Journey to Ornn

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Journey to Ornn

"Dark smoke exhales, from the mountainhalf

And wind blows through hollow dells

skies clear as day, will soon turn gray

and you'll know, you're nearing Ornn.

Barring your path, is a chasm wide

Howls rise from fathomless pits

but close stands a bridge, frozen by time

and across, you'll soon find Ornn.

River of fire, that scorches the earth

belies his kingdom of stone

and steel sings its tone, as a god stands alone

the shaping hand, we know as Ornn.

Spark leap and fly, from the star-fallen ore

forging his works, divine

bellows erupt, with unbridled force

no longer lost - the Mountainsmith, Ornn."

Thats all we had to start our journey, an old parchment. No one knew where it came from exactly but we had nothing else to start with, so we used it. We wanted to learn metalworks, but the only blacksmith in the village was a grumpy old man. We were just a group of enthusiastic teenagers that were told that there were signs of activity in the Hearth-Home.

We lived in Piltover, city of inventions. To get to the Hearth-Home we needed to get to the center of Freljord by passing through the Shurima desert. We had already packed the night before, it was complicated because in Shurima its always unbearibly hot, and in Freljord a sub-zero cold, so we had to choose carefully what clothes to take.

The sun still hadn't come out when we got up, so we decided to have a plentiful breakfeast before leaving. By the time we finished and washed up, you could already see the suns light, but not the sun. After saying our goodbyes we walked to the city limits, where the Shurima desert started. With the morning sun blazing, we beginned our journey throught the cacti forest.

Only an hour and a half had passed when our first challenge appeared. The serpentine river had been dry for centuries, but somehow it was completly full now. We were standing on a cliff about 40 meters above the river, and the river was 10 meters wide. Since it was too dangerous to walk or swim through, so we had to improvise. Using the clothes we had brought, we connected about twenty or so jackets by the zippers, and got into some of them at equal intervals. By grabbing hands we made it into a paraglide and ran at the cliff as fast as possible to get enough lift and paraglided to the other end of the river. We were so happy with ourselves we didnte notice that some of the zippers were starting to get unsewn until the paraglide started to break apart. We were still 20 meters from the ground, but someone found out how to use the jacket she was in as a flying squirrel would. A couple of seconds after everyone was doing the same, but we still hit the ground, hard.

A minute passed before we could get up and moving again, and another, up to around fifteen. We salvaged as many jackets as we could, drank some water from the crystal clear river, and decided to keep going. At our average speed, we should have to walk only a fourth of what we had already done to reach Freljord.

We saw the mountainrange before finding the group of saddled goats. At first, most of us though that we shouldn't take them, but after seeing that there was no sign of other humans, and remembering the fact that Ornns sacred animal is the ram, se finally decided to mount them and hope that no harm came to anyone.

It was a good idea to use the goats, for they are much better climbers than humans, and it seemed like they knew where they were going.

Soon enough skies started turning gray, just as the parchment said. Not long after, the keenest started hearing a faint howl. At first we though they might be ice wolves, but then we remembered what the parchment said, and upon reaching the highest peak we saw the Howling Abyss in the distance.

Another 10 minutes has passed before we reached the bridge. When we got there we decided to leave the poor goats behind, they had served us well and we didnt want to tire them too much.

The architectural design was incredible, but we couldn't stay long, we were running out of provisions. It was a really old construction, so naturally the wind and water had weakend and degraded the materiales.

We knew it was unstable, but it was the only way across and we couldn't lose any more time. It was decided that we would go single filed across the chasm, the bravest of us in front in case of any danger.

We had almost made it across when lightning struck the pillar under the bridge, creating a hole underneath us. Even though we desperatly tried to get a hold of something, we fell, plummiting to our death.

Or so I though, before hitting the slide made of hardened magma. The trip was too fast to see anything, all I knew was that we were still together, and that we were going strait to the base of a huge mountain.

At last we came to a stop. We huddled together to catch our breath, meanwhile we took in our surroundings. We were in one gigantic vaguely circular room, full of improvised rock anvils, a wild assortment of tools, and the strangest thing of then all, was that in the center of the room, a pool of molten rock about 6 meters in diameter.

Suddenly a big burly man with rams horns, red beard and a hammer entered. Thats when we knew, we had finally found Ornn.