“Who… am I…” murmured Frost, daintily touching her chest, as her features turned almost nostalgic. If Lukas didn’t know her nature, he’d have called her human. Bremetan. Whatever. Part of him was utterly fascinated by this creature, especially because the Screen threw up a mess of contradictions when he tried to analyze her. On the other hand, the longer the delay, the less time he had in his hands to save Tanya.

“Do not fret, Outsider,” the creature offered. “Your concern about my Host is touching, but Time passes very, very slowly for her, as compared to here.”

If that was supposed to help him feel better, it was a disastrous failure. Instead he began worrying if she had just read his expressions perfectly, or worse, had plucked the knowledge from his mind.

It was like dealing with Inanna all over again. Back when she was just a high-strung divine bitch.

“I suppose if I have to give it a name, it will be the Void.”

“The… Void?”

“Oh yes, the Void. From the very beginning,” said the avatar of Everfrost, “there has always been the Void. The cold, dark existence of infinite emptiness, and endless hunger with a singular fundamental purpose.”

Glacial white pupils met stubborn, brown ones.

“To invade into every aspect of Creation and absorb it into itself. To halt the march of the Infinity of Forms, coalesce it and revert it back to the Formless Infinity. The End of Potential itself.”

Lukas watched with unraptured attention as the arctic tundra all around him thrummed with every word she spoke, as if the truth of her words were resonating with the world she had crafted for herself. Much like Territory Creation, it was akin to a world where the caster defined and limited the applicability of Rules. The stronger the caster, the greater his or her control over this territory. For someone like the Frost Avatar, she might as well be a god inside this domain.

And she had done it within her mind.

With him standing in it.

Speaking to her.

It broke every rule of self-preservation and common sense and yet—

—Where is your sense of adventure? —

Thoughts of the goddess made him reflect on Frost's choice of words. The Formless Infinity and the Infinity of Forms. This was the first time anyone in this world had used those terms. Inanna had mentioned a line that separated the two, which Lukas presumed was this Void, or the In-Between.

“What has that got to do with Meynte’s Truth?” He demanded.

Frost arched an eyebrow.

“The Infinity of Forms is the absolute zenith of Potential,” he said, eyeing the hungry grin forming on her face. “The realization of All Truths. Whatever, whenever they are. The complete actualization of everything that can be in this universe. The finalization of everything that started from the Origin.” He narrowed his eyes. “Not this… Void.”

“Such interesting things you tell me, Outsider,” Frost licked her lips. “I can see it. So many interesting futures unfolding.”

Lukas scowled, and ignored her antics. “Stop avoiding.”

“You speak of true things, Outsider Simple, perhaps; crudely put, definitely, but nonetheless, true things. But say Outsider, does everything need to stem from the Great Progenitor? The cold, raw, untainted darkness of the Formless can also birth existences. You call them…”

“Taboo,” said Lukas, grasping his head with both hands as flares of agony shot through his skull. His mind was being tossed round, caught up in a maelstrom of knowledge that didn’t belong there. It tore at his perceptions, flooding them with random images, smells, tastes, and sensations. It was like standing in a sandstorm, only instead of inflicting pain, every random grain forced you through an experience, a memory, so disjointed and intense and rapid that there was nothing to focus on, to hold on to. A flash of a younger Inanna walking through a world of fire and ash. A dagger, crafted out of shadows, striking into the heart of a young girl. Screams in the middle of a market. An Emperor that called himself two-thirds god. A pair of hands, wreathed with crimson flames of purgatory strangling another being of fire. And the images doubled, redoubled, multiplied into thousands of separate impressions all coming at him all at once.

It was a miracle he hadn’t fallen down to his knees already.

Frost laughed. “Taboo. The inverse of Truth. That which cannot happen. A perversion of Reality. A blight so repulsive that even the Great Progenitor shies away from it.”

Taboo, thought Lukas. The antithesis of Truth. If Truths were the greatest realization of the raw Potential created by the Origin, then Taboo was the worst form of anathema. Truths drove Creation to the Infinity of Forms. Taboo — it rolled it back to the Formless. A perfect duality. Yin and Yang. Day and Night. Creation and Destruction. Growth and Regression. Everything and nothing.

The rational part of him was freaking out at how easily it all made sense to him, when he didn’t even remember knowing them.

His breath hitched. His stomach twisted with sudden, sickened understanding. “Are you telling me that Everfrost is…”

Frost threw her head back and laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed, like she had gotten the meaning of the most hilarious joke in the world. Like she had just realized the greatest absurdity in the universe.

Frost’s lips twisted predatorily. “You asked to know what I was. I’ll show you.”

She stepped closer, their faces inches apart.

“Look. At. Me.”

A horrible pressure grabbed him from all sides of his skull, forcing him to stare at cadaverous-white eyes. A dizziness and intense nausea gripped him and at the same time, some part of him was screaming to let go, to forget all of this and call it a bad dream. Another part of him wanted to ditch his rationality and told him that there was something there, something he wanted to see, something he wanted to stare at for a while. A cold, greasy tendril of power slithered all over his body, something he had felt before when…

Lukas jerked his eyes away with no small effort, and then looked up.

And up.

And instantly froze, rooted in fear.

—IcEcOLdHUngErkILlDevOUrEveRYtHinG—

He had stared at Inanna, the Supreme Goddess of An and Ki. He had witnessed the sheer impossibility that was the Origin. He had borne witness to the End of a World.

All of them paled before the sheer wrongness he saw in those eyes.

It held so much hatred, pure and undiluted, a hate as hot as the fires of the Ifrit King’s attacks, a hate as hard and sharp and cold as steel, so vicious, so vitriolic that it surpassed the comprehension of a mortal mind. It was an ancient thing, as old as the universe itself, and with that hatred came an eternal absence, a power that manifested itself by being not. There was no noise but his eardrums threatened to burst, leaving him utterly incapable of thought. Whatever it was, it forced its way into his mind with its presence, and with every fraction of a second, just that presence made him less.

And then he saw it.

Scales the size of trees filled his vision, shifting and slithering smoothly together like water over the surface of a river. Goosebumps erupted all over him just by being near them, the sheer frigidity radiating out of it was a physical thing. It was like standing at the base of a glacier, knowing that nothing but certain death waited should his feet slip and fall down from its great height. It encompassed everything he could see, towering like a mountain and just as wide.

Then the mountain moved.

There was something utterly serpentine about it, even though it had a head and a pair of forelimbs and hindlimbs. It didn’t help that its hands were too large for its arms, and its claws were too large from its hands. Frost covered its entire body in giant clusters of scales, each of them the size of a small child, its slit-like pupils filled with an ancient malice and unending rage. He’d have gone for a better description had he been able to hold its entire visage within his gaze. Unlike the Ifrit King whose radiance was like the Sun itself, this creature exuded a terrible wrongness — making the world lesser just by existing in it, making a mockery of everything alive and powerful.

A power that made itself known by being not.

Like an ant on an elephant’s back. That was what he felt when he stood before it.

“I am the Deepness, the Frigid Plains of Hel, the Cruelest Winter…”

The voice that came sounded like a peal of thunder, ragged with inhuman malice, buffeting him with its rolling depth.

“Eternal Glacier, Wrath of the End, Anomaly Slayer, Everfrost…”

Massive wings of scale and frost erupted. The legs, each the size of skyscrapers, slamming into the white floor, producing miniature earthquakes as they landed. Gleaming talons clawed at reality itself, carving deep furrows through it like knife through butter.

“I have been called many times, across many civilizations,

The perpetual darkness that turned Nidhogg’s scales in the shade of the darkest night…”

The scales solidified into obsidian-black. The serpentine neck reared up, and along with it, the head, triangular-shaped, adorned with curved spines and festooned with ivory fangs. Streaks of white married the black snout, reflecting the scales in this world of white. Large, cadaverous eyes glared at him from the skull, a primal intelligence burning in them.

I am the Devourer, One that dragged the Aesir into my Maelstrom,

Valhalla despised me, One-Eye feared me,

Meynte unveiled me, for I AM….”

The behemoth arose to its fullest height, and let out a rumbling snarl from its vicious jaws.

“Fimbulwinter, devourer of pantheons, and I’ve come to devour—”

A dark, taunting amusement shone within its pupils.

“EVERYTHING!”

The last word were roared out with such force that the shock wave made the air as solid as stone when it slammed into him with all the force of a speeding train and—

And his eyes snapped back into focus again, as he found himself back where he had started, staring at Tanya’s facsimile in the eye.

“...Fimbulwinter!” He ground out. “The event that brought the end of the Aesir. The herald of Ragnarok. The wintry apocalypse.”

“Flatterer,” cooed Frost.

Lukas didn’t reply. Instead his mind was racing miles ahead. Solana had lied to him. Meynte’s Truth— her power, it was no Truth at all. It was a Taboo, one that existed in the heart of Niflheim after devouring the Nordic Pantheon. His mind flashed back to the memories of yet another Taboo, this one that he had seen in his dreams but had never truly comprehended, not until now.

The memory of Inanna walking into the Vikahl Ashlands to imbibe a Fire that could burn the divine fires of Asshur. The Fire of Consumption.

In a similar fashion, Meynte had stepped into Hvergelmir to imbibe Fimbulwinter into herself, becoming a Yuki-Onna in the process.

He had the sneaking suspicion that the true power of Fimbulwinter was far, far worse than the lifeforce-draining Everfrost. A Taboo that crafted a secondary personality within the bearer.

Like a kaleidoscope coming into focus, Lukas understood.

“I see,” he said at last. “Meynte grabbed a Taboo to ascend herself into an Empress. As a counter to Amaterasu’s Eternal Light. But the World would not accept a Taboo, certainly not one that destroyed Potential itself. That would be like drinking poison, the world-killing kind. Naturally, Meynte couldn’t become a goddess even if she tried. She stayed as an Empress, becoming the Host, the Anchor, the source of Fimbulwinter in this world. And she gave it a new name. Everfrost.”

A slow smile spread over her mouth. “Mmhmmm.”

He glowered at her. It didn’t help at all. “But Meynte failed. Failed to eradicate the Eternal Light. Maybe Amaterasu was too powerful. Maybe Meynte hadn’t assimilated the Taboo enough. Doesn’t matter.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“What matters is that she failed. She failed and perished. But the World would not assimilate the Taboo, so it existed. As Everfrost. Born into the souls of future yuki-onna like her. Meynte’s descendants. Maybe through blood. Maybe through possession. Again. Doesn’t matter.”

Frost let out a soft purr. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was getting aroused.

“Just like a Truth, only one can wield a Taboo. Solana said that Tsurara was Meynte’s last descendant. And now Tanya, from… wherever. Again, it doesn't matter. Point is, she has it. And that means that Meynte, don’t care how, is dead. So how,” he demanded in asperity. “Is this ghost possessing Tanya?”

She nodded in approval. “You phrase it simply, but not incorrectly. But I cannot give you the answer you seek. Knowledge is power, and power can hurt. Power can kill.”

“You’re not going to help,” Lukas said quietly, the glacier outside reflecting the blizzard within him. His fists clenched. “If that’s how it is, then you can forget about getting free.”

Frost laughed again. “Hold onto your perceptions if you will, Outsider. But doing so will consign her fate to fickle chance.”

“But you haven’t told me anything! If Meynte’s possessing Tanya, then I’m against the ghost of an Empress Bitch, and I’m—”

“Do not decide lightly.”

Something in her voice made him stop and ponder. Her cryptic statement reminded him of Inanna, plans within plans within plans. A being that could see so far into the future that regardless of the illusion of choice, things turned out exactly like she orchestrated it to be.

“Do not underestimate the depth of what I’ve done for you, Outsider.. Nothing I can say can possibly make this task any easier for you. You and you alone must find the way. And once you do, I expect the favor to be paid back in full.” She raised a finger. “One task, of my choice.”

Part of him wanted to strangle her. Rest of him wanted to pull his hair out. “But you haven’t done anything.”

Her lips quivered. “Foolish Outsider. Your mortality is a bliss of ignorance. A flaw of your perception of Time. Who says I haven’t given you exactly what you need?”

As if on cue, the Screen flickered in.

Current Prophylaxis Status : 91%

Skill Suspension deactivated

Warmonger Protocol Active

Lukas blinked. Frost had said that Time was relative here, and passed very, very slowly compared to the outside. So was she….

His eyes widened, and he gaped at her.

She winked.

“Exactly what you need.”

“... Fuckme!” He murmured. And then it hit him. Like, really hit him.

It was up to him.

There was no backup plan. There wasn’t a second option. There wasn’t any cavalry coming over the hill. He might have wounded, or in the best case scenario, killed Solana, but that wouldn’t make a cent worth of difference.

Meynte, a ghost of a lost Empress, was possessing Tanya.

Meynte, the original wielder of Fimbulwinter. Of Everfrost. A catastrophic individual that was greater than the Ifrit King he had encountered back in the borderland. If he succeeded, he’d save Tanya. If he failed, Meynte would kill him, and Inanna would be lost forever. And then, another war between the Yokai and the Asukans would begin.

No dodges. No delays. No excuses. It would happen, or it wouldn’t. All depended on him.

He looked down at his hands. Slowly, he closed them into fists. He had lifeforce, but bereft of kinetomancy. If he used it, he’d probably die in the process.He could use mana, and it would be like a candle trying to overpower a glacier. He could use his reserves and his divinity to summon Inanna again, but in doing so, lose her forever.

He felt like throwing up. Instead he stiffened himself and straightened his shoulders. There wasn’t any other way to face it except with whatever he had in his hands. Himself. The Anomaly. And—

And Blob.

He met her glacial eyes.

“One task,” he murmured. “What is it?”

“I know your heart, Outsider,” her voice boomed. “And I know your secrets. I know what you yearn for.”

Lukas stiffened.

“All you desire is possible. But all you fear is also possible. All you need to do is….”

She told him.

Lukas blinked, and then blinked again. As the implication behind her words settled in his head, he let out a small chuckle. “You really don’t like Meynte, do you?”

Frost regarded me, cold and distant and interested at the same time.

“In that case,” he murmured, “I’d appreciate it if you sent me back.”