I spent a lot of effort and time to carefully remove and carry out the ice pillars one by one. Even though the four fused ice columns were pain to separate, I finally managed that after using my poleaxe to carve the grooves between them. I also took extra care so that no sudden shocks would freeze the supercooled water surrounding the bodies. I kept bringing out these ice coffins and constantly changed the methods how I opened them.

I drilled holes to drain the water before breaking the ice, I let the whole mass of ice to heat up naturally, I even tried to instantly smash the ice open. I tried everything I could come up with, before continuing with CPR, limb massage and any other method that I thought might be effective. I even tried mouth to mouth resuscitation, despite being unsure about the proper procedure.

Results? Three dead as doornail male elves and four female elves who were not better off either. I left the ice column with the strongest magic where it was for now, and tried to organize the results I got so far.

---

Elves, if it was correct to call them like that, were diverse. Only their long ears, sharp facial features and still fairly slim builds hinted at their shared origin. Each one also wore a glowing gemstone of different colour fitted into a tight silver chain choker around the neck.

Three male elves were the ones standing in front before the collapsed passage and had their ice masses merged together. What was interesting, they looked a lot like dunmers from The Elder Scrolls franchise. Dark grey skin, pitch black hair, height reaching almost mine and notably strong and well-muscled limbs. Only their eyes were yellow like owls’, not red. Each of them wore a light looking metal armor covering their upper torso and limbs, padded with some sort of fur. They also had short but rather heavy double-edged swords in scabbards horizontally attached to their lower backs. Weapons and armor were made of the same metal or alloy as the picks I had discovered before, confirming that elves were the ones who brought those.

Out of the females, there were three freshly freed ones and one that I had discovered first.

From those three new ones, two wore armor similar to the males, but had rectangular quivers tied to their hips and short recurve bows in a sheath on their backs. Bow sheaths also contained an extra quiver each and held a handle of a long and narrow knife above the right shoulder.

The last elf woman wore clothing similar to the first elf, but the fabric was yellow in colour and she also had sturdy leather vambraces and gloves made of thin leather. She also had a shoulder bag full of different plants, stones and random pouches I did not trust to open. She was the one I tried CPR on with mouth to mouth resuscitation, by the way.

---

Different from the male elves, each female was greatly different from each other. One archer had golden hair and brown irises, but her fingernails were thickened into claws. Second archer had raven black hair and irises so black that pupils could not be seen, but her teeth looked sharper than those of humans or other elves. The elf with shoulder bag was oddest, as she had slit pupils, although these should have been dilated, and her skin seemed to be covered by extremely thin and delicate scales. And she had dark blue hair, which gave her a very punk-like appearance and would look completely artificial, if only the hair roots did not prove the authenticity of the colour.

Most of the fantasy and myths I knew about depicted elves as definitely racist. What the hell was in front of me then? A party of Scandinavian dökkálfar, ljósálfar and svartálfar hanging around? Or did I end up in Nirn by any chance? At least their weapons did not look like belonging to Bronze or early Iron Age, so they should not have been Gaelic aes sidhe either.

---

After spending some time and organizing my thoughts, I did not immediately set out to retrieve the last piece of ice. Instead, I decided to lit a fire. I was preparing to go all-out with my last chance.

Using some dry wood and my ridiculous speed and stamina to rub it together, I managed to lit a nice small fire away from the elves that I had carefully laid out further away. After ensuring that the fire will continue to burn for a while, I grabbed a spird hide, some rope and returned into the pyramid.

After approximately an hour and a half, I emerged from the pyramid with a wrapped-up ice crystal on my back. I quickly approached the fireplace and added some wood to the remaining glowing coals. Dry wood quickly got the flames to flare up again and I carefully put the mass of ice down. By the fire, I also prepared a spird pelt, making it a rather comfortable, soft and warm place.

Then I began the defrosting operation. I carefully shaved down the thickness of the upper part of the ice block, before drilling a hole into the bottom using the sharp pike point of my poleaxe. When the water began to drain away, I cracked open the ice layer above. As soon as I ensured that the body was free from the water, I quickly bent down and picked the elf up.

---

While subconsciously noting down, that is was another “she”, I laid her down onto the spird pelt I had prepared. After ensuring that it was not too close to the fire, I momentarily got lost looking at her armor, before wasting some time trying to remove it. After some attempts to understand the design, I managed to remove the chest protection and began the cardiopulmonary resuscitation. As with others, she had no water in her lungs, and I could start with the CPR straight away.

Time passed by, and her body temperature rose as the chill faded. The massive red sun still remained at the same spot as where I had first seen it. Since then, perhaps more than several dozens of hours had passed with me carrying and trying to revive elves. While i conducted the CPR, I also observed her.

The armor I had removed by snapping some leather straps was an interesting set of intricate armor made of thin, interwoven strips of a very hard silver-coloured metal. She wore a light helmet decorated with the shapes of unknown tree’s leaves, and I had to disrupt the CPR to quickly remove it before continuing. The helmet included a scaled neck protector, and it even had a movable visor patterned in the shape of owl’s eyes. She had completely white hair, eyelashes and brows. The eye pupils were not completely dilated, which allowed to fully observe her silverish-white irises. She gave an impression of something ephemeral, despite the fact that she almost reached the height of the male elves and me, making her just around two meters high.

At some point of time, thanks to the fire nearby, the body temperature of the white-haired elf had risen over that of the previous attempts. But, no reaction was felt. Did I actually fail?

I ceased the CPR and looked at her. I was out of tricks. I sighed again, and took her into my arms. I carried her over to the rest of her group, as I planned to bury them properly later.

When I laid her down, I saw that I had failed to notice before that she also had a similar necklace as the others. But if others had a simple silver choker with a single coloured gem, she wore a faceted jewel the size of a pigeon egg, and each facet carried a different color.

At the moment I stood up preparing to leave, that multicoloured jewel began to glow. I felt the magic being sucked in by the jewel. Simultaneously, several coloured brilliances were emitted by the gemstones on the throats of the rest of the elves. Oddly, even I sensed a very slight suction force coming from the jewel, and it even seemed to pull the spiritual side of my being.