East of Nowhere Part 7- Ruined Ice Princess

They come upon an intersection, and there are four different paths to take. Sasha says, “I’ll take the middle.” Winter says, “I’ll take the first path on the left.” Gerald says, “Well, I’ll take one of the other two paths, can we all meet back here and then we can explore the last path together. Please be safe you two. Let’s make it back here alive.” Winter turns and heads down the farthest path on the left, (It’s been a while since she’s felt this alone) she thinks to herself as she keeps walking down the path, strangely this tunnel is illuminated in small, blue glowing mushrooms. The light they give off isn’t very much, but it’s enough to keep the darkness at bay a little bit, and enough to see by.

Instead of the dark being pitch black, it’s just dusky now. She’s staring in wonder at the small stalagmites on the ceiling, and smaller ones that come out of the walls, she touches one of the mushrooms on the wall, and it starts to glow a bright blue, illuminating the area she’s in with a bright light. She backs away from the wall and turns to head back down the tunnel. She steps on a rock, instead of it pushing into the bottom of her boot like a normal rock would, it depresses into the ground and becomes level with the tunnel floor.
Suddenly, there is an impossibly loud scraping noise. She turns and looks behind her, and where moments ago there was just a tunnel floor, now there was a huge ice wall rising out of the ground. In the middle it looked like there was a circle carved, a hammer came down from the ceiling and suddenly smashed into the wall.

The outside of the circle fell away, revealing a perfect sphere which started rolling down the tunnel path from the force of the hammer hitting it. Winter stands there in shock, afraid to move as the ball starts rolling towards her picking up speed. She grabs two arrows, notches one and fires at the ball. It hits the center perfectly! But shoots off towards the ceiling, like it was deflected. She shoots another arrow at the ball, and it’s deflected again.

She thinks (Fuck this) and starts running down the tunnel away from the ball as it starts chasing her. The ground is shaking so it’s hard to keep her balance as she keeps running, and jumps over a small stream that is in the middle of the path. The ball hits the edge of the stream, soaring a few feet in the air and slams back on the ground, and shakes the whole tunnel before picking speed up again. Winter keeps running for her life, her breath coming in huge gasps as she starts to get a stitch in her side from being afraid for her life. She’s panting and starts to feel short of breath. (I can see the end of the tunnel!) She thinks to herself, she picks up speed for one last run. (Almost there! I’m almost there!) Suddenly, she stops and screams.

Unfortunately, she was moving so fast she stumbles and falls. The ground is shaking, stalagmites are falling off the ceiling and crashing around her as she’s laying on the ground. She scrambles to get up and comes face to face with the end of the tunnel. Which is just an ice spike wall! She puts her back to the ice spike wall, this is her last stand! She starts shooting arrow after arrow at the ball, some hit the middle and a few hit the edges. She finally realizes the middle is just ice. If she hits the edges of the ball, it’s just snow, which falls away. Winter is finally able to use enough arrows to make the ice ball small enough that she’s able to run up the tunnel towards the ball and put her hands out and vault over it. Where she was a second ago, the ball passes that spot and slams into the ice spike wall shattering the spikes and exploding sending ice shards all over the tunnel. Cutting her on her arms as she covers her face with them as the ice rains down on her.

Bruised and bloody Winter stands up and starts to stagger up the tunnel, collecting her arrows as she goes. Some are broken in half, others are just missing part of the tip or feathers, and others luckily aren’t damaged at all. She fills her quiver with the unbroken ones, and partially broken ones, leaving the completely ruined ones on the tunnel floor. (I can always get more at Sacred Hills) she thinks to herself. She continues to head up the tunnel and finally walks into the main area. She leans against the wall and slides down it. She sits on the ground and closes her eyes, trying to catch her breath and slow her racing heartbeat. She drinks out of her water pouch, and eats a little bread as she sits there and waits for the others to arrive at the main entrance.

Sasha enters the second tunnel, and walks down it. Her light orb hanging by her head, lighting her way. She starts looking around at the mushrooms and all the stalagmites on the ceiling in wonder, and she’s about halfway down the tunnel when suddenly she is attacked by a small, green troll man, wearing nothing but a small apron around his waist. He was using a small pair of scythes. He jumps towards her screaming, and brandishing his scythes. He swings at her and she’s able to block the first one with his sword, blocking the second with her shield. She swung her sword faster, knocking his scythes aside, one was wrenched out of his hand landing on the ground a couple feet away. She fought him as hard as she could, either gaining ground or losing it as the fight went on for what seemed like hours, but couldn’t have been more than 5 to 10 minutes.

She was finally able to gain the upper hand and shoved her sword through his chest, and right into his heart. The troll’s body sank to the floor slowly, the light fading from his eyes as she watched. She yanked her sword out of his body and kept walking down the tunnel, she walked until she saw she couldn’t go any farther. She had hit a dead end. She turned around and started walking up the tunnel again, and then suddenly found herself walking through the forest again. (How did I get here? I was just in the cave at Sacred Hills.) she thought to herself.

She has a flashback and she sees herself waking up at the very first spawn point and looking at her map.