I am sitting here at the shore, after the fact, and writing all this down on a large piece of wax paper. The memories of the dream-like logic and unreality of it all are unravelling in my head, dissolving like sugar in hot tea. Most of it could never even be understood by a tiny mind like mine. So I decided to pin these memories down with words before they disappear into nonsense completely.

I had barely arrived in the town close to the lake, when a young girl greeted me with my name and told me the singers were waiting for me. I followed the girl and she brought me to the shore of the lake. The town itself was some distance from the shore, at the banks of the river that flowed out of the lake and out of the valley. There are no buildings at the lake’s shore and not a single boat on the lake itself.

Five women of different age greeted me and spoke to me in the old runic language. I didn’t understand everything, but much more than in the native tongue of the land. They told me to make my way across to the island in the lake and showed me to a rowboat.

I rowed towards the small island, poking out of the still, misty waters like a rock bristled with fir trees. I saw many more singer’s along the shore and heard their song. It was beautiful, soothing, lamenting, pacifying. The mist turned thicker and thicker and finally, the island was more clearly visible than the shore I had left from. I do not know whether it was steam, mist, fumes or something else entirely that rose from the waters, but it seemed to greet me, embrace me.

I set foot on the island's shore. Through the trees, I heard the sound of wood being chopped. In the middle I found a hut and in front of it, a young man, maybe an almost adult boy, at the chopping block. He greeted me and said this master would receive me soon, then vanished inside the hut. Finally, a beckoning call led me inside.

There I found an old man sitting at a fire, wrapped in endless layers of hides, furs and pelts. He told me to take a seat, then he asked me what my request was.

I told him: to retrieve something that Ssil had told me to retrieve. He answered with a concerned furrow on his brow. Then he told me that I would never return with such a goal in mind, but he was not here to guide me, merely to let me pass. He said that he could not refuse a god entry to their homelands, only the other way around, and so, he would decide whether I would return to the lake's shore or not.

I asked where we were and he merely answered, that we were neither here nor there, whatever that means. Spirits and seers are not ones of concise and definitive answers.

Then I asked, how I would get there and he told me that I was already halfway there and just needed to complete the second half. Finally, he painted a symbol on my forehead with ash and guided me out the door.

I was back at the rowboat and stared into the distance. I saw the faint lights of the town through the mist. I walked around the Island once, twice, until I decided I had to keep going, no matter what. I came here for a mission that I knew would take me to strange places. Logic and plans were useless here.

I got back into the rowboat and finished my journey across the lake. It seemed to be much smaller while rowing over it than it had from my vista in the mountains.

The sky had disappeared while I had been in the mist, and as I regained sight of it, blue translucent floes of ice were drifting like clouds in front of a bright sky with that familiar black star.

As I stepped onto the shore on the other side, I noticed a shift. I looked back and saw the island still lying there, wreathed in opaque white. An animal that I took for a stag grazed nearby, but its antlers were majesty, forking and tapering out to a hundred tips or more and between each tip ran a thread of golden light. It paid me little heed and merely got back to grazing on the luscious grass growing to its feet. Somehow, I had the feeling that I could not see the entire being, as if the remainder of its greater whole was hiding behind what I saw, always obscured from my limited point of view.

Ssil, once again from my body, swam through the air and pointed me towards the mountains ahead. They were not the mountains and cliffs I had seen from atop the pass. A narrow notch could be seen where I could make my way through. I tried setting one foot in front of the other, but just that cost me a great deal of concentration and will. With each step, the landscape changed, but it was still the same landscape. My mind strained just trying to perceive that strange place, understanding seemed impossible, but eventually the peak of the mountain pass had become the place where I stood. I looked around and the full weirdness of that plane hit me like a charging bull.

Ahead of me I saw a trail, leading away from me and towards a large shrouded landscape not obeying any laws of geography. It bent and twisted over and under itself, fraying out into threads and reforming from thin air, my mind feels like it’s about to throw up just remembering.

It's weird to say what I did and what happened as a result, but I guess I could say that I turned my head and the landscape changed, except the landscape stayed the same and my head didn’t move, especially because no head can turn into such a direction and stay attached to the neck. It felt more as if I turned my mind! And as a result, I thought about the landscape differently.

As I turned my mind, the black star in the sky set behind the horizon and I watched the landscape change shape like the shadow of an object as I turn it between my fingers or move the light source. It was still the same landscape, but much easier on the mind to bare. I felt unfettered by the bounds of logic, yet also afraid, like a boat adrift on an ocean of strong currents.

I think this was when it dawned on me, that directions like up and down, left and right, forward and backward, did not exist in that place beyond; they were illusions created by my feeble mind to have something to hold on to. To give the true dimensions of that place shape and form. I had to come to terms with that illusion, or else I would be merely dragged along by Ssil. Like a baby having to learn how to walk, I had to learn to think in a completely new manner.

Ssil led me through valleys and over ridges. Thinking back to it, it really felt like I was in a boat carried by currents, with only a flimsy paddle to steer my path. More than once I passed beneath floating shards that seemed to exude a relaxing hum that felt as if it was an island of reality and sanity in that ocean of nonsense. I feared that the ground under my feet could slip through the fingers of my mind if I let myself be distracted any more.

Ssil made sure to keep me anchored to the correct directions. Her former place of residence, her temple, stood at the intersection of pain and justice, a place not unpopulated, and so we found a town there that was built entirely of courts, arenas, trial grounds, torture chambers and martyr’s stakes. I am sure that if I had turned my mind yet again, I would have discovered dozens of directions into which the city sprawled.

We arrived at a building that I recognized. I had seen one very much like it before, in a dream about Ssil’s home. It had the same pit in the courtyard and the same pyramid-like central complex, but the one I stood before was made of a dark and merciless stone, not red and white stone with painted reliefs.

Ssil beckoned me to climb the stairs to the roof of the pyramid complex. There I found a pedestal upon which lied an ornate ceremonial robe covered in feathers and stone pearls, as well as a curved dagger, with an ebony hilt and a blade made from a material like volcanic glass, but bright green instead of black.

I looked around and saw the courtyard with the pit below me. From up there anyone could easily cast judgement on others. But there was something else with me on that vantage point, other beings. I could feel them standing behind me and to my side, but when I turned my head, there was no one there but Ssil. Until I turned my mind again, that’s when I saw it all.

I remember seeing the building, vaster than anything I had ever seen. And on it, the serpent’s temple was merely one tiny balcony of many, on each stood another robed figure, casting their judging glares over a landscape of squirming souls. Each figure wore a robe of different make and a held a different tool. A gavel made from beech wood braced with cold-wrought iron. A finely etched sword as high as a person and without point or guard. An axe with a sickle-like blade made from bronze that flowed like water. A torch with a gilded cage containing a silvery flame. A red-hot glowing branding iron that constantly twisted into new shapes. I saw many more tools, most of which are fleeing from my memory as I write.

I turned around to the objects to my feet. Ssil was impatient, beckoning me to pick up those implements, they obviously no longer fit her; she had shed too much of her former self when she sought refuge in my body. I picked them up.

The objects weighed heavy in my hands. The robe was a tiny bit too large to fit me, but I imagined I could grow into it. The blade felt cumbersome, badly balanced and useless as anything but a ceremonial tool. These objects were alien; there were not made for me, and Ssil could no longer accommodate them. Yet with every heartbeat I felt my mind’s yearning to expand, to adapt to these items so that I may wield them; it was struggling against my willpower. I heard drums in the distance, coming closer and my heart aching to match the rhythm. My will began to face a dead power, left behind but eager to reunite, and I felt its magnitude envelop my entire world.

I remembered Elissa’s words, Garetas’ words, and the old man’s words, like a nail in my forehead they tethered my mind. I packed the dagger into the robe, then I struck out as far as I could and hurled the bundle to the ground. I heard the green stone shatter and the robe burst into flames, leaving behind nothing of the two, not even ash or soot.

Ssil hissed in anger, I did not expect otherwise. But this was the time I had to stake my ground. I will not let go of what I have so easily. I have something to fight for now.

I told her no. These were no tools for me and no tools for us. We were one now, and everything she only used to be was not part of us. Any power or tool we would come to wield would come from us. I told her that we would forge a new tool to wield and tailor us a new garment to fit us in our new life. No longer would she sit and wait that those to be judged be brought before her. Judgement will come to them like a nightmare in restless sleep.

She was still reserved, twitching and coiling in anger as she hovered before me.

It is unwise to anger an entity that I share a body with. I stepped closer and stroked her to show that I did not hate her. I want us to be a union, but I can’t call it union if I submit to her will and become everything she desires to be. That would be submission. Enslavement.

She understood. I knew it would be difficult to forge a new tool, I don’t even know what these things were that appeared to me as robe and dagger, but I know that it was not meant for me.

My mind turned around again and was back in the temple. Ruin and decay had already taken roots between its dark and merciless stones since the vestments had been destroyed. It would not last much longer. Ssil seemed melancholic, I think I would have been too. It was time to look ahead, we will make this body a great new temple.

I sit here now, at the shore of lake Stormeithslgigr and write this. With each word I put down, the otherworldly logic is pinned down a little more, but much had already fled from my mind before I even arrived. I don’t know how long I had been gone. Time was possibly of no meaning in that place.

It is time to meet Blue Wing. He might not have stopped me, but I could still do him the favour of letting him take me to Sturreland for that contract. No reason to spit on his efforts, also, it would mean I’d have a safe passage and would have to pay no fee.

It’s time to go home.