Iris felt her mind resurfaced into reality feeling her body pulse with a pleasant sensation which had wrapped its tempting touch around her hips. She loved it when Kia hugged her and pressed her small frame against hers. It made her feel needed but not as a tool but more as a person. She felt the sensation was similar to a man coming back home exhausted from work to his wife and kids who waited for him to return with bright smiles. She relished the sensation in the darkness of her mind before remembering what had happened before she fell asleep.
The memories of her kitten's hopelessly lewd face made the stoic elf smile a little before causing her to bite the side of her cheek as she grew worried if she had pushed Kia's delicate body too far. She was willing to wait for the girl to accept her until the end of time but until then she needed to treat her kitten with respect. The elf though, unaware of her mind hypocritically calling the ancient necromancer she needed to respect as her kitten or perhaps the risen sought the refuge in grey area of her morality not wanting to stop describing her stunning undead saviour as being hers.
"Kia?" Iris felt the feeling of her porcelain doll's hands wrapped around her, pushing her breasts upwards. "?!"
The elf turned over to check if Kia was still there and almost fell over. She was greeted by an unfamiliar snow-swept landscape as her lavender-coloured eyes opened wide open. The tall undead's eyes followed a snowflake on its trajectory. It danced in the harsh wind before coming toward her. Iris felt her eyebrows dip in confusion as the snowflake instead of melting on her skin went right through where her body was supposed to be.
"Huh?" Iris stared completely perplexed at her body which almost didn't exist, she appeared as a blurry mostly transparent orange cloud in the vague shape of her real body. She noticed a large crystal sphere hovering in the centre of her chest, bouncing sluggishly whenever she moved. She didn't notice other differences other than her appearance from her usual self but her eyes were instantly drawn to the strange landscape around her.
White snow fell from the grey clouds above onto an endless expanse stretching far beyond the horizon. Between the dark grey clouds, Iris could see strokes of purple adorning the nightly sky. Surrounding the snowy land was a violent blizzard which stood with a uniform height of about five meters throughout its length even though the winds inside whistled with an ear-piercing volume, the blizzard resembled more a wall than an act of nature which just so happened to trap the elf inside. She couldn't explain it but as her eyes focused on the distant snow-capped land she had a feeling she could see much further than normally, as if someone had flattened the snowy landscape completely leaving it as flat as a pancake.
Iris angrily snorted, the last time she fell asleep it was just a dream, an extremely vivid and realistic dream but nothing more but the purple strokes on the heaven above faintly resembling pieces of shattered glass reminded her of something, which she didn't like.
Somewhere in northern Anglas, Brad was tasked with destroying a newly found dungeon. Upon arriving where the local authorities had reported the dungeon's location they found an ordinary-looking forest which Alicia had checked and came up with nothing being out of the ordinary. Their trouble started when Brad and Dian suggested sleeping in the picturesques forest in which the trees bloomed with colourful spring flowers. It just so happened that the dungeon was just under the forest floor and the dungeon master decided that teleporting the heroic band into a vast open room with a glass dome walling them inside was the best form of entertainment. Given the fact that there existed a monster capable of healing Kia, there was not a zero chance of a dungeon also existing not so far away.
Iris felt the wind pick up, hitting her back with an ice-cold gale prompting her to start walking forward. As the undead walked further from the edge leaving shallow footprints in the soft white snow which let out a crunching noise with each step she took she was reminded of Kia's ability to walk on practically anything without sinking. It had something to do with controlling mana density or something like that. She frowned internally, remembering having to slog through a marsh while Kia walked beside her, mud-free.
To the tall damestar raven's relief if something had happened to Kia she should know it since she was the girl's Anchor but their connection felt hazy like talking underwater, she felt Kia's emotions were still being sent to her but her body couldn't make sense of them.
...
-
...
Focusing back on the landscape around her after spacing out, the previously light snowfall turned sour, limiting the elf's vision to only a couple of meters in front of her as the landscape truly turned white. The elf tried to orient herself about where she ended up walking after spacing out but the combination of the low visibility and lack of landmarks made Iris quickly give up on that idea, leaving her to hope her legs hadn't wandered off anywhere strange.
Suddenly her eyes were assaulted with bright light as she stepped out of the blizzard onto a peaceful sheet of snow with calm light-grey clouds no longer covering the purple glass tapestry above her. This area was even stranger than the vast empty tundra surrounded by an even more powerful blizzard than the blizzard behind her. The land was brightly illuminated by two suns hanging low on the blue sky peeking inside where Iris was standing from above the snow tempest she just walked out of.
Iris felt a weird dissidence from looking at the clear blue sky reminding her of summer heat which didn't fit the ice-locked hell she found herself in. If the two suns represented dawn and dusk she had to come from either the north or south. The elf reasoned to herself if they had been abducted by something, it was safe to assume that Kia had been teleported to the other side, which was now Iris's goal to reach.
Iris's eyes lingered on the sun on her right which strangely appeared a little bit more aesthetic than the other. Her gut feeling was telling her that the sun was the rising morning sun. Kia would have loved seeing this. Iris thought as she turned to the other sun which if her gut feeling was correct had to be the setting sun.
"Huh?"
Only an arm's length away from Iris, she noticed a blue-skinned person kneeling in the direction she was heading. She walked up to the kneeling man with his back turned away from her and noticed he wasn't blue but was covered in a thick layer of ice. He appeared to have died while showing reverence to whatever lay in front of them.
The elf crouched and put her head next to the pilgrim and looked at what was he praying to. Her amethyst eyes couldn't spot anything at first before bringing her gaze up toward the purple stain above them and waiting. Six or seven kilometres away from her there was an area where the clouds avoided like fire, they would appear to swear around that particular area of the sky for no apparent reason or cause.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
The elf reached for the thick icicle hanging from the pilgrim's chin, wanting to use it as an improvised weapon just in case of something unfortunate happening. Upon hearing the ice snap, Iris lost balance as the ice and snow covering the man fell onto the ground around him.
"A statue?" The hoplite stared at the weathered terracotta sculpture.
As the undead raised her eyes away from the mysterious sculpture a strong gust of wind washed over her. She raised her arm to cover her eyes as the puffy snow got whipped up into the air before falling back down. Iris's frown got more pronounced as she tried to head in the direction of the strange anomaly far in the distance. The previously empty white desert was now littered with terracotta statues slowly being uncovered by the strong gale.
The confused risen tightened her grip on the icicle which stayed in her ephemeral hand as she took a step forward. The lifeless statues she walked past appeared as though they have been made by an exceptional craftsman, their weathered and eroded forms still managed to show the detailed work which went into making each and every one of the hundreds if not thousands of the unique statutes which emerged from the white expanse almost like ghosts.
Many statues appeared shattered or severely damaged, with missing limbs, shattered torsos or being headless. Iris couldn't figure out what was the purpose of these statues, it wasn't to guard something as most of them appeared like normal people ranging from depicting the lowest of crooks to the highest of noble and everything in between. The only thing unifying the statues were the many poses they took upon. Most of the carved statues which weren't shattered into pieces were shown expressing dread, cowering in fear from something, crouched down, their heads stuck between their thighs and with their backs turned. Some statues stood with their backs straight as a sword, their clay visages radiating an aura of confidence and bravery of the people whom they meant to depict. As Iris walked for longer and the landmark she was heading toward seemed to get closer at a snail's pace, she could have taken an oath she was walking for far longer then her legs should have taken to cover such a small distance. She spotted scattered rarely between the statues, depiction of devotion toward the strange entity presumably ruling this frigid hell. The seemingly random people expressed their beliefs in many ways, some pressed their forehead against the ground while others seemed to be clutching pots full of flowers. Regardless of their differences, these statues had their faces carved into small smiles, a smile one would do knowing there was nothing to do other than accept something they couldn't change.
*Crack*
Iris accidentally stepped on the face of a soldier who was lying flat in the snow. The terracotta statue seemed straight out of a dungeon's corridor as it held his spear to his side, vigilantly observing the area around him and ready to come to life, belonging to the second group. The elf quickly lifted her foot off the tall soldier who she suspected was a Nordling by his height alone but the damage was done as the heavily weathered brown terracotta on his face cracked under her light step.
Instead of being hollow or being one uniform block of clay Iris saw through the hole in the figure's left cheek that inside the warrior was a skeleton made out of stone. After making sure the grey bones were in reality made out of stone, the elf pondered why would anyone go to the trouble of making the skeletons for these statues, after all their hard work would never be appreciated.
Iris felt her mind becoming increasingly tired from constantly scanning the white desolate expanse populated by nothing else other than ever more of the strange statues. As she got closer to her destination, she noticed that the statues grew in numbers and the races they depicted. She must have passed every single race she knew of and a couple of others she hadn't recognised. The further she got the more weathered and unrecognisable the statue got.
"Seventeen I think?" Iris said to herself as she passed a gigantic statue without a head. To entertain herself she had gone to counting each race she passed going as far as to stop and sweep snow off their faces to make sure her count was correct. She noticed the lack of spirits, demi-humans, goblins or orcs in the rank of the statues but from what she knew the dungeon master in control of this dungeon might have been lazy in collecting these statues or was showing off his or her favourite races.
Behind the statue, the elf finally laid her eyes on something which rekindled her bored mind back into action. The land dipped severely into a crater before going up again creating a small hill in the middle, raised slightly above the flat snow plain. Beyond the edge of the crater Iris was standing on, she couldn't see any more of the statues inside the crater and on the strange spiral-shaped hill.
The dauntless risen slowly walked down the northern face of the crater before climbing the hill. Snow tumbled down the dell as she climbed on top of the hill each step sinking further into the snow then the last. Only after climbing on top of the hill did Iris notice an opaque ice crystal in the centre of the convex snow heap. Her legs carried her forward and as she got closer her mind refused to believe what she saw. Resting behind the crystal was the skull of an ancient dragon, the risen couldn't believe her eyes as she stared at the giant horned skull overseeing the crystal. Iris had seen a wyvern and even a very young dragon while under the peonage of Brad but the skull of the true dragon right in front of her could easily fit an adult Csord inside its maw. She was hit with the revelation that the ground she was walking upon must have been the dragon's body.
Even if the dragon was dead the elf stomped extra carefully toward the crystal which awakened an intense fire of curiosity in the young undead hoplite. Without touching the rich blue and white ice crystal she peeked inside, seeing that its opaqueness disappeared significantly as she got near it.
Inside she saw a hollow space occupied by a simple throne which was made out of bones if her eyes didn't lie to her. She took another step forward trying to make out a better image of what was inside except the throne.
"Interesting." Iris tilted her head to the side, giving the ice a side look as it began to melt completely, letting out a huge cloud of steam rise into the air which quickly rained down in the form of ice pellets.
With the ice gone, the damestar raven could clearly see a petal from a beautiful flower lying on the throne. Unable to resist the urge to touch the only source of colour in this white world, Iris extended her hand and gently held the large petal. She didn't know the word for the colour of the petal she was holding. The petal was a mixture of blue, yellow with a hint of red, it was not black but the colour was certainly dark and she could clearly make out each individual colour in the delicate petal. If she had to describe the colour she was staring at, it would be cold.
"Soo sweet." Iris smelled the piece of a mysterious flower causing her to accidentally sit down on the throne, wanting to do nothing more than enjoy the enchanting floral fragrance. Before her brain could process anything she felt two pairs of hands suddenly grabbed her from behind.
"Annoying?" The elf heard an emotionless voice ask from behind her left ear.
"Nnmm, nnmm." A dismissive hum tickled her right ear, full of life and energy but a little bit hoarse as if the speaker had trouble forcing air out of her lungs.
Iris couldn't move her head to see who had grabbed her arms but saw that the world around her began to be shrouded in the violent blizzard. As the blizzard got closer she felt more and more arms grab her with strange affection, pulling her paralysed body in all directions as a choir of voices roared over the blizzard. Snow flakes filled Iris's vision as the blizzard filled up the crater in an instant before her vision turned black just as she was about to be swallowed.
----------------------------------------
Iris felt her eyes open and saw Kia lying on her back beside her. Instinctually she reached for the girl and felt with the back of the hand her kitten's soft cheek, causing a wave of cold to travel down her arm, calming her mind. Before she could do anything else or think about what had happened to her the purple crystal in Kia's chest pulsed brightly.
*Gasp*
Kia's body shot straight up as her arms clutch onto her chest. She began to heave loudly as her pale porcelain-like body was covered with sweat. Her bright eyes scanned her surroundings in a panic before finding the risen.
"What did you do?" Her eyes showed a bit of relief upon realising that no one except Iris was near her but she continued to clutch the centre of her chest.
"I-I didn't do anything," Iris struggled to explain herself as she instantly sat on her knees and tried to calm down the heavy-breathing girl. "Did something happen? Are you hurt anywhere?"
Kia's blue and golden eyes shifted away from Iris as the girl seemed to ask herself the same question. She closed her eyes, Iris could see that Kia was checking her own status. The mage's hand landed on Iris's chest without a warning.
"Kia?"
"I'm fine I think and I can't find anything wrong with anything," The undead necromancer leaned toward Iris, resting her head on Iris's torso with her body exhausted from using so much magic nestled into the elf. "You're also in the clear."
"You shouldn't have worried about me." Iris unthinkingly spewed out causing the ancient mage to turn her head and look up at the elf from under her.
"Dummy." She proceeded to bash her head on the risen before making herself more comfortable in the elven hands.
"Yea..." The poor elf responded to her kitten finding herself shamelessly hugging Kia's bare body and enjoying the girl's aroma, before being hit by a wave of exhaustion.