The Land of Fire and Ice

Ari fastened his crampons to his boots with fumbling fingers, the monstrous peak looming ever closer through the swirling snow. Hljóðaklettur stood before him, its craggy face and wind-ravaged ridges formidable even on calm summer days when tourists snapped happy photos in the glittering sunlight far below.

But today Ari climbed alone. No smiling selfies or stale guidebook recounting mythic tales to spur him upwards. Because Ari sought something beyond the surface glory of this frozen volcanic giant. Tonight, he would trespass into the hidden wonders beneath.

The old texts Ari found tucked in the back of the university library referenced it obliquely as Þróunarsaga – the Evolution Saga. Lost for a thousand years, the saga whispered of a living core at the heart of Iceland’s volcanoes. Not liquid fire, but something more mystically alive. The ancients believed it an ever-evolving source of creation itself, where new organisms took ephemeral form before emerging to populate the living world. Stars, stone, man and beast all sprang from the same primeval fountain hidden far below the crater called Hljóðaklettur – the thunderous rock summit scrapeing the very sky above Ari now. On this winter solstice when veils between worlds faded, he aimed to find its secrets. Or be buried forever in the attempt, he thought with a fatalistic grin.

Snow swirled faster, obscuring the looming peak and cutting visibility to mere feet in front of Ari’s ice-crusted face. He leaned into the biting wind, struggling step by agonizing step up the frozen enormity of Hljóðaklettur’s western approach. Time and reality blurred. After eternities spent hauling his leaden body upwards, the slope’s angle gradually mellowed. His axe struck icy solidity with each swing now instead of loose volcanic slag. The summit ridge. Ari crested the final rise, breath ragged in the thin atmosphere but a fierce exultation rising in his chest. He scorned the deadly drop yawning just beyond frozen soles during those last meteres. Some siren song louder than self-preservation sang in his blood now. The ancient texts promised wonders at journey’s end here – and Ari had scaled legendary heights to finally behold them with his own eyes.

Hljóðaklettur’s crater opened above him, concealed in roiling clouds and frigid fog. Ghostly outlines of boulders emerged and vanished again in the whiteout as he descended into the secret heart of the mountain. Time stood unnaturally still and silent here. Even the shrieking wind died the moment he passed the crater’s sharp upper rim. Under his boots, slopes gradually leveled from ice-slicked rock to compacted volcanic gravel. His crampon spikes crunched steadily downwards through centuries of fallen debris long undisturbed. Glittering shards sparkled all around him, winking suspiciously bright in the strange underwater glow seeping up from beneath.

The crater floor arrived under Ari’s boots abruptly. He crouched atop the final scree pile, squinting towards the faint green glow and darkness at the pit’s center. Behind him, the path he had descended now vanished completely into the white oblivion still raging across Iceland beyond Hljóðaklettur’s secret refuge. No turning back now. Ari leapt from the rock pile, boots striking packed volcanic sand instantly softened by an invisible heat permeating the alien quiet around him. He trudged forward against forces turning the very air viscous. Damp warmth clung to him, coaxing each movement slower while his heart raced against this strangling umbra. Ghostly outlines swirled at the corners of his vision, shadows given substance. Haunting moans rode the sultry wind now gusting against his determination to press on. Phantoms guarding the primary portal.

Ari halted suddenly, toes inches from a sharp fissure slicing the crater floor in two. Verdant light erupted in ripples from far below, limning curls of mist snaking along the sheer rock walls. He dropped to his knees at this final threshold, breath ragged more from awe than exertion now. Centuries of faith and scholarship underscored this moment. What immortal forces had he trespass into? As he threw back his head to wage one last silent argument with destiny, ghosts peeled forth from subsurface shadows in earnest.

Pale visages encircled him, mouths moving without sound to echo the keening laments swirling in his mind. Ethereal hands reached forth to grasp and rend, shredding not just Ari’s clothing but his mortal coil as well. He reeled beneath their silent assault, words of power leaking from memory like air from a punctured lung. Mind fracturing, Ari’s broken cry for mercy tore open the ominous quiet at last. His ragged shout struck the towering inner walls and burst outward in a thunderclap rage to shake the heavens.

Stone teeth erupted instantly from pulsing emerald magma far below, scissoring violently together just shy of Ari's frozen limbs dangling over the abyss. A neon network blazed into being – angular veins mapping untold power and binding chaotic forces into structure within the living depths. Jagged blocks of minerals took shape, cooling impossibly fast into an enclosure for the convulsing portal spewing its secrets into the crater’s palpable atmosphere. Crystalline stairs branched up the smooth inner casing toward Ari’s astonishment. A path had opened down into ever evolving eternity. But could any mortal mind withstand its revelations and return unbroken to walking the solid earth once more?

The phantom guardians' wails took on tones of warning, their haggard faces disappearing back into subterranean ether. The portal seethed incandescent and unknowable, alluring Ari now with welcoming susurrations instead of hostility. He crouched motionless at the luminous aperture’s fringes, heart racing with possibility against the anchor of cold reality still weighting his limbs. Had some guardian spirit of this ancient volcano responded to his defiant encroachment by unveiling wonders long spoken of only in legend? Or was Ari but an unwitting pawn invited into the clever trap set purposefully to snare those weak, curious souls that dare peek beneath the infinite universe’s veil?

Ari bowed his head, acknowledging no path back from this schism now opening at his feet. But the icy grit of the world he came from still clung to his palms, keeping fear at bay. He embraced this fate, to either traverse the shimmering abyss before him down to whatever magnificent or hideous truths lay at its root – or be consumed entirely in aberrant flames trying. Laughing with abandon at last, Ari plunged feet first over the luminous ledge. Crystalline steps rushed silently past in heartbeat bursts of emerald and azure, carrying him into the volcanic heart of all creation where space and time hold no dominion. His defiant howl of triumph became the thunder born when ancient rock collided aeons ago in cosmic chaos. It echoed still through Hljóðaklettur’s yawning summit caldera as man and mountain merged once more into ancient eternity