Santa's realm - Episode 3 - The city of ice
When Jack walked out of the tunnel he noticed something. The streets of the city were empty. And if you looked closer you could see some damage on the street and the buildings around it. The damage was healed over time with different sorts of ice and this made the damage less visible. On the street small icicles had grown, which made it impossible to run on the street. Most of the houses were made of packed ice, so you couldn't see right through them.
This feeling of not knowing what is inside and the fact that there was a lot of concealed damage made Jack suspicious, because of this he made in his mind reason why there would be damage. The first reason was that there were traps. And the second reason was that the city was attacked from the inside or outside.
Because the second reason wasn't a threat to him at this moment, he discarded it for now.
Jack broke off some of the icicles and threw them in front of him when he walked. With this he could see if the street had some automated traps in it, but he made it till a crossroad unharmed and without seeing any traps.
Jack looked around in the crossroad. Both streets on his sides had houses around them and came to an end. One let to a market with stalls and the other one ended in a park made of icicles. The street in front of him was different. The houses were bigger and looked more expensive and the street was better decorated. At the end of this street was an staircase. At this moment he couldn't see to what the staircase went, but it looked very important. The better decorated street had way more damage then the rest of the city he had seen until now. This made Jack aware that his second theory might be more fitting, because the staircase looked very important and easy to defend. This also made Jack feel the urge to discover what was at the top of the staircase and so he walked towards it.
The staircase was huge and the steps looked like they were made for person at least five times as big as him.
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Jack went up the staircase with a high alart for his surroundings. Even if the second theory was true there was still a lot of danger, this was because the craters that were in the ground could not be made be normal persons or machines. If a wepon was left behind and it was accidentely activated it would have consequences he would not be willing to take.
When he was nearly at the end of the staircase, he paused and looked down. The other buildings were now far beneath them and the city looked very comforting and nice. It looked nearly the same as a normal city. Then he noticed there were more tunnels on the border of the city and that he couldn't remember from which direction he came. This would be quite problematic when he found the goat or wanted to run.
When Jack finally arrived at the other end of the staircase he saw that the huge doors of the building had been forced open. He couldn't imagine what kind of beast could tear open this huge doors and he became terrified of what he might find inside. This feeling of fear was kept in control by the need to find the goat, because it would be his death if he couldn't find the goat.
The room that he arrived in looked like the entrance of a castle from his dreams. It had the double staircase with a hallway under it that led to a dinner table. Only the dinner table wasn't one whole anymore, but instead existed in six different parts scattered around that room. The floor had broken carpets and also here there were icicles on the ground.
Jack walked towards the stairs and climbed them. The stairs were again made for people that were at least a few times as big as him. At the top of the staircase was a hallway that led to a balcony that looked over a garden. In the middle of this garden was a real tree, which was not made out of ice but out of wood. This startled Jack, because everything here was made of ice. When he arrived at the balcony he was again startled because in the garden a little girl was playing, but this little girl was at least twice his size.
End of Chapter 3