“The frozen North” was what Duman said when referring to the North. We were tasked by the king to explore the North. This would have been nigh impossible for anyone to undertake under normal circumstances. In Duman’s own words, lungs would feel like freezing by just taking air in. Venturing past Siwen mountain had been impossible until airships came along. Even so …

  “Holy shit, this IS cold!” I exclaimed while covered in a blanket. I was in the pilot’s room, and the air coming in from the front was simply unbearable. In the end, I shut down shutters to block the wind, and we stopped in the air. In order to increase the temperature, I had brought out fire crystal lamps as well as opening the boiler room wide so that its warmth could circulate. That was just barely enough for me not to freeze to death.

  “Told you that it wasn’t going to be easy,” said Duman on the main deck. He didn’t seem to be suffering as bad as I did. Roseline and Jane were present as well with each of them having a fire crystal lamp in their hands. It provided decent warmth in its immediate vicinity. Everyone had a blanket around their shoulders, acting like an extra layer of robe in order to provide further warmth.

  “We can’t go on like this, surely?”

  The airship didn’t have any moving parts thankfully. If it did, we might have been in real danger of something going horribly wrong in mid air.

  “We can. We are going to install a door to the pilot’s room. You will put on how many blankets you need to keep warm and continue sailing the airship,” he said.

  “We should have done that earlier…,” I lamented with a pout.

  “Nah, this is better. Now, you know why we must,” he replied with a chuckle.

  It took us over a day; we installed a door after taking out a door from below deck from an unoccupied room. And then we installed more than five fire crystal lamps in the pilot’s room in order to boost its temperature. Finally, Jane had spent several days creating a robe for me made from blankets. It was a hooded robe to cover as much skin as possible. All in all, it took us about five days before we could proceed exploring the frozen North. Even so, we took it slowly because I could not handle the fierce and freezing gust.

  “Man, there is nothing here at all,” I remarked after taking a good look ahead. There was a literal wall of mountains ahead of us.

  “I cannot see past that wall of mountains,” I muttered. We’d need to go deeper which was a bit risky.

  “It’s a risk we will undertake,” Duman said firmly as he entered the pilot’s room. Roseline was right behind him, who closed the door as soon as she entered to conserve the heat. Both of them took a good look outside as well.

  “There has got to be something beyond that wall,” she said.

  “There looks to be a narrow path you could traverse across,” he added. Yeah, it did look like you could walk past the wall of mountains by foot - if you were prepared against the brutal cold. It would take God knows how many days to reach that passageway. Most, if not all, would freeze to death before reaching that point to be brutally honest. I will be honest. I wasn’t taking the cold temperature seriously when Duman warned me about the frozen North. I mean, how cold could it possibly get? How wrong I was. I was just a boy born and raised in a tropical climate, which probably made me less resistant to cold.

  “So…, we are going past the mountain wall?” I had to ask, just in case.

  “Actually, could we stop by the volcano?” Roseline asked. “It should be quite warm over there. I want to check something.”

  Check something, huh… It wasn’t exactly a place I was happy to revisit… I didn’t exactly have a say in this, though. She wanted to go, and we were going. I was just a pilot.

  “Alright, let me see…” I eyeballed the distance to the volcano. “Half a day, and we will get there.”

  “Good,” she said curtly as she left, leaving me and Duman in the room. I sighed discreetly. I don’t think I was getting along with her. In fact, I was getting pissed at her. Thankfully, we stayed out of each other’s way most of the time. If not, we would have had verbal fights already, probably. If there was such a thing as human compatibility, we didn’t have such for each other.

  “Keep up the good work,” he said and left the room as well. Then Jane entered shortly after.

  “How is the robe?”

  “Ah? Oh, it’s okay.”

  Actually, I didn’t feel it was much help, especially when the freezing wind was bashing me non-stop. It was better than nothing, though, that was for sure. It was the fire crystal lamps that were actually keeping me alive. I had also closed one of the frontal windows. I was essentially piloting the airship with one eye closed but, since there was no fast reaction involved, it was fine. I wouldn’t do this in combat or something like that. She closed the door after making sure that the main deck was empty. Both Duman and Roseline had gone downstairs.

  “You don’t get along with Roseline, do you?” She asked me softly as she approached me. Her voice was low as if she was afraid of someone overhearing her. I had no reason to lie to her. She was my wife after all.

  “No, I don’t,” I replied promptly although I did keep my voice low also.

  “You may not be noticing it, but your voice goes up a bit whenever you are talking to her.”

  “Am I being passive aggressive?”

  That was news to me. I never noticed, I swear.

  “I think you are. Whether she has noticed, I can’t say.”

  The half of my face frowned. I felt that she probably noticed.

  “What should I do?”

  “Well…,” she trailed off for a moment before continuing. “Do you know how old she is by the way?”

  “What?” I was thrown off by the sudden change of the topic. “Well…, I am unsure how old she exactly is…”

  I knew that Duman was 35 years old. He was old enough to be my father. Actually…, I didn’t know how old my father was exactly. The same applied to my mom. Logic and simple math told me that they’d be around 30 years old at the least. Anyway, Roseline was younger than Duman for sure. How much younger, I had no clue.

  “My point is that she is probably old enough to be your mother or at least close to. You don’t need to keep a friendly relationship with such a person. Just keep it professional.”

  After some thoughts, I did agree that she had a point. They were almost old enough to be my parents. They weren’t exactly my friends, which was what she was trying to tell me, which also made me realize that I didn’t really have friends from my own age group. Well, Jane was a friend and then became a wife, so… she wasn’t a friend?

  “I will try.” I gave her a non-committal answer because quite frankly I wasn’t sure how to go about it.

  “Well, I guess I will finally see the battleground, huh.” She changed the subject also.

  “Ehm…”

  I actually never thought about that. I was so preoccupied by Roseline’s demand to see the place that it never crossed my mind that we were going to revisit where we had the battle. I had mixed feelings about it because it wasn’t exactly a happy place to revisit.

  “It’s cold here. Go back in,” I told her, wanting to be left alone as dark clouds started to swarm my head.

  “Okay, see you later.” She gave me a gentle pat on my back and left the pilot’s room. Once making sure that it was indeed alone, I took a deep breath.

  “I am gonna have a nightmare…,” I mumbled. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I was actually never involved in the battle. All I did was ram the airship into the dragon’s eye, and that was all there was. I was so far away that I could barely see the group. They were just dots from where I was.

  “Would … something have been left?” I wondered. “How many months has it been?”

  A year? No, a bit less than that, I think… In my mind, there was a chance that something would have been left behind. I was told that Amanda cast a sacrifice spell … Her body would have blown into smithereens. Her flesh would be gone most likely. Pieces of her clothes, however, might still remain…

  “Come to think of it, she was never given a proper burial…”

  Although I wasn’t there, Duman told me that he gathered her belongings from her room, put them in a box, and buried it. He did the same for Ayaan. However, it wasn’t the same for Meizei because he made the call of not doing anything. He was her husband after all. I didn’t know what he did exactly for her; he never told me and I wasn’t going to press for an answer.

  “Amanda…”

  I found it rather shocking that I had yet to get over her death. I mean, strictly speaking, she was a stranger to me. She treated me well, perhaps too well, but that didn’t warrant my current reaction to her death, probably.

  “Did I … have feelings for her?” I wondered aloud. I didn’t want to admit it because she was … like 10 years older than me? But the fact that I was yet to get over her passing… felt like she was more than a stranger to me. Then I realized something…

  “My brother is … married to older women. They are four and five years older than him… I myself am married to a woman who is two years older than me …”

  It looked like it wasn’t entirely impossible that men in this family tend to get married to older women. Speaking of which…

  “Is my mom older than my dad?”

  They looked to be of similar ages, but I didn’t know their exact ages.

  “Well, does age matter?”

  I suppose it mattered if the gap was too big. Speaking of which, the five year old gap was a bit too much even in my mind. Two years, which Jane and I had, was perfectly acceptable.

  “Well, whatever…”

  I gave up thinking too hard about the age gap as well as Amanda. There was no use in thinking too much in either of that. I simply decided to look for her remains once we arrived at the top of the mountain.

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  The sky was starting to turn orange-ish when a familiar view came to my eyes. We made it just in time. It should be warm down there, and we will have a decent night. Too bad that I can’t sleep with Jane with walls so thin and rooms so close to each other. I reached out a rope attached to a small bell and pulled it a few times, letting the others know that I needed their attention. Once done, I approached the window and looked down to see whether anything had changed significantly. As far as I could tell, it was very much unchanged. I was told that the volcano had become dormant, but red hot lava was still flowing down albeit slowly.

  “Are we there?” Duman was the first one to arrive and asked.

  “Yeah, do you think it’s safe to go down there?”

  “Should be safe. It is a bit hot down there, though. Why don’t we stay afloat and use a rope ladder to get down?”

  That made perfect sense actually.

  “Jane should stay, right?”

  “No reason for her to go down. Yeah, let her stay.”

  It didn’t take long for me to park the airship in the air. Now, parking an airship midway didn’t exactly work because it should slowly drift away. Lowering an anchor didn’t really help, either, due to the sheer weight of the airship, and we weren’t going to carry a heavy enough anchor, either. Therefore, I taught Jane the basics of control. When the three of us went down, she’d stay at the helm and would make sure that the airship would not drift away. All she would need to do was control the wheel ever so slightly, thus it didn’t require much training.

  “Have I told you that I hate going down a ladder?” Duman said as the three of us stood at the opened door.

  “Yeah, you did say.”

  That was probably because of how awkward it looked when he climbed down a ladder. The guy was a giant and, when he climbed down a narrow ladder like a rope ladder, it looked quite ridiculous.

  “Let’s go,” Roseline volunteered to go down first. In fact, she rushed to go down even before either of us could say anything to her.

  “Oh, well.” Shrugging, I was the second one to go down. Duman followed us down shortly afterwards. The first thing Roseline did once she touched down was grab a handful of soils and put them in a small leather pouch. And then she walked around, looking as if she was searching for something. I, too, walked around, looking for Amanda’s remains. It didn’t take long for me to find something. There was a large boulder that was either black or covered in soot. It looked like there was a piece of fabric on it. Approaching the large rock carefully, I took a closer look at the dangling fabric.

  “This is Amanda’s…”

  Or to be more precise, it looked to be a part of her robe. I knew for a fact that she wore a dark purple-ish robe. The fabric had a similar color although most of it was covered in soot. My hand was shaking a bit when I carefully picked it up. I tried to remove some of the soot to find a more vivid purple color underneath. There was no doubt about it. It was indeed a part of her robe. Looking fanatically around, I ran around looking for more pieces of her robe. I ended up finding three more pieces of her robes scattered around. Because I was so preoccupied with what I was doing, I was completely oblivious of what Duman and Roseline were up to. In fact, at one point, I felt like my head was spinning.

  “Amanda…” I felt like my voice was shaking and felt like fire was surging from below to my face. I looked at my left hand that was holding several pieces of her robe. All of a sudden, I fell to my knees with my eyes still fixed on the robe pieces and … simply dropped tears. I never understood the expression, tears falling like a waterfall. I understand now, literally. I wasn’t crying or sobbing, but my tears wouldn’t stop falling out of my eye balls. It was a strange sensation.

  “Faro…, is that …”

  It was Roseline’s voice. I looked up to face her, and she must have seen my tear soaked face. I couldn’t see well due to tears obstructing my view but I could still see that she got down on her knees after approaching me. She grabbed my hands or rather she grabbed the fabric pieces I was holding onto.

  “These are Amanda’s…, right?”

  Her voice was shaking.

  “Yes.”

  “Amanda…” She placed her forehead on my hands and I could feel water drops falling onto my hands. At that point, I understood. I see. I see now. I see why she wanted to come here. She was after the same thing. Both of us sulked for a while with Duman watching us from a short distance. Interestingly, neither of us cried. It was just tears falling out of our eyeballs. It was a very interesting experience. We ended up with about ten pieces of Amanda’s robe. Roseline got half and I got the other half. I didn’t ask what she was going to do with those, and she didn’t ask me, either. When we were finally done, I spotted Duman looking down on a seemingly random spot on the ground with a vacant look in his eyes.

  “We … have to get out of here,” I told myself. This was not a good place for us to be, mentally speaking. I assumed that he was looking at where Meizei perished. Granted, I thought it was a good idea to collect Amanda’s remains …, but it was clear to me that none of us had gotten over the death of our comrades. It was likely that this wound of ours was never going to heal. Moving on and not thinking about it was probably the best course of action.

  “Why are your eyes red?” was what Jane asked of me when I got back. While I wanted to avoid talking about it, lying wouldn’t have worked on her. She knew me a bit too well after all. I showed her the pieces of fabric and told her that it belonged to Amanda.

  “Oh, my God,” she uttered as she covered her mouth. “So, the reason we came here was …”

  I replied with a nod, “Yeah, to seek her remains.”

  Ayaan was killed here as well but nobody cared for him apparently. He was a little mean to me although he never actually bullied me.

  “Actually…, I am going to get down there and look for something.”

  “It’s dark out there.”

  “Well, thanks to the lava, the area is well lit.”

  She nodded in agreement. “I see your point.”

  Duman and Roseline were back in the airship as well. Both of them had gone down to rest or whatever. I quickly got down to the ground once again and searched for Ayaan’s remains. If Amanda’s robe pieces made it, then it was very possible that Ayaan’s remains were present as well. I did see how he died from a distance. He was sliced in half by the dragon’s fang. His upper body fell into the lava. His lower body should have remained on the ground. Therefore, it should be possible to spot his armor or …

  “His sword and shield,” I said to myself as I reached the ground via the rope ladder. The top of the mountain was essentially several isles in the sea of lava, but one of the isles was much larger than the others. That was where the fight took its place. It was also connected to a path that led all the way down. He was killed on the edge of the isle. Therefore, I searched alongside the edge and it didn’t take long for me to spot a pair of soot-covered chainmail pants. Not wanting to carry the armor since it was quite heavy, I continued on with my search and found his also soot-covered sword that had half of its blade molten.

  “Bingo.”

  I looked around a bit more to find his shield, but it was nowhere to be found. I assumed that it fell into the lava just like the sword. Luckily, the sword survived since only its blade went into the lava. With his sword, I returned to the airship. Ayaan was buried just like how Amanda’s tomb was made with his belongings found in his room. Neither actually had tombstones however since the guildmaster feared that gravediggers might get their hands on their belongings. Only a few of us knew its exact location, and I was one of them. I was going to shove his sword into his grave. Yeah, I disliked him, but he still died a hero and should be treated as such. Knowing him, if he survived, he would have spent his time enjoying women and liquor. He would have wasted his life away eventually. Perhaps, death was the correct path for him. I veered the ship away from the top and found a spot to land. The further we were away from the top, the temperature sharply dropped. The spot I chose was still warm, relatively speaking. I landed the ship and made preparations to spend the night.

  “It’s been a long day.”

  It was indeed a long day, mentally. What am I going to do with the fabric now? There was an option to bury them properly, but I didn’t feel like doing so. After making sure that everything was properly done, I laid down on my bed under the deck and fell asleep pretty much as soon as I hit the bed cover.

  I was … confronting something. Everything was blurry, and it took me a moment to figure out what I was exactly looking at.

  “What is going on?!” I tried to speak, but nothing came out of my mouth. I mean, my mouth and tongue were moving but no sound was coming out. Fanatically, I looked around. Again, everything was blurry but it looked like I was on the top of Siwen mountain because I could see orange stuff slowly flowing from a distance.

  “Then…”

  I looked at whatever I was facing. Its shape was vaguely of a dragon or the dragon. Then I looked at myself; it looked like I was holding a sword and a shield. My whole body was blacked, however. I wasn’t even sure it was my own body to begin with. Taking a deep breath, I glared at the blurry shape that was the dragon. Not quite knowing what was going on, I dashed forward anyway to strike at the foe only to be stopped by a hand that grabbed my left shoulder and pushed me backwards. There were several people who passed me. They were all shouting at me with, of course, no sound. I tried to read their mouths therefore. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but it felt like they were telling me to save myself. But why? Why save myself while the others are charging toward the dragon? Fighting the dragon would be a useless endeavor. No mortal was capable of defeating it. It took Amanda her life just to inflict some visible damage to it. Anyway, I attempted to run forth and join them. However, countless arms appeared out of nowhere from the back and grabbed me, dragging me backwards. They were pitch black with an eerie purpleish glow.

  “Let me go!”

  Of course, my voice wouldn’t come out.

  “Let go!!!”

  Whatever behind felt warm and viscous, like water. The hands kept dragging me into whatever it was, and I was eventually submerged into it. I was actually afraid of not being able to breathe, but that didn’t appear to be an issue. I didn’t know whatever the hell was going on until I started to hear a faint voice from afar.

  “.... Faro….”

  I recognized the voice.

  “.......Faro!”

  It was … Jane’s?

  “FARO!”

  Opening my eyes at once, I saw her face looking right on me. I was panting, and my body felt hot. I could also feel that my back felt quite yet.

  “You have a high fever,” she told me after having checked my forehead. “I am not surprised. You’ve been working in the cold for days.”

  “Jane…?”

  My head felt heavy and murky although it was clearing up fast.

  “Yeah, it’s me, your wife. You do remember me, right?”

  “Oh, Jane…, can I touch your boobs?”

  I wasn’t making a joke. I did want to touch her breasts. Looking around, she found Duman standing by the door. Clearing throat, he walked away. She even closed the door. Her attire was such that she had her shirt tucked underneath her pants. She pulled her shirt out of her pants, allowing my hand to reach her breasts from below.

  “There,” she said curtly. She didn’t sound too pleased but still let me.

  “Come on, lay down next to me please.”

  The bed wasn’t actually large enough for a couple to lay down without squeezing one other. Therefore, instead, she sat down and leaned her upper body toward me. I squeezed one of her boobs after getting my hands into her shirt from below, eventually pushing her clothes upwards. She clearly didn’t look happy.

  “I had a nightmare,” I told her. “I don’t want to be here.”

  Upon listening to me, her face eased.

  “Roseline’s eyes were red, too,” she said. “I guess I will never be able to understand your emotions, huh.”

  “No, you won’t be able to. I don't even understand it. The sadness is passive and it lurks. You don’t feel it until it strikes you down. When it does, though, it hurts like this.”

  I retracted my hand from her and apologized to her. “I am sorry. I just … needed something comfy.”

  Sighing discreetly, she replied, “That’s fine. I guess this is a part of my job after all.”

  “I feel fine now. Did I oversleep?”

  “You feel fine? No, you have a cold, a nasty one.” She checked my forehead once more and tilted her head in confusion. “What? The fever’s gone?”

  She wouldn’t lie., and the bed was wet with sweat. I did have a high fever but somehow recovered in a surprisingly short span of time. Or perhaps it wasn’t a cold at all to begin with.

  “I feel fine,” I repeated, slowly getting up from the bed. “I do need to change, though.” My clothes were soaking wet. “I overslept, didn’t I?”

  “Not by much. We should rest up -”

  “No,” I interjected. “We need to leave here.”

  The sooner, the better. This place was bad for the three of us. In fact, this place, this mountain, was cursed, at least to the three of us.

  “Help me change quickly. We are leaving right now.”

  She looked like she wanted to object but agreed. After changing up, I dashed into the pilot’s room and prepared to take off. Jane did her part to speed things up.

  “We are leaving?” Duman asked after entering the pilot’s room.

  “Yeah, how is Roseline?”

  “She hasn’t shown herself since last night.”

  “Leave her be.”

  I didn’t want to get up today, either. There was a decent chance that she was going through what I was going through. Wait, hang on…

  “Duman, check on her. She might have a high fever.”

  “What?” He sounded confused.

  “Just check on her.”

  “Alright.”

  It turned out that she did, in fact, have a high fever. While he was tending her, I hurried and got the airship airborne.

  “I am never coming back here now,” I said to myself as I veered the airship away from Siwen mountain. “I’ve got what I needed anyway.”

  Amanda’s robe pieces…, what to do with them…