The Askælean mountains

Lily was right. In the evening of the second day after we left our last hideout we started to see the first peaks of the Askælean mountains. They steadily grew over the next day until we stood before a literal wall of rock and ice, stretching from horizon to horizon, unbelievably long and vast (like everything it seems here on Liyúra…), awe inspiring …but not very high, surprisingly. I assumed most of it was hidden beneath the Skîbæriaen ice sheet. Some of the visible risings were clearly active volcanoes, round, wide, hill-like, with smooth flanks, while others peaked like needles up into the sky with very steep, nearly vertical cliffs. Glaciers snaked between them down towards the vast Skîbæriaen plains to merge with its gigantic ice masses.

It was here that the skies started coming back to life: The long absent forms of sky dragons could be seen again, their cries, roars and shrieks echoing from the icy and rocky flanks of the mountains. Thankfully they ignored us, but despite that, Yára and Reeza strengthened our cloaking to the maximum.

Lily had told me there was ‘some sort of gap’ in this enormous mountain rise, where the skîbærean ice pushed nearly undammed through a deep valley before it reached the waters of Lake Atûmna. We now steered towards this ‘gap’ and made one last stop at its edge where the last hideout on this side of the mountains was located.

The ride wasn’t smooth here anymore, as the ice started to wrinkle and crack the closer we got to the valley. Soon driving was impossible - the ice started to look like it had been worked by a giant axe, run through with immense cracks in a highly chaotic manner.

Here Al’Reeza finally showed the magic trick I'd hoped to see much earlier: she levitated the Munchie from the ground and let it fly until we were directly in front of a vertical cliff that rose directly up and out from the ice. I felt like Elliott from the movie ET! You know the scene, right?

But did I ‘wanna go home’ like the adorably ugly alien? I must admit, not once have I been homesick here in Liyúra, and even now, becoming aware of it, that feeling still eluded me. Sure, I thought back fondly to the times with my master and my brother, but not with the deep longing I felt for instance when I was in a youth camp as a kid. I reflected on that matter for a long time even after dinner, which we held at our hideout deep down in the cliff.

The ET-experience continued on the next day when we left the cave and entered the valley running through the Askælean mountains. The ice, crammed, squeezed, squashed together from the massive rises on both sides, was absolutely unpassable for the Munchie with fractures, cracks and fissures all over the place. It was a wide valley, stretching five to ten miles across, with an overwhelmingly beautiful panoramic view. First there were the mountains, peaks and tops lining the wild, wide ice stream squeezing in between them. Second were the glaciers flowing down from the highlands, feeding the main flow to the south. Then there were active and dormant volcanoes, regular sharp summits, peaks and ridges, looking sharp as razors, topped with ice and loaded with snow.

My senses were hopelessly overloaded after they'd gotten fine tuned in the vast Skîbæriaen expanses, where even a small, single rock would’ve been a big event. And here, thrown all over the place in abundance, was such an incredible amount of different forms, shapes, views, sceneries, impressions, and outlooks with so much detail that my head started to hurt.

Where Skîbæria was the exponent of vast, white, empty nothingness, the scenery here was the opposite, the exponent of an overwhelming abundance of every single possible shape and form nature could possibly produce without the help of life, wildly strewn around, generously, luxuriously, wastefully.

Still, here just reigned the raw forces of physics and nature. No sign of life was visible except for the occasional sky dragon, who either didn’t sense, or just ignored us. Reeza’s strategy to let us fly close to the surface certainly paid off!

We ate our lunch on the gentle slopes of a volcano that stretched its ridges abnormally far into the glacier valley and forced the ice masses even closer together. Fresh lava flows littered the flanks, diving into the glacier, having surely melted their way a good distance into its icy depths. The glacier had reacted in a silent frozen uprearing, pushing enormous blocks of ice high up into the air, breaking and fragmenting its surface beyond measurement and imagination. Fascinating document of a slow, silent battle transgressing any sentient comprehension, raging almost certainly since the very beginning of the formation of these mountains.

After our lunch break we followed the glacier valley further south. Now it widened slightly, still getting fed from glaciers on both sides, but also starting a gentle, almost imperceptible descent.

I was getting terribly tired. All the impressions of this magnificent landscape were overwhelming, and my head pounded like a drum. So I closed my eyes and took a little nap. Of course all the shapes and forms of glaciers and mountains still danced before my eyes, but I was just too tired to care anymore. So I let them drift and come and go as they wanted…

I was woken by Lily who frantically shook my arm.

“Look!” she cried in her raw voice. “The Sea of Atûmna!”

I looked and saw maybe the most impressive and beautiful view I’ve ever seen in my life. Well, to be honest, there were so many beautiful and impressive views in my life recently that I had a hard time choosing, but this one was truly special!

We were situated near the top of a dormant volcano (based on its overall shape and the glacier-covered flanks) and parking on the ground. Before us stretched an enormous expanse of deep blue water, littered with icebergs looking from this distance like small white dots, calved from the looming white icemass coming from our left. It was the front of the mighty ice stream that we’ve followed until now.

‘So this is where the reign of Skîbæria finally ends’, I thought and soaked in this incredible view. The edge of the glacier was sharp, but stretched impossibly long and wide in a gentle curve towards the horizon, utilizing the widening of the landscape, because here the mountains flattened gradually out, giving way to gentle, rolling hills that stretched in long ridges on and on to finally vanish behind the horizon.

The glacier harshly pushed forward into this tender landscape, but got stopped by the deep waters of Lake Atûmna, whose shore consisted of a myriad of bigger and smaller inlets, bays and fjords with scattered islands in all possible shapes and forms in between. It looked mostly bare on our side, but here and there I could already see small dots of green that grew together, both in number and in size the more my eyes were roaming south, until they formed a continuous green cover, further smoothing out the contours of the many ridges and hills. The tender blanket of life started to smoothen again the harsh edges of raw matter.

“What do you say? Isn’t it mesmerizing?” asked Lily after I just stared, I don’t know how long, into the scenery before us.

“I don’t know what to say. It’s …beautiful…”

My voice cracked. Never in my life had I encountered such a breathtaking view that actually moved me to tears! And it’s been so long since I’ve last seen larger bodies of water and actual green!

We were yanked from this moving, peaceful endeavour by Yára’s alarmed voice.

“Careful! Somebody’s coming!”

Lily’s head whipped back.

“What do you mean? Who? And is the cloaking still in place?”

“Of course it is!” answered Reeza in her place, sounding slightly offended. “But I can’t detect anything.”

“It’s a very faint signature.” stated Yára, eyes closed, her face highly concentrated.

“Somebody’s closing in on us. Cloaked and very powerful.”

“Damn it! We were reckless!” cursed Lily. “Should’ve taken the long path by foot!”

She sighed.

“This one’s on me. No use to hide anymore.”

With that she opened the door and squeezed her mighty frame outside. We followed and waited in anticipation. The cold mountain air made me shiver, but more so the unknown approacher.

“There!”

Yára pointed at a dot in the sky that slowly grew in size. I took my binoculars and …put it back down, astonished.

“It looks like a daimon!” I exclaimed. “Reeza, do you know any relatives or acquaintances who would pursue us here?”

She shook her head.

“Not that I’m aware of. But it’s good news. Chances are high that it isn't someone hostile.”

Lily shot her a suspicious glance.

“How can you be so sure? Can you establish a mind link?”

Again Reeza shook her head and Yára followed, tentatively.

“I just feel someone fast approaching who tries to cloak his or her magical aura.”

I took a look through my binoculars again.

“To me it looks like a female daimon. With blue skin.”

I handed Reeza my glasses.

“Do you know anybody of this colour?”

Reeza gazed through the apparatus and grunted impatiently because she had to adapt it to her sharper eyesight.

“No,” she said, when she finally found the right setting, “but it’s very rare. Hm, the face looks vaguely familiar, but I’m certain I’ve never seen her before. Do you want to have a look?”

She offered the binoculars to Lily, who took them instantly and gazed long and concentrated at the incoming, still growing dot.

“Haven’t seen her either.” she finally grumbled. “But looks like nobility. Fancy armour.”

The dot now started to gain contours and forms, until even I could spot the incoming daimon with my naked eye.

She landed elegantly in the snow and approached us then with measured pace. As Lily had said, she wore stylish armour, but didn’t appear to have any weapons on her. She was taller than Reeza or Yára, but didn’t reach Lily’s height. The deep blue colour of her skin gave her an even more exotic appearance than Reeza’s red skin, and her face looked decidedly more mature than any of the girl’s, despite her skin being flawless and smooth.

She halted about five feet before us and raised her right hand, which also had two thumbs, one on each side of the palm.

“Greetings,” she said in a deep, rich, smoothly rolling voice that wanted to melt my insides. I balled my fists to not fall under its spell.

“My name is Elä’Ahrûna. Some of you may know it, but I am aware that it has been a long time since it was last used among sentient beings.”

I looked at my comrades, but only Reeza and Yára showed signs of recognition.

“I see, you recall.” said the daimon lady, when she saw the frowning and thoughtful gazes she was met with. Reeza and Yára seemed to know something, but apparently were having trouble remembering …or believing it.

Lily was unimpressed.

“What brings you here then, Elä’Ahrûna, and what is your request?” she asked courtly.

The blue skinned lady smiled leisurely.

“That is not as easy to explain, and there is also no easy way to say this.” she answered slowly, as if unsure which words to choose.

“But, you know, I wanted to meet the one I summoned here.”

An icy shock went through my bowels! Elä’Ahrûna turned towards me and saw my stunned face, staring at her in bewilderment. Again she smiled and addressed me now directly.

“You heard right. The one who summoned you is me.”