Beautiful and Broken

8.

We crossed the Fjerdan border with shameless ease, during the night, keeping away from any public roads, being enveloped in Aleksander's shadows. He summoned his shadow gholems even before the crossing, to act as our scouts and guards, because as he told me, Fjerdan witch hunters often ventured into Ravka in the vicinity of their border. I found myself wishing we would meet some, only to see what his shadows are capable of. Such creatures were not unheard of in Atlantis, hence we had a name for them, but I've only seen them being summoned out of solid matter. 

The biggest action I witnessed was one of the shadows tearing apart a bear that was unlucky enough to wander too close to us. Still it was more than nothing: I found out that they could destroy solid matter. I've also observed how quickly the gholems drained his energy. Of course, animating a gholem was high level magic, and keeping one alive for a prolonged period took its toll even on the most powerful mages of Atlantis, but he was visibly tired only in a few hours' matter. It only reassured me in my suspicion of something not being quite right with Ravkan magic.

During the last stretch of our trail we were riding in a furious mountain stream, the water aiding us to hide our traces. One of the entrances to Aleksander's underground base was hidden behind a waterfall, accessible only through a high and narrow path on a steep rock wall, so we had to dismount and even so, our horses needed some serious convincing to follow us. I was expecting a cave system at the best, but the reality much surpassed my expectation.

After passing a narrow tunnel, easily defensible even by a few human soldiers alone, we arrived in a hangar the size of a cathedral, with perfectly smoothed walls. It was three stories high, countless corridors leaving from each of them in different directions. Natural light was captured through the cracks in the rock and guided with an ingenious system of mirrors, so that the hangar was enveloped in what closely resembled daylight. All the noise and the movement was overwhelming, after my long weeks spent alone in the Fold, and our quiet journey here. Dozens of Grisha in their coloured keftas were bustling around, the guards bowing deeply in front of Aleksander, one of them running away probably to alert the others of the arrival of their general.

By the time we left our horses to the care of the human stall boy, a welcome committee of two young Grisha was standing in front of us. Aleksander presented the man with the bronze skin and brown hair as Ivan, his second in command, and the beautiful woman with the red hair and alabaster skin as Genya, next in rank to Ivan. Of me, he only told them my name and that I was here as his guest. Then he told Genya to show me to my room, and the next thing I knew he was departing to discuss some urgent matters with Ivan. 

Genya promptly led me to a small chamber, showed me the adjacent bathroom, expressed her apologies for me being forced to use the common shower down the corridor, promised to send someone after me to show me to the mess hall when it was time, and she was gone in a blink. I've plopped down to the narrow bed, probably with a rather dumb facial expression. Only now it started to dawn on me that Aleksander had more pressing matters to attend to than chaperoning me, and I was left to fend for myself amongst dozens of polite and uninterested Grisha. It wasn't the best of prospects: I was never good at making friends.