The morning was bitterly cold. So it always was, there in the northernmost reaches of Bāranok. Such were the mornings, and the afternoons, and the evenings, all discernible from the last only by the gradual crawl of the watery sun across the wretched sky. The blue was always as pristine as the hue of a robin's egg, at least when distanced from the northern arm of the Mountains of Dusk. When the eye meandered to the heavens above the towering, forbidding mountains, there first arose a chilling white. Not the white of a snow-swathed peak bathed in the starlight of a glimmering moon, but rather the pallor of an old man struck suddenly with the unforgiving talons of Death.

And then, above this white that layered the mountains' glimmering faces, there descended a silver gloom, the gloom that one might encounter when dangling above a raging inferno of crimson and gold; the fire atop the Mountains of Dusk, however, was instead lingering above the smoke. There, the clouds charred and blackened until they were utterly unrecognizable as such. One might mistake these beastly ghouls for a writhing tumult of the notoriously black dragon's blood, entangling itself in its own coils and then continuously roaring out its frustration in belligerent veins of white light that periodically lacerated the mass.

Durven's mind dwellt bleakly on such comparisons as he studied the thunderheads. They seem angrier today, he mused, resting a hand on his stubbly chin in thought, as though those blasted Witch Folk have angered the very elements themselves.

His breath clouded before him, finalizing its life in the death throes that erupted when he shook his head. Around him spread a barren landscape of all differentiations of the colors red, green, and gold. Scraggly bushes of purple and black protruded as jagged scars all across the landscape, interrupted frequently by glimmering gray stones. It was vibrant, demanding, an orchestra of color and hues, though one would be unable to tell in the wintertime, when a layer of snow often ten feet thick draped itself across the flatland. And then the tundra would fall into a deathlike trance of hibernation until the late reaches of spring awoke it once more. And thus it would be muddy and untraversable for another couple months, and then it would become as dry as a desert for the last month before the snows began to fall again.

It was good that they had arrived just before the last of the ground de-liquefied, or else poor Maffe would have sunken up to his beard in the muck. Durven's mouth turned upward at the thought of his companion's disgust. It was not often that one met a fastidious dwarf, but if ever there was one, it was Maffe. Maffe, who was so proficient with his battle-axe, cleanly decapitating anyone who dared to oppose his King. Or any King, for that matter, apart from the dark one. The Witch-King.

Durven shook his head again, glancing once more at the roiling cauldron of shadow and precipitation that hovered ominously above the pale faces of the Mountains of Dusk, then turned and started down the gentle face of the hill that he had mounted to examine the day's ride. Grimly, he thought, It's good that we aren't inclined to delve any deeper into that mess. Of course, I'd take that never-ending storm over Jovandur any day.

The hill was the only one to be seen for miles, and would offer at least some protection against the howling wind that plagued the plains at night. Durven had once asked one of his tutors, back in Ordrobis, what caused the skeletal land of Bāranok to be so windy after the sun sank below the horizon, and his tutor had answered vaguely about wind currents and cooling air, and said that he would learn more of it when he was older. On the condition that he continued an interest in science, of course, which he hadn't. Not only was it illogical, for no one could make a living out of science, but it was also somewhat dull. Of course there had been the initial surge of curiosity and excitement with every discovery, but eventually it had faded into a longing for sustenance not only for the mind, but also for the body. Thus, Durven had enlisted in High King Ordromil's ranks. Due to his lack of physical capacity, however, he was quickly dispatched as a messenger and spy. This suited him fine, especially when he was paired with Maffe, who (despite his complaints) was really quite capable of handling anything dangerous that came at them.

Maffe was still asleep, snoring with only the fervor that dwarves and some wild beasts could manage, and he had been since he had slunk into their makeshift tent the night before. Durven knew that the dwarf had drank too much; he always did at the end of any prolonged and arduous mission. They were destined to return to Ordrobis with news of the Witch Folk two days hence, and that had been enough to provoke a full-fledged celebration last night, just before the whispers of breeze had sprung. Unfortunately, it had also provoked Maffe into drinking half of the last barrel--barrel--of ale that he had insisted on bringing in place of water. Evidently, alcohol flowed deeper in the veins of dwarves than blood.

The thick canvas of the tent's flap rasped as Durven pushed it aside. Maffe was wrapped in a quilt, sprawled across both of their bedrolls. Mornings did not agree with the dwarf. The sun is well above the horizon now, you lazy lump, Durven thought fondly, at the same time nudging his friend with a foot. "Maffe!" he said, "Maffe, wake up! If I allow you to sleep any longer, we'll be stuck in Bāranok when the snows come!"

The dwarf groaned, stirring but only squeezing his eyes tighter. "M' head hurts..." he muttered, draping an arm across his eyes. He stopped stirring then, and his breathing began to deepen once more.

Durven bent down and took the rough cloth in his fingers. He whisked it away, jerking the dwarf's arm in the process. Maffe moaned again. "Up! Tomorrow is the last day before we leave. We cannot waste what time we have left!" With that, Durven turned and whisked out of the tent.

He knew that it would likely be another ten minutes at the least before Maffe finally showed his face again, and so he started packing up the few meager belongings they had left into saddlebags. The two horses that had borne them to these rainbow grasslands were standing at the base of the hill, along with the packhorse that they had deposited the majority of their luggage on. The beasts were grazing, heads bent toward the ground, tails flicking automatically whenever a fly chanced to land on a rump or leg. Durven's eyes scanned them, checking for any telltale signs of an intruder nearby, but the horses seemed to sense nothing.

Durven wandered in a circle around the remains of their campfire, pulling up the crude (but effective) cooking turner that he and the dwarf had fashioned, and then stomped on the cold ashes just to ensure that no sudden breeze would elicit a flame. A futile effort, he knew, but an important one nonetheless. After he was certain that the campfire was of no more use, he moved on to the small pile of baggage that they had unpacked and then returned it to its rightful place on the packhorse's back. The mare looked at him with solemn brown eyes.

He then moved on to the tent itself, dismantling it vertically from top to bottom. At this time, he heard a great deal of rustling coming from inside the tent, albeit with a few dwarvish curses mixed in, and a minute later Maffe emerged. He stood for a minute, blinking in the sunlight, and then muttered, "Had no idea it was so blasted early..." and moved to return inside. Durven caught his collar, however, and coaxed him into helping dismantle the tent with the promise of breakfast as soon as it was done.

He stayed true to his word, and soon they were stuffing the remains of some cold and stale biscuits into their mouths. Maffe had released a stream of curses and lunged for his battleaxe when he saw what Durven had meant by "breakfast," but they both knew that the movement was nothing more than a feign toward animosity. Thus the dwarf had begrudgingly snapped the flaky bread up and mounted Torren, his pony, while Durven climbed into Tempest's saddle.

The day's ride was much like every other day's: trying, battering, and ultimately tedious. Though Durven knew that the Mountains of Dusk, and the witch-tunnels therefore, would be within reach by late afternoon, it appeared as though the hills and the raging storm overhead remained just as far away as they had been early that morning. Durven was familiar with Jovandur's frustrating habit of drawing his patience to its limits, and yet he still could not halt the progression of his anxiety. They cantered onward; the mountains did not near. Why did we go out so far from them in the first place? The answer, he knew, was simple: they had not wanted to be spotted by any passing evil in the mouth of the tunnels, nor by any meandering around on the mountainsides.

Despite the apparent futility of the journey, Durven suddenly became aware of the change from tundra to inky, jagged stone beneath Tempest's hooves, and he looked up to see that the ominous eye of the storm was upon him. He drew Tempest back to a slow, plodding walk, and he heard Maffe do the same with Torren at his side. The horses' sides heaved, and their breath streamed out in front of them to create smaller versions of the wispy white overhead.

The Mountains of Dusk loomed up indifferently, casting a great eye of apathy down on any traveler that was unfortunate enough to pass at their feet. There were no foothills here; the midnight mountains simply rose up out of the monotony of the grassland's amicable hues like some colossal invaders come to destroy the land of the living. Their crowns were wreathed in the fiery thunderheads, and distant roars of thunder echoed throughout the mountains. A biting, antagonistic breeze sprung up as the clouds reached outward to wrench the watery remains of the sunlight and plunge them into a gray, colorless canvas. Where the grasslands had taken on a semi-habitable look, with the few dejected bushes and the constant twitter of birds, this place had a palpable deathlike feel. The back of Durven's neck and arms rose in goosebumps, evoked more from the dismal change in the landscape than from the hissing wind itself.

"Well, we're here," Maffe tittered. A dwarf tittering is a strange sound indeed, Durven thought brusquely. "And here we shall stay for tonight, and then tomorrow. Once we manage to crawl over all of this blasted asphalt to our hiding place at the shoulder of Jovandur, of course."

"Obsidian," Durven muttered, Maffe's sarcasm not lost in his pretense display of cheerfulness. He ducked his head to examine the ground as the three horses clopped onward. As before, there was no sign of life within the unusual rock formations. The dirt had been swallowed up by some ancient tidal wave of molten rock, belched forth from a dormant mountain of fire. And thus the lava had cooled, hardening into this ghoulish, glassy stone, wrinkled and scarred from the awkward positions that it had been trapped in. It had started abruptly and ended abruptly, caught in liquid-like formations, and therefore was called the Ebony Sea. The only sea to be found on land.

Maffe snorted astride Torren, sounding humorously like the horse. However, Durven could not bring himself to even crack a smile at the resemblance; the Ebony Sea had an uncanny air about it, one that had situated itself before the floodgates of the witch-tunnels centuries ago. Despite the Sea's poetic name and lore, it was anything but romantic. These were the lands that the dreaded First King had decided to settle in, and were shunned by all good folk of the world.

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