The First Settlement
Hal and Ral took the quick way down—jumping off the ruined ledge of the stronghold while Venry worked his way through the proper channels…or what was left of it. Behind him, Dystro strolled along, whistling nonchalantly and proclaiming their location to every potential Nightmare.
“Is that some sort of strategy?” Venry asked while he peeked down the stairwell. Each step had a crack or a missing piece in it, but it was otherwise complete. He still wouldn’t trust it with his life, though. He placed one foot on the steps with as much caution as he could afford without slowing down to an excruciating pace. They had a lot of floors to cover.
“You can say that,” Dystro replied. “Not that we want an encounter, but if there are lesser Nightmares around, they’ll immediately respond to the foreign sound. It’s better if we hear them coming from far away rather than get jumped by one because we’re too stealthy.”
Venry didn’t buy the logic. Then again, Dystro and his comrades had more expertise with regards to dealing with Nightmares in the first place. So he went along with it.
They entered a room which comprised the entire floor, emerging from the stairwell in a puff of dust and old cobwebs. Venry had no knowledge which floor this was, nor did he care. It was too ruined to matter anyway. Like the floor above, this one was missing an entire section as well, only it was missing from the opposite side. The oddity of it made him observe the infrastructure’s make up a little bit more. He studied the stable parts of the room.
The floors and walls and ceilings were made from some sort of stone. Maybe marble, or something sturdier than marble. It was white and glossy, almost like glass with its smooth and chill texture. The chill was particularly weird. It didn’t make sense for it to be this cool while being exposed directly to the sun.
He walked along the walls, towards some shade to see if the temperature was consistent. As he did so, some parts reflected his face, as if someone had implemented a blurry mirror inside the stones. There was no pattern behind the implementations, scattering it in totally random segments, which made him conclude that it was a natural feature of the material, not man-made or induced. He arrived at a shaded section and found no apparent change to its chilled touch.
“I think,” Dystro began. He was performing his own investigation and was enamored by the same oddity of the floors and walls. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I think this is Eternal Ice.”
“What’s an Eternal Ice?” Venry made some deductions with just the name alone, but an eternally solid ice didn’t make sense for him.
“Honestly, I don’t know much. That’s why I’m assuming. I just know it has something to do with Palar’gog up in the Oh’strol Continent when the entire ice cap was still a singular landmass. Said that the Deitar’s presence alone turned stone into these things—probably.” Dystro brightened up as he rummaged for something from his pack. “Actually, we can test this theory.”
He pulled a small chest. It looked like a toy, fitting perfectly on his palm. “You Meiyal Arts folks have your fancy Spatiera. We have this.”
Venry observed the former Lord Knight channel his Smelted Meiyal, bringing the object to life. Sections of it began to grow and move like clockwork, creating clicking sounds as parts of it dislocate and reattach on certain parts. It eventually grew to a legitimate-storage box which was at least half a meter in all dimensions.
Dystro pulled a switch on top of its lid and a hiss seeped through as the pressure left the container. Cold air crept out of the box and touched the floor. Immediately, the stone resonated, emitting a slight sheen.
He nodded agreeably, but he still opened the box and retrieved a small water canister.
“See, Eternal Ice is a bit of a rare commodity,” he started. “From Vyndival Kingdom’s perspective, mind you. I trained a slight bit in the Western Sanctum before I realized my talents are more attuned to suppressing people than Nightmares. I heard this little bit that these things don’t really lose their cold all that much, but if you hydrate them, they’re supposed to become a lot colder.”
“I thought you lost to Princess Kristel?” Venry asked, latching on a tangent that he couldn’t quite let go. Dystro glared at him.
“She was killing my comrades, Venry. We were caught by surprise. Usually, that’s my thing. Plus, Xiv wanted to speak with her. Can we just let that go already? This thing right here’s more interesting.” He pointed at the wall while pulling the canister’s lid.
“Yeah, my bad.”
“All good. Just watch.” Dystro splashed the contents and the reaction immediately took hold.
Rather than bounce off like normal water, the liquid latched onto the wall and solidified into ice, slowly submerging into the stone. Crackles of ice popped as a small section of the now confirmed Eternal Ice transformed into clear, solidified water.
The former Lord Knight breathed and leaned away, blinking a few times before surveying the entire room.
“What is it?” Venry asked. He could see some sort of realization dawning on the man and a slight smile appeared on his lips.
“You seriously never heard of Eternal Ice before?” he asked.
Venry shook his head.
“It’s ice that never melts! We can have all these fancy meiyal-crafted devices or Meiyal Arts to keep things preserved and chilled, but non-melting ice is a different thing entirely!” Dystro couldn’t hide his excitement.
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“Calm down, Dystro.” While he agreed on the fancy and amazing properties of this material, Venry couldn’t fully grasp what was so amazing about it. “If you want, we can probably chop a few blocks as souvenirs, but we need to keep going.”
“Alright. So, to clarify, it might not seem the case because we have an entire floor full of it, but Eternal Ice is an extremely rare commodity. You have to go to the Nightmare infested region of the Oh’strol Continent, survive the frigid winds, the living blood pools, the freaking Nightmares themselves, and Brymeia knows what else, to even get a glimpse of these things.”
Dystro shrugged, throwing his hands in the air and gesturing all over the floor, walls, and ceiling. “This entire floor, if we can mine it and sell it, I can bet you my entire life and the next that we’ll be richer than most nobles in Irista Nation.”
“Fine,” Venry relented. “How long would it take you to demolish everything? Do you even have enough storage for all of it?”
“No, you’re right, pal. Let’s just take a few chunks.” Dystro walked towards the missing section of the floor and began hacking at the edge of the wall. It didn’t take him long to get a nice slab about his height.
He returned with his haul, storing it inside his meiyal-crafted chest. The box itself wasn’t large enough for the slab, but Venry didn’t question it when the entire thing got swallowed. Dystro did compare it to Spatiera.
“I’m getting a few more for the twins,” said the former Lord Knight. “You want some too?”
“Sure.”
Venry looked around in the meantime. Figuring out the glossy properties of this place only spurred him to investigate further. The top floor and the stairwell certainly weren’t made of Eternal Ice. It was also odd not to find any lesser Nightmares in this place. But other than those, something was missing in place. He couldn’t quite put it together. His mind whirled around the conundrum as he joined his impromptu bodyguard.
Dystro was working on his third slab. He’d taken quite a few chunks off the missing section of the room, using his Forged sword like a saw to slice off sections of the Eternal Ice a teeth-grinding portion at a time. It was utter blasphemy of swordsmanship, but Venry wasn’t one to nitpick, especially since he wasn’t asked to offer any help in the first place. He was going to get a slab of it either way.
Instead, he gazed upon the horizon of the island. He could see the shore from here, as well as signs of the twins who were hard at work hunting Nightmares. They’d piled up quite a large number of the lesser creatures along with one Fallen. Soon there wouldn’t be a Nightmare within a kilometer of them. Preferably, he would rather have more distance, but this vantage point would be enough to make up for it.
The sound of falling pebbles caught his attention and he turned back to Dystro who silently cursed himself.
“Messed up the cut,” he said and shrugged. “Guess this is yours, buddy.”
“It’s fine, I don’t mind,” Venry said. His attention was more focused on the pile of rubble as though something had clicked into place. He picked up a pebble of Eternal Ice and looked around.
“There’s no rubble,” he murmured.
“What was that?”
“I said, there’s no rubble,” he repeated, gesturing all over the place. Sure there were signs of ruin, of age and neglect. Cobwebs, dust, dirt, wilted plants, and fading paintings. But there were no signs of destruction. Save for the current ones Dystro made, there weren’t any cracks or rubble.
Venry studied the edge of the missing section again, now more focused on the line around the missing area. It was clean, free of any signs of external force, as if the place simply vanished. He traced a hand on it, and then over.
His fingers dipped rather than pass through nothing. There was a mild interaction, like heavy and freezing smoke softly passing on skin. He stretched his hand further and felt the soft force working against him, pushing his arm upward until it was back on surface level.
“What’re you doing?” Dystro interrupted.
“Pass me a rock,” Venry replied, holding out a hand.
The former Lord Knight shrugged and tossed over a pebble. Venry chucked it over the ledge.
The pebble kept falling at first, reducing into a speck as it gained distance. And then it quickly grew back to normal size as an invisible force hurtled it back at him. He barely dodged in time. It shot straight to the ceiling, smashing itself to tiny pieces while leaving a crack.
“What in Brymeia’s name was that?” Dystro exclaimed, snapping back just as he finished sectioning the final slab. His glances moved past Venry, the ceiling, the crumbled remains of the pebble, and finally back to the Guard Knight.
“I think, this section over here,” Venry began, motioning his arms towards the wide opening. “It’s not exactly gone. I think I need something heavier. Can you toss that over here?”
“Wait.”
“You can cut off another one, just pass me it.”
“No,” Dystro protested. “This is the best cut I made so far, so you wait and let me get you a new slab.”
The next two minutes were excruciatingly long. Venry almost entertained the idea of jumping off himself. Worst case, he’d need to expend precious meiyal to survive, but the image of the shattered pebble made him rethink that notion.
“Here you go. I got you a really large one.” Dystro pushed a flat block that was at least twice as wide as his wingspan. Sections of it were hastily sliced off since he no longer cared for preserving beautiful corners. “You said you needed heavy, right?”
“Yeah,” Venry said, pushing off the idea of excess and concentrating on his experiment instead. “Just push it off the ledge.” He went over to help.
As soon as the block of Eternal Ice slipped over, the external force worked hard to push it up. It made the block float as if it was buoyant enough for this air-water. And then it clicked.
“Maybe Eternal Ice, isn’t eternal after all?” Venry questioned as he stared at the block slowly drifting away from them. He motioned for his bodyguard to keep it in place. “Maybe if it actually melts, it’s like this air-water current or something.”
Dystro pinned the Eternal Ice with the tip of his sword, pulling at just the right angle—as awkward as it looked for him—while trying his best not to risk his balance.
“Don’t tell me, you plan on riding it, smart guy?” he said with a tensed voice as he struggled to keep the block in place. “It’s pulling away quite strong. It might sling you off the entire island.”
“Let go,” Venry said.
“What? Are you sure?”
“It doesn’t follow physics at all. I want to see how it’ll behave when you let go.”
Dystro did as told. He did so while keeping the rest of his body clear away from the block as if he expected the entire thing to just shoot straight to the skies. But the Eternal Ice simply drifted.
With a deep breath, Venry hopped onto the block. It bobbed down for a bit and slowly bounced back to surface level. The odd motion forced him to sit down, else he would lose his balance and fall off.
“You sick son of a—” Dystro stopped himself from falling off. “You out of your mind or something?”
“I have no idea how to stop this, so you better hop on or you’ll miss the fun.” Venry beckoned his bodyguard over while he continued to slowly drift away.
“Freaking crazy Iristan,” Dystro cursed. “You guys think you can solve everything…”
Despite his complaints, the former Lord Knight didn’t back off from the challenge. He cleared a meter jump and landed on the ice, promptly slipping down on his butt. He shoved his sword straight into the block to stop himself from falling. Good thing Eternal Ice didn’t shatter from cracks the same way normal ice did.
Venry helped his bodyguard up to a proper sitting position. “There we go. Now to find where this leads.”
“It’s oddly slow.” Dystro breathed, trying to calm himself down. “Not that I’m complaining.”
They continued to float while slowly bouncing up and down. It felt like they were on a raft, drifting along an odd sea. Venry followed his gut and cupped his hand, dipping it off the edge of the block and pushed off the air-water.
And just like that, they sped up out of the stronghold and towards the other side of the mountain.
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