Legends of Runeterra

He turned in the air and tried again to break his fall, ramming the axe into the ice, but it slipped out of his hand and would have been lost if it hadn’t been held on by the wrist strap.

When death comes, do not shrink from it.

He dropped forty feet, zipping past Olar. His predecessor's flint eyes widened.

We are born from ice and return to ice.

“Hold on!” the old Iceborn warrior yelled, gripping his ice pick tightly and kneeling in preparation.

He saw Halla look up and form a curse as she realized he was about to fall right on top of her, and she quickly and surely drove the pick into the ice and moved sideways so he didn't knock her off the edge.

Then he was caught by the rope, and the sudden stop made his bones fall apart. He hit the ice wall hard, and the violent impact squeezed the air out of his lungs.

Olar roared and took Sigvar’s weight. But Stonefist’s hands held fast, his grip on the ice firm as iron.

Sigvar recovered quickly, hammering his ice pick into the wall and driving his toe spike deep into it. He glanced up at Halla Ice-Holder, who was staring at him with two soul-piercing eyes—one azure, one gray—as unblinking as the single eye painted on her forehead.

Her eyes were silently judging.

“We rest at the Bridge of Shadows,” she said at last, and continued her descent into the twilight. Sigvar cursed himself, his cheeks burning in the cold wind.

As Olar passed him, he gave him another toothy smile.

"You were a heavy bastard, Half-Quiver," he said. "You nearly took me down with you."

“The ice is breaking,” Sigvar said faintly. “I will do better.”

"By all means. I'll probably cut your rope next time."

Sigvar looked at the old warrior with a puzzled look. Olar had returned alone from his three previous expeditions to the Abyss. Was this the reason?

At the Bridge of Shadows, so called because the sun never sets below the horizon in midsummer, they unloaded their packs, untied their ropes, and reeled in their ice axes.

Olar lay down on the stone slabs, stretched dramatically, and leaned against the railing of the bridge. Halla stepped away from the two men, took a small black statue from around her neck, and placed it on the ground. She knelt before it and took a deep, reverent breath. Sigvar stood there like a stake, wondering if he should use this time to pray as well, but Olar beckoned him over and urged him to sit down.

He didn’t know how much older this elder was, but Olar must have been over sixty. He produced a small leather bag from nowhere. He unscrewed the cork, took a long sip, and sighed with satisfaction before handing it to Sigvar. The young warrior nodded in thanks, opened the leather bag, and drank a sip.

“The tears of the gods,” Olar said. “I am the only one on this side of the Spine.”

The nectar burned his throat and made his eyes wet. The tears that overflowed immediately froze on his face. He nodded in approval and returned the skin to Olar, who took another sip and hid the skin back in his fur vest.

The waterskins would have frozen the moment they passed the keep’s gates. They could have done without the water, but the strong drink was the lubrication that Sigvar’s throat soothed.

Olar’s ​​tattooed arms were still sticking out, and Sigvar shook his head, pulling his furs tighter around him.

"Aren't you cold, old man?" he said.

"The cold is coming, kid," Olar said with a malicious grin. "Compared to the cold that is coming, this is like a warm summer breeze."

Sigvar didn’t know if he was joking or not. He moved his bag aside and pulled out a small strip of salted meat. He opened the wax seal and broke off a frozen piece, handed it to Olar, and then broke off another piece for himself. He swirled it around in his mouth, thawing it until it was chewable. The meat was tough and tender, but it was a luxury at the moment.

Sigvar sat beside Olar, leaning against the low wall of the bridge, sheltered from the howling wind, though the wind itself was a blessing. It screamed above them, a horrible wail that swept tangled snow and ice across the bridge. Some said the sound was the screams of the thousands of Iceborn who had died in the final battle, their spirits trapped in this chasm forever since the days of heroes long ago.

"It's a scary sound, isn't it, kid?" Olar said. "It gets into your head after a while."

“Is it like this all the way down?”

Olar shook his head. "It would be nice if it was. No, it was as quiet as a cemetery near the bottom."

"That's definitely better than this..."

"Of course you would think so, wouldn't you? But silence is worse. That kind of silence is heavy. Heavy as if you were wearing a full body of chain mail. No, I'd choose this over anything else."

Halla finished her prayer and returned to the two of them, sitting next to Olar. She took a long sip of Olar's skin and wiped her mouth with the back of her glove.

"How come you always have the best stuff, Stonefist?" Her words made Olar snort in laughter.

"It must be my charming charm," he replied.

"I fully deny that," she deadpanned, and Olar snorted again.

Sigvar came closer and offered her a piece of meat with trepidation, still ashamed of his fall. She stared at him for a moment, making Sigvar think she was about to refuse his offer, but she took it and nodded her thanks.

"How did you earn your name, Half-Quivet?" she asked between bites.

"An attack. I was a rookie escorting a convoy bringing supplies to the keep. We were attacked on the open ice. A blizzard hid their approach. The Toothcrow Tribe."

Halla grumbled. "A vicious warrior. A head-chopping one."

Sigvar nodded. “I was hit by several arrows in the melee. I fought on, though. When the last of the Tuskraven fled and the rest lay dying or dead on the ice, Stonefist gave me my current name.”

"You'll never learn to tell a story, boy," Olar said. "You're missing half the story. You don't know how to create atmosphere."

"Unlike you, old man," Halla said. "I swear each time you tell your story it gets stranger than the last."

“Did I ever tell you my story about the bear, kid?” Olar asked Sigvar with a wink.

“Don’t,” Halla said, raising a finger at the old Frostguard. “I don’t want to hear that again.”