“What fresh nightmare is this?!” Heketi shouted and snatched up her spear, forcing herself, weary as she was, first to rush out of the hut to find her people screaming in alarm. ‘It can’t be more undead! It can’t be!’

It wasn’t. Everyone seemed fine, but the cause of their screaming quickly became obvious. Just beyond the breaches in the walls, a thing she’d only ever heard stories about, dominated the water.

‘Is that ‘ice’?!’ Heketi wondered as she looked at the still white ground that had once been the ebbing flow of water. The red bloody surface had become red stained and still, while the rest was either dirty or as white as the purest and most perfect of clouds.

Several of her people were howling and screaming, “I’m stuck! I’m stuck! Please… I’m stuck! Comrades! Help me!” Cries of fear and pain were rampant, and before the cries could rise higher she understood just why.

‘The ones working deeper… the water froze around them!’ Heketi pointed her spear toward the area beyond the damaged wall. “If you’re not stuck, go help the others, when someone unsticks you, go aid them in helping others! Use rocks, spears, anything!” She shouted and rushed out, her powerful leaps carrying her over the wall to find that at least a dozen of her own were flailing about, waist high or worse in the now solid surface of the lake. They pounded with their fists and ignored the breaking of their fingers.

Heketi didn’t blame them, frogmen did not fare well in the ice. Around her, to their credit, the frogmen were following her commands, clubs swung down hard to crack at the ice, while others chipped at ice with knives, and enterprising souls rushed out to take up swords that were piled high from the dead humans, and applied those to the task of freeing their brethren.

There was no way for Heketi to tell how many were trapped in the ice, but there were many, and the cruel, cruel cold which would have melted on its own eventually, began to take its toll on those who had the misfortune to be standing in it at the time.

Heketi brought her spear down and smashed through, freeing one of her followers in a single blow. Her heavy infantry were doing the same, but others of more common strength struggled at their task.

Sometimes the scream changed its tune, going to a higher octave when a blow missed the ice and struck flesh instead, adding to the total tally of the wounded that was already too much for Heketi to truly grasp.

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But thanks to steady order and quick actions, one became two, then became five, then ten, and the numbers of those helping free the remainder became sufficient that the whole tribe was set completely free of the dreadful substance in a few hours.

“What was that…?” Somebody asked their Queen, to which Heketi answered.

“That was something called ‘ice’. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it up close, the dwarven merchants told me their mountains get this stuff on top of it, but frozen water… Who could freeze so much?”

Nobody answered that either. ‘Will I ever get one of ‘my’ questions answered?’ She wondered, and ironically she had no answer to that either.

The luckiest frogmen had only mild burns from the freezing around their ankles, and though they were in pain, they could still move and work, albeit with some wincing.

Others however, had more serious burns all over most of their body, and they were left groaning and in pain, a few unfortunates had hands and feet both frozen into place when picking something out of the water.

Worse yet, when the last tally was told, six more had died, they had been frozen at the head, breaking the surface of the water when the freeze hit. Frozen where they were, their brain could not take the change, and their struggling ceased long before anyone could see they were in danger, leaving them mere frozen corpses waiting to be released.

Heketi mounted the wall and stood above the center where she had fought before and looked off into the distance over the now solid white waters.

Over the distant waters, she could have sworn her eyes beheld ‘dots’.

“No…” She whimpered to herself. “No more… just no more…” The whispered plea to the gods went unanswered, and the dots remained atop the frozen surface.

‘That is why the waters were frozen. So that whoever did it, could ‘walk’ here…’ The dread of that understanding sent Heketi into a desperate tailspin of thinking.

‘We’ve been getting the evacuees back all day, can they find the strength to run again? How long before those ‘dots’ get here? What about our young…?’ Heketi acutely felt the lack of options open to her in the present moment.

If they fled, survival was uncertain. If they remained, survival was uncertain. If they fought, survival was uncertain. “Fight… don’t fight… maybe we can surrender. The lizardmen couldn’t have done this, so that means some other enemy has, perhaps I can persuade them to join us instead…” Heketi clung to that thought, they were far away at least, giving them some time to rest.

She looked over her shoulder, “Withdraw to warmth! Eat! Rest! All non-combatants set to rebuild the defenses!”

‘Get someone to take the young to safety…?’ She considered the order, but then she had to ask herself… how? Where? Carrying so many eggs was impossible, and they would just attract more monsters, and enough guards to protect them all would mean they might as well all go together, and still there was the ugly question of where?

Behind her, she could hear her people flopping down in various places, it wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be something, and in the meantime her non-combatants went about the work process, rebuilding the walls where the undead breached it before, running fresh vines back and forth between trees to create the barriers again.

There was little else to be done, and to her pride, her people were doing all that they could.

So Heketi stood on the wall, and waited.