I recognised one of the Arachne as the one who had met me in the maze the last time I was here. None of them were moving towards me, they were just blocking my way forwards.

"Greetings Arachne." I said. "I am Lord C.C., from the lands to the south."

"Greetings Human." The Arachne I recognised said. "I am-" She made a chittering sound. "-, Guardian of the maze. Why are you on our lands?"

Her name was in whatever the Arachne language was. I think I could manage the pronunciation, so I made a translation of her name to Rebecca. When I said her name it would come out as the Arachne chittering.

"Rebecca." I said, it worked. "I am tracking one of my people, and it has led me through here. She is still far to the north, I simply wish to pass through."

I didn't feel any hatred for the Arachne, so long as they weren't attacking me or my people they weren't my enemies. The winter god kept telling people to stop me, though, so I might not have a choice.

"The direction you are travelling will take you through our nest." Rebecca said. "I can guide you out of our lands, or we can stop you here."

"Guide on." I said.

The rest of the Arachne and ice spiders fell back and Rebecca headed west along the wall she was on. I leapt over to the top of her wall and followed.

"I'm surprised to find you still here." I said. "There were a lot of you that attacked my fortress not so long ago."

"Only a small part of our nest joined the army that went by." Rebecca said. "They didn't have any choice, they were compelled by the God. We are creatures of Winter, if he calls we cannot resist."

We started heading north after a hundred meters.

"Another thing I'm curious about." I said. "I haven't seen any male Arachne?"

"You have." She said. "Only Arachne women have humanoid torsos and are able to speak this language. The males are the others."

We came to the northern end of the maze, there were still walls ahead but they weren't connected into a path.

"We are here." Rebecca said. "You should come make a treaty with us. We do not like people travelling over our lands without our permission."

That was entirely reasonable, I thought. "When I next have the time I will come see you." I said.

I climbed down the wall and headed north towards Chantelle again. Roughly one hundred and ninety kilometers to go. Five minutes later I ran into the wall of a building. I was running at thirty five kilometers an hour and was detecting far enough out to avoid the meter thick tree trunks. I ran into an open space, and then there was a wall in the way, the easiest way to stop was to bounce off of it.

I picked myself up off the ground and cleared the snow that fell down on top of me. Soaking my power into the area around me I immediately noticed a cylindrical void in the snow rushing at me from behind. A snow worm. And there were half a dozen others within my detection range.

I drew my sword from my back as it burst from the snow behind me. I stepped to the side and held my sword horizontally in its path. That cut it almost entirely in half, and I stepped forward along its length to finish the cut. It was the work of another ten minutes to hunt and kill the rest of the snow worms in and around the buildings, eight of them in total.

With that done I had time to study the buildings. This must be Chantelle's village, I realised. Having a Pocket Dimension doorway here would be useful, as I'm sure Chantelle and her people would like to collect their things after I rescued them.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

I cleared out an area of snow, finding a neatly paved road, and made myself a stone doorway. Starting on the Pocket Dimension symbols I could set where in my Pocket Dimension the new doorway would appear, the first symbol carved linked the doorway and it was as though it was asking me where it should be. The other doorways I'd just pushed on to the next symbol and the default was chosen.

I put the new doorway in the secure room I had made. It took me half an hour of carving to make a two meter by two meter doorway. When I was done I sealed the portal away in its own secure room in the Pocket Dimension, adding a wall to separate it from the doorway to the bottom of my fortress. I then sank the doorway on this side into the ground, making sure there was no trace of where it was left. I could sense it as a one-sided opening with my power, if I needed to find it again.

I began clearing the snow from the village, wanting to make sure there were no horrible surprises when I brought Chantelle back here. I was glad that I did. I made it to the village square in the center of the village and came across a scene from a nightmare. There were twenty people posed and frozen solid, faces locked in horrific pain and fear. They were missing pieces that were obviously bitten out of them while they were still alive.

There was a progression were they had been lined up, all facing the one direction towards the worst corpse. The corpses were missing more the further down the line they were. The first person was completely intact, and the last was just a leg, the spine, and a head. Whatever had done this had made them all watch as it had eaten more of the next person in line. And when it was done it froze the entire scene, leaving it as a permanent warning for anything that came across it.

To hell with that. I dug a set of stairs directly down into the ground below the village square and made a solid stone room with twenty sarcophagi raised inside it.

I didn't know of any rites to say over the bodies, but I was as respectful as I could be in laying them to rest. I used my Matter Manipulation power to move them carefully over the stone, one at a time, down into the crypt. I sealed it after the last body was laid to rest and cleared the frozen blood from the village square's stones. I would bring Chantelle and her people here if they needed to. I hadn't been looking up at all as I'd been working, but now that I was done I looked around at the buildings surrounding me.

There was a man standing frozen on the roof of the only two story building in the village square, looking down. I sent my power towards him, intending to bring him down and add him to the crypt, but it wouldn't enter him. The man was somehow still alive.

I used the material of building to form wooden stairs on the outside and rushed up them. He was definitely frozen, his eyes open and pointing to where the people had been staged in the village square. There wasn't anything I could do here, so I picked him up and carried him to my Pocket Dimension doorway, pulling it out of the ground.

I pulled the wall down that separated the village doorway from the table in the secured room in my Pocket Dimension and laid the man down on it. The next few minutes I spent trying to push my power into him, not knowing if I was making any progress. Maybe he wasn't alive, his dead body might have been enchanted? Five minutes later I got my answer when my power broke through.

His entire body was dead and frozen, the only exceptions were his brain and his eyes. And now that I was through I could see that they had just started dying. This was going to suck for him. I manipulated the cells of his brain, reversing the damage as it was occurring. I was buying time to get a complete scan of his body as quickly as I could. I then used myself as a reference to change the model I had of him into a living and functional copy, then dedicated my entire processing into changing his body to match the model.

His physical appearance would still be the same, the modifications were at the cell level and I matched the original cells as much as possible. My digital side slowed down to such an extent that my biological side lost its connection to it. The reverse of what usually happened when I slowed my perception of time.

It was making the conversion of the man happen faster, which also unfortunately meant that it was likely hurting a lot more than anything I had experienced. Ten minutes later my digital side snapped back to normal speed.

The man was breathing, his heart was beating, and his brain looked to be functioning perfectly on a physical level. He was also unconscious, so it was difficult to tell if he was sane. He sat up with a scream. I stepped back, placing a hand on the hilt of my sword.

He was looking around wildly, and as he ran out of breath from his screaming he took a deep breath and then continued screaming. When he started screaming a third time, after another breath, I stepped forward and slapped him across the face. The shock of it stopped his scream.

"Hey." I said. "You definitely have a reason to be screaming, but I need to know if you're still in there."

"Is this hell?" He asked with a sob.

"You've been through hell, I would say." I said. "Welcome to the other side. That you can talk at all is a very good sign. Do you remember your name?"

"Michael Warder." He said. "My wife is the Clan leader."