They leave to the north while it’s already dark outside, waiting for light would make them lose most of the day, and it's better to save the hours with natural light for when they are crossing the mountains, they can’t rely all the time on Meira’s light to see their path, especially with a big group like they are. The people of the north don’t have horses, the mountains are too rough and the weather too cold. They are riding wolves, almost as tall as horses, stronger, fluffier. Lífdagar explained that they are trained to also give warmth when you can’t find a good shelter, or even then, their cuddles are better than any blanket.

Lífdagar wonders what the High Council would think of this, just them, her father and Gabriel, with a family of strangers, traveling on top of wolves, herself turned into one and carrying Meira. They didn’t look like they approved of how they travelled to Prunetzia, and that was unarguably better, but that is not going to stop them.

The sun starts making its weak appearance some hours into the journey, when the cold is making their hands numb, even through the thick clothes they are wearing. By nightfall they are not even close to crossing the mountains, but nightfall doesn’t mean much at this time of the year, if they travelled only on daylight, it would take them weeks to arrive at the plains.

It still takes them three days to arrive to the other side of the mountains. It is difficult to navigate them even with the wolves, there is no real path, just trees, bushes and rocks to climb through. The people from the north normally use boats to travel between the plains and the mountains, but they didn’t want to travel with more people than necessary, so no aquadores or wind masters, and the weather is too changing at this time of the year to travel without them.

At the third day they stop at the edge of the mountains, what lies beyond them, if not completely flat, much smoother than the territory they come from. They call them the plains, even if there are still mounts and hills, there is a great contrast with the rugged lands they come from.

“What now?” Meira asks, when Odvarr, Lífdagar’s father, stops. She dismounts from Lífdagar, the girl immediately tuning human again.

“We wait.” answers Odvarr, “we will camp here and make a fire, the natives will see us and come to see who we are. They” he signals to the family “can go with them to the nearest settlement and if there’s anyone that knows if there are paintings like the ones you are looking for, it’s them.”

“That’s if we don’t die from the cold before they can find us.” Meira says with a shiver.

“The wolves can find a cave we can stay in, there are a few around here, carved by Marked for the travellers.” Odvarr says, he is unstrapping his things from his wolf, the others following his example.

“Aren’t we lucky” Meira mutters. The wolves leave with a pat on their necks.

The animals do find a cave to stay in, with a big enough entrance that the fire they make will be visible from miles away, just a few trees in front of it. It doesn’t take them long to get a fire going, with Rakan cutting the wood and lighting it. The wood probably wouldn’t have been good enough for a normal fire.

They sit around the fire, on top of pelts to avoid the coldness of the rock floor, sharing dried fish they brought with them, and water Gabriel created. The wolves have left to catch their own dinner. They will be back soon, trained to sleep with their riders to keep them warm.

“What if they don’t see us?” Gabriel asks.

“They will, they have scouts to control who steps into their territory. Now, we should take watch turns, in case something else comes, you can never be too cautious.”

----

The first to know they have visitors arriving is Rakan. He is the one awake on the last guard, playing with the spirits of the mountain before its time to awake the others. It’s the spirits who tell him that there are people approaching. Rakan runs to the cave the others are sleeping in to wake them. They are up and ready by the time they see the first person between the trees. She is mounting an elk, as are the ones that accompany her. Meira had heard about elks, but she hadn’t expected them to be so huge, way taller than any horse she has ever seen, their horns almost hide the person riding them. Dangerous animals. Odvarr goes forward to speak with them while the others observe them from behind. The strangers look at them from time to time when Odvarr gestures towards them.

At last, the strangers dismount and walk towards them. The girl they saw first is the first one to get close to them. She stands in front of Rakan. He extends his arm to greet her but she doesn’t grab his arm, she reaches out and grabs his hand between hers and bows to touch his hand with her forehead while whispering something that they don’t understand.

“It’s an honour to meet you, Daru.” She says when she finally straightens. She moves to do the same with Lífdagar while one of the men that are with her goes to salute Rakan in the same way.

“You don’t have to do that.” Lífdagar says.

“Let them pay respect to you.” Odvarr intervenes from behind the strangers. “It’s important for them.”

Once they have paid respect to all of them, except Gabriel, who got a normal greeting, they gather inside the cave to talk, the air is too cold to stand outside unless necessary.

“You’ve come a long way north just to accompany a family back to their home, Daru” the girl, who introduced herself as Riika, says.

“We are looking for pictures of the old gods.” Kylem tells her. She seems to be the only one in the group that knows the common language, the ones that came with her stand back observing them. All but Odvarr, who has decided to accompany the family to the nearest settlement so they can go back home.

“So Odvarr tells me. I won’t question the motives of the Kyusei. I can help you, I know of one place, but is further north” Kylem exchanges looks with the others. They all nod.

“We didn’t come all the way here just to stop now” Meira says.

“Take us there.” Kylem tells the girl.

--

The plains don’t have the cover of the mountains, so the wind blows cold and strong around them. It’s only thanks to Riika being able to control the wind that they can travel in some way comfortably. They only have food to last for a couple of days, so they decide to travel and accept Riika’s invitation to stay with their settlement on their way back. She is the only one that stays with them, the others leave to inform the settlement of everything.

They advance accompanied by Meira’s light until the sun finally comes out, weak. An elk followed by wolves. They make a stop to eat before they continue their journey. They keep travelling when the sun goes down some hours later guided again by Meira’s light.

It’s when they are already thinking of finding a place to spend the night that Riika tells them that they have arrived. They are in front of an opening on the ground. It is on the foot of a small mount, and it is not very big. Tall enough for an elk to go through without a rider and wide enough for 4 people to enter at once.

We came here a few years ago to do a celebration on the day of the eclipse.” Riika says.

Kylem points to some markings on top of the entrance to the mountain. “What does that say?” he asks. He has dismounted and is standing next to Riika.

“It’s too old, I can’t really understand it. But it says something about the gods being here.” She turns towards the others. “You can leave the animals outside, they can hunt while we are inside.”

The inside of the cave is not very big. A normal cave as far as they can see. Kylem is a bit disappointed until Riika guides them to an opening in the back of the cave. It is hidden by some rocks, and only barely wide enough for Rakan to go through. The cave at the other side is a completely different thing. Kylem comes in last, and he hears the sounds of amazement the others make, Rakan and Gabriel laughing like children.

He can barely contain his own wonder.

Meira’s light is everywhere, the walls of the cave are made of dark crystal and they reflect her light making every other surface dance with little specs of light. It takes a while to get accustomed to the view enough to notice the other things in the room. There are six altars in a circle around the room. Each has a tall dark stone with two stands for torches to the sides and a stone table in front of them.

Kylem moves to stand between the table and the large rock closest to him. There is a tree carved on the stone. It is in the same fashion as other art he has seen on the books. Not realistic, the shape made of simple intertwining lines. He looks up. Lífdagar’s Mark is carved on the upper part of the rock. The mark on the next rock is his, the next Seoham’s and the next...

“This one is mine!” Rakan proudly announces from some place to his left, getting him out of his thoughts.

“I know there’s a lot of types of dragons but this one must be the ugliest one I’ve seen.” Meira says. Kylem turns around, curious. The carving on the rock truly is a very strange looking dragon but it could be because of the art style.

“That is not a dragon.” Riika says. “It’s-”

“Jormungandr.” Lífdagar finishes. “What is it doing here? I thought he was only from children's tales.”

“It has Rakan’s Mark so it’s probably just an ugly dragon.” Meira says.

“It doesn’t have to be a dragon to have my Mark.” Rakan says. Everyone turns to look at him.

“What do you mean?” Gabriel asks.

“It can be from before.” Rakan answers. He looks around at the others, confused. The others look at his with their faces blank. “Come on, this place looks so old, it can be from before.”

“Rakan, we don’t know what the fuck you mean with before.” Meira voices what everyone is thinking.

“Before only humans, dragons and spirits had magic!”

“Wait,” Kylem says “isn’t that what you said, Liv? That one of the figures was like a kyusei of magical creatures?”

“Yes” Lífdagar answers, she looks around at the others, confusion on her eyes “but I always thought it wasn’t right and it was just based on some myths and bedtime stories.”

“Oh, no, it’s real.” Rakan says. “The dragons told me that there were a lot of other magical creatures and that what I am, used to be able to communicate and transform in all of them like Liv does with animals but then there was a war or something like that and they died and now there’s less dragons and more humans and I’m not that powerful, I don’t know, something like that”

“And why didn’t we know about this?” Kylem asks. Rakan pauses for a moment and furrows his brow.

“Now that I think about it, I don’t know if I was supposed to tell you. The dragons don’t want to be seen as weaker than humans, in magic I mean because hand to claw combat would be like one bite and puf, dead human.”

They all look at him, silence filling the room.

Meira shrugs. “Well, mystery solved. Can we go eat now? I’m hungry.”

She starts moving towards the entrance, but she stops when Kylem speaks.

“That’s solved but, what about that?” he points towards the rock next to him with his hand. Everyone moves to look at it better.

“It looks like a pyre, Se- Elements?” Gabriel asks.

Lífdagar shakes her head. “It’s a funeral pyre. I told Kylem the other day, here there are six figures that the people worship. The Kyusei plus one that represents death.”

“Then it’s solved too, let’s go eat.”

“Aren’t you curious why there’s a sixth figure?”

“Because people fear death and think it will be kinder to them if they worship it? Because they like to think they have a connection to their deceased loved ones?” Meira says, not really as questions. “The rock doesn’t have a Kyusei Mark and the others do, even Rakan’s before the mythological war shit one, so it’s clear that they just invented a new figure to be comforted. And pray for a good afterlife or death to their enemies I don’t care. I’m hungry and cold and I don’t want to look at rocks for hour so” she turns to leave and Rakan moves towards her.

“She is right.” he says towards Kylem with a shrug before he breaks into a run towards the exit. “Mei! Good luck with that hunger if I arrive first!” he shouts.

“Oh no you are not!” Meira starts running after him. “Just hunt something you oversized lizard!”

Riika looks a bit bewildered between the ones leaving and the ones staying, Gabriel shakes his head with a smile and puts an arm around her shoulders. “You’ll get used to it.” He tells her while guiding her towards the exit. He turns to look at Kylem and Lífdagar “don’t worry, I’ll save some food for you two!” he says as a goodbye.

Meira has left light for them, not that they would need it as Lífdagar can just do Rakan’s trick with the eyes now and get some animals night vision and Kylem is not affected by darkness. But it does the trick with the light flecks that they wouldn’t see with their night vision and even if it doesn’t really have a purpose, Kylem can appreciate that it looks good.

Kylem moves towards the sixth rock. The stone table, altar in front of it has traces of blood, probably from blood sacrifices. Like Meira said, the rock doesn’t have a Kyusei Mark like the others do, he hadn’t seen it before she said it. Kylem is always surprised at how observant and quick-minded she is. But she must have thought the same as him, if she looked for it.

“It’s strange” Lífdagar says. Kylem had forgotten she was still with him. He doesn’t answer but he tilts his head, to show that he is listening. “That they built six altars and carved only five Marks, also that there are Marks at all.”

“You said the people from the North didn’t know about the Kyusei.” Kylem says.

“Exactly. And specially not as in the past as these carvings seem to be. If these are from the transition from hundreds of gods to six, and it looks like it, seeing how old it is, then they shouldn’t know how the other Marks were.”

“They must have added the Marks later.”

“I suppose. I just don’t know how Jormungandr fits here. Hiroshi said... he said that there was something he couldn’t tell us and we had to discover on our own.”

They stay in silence looking at the rock, they can hear the echoes of the others laughing and yelling on the other part of the cave.

“Maybe we should accept Meira’s explanation and assume people here didn’t have enough information to make the carvings completely accurate.” Kylem says.

“Yeah...”

“Hey I don’t know how much longer I can save your food” Gabriel’s voice says. They turn to see his head poking from the exit.

“Tell them that if they are not coming now they are staying in the dark!” Meira’s faded voice comes as an echo.

“They can see in the dark, they don’t care!” Gabriel shouts back and his head disappears.

Lífdagar walks to the exit at the same time the light in their cave goes away, now the only source of light coming from the space between the rocks that is the exit to the other part of the cave.

Kylem follows Lífdagar. When he reaches the exit of the cave he turns back towards the rock formation and stays there, in silence, until another shout makes him finally move and go back with the others.