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[Arahim]

---

Arahim's stomach filled with spiky adrenaline at every sudden drop off.

Riding hard over the sea's choppy swells, and crests. White foamed waves and eddies.

His small, sleek ship furrowing a clear, and sure swath, and a sharp, staccato wake to the already raucous ocean song.

The sky a dizzying, distant rooftop rushing above. Hung with an unbroken curtain of serried clouds tinged red and gold.

Hiding the Day behind.

His laughter trailed far behind him; lost to time without echo.

His face stung by cold, lashing winds.

Tears wetting his cheeks lost in the seaspray that dampened him.

His hair a red-brown pennant unfurled; soaked afterthought given a life, and tentacled.

Arahim, alone, skimmed over the fluid skin of the World, leaving scars with his passing.

Sailing ever North.

[Arahim]

---

Ice shifted and cracked around the prow of Arahim's ship as he set his pace to a steady crawl. The increasing thickness doing more to slow his momentum than any of his seacraft could. Here, so far north, where Winter held unending, unyielding sway, instinct was an indispensible tool.

With a grinding, shuddering groan, the craft refused to go any further.

Dropping anchor would be extraneous. Launching to leave again, difficult.

Gathering his pack from the hold, setting such thoughts aside for later, Arahim quickly took stock of his supplies. The tools Al'lyria had given him, a large pewter flask of Trinsic whiskey, tinder and flint, and a parcel of dried beef. Enough for a day, if all went well.

Tossing the pack over the side, he returned to the hold to drag out a tightly wound bundle of dry wood. Leather straps hung loosely at it's ends making it easy, or easier, to heft over his shoulders, or drag along behind him. With carefully measured diligence, and luck, Arahim hoped to find the sort of shelter he needed before night fell...and the temperature with it.

This too, he heaved over the side near to his snow crusted backpack.

Finding fuel for a fire on Dagger Isle was as sure an impossibility as finding a virgin amongst a group of Magincians.

Flakes fell upon him lazily. Caught adrift a wind that was both laced with biting frost, and mercurial in it's intensity, running the narrow gamut from soft puffs, to steady breeze, to still air.

Spiralling down from the distant mountain tops like some secrets breathed by the Gods.

Before joining his gear, Arahim sat upon the deck crosslegged, and pulled off his boots, one by one. Quickly replacing them with heavier, thicker ones equipped with steel, finger length spikes upon the soles. Four at the toes, and three at the heels.

Grey, sea skies at his back.

Austere, unbroken white in every direction before him.

Unforgiving mountains monolithic in the dim, mist shrouded distance.

Profound his sense of isolation, Arahim began.

[Arahim]

---

An hour had not passed before the shifting weather worsened.

Sheets of driven frost howled unhindered across the flat, ice choked land, slicing into Arahim persistently. Cutting its way through his heavy cloak with probing, invisible fingers. The cold tightening up his leather armor, making his every movement stiff and blessing him with a sour creaking sonata with every labored step.

Head down, squinting out the stinging snow, he pressed on towards the dark mountains ahead. The pass that housed the Shrine of Honesty was very close, and from there, a choice of cave entrances. One, he hoped, deep enough to have birthed clean ice untouched by fallen snow.

The bundle of firewood on his back was a more awkward and heavy load that he had anticipated.

Closer to the mountains, scoured black and sheer by arctic winds unceasing, Arahim found the going more treacherous. Several times he foundered in deceptive drifts of loose snow. Sometimes finding himself chest deep with a dangerous suddeness before struggling loose. His pack and unwieldly fagot ensuring each misstep became an ordeal. The gale peppering his face raw in elemental insult whensoever he was brought low.

His labored breath came in short, measured pulls, and ragged. The air here was thin. It's frigid taste burned his lungs. Lent no sustenance to his cause.

With the day fast dwindling, the dark gathering, and a dampness seeping into his clothing to his skin, he would need to find shelter soon...or freeze. It was that simple.

The cold, the winds, and his lonely, dogged exertion all summed up to sap from him his will, and vitality. Without any sign of exultation, or pretense of blind hope, Arahim paused briefly at the mouth of Honesty's Pass, and keenly felt the insipid freeze to his core.

A weird keening came from the recesses of the cut stone. The mournful sound of some bound thing Arahim could put no shape to, though by sheer providence, Winter's howl was much diminished here. Cut in twain by the protective rock walls scraping the sky. He would brave such strange cries to be free of the gusts and buffets of the storm if only briefly.

Lengthening the leather straps, Arahim dragged his precious wood behind him towards the Shrine, and stepped inside it's four welcoming walls.

[Christopher Sherwood]

---

She had called the Abyss by It's name
Green eyes lingering
Slim white fingers upon a heavy chain of silver
She had worn it in secret for years
Now his by her hand
The ankh a viscous red in the firelight

Christopher still remembered her
Still heard her sometimes
Distant
Like a soft Spring rain upon still waters
Azure crystal
Perfect, but for the black mud
That was its floor
Just below

[Arahim]

---

The Shrine was wide and deep for five or six men abreast either way. Room enough to seem important, but simple enough to appear modest. The Virtue itself held just the right measure of intellectual challenge that complex architecture would only convolute and distract.

At every corner, tall, gold candelabras flickered tiny, three pronged flame. Given the nature of the weather, and the semi-enclosed, roofless structure, the dancing lights seemed dreamlike, and impossible.

Arahim stood with his back to the thick stone wall. Gloveless fists to his face, he blew into the curved hollow of each hand in turns. Clenching, and unclenching his fingers, slowly coaxing life back into them as though in solemn ritual.

Warmer slightly, but still numb with chill, he dug out his flask from his pack and indulged in a generous mouthful. The fiery liquid raised gooseflesh on his arms, coating his belly with a biting, pleasant burn that crept like syrup into his chest. Oozing into the secret cracks just under the skin. The heat clearing his sinuses, and making his nose run.

The effect was brief in duration, prompting a second swig.

Closing his eyes, Arahim steadied his breathing. Feeling reborn just to be out of the relentless windstorms for so short a time. Freed of the weight he saddled upon himself, he stretched the stiffness out of his back, and shoulders.

He had made pilgrimage to the Shrine of Honesty before, and lost himself to those memories as he approached the stoic, stone ankh. Pocketting his flask, he lightly ran his hands over it's grey surface, walking himself around the carven symbol as if to find some hidden side to it. Some angle that tricked the fading light of Day into revealling Truth.

Dropping to his knees, Arahim began to brush aside the thin layer of snow that had crept its way into the Shrine, and partially obscured the open palm glyph representative of the Virtue. Undoing the work he had so recently put into warming his hands, and yet unmindful to his discomfort until swept clean the embossed emblem before him.

Standing, he bowed low his head, and pulled a heavy linked chain over it. A silvered ankh dangled freely at it's end, catching the very last embers of Day, and the first cold kiss of the Wintermoon.

"Ahm." he whispered reverently, closing tightly his eyes to the World.