The Eternal Winter - Book 1 - Chapter 40 - BF1
Added 2022-12-24 01:19:51 +0000 UTCThe chapters of The Eternal Winter will be moved to the relative tiers most likely within the next few days or so. Whenever I get around to doing it.
Till then they'll remain free for all.
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Alexander North
It takes the others three whole minutes and me beginning to leave without them with Cynthia to snap them out of their frightened stupor, the fear of being left behind apparently outweighing their fear of me. And once we reach the top of the stairs and I press the button, causing the secret entrance on BF1 to open, I find a rather alarming surprise on the other side.
The room the stairs open up into is the control center of one of the secondary hangars, but for some reason, the entire control center is frozen. All of the terminals are literally just blocks of ice, the window is so frozen you can’t see through it, and the floor is coated entirely with ice, making stepping on it slippery.
“You guys might want to…” I trail off as I look to the others to find all of the civilians shivering like crazy and breathing out puffs of warm air visible to the eye. Even the private and sergeant aren’t doing much better. “Head back down while we check it out.” I finish with a glance towards Cynthia, who is taking things much better than the others and acting as her rank should.
The others don’t even hesitate and immediately rush back down the stairs to the storage unit again, leaving me and Cynthia in the control center.
“You want to go back down with them, or are you joining me?” I ask her, because I can tell she’s also incredibly uncomfortable despite how well she hides it. But she just shakes her head and begins walking towards the door leading out onto the railing overlooking the hangar itself.
Guess she isn’t gonna go wait with them.
I follow after her, but once she opens the door, we both stop as the outside of the control center is revealed to be even worse than the inside. The entirety of the hangar is frozen. The walls, ceiling, floor, railing, stairs down from the railing, and even the aircrafts. But what’s most eye catching out of it all is the large hole in the wall leading to the hallway, where a large trail of frozen hallway follows.
“What do you think did this?” Cynthia asks while turning to me.
“I’m not sure,” I mutter without taking my gaze off of the hole. “It could be some sort of advanced wendigo, but…”
“Wendigo…?” she mutters only to shake her head and turn back to the stairs to begin climbing down them as she says. “Never mind.”
Oh. I called it a wendigo out loud.
Whatever.
I follow her down the stairs while being careful not to slip. And once we both reach the ground, we take a short look around the floor before finding a few frozen frozen ones.
“This one’s still alive,” I tell Cynthia while pointing out a frozen brute who is still letting off body heat. She turns to look at it with surprise before asking, “You sure?”
I just walk up to it and the instant I get close enough, its eyes shoot open and turn to me, following which I lop its head off with my sword.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I tell her while sheathing my sword again and turning to look at the other frozen ones. “The rest of them aren’t though. Looks like whatever did this missed that one.”
Just the fact that whatever did this was able to freeze these monsters in the first place considering what the spiders’ blood did to me… it’s rather surprising. And a little scary.
I turn to look at the hole in the wall, just for the sound of a door opening to catch my attention from the control center, where I find the two soldiers and the civilians rushing down the stairs before going out of the hangar entirely, in the direction opposite of the trail of ice.
Cynthia and I stare at the hole for several seconds in silence before sharing a glance.
“Guess they didn’t find the idea of traveling with me anymore very pleasant,” I state with a frown, and she nods her head in agreement.
Out of nowhere, a loud roar echoes throughout the entire floor, followed immediately after by the walls and ceiling beginning to shake.
“What the-” I mutter before Cynthia asks, “Is it the one responsible for this?”
We both share a glance and begin rushing off to follow the trail of ice. Which happens to be heading in the direction of the main hangar.
But along the way, we keep running into frozen things. Frozen weapons, frozen humans – both civilian and soldier – and frozen monsters, all of which are dead, with the energy drained out of the frozen ones. Although the humans are frozen perfectly intact with no actual damage to them, outside of what is likely damage they had prior to being attacked.
Once we make it to the main hangar though, everything begins to make sense.
“That’s…” Cynthia mutters, only to begin backing away slightly at the sight of the two giants fighting it out. One being an enormous worm with 3 sections of its body glowing with energy, two large feet, and a lamprey-like mouth, and the other being a really large frozen one similar in appearance to a wendigo. But with a strange, almost biological thing attached to its chest, and with eyes glowing purely blue with no black.
“The first frozen one I’ve ever seen whose eyes glowed purely blue…” I mutter in response as both Cynthia and I slowly begin to back away from the monsters as they fight it out, killing off who knows how many smaller worms who happen to be in the way of their battle.
From the looks of it, the shaking of the floor was caused by their fight. And the roar must’ve been from the-
The large, humanoid frozen one lets out the very same roar as it launches itself at the worm again with both of its fists held together above its head in preparation to smash them down on it.
Yeah. That one.
Cynthia and I quietly make our way out of the hangar and back into the hallway before rushing off away from the first hangar and towards the third hangar. The only one we haven’t seen yet.
“Let’s regroup in the central command room of hangar three,” I tell Cynthia in between heavy breaths. “We can figure out a plan from there.”
She nods her head, and we continue running away from the roars and screeches of the large monsters in the room behind us.
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