When the next ranger to come through on their patrol route, found the crumpled form of her comrade lying in the middle of one of the side-passages, she immediately raised the alarm, causing everyone nearby to come running. I watched from behind a stack of scrap in the war tunnel as several warriors and a Stormcaller came running, passing by my hiding place and continuing on towards the place I had left the luckless ranger. The workers, on the other hand, retreated to the bottom of the tunnel, away from the possible danger. Doubtlessly whichever warriors weren’t immediately responding to the downed ranger would instead be guarding the vulnerable civilians. The sum result of the whole thing was that I had a moment, a clear path to the surface. I broke from cover and sprinted up the slope, my boots gripping the ice with incredible steadiness, maintaining my grip with no trouble at all. I ran as hard as I could, pumping my legs despite the burning in my thighs, and burst through the exit onto the surface of Ravanur.

It was very cold outside; not that I cared. Though my personal warmth was not in the least bit affected by the lethal temperatures, I could still feel them, even if they didn’t bother me. The sky was clear, but night had fallen, and Palamun’s veiled face was slightly smaller in the sky than he would be during the day. I lit out, away from the war tunnel entrance, moving away from the lines of scrap collection, which I knew would be resumed very soon. I moved quickly to the nearest hump of heaved ice and took cover behind it. I waited. I couldn’t hear any pursuers. Good. Now I just had to wait for the scavenging party to leave so that I could approach the site where Joanna’s camp had stood. It was getting on towards the evening, and those workers would be heading home soon, even with my little distraction.

I lay flat on the ice, just behind the crest of the little hillock, and peered out carefully, trying to get a sense of just how badly Joanna’s campsite had been destroyed. I knew they had destroyed her tower, that much had been obvious. But the Deepseeker had spoken as if the entire campsite had been erased, and that just didn’t seem likely. He also seemed very sure that Joanna was alive. The two ideas didn’t seem to make sense in my mind. If her camp had been utterly razed, then surely she was dead. If she was alive, then surely her formidable strength and weapons could have helped her to repel my people and win the day. It didn’t quite make sense.

I peered out over the ridge, towards where the tower had stood like a great monolith amidst the storm. At first, I didn’t realize what I was looking at. But then I saw it, the carved groove in the ice marking where Joanna’s divine storm had marked the boundary of her territory. And inside it… there was nothing. I frowned and squinted, willing my eyes to focus. But it remained the way I saw it. There was nothing inside that boundary. No campsite, not even wreckage or ruin- just emptiness, as if a great hammer had come down and driven a massive hole into the ice. As I stared at that emptiness, I thought of Joanna falling into the darkness, unable to do a thing. How could she have survived? If she had fallen into a crack in the ice, there would be no way for me to know how far down she could have fallen. “Well, there is one way,” I corrected myself under my breath.

Just then, I heard voices at the mouth of the tunnel. I ducked down below the crest of the ridge and waited, listening. The first voice was clearly a ranger, if for no other reason than that he sounded like he was overworked and in a foul mood. The second was probably a Stormcaller, judging by the arrogant tone of her voice and the condescending manner. After a moment, they came close enough that I could hear what they were saying. “...doesn’t make sense is all I’m saying, right? One day he’s one of the best of us, and then he disappears for a month and now he’s dead? I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t add up to me.”

“What’s not to understand?” The Stormcaller scoffed. “He was corrupted by the Dark Ones. It happens from time to time, you know. You’ve heard the stories, like everyone else. The Dark Ones sometimes take the minds of the weak-willed. Warriors don’t tend to resist the pull of those evil powers very well.”

The ranger was silent for a moment, and I imagined he was restraining himself from making a sharp remark to the mageling. The Stormcallers didn’t always respond rationally to confrontation, often with spectacular results. Eventually, he replied, “You may be right, mage, but I saw the man’s initiation, his gauntlet. He didn’t fall, not once, and we hit him as hard as anyone, harder, maybe, since he seemed to come by his skills so easily. Nobody goes through that, not the way he did, not if they’re weak.”

The Stormcaller didn’t reply for some time, perhaps thinking. Eventually, she conceded the point with a noncommittal grunt. “This god may have been more dangerous than some,” she admitted. “After all, no one has seen the Deepseeker since we felled the false god’s tower. And if this metal god could infect the Deepseeker himself, it must have been quite dangerous indeed.”

They stopped no more than a few paces from where I lay. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing as much as I could. They would pass by and I would remain unseen. It would be fine. I lay there for what felt like an eternity, waiting for them to speak again, to let me know where they were. My mind filled with visions of them coming up over the ridge and spotting me, and the Stormcaller rending me apart with howling wind and razor ice.

The Stormcaller spoke again. “The real tragedy of this whole mess is that we lost Nissikul. Fallen with the false god, determined to get her revenge for the death of her brother,” she paused, her tone regretful, laced with just a little awe. “At least she went out swinging. Bringing down the false god’s whole tower with a single stormhammer- I’ve never seen anything like it.” Nissi? Dead? I shut that thought down quickly. There would be enough time for that when I stopped for the night.

“Few of my friends lost in that fall, too,” grumbled the ranger. “No offense, but things like that are why most of my brothers and sisters don’t really like your kind.”

The mageling snickered, a little girlish sound completely incongruous with the frightening power I knew one like her could wield. “I don’t care what your comrades think. Besides, you like me just fine.” The ranger only grunted in response, and a moment, later, the Stormcaller let out another high-pitched squeal. I rolled my eyes. Of course. They weren’t going to be noticing a damned thing. I had never really understood why some of my comrades thought Stormcaller women were so attractive. They had a tendency to main the men who did them wrong, and to those power-addled minds, the definition of doing them wrong might change daily. Nevertheless, I wasn’t one to ignore an opportunity like this. As the sounds from the other side of the hill began to come more frequently, more insistently, I rolled to my feet, careful to move in silence so as not to disturb the impulsive lovers.

I crept away, carefully, and made my way toward the pit where Joanna’s encampment had once been. I approached the edge warily, looking down into the darkness. The abyss seemed to go on forever. It was even worse than it looked from far away. There was no way someone survived falling into a hole like that, much less if they ended up in a crack in the glacier. But the Deepseeker said Joanna was alive, and I had to proceed as if that was true. My tribe thought I was dead, and I was not. Perhaps she had gotten as lucky as me. Maybe Nissi got lucky too… I clamped down on that thought. Hope was as dangerous to me right now as grief was.

I gritted my teeth and drew my axes. This was going to be a difficult climb. Down was always harder, and this time, I was going all the way down... to where the dead gods dreamed.