I had no problem finding the home of the metal god. Roughly two days after I had set out from the tribal village, I got out of the old burug tunnel I had chosen to follow, preoccupied with my own thoughts. The tunnel had been utterly free of any sign of the great insect that had made it, and that didn’t make a lot of sense. Though the massive adult burug that had made the tunnel had been slain, typically within those tunnels a ranger would find burug eggs or larva. Even this far from the village, they would be exterminated outright, but there was no sign of that either- no shattered pieces of chitin, no flash-frozen blood or ichor, no grooves in the ice from heavy blows. This tunnel had emptied and stayed empty. There weren’t a lot of things that scared a burug; they weren't really smart enough to actually know fear. For something to drive away all of the juvenile insects that should have been here… A rumble of thunder vibrated the ice beneath my feet, and I looked up, out through the open mouth of the tunnel. In that moment, I knew exactly what had scared the beasts away.

The sky in front of me was covered by a solid column of black, hundreds of spears wide and three times as high. It was lit from within by brief, startling flashes of blue light, occasionally spitting out a bolt of searing blue that gouged up great chunks of ice and flung them high into the air, only to be caught in its lazily rotating mass and swallowed. I was standing inside a great storm. Green lined clouds stretched in concentric circles past me, seeming to extend out to the horizon. The wind whipped around me, howling for my blood. Its rage blew me back and forth as I got to my feet. I kept one arm thrown across my face to protect it from the flying ice. I quickly tugged a scarf across my mouth and nose and crouched to preserve my balance against the rushing violence of the storm. I understood now that the pillar of roiling blackness that I was looking at was the storm wall- the place in the heart of a great storm where the violence of the wind was the strongest. I knew that the eye of the storm would be a place of calm, near serenity, shielded from the tempest’s own rage, and I was sure that if the god I had seen was inside the storm, then the eye was where he would be. I just had to get inside. It was strange that the god had chosen a blizzard to be its ward; every Erin-Vulur ranger had to reach the eye of a blizzard before he was considered worthy of his ink. I had crossed a storm wall before- every one of my comrades had as well, some of us multiple times. Surely a god would have known that. Was this some kind of test? If it was, I was ready for it.

I reached inside my furs, into a pouch I kept tucked under one of my arms for safekeeping. Inside it, there was a set of goggles, with thick lenses shaped from precious quartz that the Deepseeker had found under the buried peak of the Erin-Vulur village. I strapped the goggles over my eyes to protect them and put the pouch back within my furs. Next, I spread protective balm over any of my skin left exposed, from a clay jar I kept in my pack. This would keep the storm's cold, harsher even than the ambient cold of Ravanur, from leeching heat from my body. A powerful enough storm could freeze even someone protected by powerful Deepseeker magick if they weren't careful, and the strange breastplate I wore under my furs would do nothing to protect me from a lightning strike. Even though I was experienced, every time I crossed through a storm, I took my life into my own hands, and a storm shaped by the hand of a god was no exception. No sense in waiting around. I checked the claws in the tips of my boots, drew out my twin climbing axes, and sprinted toward the storm wall, diving to the ground as I drew near to the roiling barrier. As I dropped prone to the ice, I slammed down my axes, getting a grip with the sharp points, and scrabbled with my clawed boots, getting purchase against the ice. Lying face down like this, made it less likely I would be ripped up by the storm, and hopefully it would also protect me against the chance of a lightning strike. I pushed with my feet, reached out with one hand, slamming my axe down hard a few hand-spans further, and then dragged myself forward. It was like climbing, a little more dangerous though, and my body fell into the familiar seeming rhythm with ease. Within moments, I was fully surrounded by the storm wall.

The time I spent within the god's storm wall was like a fever dream. Sensations passed across my body in waves, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. I was cold, even with the blessing I wore, and the wind seemed to be trying to rip the hides off of my back. I was in total darkness, concentrating on the indistinct impression of the little bit of ice in front of my goggles and not daring to lift my head. Each breath was a labor, as most of the air was sucked away from my mouth before I could take it in. I had to expend precious effort to remain calm in the face of it. Every so often, lightning would play across the inside of the storm wall, and a nightmare skyscape would reveal itself to me in the afterimages burned into my eyes. I saw towers of clouds growing upward to the unseen heavens before they were smashed into curling wisps by icy boulders, flung by the storm like they were pebbles. Through it all, through the light, and impact, and the terrifying, all-encompassing noise of it all, I persisted in my driving rhythm, dragging myself ever further into the storm wall.

I don't know how much time passed, but abruptly, with little warning, the noise dropped from bone-pulverizing to merely deafening. I had done it; I had breached the god's storm wall. I was exhausted and sore, so much in fact, that I didn't hear or feel the heavy footsteps approaching me, until something seized me by the back of my furs and lifted me off of the ground like I was an infant. I yelped and tried to fumble for a spear, but my captor simply shook me, enough to rattle my brains in my skull without killing me. I immediately stopped struggling, and instead, I twisted in the massive grip- and then froze.

The god was a two and a half spears tall, and clearly much stronger than any of the Erin Vulur. It seemed clear to me now that the metal was not actually its skin, but rather some kind of heavy armor, similar in function to the glacial plate that Stormcallers sometimes summoned to protect themselves. All of its movements seemed a little too-smooth, demonstrating a grace that wouldn’t have seemed possible in armor that heavy. I had the sense that if I tried to reach for any of my weapons, it could pluck them from my hands with deft ease, and fling me into the storm like a discarded puppet to be destroyed. The god’s helm bent towards me, and presented me with the broad, quartz plate that took the place of any facial features. For a moment, the plate was opaque, a glittering metallic sheen reflecting the bright strobes of lightning in the storm wall before us. As I watched, the metallic sheen faded away, leaving the crystal perfectly clear, so that I could see inside. What I saw- more than anything else I had witnessed since I had seen the star fall from the sky- stopped my heart in my chest.

Staring back at me from within the helm, there was a face I would never forget. She looked simultaneously like and very much un-like one of the Erin-Vulur. Her features were less angular than those of my people, her jaw more gently curved and her cheeks soft and un-lined. Her skin was darker than my own; the color of new leather, and her mouth was narrow, framed by red lips that seemed, even now, to be on the very edge of smiling. It was her eyes, though, that fascinated me. They were rounder than mine, and set a little deeper beneath her hairless brows, but the actual eyes themselves were fascinating. Deep, liquid brown eyes gazed back at me from beneath thick lashes, instantly intriguing, staring into my own eyes with an intensity that shocked me. My heart was beating again, very fast, as I met those endless eyes and wondered just how much she could see. Could she see into my mind? My soul? If she had, at that moment, all she would find would be a single thought, echoing through my head. Beautiful. She is beautiful.