The Freljord is damning proof that the universe, when not actively trying to kill you, is content to just make you uncomfortable. After a year in this frozen, white desert, I have compiled a mental list of its failings. Item one: the colour palette, a depressing variation of white, bluish-grey, and the occasional red of blood on snow. Item two: the menu, a monotonous ode to elnuk meat. Item three, and the most irritating: the cold. It is not an ordinary cold. It is a sentient cold with territorial ambitions, one that seeps into your clothes, freezes your thoughts, and hampers the circulation of Qi, demanding twice the effort for a foundational meditation.
My life, which had once been a cosmic saga, had become a thermal engineering project. Morgana and I, wrapped in layers of leather and fur, had found refuge in a cave on the edge of the territory of Grena's Avarosan tribe. We were the outsiders, tolerated for our usefulness but never truly part of the whole.
But a year is a long time on the ice. And trust here isn't earned with words, but with deeds. Morgana, with her magic and medicinal knowledge, had become a figure of reluctant respect, the Hjør-vord the Keeper of Shadows. I, on the other hand, had found an unlikely ally.
"Come on!" Ashe's voice pulled me from my thoughts. She was at the entrance to our cave, her face flushed from the cold, a small wooden bow on her back. "Warmother Grena said the Snow-Hares are active today. If we're quick, we can catch one for supper!"
Ashe, now nine to my seven, was the only child in the tribe who didn't look at me as if I were a ghost or a bad omen. Her loneliness, being one of the few her age, had met mine, the loneliness of being unique in the entire universe.
"Snow-Hares," I repeated with a tone of profound disdain. "Pathetic creatures whose only defence is to look like a mound of snow and run in zig-zags. It's a waste of energy."
"It's food," she retorted with irrefutable Freljordian logic. "And it's fun! Unless you'd rather stay here meditating and talking to yourself again."
She was referring to my internal debates with Eos.
[Statistically probable: yes. But in a socially acceptable way in this culture.]
I sighed theatrically. "Fine. But if I twist my ankle, it will be entirely your fault and the fault of your glorified hunt for fluffy-tailed furballs."
I followed her outside. Her 'game' was, in truth, training. Every step in the deep snow was calculated, every glance at the trees searched for signs. She led me to an area of low rocks.
"You stay here," she whispered, handing me a fistful of smooth stones. "When I whistle, throw the stones at the rocks to your left. The noise will make them run towards me."
"An ambush," I observed. "Tactically sound. A bit of an over-kill for a hare, but I appreciate the professionalism."
She rolled her eyes and vanished into the shadows of the trees. I stood there, the cold biting my cheeks. The wait was familiar. In another life, I had waited for days in similar conditions, but the target had been an ice wraith, not a rodent.
I heard the whistle, a sharp sound like a snow finch. I threw the stones as instructed. There was a rustle and a white blur bolted… in the opposite direction from Ashe. Seconds later, she reappeared, looking frustrated.
"It got away!"
"Clearly," I said. "Your theory was sound, but you failed to account for the animal stupidity factor. The hare did not react logically to the auditory stimulus."
She huffed. "It's not science, Azra'il, it's hunting!" She flopped down in the snow, disheartened. "I'm never going to be a good Warmother like my mother."
I sat down beside her. "Is your mother a good leader?"
"The best! She's strong, imposing… and everyone listens to her."
"And she has a lot of 'hearth-bounds' around," I observed, testing the concept I still found bizarre.
Ashe laughed. "Of course! A Warmother needs lots of strong arms to protect the tribe." The concept of multiple parents was as natural to her as breathing. For me, whose only consistent parental figure was a winged woman who was probably still figuring out how she felt about me, it was fascinating.
"Mine went out for milk and never came back," I said, recycling my standard joke.
As always, her reaction was immediate and full of misplaced compassion. "Oh, Azra'il… Morgana must have been so sad to be left." She looked at me with pity. "But she has you. You protect each other. That's what matters."
Before I could reply, I heard a different sound. Not a hare. Something heavier. "Be quiet," I whispered, holding up a hand.
Using my Qi perception, I felt the approaching life-flow. It was large, annoyed, and… trapped. "That way," I pointed.
We found a young Elnuk, one of its legs caught in a crude hunting trap, likely left by the Winter's Claw. It was struggling, panic in its eyes.
Ashe instinctively raised her bow. It was an easy kill, a guaranteed meal.
"Wait," I said. I walked slowly towards the animal, my hands visible. "There is no honour in killing something that is already defeated." I spoke the words I'd heard Grena say once.
Using a sharp stone, with Ashe watching nervously, I managed to cut the rope of the trap. The Elnuk, free, looked at us for a second, confused, then bolted, vanishing into the forest.
"We… we let it go," Ashe said, her voice full of awe.
"We didn't let it go," I corrected. "We freed it from a dishonourable trap. Today, it lives. Tomorrow, if you are a skilled hunter, you may face it in a fair hunt."
Ashe looked at me with newfound respect. "You speak like a Warmother."
That night, the tribe's trust was tested and solidified once and for all. A terrible blizzard swept down from the mountains, a wall of wind and ice that threatened to bury the animal shelters. Panic began to set in.
It was my chance to apply theory. I felt the flow of the wind, the chaotic energy of the storm. I didn't try to stop it; that would have been foolish. Instead, I found the 'riverbed', the natural path the storm wanted to take. It was a narrow gorge, just north of the settlement. "The shelters are in the wrong place," I said to Grena, my voice firm. "The wind wants to pass through there. We have to move the animals to the southern caves."
She looked at me, then at the fury of the storm. She trusted Morgana's healing, but this… this was different. It was a huge risk. But the desperate look from Ashe, who believed in me, was what convinced her. The tribe moved the animals, a frantic operation amidst the howling wind. And I was right. The blizzard passed like a furious river through the gorge, leaving the area of the caves relatively untouched.
The respect I earned that night was silent, but absolute. I was no longer the strange child. I was the 'Little Wind-Sage'. A dreadfully dramatic title, in my opinion.
The invitation to the Great Bonfire was the final seal of our acceptance. Sitting beside Ashe, eating Elnuk (from a fair hunt), Morgana looked more relaxed than I had ever seen her. And then the storyteller began, his voice a low thunder that seemed to resonate with the ice itself. He told the legend of the Bridge of Frozen Moonlight and of Hjorthar, the elk-spirit who guarded it.
Ashe was wide-eyed, rapt in the magic of the tale. And I, I was listening with a different intensity. My mind was cross-referencing: the ancient melody Morgana had sung, the scraps of history from the golem's book, and the data I had been collecting myself. The storyteller mentioned the bridge, a structure that spanned the "chasm between worlds", and described it as being forged "not by man, but by a hammer that shook the mountain itself".
Later, while most slept, Ashe and I sat on our usual rock. The aurora borealis danced in the sky, a curtain of green and violet silk.
"I'm going to unite the tribes one day," she said, her voice full of a stubborn dream, almost painful in its purity. "Like Avarosa wanted. Without war. We can be one people."
I looked at the girl who saw unity where everyone else saw only clans, blood-feuds, and winter.
"What about you, Azra'il?" she asked, her eyes reflecting the dance in the sky. "What's your dream?"
To survive. To find a place where I don't have to lie about what I am. To understand why I keep coming back to this endless cycle. The answers were many, and none of them could be spoken to a Freljordian child.
So I pointed to the distant mountains, sharp black silhouettes against the aurora. "I dream of seeing what's on the other side of that bridge."
"The bridge from the stories of Hjorthar?" she whispered, awestruck. "But… it's just a story."
"All stories are true somewhere," I replied.
She didn't understand, but she accepted it. Friendship in the Freljord, I'd discovered, wasn't made of total comprehension, but of unconditional loyalty. It was knowing someone would watch your back while you slept. Morgana had given me a shelter. Ashe, for a brief, frozen moment in time, had given me a home.
But the bridge… the bridge had given me a renewed purpose. Adventure was calling, and it was terribly irritating.
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AUTHOR'S NOTES
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What did you think of the first appearance of a LoL champion other than Morgana? Do you know Ashe? Have you played her? I always miss the arrow when I use her Ult. ❄️🏹