Within the icy cave which surrounded Foxly and Crown rained bits of ice and rocks as the destruction of the ice-pillar weakened the structural stability of the cavern.

"Can you hear me?" called out Pedecree, his voice barely making it through the rubble.

As he spoke the cave shook.

"STOP YELLING OR THE CAVE WILL FALL ON US!" Crown exclaimed causing a massive icicle to fall down from the roof of the cave and onto the ground where it shattered into a fine icy mist.

"Shit, sorry!" Pedecree called back as another volley of ice fell down from above.

"We need to dig through the rubble, that might be our only chance," said Foxly before turning to Crown.

"At that point, you'd basically be asking to get the cave to collapse on us..." Crown replied critically.

Foxly was about to argue but didn't.

"Alright... I'll melt our way out through the side!" he suggested.

"Melting ice cracks, the whole thing could collapse on us..." again, Crown replied with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Foxly kept suggesting different ideas and Crown kept rejecting them.

"I know! Use the druid-roots to hold the roof up while I melt the ice!" Foxly exclaimed.

"I can't make roots grow on ice, dumbass..." she replied.

"Do you think... we'll die here?" asked Foxly.

"Probably..." Crown replied.

"Well, shit... guess we should just off ourselves and stop wasting time... or better yet, let's try one of the risky plans of escape, a low chance of survival is better than certain death!" Foxly exclaimed.

"I'm not sure... I'm ok with dying..." Crown replied.

Foxly raised his eyebrows in surprise as he heard this.

"My God, the ever-critical Crown is afraid of dying?" he asked in a mocking tone.

"..."

"Damn, I'm not great at being the asshole..." thought Foxly.

"Foxly... did you ever think about what happened to our bodies on earth?" asked Crown.

"Ehh... no, not really," he replied, "What are you getting at?"

"What if we stop existing when we die?" asked Crown.

Foxly rolled his eyes, "The thief already died once before, and you saw she was perfectly normal." he replied.

"I know, but what if that's not the 'her' that died? Just a copy with her memories... a replica so accurate it's not even a replica...?" Crown asked.

"Uhh... well... I guess that would mean there's no point worrying, you'll have the same memories... and personality..." he sighed.

"But what about the previous consciousness? Where does it go? Does it just disappear?" she asked.

Foxly felt a chill run down his back.

"What...? Wait... so... if one us dies... we would be replaced by a new 'us'?" asked Foxly.

"I have no idea... but... this world was designed by a programmer... variables aren't moved, they are deleted and copied..."

Foxly let out a loud sigh, "There's no point crying over this now!" he replied before standing up and stretching out some.

Her eyes darted over to him.

"How can you be so calm about this? We might not even be the people from Earth!" she exclaimed.

"Right, and what difference does it make to me?" asked Foxly.

"What are you stupid?! I guess you are if you tried to shove your dick into a pillar of ice, but still!" she exclaimed.

Foxly made his way over to the centre of the cave and pulled out a dozen pieces of seal-paper.

"What the hell are you going to-" Crown was cut off by Foxly who without turning back to her said: "I refuse to die a generic character, the new me would have to deal with my reputation." she laughed before speaking towards the paper "Warm".

He placed all the different seals on the icy ground as a puddle quickly formed, the heat digging into the floor making a verticle pit down.

Foxly got inside and used the back of his shoe to break the ice faster.

"You're going the wrong way!" she exclaimed stomping over to the edge of the hole before slipping on the melting ice and falling in, pushing Foxly down into the (frog) knee-deep body of water.

"Nice of you to drop in..." he said be placing a warming seal on the side so as to get some more room.

"Fuck!" she exclaimed before planting a light smack to Foxly's back.

As the seal on the side of the wall began to make even more room, he kept adding more so as to form a tunnel.

"He's making a tunnel under the ice-cave?!" she thought watching him pick seals off the ground and attach them to the icy walls.

"We'll dig under the ice rubble and out on the other side, if miners can do this so can we! Not to mention the superior size of the frog-people!" he exclaimed.

"Quit talking and hurry up!" she exclaimed pointing to a white line forming in the ice around them, "Because the fucking ice is breaking!" she added.

Quickly, Foxly grabbed another seal-page and made it into a freezing-seal.

"There!" he slapped it onto the crack before patting it a few times.

"Good as new!" he exclaimed before rushing back to wall-melting.

"A freezing spell? That might work!" she thought looking around, seeing more cracks form.

"This is not going as planned!" Crown exclaimed pointing to another crack, this one coiling around them like a jagged snake.

"Crap!" he exclaimed tossing crown two more seals.

"Just slap them onto the cracks!" he instructed, he looked back to the start of the tunnel.

"This looks like... four meters? I'll melt another bit just in case!" he thought.

"MORE CRACKS!" Crown exclaimed.

"Shit!"

Foxly tossed her more pages, she slapped them on.

"Two on the left!"

"Right!"

"Three above!"

"Alright, here!"

Five minutes later they were finally starting to see the light of the fire shining through the ice.

"We must be close!" Foxly exclaimed placing another seal onto the thin barrier of ice.

"So close!" Crown exclaimed as she heard the loud cracking followed by vibrations coming from the other end of the ice-tunnel.

"Looks like the freezing seals were too weak!" she thought looking back and seeing them peel away from the walls.

"Yeah... thing is, I ran out of mana after the first one... so I've been handing you tape instead," Foxly replied hesitantly.

Crown looked over and saw all the "seals" she attached in hopes of freezing the melting ice cracks were truly just bits of tape attached to the melting walls.

"WHAT THE FUCK, MAN?! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME!?" she demanded.

Her loud voice made the cave shudder once more.

She became quiet as she looked around for signs of their imminent death.

"This is why," Foxly sighed.

Behind them, the tunnel all but snapped closed, jagged chunks of ice, like titanic glaciers tightening their grip over the passage.

"Oof..." Foxly exclaimed.

"OOF IS INSUFFIEICENT!" Crown exclaimed Grabbing him by the throat and violently shaking him with a look of burning hatred in her eyes.

Foxly looked up and tossed his boot at the now translucent layer of ice above causing it to shatter.

"Hey, guys!" Foxly called out to no avail.

"Shit, they must have gone looking for a different entrance or something!" he cursed.

His eyes darted around as cracks formed all around them.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out two seals.

"Dispell!" he exclaimed causing the heating and freezing seals to free-up his mana.

"Levitate!" he said in the direction of once paper, his mana dropped down so far he felt the world spin around him.

He slapped the seal onto Crown's back and tossed her up and out of the hole.

Foxly took out the other page, "Levitate!" he exclaimed,

"Fuck, I need more mana!" he thought looking around.

As soon as Crown reached the surface he dispelled her seal.

His eyes lit up and the mana-less feeling cleared.

He turned to his seal, the walls all around him trembling and moving in rapid, snapping movements.

"Levi-" the walls of the cave snapped around him leaving nothing but a spray of blood to fly out onto the surface, clearly marking the hole.

Crown moved over to the pit, not more than three frog-people deep seeing a loose hand and a puddle of blood and ice-water.

"Oof..."