It was eeerie, being back, but it reminded me I'm not supposed to be there. The everstorm seemed to choose to make me feel unwelcome. I can feel the love for my home burning inside me; the rush of memories as we crossed the wastes towards Ka'ar, everything familiar to me but alien to my companions. Up that painfully treacherous mountain to the pilgrims cave at the top, where some fierir were performing some sort of ritual. Eventually they blew down the smooth wall, to reveal a path behind it, and attacked us. We were praying as well, but there you go. Godless bastards, I'm sure they meant well but the everstorm can have their souls anyway. Bad luck, but that's how it goes: death does not play fair.
Behind the wall is some sort of strange lab, with ancient books and gelatenous bodies scattered around it. Mel (bless his tricksy fingers) decided to awaken a great stone monster in an attempt to get the key for a further room. Fighting it was exhausting, we nearly let it get us, but in the end we won by a whisker. So sod my fretting, we really needed frald and his healing, I shall be kinder about it in future. We needed everyone really, as our tribe is small. And perhaps one day george will learn how to fight like a warrior.
It would have been poetic to have died there, though. On the same mountain as Balthzar. Blessed be his memory, of the one who held mastery over the snow, and who taught me so much. As we passed by his grave, I couldn't just leave it without some acknowledgement. A single light to mark the skeleton of a great man under the snow, with the dagger that put him there. I wish he hadn't been so proud.
I guess he chose to lose quickly, rather than live with his failed luck. And after all, what am I doing except gambling my life with the most powerful force in the universe, and hoping it lets me stay. I expect a sane person wouldn't take that bet, so perhaps I'm more like him than I care to admit.