Traveling the network of tunnels around and beneath my tribe’s village wasn’t actually particularly hard, largely due to the diligent work of my former comrades, the rangers. The frozen skin of Ravanur was always shifting, moving and changing. Cracks would open in a day and close in a week. Burug would carve tunnels in their incessant search for food, and then those tunnels would collapse. Very rarely did my people actually cut our own passages- the ice moved enough that it was barely worth the effort. Instead, we marked the ways we found, exploring the twisting labyrinth daily and keeping a running knowledge of all of the paths through the ice near our home. This meant that getting from the Deepseeker’s hidden sanctum to Joanna’s old campsite wasn’t particularly complicated; once I left the tunnels that the ranger’s had no record of. The hard part was remaining unseen.

I moved carefully through the tunnel network, reading the scrawled shorthand ranger-sign scratched into the ice at regular intervals. The trick was staying in the tunnels that were just old enough to be somewhat riskier to use. No one wanted to use an old passage that might collapse or close on them without warning. Passages more than seven days old tended to be avoided. They were traveled only by whichever unlucky ranger had been assigned to scout out the dangerous trail. I stuck to those riskier routes, trusting my former comrade’s instinctive wariness to work to my advantage. For the most part, it worked. I passed beneath the tribal home of the Erin-Vulur with little trouble, completely avoiding being seen in the process. Once I got close to the fallen campsite, however, it was a completely different story. Warriors and Stormcallers alike, crawled all through the passages near where Joanna’s tower had fallen.

This proved to be a true test of my stealth. I spent an hour hidden in a tiny crack in a tunnel ceiling, observing my tribesmen and their movements, finding the pattern. Of course, they didn’t follow a pattern of movement exactly, no one did, especially warriors looking out for danger. Falling too rigidly into a pattern would leave an opening for someone like me to exploit. But searching for someone or something always caused people, warriors or not, to follow established methods- and I knew my people’s methods. A hidden route would present itself, and when it did...

Now. I slipped from my hiding spot, pleased with how smoothly my new crystalline armor moved. I didn’t feel hindered at all. I stepped carefully, following far behind the shadow of the latest ranger on scouting duty, making sure not to scuff or scrape the ice beneath my feet. He led me in a circle, through a deteriorating burug tunnel and out into a passage that was much smoother, more neatly shaped. This one had been made by a Stormcaller, and a talented one at that. It was one thing to stir up the winds like all of the other wind shamans, but only a skilled few could wield power with such fine control as one would need to bore a specific route through the ice. This had been the way the warriors had used to get to Joanna’s campsite. I shook my head. They had sent a full war party- that was the only reason to dig a direct passage like this. Why would the elders have gone so far to destroy her? She hadn’t posed a threat to us at all, except for the Stormcaller she had apparently killed, but that had been self-defense. Something else seemed wrong about all this. How had they mustered so much force so quickly? Yes, the Erin-Vulur could scramble a quick strike force with little effort- the rangers were always out and about, and it was a simple matter of leaving ranger sign with new orders near the intersections in the patrolled tunnels. But to get all of the warriors, all the Stormcallers- to muster the tribe as a large war party- that took serious coordination. That took planning. It hit me like a slap across the face. They had meant to destroy Joanna from the start. They hadn’t sent me to learn about her, they hadn’t sent me to strike up some kind of accord- they had sent me as a distraction while they got ready. They had used me. Had Nissikul known? Did I really want to know the answer to that question?

The war tunnel wasn’t empty. Workers from the village moved back and forth, dragging scrap metal from the destroyed tower away down into the darkness, where no doubt they were preparing it for transport back to the tower. Steel and iron were never wasted by my people, and the kind of metal used by a god, would doubtless be better than whatever iron we could carve out of the frozen mountain beneath our village. I grimaced. I needed another way out. I had been seen here, and I really didn’t want to have to hurt any of my own people to escape, even if they might not show me the same courtesy. I stepped back into the ranger tunnel and turned, just in time to see the ranger creeping up behind me, ax brandished.

I lashed out; my body reacting much faster than my mind could have processed the situation. I twisted, slapping the side of the ax head with an open palm and knocking it from the ranger’s grip. Before he could react, I curled my fingers and hit him in the throat with my knuckles, pulling the blow just enough to avoid crushing his windpipe. He gagged, but could not otherwise make a sound or raise any alarm. Continuing my assault before the unfortunate ranger could regain his balance, I hit my forehead into his, and when he reeled, I hit him across his jaw, right in the sweet spot. The warrior crumpled to the ground, and dropped, crouching over his prone form for a moment and listening hard for any sign that someone else had heard the brief scuffle. No alarm was raised, and there was no sound of running boots. I huffed out a sigh of relief. That had been close. I glared down at the unconscious man. If I had been a second slower, I would have been the one lying face down on the ice, only I would have had a nice ax sticking out of the back of my skull, and wouldn’t that have gotten some attention- I stopped in the midst of my internal grumbling, and then narrowed my eyes into a mischievous grin. I had an idea.