The Ice Lands

by William Dickey

  More specifically, Lilith took Izusa to a chamber near the lab where Malphestos kept his more troublesome specimens. Along the walls of the chamber was a row of cells. All the cells had simple blue mana shields that prevented the escape of the creatures inside, except for a single cell in the far corner that was orange instead. As Lilith walked past, she couldn’t help but check on the subjects.

  ‘Bk-182 seems as quiet as ever,’ Lilith though as she passed a creature that looked like its skin had been melted off and lied in a puddle on the floor.

  ‘And I see Ex-626 is as stubborn as ever,’ Lilith noted as she passed a small blue beast that spent all its time dashing around its small cell, regularly bouncing off the mana barrier.

  Lilith dragged Izusa to the final cell, the one with the orange barrier, behind which were the recently acquired surface dwellers. The barrier was orange because it had a different function than the other barriers. Izusa had modified this shield to thermally insulate it from the rest of Niflheim. This way the prisoners could be safely kept until Malphestos had a chance to study them.

  As for why they were crowded into a single cell, there wasn’t much room to spare and Izusa figured there’d be more survivors if she crammed all the humans together than if she doubled up any of the subjects in the other cells.

  Zelus and Rose were awake, the other two were unconscious and still recovering from their wounds. The pair watch in helpless terror as Lilith returned and pushed a sleeping Izusa through the orange barrier. The adapted barrier may have blocked heat, but it no longer acted as a physical barrier and anyone could just walk through. Despite this, Lilith wasn’t concerned the prisoners would escape. Should they leave the protection of the barrier, they’d all burn.

  To that end, Lilith yanked off the portable heat shield from Izusa’s chest before she left the prisoners to wallow in their disparaging recent losses and their horrifying potential future, a future glimpsed in the monstrous creatures in the other cells.

  You have completed the first step of the quest: †Investigating the Permerine Shrine†

  You have successfully arrived at the Permerine Shrine and are now ready to begin the next step of your quest: Figuring out how the Shrine is related to the unusual weather.

  Headaches suck. When an arm or leg hurts, you can ward the pain off with sufficient resolve, like you can tell your brain to temporarily cut off or diminish reception through certain nerve passages. But that doesn’t work for a headache, or at least it never has for me.

  I’d guess it has something to do with the fact that those nerves are so much closer to the brain and accordingly see a lot more traffic from throughout your entire body. Those nerves were too important to shut down.

  Now you might be saying, why don’t you take a couple aspirin and make the pain go away, but I didn’t have that luxury. I was in a world without such advanced medicines and perhaps more importantly, I doubted any normal drugs would affect me so long as I was in my murlimp form.

  When I first awoke, I was quite confused. Other than a headache, my body felt strangely comfortable. I could immediately tell from the look of my hands and other parts of my body that I was still in my murlimp form, but unlike every other time I was in it, I actually felt warm.

  I got up and looked at my surroundings. It was so dark I couldn’t make anything out except for a dim red light arranged into a cracked texture.

  ‘Oh, you’re finally awake,’ said Mai.

  “What’s going on?” I grumbled, not enjoying how Mai’s voice interacted with my headache, but I needed information and I doubted ignoring her would lead to silence. The last thing I remembered I was in the middle of a fight for my life.

  ‘Shhh,’ Mai shushed me, bringing an exhausting reminder of the last time we were trapped in darkness. ‘You’ll wake them up. Here, I’ll let you see, just don’t freak out.’

  My eyes adjusted, the faint red cracks gained brilliance, they were the room’s only light sources and were used to illuminate the rest of the surroundings. Those cracks had looked familiar and now I understood why, I’d seen the pattern on my own body. I was in a dark room filled with sleeping murlimps.

  ‘We’re inside of Niflheim. After you broke back onto the surface, the succubus confused you for the murlimp you killed,’ Mai explained.

  “What happened to all the others?” I asked as quietly as I could manage. After confirming my temporary safety, they were my next concern.

  ‘I couldn’t see with your eyes closed, but it sounded like most of them were taken alive. They must be prisoners somewhere,’ said Mai.

  “And Rose?” I asked.

  ‘Hmmpf, getting a bit too attached to that one, aren’t you?’ said Mai. I gave her a dirty look. ‘She’s fine. Hers was one of the voices I heard.’

  I was in a single large room where all the murlimps slept. There were 42 of them, 43 if I included myself, and each of us were given our own slab bed, that despite its hardness felt perfect. With a murlimp’s body, it didn’t seem to matter how soft the bed was.

  Otherwise, the room was surprisingly empty. There were a few loincloths under the bed that I assumed were their normal daywear and several large dirty chamber pots in the back corner.

  I laid back down in my bed. All the other murlimps were in here and asleep so I couldn’t go outside, I’d be noticed. Right now, I was surrounded and in enemy territory, the only thing I could do was my best to keep myself hidden, collect intel, and come up with a plan for what to do next.

  After a couple hours, the lights in the room flicked on and almost as if activated by the same switch, all the murlimps began to stir. They all sat upright. Then took a moment to stretch their arms and legs before standing up and getting changed. All their motions were nearly identical and if I didn’t know better, I really would have thought them machines. I tried my best to replicate the motions as they did them, I didn’t think they were too bright, but I still had to be careful.

  After everyone was ready, the murlimps filed out of the room. Naturally, I followed.

  ‘I wonder how long you can keep this up?’ said Mai as she pretended to follow alongside me as all the murlimps made their way down a hallway.

  “Longer if you don’t distract me,” I whispered back.

  It was surprisingly slow moving since the halls were barely wide enough for us to fit, they’d been built by and for the Travelers not daemons, but eventually we reached our destination.

  The dining hall had steaming troughs of food lined up on one side while tables and benches filled the other. No one sat at the benches but there were a few daemon servers against the back wall behind a counter and food trays. The daemons sort of looked similar to my group except they were a half of our size. The interface had said my murlimp form had been one that was augmented, I guessed these were the original unmodified murlimps.

  I could tell from smell and appearance that the food being served by the regular murlimps was a lot higher quality than the stuff in the troughs, but all the augmented murlimps went straight for the troughs so I had to do the same. Apparently, we weren’t important enough for the good stuff. The murlimps lined up and shoveled it in. I partook as well, I wouldn’t say the food tasted good, but it must have been quite nourishing because it wasn’t long before I’d had enough.

  Satiety is completely full. Eating more will cause debuffs. You greedy pig.

  After breakfast, the murlimps and I returned to our beds. Each murlimp returned and sat. That was it. We just sat there and waited. Apparently, the augmented murlimps didn’t have any regular duties and they all just sat there awaiting orders. At first I was pleased with this discovery, the less I had to do, the smaller the chance I’d screw up and be discovered, but after a couple hours of doing my best impression of the Thinker, I started to realize how hard doing nothing was. I wanted to go out, find my friends, and figure out some way out of this, but I was trapped here.

  I was tortured by my own cursed imagination. A thousand cruel tortures experienced by my
companions at the hands of the daemon scum filled my mind only counterbalanced by a thousand plans that could lead to my escape. Of course, with my limited knowledge of what was going on, none of those plans could really go anywhere. All remained equally possible and thus equally unlikely to ever be used. So long as I was stuck doing nothing, I had no way to narrow or refine anything. My ideas remained a jumbled mess.

  To make matters worse, Mai took it upon herself to entertain me. To keep me from getting bored, she called it. To keep me from being able to relax is what I’d call it. Mai put on her best rendition of the Tautellus version of a nature documentary accept everything was done in hyper realistic full 3D. I might have actually found it entertaining, hearing a voiceover describing a scene where a squadron of scarrows swooped down onto a gilaphant’s back to snag a couple ticks or a scene wherein a trio of young male hedge-beavers tried to attract mates with what to a human observer appeared to be slap stick comedy, but those weren’t the only sorts of scenes Mai showed.

  Turns out, it’s pretty hard to sit still and expressionless while a hundred tarantulas crawled over each other in a mosh pit two feet away or while something called a care bear, that looked more akin to a furry velociraptor than a colorful teddy, jumped out to take a bite of your face.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to spend all day doing this. Around midday, the succubus entered the murlimp barracks. All the murlimps turned their heads towards her. Mai’s illusionary flying pig vanished and I turned my head to the succubus as well just quick enough to avoid suspicion despite the fact that it was at least a full second after the others.

  “Good, you all look well after yesterday’s outing,” said the succubus as she carefully looked over a few of the murlimps. She took especially long looking over me, which made me nervous even though it made sense that she would, I had been injured.

  “Well, I don’t have much need for you today,” the succubus continued. “I only have one thing and I only need four of you for it. Everyone else can either rest or go to the practice field. Just remember not to let things get out of hand.”

  The succubus proceeded to select four murlimps, which included me, and had us follow her out and down Niflheim’s long hallways. Before as I’d headed to breakfast, we hadn’t gone far and the tightly packed murlimps blocked most of the view. This was the first time I got a good look at the place. As we headed what seemed like across the entire length of the complex and down a floor, I couldn’t help but notice how similar this place seemed to the place under Crystalpeak. I chalked it up to simply similar architecture from the same civilization and time period until Mai said it was more.

  ‘This place has the exact same layout as the place under Crystalpeak,’ she claimed.

  I couldn’t answer her without risking discovery, so I simply turned my head as we went downstairs to look at a wall running along the inside of the staircase’s slow circular spiral. In the place under Crystalpeak, a single staircase connected all seven of the building’s floors. It wound in a gentle circle like this one, but in Crystalpeak, there was no wall on the inside of the staircase. Instead, there was a waist high rail and beyond that, an open air space that allowed all seven floors to be seen from one spot.

  Mai understood what I was getting at by looking at the wall.

  ‘I mean the original Traveler structure is the same as Crystalpeak. The daemons have added a few things including that wall. Take another look, that wall is made of completely different materials,’ Mai explained.

  After a few minutes, the succubus led us to a room filled with lab equipment. All of the delicate things you’d expect in a lab, glass beakers and the like, were packed away and a number of larger machines were already broken down and ready for transport. She had us murlimps pick up the large pieces of equipment and follow her back upstairs to another room on our original floor.

  When I first entered the room, I wanted to vomit and then upon a full look I felt like I was going to die. The first thing I saw was a shrunken disfigured creature that looked like a wax figure of a lizard man that had spent some time in an oven, causing its legs to fold in on themselves under the torsos weight and shifting its right arm so low that it looked like it had grown from the creature’s ass.

  The creature was behind a blue barrier that was nearly translucent, hence my ability to see every one of the creature’s details clearly and my immediate urge to yak.

  I scanned the rest of the room more out of a panic to get my eyes away from the melted monster than a conscious choice. I saw more creatures behind other barriers, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. In the back corner of the room was an orange barrier and behind this barrier were five people, my friends. I scanned them all with some difficulty since their cell was cramped and not all of them were facing my direction but sure enough, she was there. Rose was alive.

  “Hey you,” the succubus snapped her fingers to get my attention. The succubus’ metallic skin gave the noise almost a bell-like ring rather than a snap. “Stop daydreaming. Set the protein synthesizer in there.”

  The succubus pointed to a small room offset from the one where my friends and all the deformed monsters were being held.

  ‘Only 5 in the cage, so we lost one,’ said Mai, commenting on something I’d been too preoccupied to notice, we lost someone in the last battle. ‘Ahh, it’s fine. It was only Bullseye, a classic redshirt if I’ve ever seen one.’

  “That’s all I need you for,” said the succubus after all the boxes were deposited in the room. “You all may return to the barracks or practice field.”

  “Yes, Mistress Lilith,” all the other murlimps said in unison. I, of course, hadn’t known to speak but the succubus didn’t seem to notice. She was already starting to organize and unpack the lab equipment.

  The other murlimps turned and started walking away. I stood there, fortunately silently stunned for if I voiced everything going on in my head my identity would’ve surely been revealed. This whole time I assumed all succubae looked and sounded the same. Could it just happen to be the same name? Could all succubae be named Lilith? It seemed quite unlikely.

  A swirl of emotion went through me, disrupting the generally positive attitude I felt after finding Rose and the others. I felt anger towards Lilith’s betrayal, fear because I still easily recalled how powerful she was, and frankly, a touch of anticipation. This was an opportunity for some payback.

  Again, Lilith fortunately wasn’t paying any attention to me, a murlimp servant. I don’t know what a stupefied murlimp looks like, but it probably had never existed before that moment.

  I eventually snapped out of it and followed the other murlimps, but they didn’t go back to our bedroom. They went to what Lilith called the practice field.

  The practice field was just a large room where the murlimps were free to wail on each other, indulging in their natural tendencies. I didn’t share their enthusiasm for blood so it wasn’t long before I had Mai guide me back to the murlimp sleeping quarters.

  Ch. 27: Chill

  I spent the next few days trying to remain low key by doing whatever tasks I was assigned. The work mostly consisted of moving stuff around or destroying stuff that was to be thrown away.

  Mai was right, as far as I could tell Niflheim was laid out the same as Crystalpeak. If so, there were seven floors though I was only allowed access to the first five. The daemons had installed a security door that required a special key card to access the sixth and seventh floors. The entrance to the base was a single melting door located on the first floor, the highest floor and the only part of Niflheim above ground.

  The murlimp sleeping quarters, the practice field, and their eatery were located in a corner of the first floor. This seemed to be done to keep them away from interacting with most of the other daemons on the base, probably to keep the peace as the augmented murlimps seemed to be a bit unstable. Sure, most of the time they were passive robots, but a couple times I saw one of them start thrashing a random inanimate object for no apparent reason.r />
  My friends were stored in another corner on the first floor, not too far from the murlimp barracks.

  I visited all five of the ‘open’ floors on one occasion or another during those few days, but it didn’t seem like there was much difference between them. All the floors were filled with daemons and fancy looking lab equipment that varied in style but were incomprehensible at least with the quick looks I could take. It would be noticed if a murlimp showed interest in such things.

  Still, I looked everywhere as best as I could and eventually on the fifth day of my investigation while I was walking through the outer edges of the first floor, my persistence paid off.

  “Hey Mai, what’s that thing.”

  A large machine was set against what Mai indicated as the complex’s outer wall. Bright indicator lights flashed along one side and the machine loudly hummed with activity even though externally it didn’t have any moving parts at all. A vent made up one side of the machine and I could feel hot air gently flowing from it. Given it felt hot even as a murlimp, I knew the temperature had to be tremendous.

  “A heater? Is this how they keep this place so warm?” I asked Mai. Niflheim felt comfortable to daemons even when it was located in the coldest environment imaginable. It had to be kept warm somehow. Furthermore, I could see that the machine was connected to an air duct that ran up to the ceiling then over towards the center of Niflheim, a means of distributing heat across the facility.

  ‘Hmm… probably, but there’d be better ways to do it than with this thing. Take a look at where it meets the wall,’ Mai suggested.

  Upon closer inspection, I found a slice into the wall that went all the way around the machine. It wasn’t propped up against the wall, the machine passed through the wall.

  “It’s an air conditioner,” I realized. On Earth, a normal wall mounted air conditioner worked by using electric power to separate the air into hot and cold constituents. The cold air would be sent back into the room, while the hot air was released outside. This machine worked just the opposite. The hot air was sent back into the facility while the cold air was released outside. I now understood why it was so cold outside, this device.