“Aaaaaah!”
“Help!”
“Shit!!!”
The shouts came in unison from Mel-Ivas, Dai’Vasy and Tiesya as they were caught by surprise as the snow-covered crevasse crumbled apart beneath their feet and dropped them straight down to its depth. The group had traversed over the crevasse since it was the most expedient route between the mountain they were on and the next in line, and because it showed no signs of collapse even after some of them tread on it.
To say that it was unexpected for the crevasse to collapse as the last of their group traveled on it was an understatement.
Fortunately, as the group had ropes tying them to each other at the waist, none of them ended up plummeting to their deaths or something like that. While the three who were on the crevasse at the moment it collapsed under their feet were unable to react in time, Val-Kas’j was next in line and he reacted fast enough to anchor himself to a rock outcropping with one foot, stopping the others’ fall immediately.
They had arranged it so the less physically fit Mel-Ivas and Dai’Vasy would be positioned between Tiesya and Val-Kas’j who were physically the fittest out of the [Progenies of Yore] in order to prevent troubles like what just happened from happening. In the end, since Tiesya was caught up in the collapse herself, she was unable to help the other two, but Val-Kas’j did his role perfectly.
Mel-Ivas, who was closest to the edge, ended up smacking face-first against the frozen cliff, causing her nose to bleed and disorienting her for a moment. Given her healing abilities, however, she quickly did away with the minor injury and found footholds in the cliff while her hands held the rope tightly. She was half-supporting the weight of Tiesya and Dai’Vasy beneath her to help lighten Val-Kas’j’s load.
Dai’Vasy had a bit more time to react and managed to conjure panels of ice to break her fall and gently deposit her against the cliffside, where she then created more ice to anchor herself to the wall – though she could move them at will, of course – to not burden those above her too much. At the same time, she conjured a larger, more solid panel of ice that sloped towards the other side of the cliff to prevent the deluge of snow that followed their fall from washing them down deeper into the crevasse.
Tiesya had the longest fall since she was the one furthest back, but her physique was strong enough to catch her fall with her legs against the cliff face, and the girl rapidly found hand and footholds to hold herself steady even as the deluge of snow barely missed her on the way down. She pressed herself flat against the cliff to avoid it, as despite Dai’Vasy’s efforts the deluge only missed them by the barest margins.
It took a while before the deluge of snow ended, as even Dai’Vasy’s magic struggled against the force of nature that was magnitudes greater than what she could manipulate. As a result, her makeshift barrier eventually gave way beneath the weight of the deluge, and the falling snow washed over Dai’Vasy and Tiesya on its way down.
Mel-Ivas was spared since she was close enough to the cliff’s top that the deluge didn’t reach her.
The two who were less fortunate hung on for dear life with all they had, Dai’Vasy practically encasing herself in a cocoon of ice which anchored itself into the cliff to avoid getting washed away by the deluge. Tiesya was somewhat shielded from the deluge since Dai’Vasy was directly above her, but still had to deal with quite a bit of it as well. She could only rely on her muscles to hold on to the cliff, her fingers pressing so hard to the point that they dug into the rock of the cliff face.
After what felt like an eternity, the deluge eventually settled, and Tiesya felt a tug on the rope that was still tied around her waist. She noticed that the others were already loosening themselves from the cliff face and started to climb up, so she followed along, her hands gripping the now-taut rope tightly as she walked along the cliff face.
It took a few minutes before all three girls finally managed to climb back up the cliff, with Val-Kas’j and the rest of the group anchoring the line for them. Mel-Ivas and Dai’Vasy looked somewhat shaken by the unexpected misfortune, though surprisingly, Tiesya, who likely had it worse, looked calmer than the other two by a good bit.
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“All of you fine? Nothing broken or anything?” asked Esperanza with obvious worry. At the moment everyone was just glad of Esperanza’s insistence that they remain tied to one another with ropes around their waist as long as they were moving on the mountains. Things might have gotten much worse for the ones who fell otherwise.
“We are, Exalted One,” replied Mel-Ivas as she blew some remaining blood out of her nostrils. “At least, nothing that would bother us in the long term,” she continued with a shake of her head. The girl still looked a bit surprised and discombobulated from the experience, but relatively calm all considered. “That… was not a pleasant experience.”
“Nature really has its way to make us feel small… which makes the arrogance of the new gods to think that they could wrangle the world to be their plaything even more grievous an offense…” muttered Dai’Vasy under her breath. Despite the girl’s elemental affinity meaning that her magic was strengthened in the cold environment, her magic still couldn’t stand up to the wrath of nature, and the experience clearly affected her.
“It got pretty close a few times down there,” admitted Tiesya with a bit of a shudder. “I’m really glad that we followed the Exalted One’s suggestion to tie ourselves to each other like this. I might have survived that fall, but it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience even so,” she added before something seemed to come to her mind. “Oh right, Exalted One, I believe I saw a glimpse of other people down there while the deluge was crashing down on us.”
“Others, you say?” queried Esperanza with some surprise. She exchanged a quick conversation with Ani to get the older woman’s opinion, and they quickly came to the agreement that it might be worth their time checking further on what Tiesya saw. As Esperanza was the only one who could really do it without any risk, she would climb down herself, untethered to the others just in case. “Show me where you saw them.”
Tiesya duly pointed out the region where she claimed to see other people, which was now partially covered with snow from the earlier deluge. With a nod of thanks, Esperanza stretched her limbs and crawled down the cliff face like some sort of eldritch octopus, her amorphous body making the steep cliff almost as easily traversable as flat ground.
It was too far for Esperanza to reach to the other side across the crevasse, but by spreading herself thin like a membrane supported by sturdier structures, she managed to turn herself into a living hang glider and glided over to the other side. Once there, she hugged the cliff face once more as she worked her way towards where Tiesya saw the people earlier.
The region was covered in mounds of snow, but fortunately it was tall enough on the cliff that it wasn’t completely buried. It only took a few minutes of work to move away the snow that covered the area before Esperanza spotted what Tiesya must have noticed earlier. Namely two huddled figures inside a shallow cave – more just a large depression, really – on the cliffside.
What Esperanza found once she came into contact with the figures were that they were corpses, long frozen over by the sub-zero temperature. She had not exactly expected otherwise, but had hoped that the corpses might at least be able to shed some light as to how they got there. As such, she took them with her as she glided back across the crevasse.
It was harder to glide with the added weight of the corpses and she lost quite a bit of height, but she reached the other side eventually, just a good bit lower than her launching point. From there it was a matter of climbing up the cliffside while simultaneously lugging the corpses behind her. A task that her amorphous form was well-suited towards, fortunately.
She clambered back to the top after a few minutes with her grisly package in tow, depositing the corpses gently on the snow. Now that she had time to take a closer look, she realized that one of the corpses must have been a youngster or a juvenile, and the larger corpse – likely the parent – was curled around it protectively.
Sadly, its efforts to save the life of its child was futile in the end.
“They’re human hybrids,” Ani pointed out after some inspection. The corpses had decayed some, but were quite well-preserved thanks to the cold, so some features were still identifiable. Ani had no need to elaborate on her findings, as the only hybrids with human blood in them would only be found in enclaves of the worshipers of the Deities of Yore.
“Do you think they might be part of the migrating group from the last shelter?” asked Esperanza, who quickly put two and two together. The path they were taking was one that headed straight towards the larger shelter deeper in human lands, so if the migrating group were headed that way, they would have gone through a similar path.
“Very likely,” replied Ani with a grim nod. “They would have passed through this way, and if that crevasse just now crumbled beneath them as well… would have been met with a worse fate than us. More might be buried deeper in the crevasse, I think,” she added with a somber tone. “Though chances are some of them should at least make it through… I hope.”
“We won’t know until we get there, I guess,” replied Esperanza with a sigh. The discovery of the corpses and their implication was a bit of a downer to the group, given their similar backgrounds, and they respectfully buried the corpses on the mountain after they were done checking. As for the ones likely buried deep within the crevasse, there was little that they could do about it, so the group just left them be with a disappointed sigh.
They continued their trek towards the larger hideout several mountains away in a much more somber mood after the incident, and most of them also gained a habit of double-checking the ropes that connected them to the rest of the group. Apparently the incident had given them a healthy dose of paranoia about their own safety in the mountain.
While the group were mostly strong enough physically to have likely survived the previous incident, all it would have taken was a little bit of bad luck for even a fourth tier combatant to lose their life in that sort of accident. In fact, if they reacted too strongly they might have ended up causing a bigger accident that might have affected the others as well instead.
As a result, the group moved with far more care and alertness compared to before, as they carefully watched their step and thoroughly checked every region they would cross before putting their weight on it. It slowed their travel down somewhat, but nobody complained after the close call they had. There was no point in going fast when it would just end up costing their lives, after all.