The Ice Lands

by William Dickey

  Now you might be wondering why Zelus didn’t break himself out. His lightning bolts had been enough to scramble Distlemander’s main body. Surely, it’d be able to do the same or more to the small robot that’d captured him, but Zelus knew better than to try. Disrupting the robot would probably cause both of them to fall and Zelus wouldn’t survive a seven-story fall.

  “Damn you, don’t think this daemon can be ganged up on. I haven’t even used my real weapon yet,” Distlemander groaned over an external speaker.

  ‘I don’t know why he’s complaining,’ said Mai. ‘After this robo-nerd has spent so long alone fingering away at his toys, I’m sure getting ganged up on is a dream come true.’

  One of the gun toting arms flung Bearballs back. Another capture robot fell from the ceiling to grab him, but Bearballs saw it coming and rolled to the side. Similarly, other bots tried to ensnare Rose and Izusa, but they were able to avoid them. Everyone was keeping one eye on the ceiling so Distlemander would have a hard time catching more of us.

  “You bunch of gnats; you don’t think I can deal with that. Well, watch this,” Distlemander roared. One of Distlemander’s gun arms swung around to point at Bearballs. A peculiar wave of heat emanated from several vents across Distlemander’s robot torso an instant before the gun fired a short beam.

  The beam itself was completely colorless, but because its effects on the air, a dense white fog line was generated by its passage. The beam struck Bearballs foot. Instantly, a block of ice formed, freezing Bearballs to the ground. Distlemander had freeze rays.

  The guns must have worked on a similar principle as the AC units, separating warm and cold, which explained the wave of heat I felt beforehand. The freeze ray was just more focused.

  Bearballs pulled on his leg to free himself. After it failed, he tried shifting. That method was clever and might have worked if there had been time. Another bot jumped down and grabbed Bearballs. And that was that, there were only three of us left.

  “I could use a little help here,” I whispered to Mai. Mai usually provided useful data on enemy weak points, but so far, she’d been silent.

  ‘It’s hard, it doesn’t really have particular weak points but if I have to choose...’ My vision changed. A series of red spots appeared in my vision. Most of the points were on limbs, suggesting a tactic wherein those were dealt with first. Distlemander only had three arms remaining, two gun-toting arms and a grappling arm. The grappling arm had a weak point on the elbow in the same spot Bearballs had chopped its opposite. As for the two gun arms, the arms themselves didn’t have any weak points, apparently they were sturdier than the grapple arms, but the inside of the barrels were highlighted.

  As for the legs, the weakest joints turned out to be not where they met the torso as I had thought because the legs were thinnest there, but the next joint down.

  “The vents?” I asked. Mai indicated one more set of points as weaknesses. I found them somewhat confusing.

  ‘Ice beams naturally generate a lot of residual heat. If you block the vent, the heat won’t be able to escape and Distlemander will have to either stop using the freeze guns or risk them overheating,’ Mai explained.

  I took in the information and struck. I grabbed one of the legs and moved to damage the weakest joint. Distlemander tried to use the grapple arm to get rid of me, but my murlimp body was too heavy for the spindly arm to budge. I took a moment to tear off the grapple arm and rid myself of its distraction before I clawed at the weak leg joint. Unlike the arm, the leg was too thick for me to simply tear off, so I had to settle for rendering the joint immobile.

  I reached towards the next leg. Distlemander pointed one of his guns and fired on me.

  The continuing cold causes stats to decrease by additional 5%

  Total loss due to cold: -20%

  The continuing cold causes stats to decrease by additional 5%

  Total loss due to cold: -25%

  The continuing cold causes stats to decrease by additional 5%

  Total loss due to cold: -30%

  The freeze ray was exceptionally effective on my daemon body. Within seconds, my health had fallen by a third.

  Fortunately, the freeze ray had a hard time getting ice to stick to me, my body melted any that touched me instantly, and I was able to safely retreat.

  While this was happening, Izusa followed my lead and targeted a different leg. She was able to cripple it shortly before Distlemander blasted her with the other ice gun and one of the capture robots grabbed her.

  With two damaged legs, Distlemander could barely move anymore and resorted to using his freeze guns to attack me and Rose at range. We were the only two left.

  Rose kept on her feet, quickly bounding around the room dodging Distlemander’s shots. My hulking murlimp form was ill suited for such a strategy so I knocked over the largest sturdiest lab bench in the room, spilling all the equipment on the floor, and ducked behind it.

  “How do you like my new capture drones? Most of my normal battle drones weren’t suitable for the environmental conditions you created,” Distlemander grumbled. He wasn’t really into hearing the opinions of some primitives. He just liked talking about his work. “So I threw these together as I watched your team mucking about upstairs on the security feeds. Don’t feel so bad about losing to them, they were designed specifically to counter your team and even though it was a quick and dirty build, I made sure their carapaces were made of the finest gold-titanium alloy and the AI is from my CXT-series that utilizes quantum tessellation….”

  Distlemander took a couple shots at me with his ice beam as he chattered on, but since they had little effect while I was behind cover, he soon shifted the focus of both barrels to Rose.

  Rose kept up well under the increased pressure, but things were still steadily growing more difficult. Even if the freeze rays didn’t strike Rose, they froze patches of the ground, making Rose’s future footwork even more precipitous.

  I flipped over another table near me.

  “Quick, hide over here,” I told Rose, but I didn’t need to, she was on the way over before I started speaking and was at my side under the cover of the other table by the time I finished. The tables I knocked over were near the center of the chamber so they were underneath the black hole. Thus far, the capture drones had always gone straight up and down and I doubted the drones could pass through the black hole region. Between the black hole above and the knocked over tables we were protected from both the capture drones and Distlemander’s ice beams. We had a moment of respite to plan our next move.

  “How do we beat this thing?” Rose shouted over the loud squeal of grinding metal as Distlemander used his two remaining legs to drag his metal ass across the floor an inch at a time.

  “You see the vents on that thing that emit heat whenever he fires the freeze rays?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Rose.

  “I’m going to pop up and draw the daemon’s fire… ice. While he’s distracted, I need you to junk the vents up with dirt. Inventory.” I selected an icon from the menu and a small pile of dirt spilled out onto the floor.

  Rose needed the dirt to do what I asked of her. She could conjure ice because of water vapor in the air, lightning because of electrons present in everything, and fire because of chemical reactions with oxygen in the air, but she couldn’t conjure dirt from nothing. To junk up the vents she’d simply use telekinesis to throw dirt in.

  “Understand?” I asked. I never got an answer.

  Distlemander gave up trying to crawl his way towards us and instead simply focused both of his blasters on the table protecting Rose. At first, we thought everything was fine; the freeze rays didn’t have much penetration behind them so we thought we were safe as long as we weren’t in the line of fire. But the table started to crack and after a few seconds, before either of us could understand what was happening the table shattered and a freeze ray hit Rose.

  Distlemander shut off the blaster the moment he pierced through. He could have frozen
Rose into a solid block but he seemed more interested in capturing us alive. You can’t interrogate or punish the dead. I’m not sure which Distlemander was more interested in. Still, the damage was done. Rose was frozen to the ground.

  “I’m sorry. This might hurt,” I growled.

  I moved to Rose’s side and put a hand on the ice. A sizzle of steam filled the air as my body heat combated the cold. I did my best to distance myself from Rose, but I still heard her yelp a bit from the heat of being near me.

  Distlemander hit me with a burst from a freeze ray, taking another hunk out of my rapidly shrinking health.

  The continuing cold causes stats to decrease by additional 5%

  Total loss due to cold: -35%

  The continuing cold causes stats to decrease by additional 5%

  Total loss due to cold: -40%

  “Back away from the girl, your turn will come shortly,” said Distlemander. I heard another bang behind me. Another capture drone dropped to the ground. It started to scuttle along the ground towards Rose.

  Rose could have focused on breaking herself out or trying to defend herself, but instead she fired a lightning bolt at Distlemander. Distlemander shook wildly his blasters went off a couple times, but they were no longer pointed at me. Instead, they hit random spots across the chamber.

  I took the opportunity to tackle the charging capture drone. I had to protect Rose. I couldn’t let it take her away. A compartment on it had already opened up, but it wasn’t large enough to hold me. I ripped the drone’s legs off one at a time until it was only a tin can and couldn’t move much less bring harm.

  “Isaac. Help,” Rose screamed.

  I turned around only to see Rose being captured by a second drone from the other side. I moved towards the drone, hoping to catch it before it could get away, but a couple more ice blasts from Distlemander forced me to crouch back behind my table and the capture drone got away with Rose. I was all alone against Distlemander and his damaged army of machines.

  “So, we are down to the final one,” said Distlemander. Things were getting to the end and although he was damaged, Distlemander wasn’t worried. As far as he could see, he was in complete control.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have a capture drone large or strong enough to contain you,” Distlemander hummed to himself as if he was thinking it over. “So how about you give up. I get a chance to study your shifting ability and how it lets you bridge the gap between our species and you get to live a while longer. You never know, with more time you may find a way to escape.”

  I didn’t respond to his offer. I was still trying to find a way out. I seized every extra second Distlemander gave me to think.

  “Very well, let’s continue.”

  Distlemander blasted away at the table protecting me. After a few seconds, I started to hear cracking. My brain continued to spin. I couldn’t find a way to win, but I could buy more time. I dove out just as the table gave way, bolted to another table and set it up as a new barrier. Distlemander started blasting away at it immediately.

  “I’m getting pretty tired of this. Surrender and this will all be over,” said Distlemander over the cracking of my newest barrier. Again, I jumped out just before it completely shattered. I ran to another table and did the same as before. There was only one problem; this was the last table, my last protection. I briefly thought over all the items in my inventory. There was a lot of stuff there I could use as barriers but nothing that would protect me from such an onslaught, at least not for long.

  “Fine. I’m finished negotiating. Now, just die for me. Let me study that magnificent corpse,” roared Distlemander as his suit’s two ice blasters focused down on me. I was still tucked behind the last table. I already heard cracking. In a moment, my shield would shatter. Distlemander and I both knew it, and knew that if I tried to go around the table I’d be picked off by the edge of his ice beams.

  This made Distlemander comfortable enough to open the front cockpit of his robo-suit. A display wasn’t good enough. He wanted to see my demise with his own eyes.

  “It must make you feel powerful,” I yelled over Distlemander’s continued onslaught.

  “It does. Hopefully you will last long enough to register its power for yourself,” Distlemander yelled back.

  “You chose an ice cannon as your primary weapon, something that would have only moderate success on the surface world, but gives you complete supremacy over daemons. Out of everything in the world you could have picked, of every form of weapon imaginable, I find your choice rather telling,” I said.

  “What are you getting at?” Distlemander asked.

  ‘Classic Napoleon complex,’ Mai diagnosed.

  “Your small, pathetic stature causes you to pursue dominion over the bigger, stronger, more impressive, more potent daemons,” I explained.

  “How dare you even suggest such a thing…” Distlemander steamed. “That’s not even close… I’m going to shatter you into a million pieces just like those tables. Nothing can survive absolute zero. Ice crystals will form in each of your cells, puncturing membranes and causing catastrophic leakage upon thawing. Although you won’t even get that far…” Distlemander droned on far too long, getting lost in his desire to explain how things work, to explain how I’d die.

  “Never mind. I just hope that you remember what I’ve said when that weapon fails you. Shapeshift.” I crouched lower behind my table shield and began to shift.

  The table shattered. The ice beams continued on and struck me directly. Distlemander grinned with glee for half a second before instead his expression switched to confusion. It wasn’t one of Malphestos’ augmented murlimps before him, but a human and even more shocking I was moving. I slowly stood up.

  Distlemander’s ice cannons continued to blast me. I think he was too surprised to do or say anything. Naturally, the ice beams had no direct effect on me. After I changed back, my Low Temperature Immunity was no longer disabled. The cold had no effect on me. The only effect of the ice beam was a light sting as small granules from frozen water vapor in the air battered against my chest.

  “Inventory.” I selected one of the items I’d acquired quite recently.

  “Pause.” Time froze for a few seconds giving me just enough time to carefully line up my shot. I hurled one of the vats of fluoroantimonic acid at Distlemander seated in his open super suit.

  I didn’t open the container holding the powerful acid. If I did, I would have probably just spilled it all over myself. Under normal circumstances, not opening the robust container would have made my attack a dud. The container would have simply hit Distlemander and bounced off. But like I said, that was under normal circumstances.

  Distlemander’s twin ice beams were still bombarding me as I threw the container. Inevitably, the container got a piece of the ice blast and like almost everything the ice beam touched, the container grew cold and brittle. So, when the container struck Distlemander it shattered. In a way, Distlemander was the source of his own undoing.

  It probably didn’t matter that Distlemander had opened his cockpit. If it had been closed, the acid would have eaten his suit before eventually working its way to him. The only thing that would have been different would be that I wouldn’t have had to see Distlemander eaten away before the acid spread to the rest of his suit, leaving nothing behind but a dirty puddle.

  ‘He’s melting, melting,’ Mai cackled as all this took place. But I didn’t share Mai’s enthusiasm for the scene. It just made me want to look away and puke, but I didn’t dare do so until the daemon completely dissolved.

  You gained 72345 EXP

  You gained a level.

  Ch. 30: Closure

  I looked at the other robots Distlemander stationed around the chamber. All seemed to go inert once their boss died. A few crashed to the ground but most remained hanging from the walls or ceiling, the indicator lights on their bodies turned off. Even having killed the big boss, I didn’t receive a notice from the interface telling me I completed th
e quest, Total Annihilation.

  “I need to destroy it all,” I said, looking up a few floors to the tear in space sitting there. The large dark hole should have been frightening but I found it strangely inviting. This was the closest I’d been to home in a year and a half and as displeased with it as I had been before I left, it was still home. I still missed it.

  ‘As Distlemander said before, that hole leads to another universe. But it may not lead to your Earth. There could be many,’ said Mai. I saw her point but still couldn’t help but wonder. ‘Either way though that hole isn’t big enough for you to go through,’ said Mai.

  “It looks plenty big enough to me,” I replied. It was hard to tell the black hole’s exact size both because it was fifty feet above and because its borders were blurry. The inner core of the hole was pitch black but it gradually faded out on the outside. Even so, the pitch black portion was at least a dozen feet across.

  ‘The black part isn’t the hole. It’s all a region of distorted space around the hole,’ Mai explained. She modified my vision again, zooming it in so I could get a better look at the center of the black hole. What I saw was a white spot. ‘The white spot is the real bridge and it’s about the size of a coin.’

  “What good is it then?” I asked.

  ‘Not much, the Travelers built this place to form a stable continuous bridge to move things between universes instead of jumping things across one at a time. Unfortunately, they found that this was as big as they could go before the energy required to make it any larger started to get out of hand. Eventually, the project was discontinued,’ said Mai.

  There was nothing I could do with the portal so I returned to looking for a way to destroy this place. I looked around the seven story cylindrical chamber. Most everything on the ground was destroyed. There was liquid Distlemander and plenty of damaged daemon items that hadn’t held up well under Distlemander’s rampant use of freeze rays.