Ravanur, the great mother, was dead- just as she had always been. Her outer skin, her burial shroud, and her sarcophagus had been cracked and riven. Interlopers had crawled inside to find her body. I was one of them, descending into the very bowels of the worldwide glacier with Thukkar, a gravely wounded warrior and my sister, Nissikul, a newly one-armed Stormcaller priest. I hadn't fared much better than they had in all this- I had been killed once already. We were hardly the heroes from the old stories. We didn't descend into the darkness beneath the skin of the world full of holy fire and bearing powerful talismans. Nonetheless, we went down, carried by my sister's strange magicks. We had to, in order to save the world. And to save the world, we had to save a god.

Nissikul brought the chunk of ice we had been riding to a gentle stop. The magicked black ice legs she had conjured from its flanks, spread wide to grip the edges of the narrow crevice around us. I peered over the edge and felt my breath caught in my throat. There was no light here. The only illumination I could detect was a faint, indistinct gloaming surrounding us, most likely the side effect of Nissikul's unnatural powers. I fished in the pouches at my waist and produced a glowstone. The little rock was a geode, a crystalline core surrounded by ordinary stone. That crystal, when crushed into shards, would glow very brightly. I would be able to see, but anything that lived down there might see me as well. It was a trade I wasn't sure I wanted to make. I waited, weighing the rock in my hand, but the decision wasn't one, not really. If I didn't go down there, my people would be doomed. I was a ranger, of the Erin-Vulur, and I would die before I failed to defend my own out of simple fear.

I began to check over my gear, quickly, checking the status of my bowstring, the sharpness of my arrowheads and shortspears, the balance of my greathammer. Everything was in good condition, of course. My weapons had been gifts from the Deepseeker, my people's shaman of all magicks found below the ice. He could make the works of the Ravanur and the ancient gods work for him. He had made me a full complement of ranger's killing tools- every piece was a masterwork made from light, seemingly indestructible steel. My armor was likewise a wonder of deep magick- fashioned in large part, from a crystal I had never seen before. I was as prepared as I could be, and I had the Deepseeker to thank for it. That made it all the much harder for me to consider the possibility of killing him. Was he corrupted? How could I know?

Thukkar put a gloved hand on my shoulder, likely interpreting my weapon checking ritual as hesitation. Wasn’t it, though? I didn’t want to go down there. I placed the helm the Deepseeker had given me upon my head. Who knows what- With little warning and even less sympathy, my sister planted one foot against my back, and unceremoniously shoved me out over the edge of the suspended platform. "Good luck," she called as I tumbled into the darkness. "If you die down there, I'll kill you." And then I couldn't see her anymore, couldn't hear her voice. All I could hear was the rushing of cold air past my ears, and all I could see was the darkness.

I twisted in the air and crushed the glowstone in my fist, then tossed out the shards in a wide arc around me. For a moment, everything around me was illuminated in greenish fluorescence, and hard shadows rose up from beneath me. They were strange, rectangular shapes, as perfect and undamaged as they were unnatural. They stretched up to reach me like crude fingers, extending from the grubby shadows of the stone below. The twinkling shards began to wane quickly; their luminescence was weakened by their scattering. Just as the last glow faded, I saw a flash of movement, but the light faded and was gone. I hit the ground, hard, but I was prepared for the impact and took it well. I let my legs give and rolled back across my shoulders to come to my feet and transfer all of my momentum into the ground. I was in total darkness, but I wasn't alone.

Without waiting to be ambushed from behind, I slipped the greathammer from its carrying loop on my back and took a ready stance. My people had never come down this far. I was the first to set foot on the naked stone of the Great Mother, the dead god Ravanur. But even dead gods could dream, and she wasn't the only one of those down here in the dark. I heard scrabbling claws on the stone a few paces behind, and at that moment, I felt a strange relief. For the last several days I had been working to fight an evil that I couldn't see. I was struggling against a corruption I couldn't understand and one that I couldn't harm directly. I wasn't an expert on the ethereal side of the world. I listened to the priests, I made my prayers and sacrifices, and I went about my life as a ranger. My life was one of the claw, the bow, the hammer, and I hated being out of my depth. So as the thing crouching in the darkness leaped for my back, I stepped neatly aside and smashed it to the stone with a smile on my face. I couldn't see my assailant, but I heard its chattering scream as it died, and felt the crunch of pulverized bone travel up through the haft of my greathammer. This was the kind of fight I was made for, and the scuffling, chittering racket that arose from out in the blackness told me that it wasn’t over yet. Good.

I set my feet in a solid stance and swung my hammer up onto my shoulder, into the ready position. Then I closed my eyes- they wouldn’t help me here- and focused on what I could hear and smell. I was Erinye, of the Erin-Vulur, and we were the predators here. I could sense them all, each twitching, bulbous rodent body quivering with anticipation, each of them preparing to pounce. They reeked of mildew and animal musk, and I could hear their claws skittering on the stone as they twitched and danced. They never seemed to be still, and beneath their foul moldy stink, I could sense something fouler- an acrid chemical edge underneath it all, like one of the Deepseeker's blessings. It made the most sense for me to wait for them here, to let them come to me, let them lunge into the arc of my hammer and die. But something didn't seem right about this. The creatures I sensed were drooling with desire to attack and devour me, and yet they still waited as if held on a leash, close enough that I could smell them- and they were impossible to ignore.

I understood what was happening almost too late. I dodged to the side, a loud mechanical clicking clattering in my ear, and a blade scraped along my back, the thrusting tip foiled by my crystalline armor. Falling back on instinct, I turned my dodge into the footwork for a heavy sideways strike, and I caught my attacker before it could fully withdraw. The hammer's head hit home with an echoing clang, and my attacker reeled away from me. It was too difficult to follow its movements. I couldn't smell it at all, especially not beneath the pervading stench of the rodents still waiting all around me. It made very little noise, and only a strange, rapid clicking noise given off when it struck, allowed me to avoid being spitted for the second time. I knew my armor could deflect massive force, and turn the point of a blade or arrow, but a properly placed blow could kill me just the same. The way this thing was moving, I was sure that it could see in the dark. I couldn't let this fight go on this way; otherwise I was going to lose. I needed a plan, and I needed it very, very soon.