[center][color=red]The Frontier, Day 3[/color][/center][hr] [center]***[/center] [i]"In that land there’s a winter." We tell this to our children, to teach them of the cold in between the continents, to scare them into behaving, to warn them of what happens when Varya’s light leaves you. But thus far, here on the third day of our journey, miles removed from the continental aegis, the so-called frontier has proven more a gentle Muraadan midsummer than the black storms of legend. The arks that ferry us across the frontier, I can scarcely believe they exist. The ships that we squeezed into like rats, those deathtraps that carried so many of my comrades to the spears of the Lanostrans across the Bleeding Sea would have never survived this cold. Truly the marvels of T’sarae are miraculous indeed. The crew, and the blackcoats themselves, seem perturbed by our surprise guests. The Dominion, her young nun, and the newspaper man are all liabilities, but if sending non-combatants to certain death is what the halos desire, then I won’t raise a fuss. My orders were to provide support for the blackcoats on their mission across El. Nothing more. I am tired. I wish for this foolishness to be done. Tomorrow the Karamzina and Grace shall reach the Narrow Gates. Beyond that the Meridian, where the skies grow darker. I suppose things haven’t changed since Lanostre. A different shore and yet the same fate awaits so many of us. [/i] - [i]Three weeks before the calamity, From the recovered logs of Commander Zoya Kiriyev[/i] [center]***[/center] He had taken to coming up to the tower during his off-duty hours to gaze at the sprawling white before him. In the hazy distance a stretching wall of blue glaciers lined the horizon, and if Ilya focused hard enough, he could convince himself that he could in fact spot a long thin cliff cutting right down the middle of the icewall. There, in the place between the twin ice shelves, eternally shearing against one another in a brutal embrace, lay the Narrow Gates, the only existing passage to the East. A broad smile filled Ilya’s face. The same smile he wore every time he climbed the tower deck to gaze out at the approaching glacier wall. Tomorrow would be the day. Upon crossing the gates, a new world awaited him. [i]Them[/i], a voice reminded him from somewhere deep in his subconscious. Oren and Viveca. They are here with you too. Along with everyone else. The ones who didn’t matter. You are not alone. His mood souring, Ilya cast his eyes downward to the mid deck of the Karamzina, where a score of soldiers and sailors were working on preparing the ark for tomorrow’s journey through the glacier wall. There were so many of them. Fifty, he remembered. This should be [i]my[/i] journey, he told himself. I was born to pierce the veil. To break through the Meridian. To be the first to do it. It was all he had thought about as a child. It was what drove him through the long years at the Seminary. And now there he was, at the cusp of his great odyssey, burdened with the lives of his beloved warsiblings, and those he could care less about. Not only that, but the First Armada had beat him to the punch. “Ah, there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” a voice rang out from behind him. Ilya turned and saw Father Ragnar along with that annoying reporter standing beside him. Ragnar was irritating at most times, but there he was, that bloodsucking leech from the Chronicle like a lost puppy standing behind his coat, eager for whatever scraps he could get. The short, bloated sack of a man had somehow been allowed to be embedded into the expedition by the clerical branch. He had spent the past three days pestering everyone onboard the Karamzina, desperate for whatever drivel he could spew on the pages of his stupid newspaper. “Lord Bjornley—” the man began, holding a pen and notepad. “Not a lord anymore. Also not in the mood to talk,” Ilya interrupted, turning away from them. “Please, would you let him ask you a few questions?” Ragnar pleaded. He was holding a wrinkled newspaper. Ilya sighed and turned to the young Phoenix Protector. Ragnar’s face was paler than usual and the hollows of his eyes were a wine red. Had he been crying or something? Suddenly, it flashed in his mind again. He’d been trying to ignore it, but there it was, as clear as it was during Culmination. He and Ragnar standing alone on the abandoned deck, the paling gone, the cold breaking him apart from within. And above all, the living darkness breathing down on them. Ilya narrowed his eyes and leaned in closer. “Something wrong with you, kid? You don’t look too—” “Yes, something [i]is[/i] wrong. I know you’re not fond of it, but take a look at this,” Ragnar answered, frowning. He handed Ilya the newspaper. Ilya paid little attention to the Chronicle. On most days it was filled with salacious headlines trying to smear his family, on other days it championed other inquisitors that weren’t him. If he had to see Lior Lightningsong’s stupid face one more time-- What he saw on the front page made him smirk. This must be what everyone is talking about, Ilya thought. His gaze turned toward Ragnar and he saw the young man looking on in annoyance, waiting impatiently for Ilya to get on with with reading the front cover. Ilya sighed and scanned the front page. The paper was from three days ago and printed on its cover was a photograph of Mother Tatiana in full inquisitor’s regalia, probably taken at the Rising Ceremony. Above the photograph in bold text the headline read “ROGUE INQUISITOR SLAYS VARYAN PEACEKEEPERS”. “This is going to ruin her. It’s going to ruin [i]us[/i],” Ragnar said despairingly, ripping the newspaper from Ilya’s hands and quickly tearing it up. The newspaper man, a short stocky fellow with a thick black mustache, raised a quivering pen in protest but thought better of it. “Us? What is us?” Ilya asked, watching the pieces of torn paper floating off in the wind. “Our warband!” Ragnar replied in a confused tone. “Last time I checked I was in Leviathan.” “You are. But you, Oren and Viveca are part of our family now. And now the empire thinks we’re all tied up together in this… whatever this is. Tatiana doesn’t want to talk about it. Not even to me or Galahad. We need to get the public on our side, like they were before. Mr. Ovinski is writing a profile on Warband Phoenix as part of a larger piece and I think it would really help our image if—” “Listen here, little squirell,” Ilya interrupted as he leaned forward, towering over the shorter inquisitor. His winter blue eyes stared into Ragnar’s own. “Oren, Viv and I are only here because your psycho of a lancer has proven herself a liability and you need the backup should she have another accident. We are not Phoenix. We are Leviathan. Unlike you lot, we know what we are and we’re sure as hell not your “family”, so don’t try to rope us into your bullshit drama.” Ilya walked past the young protector and began climbing down the stairs of the tower. “Also, do your warband a favor and stop focusing on what happens back home. None of it matters anymore, only El. Now, come on, we’re going to be late for the commander’s briefing.” Ragnar stood silently on the tower deck, his hands still gripping at the torn fragments of the newspaper. Ovinski the reporter stared at him, unsure of what to say. Finally, he patted the young inquisitor’s shoulder reassuringly and left him there alone. [center]***[/center] “Where the hell have you been?” Ilya asked Dmitri once he reached the doors of Commander Kiriyev’s warroom. The Omestrian had served Ilya’s family since the inquisitor’s birth and had sworn himself to Ilya as a child. He had joined the SA, enduring the rigors of its military academy to be able to serve Father Ilya adequately as part of his military staff. He was as loyal a servant as there would ever be, and thus Ilya wondered why Dmitri had been missing for the past three days. “The Grace, Master Ilya. The Commander has transferred fifteen men to the ark. I was one of them.” “How dare she? I made it quite clear to her that you are mine. She doesn’t get to order you around.” Ilya was already annoyed, and this was making it worse. Kiriyev was a war hero, a veteran of a hundred battles in Lanostre, and the commander of the SA attachment, but she had no right to give orders to his personal staff. He would have to give her a stern talking to— “Bjornley, is that you out there? Get in here, you’re late!” he heard Father Hassan shout from within the room. The doors were slightly ajar, and when Ilya opened them, he saw that everyone of importance was already within, save for himself and Ragnar. Smiling his carefree grin, he glided into the room and took his seat on the large rectangular wooden table in the middle of the room. Astraea was sat next to him and regarded Ilya with an unamused look. “Where were you, boychik? Looking for your missing manservant?” Hassan asked with a laugh. Ilya was about to respond when Lieutenant Dragonov asked where Father Ragnar was. The lieutenant had had to endure Hassan and Ilya’s bickering for the past three days and was nowhere near suffering any of it. He was a standing at the right hand of Commander Kiriyev, who sat at the head of the table looking over a stack of documents and a large map. She was so focused on the map that she didn’t seem to notice anyone else in the room. “Sorry! Sorry! I’m here,” Ragnar cried out as he jogged into the warroom. “One of the pups got out of my room,” he said before taking a seat next to Ziotea. “Good. We can begin,” Dragonov stated, his voice measured despite his obvious annoyance. He was as tall as Ilya, and just as quintessentially Varyan. He had a thin but powerful frame, a warrior’s set of shoulders, and wore his dark red officer’s uniform as though he had never taken it off. Indeed, it appeared as though Dragonov would be comfortable dying in his uniform, and even more at peace with being buried in it. His half-lidded eyes, greyer than most Varyans, turned to Kiriyev, a sign that he had ceded the floor to her. The commander cleared her throat and rose from her seat. She silently picked up the large map and hung it on the blank wall behind her. That she would do this herself instead of ordering someone else to do it was curious, Ilya thought. She was a woman in her middle-age, clad in a loose-fitting and brazenly sloppily grey uniform with crimson accents. Her sleeves were rolled up, revealing a pair of mechanical arms that hissed and squealed silently whenever she moved them. Her hair was curly and black, barely held together in a loose bun. Her skin was a deep bronze and her eyes were a violet so severe they almost appeared red. Ilya had heard tales of people with her coloring before. If rumors could be believed, the commander was a descendant of the Nastrondr, the long dead Muraadan clan of dragonriders who were among the first to be wiped out in the northern invasions. “Tomorrow we reach the Narrow Gates, the only known open pathway to the east. It has been the empire’s policy to sugarcoat the Gates as a relatively safe journey through an icy corridor and then, the frontier awaits with open arms. It is a lie. Painting the Gates as a simple, straightforward obstacle is good for the recruitment drives of the secular army and imperial armada, but the truth of the matter is that we could all very well perish tomorrow.” At that moment, a wave of worried murmurs spread throughout the room, mostly from the back of the table where the heads of the engineering corps and some of the lower-ranked soldiers sat. Ilya remained all smiles however, and despite how annoyed he was at the commander for her removal of Dmitri from the Karamzina, he appreciated how straightforward Kiriyev was being with her staff. “This first step of our journey will be a difficult one, and we must all prepare for whatever may come. The Gates are treacherous by themselves, but there are reports of… other unforeseen obstacles as well.” It was then that Kiriyev looked to the far end of the room, where there sat a somewhat elderly blonde woman wearing an absurd ballroom gown colored white and crimson, the colors of the divine clerical branch. The woman smiled broadly, her teeth catching the light of the room. Ilya groaned. Mother Yonah Levshin, the Sixth Dominion of T’sarae, stood from her chair with all the grace a woman of her standing demanded. She appeared much younger than whatever age she was, but some of the wrinkles on her face were still faintly visible (a result of countless magical alterations, Ilya theorized) and as she got up and walked to the front of the room with a young nun in tow holding the train of her gown, she smiled and nodded at each of the inquisitors as she passed them by, greeting them each by name. “Darling Ilya, how good it is to see you from out behind your mother’s skirts,” she said to him in a voice so high and lilting that everyone in the room could hear. Astraea chuckled next to him and he flashed her a scathing look. By the time he turned back to Mother Yonah she was already at the head of the room. “Dear me, how many fresh faces,” she said with a pearly white smile, gazing out at warbands Phoenix and Leviathan. Most of them had never met this strange garishly dressed woman before, but they had surely heard of her. The Sixth Dominion of the clerical branch, Mother Yonah, had until very recently been the appointed governor of T’sarae for the past twenty years. In her youth she had been the first Varyan to attend and graduate from the MUSE academy and in the proceeding years had helped expand the vaunted hall of learning into what it is today. If the rumors could be believed, Mother Yonah was the foremost expert on the fields of ethereal research and development in the empire today. It was all very impressive, Ilya thought, but why had she chosen to be a part of their mission? If she wanted to go to El, why not join the First Armada instead? “As our stalwart commander mentioned, tomorrow’s journey will be anything but a ride down the Skyway. The corridor beyond the Gates, or what we call the Meridian, is a long and twisting trail which snakes in between the two glaciers. Some of my former colleagues in the academy believe the splitting of the glaciers to have been caused by an errant blow during an earlier clash between two or more of our Gods. My money’s on Lanostre’s lance, but I digress. The bright season causes the ice that builds up in the Meridian to crumble and melt somehow, thus allowing us passage. However! The warming temperature causes the two glaciers to break free and shift around as well, and as a result, our two tiny arks will be forced to maneuver through a shifting narrow corridor where the walls can easily crush us.” Kiriyev pointed to the map, which showed an illustration of the Meridian, a thin line twisting and turning chaotically in-between two massive glaciers. Ilya leaned in closer in his chair and noticed a large number of smaller black circles dotted along the length of the corridor. One of the circles, at the forefront, was the largest. “This is the First Armada. Twenty-three arks in all. At its head is the Ravenous, the fleet’s grand flagship, larger than any ark under the empire’s banner. It appears there was some manner of miscalculation, and the Ravenous could not adequately fit within the Meridian, thus the Church saw it fit to allow the use of its ether torches to carve a way forward. This resulted in a weakening of the corridor walls, and massive chunks of ice began to fall on the arks beneath it. Word from up high is the Armada lost three of the smaller arks to the ice. ” “Those brutes,” Mother Yonah interjected. “The Meridian is a delicate operation. We mustn’t repeat their mistake. The Karamzina is one of the larger arks within the empire’s fleet, and thus we must navigate through the corridor as carefully as we can.” Kiriyev then placed another large document over the map. On it was a depiction of a strange fanged creature with a model of what appeared to be an adult man next to it. “There was… also word about strange creatures prowling within the ice. They attacked one of the arks and an unknown number of crew members lost their lives trying to fight them off. There are rumors that an inquisitor might be one of the casualties. We’ve not had any confirmation on this, but we should take adequate precautions all the same.” “Who was it?” Ragnar asked suddenly. “We don’t know.” “Hm.” Ragnar’s leaned back in his chair, growing silent. “Those things tore through the paling and the armor of an ark. And also possibly killed an inquisitor… This will be fun,” Hassan mused out loud, his face a mask of seriousness. It was weird not seeing him with that stupid grin on his face, Ilya realized. “If we need to fight those things, we can’t use any powerful ether. Not if we don’t want to damage the corridor walls and have giant pieces of ice falling on us,” Astraea said, eyeing the rest of her warband. “Any ideas on how we can all make it out of this alive?” she asked her warsiblings, stretching out the fingers of her repaired hand.