My arms snap to my shoulders, and then quickly condense the cloying cold into a beam of ice.

I jump backward and knock down the impending wave of stone with a continuous spray of cold.

The sadness magic does not succeed at freezing the telekinetic avalanche, but I keep going.

Continuously going backward I aim at the front of the pack slapping the first boulders down by hitting them with the weight of the ice, bogging down the movement.

And with a smile, I smother their advance for I know that if they’re slow enough that they can get them frozen in place!

But as I think of victory a small piece of stone jerks away from the tide, and ricochets off the walls toward me!

I push myself to the side, and my head crashes against my own icy walls. The flow of ice from the technique is diverted, thrown off kilter by my desperate dodge.

I hiss in pain befor- I hear something, shit! I turn back toward the threat and quickly see a barrage of shards launched at my head.

I desperately pull at the irregular walls putting myself above the threat, but in my haste, I overshoot and fly into the ceiling, sliding along its surface like a crashed motorcyclist skidding on the pavement.

I quickly aim the technique again at the swarm of stones, but the stone wave disperses into a great widespread cloud all shooting toward me!

I dodge the first few stones, all of them digging into the ice and then freezing in place due to the magic. But as I frantically dodge the ring of sharp stones, one stone cracks me in the head, and I feel the sights dim.

Hells, I’ll die if I fall now, but wha-

Ugh I wince, and then I think guck it. And wildly wave the beam of ice, my mind screaming in the background as I urgently cover everything. I am not finished, my hands are in the middle of painting another stretch of white.

But I cannot hold on, as it all fades to black…

—

I wake, my head ringing as if my head was the shitties bell in all of existence.

But as I groggily try to stand up I fail. The ice is so close to my back that I can barely rise higher than my elbows.

And so I stand propped up on my goddamn elbows, gazing at the ruin that I have wrought.

I shiver, the cold closer than it ever was before.

I rub my hands together. My eyes searching for something, anything that I can use to save this debacle.

But all I see around me is stone and clouded ice.

And I come to a very simple but very dire realization.

I’m trapped.

I stare at my hands the only thing that I can even see. Everything else covered in cold ice.

My hands clench into fists trembling, and shivering, accompanied by shy tears unable to leave their eyes in this cruel place. My own pathetic sobs echoing out across the ice.

But no matter what I can't stop the tears.

The infusion of sadness has nothing to do with it. Because I don’t sink into despair I burn with hopeless anger.

BECAUSE WHY.

It was so goddamn stupid when trying to futilely crush me with its weight. But in an attempt to cave my skull in, it improvised an instant solution to my hardest efforts.

Rendering them all worthless.

Whenever I do anything right these idiotic chunks of rock break it immediately!

I easily, and efficiently solve the golem problem by using my available resources in a creative manner. And then it all is reduced to dust because of what. I didn’t properly brush off my coat?

A few glowing rock bits summoning some friends is enough to condemn me to be trapped?

What bullshit is this!

And even when I solve that too, they still ruin it.

A bunch of telekinetic rocks is apparently powerful enough to break through ice that slows down all molecules nearby.

While also fighting against an entirely different spell!

And they destroyed all of that by instantly coming up with a plan that made all the right decisions become irrelevant.

What am I supposed to do when at any moment I can die to something I can’t possibly predict?

It feels like putting on your seatbelt in your car, and then being hit by a sharknado on your way to the airport!

Like having a man in a shrimp costume spit on your work, and all you stand for.

The utter absurdity of it all. It sickens me, it drives me mad for the whole ridiculous weight of what’s been thrown at me.

My hands tremble, and tears remain stuck in my eyes as I think about what the fuck am I supposed to do.

What?

Make a last stand to live one more day.

Hells I can’t even stand, I trapped myself in my own doom, and all I can do is wait for death.

But with a little giggle escapes my throat.

One last laugh at my own expense before my own slow death to the cold.

But I don’t dare to let go of something else than this. So I seize the tiny piece of hilarity found at my own expense and force myself to smile.

I grab the smile and hold it tight. I have to get and keep my thoughts away from here.

I can’t fall here and while these thoughts are right, their righteous anger can’t save me. Thinking through this properly can.

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So even though this smile hurts, my skin stretching painfully under the pins and needles of the cold.

I keep it on my face for I refuse to wallow in my own pointless misery like this.

I can’t die here, I shall leave this crazy place, and I will see my family again.

I just have to problem-solve.

So what do I have on hand?

Well without some supplies all I have are my clothes and the infinite notebook in my pocket.

And well I need those goddamn supplies.

I try to look around but all I see is more ice, and some murderous rocks atop the meager perch of my own elbows.

Gods, what do I have to work with? Nothi-

No, I can’t think that through, let’s switch tracks. If I can’t stand then let’s crawl.

I desperately crawl through the scant space offered to me and find an iron plate stuck in the ice. I carefully melt away the ice holding it thankful that it has no boulders close by.

I wince, thinking of the blow to the head that got me here.

And start to conjure up healing magic in a beam toward my head.

I reapply it over, and over. Better to be careful, than dead from something I didn’t notice.

Thankfully the wound wasn’t a bleeder but that makes it a bit concerning considering that the other option is a concussion. Which is really goddamn serious.

But well everything is when you are at the edge of death either way.

I keep looking for something anything I can use but all I can find is 3 more iron nails.

Something made all the more frustrating by the dint of supplies left on the floor.

I grimace because sadly enough I made my last, last stand on the ceiling.

And I didn’t exactly predict that I’d be slavering for something anything to save me.

I just needed to get away from the rocks.

Frankly, I’m lucky I even have the plate!

So what do I have?

I got my clothes, a steel plate, 3 nails, and the infinite notebook I kept in my pocket.

I cram my brain for what could be useful, I could maybe use the infinite paper for retaining some warmth, but well at this point how would I know when the magic is out?

Would I die in this cramped cold space because I was a bit too careful?

No, I can’t just hope to survive for just one more day or I will die the next.

I grit my teeth

Searching for avenues of survival, maybe I could crush the rocks before they crush me. I can’t use wind waves for that or heatbeam, and the cold creating ice spell is what did this.

I can’t meekly wait for the walls to fall!

I wince as I hear a crack in the ice.

Even if I were to find some way to survive the cold, without renewing the walls formed of slowing Ice, I am doomed to die by those ridiculous boulders.

A strangled cry erupts from my throat the sound bouncing around what little space I have left. Will I truly die to a bunch of rocks entertaining the idea of motion?

No.

But what do I do? I must stay alive through the cold, and dark, but I can’t use both the dark cold of sadness and the blazing power of anger.

Expectation theory cannot fix this. It is a Law of the Astral. I cannot pull two spells not of the same emotion at the same time.

And with me requiring the lessening of energy to live through this. And the increase of energy required to not freeze to death.

Since I would need to make a spell that has the exact opposites of each other. That means that I am unlikely to create a spell that uses only one emotion to save me from two fronts.

Oh gods what am I supposed to do, am I supposed to do anything? Is there anything that I can even try to do? I’m essentially trying to hold back a landslide with my bare hands.

But as I wallow in the despair again, I feel my mind slowly begin to start speeding along. Because wait, a second, I’m ignoring what is currently one of my greatest powers.

Language!

I know that these runes were born from something. And who cares if I don’t know how the hell they were made? That’s never stopped me before.

Hells, I’ve barely cobbled together an understanding of the world around me with the scientific equivalent of duct tape and prayers.

And I can do this as well, I know it’s possible so that means that I can expect it to happen!

Enchantments didn’t take any price when I saw them otherwise the people using it would have grown irrational and then catatonic.

So if I use a rune I can use my own magic to keep myself alive

I drag over the slab of metal holding it in a strange sideways position the cage of ice not allowing me to hold it beneath me.

I hesitate for a moment before scratching on a crude symbol with a scavenged nail. It holds no meaning but no symbols first appearances do. They are all born through repetition and tradition.

I pull in the breath of language the tidal wave of words I’ve grown familiar with in its easy strength I carry around.

But as I do so it finds no purchase, it strangely feels like the symbol is too empty like it can’t hold the weight of the spell that has almost killed me but what might lead me out.

So I try again striking a jagged streak that reminds me of the eldritch appearance of summoned ice.

But it fails so I try again adding a piece that just feels like molecules slowing, each time deepening the groove of a story.

The story of someone who refused to die, who is embraced by cold, yet refuses to answer its call for she seeks something beyond.

Until it forms, slowly but surely a magnificent work of perfection.

A jagged thing deeply embedded into the steel the edges flaring out like a flurry of snow, I gingerly touch the metal its surface is cold as sin, I hiss drawing my hand back after I cut myself on one of the many extended jagged grooves.

My shivering leads to unsteady hands. But I muse with my own blood on my hands, a sharp smile on my face, and surrounded by frozen tears. It seems appropriate to pay for this in blood.

And so I pull the tide of words in, and it accepts my hard-won story born of blood, ice, and desperation.

But one story that will take me to the next. This I swear. And so I grab it.

I dislodge the piece of steel from its place. The ice holding it in place although sadly enough it isn’t holding everything else in place.

Tears fall from my eyes in a continuous stream. The effort required to keep me alive at all nearly filled my cup bursting with sadness.

The cloying weight of its clutches only held back by the desperate need to survive.

I hold it close, my last bastion of hope, I lay on my back my hands covering it, the steel still as cold and sharp as before but now it refuses to hurt its master.

I feel it at the tip of my tongue like an instinct baked into my very being, like the birds' inclination to fly the ability to let go of the magic, and let the floodgates loose.

I have been reluctant with carrying through, but at the end of the day, I will survive, no matter the cost of pain, and blood.

I feel a crackle as ice encroaches and flinch closing the gates of magic. But I refuse to fail, I start again slowly letting the doors open.

For at the end of the day if I haven’t eaten a single drop of food in this time what need do I have for air?

And if I am immune to the vagaries of most resources why not encase myself in ice?

My lungs are nothing but sacks of flesh empty of purpose.

I stand as still as I can be slowly feeling my body entirely entombed in ice.

But with an imagined wince, my face held in place by the ice I pull in the anger holding in my mind, the indignation of defeat, my refusal to die to something so weak as my own body.

The steel slowly warms up, the ice melting away from my magic but regenerating so quickly that you could scarcely tell it was gone.

The steel slab held over my chest continuously heats up the steel until it burns like a stove. But I cannot escape, held in place by the ice of my own creation.

A silent scream sends no echo as I stay like this.

Trapped entirely by ice, leaving myself barely alive by burning myself alive.

—-

I limp out of the broken husk of a temple.

Backpack on my shoulder and the crude steel slab in hand. Holding the object of my salvation solidly in my arms almost afraid that it would drift from my sight.

My fears did not come to pass. The golem died in a quite obvious manner.

The subtle light allowing me to see anything at all in the hellhole dying quite obviously indicated that it was done.

I grimace grabbing my shoulder roughly, I still waited for a bit.

Terrified that something new might happen but once I finally heard the boulders stop grinding and cracking only held back by the near-constant efforts I gave up.

If something were to dare to stop me then I’m pretty sure I would have found some way to resurrect myself purely to destroy them.

So I released myself from my own prison and melted the entire thing into a deluge of steam.

The boulders floated amidst it all. The arbitrators of my seemingly inevitable doom now floating inert.

Next, I grabbed my stuff and went off, for I wish to be anywhere but stuck in this accursed place.

I pass along walls of art, and text. The beauty was rendered illegible by the grinding and tearing of the beast who tried to kill me.

I float past refusing to entertain even the notion of stopping, speeding through the corridors like a very tired, but very determined swimmer.

Until finally I see beyond these stone walls.

I wait at the exit of my own personal hell almost hesitant to leave.

Yet as I clutch my savior I find the strength to push beyond it and arrive outside at last.

My eyes flutter open, their globes not used to the dazzling lights of the Astral Expanse after kept so long in dangerous ice.

But as I drift away from the temple and look back what I see is truly a travesty.

I gaze upon what I left and I weep for I have seen the last vestiges of a culture torn to pieces.

The golem is now a crude pile of broken stone and runes. The stones destroyed themselves and generations of artwork in a bid to destroy me.

All because I touched a single goddamn book.

I simply stare at it, the manifestation of the realization that all that knowledge, and all those little girls, and masons, are gone, any last trace of them ground into a million pieces.

And I cry not for myself but at the sheer loss of beauty made by one tiny mistake.