An eternal winter

“You hear me! Hang in there. You hear me!”

The Kid slipped in and out of conscious, she could barely make out the outline of the Warden. He thrusted into the wound, rummaging through her inside to dig out all the fragments. Despite the gruesome process, the girl could not feel anything. Her stomach did not feel the rumble nor the pain.

The abyss took all.

Hands reached up to drag her down through the ground. She sunk deeper and deeper into the depth. A familiar journey.

‘Maybe this is not too bad.’

The Kid thought to herself. Soon she would feel the embrace of water in the depth. The girl waited and waited but a cold soon pierced through like a sharpened spear. This should not happen, she panicked but the hands tightened their grips and dragged her into a hellscape of snow and ice.

The storm was fierce and all consuming. The Kid could catch glimpse of others like her, trapped in the vortex. Then came the snow, falling along with the cyclone. A person, a figure was caught, they screamed out but there was no sound but the tyrant wind. One single snowflake touched their skin and spread out in an never-ending pattern, the fractal. It consumed all, skin and meat, reducing that person to a husk.

Other panicked, trying to run but their feet could not find purchase in the vortex. The Kid was among them, she tried to dodge them to no avail. A single snowflake landed on her right arm and the fractal expanded hungrily, consuming her whole.

They moved in pack.

A ravenous horde consuming all in their path, the frozen night was upon the world. They swept through the villages and cities, taking and devouring countless. There were those who would fight back, people on horseback, firing their guns into the endless storm.

A futile attempt.

They were swallowed, all but one. A gunslinger faster than most, taking bullets from the dead, he held back the horde. But in the end, the man was overwhelmed and got torn apart. Sunlight came to drive them away, leaving the gunslinger alive but forever broken, with only a mechanical future ahead.

Even the Hunters, with their training and steel sword could not temper the storm. Even the most veteran lied cold and shriveled.

And she was with there the whole way through.

The Kid and many others were swept along, plagued by an overwhelming hunger. On their path, the girl recognized a place most familiar yet foreign. She knew these streets since childhood but they were filled with life instead of a withering dread. The parents barred their doors to no avail. The horde’s hunger for the young was unquenchable.

They kept on moving, leaving behind broken lives, dead or alive. Soon, those in the storm lost all sense of self, only the fractals remaining. All but the Kid, she held on with all of her might. This was a force beyond her comprehension, but she would still fight.

It was a losing battle.

Her sanity soon merged into the eternal fractal. But then, something in the dark seemingly opened her eyes. It was a small cabin where a small caravan had stopped for the night. A small circle ward of the horde but there was a prize within, a mind most pure of an unborn.

Knowing that the next time she closed her eyes would be the last, the Kid rebelled. She clawed at those around her, ramming her frail from into the line behind. The fractal was something most divine and beautiful, but all it took was one fault to break it all apart. Everything soon descended into chaos as the horde became nothing more than a feral pack, disordered singular.

Many were repelled by the circle but even more pushed on anyway. Their number many, trampling onto the Kid’s body. The broken fractal broke through and what awaited was a slaughter.

‘I’m sorry.’ The Kid murmured as the horde passed her by.

In the end, she could not divert the flow, the frozen night claimed all.

Even in this darkest moment, those insignificant human fought on. Their number dwindled slowly but they struggled to the very last one. A single ember was lit as someone more joined the fray. A young mage, talented and determined. But even he would not stop the horde.

The Kid lied in the snow to be buried as the snowflakes once again fell.

But then, a shot shook the frozen night. The girl opened her eyes and dug her hands into the ground. Mustering all of her shriveled strength she stood up.

‘This is not the time to rest, not here, not now.’

She swiped at one of the horde and its head was lobbed clean of. In her hand was a machete, its blade covered in spiral pattern. And so, the Kid kept on swinging, cleaving through the horde, cutting a spiral in the fractured fractal. It was not anything fancy nor skillful, just the flailing of a desperate soul.

The frozen night lasted for what seemed like an eternity, but the sun would finally rise.

A cry of a young soul signaled the end. The Kid could feel her body burning away in the light. But before she could perish, the girl was swept away by the snow to fall once again. This time, the Kid was prepared, she swung at the welcoming hands, rejecting their icy reception. Their torn flesh joined with her shriveled form.

The Kid fell into the snow, back in her own body. She touched her face, cold but plump. Her flesh and gears were back, but the girl something was missing.

“Where is it… Where is it!” She looked around frantically before spotting it lying on the ground. “Ah!”

Picking up the hat, the Kid put it neatly on her head.

“Now where to go.”

Looking around, the girl was still in a frozen night, but it belonged a horde different than what she had known. The Kid held up her hand and spun around with a kick. She soon lost her balance and landed buttock first.

“Ouch!”

That was painful but at least now she knew where to go. Her birthmark ached as her hand pointed in a certain direction. That was where the deity’s power touched, a place most dangerous but possibly her only way out. Checking her pouch, the Kid found that none of her silver bullets were transferred to this realm.

“This would do.”

Gripping her machete, the girl started walking while humming to herself. On the way, she could see member of the horde passing by, on their way to join the fractal. This was not the malnourished form she once took, however. These were still frozen corpses but ones most hulking with claws that could cut through normal steel. They all seemingly ignored her.

“That… kind of hurt.” The girl commented. “Not that I mind.”

She knew what this place was. The Eye Of The Storm. The end of the cycle, where all the packs would devour each only until only the best specimen remained. The true fractal horde. But this was not where the deity resided, what exactly was the purpose of the frozen night?

“Probably something horrible…”

The Kid expected to have her eyes assaulted by the vilest scene. But that was not what awaited her at the end of the road.

The horde was cleaved through, their bodies reduced to snowflakes then nothingness.

A figure, taller than a fully grown man. Yet it was something most lean, a form made of elegant curves. It was covered in glittering armor with intricate details out of silver and gold, a pattern of foreign design yet alluring in its symmetry. A thin veil ran from behind its head all the way down flirting with the ground. On first sight, one could be mistaken to think it was made of cloth but that could not more wrong. The veil was of metal, so thin it flowed and felt like the softest of silk with a cold touch.

Every step the thing took was deliberate and delicate like a dancer. Wielding two curved blades, the being sliced through the horde like they were made of nothing but air with motions most elegant.

Truly a beautiful killing machine perfected.

Such a sight was meant to be behold, every smallest detail, every curvature drew the eyes. The veiled dancer would enthralled its enemies before slitting their throat slowly with grace.

The Kid was taken in, mesmerized by the metal shining, the ethereal veil. Before she knew it, the dancer was in front of with its blade’s raised. The girl could not react as thing bowed down while delivering two downward slashes. Snowflakes covered her as two members of the horde was cut down right behind.

The dancer clicked its finger, bringing the girl back to reality.

For someone to be taken by beauty, it meant that their mind was not filled by the eldritch. A blade pointed the Kid to go on forward. She complied but not before keeping her eyes glued onto the dancer until there was nothing to see but snow.

It was then that the Kid noticed the ground she was walking on. The earth was filled with corpses. All wearing armors while not as elaborate as the dancer, was no doubt alluring. Their beauty, however, was smeared by death and dirt and the fractal carved into their steel. The more she walked, the more corpses revealed themselves. This was a battlefield where countless had fallen and only one remained, dancing solo for eons.

At the end of the battlefield was a hall, a shelter of sort built into the mountain. Its wall was decorated with the same pattern seen on the dancer. The flags fluttering in the wind was nearly as thin as the veil, their contents washed away by time.

With some difficulty, the girl opened the door to the shelter. An untold amount of time had passed but the construction remained functional, that by itself was marvel. The Kid did not realize that at the time, however, she was fixated at what ahead. What awaited her was a hall most beautiful filled with a scenery most dreadful. The walls and columns remained, resilient against the test of time.

But too bad its people did not.

The hall was filled to the brim with corpses cladded in the softest of clothes. But underneath, there was nothing but dust and bones. Sleeves lying over a bundle of small cloths told enough, attires rested against the door, a sign of a futile attempt to escape.

They did not die of hunger nor by any natural causes, however. All over their body was spikes made of metal. Its shine was foreign to this hall, this iron was not made by this people.

On the back of the door, a line was written in chalk in a language the Kid did not understand. The letters soon swirled together into a spiral that drew her in. There, glancing into the depth the girl understood its meaning.

“When iron rains worlds shall end…”

This was once a thriving civilization, a master of their crafts. But everything had to come to an end. All of their glories, their knowledge, their cultures, their histories now forgotten and lost to time. Only one of them remained, locked in an eternal battle with an eternal winter.

The Kid sat down, resting her back on the door. She remained silent in contemplation.

“Everything will come to an end…” The girl hung her head low.

“Ahhhh!” She immediately swung up, scratching her head. “Now it’s not the time for this!” Everything will end, so what, the only thing that matter was what to do in the present. “I need to get back…”

The girl looked around for any clue. Too bad the dead could not offer her any answer. She was still trapped in the winter, a part of the horde. The spiral had snapped her mind out of it but not completely. The Kid had never even seen a large body of water, much less the ocean. Thus, the depth could not pull her out this dilemma.

But maybe something else could.

The Kid had an idea, an intuition, one might call it. “Let’s hope this version of ‘me’ can’t get an infection.” She talked to herself and smiled tiredly. Breathing in an out, the girl readied her nerves before reaching out at an iron spike. The girl knew not why she was doing this. Did she expect the pain to wake her up, or something else within this metal?

It pricked into her finger slightly.

“This better works.” The girl bit on her lips and pushed her hand just a bit more. A drop of blood was drawn but not in this world.

The Kid opened her eyes in the meadow, in pain but still very much, alive. Her mind soon drifted back into the dark, but it would not return to the frozen horde. The girl was glad to be back in the land of the living. Little did she know, the wound on her finger had closed by itself as a glean of metal could be seen within.