The Abbot dozed during most of the journey on his return to the Abbey. The final hours of the trip along the foot of the massive glacier were numbingly cold, as usual. As the shadows grew long in the afternoon, he saw the familiar scenery of the Abbey. The road wedged itself between the dark forest and the icy glacier wall .
As the glacial melt pond came into view, he peeked his head out of the black lacquered coach to spy the top of the Abbey's tower. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the ice-encrusted beard and cap of the coach driver, and he heard the clip-clop-crunch of the horses' hooves on the icy gravel road. For a moment, he envisioned himself warming his fingers and toes at the Great Hearth, eating a loaf of Mrs. Kegger's cheddar and dill bread, and sipping some warm wine. "Aaaaaaaah, heaven, here I come" he appraised the dream vision and smiled contentedly.
Meanwhile, Kegger had placed Elmo and JVB in a small handcart, and was dragging it westward through the forest toward Vordasto. When Drakonis and Dulartus left in such a hurry, she had become concerned and called for Sparkl at the Great Hearth. Sparkl came, of course, and they talked for several minutes -- the longest conversation she had ever had with Sparkl. Mrs. Kegger left the Abbey in less than ten minutes without a word or even looking back.
An unnatural darkness writhed across the glacier from the north and north east, converging on the Abbey. Within its billowing folds, a creature winged. It played with the shapes of the landscape, skimming along the surface and ducking into crevasses here and there. When the darkness came at last to the Abbey, the sun was setting below the treetops to the west. Tendrils of the darkness probed the workshop and stables and wrapped around the Abbey's tall stone walls. The winged creature landed at the Abbey door, ducked its head, then disappeared inside.
A deep and wide crater formed beneath the rising column of light and fire, as the world lost the recipe for Sparkling Wine. As the glacier melted into a tsunami of water and steam, the Abbot's coach became a momentary parody of Noah's Ark, then of Jonah and the Whale, before it was gathered up into the rising column of steam, fire, and fury toward the heavens. The twilight became brighter than high noon on a midsummers day across the land, overpowering even the unnatural tendrils of darkness as far away as the foothills of the Forbidden Mountains and the shores of the Eastern Sea.
