Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 2

The Spirit of the Mountain

It rained off and on for the next few nights.

Ralata left early the following morning, returning to her clan with a goodbye wave. Sunny watched the bubbly young widow go and just shook her head, though she couldn't help the spark of amusement that rose up inside her. Ralata sure was a strange character, probably would have fight right in with the humans if that had ever been her inclination. Though, then again, almost anyone coil fit in with humans, as diverse a species as they were.

Sunny, on the other hand, did not go home. She stayed sitting under that overhang in the rock for another three days, watching drev come and go to the field of the fallen. She watched the sun shine down on the field of spears as the mist rose up around it in great billowing swaths. She watched as the early morning dew faded away and everything dried, allowing the capes to billow and flap silently in the wind.

Even from here she could see it, the soft green of the newly placed cape, standing out against the colorless and muddied fabrics marred with time and the icor of the dark season.

She wasn't entirely sure what she was waiting for.

The mountain just before her, Granlakeeanin: which could be directly translated into human as Spirit of the mountain, rose high above her. It was a tall and jagged mountain that had watched over the valley of the fallen since the beginning of time itself, or so it seemed. Staring at the mountain, it was hard to believe that such a... mundane topographical feature could have been the birthplace of Drev combat.

Then again, she was selling the peak short when she called it mundane. It was actually a pretty imposing monolith of stone and mist all told, though it wasn't volcanic like many of it's sister mountains. Still, great billows of steam rose up around it from the lava lakes and pools of molten metal that were said to line it's base.

In this, it seemed as if the valley of the Fallen was never entirely clear of mist, or smoke, whatever it may be.

On the third day of staring, and watching and thinking, she finally took up her spear and began her trek around the valley of the fallen.

She could have gone straight though the middle, but somehow, that felt.... wrong .

Sacreligious almost.

Not that she hadn't involved herself in a fair bit of heresy in her day, including the use of firearms and espionage, but for some reason she drew the line at disturbing sacred battlefields and burial grounds.

The air around her was cold and crisp as her feet made way over the cold rock. The mist brushed past her skin, clearing her lungs as the sun just began to peak over the mountain, sending newly born rays of sun streaming sharply down from above to break through the clouds and fall onto the moss below.

It smelled like ripe orb fruit and coil tree blossoms, though that smell as probably being blown up from the next valley over.

She made her way over jagged stone, her feet passing over the ground and the little shards of rocks that sat there. It took her almost a full day to reach the other side of the valley, and by the time she did, she chose to camp at the base of the mountain rather than use the last bit of daylight to head onto a trail which was unfamiliar to her, with no guarantee that there would be anywhere to camp.

She didn't bother with a fire or anything. It was the bright season, and the night would be warm.

She didn't sleep much that night staring down at the valley of the fallen,and the moonlight that glittered off thousands of spectral helmets and a still forest of spears. At some point a low hanging fog rolled in giving an eeriness to al already eerie place.