It wasn't deepest winter yet, but once Kairavi had left the sheltered bowl of her people's valley and the last steam of the hot springs was a faint, curling memory, the snow made it very clear who truly ruled this kingdom. Before long the elephant matron was slogging through the stuff well up to her knees, with no chance of the thin white fluff bearing her armored weight. Her erstwhile passenger had taken advantage of her determination to ignore him by acquiring an extremely expensive looking rug from somewhere and laying it atop her pack. The demon rambled on incessantly about the snow, the cold, the mountains, the trees...Everything and nothing, while sometimes insouciantly steadying himself with a hand against the side of her husband's helm. She kept her broad ears tight against the cold, batted his paw away with her trunk and ignored his complaints.<br/><br/>Or she did her best to ignore him. The cold and the snow were problems enough, but they were like old friends compared to what clung to her back, the most terrible thing her people had ever known.<br/><br/>She was beginning to wonder if the gods themselves had blinded everyone involved, or if perhaps the old shamaness who'd led the ritual that bound the plague demon to her was wrong about it being unable to harm her. Or perhaps it was some sort of prelude to grief, some means of saying goodbye. Perhaps her people were so unwilling to accept the idea of sentencing one of their own to death that no-one, not even the elders had spoken up when she had provisioned herself for a much longer journey than the day or so it would take her to climb to the top of the Mountain of Lights and die there with her passenger. Back in the village, numbly letting her broad hands pack her things, even she herself had not dared to think aloud within the confines of her own mind that perhaps the journey she was setting out upon would be far longer and more treacherous than the ascent to that place of howling winds and prismatic ice, so close to the cold heavens.<br/><br/>Yet here she was, and she had brought her husband's armor and his sword; surely she had not meant for those to hold her bones together up on the eternally-wintered peak? No, here she was with travelling food for at least several days, and armed and garbed to protect herself, draped with so much simple wealth of fur and metal that could've made her sons and their families more comfortable if she'd left it behind, even if in the village a sword was merely a keepsake.<br/><br/>Here she was, halfway down the mountain, instead of approaching its highest spire; not looking up to the heavens but rather looking down at the fires and lights of what could only be a caravan setting up camp for the evening as the snow began to fall.<br/><br/>And the demon stretched across the top of her pack had ceased his insouciant prattling and seemed to be waiting now, as if afraid to distract her from taking that next step away from what she had been supposed to do. Had she been asleep when she made her preparations? Had the whole village been asleep? Why had no-one spoken up to say 'You won't need that where you're going.'?<br/><br/>She could go that way yet, but it was a long journey back up past the village and around the edge of the bowl nestled between the three mountains, to reach the distant peak. She wasn't sure she could walk past her village and walk away again. There were strengths, and there were strengths, and she knew she was far from strong in matters of the will.<br/><br/>But if Old Aswathi had spoken truth and the demon could not harm her, then perhaps it had been the work of the gods. She had asked the demon one question, but she assumed it had lied, when it had told her that no, it would not die with her if she froze to death atop the peak. So perhaps the gods had made the path clear for her and guided her hands and heart. There were those who climbed the Mountain of Lights seeking truth, or strength, and there were those who climbed it as well in hope of recovering riches. If the demon would not die in the cold snows so close to heaven, then others might bring it down.<br/><br/>So she would bring it down, now, while it was bound to her and no other, and if the cold would not kill it...Well, she would find what would.<br/><br/>The lights of the caravan's cook-fires twinkled. It wasn't deepest winter yet, but they would be glad of a guide who knew these passes.<br/><br/>Kairavi adjusted her pack on her shoulders, more aware than ever of the added weight and the complaints of the thing she carried, and chose her path with care and deliberation down the treacherous slope.