The Ice Lands

by William Dickey

  .Gain recognition from the clan

  .Investigating the Permerine Shrine Time Remaining: Unknown

  .Journey to the Shrine

  .Figure out its relation to weather

  .Stop it

  “Whew, I’ve only been out for a few hours.” The beating in my chest relaxed but only a little, most of my advantage had already been lost and if I wanted to maintain any of it, I needed to hurry. I looked up out of the canyon. Normally, it would have been too dark for me to see anything down there but with Mai enhancing my vision I could see clear up to the top. Of course, from my angle I couldn’t tell how high that top was, just that it was an awfully long way.

  “How far have I fallen?” I asked myself.

  ‘Too far,’ Mai cut in. ‘Based on current air pressure and temperature you fell 1400 feet. Do you think you can climb up that flat, icy cliff with no climbing gear or experience?’

  She had a point so I quickly gave up on that option. My gaze turned from the depth of the canyon to its length. According to the maps, the canyon was thirty miles long and I fell somewhere in the middle so I was looking at several hours of walking at a minimum.

  “Any idea which way is shorter?” I asked Mai.

  ‘That way,’ Mai pointed in the opposite direction. ‘After about twelve miles you can exit smoothly.’

  “We best be going then,” I replied, trying my best to restrain my shivering and keep my voice from shaking as if it would stop Mai from knowing exactly how bad I felt. I briefly considered spending some time to remake the mud armor but decided against it. Getting mud and a fire going in this frozen landscape would take a lot of time, which was the one thing I couldn’t spare. I needed to be long gone before my three pursuers realized I never made it across and came looking. The enclosed space of the canyon was the worst place I could be in such a circumstance.

  I walked down the canyon for nearly an hour. It was cold and a bit too quiet, but since everything had gone so smoothly for so long, I figured everything was going to be fine. It’s strange isn’t it, that whenever it all seems to be fine, whenever you finally take a moment to relax and loosen your grip on the situation, that it all falls to shit. Sometimes it feels like there’s some all-knowing puppeteer that seems to throw things my way whenever things get too boring for too long.

  It started with a slight rumbling, so slight that I didn’t feel it in my numb feet at first, making me think it was my stomach acting up until I noticed snow breaking off the cliff face.

  “What is that?” I asked Mai.

  But before she could answer, the earth beneath my feet suddenly rose several inches. The frozen ground cracked and shattered, forming a perfect ring a dozen feet across with me in the center.

  †Sense Jeopardy†

  I dove to the side, desperation granting me enough speed to get out of the ring a second before it burst open.

  “Is that a frost wyrm?” I cried as I stared up at the enormous form before me.

  A frost wyrm was one of the many beasts I’d learned about. The juveniles were quite small only about a foot long and half that around while an adult could be 80 feet long and eight feet wide. Usually only the juveniles were found near the surface, as they popped out to scavenge off whatever corpses they could find. The larger ones usually stayed underground and fed on the smaller frost wyrms.

  Frost wyrms were blind, living underground they had no need for vision and instead relied on a delicate sense of touch to feel out subtle vibrations in the soil. Because the beastform acquired was a perfect replica of the individual beast used, i.e. use a baby beast and become a baby beast, the commonly seen juvenile wyrms were looked poorly upon, but this giant frost wyrm was a different story.

  Although I couldn’t tell exactly how long this one was with only its head poking up out of the ground, it was clearly fully grown or close to it. I wasn’t quite sure how this beastform would be judged but at the very least, it wouldn’t be embarrassing.

  However, at that moment, standing just a few feet from something that could turn me to paste, I didn’t have time to list pros and cons. I was up against a giant beast in a semi-enclosed space with no weapons save for a stone which I’d only gotten around to half sharpening into a spear point. Such a tool had no chance at piercing even the frost wyrm’s outer pale blue scaled skin much less the several feet of solid muscle that encircled its entire body before I could damage something vital.

  I ran.

  Having already come so far down the canyon’s length, I didn’t want to turn around and I kept going in the same direction. Fortunately, the frost wyrm was blind and it wasn’t until it detected the vibrations in the ground from my running that it was able to launch its pursuit. I didn’t look back to watch what the wyrm was doing but given the shifting ground below me I had some idea.

  The frost wyrm dove head first into the snow. The armored cone head formed while its mouth was closed pierced the frozen ground as if it were made of sand. The beast’s tail flung an avalanche of snow as it whipped around before following its head. I felt a piece of that snow smack against my back, accelerating the fear that gnawed its way into my heart. If I had been much closer, that avalanche could have spelled my end.

  I could feel a steady rumble beneath my feet that slowly grew stronger with each of my panicked strides, but I couldn’t tell how close the frost wyrm was while it was underground.

  Suddenly the ground thirty feet ahead erupted as the frost wyrm resurfaced. This time was different than the last time we’d crossed paths. This time the frost wyrm had been tracking my movements and knew my exact path. I tried to throw on the breaks to try to skirt away and throw off the blind wyrm, but the frost wyrm was too quick. In the same motion as its initial surfacing, the frost wyrm’s alien looking triangular mouth opened, bent in my direction, and chomped down, swallowing me in a single bite.

  Darkness enshrouded me as snow and rock picked up by mistake in the wyrm’s gullet bashed against me. It was only fortunate that the frost wyrm ate its food whole, allowing it to be slowly broken down by powerful digestive juices over several weeks as the food worked its way through numerous stomachs running the wyrm’s entire length. I was alive and had at least some time.

  I couldn’t see even in the slightest. Mai only enhanced my vision by adjusting brightness and contrast. She couldn’t do anything in complete darkness.

  Within a few seconds, I started to feel it. A warm sticky goo secreted from all the fleshy surfaces around me, faintly burning my skin wherever it touched. The effect on my HP bar was slow, but as time passed, I saw slivers fall away.

  “I have to cut myself out,” I said. “Inventory.” The inventory screen was a part of the interface, so I didn’t need any light to see it. I quickly scrolled through, found the rock I’d sharpened, and pulled it out.

  I took the rock and used it to slash at the tough acid dripping flesh all around me. I pounded on the same spot until my acid burned hands could no longer hold the stone, but it failed to make any detectable difference.

  “I have to find something.” I went back through the inventory screen searching for something, anything that could get me out of this. I didn’t even really care if it obeyed the rules, I figured the monitor couldn’t see what I was doing inside of the beast but I doubted standard weapons would do much better than the pointy rock. I needed something special. Then I saw it. An odd idea came to mind. I wasn’t sure if it’d work, and even if it did I wasn’t sure I’d survive it, but I knew what the outcome would be if I did nothing.

  I closed my eyes and tapped the inventory icon representing all the snow I’d stored during yesterday’s journey. I’d never meant to use the snow for anything other than to help clear my path, but had left it in there since I had plenty of free space anyway.

  Mounds of snow gushed out of the pale blue inventory screen, filling all the empty space inside the wyrm. The snow pressed on me from all sides as more continued to fill in. It even pressed on my chest to the point that my lungs wer
e forced to deflate.

  Warning. External pressure has exceeded safe levels.

  Warning. Internal Oxygen levels are low. Resume breathing immediately.

  My body quickly entered the desperate for air state experienced by drowning victims. It didn’t care that there wasn’t any air just outside my lips. It didn’t care that inhaling at that point would mean death. It just tried to do what came naturally and take it in. My body struggled to refill my lungs, but fortunately, the external pressure of the snow kept it from doing so. I waited there for several long seconds, pain and pressure slowly building inside and out. I saw the corners of my vision darken. I was seconds from blacking out when suddenly I was moving and the external pressure crushing me let up.

  A second later, I was weightless and the snow surrounding me broke apart. Air filled my lungs, letting me take a few refreshing breaths before I crashed into the ground fifty feet away from the frost wyrm. As I lay in the slow, glad to have survived I looked over to the frost wyrm. It flopped around violently its full body whipping around on the surface as it continued trying to cough up more snow.

  Its insides were still filled with the stuff. The frost wyrm did its best to clear out its system, but it wasn’t enough and after a minute or two of struggle, its twitching stopped.

  You gained 12237 EXP

  You gained a level.

  Congratulations. You have learned a new skill: †Crush Resistance†

  †Crush Resistance Lvl.1 (0.0%)†

  Grows with experiencing high pressure environments.

  Effect of the high pressure on your health -5%

  Defense +3

  I was pleased with the result. The frost wyrm was dead and I was safe, at least for the moment. I’d also gained a level and perhaps more importantly an interesting skill. A part of me looked forward to training this skill and finding other resistance skills but another part of me was worried. I theorized the lunatic aggression of the New Fallen might be related to the Starvation Resistance skill they possessed. Did other unknown side effects lie in other resistance skills?

  I put such thoughts aside. I had greater concerns at that moment. My mind drifted off to all the possibilities that suddenly were available to me. I could choose to eat the frost wyrm heart and complete my task right now or I could try my luck at finding something else. I still had a day and a half to acquire a beastform.

  ‘Hey, moron. Are you just going to lie there all day letting your life drain away?’ Mai asked, snapping me out of my daydreaming. ‘Look at the health bar, stupid.’

  I glanced at the red bar in the top right corner of my vision. It was low and even more concerning it was still decreasing. The frost wyrm’s stomach acid had weakened after mixing with the snow but not enough to negate its effect completely. I moved a dozen yards away, clear of the regurgitated acid slurry, and rinsed myself off with clean snow until my health stabilized.

  “That was a close one,” I said, giving myself a moment to heal back up a bit before I started the autopsy.

  As I waited, I thought about what to do with the frost wyrm’s heart and decided it’d be best to go ahead and eat it. Normally, participants had to eat it right away lest it go bad after a few hours, but with the inventory I didn’t need to worry about that. Time didn’t pass for items stored in the inventory, so if I wanted I could keep the frost wyrm as backup as I looked for something better. Nevertheless, I didn’t think chances of me finding something better were very good and I still had three people after me. If I ate the frost wyrm heart, I wouldn’t have to worry about them. I could just tunnel my way all the way back to Doraga and finish this quest.

  I recalled my knowledge of beast anatomy. Frost wyrms the beastmen usually found were juveniles making them throw away beasts so my coverage of them had been brief but I recalled that they were one of the few local species that had multiple hearts. The way it worked for those species was that any one of the hearts would work. In a juvenile wyrm, it was easy to search the whole thing and find all seven of its hearts but in a frost wyrm of this size, I couldn’t do that.

  The frost wyrm had so many hearts because it would be hard other wise to pump blood its entire length. The frost wyrm’s head was its most important part, having both its mouth and all the shielding and muscle in its nose that it needed to cut through the ground, so I figured that the head would be a good place to start looking.

  I didn’t know where my sharpened stone was anymore and I couldn’t use a proper tool from my inventory when I was sure the monitor would see it. I ended up tearing off a piece of the frost wyrm’s nose cone, which was harder and sharper than anything I had on me to cut into the roof of the frost wyrm’s mouth. I had to be careful as I made my way through each layer. If I damaged the heart, it could be rendered useless.

  After a few hours of digging, I found an organ that looked somewhat similar to a human heart, although it was grey and was roughly the size of my head.

  †Mature Frost Wyrm Heart†

  Durability: 200/200

  Effects: Blood Moon’s Blessing Material (quest)

  Description: Heart of a fully mature frost wyrm. Fully mature frost wyrms are rare. Only one out of every hundred eggs survive long enough to hatch and only one in every ten thousand larvae reach full maturity. The frost wyrm is a perfect example of survival of the fittest as only the strongest of their kind thrive.

  The interface confirmed I was correct; this was one of the wyrm’s hearts. According to the way the blessing worked, I couldn’t cook the heart ahead of time so I had everything I needed to begin. The size of the thing had me a bit worried but since I hadn’t eaten in more than a full day, I was quite famished.

  I raised the bloody lump of meat to my mouth, its grey color and vinegar like odor were repulsive but such concerns were pushed back in light of the benefits I’d soon experience. I was seconds from taking my first bite when a hawk suddenly swooped down and grabbed the heart from my grasp before flying away.

  I followed the hawk’s path through the air, scared it would fly up and out of the canyon where I couldn’t follow it. It didn’t, the bird seemed injured and was having difficulty flying. Instead, it settled on a ledge 100 feet up the cliff. For a brief moment, I actually held out hope that I could salvage the situation, but then the bird suddenly shifted, growing into the blond beastman, Krill. Krill must have somehow acquired the hawk form in the last few hours. Otherwise, he would have been able to follow me over the canyons.

  “Yeah, you got it,” yelled Ruhl from behind me. I swiveled around. Just on the other side of the frost wyrm corpse, I made out Ruhl and Mira.

  “Yeah, what now?” Krill yelled back.

  “Just stay up there and keep it safe,” said Ruhl. “We’ll finish him quickly. Then I’ll eat it.” Like fights between participants, stealing hearts was frowned upon but allowed. In the wild, it wasn’t uncommon for animals to steal from one another, protecting one’s earnings were a natural part of survival.

  “Sure thing, I can do that,” said Krill.

  “Hey, who says you get the frost wyrm heart,” said Mira. She lightly punched Ruhl in the shoulder.

  “I was just thinking that a big, strong beastform suits me better,” said Ruhl. “We still have almost two more days and with Krill searching the skies and me tunneling underground we are sure to find something suitable for you.”

  “Fine, let’s just make this quick,” Mira huffed.

  I considered my options. Fleeing was next to impossible. Now that Krill had obtained a hawk birdform, I was at a definite disadvantage in terms of speed. My only chance would be to strike hard and fast, if I somehow managed to take out two at once than I would have a chance holding out against the third.

  “Don’t be like that, Mira. You know how I feel about you,” said Ruhl as he put an arm around the beastwoman. “You don’t want to be an ugly worm anyway. This way you can have your pick. So, what’ll it be? A wolf? An ice bear?”

  “You know I’ve always favored a polar panther
,” said Mira.

  “Then that’s exactly what you’ll get. After we finish our mission, we’ll send word to Truant and see what he can do,” said Ruhl.

  While the two of them were chatting, my mind was spinning. How could I take both of them? I still had the chunk of the frost wyrm’s sharp nosecone, but while it had a sharp edge, it lacked a good place to hold it from. Frankly, I thought it’d make for a better shield than weapon.

  I checked to my surroundings. Cliffs blocked two sides. The path behind me was technically clear but I’d already figured it was impossible to run. Meanwhile the path ahead had the frost wyrm corpse followed by the pair, Ruhl and Mira. Looking at the corpse an idea sprung to mind, I wasn’t sure it’d work, hell I thought it probably wouldn’t, but I saw no other option.

  As the pair finished making up, I subtly approached the frost wyrm’s corpse.

  “Hey, watch it, he’s up to something,” Krill shouted from his cliff balcony, drawing Ruhl and Mira’s attention.

  “I’m just helping with what both of you seem to want,” I claimed as I came to a stop about ten feet from the end of the frost wyrm’s tail. I tried to look casual as I glanced at the tail and found what I was looking for. I raised the large nose plate I’d been using as an oversized knife to my chest with one hand like I was carrying a shield while I concealed my other hand behind it. “Let’s make this quick, or are you guys all talk and no fight. Maybe both of you do better as crafters than fighters.” I nodded towards the weapons both were carrying. Ruhl carried something akin to spiked brass knuckles, except it was made from jagged rocks bound together by leaves and twigs. Mira leveled a large wooden club whose width and length were comparable to my entire body. “Those things are impressive, you two should think of making a career of it.”