T Lain - Plague of Ice

He felt no wind. Hennet half-expected the Plane of Ice would be forever wracked by the same howling winds that demolished the Fell Forest, but at this moment at least there was instead an unearthly quiet over the place, a hush that Hennet did not find peaceful at all but deeply unsettling.

What of the rift? he wondered. On the other side it blew fiercely as the elemental material was sucked back into this plane, but here? Perhaps it didn’t blow spectacularly with wind and fury but simply diffused its essence back into the Plane itself.

Hennet stood, short spear at the ready, puzzled about what to actually do. Ice from the ground crept up his legs and coated them in a sheen of frost. The air itself, the jagged snowflakes that stared at him so menacingly, came closer, clinging to his face and his hair and his arms and his torso.

His blood froze.

He couldn’t imagine the air being colder than what he’d faced these last days in the cold zone, but the Plane of Ice knew temperatures far below even the coldest, most remote recesses of the Endless Glacier, where neither man nor mammoth nor frost giant ever dared set foot. Water froze. Flesh froze. Ice froze. To Hennet it seemed that no creature, not even Sonja, not even the mephits, could survive for long in so harsh a place as this. This for him was the wellspring of all cold, the ultimate source not only of the plague of ice that now threatened Atupal and Klionne but of all winters, all frosts, all sudden cold spells that kill crops and children alike. It was the evil of cold and the cold of evil.

So Hennet thought as the harsh chill penetrated his bones, and all thoughts left him but for a distant yearning for the comforts of a place by the hearth and two warm arms enfolding him.

“Hennet!”

The name echoed through this strange world, striking the sorcerer with the force of a magic missile to his brain. He shook off the ice that settled on his limbs and jogged painfully in the direction of the voice, pushing his way through the icy particles that clung to the air. Peering through the frozen fog hanging all around him, he desperately searched for the source of the sound.

“Sonja!” he yelled as loudly as he could, shaking frost off his vocal cords. He heard the fluttering of wings swooping past him and instinctively whirled about to face it, but he saw nothing. There Hennet stood, once again inert and unsure of where to turn next.

“Keep moving! If you stand still, you’ll freeze in moments,” the welcome female voice cried again. “Come to the sound of my voice! We must keep them from getting the Pendant!”

Where is the pendant? Hennet wanted to shout as he forced his way through the sluggish air, but all he could produce was an inarticulate string of random syllables. In the icy silence, he faintly heard the mephits’ wings beat as they flew above him, doubtless scanning for their unholy prize. In a flash he knew what he had done wrong. He should have stood guard at the opening of the rift to block them from getting back in with the pendant.

Only he knew he wasn’t here for the pendant.

Hennet thought he heard wings close by, and he whirled again. He gulped with glee as the tip of his spear impaled a mephit, which let out a cry of pain and crashed to the ground. Tiny ice crystals swirled riotously in its wake, forming whorls and kaleidoscopic swirls above the corpse.

“You killed one of them!” Sonja confirmed a gleeful voice from the frozen fog, and Hennet again was on the move, desperate to find the source of her calls. But he felt the sluggishness closing in on him. He heard his joints crack as he moved, as if he was freezing from the inside out.

There was no warmth in him now, no warmth anywhere in existence. His exposed skin turned white, and his hair stood up, dagger-stiff. Mentally he conjured up images of roaring, crackling fires, hot food and drink, and Sonja’s welcome touch. He even wished he was back under the city in the oven room. He almost died there, but the torment of having his blood turned to steam seemed far better than freezing to ice. He yelped in horror as he realized he could no longer feel his hands. He could see them, but otherwise he had no way of being certain they existed. His legs were not far behind.

Hennet’s cloak was partly frozen, and bits of it crackled and snapped off as he walked. He’d sometimes wondered what freezing to death would be like. Some said that it was the least painful of deaths, a gradual, gentle loss of feeling, like a slow drift into sleep. He knew now that was lie. He would gladly exchange this death for any other. He blinked, and frost clung to his eyelashes. When he breathed heavily, his breath froze in midair. The tiny crystals joined the swirl of others that danced round his head. White oblivion threatened to envelop him forever.

There it was. Glistening brighter than any diamond in the pale blue light, the ice-white jewel of the Ilskynarawin, the Frozen Pendant itself. Hennet was struck by how small and insignificant it looked—in the face of this eternity of snow, a tiny chunk of whiteness possessed so much power. It lay where it landed, launched through the rift by Regdar’s toss, its golden chain half covered by the snow. It looked different here on this plane that was the source of its power but paradoxically where it was useless. It was larger and shone brighter, making it more visible in the diminished light, and it had transformed from a misshapen lump into a perfect sphere of purest white. It glowed serenely, perfectly untroubled by all that happened. For a moment, Hennet stood, looking at the Frozen Pendant at his feet as if it dared him to pick it up and claim it, and he hesitated to accept the challenge.

He wondered for a moment if he should call Sonja. She’d know what to do with it. But he could still hear the mephits beating their wings above him, and he knew he didn’t dare give away its location. He needed to do this himself.

Hennet’s bones creaked as he bent over, slowly extending his hand to grasp the necklace.

Before he could reach it, a mephit burst out of the fog above him. With lightning speed it swooped down, snatching the pendant away just before Hennet’s hand could close around it. For half an instant it turned to Hennet, smiled, and hissed at him, before setting its wings flapping and vanishing into the air.

Hennet screamed in frustration, but no sound passed his stiffened lips. He tried to toss his short spear after the mephit, but he couldn’t move fast enough to hurl the weapon effectively. It wobbled only a few yards before flopping to the ground. Hennet felt his legs crack and collapse underneath him. He, too, tumbled onto the ground. With great effort he rolled onto his back and lay staring up at the diamond-cold, heartless sky. Here, with whatever time was left to him, he contemplated his failure as the cold soaked into his organs. In short order, he knew, the mephits would return to the Prime and with the coveted Ilskynarawin in their claws they would cement and expand the rift so that pure, unfiltered, elemental ice would spill over into his world. Regdar and Lidda would fight, but the new blast of ice would be more than any humans could endure. Before long Klionne and Atupal would fall and the lands beyond would face a terrible, new threat. All mankind would be in danger. He had failed Sonja utterly.

There was nothing he could do to stop it.

He remembered how the tiny crystals of ice melted away from his hand when he first stepped through the rift. Raising his hand, he saw that it no longer happened. The crystals collected on his skin, forming a shell. Even the tiny bit of heat required to melt these specks was beyond his body’s ability to generate. What damage a fireball would do here! he mused. But he was too weak; he was dying. He wished momentarily that he still had the fire wand he’d used against the elemental ice scorpion. That would be something to see.