It was quite amusing, travelling through the Mountains of Ice was just as dangerous as travelling through the elven realm, maybe even more so. The elven forest had required us to conceal ourselves constantly and as long as we managed to stay hidden, and avoided their greatest strength by keeping away from the trees, there was little that could challenge us.

On the other hand, the Mountains of Ice housed a wide variety of monsters, all with their own territorial instincts and we had little information on those territories. Given the jagged cliffs all around us, a large number of predators in the region were avian, similar to the giant eagles the elves had been riding, but there were many more. And with such avian predators, the rest of the beasts was obviously used to airborne threats, ready to either hide from such or strike them down before they could ever come close.

At first, we tried to keep to the skies, with Lenore flying during the day and me during the night, but after Ylva and Lenore had to contend with a flight of Wind Raptors, we began to consider. Sure, they had managed to fight them off without too much trouble, but if there were more powerful threats deeper in the mountains or more enemies, things could easily get hairy.

Lenore, Ylva and I discussed the issue until we decided to switch our plans up a little. Most avians were sight-hunters, active during the day or in the twilight of dusk and dawn, so travelling during the dead of night was our best bet. There, I could easily shadow-step to avoid trouble, the endless shadow of the night granting me near-limitless mobility. By now, I was even confident to shepherd Ylva through the shadows for an extended duration, at least as long as she morphed into her smallest puppy form and Lenore could obviously hide in her Hallow, so she could come along, too.

On the other hand, during the day, we looked for one of the many small caves, some opening in the middle of a rocky cliff, where we could hunker down and rest. During those times, we could also try foraging for food, to add to our rapidly diminishing stock. It had to last until I was done with my vengeance, there was no way for me to head into civilisation ever again and foraging on an alpine glacier wasn’t really possible.

Like that, we kept travelling for a few days, following the siren’s song of the distant nexus, moving around the high mountains when possible and even visiting a few of the glaciers during the night. Standing on them was exhilarating, the sensation of endless power, tightly bound and contained in the Ice, strong enough to never melt, even under the heat of the sun, it was inspiring. I wanted to reach out, to add my own power into the glaciers, to bring them to cover the entire world, so everything was bound in Ice.

But I knew that I didn’t have the power, covering the world in Ice was a beautiful fantasy, just like snuffing out the sun and letting the icy darkness reign supreme. All things in this world needed power and I simply didn’t have enough. Yet.

I was tempted to stay on that glacier and meditate for a decade or five, the cold, dispassionate nature of the Ice perfectly uncaring for any mortal suffering, its timelessness slowly shifting my perspective. Or rather, my perspective was shifting as i tried to comprehend it, because the Ice simply didn’t change. It was perfectly still, giving me the impression that nothing would ever move it, even if the world beneath collapsed. It was an illusion, but it was a comfortable one.

Sadly, I simply didn’t have the time to meditate here, at least not long enough to get results. Vengeance was still calling and I had to heed the call.

On the other hand, the Nidhögg was surprisingly quiet and calm during our journey through the Mountains of Ice. Maybe it was temporarily sated by devouring the dryad and the trees bound to her or maybe it was capable to understand that there was nothing for it to feed around here and annoying me wouldn’t be useful. Either way, I occasionally tried commuting with it, to get a better understanding of what it could do for me and what I could do for it.

Sadly, while there were a few reactions, it felt more akin to a dog, twitching its fur in an attempt to shoo off a fly that kept annoying them. Unwilling to get swatted, I didn’t try overly hard and let sleeping dragons rest.

It was quite interesting to feel the difference high attributes made with my own body. There was a part of me that physically felt the thin air high in the mountains, that knew the cold was biting and would normally kill someone without warm clothes in a short time and yet, I was perfectly fine. My Ice-affinity, combined with my somewhat high attributes, meant that I could stand in the middle of the glacier in my thin, dwarven-made clothes and not feel the cold. If the wind became too biting, I might wrap myself in my cloak, but other than that, there wasn’t a need for it.

Similarly, the thin air was simply no problem. I would lose stamina a little faster if I strenuously exercised, but normal activity was perfectly fine. It was quite intriguing, making me wonder just how deeply Pantheon Entertainment had gone in their programming and a part of me wanted to begin testing, to see how deep the rabbit hole went, but we had things to do.

When it came to monsters, there was an interesting variety to them. Most of the beasts we faced were avian, Wind Raptors, Giant Vultures and even a kettle of large bats. Those were the most annoying, their ability to use ultrasonic waves to communicate was potent enough to give me a headache and make me a little dizzy. Dealing with them had required conjuring up a storm of Ice, countless small, razor-sharp blades that Lenore and I controlled with the wind, creating a rotating vortex around us that tore anything trying to get in to shreds. It was only then that the kettle retreated, leaving quite a few of its broken members behind.

In addition to the avians, there were large insects crawling from underground colonies, few of them truly threatening individually, but while fighting one was simple, fighting a million was not. We mostly just left when dealing with such a threat, our interest to tussle with insects the size of large dogs quite literally zero.

But while those threats were something we could either deal with or avoid, there were other problems as well. The mountains contained spirits or maybe calling them Sprites was more appropriate, as they seemed to be related to Nethersprites. The first time we faced one of them, it was a malformed bird-like creature, Observe giving us the description of a ‘Windsprite’, and while its combat strength was nothing to write home about, it was merely level eighty, it was curiously able to avoid Lenore’s wind-magic, forcing Ylva to dispatch it directly. When she chowed down on it, it turned into a disgusting slime, which, in turn, soon faded away. Later, we realised that these creatures were inhabiting bodies made of Astral Power, somewhat similar to conjured creatures but naturally occurring. How that happened, or where they came from, we had no idea but we soon learned that there was a wide variety of them and all of them were a pain to deal with.

Using magic of their own type against them merely meant we were feeding them and even other types of magic were quite ineffective. Using Mind- or Death-Magic on them was completely pointless, it didn’t even seem to register. Mostly, they were left to Ylva or we simply ignored and avoided them. It wasn’t like we wanted to fight or train in these mountains, we wanted to get somewhere.

And getting somewhere, we did.

It took us almost a week of travel through the mountains until we reached the high glacier within which I could feel the Nexus. If the Nexus in Neyto was subdued and calm, this one was somewhat different. Less like a placid lake of endless cold and more of an unstoppable glacier pushing forward, not fast or violent but containing endless power and unstoppable force. The Ice was piled high between mountains, covering the valley and stretching upward, covering the slopes and the peaks of the surrounding mountains.

Everything was covered in freezing mist and from here on out, our objective changed.

No longer were we going somewhere, no, now we had to conquer something, to make the glacier and everything around it ours. Now, the time to slaughter had come.