Music for today:
Edda Hayes, 2WEI – MEDUSA (Official Audio)
https://youtu.be/-mguELZsf_E
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Chapter 474: The Frost
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*Woom—Whip—Woom* The sounds of churning mana—the soothing, yet chaotic washes of hot and cold that came without rhythm or pattern. It was something I knew so well that illusions of it played in my dreams.
However, even to a being like me, the mental burden of making such sensations accurate within a dream was too much. Subconsciously, my mind knew it wouldn't break the illusion anyway, and 'approximates' the sensation to merely be 'convincing enough'.
This time though, as I focused on the curves of the ripples crossing my body—their intersections and echoes—I didn't find a single indescribable jump, distortion, or error.
At long last, after replaying my journey through the eons within my mind, I had landed the last part of the gamble, and successfully thread the final needle I had foreseen.
After eighty thousand years.. I had actually succeeded.
The illusion had ended.. and I survived.
Born anew as the being I once wished I could be.
...And I was simply ecstatic.
*CRACKLE* Shearing off excess mana strengthening in my joints and muscles with a twitch, my wings and tail spread, pressing against the outer shell of the colossal mana core like an oversized hatchling in an egg.
Having reached the end of my vision, the future only held the unknown, but in that moment, I didn't care. In the purity of my soul, the clarity of my memories, and the new-set foundation of thought within my mind, I found excitement welling.
Though still far below the great heights I had reached as Nott, my new foundation had finally been set, and with it, not even the stars would be above its peak.
I had so much room to grow—so many theories to craft and so many questions to answer—that instead of fearing the unknown of the future...
It was exhilarating.
*Tink—KRAKOOOOOM* Forcing my wings through the brittle shell of mana that had been trapping me for what felt like a hundred thousand years, the core exploded, liquifying everything nearby before showering me with a chunky crimson slurry.
-Hm?- It was flesh—cold and rotting—with a scent that punched my sinuses through a wash of frost as if I had stepped into an abandoned meat freezer. "Eck..."
Curling my lips with a snarl, I stiffly stepped backed with a wince, shearing off the excess mana strengthening in my muscles and joints with a series of crackles before my paws started sinking into the gooey sludge.
The scent was inescapable. -Fucking hell...-
Forcing my mind to get moving, I quickly began grasping at the air to gather hydrogen before suddenly igniting it. *tsss—woooOOOOSH*
The small blue flame was instantly eclipsed by a wash of orange curls, dilating my pupils in a wall of flame before exposing the shell of flesh and dark, deep blue ice that surrounded me. -What the...-
Having expected magma upon my waking, it was already a bit of a surprise.
However... -Why is the ice so solid..?-
Unlike the ice layer at the bottom of the Death's Gape that was formed with pressure alone, this ice didn't deform even with a sudden, drastic pressure change I created.
It meant this ice was formed purely by the cold. -Where am I..?-
Eventually shaking off my mental fatigue, I set off a small amount of antimatter in my breath gland, and left my mouth closed to slowly radiate the heat from my body in order to melt and climb up through the ice.
But.. I was far from prepared for what would greet me at the end...
After climbing through the ice for some time, eventually seeing the blue gradient lightening, I broke through the surface only to be blasted with a burst of white light, a howling wind, and the front of a blizzard. *WOOOOSH*
-What the hell?- It was completely otherworldly. -Where.. is this place..?-
Letting my aura rush out over the ice, I wanted to find any kind of landmark, a forest, mountain, or village.. but even as far as a hundred kilometers out, there was nothing but snow-covered flats.
The place truly didn't feel real... Like it was still merely a fabrication of my mind.. an illusion manifested by the mind.
But as I went to question if this was truly reality, my aura brushed against another.
...Or rather.. brushed against many...
-Huh?- A little over a hundred kilometers away, I felt a mass of presences, some humanoid, some draconic, surrounding two large masses. -A ship, and...- Something else...
...A large lump in the endless, snow-covered flats...
Being surrounded by considerably large dragons and dozens of humans rivalling the strongest I'd ever seen, I couldn't risk probing it with my aura alone, especially from such a distance, so after giving one last, thought-laden look at the hole I climbed from, I took to the air to get a little closer.
But truthfully, the blizzard was too thick.
With winds rivalling a tornado, and snow so dense it could lay meters on the ground in seconds with slower winds, it was hard to actually push my aura through it while retaining any detail. Like pushing a camera into an ocean of static, it was disorienting and blinding beyond words.
But, merely focusing on the presences and the ground, I continued before finally getting close and descending through the clouds again.
It wasn't really until then that I noticed how much I had changed.
Stepping up to the outside of a barrier they had up to hold back the snow, I looked over dragons whose auras belonged to ancients and elders, yet looked so small I found it hard to believe.
That was at least until my attention drifted to the humans. -Ah...-
It wasn't that they were especially tiny...
It was that I was especially mountainous.
Though it had gone unnoticed until now, I had practically multiplied in size—now standing a hair over two hundred meters tall with fur now spread over parts of my wings, legs, and underside.
Without realizing, I had been forced into a dragon sleep, and stepped into the demigod stage.
But.. that didn't come as joyful news...
While recollecting my memories in the sleep, over a hundred thousand years had passed within my mind, so upon returning to reality, when my biological clock told me it had been almost twelve thousand years, I didn't believe it.
I thought... -It has to be distorted, right?-
But the more time I gave it—questioning how long it'd take the serpent's body to rot.. or for Delphi's climate to shift enough for such a huge plain of ice to form over what could only be an ocean—the more doubt ate at me.
Until eventually, the people beneath me began noticing the purple glow of my body emanating through the layer of curling snow on the barrier, and I stepped through.
*Woom-CRRRUNCH* The ice cracked under my paws with each step—the humans and dragons alike freezing up as my claws, the size of buildings, dug into the ground with visible echoes of mana.
They froze in a blink—not even the prideful ancients moving a hair while my chest and lowered head ducked into the barrier.
Though, I wasn't even able to pass a greeting before my eyes wandered.
At the center of the barrier, there was a large galleon sitting in a pool of water just large enough to park in, while beside it, humans and dragons worked together to carve out bone and flesh from a smaller specimen of Jormungandr's young that seemed to have died in the ice.
They appeared to be there to harvest its corpse.
But the moment I stepped in, all such progress ceased.
-The Kingdom of Toria, huh?- Looking at the hulking flag on the ship with a squint, my mind raced. -We must be up north somewhere...-
But that was purely my assumption.
"M-My lord." Eventually moving, one of the ancients spoke with a quiver before lowering their snout to the ground. "W-What matters bring you here? H-How can we help you?"
He spoke formally, discarding personal beliefs and affiliations solely to try and please the unfathomable being that had descended before him.
To everyone there, they probably believed it was an illusion of magic or a machination of the mind...
But after seeing the strongest of the group bow, unable to keep themselves from quivering, the rest followed his lead.
Gazes fell, bodies collapsed, and movement ceased.
Before them was a being only capable of existing in myth.. a giant whose mere presence forms legends and creates stories.
But even the eldest of the dragons there, a being likely almost two millennia old, didn't have an inkling as to who I was.
"I-If we have done something to offend or upset you.. p-please forgive us!" Never moving his eyes above the snow, he spoke with a survival-driven haste. "We are willing to do a-anything for your forgiveness!"
Overhearing murmurs between some humans farther away asking if they had awoken an old god, my pause only continued a breath longer.
"Where..." My voice came out so heavy it was like it echoed through the fabric of space itself. "Where are we?"
It was less of a question as it was a command for an answer.
But I never could have expected what the ancient would open his mouth with.
"W-We are in the middle of the Death's Gape between Ormos and Pagonia."
-What?!- I twitched, and in response, so did they. -We're in the south?!-
We were essentially in the ocean between the Forgotten Islands and Bahamut...
...An ocean known for its non-seasonal warm waters.
-How did it freeze over so much...- Looking back up at the flag, I paused again. -And what is a ship of Toria doing here..?-
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