A Cold Breath

A planet beaten by time, swivelling on its unordinary axis causing its top to lean too far from the sun, making constant blizzards of fierce subzero temperatures that have plagued the surface for many generations.

Mountain peaks are being blanketed for miles upon mile within thick snow which embraces the upper half of the planet, making any creature that lived here a very high commodity as finding something that tastes reasonably good amongst the frozen wasteland rare.

Countless wars were sparked over whoever had the best land to cultivate crops on, which subsequently claimed countless lives.

And upon one such battleground where many bodies had been preserved due to the extreme cold almost as if they had been frozen in time.

With corpses strewn across this wasteland with rusted weapons and broken armour, a body that should have never moved was busy receiving a chance to allow someone to have a start at a new life.

This body had icicles flowing to the ground like vines off ledges, as this body had bowed over its knees and hunched in front of a sword with his right hand clasping the hilt which was firmly planted halfway into the ground.

But a subtle twitch came from beneath the ice-covered body, a movement in the finger chipped away some ice and in the following moment, a sharp breath was slowly sucked into the opening of the metal helmet.

Slow, meticulous, breathes seeped out of the slits in the helmet after the frozen body started to warm and only then did the hunched soldier's blood begin to flow with ease into his deadened arm till it disconnected its self from the sword.

As it crunched its self into the snowy ground, the eyelids of the warming body began to slowly let the blinding light peek beneath the constantly fluttering lashes, as it slowly got accustomed to the brightness of the ground.

Sipping in the fine air, that I had so missed, I noticed that I was hunching forward, facing a ground that looked like a fluffy cloud.

Planted here and unable to move I decided to do a self-examination of my body and I found that I had a few pains coming from my back, but I had a torturing pain coming from my abdomen, however, I would first like to be able to study my surroundings.

Trying to move my legs to stand, but they wouldn't move as they had been frozen for a while, so I gave them time to heat up but after a while, nothing had changed, I still couldn't feel anything from my waist down.

Subsequently, not wanting to look at the ground any longer I moved my hands forward to stand up, but something felt strange as I noticed my left arm wouldn't bring its self forward, and I expect that something must have happened to it however I had to put that thought on hold for now as I needed to stand.

Proceeding to force my arm to move to grasp at the ground, caused an extraordinary painful sensation to explode within my stomach and to swell up from the depths of my throat, announcing itself by a stream of liquid forcing its way out from behind my teeth and splashing the inside of the helmet.

Now laying in pain and with my bodily fluids staining the inside of the helmet, I had to move my arm to rip off the helmet to get away from the stench as well as to get to the liquid that slowly trickled down my face and wipe it away.

Upon taking off my helmet, I was hit by a wave of sheer cold that caused a shudder to run down my spine, and yet what startled me the most was the white landscape that unfolded before me, that seemed to stretch out forever.

Looking down into my helmet I saw a dark black liquid that trickled out from the joints of the helmet and if I had to put a taste to it, it was like expired blood, even so, glancing past the helmet I could see something protruding from my low abdomen.

Noticing a smooth round metal object had priced its way straight through my abdomen and planted itself into the ground before me and out of curiosity I reached around to my back to feel that it was also coming out my back.

Now I understood why I was unable to move as it seemed it hit the lower part of my spine was severed obliterating the connection to my legs, luckily I had a way to fix my predicament but for now, I had to figure out how I was going to remove this spear from my stomach.

Two possible ways came to mind, first I didn't know how far into the ground the head of the spear was submerged and on top of that the ground had probably frozen around the head, so it would be impossible to just pull it out.

Secondly, maybe I could break through the rod to then push it out through my back, but I need to know if it's metal or wood so, brushing away the snow laying on top of the spear to see and a sigh of relief escaped, as I saw a wooden pattern typical of an oak tree.

Cracking the spear in two I managed to push it into my stomach and out my back to hear it flop on the floor behind me and once that was done I could release my clenching teeth.

I now needed to heal my spine as that was an important part as I couldn't just let my body half-ass heal it, so I only focused on sending energy to the surrounding muscles and tissues to patch the hole that was leaking blood.

Crawling along the ground with my one arm was exhausting, but I managed to make it to a good pile of corpses that seemed to be at most undamaged, however, they were wearing armour and I needed to be able to search them so, removing clothes around the spine area.

I began placing my hand on their backs, as I searched through them by pumping what little energy looking for a new spinal cord that wasn't damaged even, so I got lucky as these bodies had been preserved, thus it was like getting a brand-new spine.

Transferring over the complete spine and waiting for it integrating left me motionless for a brief moment, noticing that I could slowly start feeling my legs come back from their slumber and I stood up to test the new spine to see if I could find any problems, but fortunately I did not find any latency within my actions.

Finally, that problem was over, but now I don't know where I am, then looking over the battlefield, feeling a soft tickle as snow hit my cheek I needed to find shelter to get some strength back, so I set off in a direction.

Scavenging through the dump piles I was snapping rusted swords and bending broken shields as I tried to find any that could help along my journey, I found a sword that was moderately undamaged but with a few chips taken out of it plus a spear that had almost no damage.

I put the sword in the holster that had been on my waist and used the spears as prongs to judge the depth of the snow, luckily I also found fur on some corpses and stuffed my armour and draped a cloak around my body and head.

Glancing around and not seeing any noticeable landmarks that could indicate a town, I decided to just walk and see where my feet take me.

After leaving behind the battlefield I seemed to have stumbled onto a path made by animals and after a while, I noticed frozen beads of blood on the snow made me think someone was hunting as it looked like footprints were following them as well.

Following the trail, for about half a mile, I saw where the hunter had found the collapsed animal by the amount of blood and how deeply the snow had been pressed in by a large object.

I could see where the hunter had dragged away the animal, so I subsequently followed it to hopefully find civilisation or at least a warm place to rest up for the night.

Following the hunter's footprints For quite some time, I noticed that they lead me to a forest of white blanketed trees and after about another hour the footprints showed me the way to a small opening, but the footprints also seemed to vanish.

Feeling something ominous coming from the surroundings, so I glanced around trying to figure out what was making it, but a sudden crackling voice hit me.

"What brings you here, stranger"

Hearing a voice echo through the trees, I now understood how he was able to conceal himself, which was by using an old rune formation

I stepped forward just past where the footprints disappeared and passed through a thin barrier to see a man aiming a bow at me

Unfazed by the arrow pointed at me, I glanced at him "I am just looking for a place to rest, and then I will be on my way"

"I can't allow that, so step back or die" now that I was on the other side the crackling in his voice had gone

"I understand, if you feel uneasy I could hand over my weapons, all I ask is for is s place to stay the night, that is all"

The man with the bow, pulled back on the string when a sweet voice came out through the wooden hut behind him "Honey let the poor man in can't you see he has no strength to stand"

I frowned at the fact she was able to tell my condition without me being able to even see her, which I could feel subconsciously put me on guard.

"Honey, I think we shouldn't" as he tried to argue back.

"Darling" with a firm yet loving tone was all she needed to say to scare the husband to give up his endeavours of trying to argue back.

"Ok fine, please come this way" pulling the arrow off the bow and throwing it to his back, he didn't even look at me but walked, and I followed soon behind to the front door.

As I said, I started to pass my weapons over for the man to take them, to which he showed me where to put them by waving his hand at a makeshift weapon holder, just by the front door.