Lorn was cold. His tail swayed stiffly from side to side, not gently bending to the left and right as it normally did in warmer climates, as he trotted down the slick corridor. More than once Lorn found he was unable to find a claw hold in the hard, icy floor and skidded into a wall, jarring a few small stalactites from the ceiling, and steadfastly refusing the look up. Rubbing a fresh gash on his snout, Lorn cursed at the frigid caverns, “Lizard-biting ice, falling from the damnable ceiling, making me warier than a prisoner in the arena,” he muttered as he stood up from where his last slide deposited him beside another ice-slicked rock wall, the ice seeming to flow in waves down the rough surface as it navigated the various contours of the rock.
This place would be interesting to look at if it wasn’t for this ridiculous cold, he thought to himself as he started slowly down a joining hallway, determined to keep his footing this time. Every so often the monotony of the cavern’s icy trappings was broken by odd doors carved entirely from ice. Once he even saw an archway blocked by what looked to be rough sheets of interlocking ice, overlapping and sheering into one another, forming a solid barrier that Lorn had no urge to figure out now. The strange doors and formidable barriers aside, Lorn was amazed that he was still able to see this far into the Shrine. After he had walked far enough in that he knew it couldn’t still be sunlit reflecting off the many glaring surfaces, he noticed that it seemed that the icefalls on the walls, the dangerous icicles above, and even the sheets of ice beneath his feet gave of a blue-white glow. When he looked down at his feet, it seemed as if he were being frozen from the outside in; the soft glow painted his scales in the off-white shine of the ice.
For what seemed like the thousandth time since he entered the Shrine, Lorn attempted to shiver and for the thousandth time, failed. Back when he was crossing the ice warrens, he had seen the small, furry animals that lived there doing it and decided that it must be useful to fend off the cold. Why else would anything live in such a horrid place if they didn’t have some way to keep warm? Clamping his jaws even more tightly together to mask his frustration, Lorn began his stumbling trot again. Constant movement seemed to be the only thing that even came close to keeping him remotely warm. Even his belly cloth was useless here. It was only a few more hurried strides until he lost his footing again and found himself sliding down the now gently downward sloping corridor, claws scrabbling for any kind of hold, but only scratching furrows into the ice and spraying cold shavings into his face.
Finally fed up with the caverns making a fool out of him, Lorn focused on his newest essence and felt himself slow down immediately. His claws widened and his body grew heavier by the second as he focused the part of his mind that he had been training to deal with the essences on the rocks that lay beneath the many layers of ice around him. His scales, cast in the off-white glow of the cavern began pushing outward all over his body. Slowly, rocks that could have passed for a common roadside sight in the mountains formed, weighing him down more with every new appearance. Stones covered his back like armor plating and ran down the length of his tail to end in a somewhat larger stone that Lorn found could be used in battle as a club of sorts. More rocks grew out of his legs, neck and head so that only his gravel-coated belly lacked a formidable defense, but more importantly, his wild slide was slowing to a crawl and after a few more moments of waiting, stopped entirely.
Lorn looked back up the corridor and grinned to himself. Wish I would have thought of this sooner, he chided himself as he unconsciously poked a now-blunt claw at where the gash on his snout should have been. Not quite used to this particular essence, yet, Lorn was slightly surprised to feel only hard stone where he expected to feel a slight twinge of pain. Filing his surprise away as another pleasant aspect of this form, Lorn turned ponderously toward the chamber he barely stopped himself from hurtling into.
Big was an understatement. Immense seemed a better word to describe what he saw before him. Stretching away from him as far as his stone-lidded eyes could see was a forest of jagged stalagmites lancing upwards in every possible angle all glowing with that disturbingly pale light. Here and there amidst the jumble, shining floor was visible, forming meadows of sorts among the stalagmites. It was as if he was looking down at the world’s largest balding hedgehog. The difference being that hedgehogs gave off at least a little warmth when you held them. Curse this cold! Lorn grated. His heavy layering of rocky armor did nothing to help him maintain body heat and the rocks all over his body were already as cold as the protrusions sticking through the ice on the walls.
Sighing regretfully – and immediately angry at himself for losing even that small puff of warmth to the freezing air – Lorn slowly made his way down a series of small ledges and rocky platforms that worked their way around the perimeter of the room, eventually reaching the forest of ice. The rock layer over his scales made moving quickly difficult, if not impossible, but also seemed to keep his legs from jarring under the weight as he dropped from ledge to ledge on his way around the room – the interweaving of the rocks made sure they hit each other before Lorn’s bones had a chance to smash into one another.
As he stepped from the last ledge into a small clearing at the edge of the ice spires, he felt a small wave of heat rush up his legs and through his body. Not enough to make staying here longer than necessary a good idea, but enough to make sure he didn’t join the ice spires as a frozen adornment of their stark paths. Just as the warmth subsided and another pulse of it began to rush through him, the pale glow flashed with a blue intensity from the stalagmites nearest him and quickly began moving from one spire to the next, deeper into the chamber - ripples flowing outward from a stone tossed into a pond.
No sooner had the spires nearest him lit up than the light faded and left them with the off-white glow that passed for normal in these caverns. The extinguishing effect continued to douse the spires further away from him, too, making another wave pass through the forest of ice. Try as he might, though, Lorn could not summon one ounce of awe for the spectacular light show before him. It was just another aspect of the cave, nothing to gawk at.
Why can’t I feel amazed? Lorn idly wondered, These lights passing through the ice should be amazing, but it’s so distant in my head it may as well not be there. As Lorn worriedly probed his own emotions for a moment, he failed to notice the faint tinkling of delicate ice breaking and crashing further into the ice forest.
Lorn blinked away the introspective glaze in his eyes and shook his head as the sound of crashing ice finally pierced his worried thoughts. The rocks covering his body ground against each other lightly as Lorn sway his body quickly back and forth in another failed attempt to shiver and grumbled, “That had damn well better be the Ice Tear shaking itself loose and becoming simple to find!”
Another refreshing wave of warmth rushed through Lorn’s body as he moved into the midst of the spires, coldly examining what could have made so many. Glancing up, he noticed that the ceiling was no where near as cluttered with stalactites as the ground was with their opposites. Only a dozen or so giant, frozen stalactites hanged from the roof of the cavern. They reminded him of the teeth of the flame beast that he had killed for the Fire Tear and hoped that a repeat of that battle was not going to be found here. He was here to find the Ice Tear, though, and to see if the rumors of the Golem returning were true.
The Tear is too important for it to not be guarded, he thought bitterly. Every Tear he had recovered so far had been guarded by some dangerous beast that tried to kill him. When he had told Dhire as much, before his winged accomplice – friend was too strong of a word– left for Azhel, Dhire had told him of a legend of his people that told of what would happen after the Darkness’ Seal was broken. The legend had said, ‘that once the Darkness was free in the world once again, it would send agents forth to secure its rule.’
Lorn had no idea of what ‘secure its rule’ meant, but Dhire had and set off without much of an explanation except for the, “I’ll find you when I’m done in Azhel!” that he yelled as he flapped his way out of the mountains, wings beating furiously as he fought the still air for height. Lorn didn’t know why Dhire insisted on staying near him, anyway. As long as he was a help, Lorn didn’t care.
Before moving too far into the eerie lighting of the ice, Lorn let his rock-laden tail drop as far as it could to the ground and let the rocks that formed the club at the end of his tail carve a few small furrows into the floor. He was determined to get out of here and find someplace warm as soon as he found what he was looking for. After taking a few steps, Lorn looked back over his shoulder to take in the bright white line his tail club carved into the ice while he was walking and nodded to himself. At least I won’t get lost, he thought wryly before continuing on.
The path Lorn took through the shards of ice meandered lazily back and forth across the cavern floor, sometimes running parallel to the wall for a time and every so often broken by another clear meadow. Here and there, other paths broke away from Lorn’s, seemingly criss-crossing the entire cavern and making him think of the spider webs that he had sometimes found in the corners of his home in Charlindrini; when he could show his face there, at least.
The further he moved into the jumble of spires the louder the sounds of ice breaking became and the more Lorn grew worried. At one point he stopped and made sure of his footing before forcing his hips to the left and swinging his tail around to smash into the side of one of the spires. His tail club connected with a loud crack and jarred the bones in his tail as a small fracture appeared in the surface of the ice. Looking from the crack to the direction the sounds of cracking ice were coming from, Lorn grimaced and continued plodding deeper into the mess of ice, his rocky form heavy enough to keep him from slipping unless he moved too quickly.
After walking a few tails from where he damaged the ice spire, Lorn came upon another of the glossy clearings, only this one was right up against the wall of the cavern and a huge hole had been carved into the wall. Moving towards it, Lorn tuned out the insistent sounds from whatever was breaking ice in order to concentrate on what he had found. The hole itself was nearly perfectly round, maybe 6 or 7 tails in diameter, but the top edge of the hole seemed to have been chiseled away at or broken as if something sharp had forced its way into the tunnel, cutting tooth shaped furrows into the tunnel that curved up and away in the distance. As tempting as it was to see if the tunnel led to the surface, Lorn tore his gaze from the anomaly in the cavern wall and turned to head towards the sounds again.
Lorn paused in mid turn, straining his ears. The sounds had stopped. Suddenly taking the option of running into the tunnel didn’t seem like such a bad idea. The tinkling of ice in the cavern had at least provided him with some direction of where to go, but now Lorn would be wandering blindly, hoping that he was still moving in the right direction. Baring his teeth slightly, Lorn grumbled a bit as he tromped off in the direction he remembered the sounds coming from, “May as well keep walking through the damn cold. Not like I have anywhere else to be.”
After what seemed like hours of walking and turning around and walking some more each time he came to a dead end, Lorn cleared the last spires of ice as he entered the largest meadow he had seen yet. The shining surface of ice beneath Lorn’s feet stretched about 70 tails from where he stood to the unbroken rim of ice spires on the other side. A dozen tails off-center from the middle of the meadow, a mound of earth rose above the ice sheet, covered in more of the jagged spires ranging from as long as Lorn’s tail to half again his length in height. Above the field were the huge stalactites that Lorn saw from the far edge of the forest, but neither the stalactites nor the out of place mound of earth were what really drew his eyes. To the left of the mound was an expanse of what looked like smashed shards of ice; the stumps of a few of the spires could still be seen among all of the broken pieces. Feeling as if he were crossing a frozen pond, Lorn walked heavily over to the mess and surveyed the jumble of ice.
Looking down on the destruction, it almost felt as if he were looking over the remains of a shattered city, spire stumps marking the greatest ruins the civilization had to offer. He lowered his face closer to the ice and carefully picked up a broken shard, trying not to cut himself on the sharp edges.
What could have done this? He wondered. My tail club could barely crack it and my tail still throbs from the hit.
As he stared at the imagined ruins of the city of ice, the shards began to twinkle as if they formed one large wind chime that had just been disturbed by a gentle breeze. The longer he watched, the more violently the ice jumped about and off to his right Lorn noticed the spire covered mound beginning to move! Lorn’s eyes widened in shock as he watched the mound rise up on tree trunk thick, short legs, broken bits of ice falling around them and turned as quickly as he could to face them. Resting on top of the sturdy legs was what looked like a huge turtle shell. It was hard to tell, since the entirely of the shell was riddled with hundreds of the ragged-edged ice spires, jutting out in every direction, all glowing in time with strange patterns that marched their way across the beast’s shell. Its head was shaped like a box, top covered with more of the spires and blue, glowing eyes peered out from underneath the cap of ice. As it turned to gaze at Lorn, its mouth opened to reveal too many teeth to count and a white fog that billowed out from between them.
The fog flowed towards Lorn more quickly than he thought it should be able to and he heaved himself to the right as the fog blew past his feet, leaving them numb. Lorn gasped at the frigidity of the monster’s breath as it let loose a sound that Lorn figured an avalanche would make as it roared downhill snapping trees and tearing rocks from their resting places. Hurriedly, Lorn struggled to get his lifeless feet beneath him so he could stand and make some sort of attempt at fighting back. As his numb feet continually slid back out from underneath him – Curse this ice! Lorn screamed in his head – the beast began to turn its head away from him and now had its left side facing him. Before Lorn had a chance to wonder what it was doing and just as he managed to get all four feet beneath him, a tail that he had not seen before - amidst the jumble of the rest of the ice covering the creature’s body - swung into him, sending him skidding across the meadow and into the side of an ice spire. Breath knocked out of him, Lorn had to stifle a cry of pain at the small ice spire jammed between two stones of the rock-armor at the base of his tail – the beast’s tail was covered with them, as well, it seemed.
Blood from the wound dripped onto the ice, hardening instantly, crimson amid a sea of pale blue. Surprisingly, another fresh wave of heat came from the floor and helped bring feeling back to Lorn’s cold-singed feet. Glad for the cavern’s strange qualities, Lorn got to his feet and tried to ignore the stabbing pain radiating from his tail. It almost felt like the spire was trying to freeze him, waves of cold emanating from the entrenched spire combated the continued waves of heat from the floor.
Determination replacing surprise, Lorn watched the beast as it slowly turned back to face him, its mouth hanging slightly open and each of its steps sending shattered pieces of ice sliding across the meadow’s surface. Again it roared, the smaller spires around the edge of the meadow bursting from the intensity of the sound and Lorn trying to shield his ears with his hands.
Now that Lorn had a second when it couldn’t reach him directly, he let his thoughts run wild, How can I possibly hurt it? The shell and the ice covering it will keep me from landing an significant blows and its legs’ scales looked too tough to scratch. I could use the fire essence, but I doubt I’d be able to keep my footing very well. At least I can move without sliding in this form.
Cautiously, Lorn began slowly side-stepping around the meadow’s perimeter, forcing the creature to constantly shift itself to stay facing him. It didn’t seem to be able to move very quickly and its head was slowly waving side to side, as if looking for some way to reach Lorn. With a rumble deep in its throat, the beast gave a great lunge with its back legs, cracking the ice in the floor from the pressure, and launching itself across the ice on its belly towards Lorn with surprising speed, mouth open wide.
Lorn, determined to leave some kind of mark on the creature, waited until the last moment before flinging himself out of the way as he swung his tail in the other direction, clubbing the beast beneath the left eye. The monster crashed into the wall of ice spires that surrounded the meadow, sending pieces of broken ice flying in every direction, while Lorn slid a short distance and came to a stop a tail’s length from the beast’s left shoulder. Wondering if the stone beneath the floor’s ice sheet was very far away and hoping it wasn’t, Lorn reared onto his back legs, and as an earthen hue appeared around his forelegs he smashed his front feet onto the ice with incredible force, the rocks all over his body shuddering at the impact. From the tips of his claws, explosions of ice rippled towards the creature’s shoulder, heaving shards before it and slamming into the rough scales of its legs. The force of the tremor was enough to have embedded shards of ice deeply into its leg and the beast cried out in pain, thrashing its head amongst the spires in an attempt to crush Lorn.
Already a few body lengths away, Lorn was already focusing on his next move, embracing the small flare of heat inside of him that bloomed into flame bursting from his ankles, neck, and tail. The ice spire that had been lodged between the rocks on his body slowly melted and the waves of cold coming from it as well. Feeling warm for the first time in ages, Lorn immediately readied his flame breath, holding the onslaught between his teeth until he knew it was strong enough to reach the creature lying tails away. Not hesitating, Lorn unleashed the torrent of flame and held onto it as the fire collided with the monster’s back leg, making it stomp and thrash more vigorously the longer he held the gout of fire focused on its scales.
Satisfied with the burn he inflicted and suddenly conscious of how the cold around him seemed to keep his fire from flaring as brightly as it used to, Lorn cut the stream of fire off and tried to backpedal on the ice while watching the creature finally extricate itself from what was left of the spire wall. The monster’s throaty roar rumbled the ice around them again when it turned to face Lorn once more. The scorch on its back leg gave off the faint smell of char and Lorn could see a darker smear beneath the beast’s neck, probably from the blood running down its front leg, though it looked blue in the pale light. As Lorn scanned the creature’s head for any sign of a weaker area, it opened its mouth wider than it ever had before, a slight creaking noise coming from its jaws as they reached their maximum width. Lorn watched in amazement as a blue circle of light – the same pale blue that was still emitted from the ice spires on occasion – formed between the top and bottom row of teeth and other lances of blue light arced into the circle as if they were arrows finding their mark. Lorn crouched down to stabilize himself as the middle of the circle filled with smaller concentric rings of light with the inner rings moving in and out – towards Lorn and then back into its mouth – as if a stone was being thrown in the middle of the circle to cause a single ripple. Faster the rings moved until a shaft of intense blue light flew from between the beast’s teeth towards Lorn, stopping in a flash just above Lorn’s head and moving from side to side as the creature waved its massive jaws to and fro. Trying to dig his back claws into the ice, Lorn managed to pull himself out from under whatever the creature was doing as layers of ice shards as big as Lorn was long lanced down into meadow floor, cracking the ice there and tilting it up around where the invading ice was landing.
Lorn used the small wall as leverage and scrambled to his feet in order to push off from the wall and slide until he caught himself on an ice spire even further down the meadow from the attacking monster. The blue flashes stopped and Lorn couldn’t decide if he was happy or not that he could no longer see what the monster was doing. Probably moving up to the wall, he decided.
Using the time he was just given, Lorn scanned the area again for anything that he could use to help him against whatever this thing was. His eyes ran over the hundreds, if not thousands, of spires around the meadow as well as the scattered shards of ice that were now everywhere throughout the meadow, and even the stalactites above before suddenly swinging his gaze back to the ceiling.
That’s it! If I can find some way to make those fall on it, there’s no way it’ll get back up, he thought as he turned his attention back towards the small ice wall. Just as he expected, the creature had walked up to the wall and had just now seen Lorn standing a distance away on the other side. Glancing towards the ceiling to better set the stalactites’ positions in his mind; Lorn shoved himself away from the spire he was beside, flames whooshing with the quick movement, and slid out directly beneath one of the stalactites to wait.
The creature advanced on Lorn slowly, heavy steps making the small pieces of ice on the ground jump into the air slightly. Every time the pieces landed it sounded like the ice was breaking beneath Lorn’s feet, inch by inexorable inch. When the monster was within six tails of Lorn, it gave another burst of power to its legs as if to launch itself across the floor again, but instead launched its back-end sideways, whipping its tail out towards Lorn. Cursing at the unexpected action, Lorn tried to dive out of the way or backpedal, or anything, but could only scrabble at the cold floor in vain. The fire fluttering around his ankles, slightly melting the icy floor made finding a firm step even more difficult. Razor sharp spires of ice launched from the beast’s tail as it let out a sound of trees cracking and tons of snow rushing downhill. Half dozen razor sharp spires launched from the beast’s tail, the pale glowing of the spires leaving a faint, blurry trail behind each projectile. Scrabbling for purchase, Lorn had nowhere to go and was hit, the force of the impacts carrying him through the air until the spires struck more of their own and hung there, pinning Lorn to an icy surface a foot above the slick ground.
His flames flickering upwards across the spire he was pinned to, Lorn writhed in agony, a tail long spire through his left shoulder and another, slightly smaller one, impaling the base of his tail. Lorn’s vision blurred as cold from the spires began throbbing through him, trying to quench his fires and warm blood ran down the surface of the ice he was hanging against, freezing in runnels of red and never reaching the floor. Vision swirling, Lorn could see the hulking shape of the beast moving slowly forward, mouth agape and glowing azure eyes fixed on its quarry. His left arm limp at his side and tail useless, Lorn ceased struggling and instead tried to focus on the ceiling and the remaining power left to him.
The number of stalactites wavered in Lorn’s watery sight – now a dozen, now two – until Lorn no longer cared how many there were, as long as they fell. Idly Lorn wondered if the creature had a name, if any of them did. The cold was spreading into his chest, trying to dim the heat of the essence that now suffused his body with what little warmth it could. The Tears must be very important, or it wouldn’t be this vicious. Struggling to maintain consciousness, Lorn tried to gather all the heat within him in his chest, mentally batting away the cold that threatened to extinguish his life. He pulled the fire from his dangling tail, dimming it so that even the pale blue aura around emitted from the ice could drown out the red of the fire, and urged the flames from his ankles and neck to join the now brightly glowing force in his breast. Where is the Tear? I was supposed to…to…what? Why did I need the Tear? The stalactites were barely in focus as Lorn looked wearily towards the ceiling again, able to hear the paced footfalls of the beast still coming on, and knew he only had to make them fall to be alright. Everything would be alright if he could make them fall. Why? I must kill it. The creature of ice.
Vaguely, Lorn was aware that the monster had stopped moving and its mouth was glowing blue. Why is it glowing? Must make them fall. Lorn pulled all of the heat he had gathered within in towards his mouth, weak jaws straining to keep his teeth shut as the roiling inferno in his maw tried to pry its way out. With his remaining strength, he pointed his snout towards the stalactites, hoping he was still pointing at the stalactites. He couldn’t tell anymore. A low rushing sound escaped Lorn throat as he opened his mouth and let loose a massive ball of fire, flames dancing in circles across its surface like leaves caught in a whirlwind on a breezy day. When Lorn released the burst, the rest of the flames on his body dimmed mutely, the same as his tail.
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