The first time I saw her, I thought she was a god. Long have the wise elders of the Erin-Vulur spoken of great celestial beings descending from beyond the winds to the frozen skin of Ravanur, where they might visit their will upon their mortal subjects. When she appeared, it was as a great golden arrow falling from the firmament above to the ice below. Though I suspected great happenings and portents were tied to her arrival, I could not have imagined then how thoroughly she would change my world.

Today was the fifth day of the monthly hunt, and I had been tracking a burug’s movement through the ice beneath my feet. The great, armor plated monsters tunnelled through the glacial shell of Ravanur as easily as a worm in the sand, and rarely did they emerge into the eternal twilight above. A hunter skilled as I knew that the best way to track one was to make the difficult trip to the surface of the ice, and follow them from above until they came close to the surface. Their attentions were always focused on their prey below, on the krill and rodents that infested the warmer layers of ice closer to the heart of Ravanur. A correctly placed strike could, with some difficulty, ensure me a clean kill. The burug had come within two spears of the surface of the ice, its great, chitinous mass visible through the ice in places as a colossal, distorted shadow. I stepped out over that shadow, slowly, carefully, placing each fur-clad boot carefully as I slowly walked the length of the burug, starting at its tail. I checked the Deepseeker shaman's blessing lashed to my arm and nodded in grim satisfaction. Though I was not precisely comfortable with using the magicks crafted by the reclusive old shaman, his work was always meticulous and precise. Though he was half mad and prone to fits of alternate mania and melancholia, the Deepseeker was more than suited to his purpose. Out of the scores of my Tribesmen, he was the only one who could make any use out of the ancient relics that littered the deepest chasmic layers of Ravanur's frozen skin. The particular charm I was wearing was at first glance just a steel vambrace. The back of it, however, where it touched my body, had been more intricately woven of softer metals. Between the woven wires and the steel shell, there was a strange, greenish material that seemed too brittle and thin to be as strong as it was. In the center of the outer metal face smoldered a lambient glow, the strength of its luminescence telling me that the charm I wore as a vambrace would last me another two days before it ceased to protect me from the vicious cold of the surface world. It was good that I had found this burug. Returning to the tribe empty handed would be a source of great disgrace, and I had worked hard to cultivate the modicum of respect that I had.

As I crept the length of the burug’s indistinct form, I counted each pair of segmented legs that I passed. Most creatures of its kind had seventeen pairs of legs, with its central heart and brain both located somewhere between the fourteenth. I would only get one chance at a surprise attack. If I didn’t kill it with my first few strikes, I would probably die in the counterattack. The only problem with a surface strike was that there was nowhere for me to run or hide. An angry burug could breach upward through several spear-lengths of ice, and if I were lucky, it would kill me outright in doing so. I came to the place where I thought the monster's heart and brain would be, and unslung my great hammer from my back, followed by a single iron spear from the long quiver that hung beside my fur-bound pack of dwindling supplies. I positioned the spear with one hand, pointed down, and adjusted my aim to account for the distortion caused by the ice. My first swing was a light tap, the head of my sledge still driving the spear's point three-quarters of its length into the ice. Then I backed up, swung once to loosen my shoulder, and leaped forward, swinging down an overhand blow with all of my body's strength. The strike, made precise by long years of practice, hammered the spear into the ice with incredible force. Ice split before the iron point with a thunderous crack like a gigantic bone being snapped in two, and the spear vanished. A moment later, a great chattering roar shook the ice beneath my feet, buzzing through the hide soles of my boots and sending chills rippling along my spine. Without waiting to check if the monster had started to turn, I drew and set another spear, and raised my great hammer to send another blow home into the burug’s back.

Before I could leap forward into my strike, the shadow of my hammer suddenly stood out starkly before me in a silhouette grip, so clear it might have been painted on the ice. There were no shadows on the surface of Ravanur, for there was very little direct light, only the hazy gloaming of eternal twilight. But something was casting that shadow. I whirled, hammer held two-handed before me in a defensive stance and froze as I saw the source of the light. A star burned yellow-white in the silver sky, growing ever larger as it streaked down from the heavens toward me. It trailed a tail of thick smoke and before it came a bloom of heat that I could feel even from where I stood. I wondered then if I was going to die. As I gaped, open-mouthed at onrushing doom, the ground lurched beneath my feet, sending me down to one knee, only then I was tipped over onto my back as the plates of thick glacial ice cracked and lifted into the air. The burug was breaching. I was definitely going to die. The next several moments were lost in a confusion of impact, an avalanche of skull-splitting crashes and roars, and a wave of all-encompassing heat that sucked the breath from my lungs even as I was driven into crushing darkness. I barely had time to wonder what great sin of mine had brought down such punishment before my mind slipped away sideways into silence, and I knew no more.