Once upon a time there was a crystal. As effective as an incipit that would be, the proper way to start one particular type of tale is always with a request to the audience, and that request is to have them – gender-neutral or plural, it does not matter – close their eyes (if applicable) and let the storyteller take their imagination by the hand and guide it away from the hearth.

Usually, it all begins with a landscape, far away and vividly described. This time it begins with the colour white, for it is fun to take the scenic route once in a while, even when, ironically enough, it is the very scenic route itself to remove the actual scenery from the equation. Well, perhaps it is better to say that it postpones it, for only the most bizarre of tales could take place in the real Nowhere, but then the Nowhere in those stories became just another Somewhere that is not any more irreal than any other, more concrete-sounding Somewheres.

But now it is time to end that tangent, and refocus on the colour white. It was the pure bright white of fresh snow, the type that creases light grey with the dim shadows of the mounds and of the little brown sticks of mostly buried shrubs. And if one looked the other way they would find even more white, more faded in hue and begloomed with watery brushstrokes that one would be hard-pressed to call clouds.

It then continues with the cold humidity on one's skin, and a weak breeze bringing the chill into the nostrils. It continues with silence, near-absolute in the vast, soft whiteness. And finally, it all culminates with orientation.

So, at last, picture a snowy tundra. On the horizon, in the north, the spruceline marked the frontier between the sheer plains and the domain of the mountains. Even under an overcast sky, one could make out the dividing lines between the whites and the browns and the dark greens, and recognise there a tree trunk, there a branch, there needles in bunches.

Three dark beads moved about a few inches above the flatland, as if floating. Then it rose, fell, and sank into it, which was the moment when the savvy enough wayfarer realised that this was nothing but the daily mousing of an arctic fox. It was, in fact, its sixty-seventh attempt of the day. As it rose with a flailing lemming in its mouth, its ears caught the whistle. It looked up and saw, veiled in part by the near-leaden sky, a glimmer like that of a daytime comet.

And the whistle continued...

...but then the thread of the story is severed, and blackness swallows the scene whole.

Again, there comes the light, as well as a little shift in tense. It was the light of a low sun, but it was only low because it had not had the time to rise properly yet. Far away, cumulonimbi headed towards the valley, but theirs was a slow march, and the day was certain to remain rainless for a few more hours.

Once and for all, this time for real, picture the valley. Picture deciduous forests in large blotches on a canvas of pastures. Mule tracks and roads that used to be of stone but were now rammed earth studded with broken pavers cut through them, and ran up to the passes. A small herd of wild goats was chewing cud and some metal scraps they found in the grass. Not lying, for it was not scrap metal before their teeth closed on it, but scurrying...

...and all turned their attention to the skies above, from which they heard a sound very much unlike the rumble of thunder. Something – perhaps more metal – shot past the ridge and was now speeding down it in their general direction.

It would have been inaccurate to say that they stood frozen as they watched it bore a groove into the meadow as it ground to a halt. “Unperturbed” was a better fit. They were, after all, dwellers of the Kahiko Valley. You did not survive for long in those parts without a bit of a blasé attitude to potential catastrophes.

The potential catastrophe in question happened to be a massive blue crystal of about nine feet in length and six in width. The goats came to inspect it and circled it until one gave it a hopeful lick... only to immediately lose interest upon realising that there was no salt on there.

As the goats drew back, one crack appeared on the crystal, followed by another right afterwards. As if to the beat of a drum that started slow and grew more frantic by the second, they spread and grew until, eventually, the crystal began to fall apart in chunks, which crumbled into fine sand as soon as they touched the ground.

Where the crystal stood before, a young woman fell on her knees in the sand.

“What?” And then: “Wher–”

Yunuukseyuq of Tunnels Newly Dug rose to her feet, and instinctly searched for her possessions. Clothes. Bandages. General body parts. Swords. Check.
The question “where am I?” was not just at the forefront of her thoughts. It downright pulsed, drowning all of the many, many others that were lining up behind it. How did I get here, why am I here, why do I feel I should be elsewhere, why is the elsewhere a frozen tundra, then a city full of machines, and who were the owners of the blurry but distinctly human faces inside of those cities and inside of those machines. Why would she land twice?

Land? From where? How and why land at all? And how did that gigantic groove come to be? What was she piloting?

First, yes, where was she? That was the most important thing. She was, for a start, in the mountains. Mountains she did not in fact recognise, but they were mountains nonetheless. Goats were staring at her with interest from a distance, but they were few and with no other creature in sight. Not a dog, not a person to lead the herd. If there was any community to be found, it was going to be further down.

Yet, nestled on the top of the precipes were buildings. Some of them were missing a wall, others a chimney or the entire roof, indicating both that they must have been there for a long time and for a significant chunk of that time they had been lying abandoned. Still, if she focused hard enough on one of these, she could see movement from indistinct shapes. Maybe they were just animals, maybe they were people after all. Or maybe not, because one of them was now rocketing down to the pasture.

Why was it rocketing down to the pasture?!

She ducked. The shape decelerated suddenly as it drew closer to the pasture and landed with a thud. Yunyuq turned to watch, and saw the skeletal remains of an ancient soldier – or warrior, academic as the difference was in that moment. They rose to their feet, patted some dirt off their armour, wiped a sweatless brow, and finally waved at Yunyuq.

“Oh hey, you're here,” they said evenly. When they noticed the sand in the ridge, they added: “Again. Well, that's confusing.”

“Mikkel?! Here whe- And what do you mean again?”

Mikkel calmly stroked his beard. “Ah, so you don't remember,” He said, and then turned away to stare at a distant point in the direction of a cliff up above. Yunyuq noticed it was the very point from which he had just plummeted.

“Remember? What are you talking about? Where–”

“Sorry, no time. A murderous piece of junk is on the way. You might want to avoid contact. So, toodles!”

Before Yunyuq could protest, Mikkel had darted into the forest's direction. Barely had she the time to register what had just happened that yet another somebody or something sped past, forcing her to shield her eyes from the dust that raised with the wind from their – or its – passage.

Mikkel. She knew Mikkel. She could think of a thousand familiar faces (or, in his case, mere general features) she would have preferred. It was still better than no familiar faces at all. And he might have had a headstart, but she'd always been fast. Faster than him, she was pretty sure, and that meant she could still catch up with him. She checked her swords one last time for safety and began the chase.