The frozen sweep of ocean surrounding the Spire was an impressive barrier, Anita mused as her breath misted around her, swirling in the air with her hair as she gazed from a dizzying precipice. It felt a little exposed, but the chill wasteland was almost impossible to navigate through without the expertise of Queen Valaria’s Earthsouls. Human ships wouldn’t be able to pass the ice, and it was a landscape of perilous points- they looked little more than suspended ripples from such a height, but Anita knew from navigating them on foot that some of the frozen waves towered several hundred metres high, their edges sharpened. Legends had it that the entire sea had been frozen in one instant by Earthsouls seeking to forge a home in the area- the same instant that a great torrent of water had been pulled from the ocean, forming the spire. It jutted skywards, dominating the landscape, an elegant twist like an inverted whirlpool, lit from within by enchanted lanterns and hollowed into the halls of the Queen of the frozen north’s seat of power.