The Edge of the Glacier

"Sky? It's been three hours past breakfast, why aren't you up yet?" I could hear Carl's voice at the front door. I was still hiding under the blanket.

"Is this some sort of joke or something? Found you!" I let the blanket fall to the bed and the look on his face shocked even me.

"Sky... what is that on your face?" He asked me. I was even more confused than him, but he seemed to take the lead in confusion once he saw my right arm.

"What the hell happened to you? Your arm is back! But you have a mark on your face..." Carl said, walking into the bathroom to pick up a mirror from the counter. He put it in front of me and I looked at myself.

My eyes' irises were blood red, just like hers, and near the left side of my jaw stood three marks that looked like strands. I realized they were climbing up my body, from my stone to my neck, and almost high enough to touch my cheekbone. The mark looked like I was scratched in the face with three claws. They were also outlined with red strands, just like the marks running up my left arm.

"Do you feel alright? Do you need help getting to the doctor?" He asked me. He reached for my body, but I shook my head. I felt perfectly fine, but I looked different now. Plus, I could use my right arm again. My body felt lighter. What was Deity doing to me?

"Well... are you hungry?" Carl asked again. I shook my head. For the first time in my life, I wasn't hungry in the morning. "Huh... well, Tavian said he was looking for you, you can meet him at the food hall. I'll come with you and make sure you're okay." He added.

Carl stayed close to me as I walked out of my room after climbing out of my bed. I felt no need to eat or drink water right now and just wanted to go over to Tavian as soon as possible.

I crossed past people who looked at me funny, asking me if I was okay at every turn. I wasn't sick but I could see the confusion.

I successfully avoided most people around me and didn't run into a single one of my close friends. We eventually made it to Tavian, but there were too many people in the food hall for me to stay hidden. Carl offered to go get Tavian for me and I waited behind a wall, covering my face so nobody could tell what was wrong with me.

Tavian swung around the corner, giving me a bit of a shock and revealing my face. "What happened to you?! Are you okay?!" He asked.

"Yes, I'm fine. I didn't want anybody to see me, that's all. You said you needed me?" I just wanted him to get on with his point. I didn't want to hear this every time.

"Uh, yeah. We're taking extra measures to make sure Orion's forces won't come up behind us when fighting on the frontlines. I've been working with Drake to make explosives and we have finally made enough, so we're going to plant them right now. I wanted you to come with me." Tavian admitted.

"Sounds good. Do I need anything?" I asked Tavian. He shook his head and promptly walked in another direction. I followed right behind him, and Carl stuck with us. We walked over to the armory, which was only further down the same path in the base.

We walked into the armory and Tavian picked up a pre-prepared backpack filled to the brim with explosives. He swung it over his shoulder and smiled, but his look of concern broke through once he started looking at me again.

"As long as you say you're okay, but you look like the day I saw you on that bay. Well, besides those marks on your jaw. Your eyes are the same red." He told me.

Same red? As in, they've been this color before? I wonder for how long this woman has been possessing me. Or a better question might be, I wonder how long she hasn't possessed me before. I wonder how much she has seen of my life, I wonder what she hasn't seen of my life. Nothing feels like my own anymore.

"Well, we'll start heading out immediately. Let's go!" Tavian chanted out in enthusiasm. We walked to the elevator and he pushed the button with a strange smile.

We sat in silence in the elevator. I sat in silence so many times that I was convinced this was how you rode an elevator... in complete silence.

Tavian and I followed near the path to the beginning of Orion's glacier. It's weird to think it had been two weeks since I've been here.

The trees in the north were all dead and the surrounding forests were barren, with trees collapsing because of the large mass of deadwood in each one. The edge of the glacier was close enough for me to reach out and touch it now, so Tavian took off his backpack and handed me an explosive.

They were wrapped in a strange material and tightly packed together in brown packaging with two antennas sticking out of the top. "By using these explosives once we pass this line, we can blow up the backline and they can't come up behind us. That will corner us, but it will also prevent us from being snuck upon." Tavian explained, planting the first explosive with some adhesive in the backpack. He took a deep breath in, then covered his nose. "Man, talk about a bad smell!" He added.

The adhesive did smell terrible, but it was supposedly the strongest stuff we could get. I remember them smelling even worse when I was building body armor with Tavian, but it felt as if my senses were dulled.

It was the work of that woman, wasn't it? I hadn't felt like this previously, but I couldn't smell most things and the classic taste of gunpowder in my mouth once we set the explosives in the other location.

I was confident in our plan overall. Tavian had been forming this entire plan since long before I first woke up on this Isle, I was just the factor that pushed us to war finally.

"Those marks... I've seen those before." A girl said. I turned around out of surprise to see Ellie. She had bags under her eyes like she hadn't slept in a while, and she looked like she was stumbling around.

"You have? Where have you seen them before?" I asked her. She grabbed my face and looked into my eye, just like she did when we first met. "You don't have to be so aggressive," I told her.

"In my book. I've seen that. I'll have to get my book... I can't remember where I put it, though." Ellie said.

"I found it for you." Tavian and I instantly drew our swords after hearing another girl's voice now. Ellie was too sleepy to understand what was going on, but I'd seen this girl before. I haven't seen this girl head to head, but it's the bleached-hair one from Orion's ranks. Noboki... if I remember her name properly.

I blocked the explosives we planted with my body while Tavian took the lead. "Hey, Tavian. It's been a long time, hasn't it?" Noboki asked him. Her look was almost as dull as Ellie's, but she looked fully awake, unlike Ellie.

"You didn't come here to fight, did you?" Tavian asked. Noboki shook her head. The way she stood reminded me of Deity, she was confident. I could sense that she would at least kill two of us before she went down.

"I'm here to join you." She told us.