Yeah. Surprisingly well, actually, I'd hardly have even known it was an arctic wasteland.

You ready for the ritual?

We are. Let's go.

Great. Including Findekáno, You should use your royalty powers to requisition firewood. We know what we're up against; fire can help depending on how against.

Royalty powers? he says, amused. How does governance work among Men? And yes, I already have.

It's the collecting it with no questions asked that fewer people could pull off. Lord of a city, maybe, but that's only among practitioners. Regular government would have—osanwë equivalent of a shudder—paperwork. And they'd have to pay for it, of course, but you don't use money here. 

She activates the transportation, with a brief pause to figure out how not to soak the firewood with a flying machine made entirely of water.

And they're off. Can this ritual also be of use in trying to protect territory from the Enemy during the war?

Theoretically. Nowhere near this much territory, though; it'd take actual numbers.

Which would be this same dilemma all over again.

A fortress, something like that.

That would be maybe not completely unprecedented, but still way beyond the usual use. What we're trying today is unprecedented as far as I know; we're pretty much misusing it for a better reason.

May as well give more detail. She sends a summary of what the ritual is meant for, why it can help with this instead, and why it has to be Eldar doing it.

Huh. Well, definitely worth it, though it's inconvenient that we're now halfway through the list of people I trust absolutely on an irrevocable power use thing. In your world what happens when someone loses theirs, are they just doomed?

The ritual involves making a, not quite a promise, but a pretty strongly implied statement of intent. Losing it is bad karma, more than practitioners normally want to risk. I wouldn't call it doom, though. And anyone who does loses out on a major power source on top of the bad karma.

She's not going to be the first to say things out loud, even if they should be out of hearing by now.

Okay. Let's land and build our fire.

They land halfway between the near edge and the midpoint of the Ice. About fifty miles as the crow or crow-analogue flies.

The fire, one of the spare ice elementals to ensure they don't melt a hole underneath, a protective seal, a series of almost overlapping diagrams radiating outward and standing ready to have the last lines finished. Just so that wherever anything appears, it's probably standing in one. They do have some advantages.

(Part way through, Amber mentions that it has been an Earth day since she arrived. Digital watches: a pretty neat idea, if surprisingly easy to forget about.)

"About half the length of our old ones, then. At a guess."

"I guess there was no reason to expect it to be similar." And from their point of view, that means it sounds like humans need twice the food and sleep for half the life span.

"Anyway, who wants to do the first half of the Ice?"

"I will."

"OK, you've got the script, if you do it while singing for the volume increase you should be audible to the edge but hopefully not far enough past there that anyone overhears. Irissë, you can do a weather song for warmth and clear skies? I can join in if someone who doesn't know the song would help."

"I don't think Men can sing precisely enough for magic. You could try."

And Findekáno starts.

It's very much Findekáno's show, but there's no magical reason others can't talk. Or sing, as the case may be. Amber joins Irissë; this is a pretty good time for "not proven impossible" even if it's yet another embarrassment to her species.

It's just words, not osanwë, but enough Quenya is recognizable by now that the first few lines make sense. I hereby make a claim. Let this be my statement.

"I claim this space and only this space. Let this be my challenge."

The wind howls. But it's carrying his voice instead of drowning it out. Everything he says bears a sense of significance, more felt than heard.

He gets through the bit about how if anyone objects they can meet him here for a fair contest of mutual agreement, and for a moment nothing happens. The wind dies down, and no opposition materializes.

After that moment, nothing continues to happen.

He joins the others in the song for good weather.

Eventually nothing finishes happening.

The ground beneath them shudders and bulges upward, seeming to gain more ice out of nowhere. It obliterates half the preemptive diagrams exactly as easily as the unadorned ground. The bulge resolves into a shape, not humanoid and not even very clearly defined but at least distinguishable from its surroundings. It spreads horizontally and vertically, glacially slowly, staying away from the fire, until it takes up the entire field of vision toward the center of the Ice. The good news is, it's blocking some of the wind.

The not-good news is he is not sure how they're supposed to oppose it.

It starts introducing itself before bringing up anything about the challenge.

It doesn't use language. Just sense impressions. An enormous tower, topped by a brilliant sky-blue light. Back when the sky was blue. Itself, smaller than it is now, watching as the tower collapses and everything is plunged into darkness. Chaos from the collapse, blue flame pouring out and driving off most spirits, but by then it is already old and strong. It doesn't wither. The land settling into its current form, spirits returning or reappearing, thriving. Itself and the few similarly old elementals having uncontested dominion.

This last is represented in its almost-mind by reference to the claim Findekáno just made: ownership isn't a concept it's seen much of before, but the words of practitioners are a comprehensible fact of the universe just as much as the melting point of ice. This is especially true of common and powerful rituals like this one; right now it can handle a lot more than usual of what would look to a practitioner like abstraction. In particular it knows that it gets the first chance to name or exclude a possible part of the challenge or stakes.

Another impression: itself, lesser spirits, staying away from the uncomfortable warmth. Itself, as the oldest and largest and most capable of thought, stepping in first.

It proposes stakes. If the elemental wins, the young upstart practitioner continues with the claim, exactly as it is doing (even today, no possible stretch of memories and impressions can let the elemental manage pronouns), and surrenders the demesne to the elemental as soon as it earns it.

The ice mutters at the mouths of the sea. The elemental waits for Findekáno's answer. Despite the otherwise perfectly clear skies, it looks like it's snowing above the elemental's surface.