26. Vesper #2
After another hour of walking, the air changes, imperceptibly at first, and then all at once.
The humidity fades, replaced instead with a chill that makes the hair on my arms stand on end.
At first, it’s subtle, just a gentle cold breeze, but the closer we get, the more the temperature beings to drop.
The plants and trees start to shrink as we close in, the edges of their leaves brown, until we reach a section where all of the foliage is brown and curled in on itself.
The trees are nothing but sticks, their long branches reaching out as if for their last dregs of life.
And then the ice appears.
Just hints of it at first on the edges of leaves, and then it seems to spread along the ground like a disease. When we finally reach the end of the dead foliage, it’s to be faced with endless, excruciating white.
NEW REGION UNLOCKED: Welcome to the Shatterlands
I hope you brought your coat.
Cipher’s sexy voice announces the words even as the notification dances across my vision for the better part of three seconds.
Locke opens his map and studies it. “It looks like there are two zones right here, but we’re standing right on the line so it hasn’t named them for us yet.”
We’re standing at the edge of The Shatterlands now, hesitating.
To the right, it appears to be a large expanse of water, ice chunks floating and bobbing on the surface.
To our left, it appears to be a frozen orchard of some sort, fruiting trees forever frosted in permanent blooming.
The closest tree looks like it might have been an apple bearing one, the red fruit hanging from bare branches.
It makes me sad to think these trees are dead.
In Dross, they don’t look much different, sparse and barely producing fruit, but I can tell these ones must have once been prolific.
Lots of ice-covered fruits hang from the branches, shaking in the wind that suddenly picks up.
“Yuck!” Svetlana grunts. “I do not like the cold.” She moves into my hair, tucking herself within it as much as possible, but I doubt it’s helping anything. “Praying mantises do not thrive in this sort of weather,” she grumbles. “It is best if I hide in your warmth and conserve my energy.”
“Well, we’re not prepared for freezing water,” I point out to Locke as I open my inventory and pull out the jacket I’d entered the Harrow with. Locke sees what I’m doing and does the same. Luckily, we hadn’t tossed them away in the Verdant Nexus, though a few times, I’d considered it.
“Clearly, we’re not prepared for any of it,” Locke grumbles, tucking his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. “But, there are three safehouses here, just like the Verdant Nexus. Maybe we can reach one and figure out how to combat the cold.”
“Are you going to be okay, Svetlana?” I ask her as she hides from the wind as best as she’s able. I don’t know how bad cold is for praying mantises, but she’d made it sound really bad.
“This is nothing,” she says arrogantly, despite her earlier admission of dislike. “I once survived in the depths of a Russian winter with only a severed head and a flashlight.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. Russian? Winter? Is that what this is?
“Maybe I can make something out of my supplies?” I hazard, opening my inventory, but I quickly realize that I don’t have any cloth besides the jacket I’d worn in and the small scrap that I’d picked up in the Secret Abyss.
It’s not even large enough to wrap around my arm.
I have the beetle wing chiton that could work as a shield against the wind, but it won’t do much good against the cold itself.
The wind is swirling here, not blowing in one direction.
It would be difficult to keep it facing the wind.
“Never mind,” I murmur. “I don’t have anything. ”
Locke grimaces. “We’re just going to have to make a run for it. It doesn’t look like there’s a safehouse in the trees to our left and we’re not prepared for the water where the closest one is.” He spins his map. “We’re going to have to head to the one in the center.”
We take maybe three steps into the new section before Cipher’s pre-programmed, sensual voice pops in again.
NEW ZONE UNLOCKED: Welcome to the Ice Grief Orchard
Don’t break your teeth on the forbidden fruit.
“Are all the pre-programmed notifications as sexual for you as they are for me?” Locke grumbles.
“Of course, they are,” Cipher answers before I can. “I want you to feel fucked by me before you get fucked by The Harrow. It is only right.”
I snort with laughter at his words, followed by the expression of disbelief on Locke’s face. “Was that a joke, Cipher?” I ask him, still snickering.
Cipher chuckles, the sound warm and rich in my mind. “That would depend on who you ask.”
Locke grumbles some more and shrugs on his jacket. “Ha ha,” he mocks. “Ain’t no machine fucking me unless I want to be fucked.”
“Remember,” Cipher purrs. “If you want me to believe you, you have to lock me out, player number three million, six hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred, and seventeen.”
His grumbling gets louder as he stomps off into the orchard, his boots crunching over the ice.
“I think you enjoy getting a rise out of him,” I tell Cipher as I wrap my arms around my middle to try and keep warm and follow.
“Is it obvious?” Cipher replies.
“Glaring,” I reassure him.
“Perfect,” Cipher says. “I want him to know how much I dislike him.”
I shake my head and smile, blown away by the system capable of so many emotions.
An hour later though, I’m no longer smiling.
“We’re not going to be able to, to, survive . . . for much . . . longer,” I say, my teeth chattering aggressively. I’m shivering violently now and my fingers and toes are numb from the cold. My thin jacket isn’t doing shit against the cold and my body isn’t liking it.
“It’s not much . . . further,” Locke chatters back, his hands tucked under his armpits tightly. “This, this section . . . isn’t very . . . large.”
I’ve never felt cold like this before. In Dross, it’s always hot, like we’re slowly being cooked by the red dwarf star at our center.
The Verdant Nexus was hot, too, but in a different way.
The humidity made it almost unbearable, the moisture in the air drawing your sweat to the surface the moment you stepped into it.
Now, I miss it, because nothing could have prepared me for the bone deep cold of The Shatterlands.
Even had someone warned me, I wouldn’t have believed them.
My teeth are chattering so hard, I’m not sure I can get the question spoken out loud so I think about the question in my head, hoping Cipher can pick up on it.
How do we get better gear?
“Loot caches are hidden around the Shatterlands,” Cipher responds. “Defeating enemies can also drop valuable loot.”
There’s no way we can fight an enemy right now, I think.
“Correct. Your vitals are growing dangerously erratic, Vespera. I recommend you pick up the pace. If you do not make it to the safehouse or other viable shelter within the next thirty minutes, you are going to freeze to death.”
Svetlana has gone quiet since she burrowed into my shirt. Currently, she’s nestled against my chest beneath the jacket, trying to absorb my body heat. She hasn’t cracked a joke about heads in an hour. I’m starting to worry that I’ve killed my familiar before I’ve barely had her.
In front of us, the white starts to ride upward into a ridgeline broken up by brown.
Steam rises from the edges of it, creating the illusion of a smoking pistol.
It seems to trail as far as we can see into the distance, skirting the water we’d slowly been traveling around.
In the distance, about one hundred meters away, appears to be an opening of some sort.
“T-t-there,” Locke chatters out, starting to move a little faster.
I follow after him, stumbling over the deeper ice here. It’s soft and powdery, built up as if—
“Snow,” Cipher supplies helpfully. “You’ve never seen it in Dross, but you know what it is. You’ve likely seen it on Luxe propaganda posters.”
Cipher is right. I have seen snow before, but I didn’t realize that’s what this is. In the propaganda posters Luxe pushes at us, there are parts of Luxe that are covered in the frost during certain times. There, it had looked like a pleasant landscape. Here, it’s a nightmare.
The snow is at least a foot deep now. My boots sink into the powder, bits of it getting inside my boot and making my feet impossibly colder when it melts. They’re numb now that I think of it, just as numb as my hands.
The opening grows larger, and it’s only as we stumble into it that I realize it’s only a small natural room, not a safehouse opening.
“F-f-fuck,” Locke says, clearly having thought it was the safehouse, too.
It’s not. It’s just a fucking cave.
“Build a fire,” Cipher orders. “Immediately.”
My hands are shaking so bad, it makes it difficult to pull items from my inventory.
It takes me three tries to get the sticks I’ve been saving out dropped to the ground in a pile.
It takes me another four to get the flint we’d found in The Red Bloom Court.
The two of us work on lighting the fire together, but we struggle.
Neither one of us are stable enough and Svetlana is no help at all.
She’s still nestled against my chest as she desperately tries to keep warm.
Unfortunately for her, I don’t have much warmth to give her.
My entire body is as cold as the ice we just left.
Finally, after what feels like hours, but can only be a few minutes considering we’re not dead yet, the first spark catches and grows. Both Locke and I put our hands in front of the fire, but it doesn’t quite reach our bones.
“Your vitals are still elevated,” Cipher says.