“This doesn’t make any sense!”

“You’ve said that before.”

“It’s still true! Stupid goddess damn, the Biar Constraint alone proves…”

Tyler tried to continue listening but honestly, as Riary continued to get further and further from words he understood or knew, he zoned out. He began thinking of how they’d gotten here and felt an incredible chill go up his body.

They had almost died. He could still remember it now. That incredible chill as the temperature dropped, colder than anything he’d ever experienced. Partially, he thought, colder than anything he could experience. It had frozen damn near every part of him instantly.

And then it had reached deeper.

Time had passed but it still felt like a singular moment. Less than a second but also like an Eternity had passed. It threatened to hurt his brain if he thought about it anymore, so he didn’t. But still, as the time had passed, the cold had reached places he didn’t even know he had. It had reached his very soul. He felt like… he would no longer be him if it reached there. His Soul had been frozen solid. Slowly changing when-

Protect.

It was like for a second… he could sense Riary’s Soul. And something in him had just-

“Hey! Are you even listening?!”

“Huh? Sorry. Anyway, so if time and light are frozen, why can we see and move?”

Riary looked like she was about to explode for a moment, before taking a deep breath and letting it out. Then her face pinched up as she began to think. It only got uglier by the second. Eventually, she responded.

“I don’t know! It’s probably your fault somehow.”

“My fault?! How?!”

“I don’t know! What was the weird aura thing you did that let us escape being frozen statues?”

Tyler thought more on it but honestly…

He smiled and gave Riary a thumbs up.

“I have no idea either.”

“GAH!”

Riary hated mysteries, which was hilarious. She loved learning but couldn’t stand it when the knowledge just wasn’t there. He’d known it drove her crazy but now wasn’t the time to be getting upset.

“How come I’m warm?”

Riary stopped her tirade and turned back on him.

“That’s my soul. And-” She seemed to physically stop herself from going off again, before becoming deathly serious. She looked at Tyler, staring at him hard.

“Tyler. Souls… they aren’t something we should even be able to mess with. Maybe if we were S-rank but even then…”

Tyler felt… very confused.

“Wait, hold on, back up. I know we have souls but… they can be messed with?”

Riary gave him an unimpressed look.

“Tyler, how do you think you got here? Your body certainly didn’t make the journey.”

He blinked and looked down at himself while Riary sighed.

“Souls are the domain of the Gods and Goddesses… they aren’t studied, they aren’t researched, and they aren’t messed with. And not for a lack of trying.” Riary sounded… afraid.

Tyler looked directly at her… and shrugged.

“Oh well.”

“Oh well?! Tyler, this is serious!”

“Yeah but… shouldn’t we just focus on the here and now? I’m sure the soul stuff will be fine.”

Riary sighed again, exasperated, but turned towards the goal.

The goal being a massive ice spire shooting towards the sky. It was… smaller before. Tyler felt his nerves begin to fray.

“We’re going to have to climb that.” Riary said sounding defeated already.

Tyler looked up, heart racing in a panic. He… didn’t like heights.

Riary sighed again. She did that a lot. Tyler was starting to worry she was getting depressed.

Tyler breathed deep, trying to psyche himself up.

“Come on, all we have to do is get up there, grab the gem, and maybe get down somehow. Ea-”

“Finish that sentence and I will burn you to death.” Riary said, glaring at him.

He turned away with a guilty look.

They walked up towards the spire and quickly realized something important.

“Do you have any idea how to-”

“No.” Riary cut him off.

“Right.”

Nothing for it then. Tyler reached towards the Ice Spire and began to climb. Riary followed soon after. He was still strangely warm, which he was more than glad for. In fact, he would be happy never being cold again. The chill of winter, of freezing… he was going to have nightmares about it. If he closed his eyes he could still-

No. No more cold. Just climb. Oh god it was so tall- No. No, don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Just Climb.

And climb they did. Up and up and up and up. He could hear Riary climbing next to him. The spire of ice was jaggy, giving plenty of places to put their feet and hands, but it was already getting annoying to feel some of those points dig into his mostly naked body. That thought almost sent him falling, as he realized that Riary could see him naked.

He’d mostly gotten over it because it was life or death but the sudden thought nearly sent him tumbling. Which caused him to panic and flail even more as he imagined himself falling to his death. His heart hammered like a beating drum.

“Whoa! Tyler! Don’t fall!” Riary shouted.

Tyler quickly grabbed back on from where he slipped, looking down in fear only to-

…What?

“What is it-” Riary looked down as well.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

They’d been climbing for at least half an hour but… they were barely more than a dozen feet from the ground. They both stared at the ground in disbelief and shock, before Riary started cursing up a storm.

“Motherfucking Goddess damned Biar Constraint and stupid Algethoric Principle the motherfucking bastards whore sons of-”

Her tirade went on for a while before she looked at Tyler with… panic in her eyes.

“Tyler. This… this isn’t good.”

“What’s going on? Why haven’t we moved much?”

Riary took a breath.

“Time and space are one. They aren’t separate concepts, they aren’t separate forces. One always affects the other. That’s partially the Biar Constraint. We just think and feel like they are different. Time must only be nearly stopped here so space…”

Tyler understood.

“So the spire is… a lot bigger than it seems?”

“Tyler, it’s worse than that. This spire might be dozens or hundreds of miles tall. It might take us days or weeks to climb it. We’ll starve long before we make it to the top.”

Tyler’s eyes opened and he scanned the ground. They were still in the dome. Could they leave and find food? Maybe. There were still at least some wolves around but… what if the same frozen thing happened again? Could they break out of that twice?

Tyler looked up at that spire and immediately felt sick. He, he didn’t do good with heights. They were going to have to- he stared straight at the wall. This, this would be fine. He would just need to climb and it would all be okay. Don’t think about it or worry about anything else, just one hand in front of the other.

“Tyler-”

“We climb.”

Riary frowned.

“Tyler, we don’t have the food or resources to scale a mountain. We can’t climb for weeks without any food or water!”

Tyler ran the thoughts through his head one more time and grimaced. Hard. They had been teleported here. So maybe if they got the Gem, they’d be teleported back. They hadn’t seen any signs of civilization and even if there had been any, they were now at least partially trapped in this dome. Leaving may mean never getting the Gem.

May mean never getting back. It was nearly summer. They were nowhere near where they had been.

“We have all the water we could need.” Tyler said in a dead voice, breaking off a small piece of ice and putting it in his mouth.

Riary nodded.

“Alright, sure, but what about food?”

“...did you know, it takes a month for a human to die of starvation?”

Riary’s eyes went wide.

“Tyler…” She looked up, mouth dropping open. “...what if it doesn’t work? What if it doesn’t teleport us? We’ll just be dead at the top of a mountain.”

“...hope for the best?”

Riary banged her head against the spire for a moment.

“This is going to be awful.”

“Yup.”

“Stupid awful fucking spire.” Riary kept muttering curses as she began to climb. Tyler followed soon after.

Minutes turned to hours. Tyler ignored how high they were. For all, he knew they were right next to the ground. He kept that thought in mind, just focusing on climbing and nothing else. Cold wind began to blow on him, only the sounds of his breathing and Riary’s hands on the ice flowing into his ears. He slowly began to develop a new worry. It was fine to say they would climb for days and weeks. It was another thing to do it.

They’d have to rest eventually and more than that… the spire was so tall. So tall. He shoved the thought away but it kept clinging to him. He didn’t like heights. They must be so high now and if they weren’t… they might not make it. They needed that Gem to get back out of here.

His hands on the ice, his breath pouring out, the chill of the wind. Another step, another grab, another step, another grab, another step, another grab. Over and over and over again. Over and over again.

Grab.

Step.

Grab.

Step.

Grab.

Step.

Grab.

Step.

Grab.

Step.

Gr-

“Tyler!”

He slipped. Riary’s shout caused him to slip and he began to fall. His fingers scrambled to catch him and they did, barely. His heart hammering, sweat pouring off him, screams stifled in his chest, he quickly looked up.

His eyes shook.

The spire had been thin, once upon a time. It had seemed that way. Now? Now it was like they were actually climbing a mountain. All ice. As far left and right as his eyes could see. He couldn’t understand it, hadn’t noticed it with how focused he was on just climbing.

But that wasn’t all he saw. Riary was above him, just slightly before, and now a bit more significantly. Bounding across the ice wall, was a creature. It had four arms and two legs, hunched like a gorilla, and was treating the nearly straight Ice wall like it was solid ground, swinging and jumping across it.

Big, white, and teeth jutting out of its large jaw.

A Yeti. A four armed, brutal looking yeti was running straight at them. Riary had glanced down at him quickly, making sure he was okay when he fell, and he saw as the Yeti suddenly sped up. It was seconds away from reaching Riary as she turned back to look at it. Fire already appeared in her hand, the other still grabbing the wall. Would it be enough?

Tyler felt his fears crystalize into something new. He was terrified of heights. He had been ignoring it as best he could but… if anything happened to Riary!

Like a man possessed, Tyler grabbed the wall and practically threw himself up the ice wall, thoughts of safety gone. He moved fast but the Yeti moved faster. He flung himself straight up, leaping as well, throwing himself upwards with all his strength.

The Yeti went for a bite on Riary, only to get a face full of flames.

It didn’t deter it at all.

Tyler’s fist punching it in the jaw did. For a brief moment, everything was frozen in that one moment. A Yeti getting punched in the jaw, Riary frozen on the side of a wall, Tyler leaping up with a fierce face and yell pouring out of him.

And then the moment passed, Riary reached out to grab him, Tyler began to fall, and the Yeti reared back, gaining distance. Tyler scrambled for handholds on the ice wall, feeling sharp pokes in his body as he practically slammed against it. Riary’s arm met his back, keeping him in place for a moment as he got his bearings, as he quickly looked back over at the Yeti.

It had been surprised but not deterred. It was still eyeing them with a hungry look in its eye. Tyler had no weapons, no armor, and no gear.

The same wasn’t true for Riary.

Flame came into existence and began peppering the Yeti. It had no effect, but Riary didn’t stop. A small flame, a dozen small flames, a hundred small flames. It took Tyler way too long to notice they were all different. Riary was changing her fire, rapidly. Over and over and over again.

The Yeti which had started getting closer began to hold up it’s arm, trying to block the flames, but they kept coming. Changing. First red, but then with hints of blue, of green, of orange, of white. Finally, her fire became a magical blue-ish white, shining bright, with darker shades hidden inside.

They landed… and the Yeti’s fur began to freeze.

Tyler looked at Riary in shock, her face vacant but locked in a scowl, her eyes focused.

“Fire…” She spoke, voice drawing out. “Fire… can change. Fire… is intensity itself….” Her eyes had a dull look but they began to sharpen and brighten, the flame pupils returning to her for the first time since their power had been drained.

They began to grow more and more, but the color was the same as the fire she was summoning.

“My Flames… are still only one thing at their core.”

Her flame pupils grew and the magic in the air began to increase. Tyler could feel a magical chill begin to penetrate his skin.

“Retribution.”

Dozens more small flames spawned into existence. Individually they were weak but combined…

“Freeze.”

The Yeti seemed to sense the danger, trying to flee, but the Ice Flames landed on it… and it froze. Ice began to cover its body, as it struggled to move, getting slower and slower.

Soon, there was no more Yeti. Just a frozen statue. And then it began to fall.

Tyler watched in amazement, as it fell far to the ground, vanishing in the wintery haze below.

Riary let out a deep breath, blue flames coming out. She seemed to be centering herself, as Tyler gawked at her. He forgot sometimes… that Riary was a Genius at the same level as a True Hero’s cheat like ability.

Riary shook her head, annoyance clear on her face.

“Ugh. I prefer heat to cold but burn or freeze, it’s all the same.”

“Riary! That was amazing!”

“Sh-Shut up! You idiot! What were you doing falling like that?!”

As Riary began to chew him out, he simply smiled. He had felt it while he had been climbing but now he was really feeling it. There was more strength his arms, he felt like could lift his shield again, and now Riary’s flames were clearly getting back to their old strength.

Teleportation had weakened them but it seemed it was temporary. Soon, they’d be back to their full power and their climbing speed would increase.

They might actually make this.

Suddenly, Tyler had a horrible thought. He hoped Derek and Konohora were okay. They didn’t seem to appear anywhere nearby so… hopefully they were somewhere safer than this.

He breathed. One problem at a time. He looked up at the spire that had become a mountain wall and only seemed to be getting bigger and wider.

One problem at a time.