It’s Here

Emile picked himself up. He scraped the snow off his body and peeled the ice that stuck to his warm skin.

Taking a step in the snow, Emile bent over and scooped a portion of the frozen water up. He brought it to his face and inspected the white substance.

Sitting in his hand, the snow began to melt and drip water droplets below. The refractive properties of the snow decreased and the once bright and vibrant snow grew dull and wet.

"It's real snow…" Emile muttered to himself.

Willow and Roy finally stood beside him. Together, they looked around and discussed any noticeable features found in this blizzard.

For starters, like the ravine, this unnatural snow den was littered with sky blue crystals. Some like spires that protruded from the ground, others jumbled together and stuck out from above them.

Speaking of the ceiling, it was neither flat nor rocky. Instead, it was dome shaped.

In fact, their entire surroundings reflected a sphere. The walls curved as they traveled and mutually joined the epicenter of the dome. Also, scanning their perimeter, the entrance they arrived from was the only passageway into the snow.

In the center of their dome stood another unique feature, a slew of rings encased by one another etched into the ground. And oddly enough, the snow refused to cover these rings.

Emerging from the center of the collection of rings stood an old and hanging tree. Light gray bark and leafless branches, the tree reminded Emile of some sort of arctic tree.

Surrounding the tree, on the edge of the outer ring, protruded the spire-like crystals mentioned earlier. Tall stakes of faint blue erupted around the tree.

Each spike stood taller than Emile, some came close to nearing ten feet. They approached the center and stopped outside of the ring.

Looking at the spikes, their tips had been sharpened. Emile placed his palm on one of the spikes and a raging burn immediately attacked his skin.

Ripping his skin as he pulled his hand back, he looked at his finger and noticed a chunk of skin missing. The skin was still stuck on the crystal, and as he watched it, his skin flap shriveled and shrunk.

Ice began to coat his skin's surface until every last drop of moisture was pulled from it. After just a few seconds, his skin shrank to nothing more than a flake and fluttered off the crystal, eventually mixing with the sea of ice and snow below.

"Okay so don't touch the crystals—" Willow snorted, "got it."

Taking another step closer to the ring, Roy kneeled down and stared straight into the ice:

"It's here."

Emile's back suddenly tensed and his jovial expression hardened.

"What's here?" He asked, wondering if it was another cage of roots or something more.

"Everything—" Roy replied indifferently, "the roots and a spider."

Emile narrowed his eyes.

'What?'

'But Blood killed the last spider'

'We should have just followed the roots'

'And even then, how did Roy's tracker end up on a different set of roots?'

'Or are these the same roots — and a new beast?'

Emile backed away from the ring, as did his companions. For some time they did nothing more than discuss their plan of action.

After all, the last time they carelessly probed beneath one of these trees one of them was left unconscious and out of commission.

"We should prioritize ranged attacks," Emile concluded.

But an awkward silence spread immediately after.

"Do — do we have any ranged attacks?" Emile suddenly asked.

He looked at the faces of his two companions and they mutually shook their heads. Blood was the ranged dealer, and even then, after losing his arm he had shifted to some sort of hybrid attacker.

Emile heaved a sigh of frustration and turned back at the lone tree.

They need a ranged member of the cohort.

Emile was already tired of adding more people as it is.

"Okay —" he made up his mind, "this is what we'll do."

***

Boredom quickly invaded Blood's mind. After staring at the barren wall for over two hours he pushed himself off the mud infested floor and started pacing some more.

He pulled the lever back down, activating the illusion and hiding the metal wall. Then, he started walking towards the exit.

At least, the place where Spright and the others entered the miasma. After an hour and a half of walking he arrived before the wall of red.

He instinctively reached his arm forward to pass through, but quickly stopped himself an inch from the floating mist.

He couldn't fully submerge his body in this level of miasma without Spright present, he'd succumb to the infection before his body could naturally fight it off.

He pulled his hand back and clenched his fist. No matter how much he tried or how much he wanted to, he couldn't enter this miasma.

"One day…" Blood muttered under his breath.

"One day what?" A young man's voice erupted around the canyon.

Blood exploded out of Blood's vessels and immediately launched into the air above him. It rapidly formed multiple fist-sized balls of liquid blood before hardening and crystallizing into an array of spikes.

The crystal shards hovered around Blood and needlessly rotated around his person. Since hearing the unfamiliar voice, Blood hadn't moved.

It wasn't that he couldn't move, it was that he was afraid to move. Oftentimes, at least in his assassin experience, the moment your target reveals what direction they're traveling in is the moment you strike.

It's an odd polarization of the world Spright comes from, in which your best opportunity to attack is when your target is standing still.

But in a world plagued with powers and supernatural abilities, being able to predict your opponent is far more important than attacking blind.

"Who are you?" Blood asked as sweat ran down his back.

"Hmmm…" the voice momentarily trailed off, "I'm not sure, that's a bit of a difficult question."

Blood continued to stare into the miasma in front of him. His body continued to sweat and his eyes grew larger after hearing the unknown man's response.

'I knew I was gonna die!' Blood roared internally.