At length El came to understand that it was in the Fastness where Egdod found sanctuary whenever he was struck down, and where each time he wove a new form about his naked soul. It was in the library of that great fortress where he taught himself to read, and learned his own story, and pored over maps, and came to understand who and what he was and what he must do. It was there in Knotweave’s spinning room where he would make clothes, and Thingor’s forge where he would fashion tools and weapons, that he would not venture out into the Land naked and unarmed. That was when El and certain of his high angels ventured to Toravithranax and went to the high atelier of Pestle and demanded any accounts she might have concerning the Fastness, particularly diagrams of the fortress and maps of the Knot in which it was embedded; but they were frustrated when they came at length to understand that the Knot could not be mapped, for it did not make any kind of sense that could be reduced to ink on a page. So El sent his angels to go and look at the place. But they could not penetrate the storm, and several did not return.

El resolved to journey there afoot, and rediscovered from of old the Shifting Path, which led him to the Broken Bridge. This had been built at the end of the First Age when the minions of El had gone to that place in great numbers to build a wall around the Fastness. Since then the wall had fallen into disrepair and the middle span of the bridge had been struck down into the chasm. El crossed over, and stood before the Fastness, and in his pride fancied that he would tear it down and altogether reduce it to chaos. He summoned then an army of angels. They changed themselves into the form of wingless souls and marched upon the Knot following the convolutions of the Shifting Path until at last they too stood before the very gates of the Fastness.

It was there that El at last found a limit to his power. He was not able to tear down the Fastness as he had hoped, for situated as it was in the heart of the Land where the four mountain ranges were tied together, it bore the same relation to the very fabric of the Land as a keystone to an arch; to destroy it, even if such a thing were within his power, would be to unmake the Land itself, to break it asunder into chaos and make all of its souls homeless.