Through the night, Nathanael’s mind refreshed. The thoughts of what happened in that lifeless crystal shrunk, but wouldn’t vanish completely for a while, especially that last vision…

“Find Primary Crystal, huh?” Nathanael muttered to himself.

“Did you say something?” Seth asked.

“Ah… i-it’s nothing.”

What did I see? What was that hallucination? Nathanael thought. It felt real. Like it was a real place. It was similar to the crystal that gave me those… horrible scenes. But it wasn’t that crystal, right? Perhaps it looked like that once? Are there more, some that are alive and glowing?

“…Mmhn,” Etta noised, “it’s co-”

“It’s cold, I know. Please just hang on for a while more.”

Etta drowsed about on Nat’s shoulders, the same state as ever. She managed to sleep through the night, the fire Seth created was wonderful for her comfort. The fire stayed lit for a while until Seth needed to light it up again when it was close to daytime. How the fire stayed alive for such a long time Nathanael didn’t know. He remembered seeing Seth throw some red-colored dust into the fire, making it bigger for the first few seconds, then it just stayed on.

Once the day started, Seth declared this venture had ended. The reasoning being they needed to create a new way up on the cliff.

We came here to find Etta’s home, right? Which I still don’t think is actually down here, these crystals just made that belief to be stronger. Who would want to live in this forest, definitely not me…

We don’t have enough supplies to go around the forest looking for a house that likely isn’t here, we need to go back, I agree on that.

Etta didn’t look troubled by the idea of going back. She didn’t say much, only nodding with the usual “Mm” response. Nathanael couldn’t know what she was thinking, and her expression was always the same, always sleepy.

I still don’t get it, how can she still be this drowsy? It has been a few nights since we found her, hasn’t she slept enough? Her energy is low every day, and she can barely walk. She is having enough food, that I know for sure. But is she actually sleeping at night? Is something making her awake? Is this some… disease? Nathanael shook his head. Maybe she’ll feel better when staying inside the house a while longer. I hope she will.

They found their way back to the cliff. The sleds were still there, nothing was stolen. One of the two sleds had its front broken after the incident with the cliff. Seth decided it wasn’t worth bringing that one back. They resorted to using the one and only sled for their supplies, Etta would hang on Nathanael as long as he could carry.

There was another way up on the cliff. It was a dangerous path, Seth told them, but it was the only way at this moment. They could also use climbing gear to climb up, but they decided to not try to scale the wall after the incident. It might be fine now, but they still didn’t go for it, and lifting the sled would be a hassle also without the crane.

The path was quite far. If they would take short breaks, they might make it back home before sunset. Of course, if there were no complications or distractions along the way, then this travel should be easy. That thought was just a wish, though.

Following Seth towards their next destination, it has been lovely so far. The snowfall was light, the cold wasn’t deadly cold, and they still had enough time before night would arrive. They had the cliff on their right, the place they were trying to find would be on the cliff face, and shouldn’t be hard to spot. The forest was only a couple of meters away, the trees weren’t above them, so they could see the grey skies, not like it was helpful to see those depressing clouds.

Ice layer covered the entire cliff around the forest, and deep inside – close to a meter thick – was a rocky surface. Nathanael knocked on the ice, it was hard and smooth. He took a moment to look into the ice. Though there was no reflection, he could swear he saw something moving. Perhaps it was nothing, just how the stone looked behind it all, wavy cause of the ice layer. Perhaps just his mind playing tricks again.

A shiver ran down his spine. The forest was to his left, and would always be there until they found their way out. He didn’t want to look in that direction, but looking towards the ice wall made him feel like he saw that reflection of bark and branch, even though there isn’t enough light to cause that effect.

That forest of crystals, he wouldn’t want to return. Not for a while.

Ice. That is what this path was. Only ice. The walls on either side, the ceiling, the ground with no snow, it was all ice.

They entered what looked to be a cavern inside the cliff face, the path Seth led them to. Supposedly it would lead upwards, above the forest, and enter the plains of snow once again. It was mostly a slope going up, it would have been impossible to climb it without the crampons Seth has given him. The spiked boots helped greatly, yet it was still hard with Etta on his back, who was sleeping soundly. How she felt comfortable there and in this situation, Nathanael wouldn’t know.

Not only was it just an ice cavern, to their right was a long crevasse. It wasn’t known how deep it was, and Nathanael wasn’t going to take a glance down there, he felt better hugging the left wall with Seth. The path was close to a meter wide, staying side by side would be too dangerous. The crevasse itself was wider, meaning the room was rather large, but again, they couldn’t use all that room for themselves.

Nat took the lead, he managed to get the drowsy Etta to walk by him while holding each other’s hands. Balance was important here, and Nathanael wouldn’t want Etta to suddenly sway and make him lose his footing. Seth was behind, dragging the sled along. Having the sled in front of Nathanael and Etta would only cause another misfortune to happen if Seth’s rope snapped, causing the sled to slide towards the two, and most likely the crevasse would welcome them.

This cave was warmer than the outside, and there was light coming from the exit which was still not visible. Many curves were needed to take before they could see the actual exit of this ice cavern. And sometimes the crevasse would end, and the cave either shrunk drastically in size or slightly got bigger. Then a dreadful moment when there was only a central path, and a deadly fall on either side with no wall to cling onto. But thankfully the path itself was wider than normal, and that moment of fear ended quickly.

How long was this cavern? The slope didn’t curve that much, so they weren’t ascending as fast as they would on the cliff. And there were times the slope would end up as flat ground, causing longer moments to go higher.

Their pace didn’t falter. There was no misstep. It all went smoothly. And by the time Nathanael thought they weren’t going to find their way out, the exit emerged by the next corner. The entire cave was just one long hallway, with no other routes to get lost in. How this tunnel came to be was unknown to Seth. Either somehow man-made or rarely natural. Perhaps through time, it became what it is.

“Phew… We finally made it back,” Nathanael said with relief.

To the plains of snow… Don’t know why I’m happy about that though…

“Yeah, but I believe we won’t make it back home before night falls.”

Nathanael turned back at the old man. Etta shivered and nearly fell, but Nathanael picked her back up and put her on his shoulders.

“Didn’t you say we had enough time?”

“I haven’t traveled through that cave for a long time, I wasn’t certain of how long it would take. The sun is already close to its high point, and we are too far away to reach the house in time.”

“How far exactly?”

“Over fifty kilometers. That’s over twelve hours of continuous walk. Going through the cave made us further away than going straight up the cliff. And when we were following the cliff to find the cave made us even further away.”

“Then why didn’t we climb it!?”

“Nathanael, I wouldn’t go this way without a plan. Just follow me, I know a place we could sleep through the night.”

Seth began leading the way once again, and they followed his path. Once again the old man somehow knows his way around, even in a place he said he hasn’t traveled through in a long time.

The mountains were visible, and they were walking away from them. The only visible landmark, the forest wasn’t to be seen, neither the cliff’s edge. No crystals protruding from the ground either. Only the giant mound of aging rocks and the abstracted distance Nathanael couldn’t see through. The plains of snow were always the same.

An unsettling feeling rose within Nathanael once he took a glance in the direction where the cliff and forest should be. As if someone, or something, was following. Invisible eyes stared, telling him with no words to come back. Beckoning him with no existence to find what he saw before.

The Primary Crystal, find it. That is what lingered in his mind. Not a thought of his own. An illusion perhaps. An after-effect from the gasses coming from the crystal’s slits.

“I don’t want to go back in there. Not after… that.”

The place Seth told about was another village, similar to the one they explored a few days ago. Desolate ruins, structures damaged through time, and harsh storms. Roofs and walls missing, other houses with nothing but their withering foundation. But luckily there was a small house that had enough walls, and a somewhat intact roof, to keep the wind and snow away.

A fire was lit inside the fireplace, Seth threw in that red dust to keep it alive. He had a small pouch of this substance, he only needed a small amount.

“The red dust you throw into the fire, what is it?”

“Maroon-dust, it’s a common mineral found in caverns far from here. It is mostly crushed to these small amounts for campfires. It allows the fire to stay alive longer than it usually does. But I can’t go into full details on how it actually works, I’m no scientist.”

Nathanael was surprised he got an answer from him. He was fully ready to be ignored and silenced. If he got a clear answer this time, maybe he could get more.

“Have you always been alone? Besides having Lydia around, did you go around on your journey with others?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t be alive if I started going out by myself.”

“Are they… still around?”

A heavy silence. Perhaps a subject the old man wouldn’t want to talk about. But as the fire crackled, the only source of noise that could be heard for the seconds Nathanael waited, Seth actually continued.

“I did have a group that I ventured with for the longest of times. They were the greatest people I have ever known. Through tall mountains and low caverns, the four of us went to every corner possible, to every place this world allowed. Through expanding sands and fields of grass, through decaying structures and toxic fogs, through broken lands and a deep abyss, through this land of snow and shattered realms. We’ve gone to every place imaginable.”

The words felt familiar. Though Nathanael hasn’t heard it before, he knew he had a feeling of knowing what he spoke of. On the first day when entering the studio, seeing those eight giant paintings. That is what reminded him. Those paintings were all obscured and abstract, like the land itself.

“You remember what I said before, that I was an adventurer,” Seth continued. “That is what the four of us did, go out and journey across the lands. To find the secrets that would lead us to the last chapter of this… story of ours. But even we kept secrets from each other, though we wanted to share, we couldn’t. Such an awful rule.”

“Who were they? If I may ask.”

“One man, the toughest of us all, he who would do whatever it takes to keep us safe if we would ever be in danger. Another who was the sharpest and the most talkative of us all, she was also bright and smart. And the third…” He hesitated. “The boy who would always run in first, to scout ahead and seek out any dangers. He was always the one to find our way. Then there was me, the leader. Though I wasn’t really good at most things, I managed to keep everyone together, and I was the one to set a course for our next adventure.”

“What happened? Why are you alone out here? Why aren’t you with them?”

You need to stop asking, Nathanael, he thought. I shouldn’t go too far in his past.

“Our path wasn’t at all safe, as you might have noticed in the forest. Everywhere and everything could be considered dangerous. This world isn’t as generous to us as it is to some others. Perhaps it wants you dead and makes your track harder than ever. If you are close to your answers, it wouldn’t bother to kill you sooner or later. It has been years of fortune, but the last adventure was the end of our journey.”

Nathanael listened, he didn’t get distracted by anything around him. He wanted to know as much as he could about Seth. This man still holds many secrets that he would most likely keep for himself. Etta didn’t seem to notice the conversation, she was too busy closing in on the fire, Nathanael did need to drag her slightly away from it so she wouldn’t get burned.

“So you really want to know why they aren’t around anymore?” Seth continued. Nathanael gave a slightly hesitant nod. “It happened here, in the land of snow, our last adventure. We went as deep into this land as we could, the furthest anyone has managed. Way beyond the horizon, a place infested by crystal plains, somewhere there we found ruins of an old structure. This giant structure had rich information, data, and details of what caused… this land to become what it is now. But it was also a bloody deathtrap.”

There was another painting inside the house Nathanael remembered from the first day of exploring, a painting of four people, but Seth’s young face was the only one that wasn’t scribbled over or abstracted. Nathanael wanted to know the reason for hiding their faces like that, but first, he wanted to hear the rest of Seth’s story.

“Just reaching the ruin was hell. The crystal plains weren’t at all kind, they all glowed and produced the gasses which make you go nuts. You likely know what I mean by that. Yet we trudged through it all with our gas masks, we had enough air supply to go in and out, but we wasted too much time on fighting the enemy.”

“Enemy? What enemy?”

“Not only do the crystals produce foul air, but also entities that sound like breaking glass and glimmering crystals. Their eyes were endless, surrounding us, coming at us with their lust for hunger.”

Yet again, he’s talking with abstracted words.

“We have rarely fought these beings before, and with little information about them caused one of us to become badly injured. We knew they only walked among the crystals, so we pulled each other together and ran towards the snow. The man who kept us out of danger bled heavily, yet he still kept himself alive, because he needed to be alive to keep us alive. We trudged on, still hearing the echoes of horrors behind us until we found the ruins. We knew once we entered we didn’t have enough air to go back, one of the masks was badly damaged, and the filters on it were in no good condition. And the use of the masks increased once the ruins itself vented the foul air out of the vents.”

“Wait, the ruins, was it surrounded by the glowing crystals?”

“No, it wasn’t, only snow, the crystals were far from the old structure.”

The painting had no crystals outside, so I was right on that.

“Then how would the toxic gas be inside?” Nathanael asked.

“Because the people of old who worked in that place had one of the living crystals deep within the ground, most likely to use as research, but that went most likely downhill. Even the crystal entities were abundant. Yet, knowing that, we still wanted to get what we wanted from this place. Leaving empty-handed would’ve hurt our reputation. And besides, we have encountered horrible things in the past, so we thought it wouldn’t be as hard as the other places. Oh how we were wrong, and oh how we were unprepared.”

Nathanael waited for more. He tried to visualize everything that the old man has uncovered, some bits still rather obscure and odd, but he listened and understood some nonetheless. And he was even amazed he managed to get this much from him, he wanted to know more, to learn more, to keep shrinking the thoughts of everything he saw yesterday. But there was only silence for a while.

“What then?” Nathanael asked.

Seth sighed. “I realized I said too much. I can’t say what happened inside there.”

And there it was. The story Nathanael pictured in his mind vanished. The joy of hearing more about his past became less. Disappointed, confused, the old man couldn’t just stop it right there, he needed to finish!

“What? Why? But what happened?”

“I’m impressed how much I was allowed to say, why didn’t it try to stop me?” Seth muttered to himself.

“Seth? What are you talking about?”

“This is the end of my story, for now, perhaps another day.”

So that is how things are going to be, again. Nathanael felt lost, the emptiness needed to fill, the story needed to go on. Yet he wasn’t going to pull a nerve, he didn’t make him irritated nor angry. Yet he still needed to understand one thing.

“They were… dear to you, right?” Nathanael managed to say.

“Of course, why wouldn’t they be?”

“Then… why are their faces hidden inside your house?”

Silence. No noises, once again. Only the crackling flames. Etta still had no idea what was happening behind her, she continued to shiver and heat up against the fireplace.

“Heat up against the flame, Nathanael, the snow isn’t kinder as I am.”

Ignored. Perhaps that is how things are going to continue to be. Seth won’t speak. It was a miracle for him to say as much as he did, but he eventually stopped.

There were still a few hours left before dusk. They took the time to look around the soulless village. Yet nothing of value was found. And no words were exchanged.