B2 Chapter 23: [Legendary]

“To see a Fearshaper of Trepidation in such dire straights… what have you done to yourself? Where is your guide?”

‘I’m perfectly fine! Haven’t the clue what you mean.’

Shiver leant against the wall of the fox’s burrow with manufactured nonchalance. Her muscles protested, burning with fatigue.

With a flick of her tail, Shiver felt a refreshing cold encompass her body. She felt her eyes widen and her focus sharpen. Relieved of her fatigue, she took in the cavern around her.

To call the guide’s residence a burrow would be to do it a disservice. The guide’s home had been carved into the side of a cliffside. They had ascended tirelessly until they had reached it. A thin sheen of ice presented a shield against the elements, while allowing her an immaculate view to the forest of ice below.

The fox, casually freezing time once again, appeared beside her, swatting her with one of her tails.

‘Ooh Fluffy.’

“I accept your compliment. But you are at the end of your rope.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Your Fearcore… I haven’t seen one like it in an age. What did you do to take in so much cold?”

“It’s a bit of a long story.”

“That must explain what happened to your guide.”

Shiver’s eyes snapped to meet the fox’s

“Icey? My guide? What does my Fearcore have to do with her?”

“Icey?”

The fox let out a high, laugh that felt like the ringing of tiny bells.

“How cheeky of her. This is just like her.”

“You… know her?”

The three tails of the fox waved ethereally in the air behind her. The guide looked at her, bemused at her disbelief.

“Come now… you elves aren’t the only ones who get to socialise.”

Shiver’s body was taught, ready to burst into action in an instant. She burned with an intense curiosity.

What does she know about Icey? Could she help?

“You can relax. If I wanted to hurt you-“

Time froze once again. Before she knew it, the fox was before her, floating slowly through the air, its body suspended. Its eyes a centimetre away from Shiver’s own. She was helpless, at its mercy.

Not a single muscle of hers budged. 

“I would have done so already”

Then she heard bright laughter emerge from the guide.

“How delightful. You can drop your shard.”

The fox gave a huff of approval as Shiver dismissed the ice shard she had summoned. Even though her physical body had been locked in place, her mind was not. In the moment time froze, Shiver had called her Fear in the form of the shard of ice that hung over the fox.

“So quickly identifying a weakness – you do not disappoint. Your guide’s name is familiar to me. Perhaps it is merely a coincidence. But… putting the pieces together, I have little doubt that she is who I suspect.”

“What do you know of her?”

The gentle laughter like bells graced her ears once more.

“She is kind. Ever eager to help, even when it is at her own expense. Does that sound like her?”

Shiver sighed, and sat heavily on the ground of the burrow.

“Yes. In other words, a pain in my fine ass. Please, I’ve had enough obscure allusions to past events to last me a lifetime. Tell me everything you can about her. I know she’s holding my Fearcore together. I hear her screams.”

The silence drew out between them, time intermittently halting and resuming in short bursts, as the fox paced about its cave.

“That is all I am at liberty to say, I’m sorry. I must stay true to her wishes. If you are curious to her nature, you can ask her when you reunite. Listen closely.”

The fox sat, its head resting on small paws, now with four “fluffy” white tails gracefully swished behind it.

“You stand on the precipice of Insanity. Even though you feel no different, your guide is all that is preventing your Fearcore from imploding, and from turning you into a creature of madness, born from ice.”

The fox gazed at her as Shiver nodded, listening intently. Her expression softened.

“It seems as you are aware of this. I would like to enlist your help, it will aid in your descent. If Icey is who I think she is… the invocations that this forest grants you will be middling, insufficient. There is one of my kind, not a guide, but a spiritfox, that has been… tainted. Please, put him out of his misery.”

Shiver nodded, her heart beating out of her chest as a sense of guilt that settled into her gut again.

I shouldn’t have taken in all that cold and isolation. She’s hurting because of me.

Her eyes hardened. There would be room for regrets when she was back.

The few people that came to care for her, she inevitably hurt. It didn’t matter whether it was Marta, Pov, Blaze or her innocent and overeager guide.

They all suffered.

So she would do her best to put an end to the cycle, that was all she could do now.

Shiver followed the floating wisp of white flame that floated out of the burrow. She turned back towards the fox.

“Do you have a name?”

“A name? Vivy will do.”

“Thanks, Vivy. Once Icey’s back, I’ll mention you to her. Perhaps you could speak to her again.”

The fox let out a soft laugh.

“I doubt she would remember me, as she is. But I would welcome it, Shiver.”

Once she was out of sight, the fox let out a sigh. She walked to the boundary of her burrow, in the direction Shiver had headed.

Even so deeply haunted by her Fear of ice, the girl descended fearlessly. The girl pressed forward, following her flame. The fox whispered, Vivy’s words reaching only the cold frost around her.

“There is a name for those who dance at the edge of Insanity as you do. I have no doubt you will claim it, as your predecessors did before you. Icewing.”

The sight before her evoked a feeling of nostalgia. A perceptive onlooker may have been able to discern the pain behind the fox’s eyes. Recalling happier times, with her own guide who had long since passed.

Yet, when the old guide opened her eyes, they held a flame within them.

“I wish there was more I could do for your Fearshaper, old friend. To feel your presence, after so long… The world is changing, and a world without you is left wanting. Return to us.”

Shiver halted in her tracks. A familiar sensation enveloped her, bringing a chill to her skin.

It was not a chill born from the cold around her, but from her awe.

The falling snowflakes halted in their path. So did the gently swaying winterlilies that sprouted from the snow enveloping her surroundings. A similar sensation to the previous times the fox had halted time.

Only this time, Shiver was able to move, unimpeded. An exception to the rule imposed around her.

Ever since her descent, there were few things that warmed her heart. Brief moments with Vale and Caledon on their journey. The thought of reuniting with Pov, Marta and Blaze. Small, precious moments of optimism and happiness.

All of them, marred by the inexorable advent of Insanity.

Her eyes widened, as she caught a glimpse of what Icey had been holding back.

Ever since the moment of her descent. For a brief second, she saw a horde of ice shades blink into existence behind her, covering the forest as far as she could see.

In an inevitable march to claim her, they bore the faces of her loved ones that she endangered with her very presence, as they always had. The loved ones that were destined to be turned into cold corpses for their sin of loving her.

A silent foretelling of the fate that awaited her.

Fate can be Feardamned.

Shiver watched as five more tails unfurled from behind the slender fox, casting long shadows deep into her burrow, alight in blinding foxfire that swirled around her.

The nine-tailed fox impossibly halted her hallucinations, in their tracks. They were supposed to exist only in her mind, yet they fell within Vivy’s dominion.

Shiver looked back towards a field of ice shades, frozen in their inevitable march towards her. The same hallucinations that she had encountered as a newly awakened Fearshaper in Anhedonia. Frozen, devoid of life, their lifeblood leaking from cracked lips.

Bearing the promise of Insanity.

Then they shattered. Granting her a temporary, welcome reprieve from her Fear.

Shiver thought back to the voice that had revealed itself to them, on the way to the Dreadwood. The “Singer”, as Solastra had termed it.

She was reminded of a name, and now she understood.

The ruthlessness of the Singer, the danger it posed. At least… the part of it that she comprehended.

She recalled the words that had appeared before her, one mystery solved.

Named hunts authorized.

Sourcing named resources in proximity:  

·        Vivienne [Legendary]

Shiver’s smile broke out into a grin. The [legendary] guide’s kindness would not be wasted on her.

Hold on Popsicle, I’m coming.

---

Shiver followed the foxfire into the strange passage. It had led her to an opening in a cliff, in the depths of the winter biome. She had lost count at the number of times she had caught wind of traces of a powerful creature that tempted to throw her off her current task.

Those curiosities paled in the face of anomalies in the cave before her.

First, were the shadows that danced on its walls. Foxfire illuminated the passage, but it wasn’t from the dim white flame that Vivy had cast. The fire that hung in the air was similarly white in its hue, but overpowered periodically by flashes of black. It gave the flame a untamed, visceral, quality to it that Vivy’s flame lacked.

Second were the corpses. Shiver walked past a frostwolf that had its throat torn open. While it was not the size of the pack leader she had felled, it was still a fine specimen. Instead of lying prone on the ground in defeat, it stood as it had in life, frozen still. The moment of its death captured, for all that passed to witness. The air seemed to distort around it, holding it in place.

It wasn’t the only corpse caught in such a liminal state.

She glimpsed a familiar creature, she had last seen in Brimstone. Under the control of Triol Revenant, twisted into a monstrosity. Enormous fangs drooped from a jaw twice as wide than Shiver. Shiver glimpsed her reflection in the winterlion’s empty, dark eyes. She recognised what the carcasses were.

A threat. To all that would seek to enter.

That alone, would not have made her hesitate.

Accompanying them, were the corpses of four foxes. They were similar in nature to Vivy. Yet where she gave the impression of a fully matured fox, these were children. They sprouted only a single tail, and she was sure that they were not guides but mere creatures. They had one simple difference from the creatures around them.

Unlike the others, they were not killed in the midst of their bloodlust. Terror showed on their faces, frozen in place, as they sought to flee whatever monstrosity awaited within.

They were its pack. They fled, abandoning whatever hope they had.

Shiver’s fists tightened around her Phobia, which she held at the ready before her. Its cracked surface reflected her expression devoid of fear or hesitation. Her resolve.

The path before her broadened into a large cavern, with a single figure within.

The fox rose to its feet. It looked out from Shiver from four dark eyes. Unlike its peers, two dark eyes had opened above its eye sockets. Dark, black liquid dripped from its jaws. It reminded her of-

Triol. When he had been twisted into a monstrosity. Beyond that, the strange black liquid she had glimpsed when Vale and Caledon had awakened in the temple in Anhedonia. Or the pods they had used in the academy. It couldn’t be a coincidence-

The fox eclipsed the size of its peers, in the pack that had attempted to flee.

If only, that was where the differences ended.

Black foxfire dripped from its being, as it stalked before, its eyes roaming independently from one another, analysing every minute detail of the prey that had appeared before it.

Unnatural. Jarring. An offense to nature itself. It had been corrupted, twisted into a monstrosity, just as Triol had been.

It came to a halt. Then lunged.

Dark ice blossomed into being as its paws met the cavern floor, and it danced. Skating, would be a more accurate description, as it sailed around the room in an elegant curve, propelled from the ice that it generated that negated any friction that would have otherwise impeded it.

Shiver darted further into the room, realising her mistake too late. In the blink of an eye, the fox had cut off her exit.

Then, towering black spires of ice surged forth from the ground, birthed from lines of black frost which marked the fox’s passage through the cave. The path which it had skated.

[Shard of the frostwolf]

Shiver invoked her Fear, bringing a number of shards into being. Every time she called her Fear into reality, the more defined it became.

Unlike the first shards she had called, middling spikes of ice, these were sleek and deadly.

She rushed to meet Insanity.