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[Arahim]

---

Arahim sat on the ground like one of the many faceless stones who shared his space.

Knees pulled to his chest, locked in place by his criss-crossed arms tightly hugging at his body's heat. A cradled, rigid grip like that of an over-possessive lover. A thick, grey blanket over his shoulders.

Slowly rocking, he stared at the wavering, twisting dance of flame before him. Silently losing himself in it's glowing tendrils. It's orange light woven webs.

Refusing himself even the company of his own voice.

Flinching at the loud crack of a thick log splitting under duress, he smiled ruefully; a laugh dying to nothing just as it reached his teeth at the absurdity of ease in which he had been startled.

The life giving heat of the fire ground contentiously against the strange sense of loss Arahim felt watching what had so recently been a troublesome burden die away. Consumed by the purpose it was ever intended for.

If asked, he could not say with any certainty why he had chosen this cave.

No divine guidance bespoke it's merits.

Nothing sang in his blood, "Here. It is here."

No. Prosaic need drove him up the crooked, snow choked path to the wide gaping maw in the mountain face.

It was cold.

It was dark.

He was tired.

And so he chose.

Past the entrance, fifty or more paces in, the cave wound sharply to his right before opening into a larger, roundish chamber, and here Arahim set up. Content that, at the very least, he was free of the glacial winds that had scoured him for hours until now.

A cursory examination by torchlight uncovered no signs of animal cohabitation, monstrous or otherwise, and two tunnels towards the back of the cavern leading deeper into the mountain. One a yawning, capacious gape, the other little more than a man-sized crevasse cut in deep black right into the wall.

Winter's mournful drone still rode the air outside. Wafting ghostlike into the mountains, its passes and openings, wherever it found purchase. Clawing, and heavy with lament. Even muted as it was by distance and stone, the utter loneliness it carried touched Arahim with a physicality that even the numbing cold of the wilds could not match.

[Arahim]

---

The forest gave way to field.

Individual ice crystals gleamed like scattered diamonds at their feet, stretching a scant forty yards before the ancient woods resumed their dominance of the land.

The trees shrouding Winter in shadow.

The open space was roofed by nothing but unbroken sky, and perfectly circular. At the far end, just before the treeline, stood seven frost covered stones roughly hewn, and vaguely pillar-like. Each stone subtlely unique in shape from it's neighbor, and twice the height of a man. Placed several strides apart from one another in a crescent shape adhering to the curve of the circle.

At its center, a black cube of volcanic glass three feet high, three feet wide.

Al'lyria crossed the field with quick, confident steps, Arahim in tow. She barely spared him a glance though the scene clearly took him aback. The wooden chorus of her birds clicking, marring the eerie quietude.

Closing her eyes to the World, she laid her ungloved hands upon the onyx table.

No surface, nor side, nor angle had ever been touched by snow, tho' here was a place where Winter ever held sway. Somehow apart from reality.

"Four days, four nights, Arahim," she said slowly, her eyes still closed, head tilted to the sun, "Four days, four nights."

Snapping her eyes open again, Al'lyria took two abrupt steps away from the dark cube, and turned to him.

"On the fifth day, when the sun touches the henge, you must return here with the Heart of Winter...or you will have missed another chance, boy."

[Arahim]

---

Sleep did not find Arahim.

The dwindling fire's glow before him bespoke time gone by. Time lost.

The nourishment his spirit had felt at Honesty's Shrine had long since dissipated. In haste he filled the empty places within himself with dried beef and mouthfuls of whiskey. Holding a silent faith that, at the barest, they would lend his body strength enough to see him to the final plunge.

Arahim used the last vestige of life in the dying campfire to light a torch. He unwrapped his axe which was carefully bundled, and strapped to the side of his pack. Its fine edge bled flames in the torchlight, as he tested its heft and balance.

Thus equipped, he began anew.

He chose the larger passage at the back of the cave. His going was slow, and plodding, but sure. Mindful of his footing to the point of obsession, and mindful of his chosen path. Loose rock, cracks, crevasses, and black ice all arrayed against him. Sudden changes in inclination, or deep dips and dropoffs sought vainly to cast him down. The crushing notion of being buried under the bones of the earth, of being a scant circle of light in the great subterranean void threatened his resolve...but did not stop him.

The deeper he travelled, the more hateful he found the air he breathed. It was not noxious, but was not pleasant.

Stagnant. Old. Muted.

Without the barest scents or taste of the world he had left at his back.

Like the meal he had forced down hours earlier, the air would keep him alive, but no more.

Shadow visions lined the walls just behind him. Following his every labored step in spectral procession. Doubts gibbering intimate whispers directly into his ear,

Stop. Too late. Go back.

[Arahim]

---

Arahim suffered the company of his ghastly entourage without complaint. Their garrulous mouths twisting to form dripping shadow art on the walls around him. Dancing crazily, excited to be free.

To say he ignored the chorus of voices (Don't ignore us.) would not be true. He simply kept his head lowered, and on his work.

He stopped frequently, running his hands along the floor wherever he found ice.

You must see your eyes.

Testing the depth, when the ice was clear, with spike and hammer.

Here! Dig here!

Thus far, he had been unable to pull up a piece sizable enough for what Al'lyria deemed necessary. Only succeeding in leaving a pitted trail behind him.

Who would follow you?

Is this all you leave behind?

Go deeper.

Soundless laughter echoed all around him.

The air grew colder without preamble as Arahim picked his way carefully down a rocky declination into a bowl shaped chamber. It's sides stretching to the high ceiling were pock marked and craggy, and the ground was loose with scree and stony detritus, but seemed to be nothing but ice beneath the fine layer of debris.

Of course this is it!

This is not the place, why stop here?

Kneeling, he took out his tools, and held his torch before him close to the ice, and saw his reflection.

The voices silenced abruptly and retreated.