Along an isolated range of mountains in the frigid northern coast of an unclaimed land, spring came. First to the valleys, thawing rivers, and renewing streams that had, until recently, been frozen beneath a carpet of snow. Fuzzy dark green moss and thick carpets of stone-colored lichen were the first of the hardy mountain plants to renew their slow march of life, awoken from their sleep like many of the animals they shared this mountain with, by the warming of the air and melting of the frost. While much of the snow still persisted in the shaded areas, for the first time in months the mountain range showed more color than the white of snow and the dark grey of broken slate.
The green of a small patch of grass growing between two stones, reaching up as if to grasp the sun. A quick brown blur as a skrat left its den for the first time this year, surveying the area to see if it's safe to wake the rest of his family. A splash of red blood as the skrat learned, quite without warning, that he wasn't alone in leaving his den. The glint of bronze as untrained hands part the skrat from its hide. The crystal blue of engorged mountain lakes, shedding their skin of ice like a junsk sheds its scale-skin when it reaches adulthood.
Vizsha stood from his work and wiped his bloody hands on one of the last snowbanks this deep in the valley. Surveying his work, he removed his junsk hide parka sweating from the exertion of breaking down a creature the size of a man into pieces that could fit on his sled. Looking at his handiwork Vizsha clicked his tongue and sighed sitting heavily on the ground next to his sled. Leaning his back against the sleds frame he hefted the heavy hukar in his hands. It was a thing of beauty. All hukars are made from the tusks junsks shed when they reach adulthood. Once shed they were flattened, hardened, dried, shaped, sharpened, then capped. The final hukar only shared a small resemblance to the tusk it started as. It was to Vizsha a beautiful thing; twice as long and half as wide as his hand, fire blackened, curved bone with inlaid bronze edges and intricate carvings exposing the bright white of the bone beneath. The hukar showed the story of his people, their forced exile, and eventual salvation found in these mountains. Looking at it Vizsha could only think of how better the weapon fit in the hands of his father.
Sighing and complaining of soreness in his joints and the fire in his muscles Vizsha raised himself to his feet again and got to work storing the skrat meat hide and bones on his sled. With this warmer weather he will have to smoke most of the meat over the next few days on his way back home. Groaning again at the prospect of the work ahead of him Vizsha hurried to finish loading the sled only stopping long enough to say in his best impersonation of the elder "Now Viz, I've told you how many times now, any man worth his sled can skin a skrat in one piece leaving only the hole his spear made." Looking down at the two ragged pieces of hide strapped to the sled he started to count the holes he could see but stopped after he ran out of fingers to poke through furry holes his untrained hands left in the hide.
With a grunt of effort, he grasped the bone handles of his sled and began to push it upwards. Taking a sled this deep into the valleys usually meant a lot of work getting it back to the peaks and this time was no exception. Vizsha pushed the sled with all his weight, moving it from patch of snow to patch of snow as he climbed higher and higher out of the valley and back into the safety of the peaks.
The rhythm of his steps began to fade drowned out by his panting breaths as he struggled with the too-thick air. Even the sound of his boots plodding on the loose stone scree began to fade as his mind wandered. He thought to thank the ancestors for the "man weight" he had put on in the last few years, knowing if he were any smaller some of the inclines would have forced him to unload the whole sled and carry all his cargo up the grade by hand. He thought about the air and how glad he was to be returning to the air of his home, not thick and soupy like the air became in some of these deeper valleys. The air in the Lowlands was even thicker, or so he had been told by his brother last winter. Thinking of his brother brought to mind his own predicament and that of his tribe. Attempting to keep his mind on the task at hand, he put aside the difficult thought and pushed on.
Pausing in the saddle of a low pass Vizsha took a drink from his waterskin and he surveyed the rocky windswept valley he had just climbed out of. It was by far the least covered in snow of all the valleys he had traveled these last few days. Boulders blanketed in moss and thick pads of grey fungus with short bone white stalks covered the ground where the snow had melted. Vizsha thought he could still see the sickly-looking bush that grew from the top of a boulder near where he killed the skrat and shuddered at the prospect. Any plants that big were a warning sign, if plants could find enough air to breathe then so could others. Bracing himself, he replaced his parka and began riding his sled down towards the next valley. He would feel much more comfortable when summer came and he would no longer have to come this deep into the valleys for game.
As Vizsha continued upwards, pushing his sled, he found himself lost in thought. He found himself letting his feet carry him upwards out of the valley and his sled downwards into the next. While gliding down a particularly steep patch of ice, moving towards the next valley, he was abruptly reminded of why the deep valleys were off limits during spring and summer.
Blood. Lots of it too. Fresh enough that he was certain it was from a kill today. He had been so lost in thought he hardly noticed the scene till he was right upon it. It was the carcass of a railm, well part of one anyway. Really just the head and better part of a shoulder could still be said to be intact. Its chest had been busted into and its fire heart had been eaten then, by the looks of it, most of its lower half had been pulled down the mountain to be eaten in comfort away from our thin air.
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Hand still on hukar but confident that whatever had killed this creature couldn't still be close or he would definitely know, he quietly approached moving quickly and guarded as he gathered what clues he could about the thing that must have traveled from the Lowlands all the way up here for an easy kill. The fact that anything big enough to hunt a railm came this high up in the mountains worried him greatly. The mountains are his tribes last and greatest defense.
Most of the body missing, the railm didn't appear as monstrous as usual, still the skull alone dwarfed the yurt his family lived in Vizsha drew his hukar as he left his sled behind him walking close to the corpse. Closer the size difference became even more apparent. Railms almost never are hunted, there really isn't anything in the mountains big enough to kill one. A full grown railm is often 16 sed tall (*one sed is approximately 2.5 meters long) [40 meters (130 ft)]. Well long really as Railms were not strong enough to support themselves upright for more than a minute or two. They spent a majority of their time moving from valley to valley, stripping the rocks bare of moss and lichens, eating fungal mats bare, and eating any animal dumb enough to get close to their heads. They had 2 arms and 2 legs but from any distance they looked like they were much too small to support their hulking weight but it wasn't till you got close that you saw their limbs were several times thicker than the chest of a man, ended in hands bunched in fists the size of a full grown junsk. They were covered in thick blubber below a hard white skin, but by far the most disconcerting thing about them was how they moved, slowly dragging their bloated bellies along the ground with their legs splayed around them. Ever so slowly these horrible creatures drug their gargantuan bodies from valley to valley looking for any food they can eat in the thaw and hibernating in place beneath the snow in winter.
As he circled the corpse he could nearly hear the elders soft dry words, smell the reek of fire blood and old suka on his breath as he spoke, horns scratching the ceiling of the yurt as he leaned forward to tell his stories to the captivated group of pups sitting eagerly on the ground in front of the bone and skrat fur chair he rested on.
"Many generations ago our people lived in the lands of endless ice and water." Vizsha stepped over a cord the size of his arm connecting the empty eye socket with a deflated eye several times larger than himself. "We lived many generations happy there. We lived on the lifeblood of the junsk and the sea." The first time he heard the story Vizsha had asked what the sea was. He hadn't quite been satisfied with his sisters’ assessment that it was a really big lake but the elder only laughed and agreed that yes it was in fact a very, very, big lake.
Vizsha approached the side of what was left of the railm’s face. Once close enough he removed the hukar from his hip and tried to pry the object that had caught his attention free from the thick skull. Finally, with the sound of stone cracking the plate sized canine broke loose from the skull.
"But we were young and forgetful. We didn't know so much about the world We were a part of." Remembering the story Vizsha could almost smell the burning junsk oil lamps, the smell of bodies packed inside a yurt for far too long, the smell of too much suka alcohol on the elder’s breath, the smells of any long winter.
"We didn't know. How could we? How could we know the air was so thick it strangled our minds and poisoned our bodies? How could we know that the gods we worshiped were not dead, only asleep?" The Last words were a drunken jumble mumbled into the beard of an old man. In the silence that followed everyone found themselves holding their breath, feeling as if they breathed to loudly the gods themselves would find them again. Suddenly a cry shocked the room as Vizsha's youngest brother Hebo screamed for a teat. The whole room seemed shook for a moment but soon the baby was quieted, his demands momentarily met. The room was significantly subdued after, the adults talked in hushed tones over games of luck or skill. The elder stroking his beard with one hand, swirling his skin of suka with the other, did not seem to be eager to continue his sorry but that didn't stop the restless children trapped inside for months on end from wanting to hear the rest.
"Come on Boab! Why did our ancestors settle here? It's because the air is thin up here right?" Said Vizsha’s older brother Jamb, desperate to be the elders favorite.
The elder stirred from his thoughts and managed to give a lopsided smile to Jamb’s pleading expression. "Yes, it's because the air, but I'm not there yet. Let me finish." Taking another long pull of fermented junsk milk the elder continued his story. "At the time the greatest of our gods was Halmund. Halmund was said to hear any prayers that were spoken to him and to be able to make junsk birth healthy pups." At this point his younger sister Haka burst in having waited all she could to ask her question "ImSorryButWhatsAGod?" She asked in one word.
Turning the corners of his mouth down the elder paused for a moment and answered the question "Gods are a bit like ancestors. They hear you when you pray but unlike ancestors, they weren't supposed to provide advice or counsel. They provided you with power and nourishment. A drop of their blood and a man could do the most miraculous things. A skin of their milk could keep you fed for many days on the ice. A spear made with their bone was said to never miss a target. A parka made from their hide would keep you warm even on the coldest nights. But all of that was useless compared to their blood. Now children what do we know about blood?" His last sentence came out clear as a bell and stony eyed sober. At once the four kids sat up straight and belted out together in practiced unison "Blood begets power. Power begets death. Death feeds them." As they spoke these nine words together all other conversation in the yurt stopped for a brief moment as the adults around the room paused their conversations, all eyes on the children, making sure that this lesson was heard. The elder grunted affirmative and took another healthy swig before returning to his story.
Vizsha found himself sitting against his sled again, leaning back against the cargo he hardly noticed the skrat blood seeping onto his clothes as he turned the tooth around in his blood spotted hands. Once around the head and shoulder Vizsha hadn't been surprised to see the bloody drag marks leading deeper into the valley. Whatever had made this kill had probably drug its’ prize down to the Lowlands to eat his kill in comfort. Again, he found his eyes drawn to the tooth. "I've never seen anything nearly this big. And by the looks of the markings this is one of its smaller teeth." Vizsha said to himself in a low whisper. In the dead quiet of the moss-covered slope of loose rocks the whispers seemed much too loud for comfort. Catching himself he berated his stupidity. While whatever had killed the railm must be gone, this much blood would attract every scavenger for valleys astound. Vizsha picked himself up quickly and decided it wouldn't be safe to stop again till he was firmly in the peaks.