Getting my hands on my furs, pack, and gear was actually the hardest part of the task. Normally, I would have simply walked into the Huntmaster’s Longhouse, found the alcove where my equipment was stored, and left, all the while exchanging pleasantries and the latest gossip with the other rangers. This time, however, I was to avoid being noticed, so I had to take a different approach. I ended up crawling through the smoke-hole in the longhouse roof and creeping through the rafters. I stayed shrouded in the haze until the place emptied and most of the other rangers left to attend to their various duties. It took me only a few minutes to don my armor and gear, and then I was back in the rafters and slipping out amidst the smoke. After that, getting to the Deepseeker’s hut was a simple matter of leaving the village and circling its edge in the reverse of the route that Nissi had taken to lead me to Elder Lot.

The Deepseeker's hut was as isolated as the Master Stormcaller's home. Unlike Lot's house, however, the Deepseeker's residence was as scrupulously neat as if it was seemingly new. Fresh, even glistening hides had been expertly cleaned, tanned, and stretched to cover the structure, which was built with the same kind of geometric perfection that I had only ever seen in the grain mill. This made sense since the Deepseeker had constructed the mill as well. The hut looked purpose built, fashioned with exacting detail in accordance with some plan I couldn't grasp just by seeing it from the outside. I approached the hut, and I noted that there was a small bone post beside the door. An iron hook was implanted in it. A little silver bell hung from the hook and a tiny, fur-headed mallet to strike it with. I lifted the mallet with my thumb and forefinger, while my gloves made my moves clumsier than usual, and struck the bell twice. It let out a piercing chime with each strike, though the second one seemed to hang in the air longer than it should have. A moment later, the Deepseeker's gravely, amused voice rumbled, "Get in here, boy, before someone sees you."

When I entered the Deepseeker’s hut, I found him bent over a sturdy, immaculately constructed workbench, made from a smoothed block of stone, with legs shaped from burug chitin. He had a pair of spectacles on his nose, though these had far too many lenses attached by various articulated brass arms. The magick he was manipulating today was larger than any blessing of his I had ever seen. It seemed to be a breastplate, made from a metal that seemed too dull and too dark to be copper, but too red to be anything else. It was etched with strange, branching symbols, as all of his work was. Some of those sigils, particularly those surrounding the stylized heart embossed over the plate’s left breast, seemed to glow with an inner light, lit by a power I did not understand. “Elder?”

The Deepseeker met my eyes, and gave a wide, threatening grin, revealing fangs as long and sharp as mine, even yellowed as they were with age. “It took you long enough to get here, ranger, though I suppose old Lot did set you a pretty challenge. That man always did like his theatrics, eh?”

Pretending that the elder didn’t deeply unsettle me, I shrugged noncommittally and said. “It wasn’t a difficult task, just something of a tedious one.” Suddenly curious, I continued. “Do the Elder’s disagree so much about the metal god that this sort of subterfuge is necessary?”

The Deepseeker grimaced and gave a half-shrug of his own. “Palamun only knows what goes on in Vassa’s thick skull. If he doesn’t know about what happened- about that storm sitting still on the surface- he will soon. And when he does, I can’t guarantee that he won’t declare a holy pogrom on the metal god and all its creations, whatever those might be.” The Elder seemed to shudder at this, and his face twisted, changing all at once from bemused calm over to an incandescent rage. His eyes now burned with inner fire, his lips curled to display his fangs and his expression clenched into a mask of hate. I didn’t react. The best way to handle the Deepseeker’s strange rages was to wait for them to calm down, and not draw attention to myself or them. The Elder continued speaking through clenched teeth. “One of our Stormcallers is missing, probably dead. We cannot risk another attack on that thing until we know what it can do. You are going to find out what it can do, find out how we can kill it, and you’re going to keep this whole thing a secret from Vassa and anyone else until you know all of these things. Do you understand boy?” The last word was accompanied by a spray of spittle, and a glare that could have boiled the flesh from my skull.

I stood very still. The Deepseeker’s rages could very easily become violent. “Yes, elder. It will be done as you command.” The elder snarled and snatched the breastplate he had been working on off of the worktable, turning on his heel and flinging it at me backhand as he stalked away. The armor struck me in the chest, painfully, but I caught it and kept the pain of the blow off of my face.

"Take that and get out," the Deepseeker growled. "It will keep you warm for two months. Don't break it, or I'll break you," I didn't say anything in response. I simply fled the hut with the elder's latest blessing and then put as much distance between him and me as I could, in just a few moments. When I was far enough outside the village that I could no longer hear the sounds of the crazed Elder smashing things in his tent, I crouched behind a boulder a short way down the slope and rearranged my furs so I could put the armor underneath them. To my surprise, it wasn't actually heavy and didn't really impede my movement at all. Even though the elder had made it, it was of unbelievably high quality. Judging by the lengths to which the two elders had gone, this mission was of critical importance. The Erin-Vulur needed to know more about the god now living within a whirling storm on the surface of Ravanur. It might be another predator, like the Eater-King, but then again it might not. If it were benevolent- even slightly so, it was important that we learned what it wanted- why it was here, on our world. If Palamun had sent this god as a messenger, its mission could be of vital importance. It could change everything about the future of my people.

I left the village, avoiding the high traffic civilian roads- those led deeper into the surrounding ice, anyway- and I found one of the least used ranger paths out of the Erin-Vulur tribal home. The path led into a tunnel, which snaked out and up, taking me along a route that would lead me ever further away from the village. Each of these tunnels had iron hatches in them at several points, to deter potential invaders from other tribes, but it had been a very long time since the last tribal war, and longer still since the Erin-Vulur feared invasion. I found the iron hatch and fished around inside my furs for the key, which I wore on a string around my neck. It didn’t look much like a key, appearing instead to be a featureless cylinder of the same iron as the portal, but it contained some of the Deepseeker’s magick. As long as I held it, the key would work in any of the ranger’s doors. In the hand of any other, it was little more than a useless lump of iron. I slotted the little iron cylinder into a matching groove in the door and was answered with a satisfying clunk inside the thick portal. I leaned forward into the portal, and it scraped open, clearing a thin build up of shaved ice out of its path.

I stepped through the portal and closed it. I was now standing in a tunnel barely wider than my shoulders, a rough-hewn, ill-maintained straight shaft through the ice. Driven into the walls of the shaft, there was a ladder line of iron spikes, set at half-spear intervals. I sighed, rolled my shoulders to loosen them, and began to climb. At least I didn’t have to climb this one by axe.

The surface was just as unforgiving as usual. The ceaseless, scouring force of the furious winds made me stumble as I came out of the ranger tunnel onto the featureless surface of Ravanur’s icy skin. I slid the concealing imitation boulder back into place, covering the tunnel from prying eyes. I then reached into a crack in the side of the rock and hit a hidden switch, causing the securing bolts to fall into place, fastening the cover to the hidden iron ring at the mouth of the tunnel. Periodically, a storm would rip the top off of one of our tunnels, but short of that kind of force, the secret routes of the rangers remained so, secluded and hidden from any who would wish to do our tribe harm. I wondered then if the metal god was a good or a bad one. If it was a malicious god, according to the stories, it could make me tell it all of my secrets- like the locations of all the entrances to the home of the Erin-Vulur. I shuddered. Hopefully, it was a good god, but if it was a bad one… I resolved then that if the metal god turned out to be an enemy of my people, I would force it to kill me in battle rather than be made to betray my tribe.

I unfolded my map and looked at it for a while, noting the position of the burug I had killed relative to the location of the village. It was a day and a half’s walk from here, though if I found an old burug tunnel, I might be able to follow its relatively smooth contours toward my target, and bypass some of the difficulties of overland travel. Bringing up the recent burug paths I knew about, I mentally overlaid the paths onto the map and selected the one I was going to take. A day and a half. Just a day and a half until I stood face to face with a god and the world changed forever. Was I ready for something like this? Shaking my head, I hiked my pack up further on my shoulders and set off for the burug tunnel. There was only one way to find out.