It was a cold afternoon when Andryn was shaken awake by her colleague, Irene.

"We're near," she said. She handed Andryn's coat to her as she coaxed her out of her slumber.

Irene brought Andryn to the bridge. There, they could find where they are more clearly. The boat briskly sailed on the briny deep. The afternoon sun washed the world in soft light, but even with the heat the sun above provides, it wasn't quite enough to raise the arctic air above freezing. Icebergs and ice floes floated placidly on the sea, while grey blobs of clouds punctuated the endless blue above.

Irene pointed to the ice wall to their right. It was a great cliff constructed from ancient ice. Andryn was at awe at the sight, the sight of the wall of ice, looming so high that even a kilometer or two away, they still had to crane their neck to view the top. Yet, this great glacier before them wasn't the reason why they're here, the thing they're after, their destination; it was in fact a cave.

It was inset just ahead of them, carved into the great icy wall. It was a large cave, large enough for five of their vessel to sail through. Entering the cave, they entered a world of darkness. The walls around them gleamed with the fading light of the sun behind them as though the very walls were made of crystal. Light passing through layers upon layers of translucent ice filled the walls with ethereal faint light, but such glow did not provide enough illumination to truly dispel the darkness.

Irene went to the helmsman to discuss their travel through the frozen cave while Andryn continued to admire the frozen tunnel they were moving through. The vessel had since turned its floodlights on, shining a cone of light unto the darkness ahead. It was quite remarkable for the cave to be so cave-like despite being carved from ice. Icicles dripping from the roof formed stalactites and stalagmites similar to those found in rocky caves. Strange frozen formations hung around them, distorted and bent like wax that had been softened.

Andryn looked up to the roof and examined the ice. The surface of the ice bore regular bumps similar to the surface of the sea. It gave the impression of waves upon the ice, rolling waves that had been trapped in the frozen embrace of the ice walls. The thought of going through a tube with walls made of sea sent shivers down her spine.

They had traveled far through the cave. It was bending and twisting like a snake, but it would soon come to an end. A light had reemerged in the cavern ahead, warm syrupy light. It was the sun. It was sunlight filtering through the end of the cave; glorious life-giving pale-yellow light shining a ray of hope into their sunless ship.

They exited out of the cave and found themselves in a large ice cavern. A large hole was carved upon its top, letting sunlight filter into the cavern. Ahead was a gentle shore, leading to the first solid surface since they entered the cave that wasn't composed of ice. Crushed rock and gravel composed the cavern floor while water submerged half of the cavern's floor area. Tributaries carried water from the melting ice walls to the cave. Snow and slush pile into large mounds, covering significant amounts of the dry ground. Sprigs and sprouts of hardy arctic flora occasionally broke the barren ground.

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They disembarked from their vessel and set foot upon the gravelly shores. Andryn, Irene, Skipper, and Alendrin, stepped forth to the ground that had long since been lost to the tides of time. They shook, not because of the cold that permeated the cavern, but from the excitement coursing through their veins. The camera in Andryn's hand shook as she shot a video of their arrival in this land long since thought lost. Irene set up some surveying equipment by the side.

On the other side of the cavern stood a once prosperous city. In its storied past, it had buildings that stood four storeys high in the least and were constructed out of dark stone and steel, but the ravages of time had since crushed the edifices to rubble. Piles upon piles of broken masonry littered the grounds before them. The steel in their bones and all the things that could rot had been destroyed by nature in the intervening millennia. But in spite of all the methods that nature has employed to completely erase the city from the face of the earth, half of the city was still well-preserved in ice. Encased within the glacial prison, the shapes of the ancient buildings were protected by layers upon layers of rock-hard ice, albeit in a slightly crushed state.

They had searched for this place for many years, but they could never quite locate it. It was then they realized that the city was no longer where it was when it was constructed. The glacier that had encased it had since flowed downhill from its original mountain home until it was left in its current place, here under the ice near the sea.

"I can't believe it," Andryn remarked. "I couldn't believe that we would ever find the Ancient City, right here, right now."

Irene pat her shoulder and said, "Neither could I, but just because you couldn't believe it, doesn't stop it from being real." Andryn could only nod at her words.

She gazed icy wall in the distance and all the structures encased within their frosty embrace. The stresses and inexorable movement of the ice had warped and distorted the buildings within, but even then, they were remarkably intact; their general structure and shape were preserved.

The edifices of the ancient city stood proud yet defeated yond the surface of the ice wall. They stand proud in a frozen world yet their walls were bent and distorted by undeniable forces. In the distance, farther in, so far in that only blurry impressions could be glimpsed from the cavern. The crew reckons that it's some sort of cathedral or chateau. It stood higher and grander than all the buildings around, sporting what appears to be flying buttresses and many large glass windows. Spires upon spires extended upon its roofs. The spires were like swords, slicing through the ice. They rose higher than the cathedral's was high, so high in fact, that its tippy tops may be visible on the surface.

Tears popped out as she drank the sight with her eyes. Alendrin approached the frozen cave wall with a metal spike and a hammer. The ancient rubble crunched beneath his armored boots until he stood face to face, mere armslengths away, to the icy wall. He placed the spike by the ice, and gently tapped its head with his hammer.