On the side of the skull I found thin, exquisitely made gold wires forming a complex circular seal or array. It was imbedded into the surrounding bone, flawlessly merging with the tissue.

It looked a bit like transistor array, with central part leading into the depths of the skull through a drilled hole. The hole had something looking like a cylinder made of quartz fitted in, forming some sort of device together with the wires.

After some messy and troublesome work, I managed to cut open the access to the interior of the head without damaging the artificial implants. There, I saw that the creature lacked the brain.

Instead of brain, the skull contained a dark sphere. There were numerous thin vessels surrounding it, before joining together and forming the big tube at the back of the head, leading on towards the body. Having an idea, I tried to check the sphere with my infrared vision sense. Confirming my hunch, I could faintly see some rapidly dissipating heat coming off the sphere.

---

I used to be uncomfortable with the presence of the vivisections and experiments on live animals back on Earth, although I admitted that such methods gave the most accurate and detailed data. But now I felt it was necessary for me to learn everything I could for my survival. Therefore, I went over to the crippled spird, hoping to clear up some of my suspicions.

I had to be careful with the living creature, as it kept trying to push off using its remaining limbs. It also continued its attempts of snapping at me with its jaws. And if that was not bad enough, it kept puffing out that purple fog. Well, at least I could observe from the close distance that it really did that through the holes in its body and helped to condense the ice armor over the fur.

After some cutting, sawing and twisting, I finally got my results and finished the creature off.

First, the sphere that was found in the head of the spirds. It turned out to generate heat, a lot of it. But only while the creature was alive. No portable stoves acquirable that way. The heat was drained off by vessels containing purple gas, which was kept in liquid state under high pressure.

With my limited theoretical knowledge I could not understand what processes generated the heat. But it clearly provided the creatures with the energy. Most likely, the sphere was also acting as the brain center, as several thin fiber bundles connected it to the rest of the body.

What was curious though, was the fact that the artificial construct on the head generated some electricity. Apparently, it was harnessing the thermoeletric process utilizing the difference between the hot sphere and outside cold. But as far as I could see, the current drained into nothing. The effect could have even been unintentional. I felt stumped by my lack of relevant knowledge, again. I should have picked Hogwarts for my school back in my school days, it seems.

---

Having finished with the spirds, I prepared to move on. I spent enormous effort and time to cut one hide into thinner layers. I was not ready to lose more of my energy to reform a dagger or sword, so I had to use my poleaxe. And it was not a tool for precise work, which only added to my frustration and annoyance. At least I was strong enough and my hands didn't shake, so actual cutting was done with no problems,

After obtaining several sheets of thinly cut leather, I cut some straps and used the rest to make some clothes. As I used to like the handicraft and knew some stuff about leatherwork, I got engrossed in work. Despite little knowledge about the tailoring, I had enough material, so I could experiment and fiddle with the measurements to my heart's content.

Soon, I managed to make a rather nice set of jackboots, pants and a fur cloak, if I may say so myself.

Neatly laced pants and boots were made extra sturdy and actually felt really comfortable. The laces were slightly chafing and the back of the pants was sagging a little, but I was unable to find the way to adjust the pattern to fix it. Lack of practice, skill and knowledge showed itself again. The cloak was made as a huge, radially cut circle with a hole for the head in the middle. I even attached a deep hood, using the remaining materials. I had trouble estimating, but I suspected that the spird fur cloak, covering my full length, had to weigh close to 30 kilograms. But damn, it looked imposing and cool, and I was not affected much by that extra weight anyway.

Making a simple bag to store the daggers, books and jewelry was a rather trivial matter, and was finished in a matter of few hours. I also prepared some crude belts, which I used to tie up the remaining leather and pack up all my stuff. All the hides were really bulky, but after tying everything together, it was not too difficult to carry everything on my back. It still caused to shift my center of mass, but after some adjustment, I was ready to move on.

---

After I reached the end of the hall, I found three passages leading to the left, forward and right. Of course, I picked left, still testing the left-hand rule for exploring unfamiliar structures.

Soon, I noticed small signs of living creatures. The ice dust layer on the ground was disturbed and numerous prints dotted the surface. Most clearly belonged to spirds of various sizes, although judging by the size of the prints, these spirds were much smaller than the ones that I had fought with earlier.

As I advanced, I really encountered several groups of spirds. But as they were only of the size of St Bernard, I was able to smash them with just a few swings of my poleaxe. Distinctive was the fact, that they had no gold and quartz implants. I also managed to regain most of the energy I had used to transform my weapon.

I hypothesized, that the huge spirds I had first fought with, were brought here by somebody. Then, they managed to get out of control and started to breed and live independently. In the extreme cold, they had no enemies, and fed either by cannibalism or got all their energy from the core in their heads.

I managed to pass through numerous twists, turns and stairs, before I ended up before a collapsed section of the passage. To save my time, I tried to dig through the blockage, but stones just kept coming from above. Deeming futile the attempt to dig through because the perspective to get buried by a collapse did not appeal to me, I chose to return.

---

After clearing out all the spirds from the left passage, I tried the central one. Unsurprisingly, that path also had spirds. Lots of hairy, hissing, snapping spirds. But, that way was not blocked, and I felt that despite all twists, turns and seemingly random curves, the passage kept going in downwards spiral.

Finally, at a rather sharp corner that turned into narrow stairs, I saw an obvious change.

The walls, previously covered in thin, smooth layer of ice, were hidden under thick slabs of icicles here. The ceiling and floor had veritable stalactites, stalagmites and random sharp crystals everywhere. That area was rather small, and after I passed through, the passage resumed the previous uniform look.

What was not the same, though, were frozen carcasses of various creatures lying around. From the postures and damages they sustained, I could only see them having been frozen alive in a few moment’s time. One second they were moving, the next they started freezing with their surface tissues rupturing and tearing, then falling having lost their balance due to disabled limbs. After that likely came the rapid freezing from outside towards the interior of the body.

Oh, and there was a human sitting on a pile of furs in the corner. Or rather, another frozen corpse.