It was in the pitch black of the cave, where even my enhanced dog vision perceived little more than vague suggestions of shapes and edges, the pale reflections of reflections of reflections, when I discovered we were in some kind of storage cellar. Commander Zideo knocked over something, and a cluster of smaller somethings fell to the floor and rolled into my paw. Judging by their texture, they were potatoes and carrots, too cold to rot or emit much of a scent, and other vegetables—although whether they were meant as ingredients in a stew, or the grim trophies from previous snow-murders, I could not say. I did not dwell on the it. Reeling away from it, Zideo kicked something that clanged. I sniffed and found the inert tang of cold iron. Chains fell and clattered, and I bumped into a creaking, metallic mesh that I knew instantly, for I had been locked inside a similar cage in the previous days. Indeed, leaning my body against its frigid exterior to test its give, I found that it was exactly the same dimensions, and it leaned in a way suggesting hinges in the same place.
The thought that the snow-monster might be involved in the capture of defenseless creatures intended to “pilot” those machines, the walking prisons of the Boss Council made me physically frown. Me, a dog, without the musculature to do so. Needless to say, the snow-monster had already lost all potential future Dog Points.
Hooo-huuummmm…
His song reverberated down the gullet of the cave before him. A blue aura grew stronger in the doorway, and I guessed that he was carrying the frozen-flame candle that Zideo had dropped, although I did not think he needed it.
“Found the cellar, have we, friieeennds?” His voice was a snarl now.
Zideo crouched and whispered. “What’s his deal? He should be from a game.”
“Ooh!” came the snow-monster’s voice from just around the corner. The entrance glowed blue now, shadows shifting with his every shifting step. The wet sandpaper drag came from not far away. “That word! That tickled! Hee hee ho ha! Do that again, that puts you…”
“What, g-” began Zideo, catching himself. “What g-word has a serial killer snowman?” He ran his fingers through his own hair, barely visible to me. “He looks familiar. If I knew, I could maybe remember how to defeat him.” He turned and felt frantically around the room. “Maybe there’s something here that can help.” His palms searched every surface, tracing boxes and baskets. It was pitiful to watch, and the dim vision of my human’s desperation clutched at my heart.
“Riiight abooouuut….”
The blue glow grew. I knew I could not permit the snow-monster room to swing the ax. I would have to attack him in the doorway, rend him limb from limb (so to speak) in quarters too tight to permit him any advantage.
“…here!”
He anticipated my lunge and swatted me with the arm bearing the frozen, blue candle. It was not meant to hurt me, only put me in place while he talked, and I stumbled back to my feet above rolling potatoes and carrots, all cast in the azure candlelight.
“Looks like you dug up my dirty secrets,” he hissed, “friiieeenndssss.” He cast the candlestick this way and back, frowning at the mess we had made, and we suddenly saw the room we had, until now, only felt. It was not much larger than Lisa’s car, full of a hideous clutter of baskets and cages.
Zideo stood up straight, his eyes on a nearby chest—a square and brittle-looking wooden box, latched but not locked. It was marked with a human glyph I had seen before, the one I now know is used to demarcate written questions—a serpentine squiggle followed by a dot that seemed sinister to me then, arcane, like a beheaded snake.
The snow-monster raised the ax sooner than I expected. I tried to leap at him, with a mind to rend that bundle of twigs and branches right out of his shoulders, but hard vegetables rolled beneath my paws. I stumbled and lost the advantage.
“What are you?” said Zideo, loudly and clearly.
The snow-monster paused. “Ho, huh?” I felt it, the creeping stasis that held my body in place. The snow-monster urged his ax to fall, but it refused, his viny arm held back as though tied. “Ho huh… whuh da hell?”
In the bottom of a cave, in the bowels of a mountain, on the butchered face of a Shard, hovering in space near a sundered remnant of land, far from home, the Compendium yet found us. Pages fluttered from every wall, swirled together and created the book, which flipped open and whizzed through many pages before holding steady on the entry.
* Name: S. Man
* Game of Origin: Nereus 2 (19∞9)
* Description: You might recognize this cool customer waving at you from the background of the Nereus series. S. Men cheer you on as you progress through the level, then go about their business chopping wood or throwing snowballs. They’re harmless.
“Nerr!” shrieked the snow-monster known as “S. Man,” suddenly unable to move his brutish snow-lips very far to speak. “Erts nert true! Dern’t lerssen to urt!” Apparently the monster could perceive the words of the Compendium as I could, though whether this was due to some ability of its own or my human somehow sharing it or permitting it to be observed, I did not know. Zideo read on.
* Description (cont’d): After the Total Conversion, S. Men were found on the Genre Shard Platformia, but their population decreased over time. They were thought to be extinct, but stories are told in Pengoon Peaks of a mean old S. Man haunting the woods in the snow-covered mountains. Rumor has it that he’s not very nice… so if you see him, run!
“Yerr,” sighed S. Man. “Thert’s abert righrt.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
* Description (cont’d): Naturally, S. Man has a weakness to heat. So use that to your advantage if you’re cornered by this snow-misanthrope!
“Shhh!” sputtered S. Man, now struggling against the invisible restraints that held us all in place. It was pleasant to see him panic. He wiggled his horrible shoulders to and fro, his ugly snow-base shimmying to escape the uncanny grasp. “Shursh! Be quiert, berk! Shhh!”
“Heed, huh?” said Zideo. “Merks serns to mer.”
“Nerr! Shirt erp!” S. Man’s ax-arm jerked, and for a moment I thought he knew a trick to exempt himself from the Pause, but my fears were unfounded. “Ah kill yer!”
“Suh… wert’s in thert berks erver ther?” said Zideo, whose speech organs were equally frozen and increasingly difficult to understand. This was becoming the strangest stalemate imaginable.
I saw S. Man’s eye-rocks rotate in their sockets to get a better view of what he was talking about, as he was unable to move his head. I even heard them shuffling ice crystals around in his head. They rotated back to Zideo. “Nerthing!”
“Buh shirt!” said Zideo. “Issa pewer-erp!”
I have said that S. Man never blinked, but I was proven wrong then. He was so stunned by this statement that the entire two black stones of his eyes vanished momentarily out of existence. Or else he was deeply uncertain what he had heard.
“Whert?” asked S. Man.
“Yer herd mer,” said Zideo.
“Nerr, surrously, whert?”
The transcription of this exchange strains my memory and interpretation. Try talking sometime without the ability to move your lips. I myself do not speak in the conventional sense, but when humans do it, it really obstructs their language. I might add that a dog can growl just fine without moving his or her jaws. You know everything you need to know when you hear that.
The stalemate settled over us. Zideo, with no inclination to dismiss the floating Compendium and thus release us from our forced Pause, expressed his interest in the question-mark box. S. Man suggested that the warm human release them from this spell and help himself to the box, and find out for himself. Zideo encouraged the snow-creature to “guh ferk” himself. S. Man said (I think) that he could wait around forever, and that this could only end one way. Zideo assured him that he was going nowhere. He could read up on everything in the universe in this book and would never get bored. (I knew this to be a lie, as books bored my human to tears, but thought it best not to volunteer the information.) S. Man told Zideo that he, as a snowman, never sleeps and could horrify him with tales of his most reprehensible deeds. Zideo bellowed a yawn through his clenched jaw.
It was silent and still for a long time. My foot was perpetually frozen mid-stumble over a potato, which wasn’t the most comfortable position, but better than the alternative and certainly an improvement over our first encounter with the book, when I had frozen mid-shake. At first, my mind raced with plans for the moment we were un-paused.
Oh, the things I would do to this foul snow beast. Oh, the vengeful visions that flashed before my eyes. I would slather this chamber in slush. Scatter his powdery guts throughout the cellar. He was mostly just snow, rocks, and sticks, and a flannel shirt. Two of those things made great chew toys. There would be a reckoning like no other for threatening my human, for the hubris of thinking he could trap the number one, tip-top, peak human being in these damp and dour cave bowels.
My wrath would be swift, savage, and harrowing to behold. I would make a grizzly example of the snow-psycho, to horrify all until the thawing of his remains. I would bury his coal eyes on separate planets. I would scatter his teeth to the cosmic winds. I would gnaw his arms and nose, the haft of his ax, until they were nothing more than singular particles, no pair remaining fused together.
The tedious waiting did not dampen my rage.
Until… it did. It really was taking a long time. My joints began to ache from standing in this awkward position, and I found no rest in trying to relax myself. I, too, yawned after a time.
I do not know whether or not I could have slept there, standing, frozen in a stumble over a potato. Certainly, staring into the dark eyes of my enemy would make for a difficult slumber. But, as all humans who live with dogs know, we are quite adept at going to sleep in random places, and the certitude of justice calmed me.
After a while, S. Man broke the silence, and traded insults with Zideo. The two of them slurred through speech organs frozen in stasis, and I will not bother to try and record all of their barbs here. The long and short of it was that snowman was trying to rattle my human by telling him what he was going to do when freed. Zideo questioned this, and informed snowman that he had “those good good esports reflexes,“ and boasted about his “KDR,” whatever that was.
The two were interrupted by the distant echo of a voice. Its tones were familiar, but I could not understand a single word it was trying to say… at first.
Zideo and the snowman stopped bickering and took notice.
“Ho hurmmm, more verzitors?”
“Zerdiurr!” came the voice.
“Herm girth?“ called out Zideo. “Izzat yer?”
“Inderd, ol’ churm,” came Helmgarth’s voice, echoing down the hall tunnels. “Serry I lert yer gert kerp-churred, burt erm here ta merk it reht.” Helmgarth and Zidea began to trade precious information, and strategize openly, although cllunkily, through frozen mouths and echoing chambers. It turned out that Helmgarth was not so far off as he sounded. He claimed to have a torch with him, and at which the snowman perked up. He began shouting nonsense words, noises to disrupt their conversation and prevent the imminent pincer attack. “La la la la la la ho hum ho ho ho hmmm!”
“Quiert, sner mern. Herm girth, thess guy ih merd a sner. He abert ta kill urss! Cah ya melt erm?”
“La la, ho-hum, ho, ho, hum, la la la, shirt the ferk erp, la la, ho, hum, ho, ho, hum,“ shouted the creature.
The conversation went in this manner, in fits and starts, with S. Man’s interference every time they started to coordinate. It became quiet again once everyone realized that each individual was held in check by the other.
In that silence I heard nothing, not even the drip of water. Then, the silence gave way to some hint of sound… the creeping of a small creatures, perhaps, webbed feet growing louder by the step in defiance of the Pause that book always brought with it.
In the dim blue light, two eyes peered around the cave entrance, beneath the impotent, upraised ax of the snowman. The eyes of a young penguin.