The crawler-trains never came this far north into the mountains, the terrain was simply too treacherous. The landscape was one of glacier-carved valleys, rent asunder by unimaginably terrible tectonic forces working away beneath the surface of the planet, huge boulders littering the scarred, grey wastes.

In truth, Anatolus only really slept when exhaustion finally took him or when he had managed a kill and his belly was full with yoryx meat. The flesh of the hardy little herbivore, which gnawed the lichen from the rocks of these mountain places with its evergrowing chisel incisors, matched the temperament of these creatures: it was tough and bitter. But at least it was meat.

So Anatolus slept whenever his body demanded it. Up in these windswept icy highlands the days were as cold as the nights so it made little difference what time of day he travelled. He had been alone now for... How long was it? Time had become fractured for him by this inhospitable place, just like the icy mountain summits and earthquake-fissured, sheer-sided valleys, and it no longer had any meaning for him.

Thunder rumbled across the mountain peaks. The storm giants were angry, Anatolus thought, casting anxious glances at the ragged snow-dusted crags around him. His epic journey had taken him from the temporary, tented barter town, where his family's crawler had stopped to refuel and trade ore, further than he, or anyone else in his clan, had ever been before.

There had been another mining-clan caravan hauled up at the edge of the town too, belonging to the Granislatt clan. And there were others preparing for the testing. Half a dozen boys on the cusp of manhood from among the Granislatt were readying packs and weapons to make the journey into the wilderness. They too were seeking to prove themselves to the ever vigilant eyes of the Iron Hands that they were worthy to join them aboard their mighty fortress-monastery' leviathans. Talk of good omens and the favour of Medusa looking down upon them inspired youths of the Scarrabrae to take up arms and prove themselves able of passing the test too. And at their fore was the determined Anatolus.

He could remember the beginning of his journey more clearly than what had occurred since. But now Anatolus was more interested in how would it end. Would it have the conclusion he desired? He no longer felt so certain that it would. Did he even really care any more? He just kept going for there was nothing else now. That was his world, his life, his one purpose. He would keep walking until matriarchal Medusa decided how his journey would end, one way or another.

As he had left the barter town, his father's bolt pistol heavy in its holster at his side, amidst the scurra-fur hides, he looked back on his clan's caterpillar crawler. The Aes Metallum was practically a mobile town, manufactoram, mining operation and processing plant in itself, and easily large enough to carry the whole family. The Aes and the crawler of the Granislatt clan, squatting next to the tented haggle-town, looking like two suckling hogs, disgorged smoky exhaust fumes into the already darkly polluted atmosphere. It was at that moment that he knew thatwhatever else happened he would never see his family again. Either Medusa would claim him, his carcass scoured clean by the dust winds and acid atmosphere, or he would achieve his goal and the Sons of Ferras Manus would take him to be counted among their number.