A delicate dance of ice and wind snapped into a perfect clockwork of crystal. It drifted for a time before settling to its place upon the mountain top. League after league of cool mountain air waited beyond the steep precipice, and just where the mountain found its first ledge, ruins most ancient lay under the blankets of white.

Stones of a distant age, worn by time and neglect, sat in triumphant decay as ice split open its cracks.

Defiant eyes peered out from behind the reflective sheen of a pair of brass goggles. The figure wrapped her fingers around the thick fur that covered their rims and let out a relieved sigh.

“So it really does exist”

Scurrying her way out of the cold she plunged into the dark of the ruined halls, and left the bluster of the winterland behind her. She pulled back her hood and unwrapped her matted red locks. With a cheesy grin she traced her fingertips over the stone masonry of the first age.

“The Arcanum”

Hopping between potholes and fissures that plunged into darkness she deftly made her way toward a winding staircase that dug its way into places long forgotten.

With the strike of a flint she lit a torch and illuminated a globe of light around her amid the dark and stale air.

“Ah-Choo!”

Wiping her face clean with her forearm she galloped down the staircase with excitement. All her life she had heard tales of this place, but now she was seeing it with her own eyes. Could the ancient stories passed down by her grandfather have all been real?

She warmly tightened her lips as memories welled to the surface of her mind.

…

Flecks of the first snow carried in the gentle mountain breeze as an aged man puckered his lips around the end of his weed pipe. His serene expression stopped short by the tug of a hand on his shirt as he sat on his porch gazing up at the Northern Reach Mountain Range.

“Don’t stop” the girl said with wide eyes as she clambered her way onto her grandfather’s lap, bounding in with a thud.

“Ooof! Easy there, I’m old you know!”

“But Pa! You promised to tell me about the sorceress of the mountain and how she created the river!”

“Oh alright, but it requires a bit of a story to explain!”

“Yes!”

The tender aged halfling chuckled at her celebration for a moment before turning his eyes toward the distant peaks of the northern ranges.

“Some say the legend of the black river that winds its way throughout our humble town, has its origins in the time of the cataclysm itself. A time of wonder and discovery as the nine worlds came together as one.”

“The same as all my fingers! Minus a thumb!” she said with a playful grin as shoving her hands into her Pa’s face.

“A dark haired beauty with skin as pure as the moonlight transformed herself into a dark and dangerous dragon with scales as black as the night!”

The girl took a lock of her red hair in her fingers, and let out a sigh before leaning into her Pa’s chest to revel in the story.

“She lived atop the highest peak of the highest mountain in the range. Yet despite the danger of the treck our ancestors traveled to her when they were in a time of great need. There was once a great plague that threatened the entire village. The bravest of us climbed the mountain to seek help, and pleaded with her to grant us with her grace”

“And did she come?”

“Yes” he smiled warmly, “She came”

“And pustules or not, she fearlessly tended to every last one of our ancestors”

“Eww pa!” she replied as she pushed away the pinch of her pa’s thumb on her cheek.

“Stories of her great act of kindness spread far and wide, and found purchase in a stranger’s ear”

“He passed into town with a swagger to his step, confident as they come! Eager to meet the beauty that had gained the love of our people. So captivated was he by our tales of her sorcery he braved the forces of the mountain in the depths of winter. A week’s journey made by us halfling folk was made in no more than a day! He climbed the steepest of slopes, and found footing in the smoothest of stone. He was a marvel amongst men to be sure, an outlier, a man born of passion from root to stem!”

“Are all men like the stranger pa? Are they stronger than halflings? Because Bobby said I always lose at knucklebones because I’m a halfling”

“No my sweet Rose… Most men fear the summit of the northern reach… Even today they dare not make the journey. And our kind has made the trek, ooooh, about a hundred times! Which should tell you everything you need to know about halflings and men! Persistence is key to any task worth doing after all, and that we have in spades!”

“Okay pa!”

“Now where was I… Oh yes! The man made the climb to make an ally of the beautiful sorceress! And then convinced her to share the ways of her magic with mankind! Never was a man tongue so abundant with silver, and as a capable sorcerer himself he led her by his own example teaching our village folk his incantations.”

“He taught us the song?!”

“Oh yes sweety, he showed us what it meant to live in harmony with the strum of a chord, and the stamp of the foot”

“Soon our town was so lively that travelers and dignitaries from all twelve kingdoms arrived at our humble village in search of the masters of magic. And year after year the town grew!”

“It wasn’t long before they founded the Arcanum, the first magical academy ever!”

“The prosperity of the town grew and grew like a whirlwind amidst a storm, until… The winds made a turn most foul…”

“For you see the beautiful sorceress was betrayed by that confident stranger once he had learned the last of her secrets. He used her own power to bind her to a terrible fate and in her rage she turned into the greatest of all beasts and split the earth with dragonfire! The blinding heat of her fury carved through stone, and blasted a great channel through our town, turning stone into blackened glass!”

“Armies came to steal the power of magic for their kingdoms and waged their wars, and she beckoned to the stranger’s call. She struck terror through all the kingdoms with her roar, it didn’t take long until all his opponents were vanquished…”

“And in a turn of fate, she in turn betrayed the stranger in kind! She pulled herself free from his curse with violence and blood! And she became known as the only creature in history to match the magic of the bard”

“The river runs black with her mark to this day, as the waters of the northern reach wind their way down its banks, they follow the path of her rage against his betrayal”

“But Papa, why did the stranger betray her when she was so nice to everybody?”

“Who knows,” he said as his eyes drifted out of focus and settled upon the snow capped peaks on the horizon, “Some say it was always his goal, that he sought power for its own sake. Others say that he too was cursed. But honestly, I think it is just in the nature of all kin, to destroy the things we desire to control, naive to what we are doing at the time”

…

Yuta turned and stamped his foot on the ground.

“Stop following me will ya!”

He bound his fist and grit his teeth, “I don’t need some old ass goblin companion to teach me the ways of the force, or whatever the crap”

“Gid is not an old goblin! Gid is Gid!” the goblin said as stamping his cane into the stone slabs of the northernmost trade highway.

“Gid this, Gid that, just shut up and leave me alone!”

Yuta turned his back and stormed up the road, murmuring under his breath “I hate forced game mechanics, I just want to get somewhere safe to think and assess my next moves, but this hanger on is just too god damned persistent”

“You are not alone! Gid is here for you!”

Yuta’s neck spasmed involuntarily from the frustration.

*Again with this condescension!*

“That’s it!” Yuta said in a huff, he stomped over and grabbed the goblin by its poorly handwoven clothing and sneered menacingly into Gid’s eyes, “You asked for it!”

With a stomp of his heel, he stamped onto the arch of Gid’s foot.

SNAP

Gid’s lip quivered before holding firm.

THUD

Yuta tossed the Goblin onto the path and stormed off without a second look.

“Stupid thing, doesn’t it know stalking is a crime!”

Gid tenderly gathered up his foot and gazed upon it sadly. He pulled from a small satchel a salve made from dried berries and gibber egg. He applied it to the wound as Yuta faded over the horizon without him.

…

A cold wind trailed across the peak of the mountain and tumbled down its steep cliffs to the ruined academy below. Its battered pillars were fallen to time and long forgotten battles, reclaimed by the frost. Echoing in its long lost hallways were remnants of black magic, traces of a cursed power leading into the depths of its buried catacombs.

Rose stood in shock as before her churned an enormous red gate that led nowhere but the darkness.

A single speck of snow carried in on her fur coat drifted toward the gate and sizzled as it passed through this great wound between the realms.

Rose didn’t need a story to tell her the danger of what lied beyond.

The portal echoed deep into the abyss, where monsters called out in the dark.

…

Mirio’s face was caked in grime as the dark grit of the floor mixed with his blood.

Taking his own time, he opened his remaining eye, and pulled himself up off the floor. His lips stung from a fresh wound caused by his unceremonious collision with the stone. From a quick scan of his body, nothing seemed seriously injured, beyond what wounds he brought with him of course.

With a whip of his fingers his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

The place he found himself within was far too vast to be called a cavern. No pillars held up a sky made of shadow and stone. The landscape was wasteland made of rocky outcrops, and barren plains as far as the horizon.

Glowing just beyond he saw a soft red glow. Perhaps a sunset? But the light felt too unnatural for that.

Red algae crept up over the jagged stone formations as what remained of the light flickered in the distance.

This place had a beauty to it, well, in its own broken up way. Or so Mirio thought to himself for a moment before a shiver ran up his spine. He flicked his hand to his hilt and grabbed nothing but air.

“My sword!”

The image of Ember stuck in the crystal cavern where he had fought the Guardian in the caverns of the Red Mountain sung a song for a moment in the back of his mind.

“Right… It got thrown aside in the fight”

“Guess I have to do this the hard way then” he said matter of factly as he turned towards gnashing teeth leaping from the darkness.