/pentagram symbol was engraved on the top. He took another picture, then began to turn the drone around to return to the Jeep. Something weird was going on, and he should probably go over the photos to make sure-
