aumentou

This is a changeling story. It's Elisabeth's escape. I'm... reasonably happy with it, though it was written in two parts and I feel an urge to edit it and try and make the style slightly more consistant. I'm also not sure about the ending, because it isn't really one. I can't see where to put the endpoint to this story, but I'm sure the level of detail it's at right here is inappropriate for the scenes that follow. After all, the psychology that leads to the break is important. The detail of the first moments of the break is important. The maze of twisty passages, all alike is not so much.

Mind you, I haven't got in an important psych moment where she looks at her injury, and sees what marked ice flesh looks like. That needs to go in somewhere. I suppose it could be a followup.

A girl sits, huddled in a cage.

The cage is made of ice. It's roughly eight feet across and twelve feet tall. It is suspended from the roof by a long chain. The chain is long because the roof is high here - the cage hangs in a gigantic cavern. The cavern is also made of ice - hollowed out of a glacier perhaps? It's impossible to tell from inside.

The girl is huddled on her haunches, back to the cage wall, facing the gigantic throne of the creature who put here here. He isn't here. No-one is here. She is alone with her thoughts.

She doesn't think much. She doesn't have much to think about. Her perception of time has gone. Her sense of cold has gone. There is no-one to talk to, not for a while.

The "while" in question is of indeterminate length. This bears mentioning because it is not a "while" in a human sense. Human standards are almost irrelevant here, although this girl was human once.

She is looking at her hands. For a while, in her many free moments, she has been wondering about them. The skin seems to have become transparent. Blue-tinged, even. She can see the blood vessels inside, blue-green and pulsating. She can see the bones, grey and rigid. She can see the tendons and the ligaments, sliding through the... flesh? Is that flesh? Isn't flesh red? Hers seems transparent, like a gel, seen only as a distortion in the image of other things behind it.

Her arm is the same. Her legs and torso too. She can tell because she is naked. Her head is the same too, but she doesn't know that because she can't see it.

She would be a fascinating subject for anatomy lessons, if there were anyone here to see.

It is cold here, but she is not cold. She stopped feeling the cold. When? If you asked her, she couldn't tell you. A while ago, but a longer while than before.

It is quiet here. Somewhere there is the faint sound of dripping water. Sometimes there are wolf howls. Sometimes there are wolves, down there on the floor. Gigantic things, far larger than wolves should be, with dangerous intelligence behind their eyes. He keeps them, as he keeps her, except that they can run and she is in a cage.

There are other cages, twelve in all. There used to be people in those, she thinks. She remembers them talking. Now there is only her. His favourite, he says.

She has learned something. It came to her a short while ago. She was touching the bars of the cage, and the ice of the cage spread up her, wrapping her, enveloping her, covering her... and moving as she moved, somehow a flexible covering, despite being hard and cold.

Last time he was here she covered herself in ice and danced like that. He was not pleased. He told her not to do it again, or he would feed her to the wolves.

She doesn't know why she did it. Only that she did not wish to be naked in that moment, and she does not wish to be naked in this moment, but she fears he will return.

It is strange to have a desire. She does not wish something. It has been a long time since she did not wish something. She remembers she used to be cold, and she did not wish to be cold. That was a long while ago.

She ponders. She does not wish to be alone. It is... dangerous. He has been angry, lately. Angry at her. Once there were others. He was angry at them, and now they are gone. She does not wish to be gone.

She does not wish to be here. They are not gone, they are... dead. She does not wish to be dead.

She closes her eyes, and tries to remember. There is ice, there is cold, there are others who are now gone. There are wolves, there is him, and...

...something else?

Something bright?

Something warm?

Someone else?

A... river. Yes, that. A word she barely remembers. A thick line of water, flowing. Not ice. Water. Light glints off it, not unlike the light glinting off ice, but warmer somehow. It was...

It was outside. In a wood. There were two of them. The same. Her and her...

...sister.

Sister. The same. Lived together in... somewhere else. Did... things... together?

She does not know. Evereything is frozen here. But she remembers the light, glinting on the river. Warm light, from a warm...

warm...

sun?

Sun. Sun. Sunlight. Warmth. Sunshine. River.

She does not wish to be naked. She does not wish to be alone. She does not wish to be here. She does not wish to be dead.

She knows that he will kill her. He was angry last time, when she wore the ice and danced. He will be very angry this time. He killed one of the others because she sang, sang a song of sun and warm light. He does not want warmth of any sort, and he will not want it in her mind. She must leave.

But how to leave? The cage is not decorative, it is deadly serious. The bars are ice, but not ice as humans know it. Not mundane, fragile, snappable ice. They were created and reinforced with the magic that sustains this place, and no human could hope to break them.

The girl in the cage is no longer human. She finds the weakest part of the bars, a junction at knee level that is slightly thinner than the rest. She stands back, breathes in, and stands like a dancer. Then she goes through a kicking move, in slow motion, finding her balance and the nature of the movement.

Then she kicks. And kicks. And kicks. And changes to her other leg. And kicks. And kicks. And punches. And punches.

Bit by bit, cracks appear in the joint. Ice flakes off. Small chips, then larger ones, and all the time the cracks are spreading, spreading, spreading...

With one last kick the joint gives. The girl grabs the vertical bar by its free end and yanks it backwards. With a loud crack it gives in one heave. Gracefully she slips through the gap, hangs from the bottom of the cage, and then drops to the floor.

She looks around, appraising things from this new perspective. He comes and goes through the large door facing the throne. Heading that way might mean meeting him. But there are other ways. The kitchens are off to the right. She knows because the food is brought in from there. There are smaller entrances too. Two tunnels lead off behind the throne. The wolves come from there. One small tunnel is off to the left. She has no idea where it goes. She heads toward it anyway.

He isn't here, but her escape is not unnoticed. A wolf has been drawn to the noise, and now pads almost silently from behind the throne. She breaks into a run as she sees it, and makes the tunnel with only feet between them.

The tunnel is easily big enough for a wolf, even one of these oversized monsters. It catches her before the first bend, leaping on her from behind, knocking her over and savaging her left arm. Powerful jaws send sharp teeth through sheet ice into frozen flesh. Dark blood oozes through cracks in the ice and falls to the floor.

But ice bites back. Powerful jaws lacerate themselves on razor-sharp spikes. Teeth break themselves on solid sheets. The right side of the wolf's face grates across her should and is ripped to bloody ruin, the flesh torn and eye shredded.

Wolves don't fight to the death. This one is up and running before its victim understands what has happened. She staggers to her feet, dazed and more horribly wounded than she's ever been in her life. She starts running again, the sounds of the injured wolf driving her forward with renewed vigour.

The passage bends right, and then forks. She stops, looks at the ground, sniffs the air, thinks, and then takes the left-hand path. It slopes slightly downward, but the air smells fresher.