Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 20

A gentle wind played over the vibrant alpine meadows above the expedition base camp, sending a cool, green fragrance into the air. In the early morning light, twenty-four Adventurers advanced single file through a vast carpet of summer wildflowers that painted the landscape in gold, crimson and indigo hues. Under the icy crown of the Azerlisia Mountains, the scenery made the Adventurers – who had mostly lived in E-Rantel or the rural lands surrounding it for all of their lives – gape in awestruck wonder.

“Ah, this is worth every bit of that hellish training we went through,” Kyla sniffed as she wiped away a tear. “I wish there was a way to take this scenery back with us to show to everyone.”

“Sure feels more like an Adventure,” Derek grinned. “Mucking around in tangled forests got old before the first day out of the Great Lake was over.”

Everyone’s attitudes were a great deal lighter than before; the nervous edge that they carried was noticeably worn away. The previous day had been solemn and businesslike, with the Adventurers conducting their survey work as quickly as was reasonable. Roughly twenty kilometres of montane forest had been covered, with no incidents or encounters of note – save for an unverified rumour that someone had tried flirting with a Harpy and was nearly carried off.

“I don’t mean to dampen your enthusiasm,” Ludmila said, “but it actually gets more dangerous here the higher you go, so don’t drop your guard. Dragons and Giants aren’t the only things that live up here, either.”

“Why is that, I wonder?” Penn turned her attention away from the nearby scenery, “You’d think that the most powerful things would choose the most abundant places to live, but it’s like it’s the other way around. The more hostile a place seems, the more powerful the creatures become.”

“What do they even eat?” Kyla looked to the peaks above, “They’re so huge, and it doesn’t look like there’s anything up there. Don’t tell me they live on rocks and snow.”

Ludmila scanned the rocky moors further up the mountain. She eventually spotted what she was looking for, and pointed towards them.

“What things?” Derek leaned over, trying to follow the line of her arm.

“They’re called Nuk,” Ludmila said. “We’re headed that way, so you’ll see them up close eventually.”

The destination of the expedition was the point where their survey work had left off, five hundred metres above the meadow that they were making their way across. Feoh Raizo was at an even higher elevation – or at least its surface entrance was – and the highway’s route was to follow a gentle incline that eventually led to the Dwarven city. As odd as it felt, Ludmila was more interested in their eventual arrival at Feoh Raizo, where she would have the opportunity to study what sorts of ideas and techniques the Dwarves used for their population centres. The natural landscape that surrounded them was certainly beautiful, and she could understand why the other Adventurers were giddy over it, but it was something like a variation of her home’s surroundings.

After an hour of climbing from the expedition base camp below, they reached their destination. As Merry had mentioned, the chance of someone getting lost was basically nil: there were no trees, ridges or any other obstacles – it was just a cold and rocky slope that was devoid of any vegetation save for moss and lichen that clung to the stones. Shaggy, four-legged creatures could be seen moving in small herds, grazing on the mountainside.

“Those are some bigass cows,” Penn stared at the three-and-a-half metre long beasts, “No wonder Giants and Dragons get so huge.”

“They’re as big as Aurochs from the Great Steppe,” Kyla marveled. “I thought they’d be more like Lanca.”

“You’ve been to the Great Steppe?”

“N-no,” Kyla replied, “but I read about them. Hm…think we can raise these down around Re-Estize? The people from my village might be interested.”

Over their time together, Ludmila had come to learn that Kyla was from a village in Gagnier Barony. With their focus in raising livestock, Florine might indeed be interested in Nuks, but…

“They’re mountain animals,” Ludmila said. “I hear some of the races living around here have domesticated them, but they probably wouldn’t be happy down in the plains. You’d need some specialized workers too, since they’re magical beasts.”

“They don’t look very magical to me,” Kyla scratched her chin as she peered at the nearest group of Nuks. “Do you have any of them on your land?”

“Not just on my land,” Ludmila said, “but all along the Southern Border Ranges where it’s high enough. They’re very hardy, so Nuks might be a common sight around the world. Also…”

Ludmila’s voice trailed off as she scanned the mountain face.

“What?”

“Nothing, I was just wondering if any other types of beasts lived up here. There should be things like sheep and goats, at least. The Empire must have originally captured their Gryphons from some mountainous place, too.”

She had actually been looking for something like the Krkonoše, but decided that, if Ilyshn’ish hadn’t recognized them on the night she arrived at Warden’s Vale, they probably didn’t exist here. She wasn’t even sure if the Druids of the Krkonoše were Demihumans or Magical Beasts, though the fact that they did not appear to react to her like Demihumans usually did had her lean towards them being the latter.

The Adventurer parties spread out into their positions, which were well within sight of one another. Ludmila moved over to where Merry and the other Rangers were gathered. With the uneventfulness of the previous day, they would be proceeding as planned and serving as pickets to detect approaching threats in advance.

“No one needs anything right?” Merry asked, “Last call – we’re gonna be up there ‘till tonight all by our lonesomes.”

“Should we use these dyes now?” Someone asked.

“Uh yeah,” Merry replied, “go ahead if you haven’t already.”

Ludmila retrieved several small globes from her Infinite Haversack, which were filled with the same sort of magical dye that Ilyshn’ish had received with her new bracers. She emptied the contents of the first on the hem of her mantle, and the dye spread over the entire item, turning it a dirty white colour. After a few minutes, the five Rangers were garbed head to toe in equipment that would help them blend in with their snowy surroundings.

“Alrighty,” Merry said as she gave them each a once-over. “I went ahead and checked around the survey route before everyone arrived. The good news is that I didn’t spot any Frost Giants. The bad news is that there’s Undead further up the mountain.”

“Undead?” Pool frowned, “How did that happen?”

“There’s a pass that goes from east to west here,” Merry replied. “My guess is that some big battle was fought here long ago, or the pass used to be a major route that saw a lot of fighting over time. Once things get so bad that Undead start popping up, it doesn’t just go away on its own – just like the Katze Plains.”

Battlefields, cemeteries, and other places where unnatural deaths ‘collected’ often became steeped in the energies that would eventually manifest into Undead. Once locations became like this, they were notoriously hard to cleanse. Even the E-Rantel cemetery occasionally had a Skeleton or Zombie appear up once in a while, despite the amount of effort that went into keeping it cleansed. Places like the Katze Plains had become impossible to reclaim, rendered into a cursed wasteland that was uninhabitable by any living thing.

“What sort of Undead are we talking about here?” Another Ranger asked.

“The easy stuff,” Merry waved her hand lightly. “Doesn’t look like anyone is keeping this place clear, though, so it’s possible that stronger Undead pop up once in a while. You’ll be able to sneak around pretty easily, but don’t be surprised if you see something like a Lesser Vampire or an Elder Lich.”

“There are that many Undead?”

“Yup,” Merry nodded, “so be careful. They’re all just standing around since there’s nothing for them to go after, but if you blow your cover you’re gonna have a few hundred things chasing you all over the place.”

This wouldn’t be a huge problem for any one of the Adventurers present to deal with, but the fight would certainly attract attention if there was someone else watching. Ludmila looked out towards the west, where the bare mountain slopes rose until they were covered in snow and ice. There was no sign that it had ever been a place that people frequented. There were no visible remains of a road, nor were there markers or buildings that might be found along a high mountain passage.

Long glaciers flowed out from between the massive mountains framing both sides of the pass, which were still a good two or three thousand metres higher than their current elevation. Taller peaks could be seen to the north, beyond the tops of the frozen valleys carved out by the rivers of ice.

“How far out should we go?” Ludmila asked.

“Enough to give the expedition a good lead if someone actually comes running down at us,” Merry answered. “I know we’ve all picked up cold weather gear, but don’t go so high that you freeze your asses off if the weather suddenly changes. I don’t really like how the sky looks right now.”

They all turned their attention upwards. Thin wisps of cloud were lazily crossing overhead, which often indicated that rain would arrive in the lowlands – at least before Lord Mare started to occasionally alter the weather. The winds were calm and Ludmila did not know whether it was warm or cool relative to how the place usually was.

“What happens if a storm rolls in?”

“Depending on how bad it is,” Merry said, “we might become useless as pickets. If that happens, head down until there’s decent visibility again. We won’t be able to hear or see any signal arrows in the middle of a storm, either, so things might get rough. We’re gonna just have to make do if something actually happens.”

The Orichalcum Ranger looked at each of them in turn, as if waiting to hear if they had any way to improve on what they had. Pool, who had pulled up his cowl, raised a hand.

“Are we really going to go ‘till the last part of the survey’s done?”

“That’s right,” Merry nodded. “We have a good clear run to Feoh Raizo up here, so the expedition should be able to cover the rest of the distance if we push it. I know it makes it harder for us, but at least we’ll be relaxing in the city by tomorrow morning. We should be able to start bringing in the rear early in the evening.”

Merry fell silent again, waiting for more questions. After a few minutes of silence, she slowly nodded to herself, licking her lips.

“I guess that’s that, then,” she said. “Ludmila has mountain training, so we’ll put her at the highest altitude – you have cold protection, right?”

“I do,” Ludmila nodded. “Where do you need me?”

Merry pointed across to the southern side of the pass, where a massive tongue of ice spilled down from the mountains to the northwest.

“The glacier there is the most direct approach to the expedition that Frost Giants’ll be able to take, so head up the western side of the valley. I’ll be lower down on the eastern side. We’ll all be pretty far from one another, so use Sounding Shot to make sure your signal arrows get high enough to be seen by the rest of us.”

Two other Rangers were assigned positions at the north and south ends of the pass, while Pool was placed halfway between Merry and the expedition route. After one last-minute check, they went their separate ways.

Ludmila’s assigned post was about ten kilometres distant, and she picked her way carefully across the Undead-infested pass over the course of an hour. As she came closer to the toe of the glacier, it slowly sunk in how huge it actually was. The edge of the ice stretched five kilometres from west to east, feeding several streams that tumbled into the pass below. The jagged mountain overhead went from majestic to oppressive as she followed the moraine along the glacier’s edge up and into its shadow.

Her Truesight allowed her to see through the gloom with perfect clarity, but she still peered into every nook and cranny as she ascended, half expecting to find a Frost Giant nestled above with boulder in hand. Like most Demihuman tribes, they had their own Rangers – or hunters, as they tended to call them – and Ilyshn’ish claimed that they were superior to the ones fielded by the Adventurer Guild. Ludmila’s smaller size should give her an advantage when it came to concealment, but size was relative: beside a mountain, there was little difference between a Human and a Giant, and there were many places large enough for a Giant to lay in wait.

Another hour passed as she continued her ascent, and she finally settled on spot roughly halfway up the glacier. Sitting in a shadowed nook on the mountainside where masses of ice hung overhead, her breath misted the air as she scanned the surroundings above and below. From her vantage, she had a clear view over the entire valley, but she still couldn’t see past the top of it. Beyond the occasional flying creature gliding by, the only other things she noticed were the thousands of Undead occupying the river of ice.

After some time, she decided that their presence was decidedly odd. Merry’s speculation placed the probable origin of the energies that fueled them as some conflict or conflicts in the past fought over the pass far, far below. If that was the case, then why did it seem like there were even more Undead here?

Her unease grew over their presence as the hours passed. According to what she knew of how Undead came to be, weaker Undead manifested first, and their accumulation eventually led to the genesis of stronger Undead. With so many here, Merry’s warning about Lesser Vampires, Elder Liches and other powerful Undead beings weighed upon her heavily. She looked across the glacial valley, wondering if the Elf Ranger was seeing the same thing.

The temperature dropped as the afternoon passed, and it wasn’t until the winds started to pick up that Ludmila realized that something was amiss. She rose to her feet upon seeing the dark clouds that appeared from behind the distant peaks to the north. The ominous wall rolled forward at an alarming rate, darkening the skies above. A light snow started to fall, growing heavier as the minutes passed and the winds started to pick up around her.

Looking up towards the top of the glacier, a slight movement drew her attention. She leaned forward, trying to discern what it was. There was more movement, objects seeming small from their great distance. It was only when the objects started to fly down closer to smash through the masses of Undead below that she finally understood what was going on. They were boulders being hurled to clear away the accumulated Undead.

It was then that Ludmila caught her first glimpse of a Frost Giant. It was not the towering being that her fellow Adventurers described looming over them in battle, but a tiny figure that stood no taller than a fingernail against the grey ice of the massive glacier. She hadn’t noticed it until it attacked the Undead – perhaps it had been there all along. She spotted more and more of them, sending boulders raining down on the hapless Skeletons and Zombies below.

Were they cleaning out the glacier, just as Humans cleaned out Undead-infested parts of their own territories? She counted the number of Frost Giants as the number of Undead on the upper portion glacier dwindled. There were thirty of them, and they were all at least as strong as an Orichalcum-ranked Adventurer. As they advanced down the ice, her sense of danger flooded her mind. One other Giant had appeared: one larger and far stronger than all of the others combined.

Nothing entirely absurd, huh…

She made a mental note to have a word with Kyla later about saying ominous things.

The wind picked up into a howl, whipping at Ludmila’s mantle and sending stinging powder crystals against her like grains of coarse sand. She made her way down from her perch to retreat back down the moraine. It was not until the full force of the storm’s fury rolled past the top of the glacier and over the Frost Giant advance that she realized what was happening.

The Frost Giants knew what was going on below all along: they were just waiting for the arrival of the storm to commence their assault.

It was an ambush – one that brought with it all of winter’s fury.

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