White blanketed the world around Joy. The winds swirled about him, picking up the loose snow that surrounded him. Without the Heater’s protection Joy would be feeling the ice biting at his skin, seeping into his bones. Instead, he felt toasty, as if he was sitting next to the fireplace at home. Which he hated.
If it was cold he would have to focus on fighting the ice and snow around him to keep himself warm. But he had chosen to travel in comfort and now was intensely bored with the whole situation. He wanted some excitement; he would give anything just to see anything other than the snow.
Joy decided that if he was miserable, the very least he could do was make everyone else as miserable as him. So, he quietly started collecting ammunition from the surrounding area. Snow was in abundance, so he didn’t have to search particularly long, but it was long enough for Benny to notice.
But Benny was not the most confrontational soul. He had two choices in front of him, say something about Joy and earn his personal derision, or simply pretend to have seen nothing.
Benny obviously felt that the shadow realm was the place to be right at this moment, so he didn’t make a peep as he evaporated into his shadow.
Joy giggled as he took aim. His target was Theo, who had been particularly sulky since Peku had left. Theo had been sad about Peku of course, but it was plain to see for everyone that he was sulking because Lillian had refused to talk to him for the rest of the day. So, he kicked at the snow and looked forlornly into the distance.
Then he got nailed right in the face by Joy’s snowball. The cold didn’t bother him because of the Heater’s gift, but it still stung. But more importantly, it had struck Theo’s pride. How had Joy been able to sneak up in front of him?
The snowball snowballed an argument. Theo started lecturing and Lillian started rolling her eyes. Emmy shrunk back away from this mess, content to let everyone else sort this out. And Benny stayed safely in the shadow realm, where these sorts of things just never seemed to happen.
Joy had been listening to Theo’s monologue for what felt like forever. It was boring and repetitive, but Joy was sure he could nearly recite the whole thing from memory now. It went, ‘blah blah blah, duty towards the prince, blah blah blah, respecting your fellows, blah blah blah, how would you feel if I had done that to you?’ Or at least that was the gist of it.
Just when Joy had been bored enough from this unwarranted tirade to just start running away, he saw something in the distance. It looked like a white blob, blending in very well with the surrounding snow. But the blob wasn’t going with the wind and seemed to be moving towards the group.
No one else seemed to notice as everyone was purposefully not paying attention to Joy’s plight, so Joy did the most reasonable thing he could think of in this situation.
“Now Theo, I enjoy your lecture. However, it seems that I may have found a suitable distraction. There seems to be a person in the snow coming in our general direction.”
Theo stared at Joy, with pure rage. His blues eyes seemed to pop out of his head. Blood bursting in them about to change their color from icy blue to rage filled red. But he let his eyes wander in the general direction that Joy had pointed in.
“Shit.”
The group huddled up for a moment. No one knew exactly what to do if they met some of the locals. Would they even speak the same language?
The group was wholly unprepared to succeed in this endeavor. However, they did come to one conclusion. A society that had survived this grueling winter for so long would appreciate the heat that Emmy could provide. So, she would spearhead this diplomatic part of the mission.
The stranger approached and they saw a very tall woman. She seemed to tower over the group the closer she got. The woman was somehow badly proportioned, her legs seemed to stretch all the way down. Her legs were nearly double the length of her body. Everyone was slightly horrified at the sight, they understood that these people had been far removed from the Hearted continent, but they didn’t expect these people to look so alien compared to themselves.
However, the closer she got the group realized that she had a normal sized body. Everyone collectively had a brief sigh of relief. What they had first perceived as her height was just her standing on the surrounding snow without falling into it.
The massive mounds of snow that they had to pierce their way through, this woman instead floated on top of them. Her steps were silent, regal, and graceful in the wintry domain.
Once the woman reached the range of Emmy’s gift her shoulders simultaneously relaxed and tensed up. She was obviously apprehensive about this unknown gift affecting her, but the woman felt warm in an indescribable way.
She smiled as she approached the group and Emmy gave a brief bow, which everyone else followed quite awkwardly. The woman looked a bit confused and copied their movements in an awkward but heartfelt way.
Joy was not a person for diplomacy and the awkward dance that entailed, so he just opened his mouth once the woman had bowed and said, “hello!”
“…Hi?” The woman replied in a soft voice, that had no noticeable accent. At the very least, she had no more of an accent than Joy or Lillian who had grown up in the rural parts of the Hearted continent.
After an awkward moment where the two groups realized that they could both speak the same language, the woman continued.
“So, who are you?”
“We are an envoy sent by prince David to find the people of the Frozen Continent.” Emmy declared.
“Well, that’s nice and dandy. But there are a lot of people around these parts. We aren’t just one homogenous culture. Many of us are nomadic and stay in small family-like tribes. Also, is that what you people call this place? The Frozen Continent, it feels derivative and obtuse. What should we call yours, the moderate temperature continent?”
The entire group stared at her, and Joy started giggling. The woman blushed a noticeable amount as everyone’s eyes took her in for what felt like the first time.
Once Joy finally caught his breath and stopped giggling, he asked, “If you want us simpletons to understand your last statement, you’re going to have to explain each of those words one by one. But I like you, you’re fun. Oh, verbose one, what is your name?”
“I’m Anna.”
“Well Anna, would you like to come with us to our home so you can help us make a map of this place?” Somehow, Emmy had already been sidelined in this conversation and Joy had let his endless enthusiasm take charge of the whole situation.
“Not particularly.”
“Well do you know anyone who might be interested in such a venture?”
“I can show you around and let you ask around.”
“Well then, lead the way, Anna. But do take it slow, not all of us are light as a feather.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Joy chuckled, as the group started shuffling forward. Following Anna turned out to be quite difficult. The detours the group would have taken to avoid larger snow drifts did not affect the talkative woman. She walked over them while the group had to push through the mighty piles.
The only thing that kept Anna even vaguely close to the group was her constant questioning. She was earnestly interested in the city they came from. It was a totally foreign concept to her, and she was enthralled to learn about it.
“So, it’s a class-based system where only elites can live in the innermost circle?”
“Not exactly, madame. The system relies upon the fact that it is wildly expensive to live within the inner circle. So, only the elites, people with courtly ties, can live there. And if anyone becomes rich enough to live there, they will have already gained the courtly ties to become one of the social elites.”
Surprisingly, it was Benny who had taken charge of answering Anna’s questions. He knew quite a bit about the courtly traditions of Vena Cava and was able to match her verbosity. The two had quite a few interesting discussions mostly revolving around social class, since apparently the two societies had vaguely similar traditions in terms of class relations. Which made the differences even more interesting for Anna and Benny to discuss.
Everyone else thought it was a snooze fest though. Joy was barely keeping himself awake from the boredom. He was a man of action, and this philosophizing wasn’t sitting well with him.
Eventually, the group made it to a nearby clearing, where Anna made them sit for a bit, while she went to go to talk to the supervising head of her traveling tribe. Apparently, they were a security risk, and she couldn’t have that sort of disaster on her back.
Joy made everyone huddle up and had Benny explain what information he had learned about the tribe and their systems from Anna.
“Well, she brought up some fascinating ideas. Though she wasn’t the clearest on some of them as the society has recently gone through some sort of upheaval…”
“Keep it short Benny.” Joy interrupted, since he had already gotten bored.
“Fine. There is one overarching society, however they have all separated into little nomadic tribes, since the food is so sparse in any one area that it couldn’t support more than a few family’s worth of people. The Leader is obviously this continent’s king, however he has quite a few subordinates that he delegates most of the work to. The Leader is more of a figurehead who gives broad goals and plans to the society, while the subordinates, or tribe heads make all the specific decision making for any one tribe.”
Everyone just stared at Benny for a few seconds. Over the course of the trip, they had gotten this vibe that he was a well-meaning but inept person. However, right in this moment he sounded nearly competent, and everyone was quite shocked to see this new side to their groupmate.
“That was quite informative… Thank you, Benny.” Theo finally spoke for the group as they let the information digest.
Joy personally had felt that Benny had used too many big words that he didn’t know but was a bit too embarrassed to tell the group that he needed another explanation. Instead, he sat there, stroking his chin with his right hand, a pensive look on his face.
Just when Theo was about to voice a worry about how long it had taken Anna to get back and suggest that they leave this area, Anna strode her way into view of the group. This time they noticed the tell-tale signs that she was floating above the snow, but this time she was joined by something massive and inky black, that cut a line through the snow.
The inky-black thing was a humanoid figure with a pot belly that would put most cauldrons to shame. It stood head and shoulders above Joy and had many appendages that hung off its arms and legs. They looked almost like tentacles, but just a bit hairier.
The whole scene was quite eerie, watching a small woman float above the snow, while some giant monster plowed its way through the snow next to her.
Everyone huddled up as the two approached, they hoped that this was not an attack on them, but it never hurt to be cautious.
“Hi everyone, I had this guy open a path for you all, so that you would not have to plow your own way through the snow.” Anna said to them. No one could see under the layers of cloth that covered most of her face, but they could all feel the grin on her face. They could feel how much she enjoyed how uncomfortable the monster made them.
“What is ‘this guy?’” Joy used air quotes as he questioned Anna.
“One of my brothers’ spiritual weights.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“The Leader will free people of the area from their spiritual weight, allowing them to live freer lives. And we get a worker who doesn’t talk back so much.” Anna for some reason pointedly glared at Joy as she said that. Joy just shrugged, he felt his questions were valid and that she must be glaring at him for some unknowable Frozen Continent reason.
So, the group followed the path that the hulking monster had made. It seemed rather convenient.
Lillian and Theo were thinking though, this monster seemed similar to the monsters that they had fought back in Vena Cava, how could there be monsters in both. No one even knew that people lived here on the Frozen Continent, so how could these monsters be in both places?
But they were convenient. Even with the passive warmth that Emmy gave the entire group, having to push through the endless drifts of snow was arduous work, and no one was going to squander this opportunity to rest.
Eventually the group crested one final snowbank and they saw a castle made of ice. It was a moderate sized castle, nothing like the true work of art that the prince had erected back at the home base, but it was still stunning to see a single structure in the land of snow and wind.
In front of the castle a sizeable group of twenty to thirty people milled about, chatting, and shivering from the cold. No one was horribly disfigured or looked barely human, it seemed like a normal group that someone could find in any section of Vena Cava.
The group suddenly stopped chatting as the group approached. And all at once the shivering stopped. The crowd had obviously come under the effect of Emmy’s gift, and they had all stopped feeling miserably cold. A few people looked so excited Joy was worried that they might have to rush Emmy out of there to keep people from proposing to her on the spot.
Joy was excited to see a young woman hop out from the crowd. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, yet she carried herself with regal poise, and people moved out of her way. Akin to the way people moved out of the way of royalty. This was someone of importance.
Very little was clearly obvious underneath her many layers of cloth, but she was short and had very dark eyes, almost black. A tuft of auburn hair stuck out from under her hood, and she seemed energetic.
She approached and hugged Anna, saying something directly into the woman’s ear that no one could quite hear. Then she directed the abomination away with a simple shooing motion.
That was when Joy noticed them. There were twelve or so of the monsters, of varying shapes and sizes, doing basic tasks around the camp. One was cooking some sort of stew, the motions were quite lethargic, and the broth didn’t look good, but who was Joy to judge? Another was cleaning the surrounding castle by using an assortment of brooms attached to its tentacles while spinning in circles.
Every one of the monsters was actively doing something helpful around the camp. Even the one that plowed for the group had already started moving towards a section of camp where clothes were lying out, ready to be cleaned.
It was quite an odd sight; unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.
“So, who are you all?” The woman with poise in her step asked.
“We are an envoy sent by prince David, on a diplomatic mission to see if any of the native peoples of this land would be willing to come back to our camp with us.” Benny replied with a flourish and a bow for some odd reason.
“Well, you’re welcome to try and convince someone.” The woman’s eyes were trained on Emmy though. She never even glanced at Benny during his speech.
“What can I do to get you to stay young miss?” The woman asked as she continued eyeing Emmy.
“Stay?”
“Yes, with our little tribe. I swear you’d be treated better here than you would be anywhere else in this frigid land.”
“…I’ll have to think about it.” Emmy tactfully extricated herself from this awkward line of questioning.
“If you change your mind, just ask around for Jan. I’d be happy to let you join us.”
With that, Jan left. It seemed like the leader of this group had made a sales pitch to try and recruit one of their members and then left as soon as it didn’t pan out. The group was too stunned to feel slighted in any way.
“Is everyone here just a little rude?” Joy bluntly asked Anna.
“To you? Yes.” Then she walked off without so much as a glance over her shoulder.
“I’m losing my mind, what is happening?” Joy let out an exasperated exclamation.
It truly was a befuddling situation. The leadership of the village obviously didn’t care for the group; however, they were allowed to stay for some unknown reason. Joy was annoyed, while Lillian and Theo were trying to understand the cultural differences that were causing this situation. Emmy was a tad uncomfortable; no one had ever so bluntly given her a proposal like that, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself. And Benny was just feeling hurt since he had been ignored almost the whole time.
“Well, there’s only one thing to do now. Let’s split into two groups and see who we can convince. Theo and Emmy, you’re a team. Also try and figure out what Peku and their parents are, the locals must know something about them. Then Benny and Lillian, you’re with me, maybe my endless charm will be able to do something.”
Joy let out a little grin at that last part and truly felt himself stepping into the role of leader for the group.
The two groups nodded at each other, then finally broke apart. Off to see what magic they could do.