Ned the wizard awoke to a peculiar feeling in his legs. The feeling of not being able to feel anything at all. The crystal fire had gone out while he had been asleep and now his body was beginning to frostbite like the rest of his surroundings.

“AAgh” he grunted in pain trying to stand.

His arms still worked so he dragged himself closer to the empty fire pit. The center had burned a whole through some of the rock. The non magma crystals around the edges remained half charred. Ned's arms shook as he grabbed his bag of remaining crystals from inside the cloak and hastily threw it in before lighting flint with two claps of the hands.

“Poof”

The bag of magma pellets burst into fire crackling as the wizard dragged himself back a safe distance. His nostrils had filled with the smell of burnt beard hairs. He fell backward feet close as they could be without also burning up. His vision was beginning to fade and his stomach was rumbling again. This frozen wasteland would be the end of him soon.The dead girl was nowhere to be found and hadn’t been much help anyway. He was on his own when it came to engineering a way out of this mess. There was one donkey treat remaining in the satchel. He had the shelter but food was going to be a hard find with temperatures that would quickly freeze all living flesh.

Outside the blizzard was still blowing fierce winds against the mountain. As gusts hit at certain angles of rock producing eerie whistling that sent the hairs on the back of the neck at 90 degree lines. Maybe if he was lucky a hare or something tasty would wander in here also seeking shelter. That would be an easy thing to roast up and swiftly transfer to the wizard's stomach.

“Well might as well dig in” he let out a madcap laugh plopping the last dried mushroom favored by the donkey into his mouth.

“Guess I'll chill here by the fire until morning when my stomach forces my hand” Ned thought to himself out loud.

The energy produced by the crystals in this place was too powerful for one to be exposed to long term. It was some kind of insidiousness that slowly crept up on you like an invisible smell-less gas. Even being aware of all this there wasn’t much a single wizard could do about it at the moment except sit back and laugh. Death was always going to be an inevitable. Hopefully I still have a chance to fully explore this strange land of the core before becoming too demented from the very things that makes it so beautiful to behold he thought studying the flicker of the fire on the caves walls.

Nearby Nancy had found her zombie corpse captured by the queen. She floundered in a net hung from the ice castle. Meanwhile the Queen stood on the rope watching from above, and smiling. The Jester watched on from a safe distance in the tallest ice tower above them.

“You die again, but will you rise again to betray us another day” laughed the queen as she dropped the net.

The net, and the zombie wrapped in its tight bundle of rope wrapped like a spider's food took a plunge in the lava below never to return. The crystals all around the cavern lit up a green glow as they absorbed zombie essence.

“Cheap stuff that rotten flesh” said Queen cracking her knuckles as she returned inside her palace of ice.

“SnAAAAAGY come here at once” cried the Queen entering the throne room.

From far above Snaggy was hiding in the tower library known to contain the Kingdom's largest library of torture diagrams, and snuff manuals. His little sensitive ears quickly picked up his master's call to action and he leapt to arms. Leaping out of the ice tower, and leaving it for the nearby support triangle of crystal sliding. He surfed down the rocks waving at the Queen as he bounced twice across the courtyard, and then somersaulted rapidly a dozen times before standing in front of her.

“What will it be, your majesty?” said Snaggy.

“Yes, Snaggy, please summon the dungeon master through the communication tower, and tell him to free our previously agreed prisoners from the dungeons, and into the portals at once!” ordered the Queen.

“Let me set it up here, your majesty, so that you can call anyone anytime from your lair” said the Jester.

“I already told the installation team to handle that a dozen times, and then they all left the job to go yeti hunting” cried the Queen.

Indeed previously after devouring his bride to be on their train ride prince Edward Longbottom had filled his appetite for lust. After a brief trip to the bathhouses to clean up his act, and putting the last of Mrs on ice.. Now it was time he had traveled back to the core of Tenare for an adventure.

The Prince had heard the reports about the Empire soldiers who on a top secret mission had been first attacked by what was supposedly a Bigfoot in the warmer forests, and then they found themselves devoured by the hungry Yetis on a trek up to an unknown mountain peak that they had set out on a quest to claim. Only a single survivor had made it back down the mountain. Running back to a base to deliver the final account before finally succumbing to his wounds.

The Prince, and his gang of guys had been adventuring far far north away from the Queen’s crystal castle. Five days ago the dogs had been fastened in their harness, and the sleds had left the last base camp into the unknown wilderness. It was an elite expedition of Knights joining the Prince on his adventure. Their rewards were too numerous to list. Many important parts of Empire society had come to shape around rewarding the Knights for all their wonderful exploits. They came to what remained of a devoured corpse in the frozen tundra, and the Prince commanded the others to a stop. He took a finger to the ground and had a lick of the red snow.

“That’s new… Yeti blood I'm figuring” declared the Prince.

A circle of the knights formed to sample a mixture of the blood, and the snow. Others took off ahead on their sleds to keep from the troop all becoming clumped up together at one big feast.

“Move out of the way!” yelled one knight to the other pushing down with the dogs who trampled over.

The knight stampeded by the sled hounds happened to be the last member of King’s elite guard not dead, or run off into hiding among the roadside bandits for a life of crime. His name Sir Bronco Blitz, and he was not liked for all the alliances he had formed in his successful years had been defeated, and in the upper ranks he was seen as a fool. On the other hand the lower soldiers still recognized he was the best of the best when it came to his career of soldiering, and partly on reputation of a lethally hot temper. He closely studied the man speeding off who had just wronged him with an icy stare from the ground where he had fallen.. One more man wasn’t making it off this mountain alive.

“Break off some dogs and search the nearby woods for more blood. The men ahead will find us a campsite close” said the Prince.

More sleds passed from where the prince stood on the side of the wide wayward mountain path that had begun to climb higher, but the peak was still land far away.

“Yes my lord” said a large knight heading to join a crew of six already gathering to venture into the frozen wood.

This wasn’t anybody's first adventure. All the men who had come to gather glory on the yeti hunt were veterans of many wars, hunts, and even heists. It was what they all collectively thought to be true except for the one among them who had lied about all exploits. He would have his first exploit soon enough however. It was a moment that he had trained by the best for years, studied under them extensively, and fitted with a poison capsule hidden away in his mouth. There was no going back from this one once something went wrong.

Prince Edward Longbottom drew his shining crystal sword that could cut through almost anything but had to be sharpened in a special device of rocks of its own every time he cut through too much of Tenare. The prince was starting to become self aware in that all his thrill seeking was losing the same thrills that it used to have. His latest marriage had been his fastest ever, and what a boring girl he thought. There must be something out there to satisfy my never-ending urges that are never filled. Edward checked in both directions before sneaking off into a clearing by himself where he brought out his dwarf device, and rocks for another consultation. Whatever the quest of all the quests that would logically set him up for the crown. It had to be located somewhere unexplored here in the core.

Far above the building tension taking place in the core was the jungle with Jed still stuck in it. He was walking along using his short sword as a machete to clear a path ahead.

“AAAAA” a familiar voice screamed across the jungle.

Jed shook his head. It had been weeks out here, and his friend who had been gravely wounded before becoming lost in the jungle had no chance of being currently alive. Lately he had started to hear and see a lot of things in the past few days that he suspected were not actually happening outside of his own head.

He descended the familiar banking, before hitting the stream drinking some of the clear waters before diving in the deep end of a collecting pool overflowing into a small jungle waterfall. Jed emerged out of the water holding a trout. He smacked it into a nearby birch tree and wrapped it in the bark for dinner. Jed hit his fish under a pile of rocks lying directly in the sunshines provided by multiple suns, and sprawled out onto the sand to be quickly be fried with the fish.

Sometime later he came back up over the bank dry with a red chest and a cooked fish. Thankfully the watering hole also had plenty of shade. Jed would have lived for not all the other animals who also shared in the waters. So far the savage gangs of monkeys had been his biggest threat from above. They always kept an eye on him, and when he didn’t keep his eyes open they would swoop down to steal something.

When the soldiers had still all traveled together, before Jed had betrayed them in order to try to save his friend one last time they had told stories around the campfire. On one of these occasions one of the oldest veterans among them had said that other things lurked in the jungle. Things that you didn’t fear because they just crept up on you quietly, and got rid of you before he ever saw them. Jed was hoping this was just a false tale, and lived like it perhaps in complete denial.

He came back to base-camp entering the metal walls of a rear train car that had fallen off the track somewhere up above. Vines had already grown over the walls, but the door still shut and latched sheltering him from outside threats. Mostly they did, there were still a lot of vents built into this train car. It had evidently been some kind of party train for the royalty with a shlock, and hookah bar car. Jed had discovered the problems with having so many vents the first time he had tried to store food and the ants had eaten it all in a night. Then he had thought about all the poisonous bugs he had been told about. So he filled some of the vents on the floor with rags, and built a self contained section from scrap metal to sleep in. The next project he completed was to build a secure large lock box to store food within.

Jed entered his room climbing up onto the 2nd floor. He stashed his sword after slamming the metal door. In his hands was the cooked fish that he had previously salted from the condiment bar. There was even a lemon still remaining, and required the sword. Jed drank his citrus juice, and then climbed into his hammock, and sprawled out prepared to eat the fish. In times like this being in a survival situation wasn't so bad. A man could find himself in many worse situations, and although some weaklings might say being dead is better Jed was going to keep on living for as long as he could.