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Loneliness was a friend Y/n knew well, and she had an inkling that it was a common affliction for masters of the skies. All she could think about was her mother, traveling the world for fifteen years in suspended solitude as she worked to decode what made her human and replace it with a network of tempests and tornadoes.
Every step she took further from the Village of the Lake made Y/n wonder if she was becoming just like Astoria.
Snowflakes fluttered down upon her as she walked, kissing her face and sinking into her rosy skin. She tugged her parka tighter around herself as a cold wind blew past. Her breath fanned out before her in a puff of white vapor.
She came up to a narrow passage between the mountains. Wind whistled through the valley, whispering in warning. Y/n frowned at the copious pilings of snow on the peaks above. She knew that with one wrong step, one stumble, the snow would could crashing down.
Y/n sucked in a breath and took a tentative step into the pass. She winced at the sound of ice crunching beneath her boots. As though walking across a frozen lake (which, for the record, she'd done before and survived), she carefully tiptoed down the path.
It seemed like lifetimes later that the exit swam into Y/n's shortened field of view (a heavy, frosty mist clouded her sight). Suddenly, her entire body tensed as a squall cut through the valley.
She heard the distant rumble of a rolling snowdrift and broke into a run.
She couldn't outrun the avalanche. On reflex, she threw up a swirling sphere of air to block the snow that plummeted down. Y/n shredded the snow to powder and dispersed it in a shower of innocent snowflakes. She gasped for breath.
Every inhale was like breathing icicles into her lungs.
Y/n sprinted the remainder of the passage, heart racing. Her hands twitched uncontrollably. She felt energy pulse through her veins in a tide of pure power.
No, please, no.
"A true elemental master surrenders any sense of self to their element."
There would be no surrender. Y/n wasn't about to level mountains in the middle of an unknown realm, not when she knew there was a village tucked into the shadows of the twisting peaks. She forced down the rush of power and trudged on through the snow.
She was trying her best to delay the inevitable, but she could already feel the numbness in her frozen limbs. For (impressively) the first time, Y/n wondered if she was going to freeze to death out here. She had a vague idea of how to reach the Ice Palace: cross the mountains, move south toward the river, following the river to the palace.
