Tundra is a strange sort of landscape. It is an environment on the edge of life and hospitality, teetering on the precipice of verdancy and lifelessness. It is a flatland with obvious life- grasses, lichens, moss, and even a good helping of shrubs can be found there, but no trees eke out a living here. While this is not universally true for all tundras, the Southern Antiadore Tundra had no love for plants over half a meter high. Permafrost keeps the groundwater locked away, barring all but the hardiest and most pioneering of plants and fungi. Of course, this allows flora that would have no place to survive a unique place to thrive. Extreme conditions where only the atypical can thrive.
Yet with its extreme conditions, the Antiadore Tundra was an ocean of color. Lichens of blues and oranges covered the rocks where the green shrubs and yellow grasses could not live, while purple and gold mosses claimed any ground in-between. The grasses and shrubs claimed most of the tundra, but the small swells of a couple meters were explosions of bright and exotic lichens. Surrounding the vast tundra was a horseshoe ring of mountains, the Antiad Mountian Range, a serene yet imposing backdrop onto the normally placid tundra scene.
The Portal
Thunder cracked and lightning shone, a crack appeared in the air.
Plants stood trembling and air froze, everything focused on the tear.
The lightning danced amidst itself, twin curves within the sky.
They ducked and bowed and wove between and formed an open eye.
Intricate symbols appeared within the bounds, each glowing symbol shifting.
The symbols pulled like arctic hounds with no leader, master missing.
The newborn portal yawned agape, revealing a mouth of sands and slaughter.
A foot appeared, and then the leg, then the body a moment after-
then the lightning portal closes with no sign of its departure.
The moment hung in the air as the helpless woman fell-
Was it a moment? An eternity? Only time could tell.
The tundra was dominated by lichens and mosses, with a good helping of tufts of grass- which would have made for a nice, cushioned landing. The mosses and lichens would do little for cushioning, but would give no complications either. Instead, the falling figure descended into a large clump of thorny green brambles. She let out a yelp of pain as she fell into the surprisingly dense thicket, and began to feel her consciousness slip from her. Her eyes sluggishly swept the sky above her for some sign of the portal that had spat her out, but found nothing as she slipped into unconsciousness.
She lay in the thicket, heat and blood slowly seeping out of her unconscious body. Almost ten minutes later, she spluttered and coughed, consciousness returning to her in agonizing waves. She wheezed in pain for a minute, trying to take stock of what has happened to her. Her memory was in pieces, and she tried to mentally piece together what she had been through. She remembered her name, she was Elody Kyne. She remembered being in her shop. She remembered being grabbed, no, she was warned first. She remembered the glint of metal and the cold press of gauntlets into her skin. She remembered fear, not for herself, but for her apprentice, her adoptive little brother, her only living family.
"Rudy..." Elody groaned through the pain. She knew she was in a bad spot, yet her fear was for her family in that moment, not herself. Feeling her blood running along her skin still, she knew she had to push that aside if she was going to see him again.
Elody attempted to right herself, feeling green thorns draw fresh blood as she did so. The warm blood running down her skin was sharp contrast to the bitter cold air. Her now-tattered green dress and leather apron were made for life in the desert, not this hostile environment. She moved her hand, and felt a smooth powder covering her palm. She remembered her plan of escape, and the pieces began to click.
She let out a low chuckle that escalated into wild, manic laughter. The buzz in her mind from the pain was turned on its head with her realization of triumph. Her kneejerk plan had worked! She had actually managed to defy the Consul, even as they had closed their fist around her! Sure, she had landed herself into some alien world that was freezing and pain, but it was freedom from the torture of wherever Consul Medeah threw people he wanted to keep alive rather than kill outright. All it took was a little powder meant for treating headaches, thrown into that pretty pattern on the floor at the wrong moment.
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Elody’s laughter tapered off as the pain in her body reminded her that while she was out of the frying pan, she was not out of the fire. She tried little motions first, moving about to see how she was injured. The injuries were focused on her left side, which she had landed on. Pain shot out from her side and her left shoulder, but her legs suffered blessedly little. Her clothing was no defense against the brambles, leaving her covered in tiny cuts and scrapes.
Grunting through the pain, she struggled to stand up in the shrubs, accepting every cut as lesser to the concern of her broken ribs. Her legs were a blend of brown and red as cuts persuaded blood to exit her body at any opportunity. Her lithe, ropy tail avoided the worst, but still suffered an errant cut. Finally, she made it out of the bramble, and collapsed back down.
She needed to gather herself and her bearings. She needed fire, water, food, and shelter, in that order. Most pressing, however, was the need to stem the bleeding. Her clothes did little against the tundra chill, so she accepted the loss of her leggings, and began to tear them into makeshift bandages. The sheer, black material was far from an ideal bandage, but it would be better than nothing. She covered the worst of the wounds, but many small scratches she simply did not have the means to cover. This, however, did not mean she was content to leave them untreated.
Elody was a pharmacist by trade. She spent her adolescence learning about plants and how they could be used medicinally. She could identify many useful specimens and could avoid harmful look-alikes. She had attended a school that gave her a thorough education on herbalism, so that she could find, identify, and harvest many common and useful herbs, roots, and other useful things. She had spent the last decade running her own shop, supplying her community with pills, poultices, and solutions. She could think of at least four different common herbs that could be individually used to staunch bleeding, aid clotting, or boost healing off the top of her head.
For the first time, she looked around and assessed her surroundings, seeing the ocean of orange, red and teal lichen, and the distant Antiad Mountains. The adrenaline rush was starting to come down, and she began to feel just how truly cold it was, the breeze that whistled across the plain cooling her even further. She could make use of temperate forests or jungles, grasslands or arid foothills, even the seemingly barren deserts of the interior of her homeland. This tundra was not something she had ever known to exist. Never known it could exist. Elody imagined herself to be a very competent woman, and able to adapt to many unforeseen problems. She survived a plague, a lack of family, abject poverty, and now being disappeared! This tundra felt like a personal punishment to her, created just to spite her.
A singular, vulgar exclamation spread across the tundra, and was swallowed by the vastness.
As she looked around, she realized that a small rise was nearby. Perhaps there she could get a better lay of the land. She slowly brought herself to her feet, taking care to only put weight on her right arm as she unsteadily rose. Normally, such a small hill would be nothing, but in her injured state, it felt like she was climbing one of the distant mountains with the tiny steps she had to take. Reaching the top, she sighed, despite her pain, at the gorgeous expanse before her.
Tundra is a strange sort of landscape. It is an environment on the edge of life and hospitality, teetering on the precipice of verdancy and lifelessness. It is a flatland with obvious life- grasses, lichens, moss, and even a good helping of shrubs can be found there, but none survived alone. The mosses and grasses and shrubs all share an unseen bond, helping as much as they compete. The lichens too, fungi and algae working in harmony. All this life existing in understanding, that it is those strange and counter-intuitive bonds that will let them thrive through the extreme.