Chapter 657: News Reaches the West (Part One)
On the night of the new moon, while Ashlynn and Nyrielle danced the night away in the company of close friends and the families they had chosen, ripples of their actions were felt in the farthest flung corners of the Eldritch world.
Far to the west of the Vale of Mists, nestled deep in the Western Shield Mountains, a lone figure stood atop the Summit of the World, the tallest mountain in the Eldritch world. The air was thin and cold and only a faint breeze blew to ruffle the lone woman’s pure white fur. Her iridescent horn glittered in the night, reflecting the light of more stars than could be seen from anywhere else in the world, but her deep crimson eyes held no joy at the glittering tapestry in the sky.
There had been a time when Answaen felt that she would never grow tired of seeing the wonders of the heavens stretching out above her as far as the eye could see. She had carefully dug a cave into the bones of the mountain just half a league from the summit so she could stay up here until the sky began to brighten and the sun threatened to peek above the horizon.
Time, however, had worn away at her sense of wonder. Now, when she looked out toward the horizon, glimpsing the Endless Sea through the gaps between clouds, the only emotion that stirred in her heart was a dull sort of apprehension, a feeling that wasn’t even strong enough to be called worry.
Somewhere out there, the Mother of Tides presided over the Lost Isles, lands that had once been connected to the shield mountains by vast sheets of ice. Answaen had never seen the Lost Isles, but her Master assured her they existed, even if they had become unreachable long before her older brother united the Seven Peaks in the eastern mountains.
It would have been comforting, she supposed, if the Frost Walkers could still stride across the seas to reach the Lost Isles far to the west. If they could, then Answaen wouldn’t have to wonder if the Mother of Tides still adhered to her promises to keep the seas impassable to the human ships that attempted to navigate around Eldritch lands in search of new lands to conquer. Perhaps, if she no longer needed to concern herself with watching over the seas, she could find a sense of wonder in the stars again.
For hours, the ancient Frost Walker stood unmoving, feeling the faint wind through her fur and gazing out at the stars, though her mind barely registered anything she might have seen that night. In her hand, she held a shattered piece of Eternal Ice, marked with runes older than her older brother’s nation and bearing the name ’Ansgar.’
It had been centuries since she last visited the lands of her birth and when she had, an old woman named Kimsel presided over only a single mountain as the glaciers continued to melt and the nation her brother had once ruled grew ever smaller.
At the time, she’d asked her Master if her brother and the other Blood Guardians could be moved to the Western Shield Mountains to join with their clansmen here, but the Fangs of Death had refused, saying that the Blood Guardians served more than one purpose in the east. At the time, he hadn’t elaborated, but in the past few centuries, Answaen had come to suspect that the arrival of humans in the eastern lands hadn’t been a surprise to her Master.
Now, as she held the shattered crystal of Eternal Ice, she wondered if it was those very humans who were responsible for destroying all that remained of her older brother. If Shubnalu’s blood magic had failed, the crystal would have turned red, resembling the frozen blood of her brother’s statue, but that hadn’t happened. Instead, the crystal had broken which could only mean that his horn had been destroyed.
A disturbance in the mountain’s tranquil loneliness pulled Answaen from her brooding contemplation. The steady whisper of wind across ice was broken by the scrape of metal against stone, and the labored breathing of someone climbing toward her summit sanctuary. Her crimson eyes shifted from the distant horizon to focus on the world immediately around her, and her nose twitched as she detected the familiar scent of a member of her own clan approaching through the thin mountain air.
It felt like just yesterday that she had given orders for the clan to learn what they could about her older brother’s death, and at the same time, it felt like it had already been years since she descended from the mountain summit to make her demands. However long it had been, it seemed like there would finally be answers to her questions.