Frostbound

[Jade Harley]

Strong currents of air and fleecy snowflakes spin kaleidoscopically in the clouds, the great bowl of the sky wide and the stratum of vapors furling within it dappled a bonfire-smoke gray. Cutting drafts of the breeze tear through the spaces between jumbled masses of stone, whistling cacophonously, for nature’s cathedral is home to the blusteriest and cruelest of choirs.

Jade slips and slides across a few loosely-strewn patches of ice and sleet, finally arriving at the mountain’s base after a few more hours of walking. Her feet hurt, pinched and most likely skinned raw around the edges from the long journey, but she steadfastly ignores that in favor of admiring the immense heap of rock before her.

The remnants of sunbeams long-past melt around the edges of the frost-stippled mountain, gradual plumes of deep cold setting in where they once traveled across the sheer, toothed face, rumbling like hushed thunder. There is not a speck of green vegetation in sight.

This is to be expected— not many large plants could survive in an area stricken by permafrost. It is likely that there will be smaller, more sparsely-rooted plants tucked in between the crags of rocks or growing in mats under a thin layer of snow. Lichens, Jade reasons, would be a more probable find. They aren’t necessarily the most ideal option or, more specifically, the most palatable, but at least they would be something.

Her footfalls in the snow are soft as sleep. Strangely, even the howling of the tumultuous air around her seems muted in the shadowy magnificence of this mountain. She keeps her head bowed down so as not to trip over any slips of stone or take an unasked for plunge into a hidden gorge.

Pausing once to take a hasty look at the rocks all around her, Jade notices a hint of sly greenish-white peeking out from beneath a fold of snow. She quickly slogs over to it, carefully extracting the whole plant out by its winding network of roots layered further down in the slush and rigid soil.

It feels delicate to the touch, spongy shoots branching out like flowers, with fragile hollow stalks binding the plant together. She could probably boil it later until it is soft— make porridge or something. Nodding distractedly to herself, Jade tucks this plant into the front pocket of her dress and industriously scouts around for more.

There are many jagged cracks at the edges of boulders from where they have either been struck or gradually worn away, and quite a few contain more of these plants. Whenever she happens across one that she does not recognize, however, speckled with sulfuric yellow or blood-colored flecks, she slips one or two cuttings into the front of her hood. Just in case she is ever in need of poison.

Soon enough, Jade has what she would consider the right amount of plants to at least keep her fed for several days. Not willing to abandon her task, however, she continues to quest higher and higher up in latitude, where the air is crisp and clear and filtered bits of ice scrape along the narrow passages. With a keen eye and pursed lips, Jade digs and searches through every nook and cranny she can find, even as her lungs strain for breath— she hasn’t even reached the midlevel echelons, yet.

After a while of diligent searching, Jade does eventually tire. The stars in her dress are beginning to falter with how much ice is caked over them, and her dark hair is uncomfortably stringy and damp. With great reluctance in her heart, Jade calls off her search for food and resolves to locate a source of shelter in its place.

Several areas appear to be cave-like, but as she draws closer they turn out to be nothing more than dark deposits of some mineral or merely the shadow of an outcropping further up the mountainside. It is immensely frustrating, and more than once Jade finds herself liable to stamp her foot in irritation.

At some uncertain point in time, for the doom and gloom of this icy wasteland does not provide much reference for the passing of hours, Jade passes an impressively-shaped snowdrift by, no doubt naturally carved out by the wind to be in the likeness of a crouching beast. This is a totally insignificant component of the landscape to notice, and so Jade completely disregards it.

Okay, that was a lie. After a few more increasingly maddening and unproductive minutes, Jade finds her thoughts drifting back towards that lump of snow as she regards yet another space of white emptiness that she assumes leads further up the sloping mountainside. It just so happens that, for a good while now, she has come under the distinctly mind-rankling impression that she is being watched. Hunted, perhaps.

Eyes widening, Jade whips around to face where she had last seen the mound only to find that it is no longer there. This is particularly unsettling, for she knows it was there. She had just walked past it not even six minutes ago, she’s sure.

For a terrifying moment, Jade thinks that she might very well be going insane. That this is it, this is the moment where she plunges right off into the deep-end from the shallow, secure waters of rationality.

She considers this far, far too soon.

Every last hair on the back of her neck stands up in quick, prickling succession, and despite the cold pressing in on her from all sides, Jade’s body temperature drops down a few more degrees. Plummets, more like.

Jade turns. There is another mound of snow placed about a yard behind her, right where she had just been staring off into what seemed to be a very clear mountain pass. Only, this snowbeast is much larger, almost standing upright, distinctly humanoid, and with a great amount of shaggy, matted fur covering its burly forearms as well as the rest of its fearsome bulk.

With incredible speed, the creature charges straight for her, uncannily-glowing yellow eyes piercing through the cascading, out-of-focus mass of snowfall. She can hear the crunch of the beast’s claws against the ice as it lands; the deep, lethal scrapes that could effortlessly rend flesh from bone.

Since her arrival in the Omniverse, Jade has never wished for one of her guns more.

Because she does not have a gun with her, she instead chooses to duck her head down and take off running. The creature barrels after her with a dreadful roar, scrabbling with its talons in an effort to rise from where its shoulder had collided with the ground, terribly loud and hurtling across the snow-covered slope. The ground shakes with each of its footfalls; Jade struggles not to spill over onto her face in her mad dash, and mercifully avoids doing so.

Unfortunately, this is a mountain. There was always the eventuality that she might stumble over a cliff face because of the nearly nonexistent visibility factor, utterly none the wiser to the existence of a deadly, steep drop.

Luck seems to be on Jade’s side, however, for she manages to stop right before she goes careering over the edge like an unlucky fool. She gapes over the side in shock, teetering backwards a ways so that she won’t topple over the edge in her stupor. A few shards of ice detach from the ledge she stands upon and smash at some indiscernible distance below.

The massive whirlwind of fur and frenzy is still fast approaching. Jade is struck with the vicious-tasting, terrifying realization that she only has a few seconds to think of a plan that will keep her alive for at least a little while longer.

Jade’s foot grazes against something in the snow, something solid and grounding. She grasps blindly at the object, stooping down a bit in order to do so, her vision impaired by a mixture of frozen tears and snow pollen. Her fingers close around the curve of something that seems like the hilt of a blade.

Eagerly, Jade wrenches the rest of the unknown object up into the air, an airless surge of hope flowing through her. Her triumphant expression crumbles in the next instant only to convert into one of horror.

She clutches a tusk in her white-knuckled grip, made up of partially-cracked bone that has broken up part of the way with time. The rest of that tusk is attached to a horrible, grinning skull, patches of green skin still grotesquely attached and whispering around its bared yellow teeth, which then stretch down into a well-preserved and very dead body.

This jerking movement succeeds in collapsing the ledge of ice and snow that had been supporting Jade’s weight beforehand. Somehow, with its placement and girth, this corpse had been a very excellent prop of support for this shelf. With its removal, the ground underneath her feet is just gone.

With a shriek, Jade drops in a torrential deluge of frigid snow and rock.

---

When Jade opens her eyes again, her head feels fuzzy and like it might be stuffed to the brim with cotton. All of her limbs are numb, but to be fair she hasn’t really tried to move them yet.

It is a goddamn miracle, Jade recognizes as her senses return to the land of the living. She is still alive. If she weren’t covered in so much heavy snow up to her chin, maybe Jade would be more given to a silly demonstration of arm-flailing and delighted shin-digging. As it is, she merely smiles feebly up at the serrated layer of rock hanging overhead, marveling at her stupendous luck.

But, she can’t laze around all day! There are things to do, people to meet and butt heads with— probably. With an exaggeratedly pronounced effort, Jade wriggles her toes and fingers, trying to measure the extent of the damage done to her body.

To her surprise, it isn’t much. Nothing outright hurts or makes her want to wail into the lonely ether, although her neck and back do feel kind of sore; that’s nothing new. Hefting enormous firearms around during her SBURB session didn’t do anything to help the state of her muscles, after all. A good night’s sleep should do away with that!

Without further ado, Jade knocks her way out of the shabby clumps of snow piled on top of her. It’s a wonder that she can even do that— if she hadn’t landed beside this dead green guy, who took much of the brunt of the spill and deflected a fair amount of rocks away from her, she might have been buried alive! Or dead, depending on whichever way you choose to look at it.

As she goes to pat down her legs and reawaken her iced up limbs, chattering her teeth all the while, Jade notices that she is still clutching the skull’s tusk in her hand. Huh.

Cautiously, Jade shoots a glance up the rock face she had once been directly above, listening intently for any signs of danger. The tusk fits into her hand like a spur-of-the-moment blade, and Jade is not afraid to use it.

Nothing happens. Jade can’t tell if she is supposed to be grateful for that or worried that she is still being observed, and so she merely settles on being indifferent. Still, she examines the sharp tusk in her hands for a moment longer than absolutely necessary.

It seems wrong to take it, really, and so she does her best to slot it back against the poor fellow’s mostly-shattered face. Gosh, that fall must have been really hard on her corpse-pal.

“There we go. Good as new!”

Still attempting to shake out an annoying stiffness that clings to her limbs, Jade turns around to find that she seems to be on the precipice of a cave, with only a short hop down landing her inside. A faint, scuffing echo marks her entrance. After a short-lived instance of hesitation, Jade starts venturing further into the hollow space, gloom settling around her and the howls of the wind dissipating into nothing.

The edges of the tunnel seem meticulously scratched out, but Jade notices that the claw marks are much larger than those of the snowbeast that had been on her tail before. She finds this to be very odd, because what kind of creature could make such big, jagged indentations? And why? It all seems very old-fashioned, if you ask her. Like a lame monster movie, but with less gushing blood.

Although, Jade thinks, looking nervously at the long scratches she walks alongside. Those are pretty scary. I don’t think I want to meet whatever made them.

Hunching her shoulders inwards and checking her pockets for the lichens she had gathered earlier, Jade tiptoes carefully along the tunnel’s side, the dark coloring of her clothes blending in nicely with the gloom. She is the sneaky sneakster, it is her. That is, until she comes upon the mouth of an even larger tunnel, which opens up into an enormous grotto with a sprawling, rounded ceiling shaped very deliberately into a dome.

Crystallized stalactites hang from the ceiling, glittering with silvery condensation and surrounded by gorgeously warped drapery, shaped like the waves of the ocean; the walls are inlaid with a grooved texture that seems almost accidental in its resemblance to scales. Each individual scale indentation is about the size of Jade’s head, depressed sloppily into the dreary earthen walls.

Opposite to where Jade is standing, there is a hole about the size of a person letting shafts of pale, warmth-starved light stream in. If anything, this cavern is much colder than trudging out in the frigid elements; if this is her only exit, she’ll have to traverse the whole cave to get there.

The only sound to be heard is the steady drip-drop-plink of the snow from above ground slipping sluggishly down into the cavern, and so Jade very slowly sidles out from her hiding place and into the enormous dug-out chamber. Casting her gaze this way and that, she does not see any signs of apparent danger. The coast is clearer than crystal specs.

Jade takes an agonizingly slow, careful step, and then repeats that process at least fifty more times to make her way through the rest of the room. All the while, she keeps her eyes and ears peeled for anything out of the ordinary or outright bloodthirsty. For some reason, she gets the general impression that there are lots of things in this universe that would like to eat her.

She makes it across the cave in one piece. Taking one last look at the cavern behind her, Jade takes a step through the narrow shaft and returns once again to the chilling hold of the snowstorm.