…
You awake an indeterminate time later. All of your bones scream at you, your joins creaking, stretch us for the love of all that is holy!
Your bed has not been kind to you..
Looking over the edge, you see the reddish glow is the same as it was before you fell asleep. It's gotten neither closer, nor stronger, nothing.
Running out of options, you realize you can only sneak down to check out the situation.
Nothing is different on floor #3, maybe a bit more dust lay on the strange cube.
Floor number two is the same, just more dust and a small pebble or two that cracked and fell from the ceiling.
Your anxiety rising, you carefully look at what the bottom-most floor holds.
It's.. a pillar of light?
The glow was a just a magical pillar of light?
Relieved but still weary of any danger, you decide to experiment.
Can you get closer? Yep, nothing happens, except your eyes start to hurt from the blinding light.
Can you.. throw the charcoal remains cowered in wizard-dust at it? Yep again, it just fazes through the light, as though it's.. just light.
Finally, you put your least important body part through the light. Maybe it's beneficial to you?
As your shriveled ring finger gets closer and closer to the light, you feel it. It's an indescribably strong feeling of-
nothing at all?
Huh.
…
To say you were baffled by this is an understatement. Why would a this strange pillar of light show up, if not to do something? Hopefully something good of course.
Not knowing what else to do, you decide this is too much to deal with right now. Sure, maybe eventually something would happen, but would you even want to be there while it does?
Answering with a resounding no, you head off to the only other place of interest that you can access right now. The strange hill.
Rested and already a professional at kicking snow, it doesn't take more than an hour or two to get near it. Now being within reasonable distance, you can clearly see that the dark splotch you saw was indeed a cave.
A deep one at that..
Still keeping cautious, you dry to discern anything that might reside there.
Not spotting anything, you head in quietly.. stopping almost as soon as starting. It's dark.
Obviously, why would a cave be lit after all? Thankfully there's a whole forest of charcoal nearby, as well as a bunch of sources of lava to light it.
…
Standing in front of the smallest lava-lake you could find with a makeshift torch in hand, you notice something peculiar. The snow still hasn't melted!
Even near molted rock, it doesn't show the slightest sign of doing so! In fact, the temperature it emits creates an even more comfortable atmosphere in this hellish realm.
Heading back to the cave, you're now able to see its insides.
They're beautiful.
The walls are getting more and more pure-white the deeper you go, each step you take increasing the amount of dark green obsidian lining them.
There's yet another shift in temperature, the air getting cooler and cooler, though by now you're getting used to the inconsistency.
Trekking for well over an hour you arrive at the end of the strange cave. By now, everything surrounding you is pure obsidian.
Disappointed there seems to be nothing of note here, no answer nor tools that could help you, you desperately try to find anything hiding in the walls.
The floor? Holds nothing, the light from your puny torch can't penetrate deeper than a dozen meters at most.
The left side, maybe the right? Nada, same problem.
The ceiling perhaps..? The hardest to try to discern because of the distance, yet still it does not hold even a pebble of interest.
Taking one last look at the very end of the cave itself.. you actually do manage to see something.
Is that.. an arm?
Completely and utterly baffled at seeing something alive, your eyes almost sparkling from the joy, you start shouting!
You shout and shout! Yell and yell!
The arm ignores you, whatever it is attached to clearly not hearing nor seeing you.
Desperate, you run back outside at full speed, deathly afraid whoever that was would leave.
The casual stroll taking you a full hour before takes less than 10 minutes now!
You look for a rock, one big enough that would hopefully produce enough of a bang when hit against the wall for the person to take notice of you.
Finding and sprinting back with full power, still pumped with all of the adrenaline you could possibly hold, you see the arm still there!
Banging again and again, you strike. Each one holding more and more power. Each one louder and louder than the one before.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
…
It's been.. some time now. At first you thought the arm might have twitched a bit, a finger or two moving, yet either it stopped or it was just a wishful hallucination of yours.
The wall has become cowered in dust, sadly almost purely of the rock you were using.
There's no progress, you think to yourself. Perhaps resigning in defeat, perhaps only taking a break from all the fatigue, you slump down.
With nothing else to do, you wait.
Wait for something to happen.
Anything.
Time ticks by, no change in sight.
Maybe you've used up all the breathable air down here, maybe you've simply pushed past your limits, your eyelids start to close.
What's the point anyway? Not like you have anything to return to. If you even have somewhere you came from..
Drifting off into peaceful slumber, you close your eyes for good.
…
[ Update - requirements met: 0/4 ]
[ ... ]
[ Initiating restart… ]
…
You awake in a strange white space, there being no end in sight in any direction.
You remember neither who you are, nor how you came to this place. Strangely, this doesn't upset you in any way.
The only thing keeping you company are two open doors, a trail of snow leading from the Blue one and into the Red one.
Intrigued, you search around.
Awhile passing, you find many things.
Starting off simple, there's a painted on symbol between the two mysterious doors. It looks like a.. huh, it's not really that strange. It's a simple '1'.
What it means, you have zero clue, at least you know it's there.
Switching to the doors, they're both supernatural in nature. To say the least.
The blue one leads into a realm filled with freezing snow and ice, everything in sight being covered in one or the other. Sadly you can't walk in it to confirm whether there's anything different.
The red one however, has a loooong trail of snow. Somehow it's not melted in spite of being surrounded by ash, flames, and lava.
At first you thought it weird, but stepping off the snowy trail you almost shriveled up from the heat. Clearly, whatever this strange snow is, is keeping the temperature to a manageable one.
Exploring all of the paths, you see one leads into a forest. It's, well, dead. All of the trees are nothing more than charcoal, the ground only ash.
Another leads into a tower. The first floor holds some.. salt?
Oh, and a glowing pillar of pure-red light! You digress.
Going to the upper floors, things remain weird. One is completely empty except for two carvings into the ceiling and floor, the next holds just a wooden cube, the third a pedestal pointing into the sky.
Bored after looking at the strange things for awhile, you head down to the path of snow once again.
A path leads to some rocky area littered with stones, another one to a lake of lava. Strange, but your whole situation right now is, you don't pay it any mind.
The last path you take leads to a cave. Your eyes almost glow from its beauty. It is almost pure-white, yet lined with a deep-green hue of obsidian.
Making your way into it, there's not much to see. The end is a long way in, however it doesn't hold anything interesting, maybe the way forward has been filled?
It seems someone was here before you, trying to chip away at it with a rock, so the idea does have some merit.
Not interested too much, you head back to the endless void of white. Perhaps it holds more answers.
…
Huh, you find a single stone not far off from where you awoke. It's clear, but barely. Colored a very dark red color, you pick up the perfectly spherical object.
A voice sounds in your head:
[Attack crystal - Tier 0]
..okay?
It gives no further information, nor any indication it is going to in the future.
Confused, you try to experiment.
Holding in all sorts of ways, there's little result. You swirl it around in your hand, maybe it operates on a weird mechanism?
Not getting any results either, you decide to look at it another way.
You're in a weird place, for sure, but it most definitely has supernatural qualities. Maybe this stone crystal isn't a key or trigger, but a magical weapon itself?
Pushing the stone in front of you again, this time you picture a bolt of fire attacking your (imaginary) enemies.
Wooosh!
It.. it worked!
Well, to say it worked is a bit of an exaggeration, but it clearly yielded a result. The flame was not quite as intense as you hoped, but at least some of it manifested. Admittingly, what you pictured was a battlefield ablaze, so the power difference shouldn't be a surprise for a Tier 0 crystal.
Laughing to yourself, you imagine all of the power this gives you. A magic crystal! How many people besides you can say they have that?
Zero! You hope..
You get many ideas, many many in fact.
First on the list is, but of course, to play around as much as you can!
First you set the forest of charcoal ablaze! The flames almost bring a tear to your eyes with their beauty, perhaps their heat.
Second idea.. freeze a river of lava! The molten rock takes much longer to cool than you had hoped, but eventually it does. The previous searing heat of the riverside is now replaced with a chilled and gorgeous walkway for you to stroll on.
…
You play around, finally finding something of interest in this weird place, though this too gets boring in time.
Expanding your thinking you realize something you've yet to do, visit the Blue Door's dimension!
Getting excited again, you hurry to it and activate the stone at its full power. You send not flames, but pure scorching heat at the cold realm.
The snow melts away, strangely not leaving water or any other liquid behind, but you don't notice that. You look into the distance and set off to explore!
You melt a frozen tree, some shrubs, though they don't reveal anything of note underneath their coat of snow.
There's a forest up ahead, though it seems to contain the same species of vegetation, you don't try melting them again.
Visiting a field full of layered sheets of ice, your eyes gleam at the sign. Melting almost 5 meters into them, you sadly don't find anything..
After wandering around awhile longer, you spot a large and flat surface. That wouldn't be too interesting on its own, however it holds many chunks of ice of varying sizes.
Some you could pick up, though not too easily, others as big as houses!
Exploring the strange field a little longer, you get to its center.
There, you find the biggest chunk of ice. Though calling it that doesn't do it justice, it's practically a small hill!
Better yet, berried deep inside, you see something you didn't think possible.. a girl, one as big as a giant.
An ecstatic feeling floods your whole body, you get a smile that threatens to stretch off of your face. Another person!
Doesn't matter that she's bigger than two elephants stacked atop each other, she's most definitely a person!
Your mind races, is she alright? Can you free her from her prison of ice?
Yes! You have a magic crystal that spews flames as though there won't be a tomorrow!
Slowly but surely, you use it on the hill of ice encasing her.
It doesn't take a genius to see that this ice is much, much harder to melt that any other. It takes you two whole hours, yet you don't get even a quarter of the way to her.
Taking a short break, you gaze at the sky outside of your tunnel.
There seem to be dark clouds gathering in the distance, hopefully they aren't coming your way.. You don't care too much, surely you'll be safe within your tunnel even if a snowstorm drifts your way.
Getting atop the hill of ice, you look around on your new vantage point. You notice a tower in the distance, it looks almost demonic in the serene and snowy landscape around you. Perhaps it shares something with the one inside the Red Door, though that one looks angelic.
Thinking to yourself what to do, you decide on your next steps.
Perhaps visiting the new tower might be a good sightseeing stop, but you've got work to do. Just reaching the girl will take a good 7 hours, you don't have the luxury of running around and doing whatever you want. Hopefully she'll awake with just a touch..
…
Exhausted, you slump down and take a short rest. You're not sure how simply using a magic crystal can be so tiring, but it clearly isn't as easy as just standing still and letting it do all the work.
You've gotten very close to the giantess of a girl now. There's less an a centimeter of ice between you two.
You carefully melt the obstruction, getting more and more excited at the thought of reaching her.
Finally melting the last bit of ice between you two, you touch her with a trembling finger.
..it's cold. She's cold.
Thankfully there's still a bit of softness to the touch, so maybe she isn't dead yet.
Sighing at nothing interesting happening, you look out of the tunnel of ice you've dug.
There's been a huge snowstorm going on outside for a good few hours now. Thankfully it doesn't reach you because you've dug so deep.
Not being able to continue melting the frozen cage around the girl, and certainly unable to take a rest here without constantly activating the crystal for warmth, you wait.