Cold cannot harm our immortal bodies, but we feel the pain of it like any mortal creature. That pain became our constant companion the further north we marched, and we all bemoaned the fact that we were not dressed more warmly. Of course, we did not know that we would be venturing into the arctic—it was summer when we set forth on our mission, the weather balmy and clear—but men of war should be prepared for anything, and I berated myself for my carelessness.
Aioa led and we followed, into a country that grew increasingly inhospitable the further north we went.
That era was called the Weichselian High Glacial by your modern climatologists. Though the Earth was slowly warming, and the vast glaciers that had once covered so much of the globe were in their final retreat, there were still monstrous ice sheets in the far northern regions of Europe, and that is where the minions of the God King had hidden the final segment of my body.
It is hard to describe so much featureless whiteness, or how bitterly cold it was. Often we marched blindly through swirling snowstorms. The winds were powerful, pelting us with coarse spicules of ice, called firn, so that it felt like needles were plunging repeatedly into our flesh. The ice sheet extended from the northern coast of Russia, over the Kara Sea and into the Arctic Ocean. It was a deadly, white, alien landscape of treacherous snow bridges, deep jagged crevasses and bizarre wind-sculpted seracs. And in the sky overhead, the mesmerizing lights of the aurora borealis.
We called the phenomenon sky fire, for we were primitive and did not know what the lights truly were. Of course, you modern folk know that it is not fire but the ionization of the solar winds as they strike the upper atmosphere, but that is what they looked like to us, a group of Stone Age blood drinkers: vast ribbons of shimmering flames flowing through the heavens. Sometimes the aurora appeared green or violet and sometimes a fiery red. The lights were majestic, otherworldly and beautiful, but they also filled us with a superstitious dread. What if those flames fell down from the sky and struck us, we wondered. Some nights the lights were faint but there were nights when it seemed the entire sky was aflame, and we stared up at the heavens in awe as we marched ever northward, waiting for that shivering fire to rain down and consume us.
We could not fly, for the winds were too erratic to take to the sky. We learned that the hard way when a blast of arctic wind drove one of Rayna's elite warriors into a serac. The tower of blue ice toppled onto the stunned man and squashed him to paste before anyone could move to help him. I tried to heal him with my blood after we dug him from the icy rubble, but his injuries were too extensive. The only thing I could do was take his memories into myself. It was a joyless task, Sharing his brief life, but I thought it proper that I should preserve the memories of any blood drinker who sacrificed their life for me, if it were at all possible. It was the least I could do. After that, we kept to the ground, though it slowed us tremendously, and marched beneath those green rivers of fire.
I do not know how long we marched across that Russian ice sheet. It seemed like an eternity though it could not have been more than ten days, perhaps a fortnight. Although we often asked Aioa how much further we had to go, her unique gift did not operate in such a manner that she could answer us exactly. She did not know where a thing was precisely; she only had a sense of its direction. "We are closer," was all that she could tell us. "It's not much further now." I'm sure by the time we reached our destination, we had driven her mad with our badgering. Even I could not restrain myself from asking her, at least once a day, just how much further we had to go.
Sometimes we sensed the God King's Eye circling overhead. It was like a great dark raptor, I thought. Or perhaps a bat. We were too exhausted to taunt him as we had on the tundra. We kept our heads down and our shoulders hunched against the howling wind and continued after Aioa, ignoring our enemy's Eye.
About three days from our goal it became known to us that Khronos's men were trailing us across the glacier. Chaumas was the one who alerted us to their pursuit, though it was almost a day before any of us realized what he was saying. The old man spoke mostly nonsense, and spent most of his time babbling to Yul's very annoyed head, which he had taken to treating like some pitiable pet. Our pursuers must have been very far behind us though because the old man was the only one who could sense them. Nevertheless, we picked up our pace. We did not wish to confront the God King's men if we could help it. It was a waste of energy, and needlessly dangerous in such a lethal environment. Our plan was to find the final piece of my body and return to Asharoth with as few casualties as possible. Once restored, I would wage war on the God King himself.
This did not please Drago, who was always spoiling for a fight, but it was much too cold and miserable for the Eternal to protest too vehemently. He just nodded and trudged onwards, shoulders hunched to his ears as the wind howled and the firn needled our exposed flesh.
When at last we came to the place where my torso had been concealed, we were exhausted and starved for blood. "It is there," Aioa suddenly announced, much to our surprise, and pointed down into a glacial valley. On the far side, at the base of a craggy cliff, was a small blue opening. An ice cavern. We were shocked into silence for a moment, as Aioa had not indicated that we were so close, and then a weary cheer arose from us all.
"We're finally here?" Sunni cried in disbelief. "We made it?"
Chaumas held up Yul's head so the Eternal could see.
It was day, the sun wickedly bright, the sky clear for a change and the winds low and calm. We launched into the air almost at once, as if an unspoken signal had been given, and crossed the broad valley in great leaps and bounds. My eyes were bleeding profusely from the light, as the valley floor had melted and refrozen into a great reflective lens of blue ice, but I did not care. The end, at last, was in sight! The final piece of my body was nearly in my grasp!
We came together at the mouth of the cavern. I peered into the blue throat of the ice cave and then looked to Aioa questioningly.
"It is here," she said with a nod. "It is deep within this cavern but we can reach it. I can feel it."
The walls of the cave were smooth and rounded and looked vaguely ribbed, like the interior of a fish's gullet. It was unusually warm inside and water trickled down the floor in serpentine rivulets. Some sort of thermal upwelling, perhaps from a submerged hot spring or volcano, must have produced the cave, but I was not learned of such things then. I only knew that the cavern looked eerily like the belly of a living creature, and the thought of going inside made me distinctly nervous.
"We should split into two groups," Rayna said. "One to go inside while the other stands guard at the entrance."
I nodded, still staring anxiously into the blue depths. "That is wise," I said.
"I will stand guard," Drago volunteered.
"I want to go inside," Sunni said, squinting into the cavern curiously.
"I will accompany you inside as well," Eris said to me. "Mother instructed me how to perform the rejoining. You will want to be restored immediately, I imagine."
"Yes," I said. Now that the restoration of my true flesh was at hand, Yul's body felt terribly foreign to me, like itchy, ill-fitting clothes. I wanted rid of it as quickly as possible. I knew the pain my renewal would entail, but it did not matter. I wanted to be myself again. Even more, I wanted to take back this victory from the God King, to wrest it from his hands, to deny him once again.
"Come, old man," Sunni said to Chaumas, who had sat with Yul's head in his lap and was happily crooning to the thing, stroking its bald pate. "Bring the Eternal's head. We'll dispose of it here, after the Father has been restored to his true form."
The old man clutched the head to his chest. "No!" he cried. "It's mine!"
"Come on!" Sunni pulled the man impatiently to his feet and then we ventured inside. Six of us went into the cave: Sunni and Chaumas, Eris, Rayna, Aioa and myself. The rest remained behind to stand guard at the mouth of the cavern. As we descended into the icy pit, Drago dispatched half of our elite warriors to the far side of the valley to act as a rearguard in case our pursuers caught up to us. Vehnfear wagged his tail nervously at the entrance of the cave but did not accompany us inside. "Watch our butts, old man," I called back to him. The wolf whined as if in acknowledgment of my order, and then a turn in the cave took him out of my sight.