My passage back to my people’s territory was uneventful. I didn’t even see any other rangers out in the cold, not even to greet me as I emerged from the burug tunnel I had been using for swift travel and approached one of the gateways to our realm under the ice. I had even approached one of the more frequent entrances, an established way down to one of the pockets of livable space under the ice. It took me from a seemingly small crevasse in the surface of Ravanur's skin down into a wider passage that led to a remote, cratered mountain of a similar size to the one within which the village rested. In past times, this cavernous space had been another settlement in its own right, but there just weren't enough of the Erin Vulur anymore to fill it. The idea had been proposed to share it with another tribe of people like us, but too few of the Elders had agreed. They had refused; by the idea that the malicious powers below the ice could corrupt anyone, and we had no way of knowing if the unknown other tribes hiding beneath the ice were still the masters of their own minds or merely puppets for the dark ones. Personally, I thought it was just an excuse to avoid having to share power with a whole other Council of Elders, but being just a lowly ranger, I kept these thoughts to myself.

In the meantime, the former village had been converted into an outer outpost of our territory, an empty expanse of cold stone with a single longhouse constructed in its center. A few feeble pens of skinny vulyak and a single lonely dukkar wallowed in a feeble morass of slimy fungus circling it. The place seemed empty, except for the livestock, which was very strange. There should have been at least six warriors on duty, along with a ranger and a Stormcaller. It wasn’t a pleasant posting, but my people were typically dutiful and vigilant. Life within the skin of Ravanur demanded such devotion. The outpost was, nonetheless empty and I didn’t understand why. I approached the longhouse carefully, my hands at my waist, ready to draw an axe and fight if some mischief was happening with my people. The door to the longhouse was pushed aside, and I half drew my weapon, then sighed with relief and let it fall back into its carrying loop at my belt. Elder Lot himself stood in the door to the longhouse, leaning against one of his sigil marked staves and staring at me with his empty black eyes. “Come on, boy,” he grumbled. “Get innnnn here, I haven’t got alllllll day.”

Shaking my head, bemused, I followed the Elder Stormcaller into the longhouse, where I found a small stone platter of food waiting between two seats of piled furs. The Elder gestured for me to take a seat, and I sat. At further prompting, I selected a tender looking strip of roasted dukkar and began to eat. The Elder sat as well, and with little fanfare, selected a mushroom cap filled with vulyak cheese and took a bite, then he squinted his eyes in pleasure. After a moment of quiet, companionable eating, the elder leaned forward over the stone platter and said, “Alright then, Vollllllistad, tell me about this god of yourssss. Why is it here? What doesssss it want?” He gestured with a broad gesture to indicate that the longhouse was empty. I was free to tell him everything I had learned.

“Her name,” I said around a mouthful of succulent meat, “is Joanna. And she’s here to change our world into a paradise.”

Elder Lot tilted his head to one side and frowned slightly. "Issssss she now? Tell me mmmmmore?" So I told the Elder of all I had learned. I told him of the great tower that Joanna was building, and of her ability to gather and disperse the storm she used as her barrier. I told him about the strange suit of armor, and how she looked very much like one of us within. I explained to him all I had seen her do, from reshaping ice and metal with a wave of her hand, to the conversations I had watched her have with a spirit that I couldn't see or hear. I even told him that she claimed not to be a god, and explained what I could of her plan to ready the world for the arrival of her own tribe. All the while Elder Lot's expression remained the same, a neutral mask, his eyes blank pits of black from which I could glean no specific emotion. Finally, with little left to tell him, and less food left on the stone platter, I spoke of what I had learned of Joanna's language, and told him what she had said about the world she said she had come from, somewhere far out within Palamun's firmament.

The Elder stood his expression inscrutable. "Follllllow me, ranger." I did, thinking little of it. The Elder held open the hide flap door so I could step through, and followed me out. Then he stepped forward and led me back across the great crater that contained Pyrinta Outpost. We passed the animal pens and continued back off of the weathered stone and out of the outpost's pocket of relative safety and warmth beneath the ice. As we ascended the frozen tunnel to the surface, Lot spoke, his voice suddenly devoid of its usual affectation of random, drawn out sounds. "Volistad," he said his voice raspy and crisp. "You know the stories of the High Epic. You know that our tribe was not born here on Ravanur- none of the tribes of this planet, be they like us or not, were born here."

"Of course," I replied easily. "We were carried here in a vast metal urn by the Great Father, Palamun, to save us from the Dirt Eaters, who would have destroyed all the world in their wickedness."

“Yes,” Elder Lot said. “And as His chosen people, we were brought here, to a world that the Dirt Eaters could never infect, tame, and never destroy. We were protected from their wickedness by Ravanur.”

I knew the story. “But the Dirt-Eater’s foul gods had heard of this refuge, of the safety of our mother, Ravanur, and they came here first, already tainting the land, breaking Ravanur’s body that they might use her blood to power their infernal creations. It would not be long before even pristine Ravanur wasn’t safe from the Dirt-Eaters and their ilk.”

The master took up the tale again, a sad smile in his eyes as he glanced over at me. “And so, to save us, Palamun himself fought the Dark Ones, the gods of the Dirt-Eaters, and with the help of Ravanur, he badly wounded those false gods. But Ravanur was grievously wounded, and without her aid, brave Palamun could not fully slay the Dark Ones, for they were gods like him, and terrible in their evil power.”

We had reached the mouth of the crevasse that served as an entrance into the territories of the Erin-Vulur. Elder Lot stopped and put a hand on my shoulder. Knowing my cue, I continued the story. "So Ravanur poured out her grief, and her pain, and her rage, and she sealed herself in a tomb of ice while the Dark Ones were distracted. And there, beneath the ice, they sleep forever, frozen to Ravanur's breast." I frowned as I finished the tale. Something was wrong here. It had to do with this…

Pain lanced through my back and chest, so hard and searing cold that for a moment, I was paralyzed with it, unable to make a single sound. Elder Lot calmly circled around me and stood so that his deep, fathomless eyes bored into my own, his mouth twisted in a snarl that showed all of his teeth. "The rest of the story," he growled. "Is as follows: Palamun hid his face with grief for the sacrifice of Ravanur, and swore that her death would not be in vain. He placed the urn filled with his chosen people into the frozen skin of dead Ravanur, and when all the people called the Erinye emerged. He charged them with the defense of the noble mother's frozen tomb, in repayment for their salvation from the world of the Dirt-Eaters." I coughed, hard, and I felt hot blood bubbling up in my throat and beginning to crystallize. It was then that I noticed that the protection of the blessing was fading, likely ruptured by whatever had hit me. My strength began to fail, and I slumped to my knees, my head lolling forward, and I saw that the pain in my back and chest had been caused by a spear of black ice, one of the enchanted weapons any Stormcaller could summon from the deeply buried heart of Ravanur. The Elder crouched before me, staring into my eyes. "I am sorry, ranger, but you were corrupted the moment you saw her. Otherwise, you would have known what she was- an agent of the Dirt-Eaters, here to change the world into one like their own." He seized the haft of the frozen spear, just behind the wicked sharp head slick with my rapidly freezing blood. The surface air was starting to claw past the Deepseeker's ruined magick, and I could feel the teeth of the ever hungry wind starting to gnaw at me, piercing my flesh and seeking my bones. It was so.... So cold.

The Elder placed one hand against my chest, almost gently, and with the other, he yanked the spear all the way through my body in a moment of blinding, tearing agony. I heard my bones crackle, felt my flesh rip where it had already partially frozen to the magickal weapon. The Elder tossed the spear aside and let me fall onto my back on the ice. "Rest now, ranger. It was not your fault you were taken, but you cannot be allowed to live. You cannot be allowed to infect any of the other children of Ravanur." Blackness was swallowing my vision, and I felt tears start up in my eyes only to freeze painfully. I tried to speak, tried to move, but I had already lost too much blood. The Elder placed a hand over my eyes and said some words I could no longer understand. I’m dying, I thought incredulously. I can’t believe it. I’m really dying. Defiant, I tried to hold on. Ridiculous thoughts, impossible plans shot through my mind as everything inside me turned numb and vanished from my perception. I would wait until the Elder left and then crawl to Joanna. I had to tell her, had to…