“Hi-yah! Yah! Yah!” she shouts as she slices the small bugs out of the air that fly too close to my face. Honestly, she’s a damn good deterrent herself. Not once do I have the mosquitoes buzzing in my ear. Locke isn’t so lucky.
Because we’re still in the Leafcutter Empire, there are large insects we come across as we push through the trees. A group of large beetles skuttles away when we break through the foliage in front of us after about an hour of working up a sweat and trying to get somewhere. The trees are thicker here, and much harder to cut through. Thankfully, I’m able to use my Bloodsense Fang to cut through it.
Svetlana raises up high on my shoulder as the beetles rush away. “That’s right, you crawling dung eaters!” she shouts after them. “Be afraid! Be very afraid!”
Locke and I share a look between us. My expression is amused. Locke’s is anything but. Svetlana still hasn’t grown on him, and I’m starting to worry she never will. Lucky for me, Svetlana doesn’t seem to care about Locke at all, so it won’t affect our growing bond.
After another hour of walking, the air changes, imperceptibly at first, and then all at once. The humidity fades, replaced instead with a chill that makes the hair on my arms stand on end. At first, it’s subtle, just a gentle cold breeze, but the closer we get, the more the temperature beings to drop. The plants and trees start to shrink as we close in, the edges of their leaves brown, until we reach a section where all of the foliage is brown and curled in on itself. The trees are nothing but sticks, their long branches reaching out as if for their last dregs of life.
And then the ice appears.
Just hints of it at first on the edges of leaves, and then it seems to spread along the ground like a disease. When we finally reach the end of the dead foliage, it’s to be faced with endless, excruciating white.
NEW REGION UNLOCKED:Welcome to the Shatterlands
I hope you brought your coat.
Cipher’s sexy voice announces the words even as the notification dances across my vision for the better part of three seconds.
Locke opens his map and studies it. “It looks like there are two zones right here, but we’re standing right on the line so it hasn’t named them for us yet.”
We’re standing at the edge of The Shatterlands now, hesitating. To the right, it appears to be a large expanse of water, ice chunks floating and bobbing on the surface. To our left, it appears to be a frozen orchard of some sort, fruiting trees forever frosted in permanent blooming. The closest tree looks like it might have been an apple bearing one, the red fruit hanging from bare branches. It makes me sad to think these trees are dead. In Dross, they don’t look much different, sparse and barely producing fruit, but I can tell these ones must have once been prolific. Lots of ice-covered fruits hang from the branches, shaking in the wind that suddenly picks up.
“Yuck!” Svetlana grunts. “I do not like the cold.” She moves into my hair, tucking herself within it as much as possible, but I doubt it’s helping anything. “Praying mantises do not thrive in this sort of weather,” she grumbles. “It is best if I hide in your warmth and conserve my energy.”
“Well, we’re not prepared for freezing water,” I point out to Locke as I open my inventory and pull out the jacket I’d entered the Harrow with. Locke sees what I’m doing and does the same. Luckily, we hadn’t tossed them away in the Verdant Nexus, though a few times, I’d considered it.
“Clearly, we’re not prepared for any of it,” Locke grumbles, tucking his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. “But, there are three safehouses here, just like the Verdant Nexus. Maybe we can reach one and figure out how to combat the cold.”
“Are you going to be okay, Svetlana?” I ask her as she hides from the wind as best as she’s able. I don’t know how bad cold is for praying mantises, but she’d made it sound really bad.
“This is nothing,” she says arrogantly, despite her earlier admission of dislike. “I once survived in the depths of a Russian winter with only a severed head and a flashlight.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. Russian? Winter? Is that what this is?
“Maybe I can make something out of my supplies?” I hazard, opening my inventory, but I quickly realize that I don’t have any cloth besides the jacket I’d worn in and the small scrap that I’d picked up in the Secret Abyss. It’s not even large enough to wrap around my arm. I have the beetle wing chiton that could work as a shield against the wind, but it won’t do much good against the cold itself. The wind is swirling here, not blowing in one direction. It would be difficult to keep it facing the wind. “Never mind,” I murmur. “I don’t have anything.”
Locke grimaces. “We’re just going to have to make a run for it. It doesn’t look like there’s a safehouse in the trees to our left and we’re not prepared for the water where the closest one is.” He spins his map. “We’re going to have to head to the one in the center.”
We take maybe three steps into the new section before Cipher’s pre-programmed, sensual voice pops in again.
NEW ZONE UNLOCKED: Welcome to the Ice Grief Orchard
Don’t break your teeth on the forbidden fruit.
“Are all the pre-programmed notifications as sexual for you as they are for me?” Locke grumbles.
“Of course, they are,” Cipher answers before I can. “I want you to feel fucked bymebefore you get fucked by The Harrow. It is only right.”
I snort with laughter at his words, followed by the expression of disbelief on Locke’s face. “Was that a joke, Cipher?” I ask him, still snickering.
Cipher chuckles, the sound warm and rich in my mind. “That would depend on who you ask.”
Locke grumbles some more and shrugs on his jacket. “Ha ha,” he mocks. “Ain’t no machine fucking me unless I want to be fucked.”
“Remember,” Cipher purrs. “If you want me to believe you, you have to lock me out, player number three million, six hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred, and seventeen.”
His grumbling gets louder as he stomps off into the orchard, his boots crunching over the ice.
