“Come on, brother! We’re almost at the caves!” Crixus yelled from the top.

Tyras’s pick smashed into the ice again, heaving himself up, grabbing a promising rock with his free paw, the crampons in his boots struggling to find purchase against the loose pebbles and slippery ice below. They had just passed the 4000-meter-mark, mostly with the assistance of their dragons, but the great beasts could only take them so far. There was no place large or safe enough to land such heavy creatures, so from that point on, it would be down to bare paws and icepicks.

The white steppe lion was almost invisible on the mountain’s icy cliff, clad from head to toe in a heavy white parka, with hood and goggles of similar color covering his blanche face. The Lunist mountaineers never saw them coming until it was too late.

Tyras was shivering, struggling to find good purchase with his tools. Though it wasn’t because of the cold. He’d done more treacherous climbs in his youth with less gear. He kept looking up, expecting to see a Lunist throw a rock at him. He looked to the climbers to his left and right, expecting to see them lose purchase from a faulty piton or old rope and fall into the white abyss with a scream. He looked at the Lunist flak cannon on the opposite cliff, rusted out and covered in ice, now used by climbers as a landmark, wondering when its crew would spot them and launch an 8cm shell to send them falling nearly an entire kilometer down to the nearest plateau, cliff and all.

He stopped for a second, breathing heavily, taking in large lungfuls of icy air, trying to calm down.

“There is no more war. There is no sound of artillery amongst the howling wind. No stench of gunpowder and gasoline amongst the clean air. No Lunists at the top waiting with bayonets and ice axes. You fought to make the Holy Mountains safe again, and you did. The bloody war is over. It’s over…”

“You arite ther’?” Basilius, one of the other climbers asked, a small yet powerfully built black bat asked, his wings encased in the warm cape. Tyras glanced at him. The flying mammal’s dark eyes twinkled with understanding.

“Come on, matey. Jus’ a bit more.” He said encouragingly. Tyras nodded and redoubled his efforts.

His brother helped him up as he reached the top. Crixus gave him a “light” pat on the shoulder that almost sent him flying off the mountain.

“You’ve still got it, brother.” The giant said with a grin.

The rest of the group soon arrived, mostly consisting of climbers from the Golden Wings Pilgrim tribe, who’d made the vast cave systems of the Foakmons their home. They mostly consisted of bats, moles, bears and steppe lions, who’d sought to make caves their refuge since before the Great Evolution. They were a solitary bunch, even by Stateless standards, and Tyras had never seen them outside of their caves without sun-goggles. They had fought bravely in the Mountain’s defense, their knowledge of the cave systems, transporting supplies and manpower through them, not to mention their willingness to die for their dark, rocky home, had proven vital in the Alliance’s victory.

Most were either youngsters of 20 or less, or old men who by all accounts shouldn’t have been able to go on such a trek anymore.

Very few were of Tyras’s age.

They entered the ice caves, the Golden Wings guiding them through the stone labyrinth. Tyras briefly wondered if he’d been here before. There was a very good chance, but he couldn’t have remembered. One narrow passageway or one rocky hall full of deadly spiked stalagmites could have been any other. There would be no enemies laying in ambush, yet he still instinctively pawed his Gladius.

The men at the front held oil lanterns and electric torches, but they soon put them out. There was no need for them. The Vihi Fungi were visible. Hanging off the rock ceiling and littering the walls were fungi and mushrooms of various colors, glowing in a kaleidoscope of fairytale lights. The men at the front were bathed in reds, yellows and blues, their white cold weather gear resembling more a clown’s outfit as they lumbered on.

Tyras and the others from his tribe stopped to marvel at the spectacle. It never ceased to amaze him. Back when he fought in these very caves, the men always sought to rest around these plants. They had an ability to soothe and hearten that went beyond their mere beauty. The cavers looked back, waiting patiently for the others to quit gawking.

By all known biology, fungus shouldn’t have been able to grow around here. It was too cold and there was too little organic matter to leech off for fungi to be able to grow in such abundance.

It was believed that Vihermu, the patron god of travelers, created the fungus in order to guide Pilgrims to the peak of the Holy Mountain. The myth was reinforced by the other ways in which the primitive organisms could be used.

Upon reaching a large hall, the group made camp to rest after the long trek. The Golden Wings cut away some of the fungi, minced them, then prepared them into a sort of thick tea. It was a blend Tyras was well familiar with. He drank the steaming liquid from the offered tin cup. It tasted faintly meaty, with a minty aftertaste. Immediately, he felt revigorated, and after a second cup, he was itching to get back on the trek. In a few minutes, he saw clearer too. No longer did he have to use his Forte to see in the dark, his already fine feline eye could see further and make out details he previously couldn’t.

As they walked on, they came across an opening that led to the outside of the cave and onto the mountain.

“That was blocked off by snow and ice six months back.” Basilius said. “Probably melted this Season of Ripe. And-“ he stopped as he saw something sticking out of the snow and ice.

A hand.

No one was surprised. It was what they’d come looking for after all. The group quickly got to work with shovels, careful not to damage the body. It was a white wolf. Clearly Osnyan, judging by the uniform and his rifle, the wood rotted away to reveal the rusted firing mechanism. A pair of binoculars and a bugle were also dangling from his neck.

They laid him out on the rocks. He looked asleep, just having a quick nap after a 60-hour watch, his calm features forever preserved by the ice. He looked almost happy that his war was over, his last moments having been ones of peace and tranquility.

Tyras looked at the opening. It gave a perfect view of the valley below, and someone with binoculars could have seen the enemy coming from miles away. A perfect sentinel post. Though that was marred by the packed snow standing precariously above. Any stray artillery shell would have sent it collapsing down. And it had.

Tyras opened up his jacket, grabbing his dead comrade’s necklace.

“Alexis Garou. Private First Class, 205th Auxiliary Regiment.” he read from the tag. On the chain was something else. A half moon pendant. Not a full moon like the “real” Lunists, but the symbol of the Old Faith.

Tyras rifled through the man’s pockets, seeking for everything to get a more concrete identity. There were close to a thousand “Alexis Garous” in Osnya. He found a prayer book marked with a faded golden half-moon etched on the cover. Something was being used as a bookmark.

It was an old picture of the wolf and his family. The woman next to him, doubtlessly his wife, was heavily pregnant, and next to her was a boy of no older than seven, looking with awe and admiration at his freshly uniformed father like he was a giant. The picture was dated “133rd Year, 5th Era, 10th Day of the second month of Harvest.” A mere two days after the Lunists invaded. He’d been among the first to answer the call of duty.

“Good luck, daddy!” Was written on the back. Neatly for a seven-year-old.

The boy would have been in his mid-20s by now, probably with a family of his own. The one still in the womb was likely already old enough to be considered a man or a woman.

Old Faith Lunists had fled the Eclipse Empire, their denial of Kirous as the ultimate Lunar deity not being tolerated one bit, most ending up in Osnya and other Fakonan countries. They were more hated than Fakonans in Lunist countries. Not that most Osnyans knew that, or cared for that matter.

He was still a Lunist, after a fashion, and a wolf on top of that.

He probably volunteered for the dangerous watch position to prove his loyalty. When his comrades abandoned the position, they couldn’t, or did not care, to warn him. Yet, he kept his watch.

And still he dutifully guarded his post, twelve years later.

Basilius covered the man’s eyes with his paws, the bat singing an old Gherii warrior’s prayer. The others joined, Tyras’s tenor voice leading the orchestra.

The ancient words echoed through the hall, singing reverence to a warrior who’d enjoyed none in life.

Tyras dug in his pockets and fished out a few pistol cartridges. He placed them in the dead man’s right pocket and one in his right hand, clenching the cold fingers around it. A thousand years ago, he’d have offered arrows.

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“Your watch is relieved, soldier. May your post in the garrison of your gods be an easier one.” Tyras whispered. His family, if they were still alive, would receive him, over a decade after they’d already lost all hope of hearing of him again.

With how the ice had preserved his features, the wolf’s son would probably look older than his father at the time of the funeral, Tyras thought with a grim sense of irony.

The man was carried off on a stretcher, to be lowered from the mountain, from where his body would be prepared and preserved, then investigators would find and contact his family.

They went further into the caves, Basilius looking at the woefully outdated map only occasionally, the bat caver mostly using his innate sense of direction which experience and Nature had granted him. Tyras would use his Forte every now and then to look through ice or crumbled rock caused by the incessant bombing both sides had subjected the Mountain to. He drank from a thermos of strong coffee to keep the headaches and nosebleeds at bay.

So far, the expedition had been most successful for mapping purposes. No more bodies had been found. What the Cavers were doing in trying to recover as many dead soldiers as possible to ship back to their families was noble, yet Tyras couldn’t help but feel there was a note of futility in it.

There were over 200.000 MIA soldiers following the year long battle of the Foakmon Mountains. The Cavers, over the course of eight years, had found 2500 soldiers, less than one a day.

Tyras shook his head. He couldn’t let those thoughts seize him. Somewhere, an old widow would finally receive closure. Somewhere, that wolf who’d bravely fought for a country that resented him, would finally be put to rest alongside his ancestors rather than forever frozen in time in an abandoned cave. It was worth it. The world couldn’t be reduced to numbers and statistics.

Another few hours passed, when they came across a wide hall. Tables, beds of rotten wood, sandbags and rusted out cans showed this had once been an outpost. Tyras picked up one of the torn cans and looked it over. It bore a silver arrow over a sun, the sigil of the Osnyan Legion. The place was in disarray in a way that not even 12 years could explain. Sandbags were overturned. Barbed wire was neatly snapped by wire cutters. Tyras ran his paw over a few tiny bulletholes still etched in the rock.

“We found a bunch of dead here. Dozens of em.” The bat explained. “We checked the logbooks and it matches a skirmish that took place just before the Lunists finally retreated. After the battle, the entrances were caved in, so, neither side bothered recapturing it.”

They walked past this transient evidence of life and death within the uncaring ice caves. They eventually came across a narrow passageway that forced them to select only three to go on, namely Tyras, Crixus and their bat guide.

As they went on, Tyras saw a thawing ice wall below a stream of light. Whatever source of water that had formed it had been diverted. Using his Forte, he looked through it.

Two bodies were in there, seemingly cocooned into each other.

“Over there. Two dead.” He pointed at the wall. The bat looked at his map.

“Huh. Doesn’t show up here.” He pondered. Yet he did not doubt Tyras. The three men got to work, picks clacking away into the tough ice. Tyras began singing a merry marching tune that he and his men often sang when they slaved away digging trenches. The other two soon picked it up, Basilius not knowing the lyrics, yet humming with his new comrades nonetheless.

Eventually, the wall came down in a shower of fractured ice and stone, collapsing in a heap of dust and melted snow.

It was a hall about fifty meters deep, showing certain signs of life. Some stones were set in a circle with long burned ash in the center. Two canteens were set beneath dripping ice walls, long since overflown. Some cave rats, still frozen, were hung up off a string in the corner, ready for preparation.

And in the center were the two dead. It was a male hyena and a larger lioness, both clinging to each other, frost and snow coating their frozen bodies. The fungi bathed them in a warm, red light.

What was strange is that the hyena was clad in the white, almost tan Yavuz Shannate uniform and the lioness in the beige and red trim uniform of the Riguri Kingdom.

The Yavuz and Riguri were rivals almost as bitter as Osnya and Alexandrios. Yet here they were, embracing each other like long lost lovers.

“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day.” The old bat commented, taking out his clay pipe. “If they’d had shoved knives into each other’s throats, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Found a few like that.”

“Let me take a look.” Tyras said. Their guide was right, this was a mystery, and by Sapistia, he couldn’t bear to see one unsolved. He was the most qualified investigator in the room, after all.

They had to use their picks as crowbars to separate the bodies as they were stuck together by years of frost.

He looked them over. The hyena was roughly 20 when he died. Slight yellowing of the claws and teeth suggested he was a heavy smoker. Yavuzi tradition could allow children as young as twelve to take up the vice. A slight indent in his lower lip showed that he’d been an avid clarinet player. His uniform was stained with old blood, with a nasty stab wound around his abdomen that had narrowly missed his lung. It was carefully wrapped up in bandages. No way he’d done that on his own.

The lioness on the other hand, was in her early 30s. Her fingers were long and thin, indicative of a typist by trade, possibly a secretary. Her socks were long and elastic, not standard issue. They were expensive biking socks. Someone who cycled to work and most likely did so as a hobby as well.

Her broken jaw was held in a makeshift splint of cloth and a sawed-off spade grip.

“They got lost from their squads during an attack.” Tyras concluded. “They wandered the cave halls until they found each other. Each seeing an enemy, attacked. She stabbed him in the gut, while he grabbed a rock and broke her jaw. Then, sometime in the melee, one or both of them decided ‘enough’. What was the point? Here they were, both lost in a hostile environment, and the first thing they do upon seeing another person is try to kill them. They decided to help each other.” Tyras looked at the two long preserved dead soldiers now sprawled out on the ground. Somehow, it seemed wrong to leave them sprawled out like that after they’d been in each other’s arms for so long. He sat both of them up. The man slid off the wall, his head resting on the lioness’s shoulder.

“They found this alcove and decided it was as good a place as any to camp and wait for rescue from one side or the other. They had food in the form of cave rats and water in melting ice. What they didn’t have is anything to burn. They probably had some wood in their packs, but once that was out… well, it didn’t take long for their savannah-acclimated constitution to expire in the ice cave.” He said, his breath misting in the cold.

Millions of men and women from all over the world had come to conquer the mountain, in the name of the Light or the Lune. But in the end, the mountain was the sole victor. Scarred, beaten, with a couple hundred meters less than it had before the war, but still soaring above the world, never forgotten. Which was more than could be said for the thousands of souls lost amongst its endless hills, its deep caves and permafrost. It’s why they were here after all.

Tyras sifted through the fire’s ash. They had survived for a good few days. How many opportunities had either of them had to slit the other’s throat as they slept?

“When the last fire died out and the cold began to overtake them, they held each other for the last vestiges of warmth their bodies provided. And there they died, in each other’s arms, futilely protecting their mortal enemy from the cold.”

Tyras thought of how they’d held each other. Somehow it seemed more than a mere search for warmth. Their snouts were in the crook of each other’s chests, the lioness holding the hyena protectively and soothingly, like one would hold a sobbing babe.

Tyras said a quick prayer for the lioness. The hyena, as he wasn’t Fakonan, it didn’t seem appropriate to do the same.

“May your soul find its way back to your homeland’s warm deserts.” He said to the dead man.

His brother and the guide remained silent. Crixus was muttering a prayer himself. Basilius was quietly scribbling a coal against the map.

“Well, Mr. Maloko… you were the one to find this alcove. You get to name it.” The old bat said simply, blowing smoke from his pipe.

Tyras looked back at the two enemies who still yearned to cling to each other for warmth that would never come even in death.

“Lovers’ Hall.”