She Walks in Beauty

VI. Welcome to Ash Kordh

The Obsidian Road gleamed as it wove its way around the slopes of Mount Shadu'ul, the King of Mountains. One could climb the broken titan for a hundred days and not reach that barren summit, currently wreathed in winter clouds. The winds that swept the heights were brutal and punishing, depriving climbers of the breath in their lungs. Not even the powerful orcish adepts with their magic had ever sustained themselves long enough to reach the cracked summit, the taller portion of the peak projecting 30,000 feet into the sky. The greatest of the Black Summits, called so for their obsidian rivers and the death that haunted their peaks, Shadu'ul was a gorgeous sight off to their right as they wound their way along the broken land of the lower reaches, down in the treeline.

Rúna spent much of their travel staring up at it, enough that she almost lost her footing on the cracked obsidian trail, the only remaining sign that once fire had flowed down the great mountain's slopes in a river that entirely engulfed and consumed the cities once built on its slopes. They said Shadu'ul was lucky to have survived, as several mountains had detonated in the Revealing. Now their calderas held beautiful alpine lakes with crystalline surfaces that glinted in the light like polished glass. They were all frozen over at this time of year, of course, looping together like links on a great chain down the Jagged Coast.

The little group had already passed through the largest of those hollows, the Valley of Sighs. Geologically active in an extreme, it earned its name from the many geysers whose calls were caught by wind sweeping through the multicolored stones stained by geothermically super-heated pools. The wind's song became moaning then, like the souls of the sorrowful. It stank of brimstone worthy of the humans' fiery hell, but was stunning in its deep blues and reds, bordered by vermilion shallows. Several geyser launched themselves upwards while Rúna was in attendance, including a giant one called Sutur that dwarfed even Rúna's true form. The plume was so tall that it almost seemed as if a lake's entire contents had boiled upwards before crashing back down into the vast pool.

Chi seemed distracted as they passed through it, as fascinated by their surroundings as Rúna was. He had several leather-bound volumes in his pack that he filled with writing as they journeyed southward, jubilantly expounding on every discovered bug and even several different patches of moss, much to Thema's long-suffering annoyance. After nearly spending nearly an hour motionless in the grass to watch the progress of an insect that disguised itself as fallen pine needles, inching across the ground in its little dance, Thema finally lost her temper with him and let loose with every barbed profanity she could lay her hands on. He still seemed to smart from her rebuke, as they hadn't spoken in more than monosyllables since.

Rúna found the interaction terribly amusing. Chi was a fine companion, as far as she was concerned. He could tell a story for any piece of flora or fauna, though he called them by strange Eth names that seemed very particular to their shape and function. The pine-needle bug he called Six-Legged-Disguiser-With-Pine-Bough-Limbs with a suffix that denoted its origins in Ash Kordh, all in the Eth tongue, which was long and unnecessary to Rúna but charming.

He was still expounding on the genius of the gods' design as evidenced in such a little creature days later as they walked across the black glass dusted with snow, Thema and Terese moving in the lead with their eyes focused on the ground to avoid razor-sharp outcroppings. Chi spoke so rapidly in his native language that Rúna, as one who had learned it after her birth tongue, felt like she was drinking from a geyser.

"The orcs call them ash-korog," Rúna said with amusement as he stopped to recover his breath.

"Really? What does that mean?" he asked curiously, dark eyes fascinated as he turned to face her.

"Pine dancers," Rúna translated. It wasn't quite a full thought in orcish, as ash was a specific word. It referred to battle-dance, not the kind one had around a fire at a celebration.