Cold is the Void

[Amaterasu]

Expedition, Day 14 - Day 2 of the Ascent, the afternoon

As Amaterasu crossed into the darkness that led to the bowels of the Ark of Yamato, she felt a wave of cold air rushing over her. Uneasy, she progressed. This was not how it had been... the Ark's central room was right behind the outer wall. Why was she not there yet?

In the complete darkness, she saw... no, she felt movement. Then with no warning a hand bursted out, reaching for her head. She shrieked and reflexively grasped it by its wrist before it could reach her... then slowly the darkness cleared as her consciousness returned. She had been lying on the stone floor of another cavern, propped up with her left and and with the fingers of her right one wrapped around Oki's wrist like a vice. The warrior of Kamui was leant over her, his hand centimeters away from her face. He did not move one bit. Out of the corner of her eye Amaterasu noticed Fiara and Urist too, and their faces were both surprised and shocked. The tension lingering in the room only broke when Oki let out the air in his lungs that he'd been holding and put his free hand on Amaterasu's, the one she was gripping his wrist with. "Relax, Ama. It's over now."

"Oki... you..."

"I woke up an hour ago, Fiara and Urist are also up. You took the longest." He stroked over the backs of her fingers. "Could you lighten your grip before you break my bones?" he asked.

"Sorry..." Her hand refused to obey her brain at first but slowly, one by one, her fingers opened and released Oki's wrist. "How much time has passed?"

"Senecianus says that it's still day outside... mid afternoon or so."

Amaterasu pushed herself to her feet, holding back a cough from her dry throat, and nodded. "Where is Senecianus?"

Fiara pointed towards a strange ice formation, where the wampa was sitting. It looked like a ramp coming out of the ground, spiraling upwards. When she looked up, she noticed that it reached the ceiling of the room and seemingly went on through a hole, so there was no way to tell how high up it went. Still feeling sore from the rocks she had rested on, she approached Senecianus, who slowly stood up as she came close.

“I see that you have awakened... Hmm, you too have made it through the Hall of Envy. Congratulations are in order... not many adventurers have been able to overcome the jealousy towards others in their life.”

“It... certainly wasn’t easy”, Amaterasu murmured. The trial of Lust had only brought out something natural in them, tried to influence them with a force from outside. However, the trial of Envy had dug deep into the dark corners of her mind and brought out the worst in her. The things she had wanted to lock up and never see again. When she looked back at Oki, at Urist and at Fiara she painfully remembered their laughs, the hurtful words and that she had punched Oki, despite knowing that none of it had been real.

“You have earned a... hmm, a break from the trials. The following trials will take place in caves that are further up.” It stepped backwards onto the spiral ramp and tapped it with its foot. “You can use this staircase to progress to the higher level. I will await you at the end.” It turned around and began ascending at a slow pace. Soon it rounded a corner and disappeared from view while Amaterasu grouped the others back up. They took a few minutes to adjust their clothing for a tiresome vertical ascent and Amaterasu reinforced their boots with little iron claws that would dig into the frozen ground and give them a foothold. Luckily, the ascent was not very steep and they all were physically fit.

Urist took the lead, armed with two picks in the case of falling. In preparation of the worst-case scenario they even tied a rope to their belts so as to stay locked to one another in case that one of them slid, and as the one on the front Urist was the most responsible. Amaterasu followed him, then came Fiara, and Oki took the back, ready to catch his lighter comrades should they slip and fall.

"Hey, Mother Amaterasu..." asked Fiara after a while. "What did you see?"

Amaterasu couldn't turn around as that would risk losing her grip on the floor, which made Fiara's words even more impactful because she couldn't see her. "I... I don't want to talk about it."

"Why? Did you see something bad?" she insisted. "Was it something that involved us?"

"I SAID: I don't want to TALK about it!" Amaterasu snapped at Fiara, shouting a few words. They echoed off the frozen walls and lingered for a few seconds even after she was done.

Fiara blinked, looking shocked yet again, and raised her hands defensively. "Okay! Okay, I won't... I'll stop asking..."

"I... I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me just now. I didn't..." stuttered Amaterasu, bewildered at herself. Sure the memories had been unpleasant, but that was no reason to snap at Fiara like that! There was silence behind her for a few seconds.

"No, it's fine... I shouldn't have insisted", Fiara finally replied.

"Oi, you two..." Urist stopped them. "You'd better take a look at this."

Amaterasu leant to the side to see what Urist was referring to. A large snowman was standing in their way, blocking the spiral path completely with its massive body. It was a good five meters tall with thick arms tipped by icicles that represented fingers and two blocks of dark blue ice in place of eyes. It looked down at the group before... well, had it had lips and teeth, Amaterasu would have described it as that it opened its mouth. But it only looked like the snow split in two, revealing a large hole but with no throat or other connections as a living being would have it. The roar that came from inside however was that of a living monster, a roar that shook the cavern and the group to their bones. A few icicles loosened from the ceiling and fell down like a hail of deadly arrows, but luckily the spiral ramp above their heads protected them from it.

"DOWN!" yelled Urist, just in time for them all to lay flat on the ground, held only by the rope and Urist's ice picks. The snowman's arm swept over their heads, the deadly icicles that it had as fingers only barely missing Oki's head. Visibly angered, it growled again while rearing up to slam its hands down and squash them. Oki was the first to come back to his feet, he charged forward and stabbed Kutone deep into the snowman's lower body in one fluid motion. The snowman, visibly unimpressed, attempted to smack him off the edge but Oki leapt onto its arm and ran up along it. He buried his blade deep into the snowman's arm at the shoulder, trying to cut it off. But Kutone got stuck halfway through and he was forced to let go of it for a second to dodge another attack.

"This blasted thing's got ice bones or something! Careful!" he yelled while ripping Kutone out. The cut had almost immediately healed back up… or rather, closed. The snow simply stuck back together. Fiara attempted to fire a few shots of her Phoenix Blasters at the beast’s head, but it barely took notice of the hits. Urist didn’t even bother, knowing that his efforts would be wasted. Amaterasu however felt it… this was HER time to act.

“Urist, Fiara… withdraw. Slide down the staircase a distance. Oki and I will take care of this.”

“Ama? What are ye plannin’?”

“What Kami would I be if I could not take on a simple snow construct? OKI! GO FOR THE NECK!” she yelled. The Oina warrior would likely not be able to deal any permanent damage but she needed to get time… and to behead this beast was to blind it. But with Kutone he couldn’t deal the final blow… or rather, not without her aid. As she drew her Celestial Brush and painted a circle onto her coat, she remembered her fight against the construct-type beings that she had battled in Nippon. Without exception, they had a weak point… a crystal that contained the magic energy binding them together. This snowman couldn’t be much different, as the snow it was made of wasn’t organic. It couldn’t be a possessing spirit either because the snowman was roaring and moving its limbs in a very “living being” way… possessing spirits did not do that. As the circle was completed, a single word left her lips: “Taiyo.” Just then, the lid popped off on one of the golden ink pots on her sash and glittery dust poured out, flying into the air and forming a tiny sun above their heads.

Oki, who had been struggling against the ice monster while Amaterasu worked her magic, stopped and blinked as the bright sunlight filled the room. He held onto Kutone which he had rammed deep into the snowman’s neck, but not found himself able to sever the connections to its head, as the snowman leant back and gave a deep groan. “Is that your doing?!” he asked Amaterasu who stood on the ramp, the spikes on her boots dug into the icy surface and keeping a foothold for her.

“It is. Hold it for just a little longer.” She raised her hands, liberating the Yasakani no Magatama from around her waist and sending one after another of the little beads flying at the snowman. Normally they would have done little damage, only chipped off parts of its icy claws, but this… this was different. Each bead broke one of the ice-fingers or sent the snowman stumbling backwards from the sheer force. She recalled them to herself after expending all twelve and started right anew, sending the snowman back a little more with each strike. Before long its ten claws were shattered and almost harmless and its body was littered with dozens of little holes where the beads had struck. And yet they kept healing, the snow just reformed and the holes disappeared as if they had never existed. But, Amaterasu was okay with that. It was all part of her plan after all.

Left with no way to attack and with each attempt at a strike being met with one of the sun goddess’s projectiles the snowman began to defend. It used its arms to cover its chest and head and tried to shake Oki off, though the brave warrior held on tight. Amaterasu’s attacks were too widely placed for the snowman to fully cover itself however, so it needed to leave some parts of itself open in order to protect others. These other places were what Amaterasu looked for… the essential areas.

“Oki, now!” she finally shouted. The warrior needed not ask: he held on with his legs alone as he pulled Kutone from the snowman’s neck and plunged it deep into its shoulder, then ripped it downward in a brutal motion. The snowman’s right arm fell to the ground with a wet splat, cleanly severed from its torso. The howl it let out in response was more an angry one than one of pain though. Oki meanwhile fell off, the attack having forced him to slide down along the snowman’s back to use gravity to strengthen his blow and to cut through the ice bones. He stepped back from the construct to avoid being squashed beneath it.

“What now?”

“Stay where you are. I’ll finish this…” Amaterasu pulled the Celestial Brush again and let the power flow through her. Rapidly she drew a Q shape into the air, whispering another word: “Baku.” Obeying her drawn command a Cherry Bomb materialized directly beneath the snowman. The construct saw the danger and batted it away with its arm, towards Amaterasu, but in doing so exposed itself. It was time to finish this.

Dodging the bomb with a leap, the sun goddess brought herself into range, and painted a straight horizontal line straight across the snowman’s chest, while speaking the third incantation in this battle: “Kiru”. The bomb exploded behind her as golden ink flooded forth and shaped into a slash that cut the snowman clean in half through the middle of its torso, and in doing so revealed the icy core that was sustaining it: a blue gem whose eerie blue glow pulsed like a heart’s. Oki needed no callout, when he saw the snowman’s upper half fall aside he leapt forward and, before the gem could regenerate any part of the snowman that would have protected it his gloved hand grasped and pried it from its hiding spot. The snowman’s pieces, now scattered across three spots, stopped moving on the spot and fell apart into loose piles of regular snow.

“Ama! Ye did it!” Urist shouted as he climbed back up to Oki’s and her level. Fiara was climbing behind him, struggling to keep up with the excited dwarf’s speeds. After all they were still tied together by the rope. Amaterasu was panting with exhaustion as the fake sun disappeared from above their heads and she returned the Yasakani no Magatama to its place. Casting three Celestial Brush spells in quick succession hadn’t made her break a sweat before, but now… she felt a bit dizzy-headed, even. Was this the Omniverse’s doing? Had she lost so much of her powers that it had weakened her to the point she was at now? Well… it would not be forever this way, would it.

“Good work… Urist, can you try to destroy this gem?”

“Hmm, you really should not, if you wish to make it to the top…”

Amaterasu spun around. There was Senecianus, sitting on a protrusion on one of the walls. “What do you mean?” she asked. She didn’t try to mask the annoyance in her voice. She was starting to dislike this wampa.

“Well, the gem… no, the snowman, it’s part of the ascent… mmmh, and the gem, you will need that if you want to open the gate… the gate that is at the top of this spiral ramp.”

“A key?” Oki asked. The glove he was holding the gem with was frozen over by now, due to the gem’s magic aura.

“Yes, you could call it that.” It produced a leather satchel from the folds of its fur and tossed it over the chasm into Oki’s hands. “Put it in there. To protect yourself from its magic… mmm, if you want to do that.”

Oki obliged and attached the satchel to his backpack. Then Urist helped Amaterasu and him attach themselves back to the rope in the same order they had begun their ascent on and they began to climb while Senecianus watched.

“You lied to us”, remarked Amaterasu as the wampa started to disappear from their field of view when they reached a turn on the spiral. “You said that we have earned a break from the trials.”

“Mmmh, well. The snowman was not a trial. It was a guardian not associated to any of the tests”, it responded. When they had circled enough of the spiral to be facing the protrusion again, the wampa was no longer sitting there. Frustrated, Amaterasu buttoned up her coat a bit tighter and dug her boots into the ice, falling silent.

When they reached the top after what felt like hours of increasingly tedious walking all four of them were very tired. Their legs were burning and twitching, they were hungry and Amaterasu and Oki had trouble even keeping on their feet after the exertion they had gone through, although Urist and Fiara weren’t much better off. Once more, the wampa was awaiting them, though Amaterasu paid little attention to its words. It congratulated them on the ascension and took the gem from Oki, placing it onto a pedestal of sorts. To this, a massive ice wall opened before them, letting them into yet another hall with another exit that would lead further up. She barely took notice of all that.

That evening Urist cooked up a warm meal for them from their provisions as Fiara set up the tents. Oki and Amaterasu could only sit down, eat without a word and finally go to sleep, leaving the dwarf and the phoenix girl to clean up and follow them into the tents. None of them were aware of Senecianus who emerged from the dark cave entrance that they would advance through. Once more, it sat down near that entrance and observed the tents, listening to the steadying breathing as one after another they fell asleep.

“Mmmh… you have made it past the guardian of snow, and through the trials of Lust and Envy…” it spoke, as if addressing them even though not one of them heard its words. “But I wonder how much more you will last through the ascent…” Picking up a heap of snow from the ground, it formed a snowball and tossed it into the air, following its ascent and descent with tired eyes. “Hmm, though you have braved two of the seven caves, your sins are piling up on your back… the burden grows ever larger, and your spirit, your willpower, is corroded. Will you be able to pass the trial of Wrath despite these hardships, I wonder?”

13497 + 2925 = 16.422 / 20.000 words.

Amaterasu has used T1 Power-Up:  Celestial Brush: Sunrise and T1 Super Attack: Power Slash (SP: 4/6)