Now I had a dead elf woman in front of me. Pale spotless skin, slightly greenish hair, and build so willowy that it would look disproportionate for humans. And especially conspicuous were her long and thin fingers and limbs. Nevertheless, together with sharp facial features it gave her some eerie beauty.

I had no idea about the elven physiology, and cryobiology was just a word I had only heard about on Discovery. Would she wake up if I warmed her up? Electric shock to start her heart, maybe? I had no means to produce electricity though. Oh, and defibrillation is supposed to be used to even out the heartbeat, and can actually fry the heart that has stopped. With my trivia knowledge baggage, I could only be called as a “jack of all trades, master of none” - lots of disjointed bits of knowledge, but few practical skills to speak of.

Therefore, I decided to go with the indirect heart massage. As I had no way to know about the health parameters of the elves, I could only go with human methods. Obviously, I had no practical experience in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, so I could only go with compression-only technique. On my side was superb stamina and strength, so I began with CPR immediately.

I started doing chest compressions right away, as I guessed that surrounding temperature will slowly allow the body to warm up naturally. In any case, I simply had no other possibilities.

I kept doing CPR, while checking her condition using my thermal and magical vision. Nothing. After several hours, her body had reached the temperature of the surroundings, but I could sense no change in her condition. I was too lacking in my understanding of magic, medicine or elf biology, so I could only give up at that point.

---

With a sigh, I stopped the chest compressions. I had counted eight ice columns in the room, and I had a good reason to guess, that each held an elf. And the woman in front of me had the weakest residual magic I could see. Maybe I should try the one which emitted strongest magic? Or try my luck with weaker ones, and do some experiments, so that I could have the greatest chances with the strongest? I was not even sure, if the elf I got was actually dead or in some state of stasis or hibernation. That would be really bad for social relations if it turned out later, that I harmed them because of my curiosity.

It was the first time for me to be stuck between choices where my decision could affect lives. I was always straightforward when dealing with my own issues, but deciding for others was something new, and as I discovered, much more stressful.

As I could not logically reason and decide what to do, I left it to a chance. Right, I had no coin to flip and using counting-out game felt disrespectful, so I used my poleaxe. I scratched a line across one of the slate tiles that formed the steps, and set my poleaxe onto the line. After setting it up vertically and keeping blades parallel to the line, I let it go. I had decided, that if the poleaxe dropped towards the pyramid, I would focus on the ice pillar with the strongest magic. If the poleaxe dropped towards the jungle, I would slowly start to defrost the elves with weaker magic first. Everything was left to the fate.

The poleaxe dropped towards the jungle. And flipped over the step and slid down the steps with a clatter.

---

With some choice swear words, I chased after my poleaxe. I retrieved my weapon in a few moments, but it still left me feeling myself as an idiot.

As I had reached the jungle anyway, I took the chance to look around. The first trees around me looked weak and thin, and many were dead and dry. Guessing that I will need some fire if I manage to revive an elf or two, I felled a dry-looking tree with a kick. Then, grabbing a 10-meters long trunk under my arm, I simply dragged it up the stairs. There, near the entrance into the pyramid, I quickly removed the branches and cut up the trunk into proper logs.

After piling up the obtained wood against the wall, I noticed that a significant amount of time had passed since I exited the pyramid. But, the sun had not seemingly moved at all. Well, at least it wasn’t raining. As far as I could remember, rainforests were supposed to be very humid and get daily rain, but the jungle in front of me clearly did not follow that idea.

---

I shrugged my shoulders again before turning my back to the mysterious and unknown world outside and plunged back into the almost-homely darkness of the pyramid. I had elves to defrost.