Creatures of the Ice

Twentieth Ice

Twentieth IceCreatures of the Mist

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##### Twentieth Ice #####

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No leash can restrain a burning soul

As no moon can embrace the sun.

I run, lift myself up to the unlimited sky, fall, and then hit something hard. Up or down, right or left, I can barely tell. Everything is the same abyss light as I scream for the mercy that is never going to come.

I am being burned alive, while I have no other choice but to let the fire consume my body, without being able to stop it. This is the kind of torture that I want to run away from, but I cannot as long as the fire around my body is still igniting. Each heat brings a higher degree to the fire on my body, piercing from anywhere with needles that keep injecting itself into my flesh. Digging pain. Calling blood. Marking scars.

I have no idea how long I have been burning. The heat of the purest fire is known for no mercy. I have lost count on how many times the sparks of the fire marked my flesh. I can no longer tell the difference between a minute and a year at this point, for the pain keep torturing for as long as I can remember. It is the only thing I can feel ever since I got burned.

If this is how it really feels like to have a heart, then I do not think I want it anymore.

If I had a choice, I would rather not be alive at all on this planet, than to let this feeling root me to the core for no turning back.

For the number of nightmares I had in my entire life, no nightmare had ever been so frightening that it made me wake up and sweating all over my body with the same adrenaline of fear still pumping through my veins.

I might have been burned before, but never so bad like that in my dream that I could not even stop myself from letting the fear spreading all over my body. I am shivering uncontrollably, too afraid to do anything about it as I recall the feeling of being burned alive. It was so frightening that I do not think I can ever let my guard down again and let me fall back into that darkness of a dream.

It is almost as if I could still tell the remains of the fire, tracing all over my body with dark marks and burns. It was only happening in my dream, but it felt so real that it almost means that.... it means something.

....It means something. Yes, that must be it. This nightmare must be one of the warnings that my guts was trying to tell me ─ that something bad and very terrible is about to come and bestow upon me. But what? What is it that my subconscious was trying to warn me about? Was it so bad ─ that bad that I almost rather pick death rather than stay alive? What kind of horror that the future will give me?

I look at my right, instantly being greeted by my sleeping husband. Valline looks as peaceful and sweet as a man can be. I do not want to disturb him, and my earlier state must have not reached him from the unconsciousness of his dream. That is why instead of waking him up, I leave him to his sleep and slide away from the bed.

We are still in my room, where no one is inside but the two of us alone. I have ordered my guards not to disturb me ─ not to disturb us. But what is a speculation without a reassuring result?

For this morning, I decide to go for a quick shower ─ to let the cold water wash over all the evidence of bad signs. I let my black nightgown slip from my body as I enter my bathroom, grabbing the lever to let the water run and wet me. I stand under the shower for quite some time, letting my thoughts wander to nothing in particular, but peace and calmness. Trying to think hard and I will only stress myself. I need to neutralize my head if I want to stay collected.

After a while, I grab a soap bar and rub it around my body, let the water wash the dirtiness away before turning the lever off. To cover myself, I pull a towel from my gallows and wrap it around me. I am about to exit the bathroom to grab some clothes from the wardrobe next door when I catch a glimpse of something odd and out of the place when I pass the large mirror before the door. So I turn over and stare on it.

The mirror is still kind of foggy due to the effect of the water being turned on for so long inside this closed room. But as I wait, it feels like I do not have my own reflection at all. Yet I keep on standing in front of the mirror, patiently waiting for the result until what it reflects catch my breath on the throat for real.

Standing in front of me is not a figure with hair as black as the night or even a pair of dark and deep black eyes. Instead, it looks like an angel just took my place and replace me with its heavenliness.

Still wrapped in a black towel, the figure, which is supposed to reflect my appearance, visualizes a girl with snow white hair, a pair of big blue eyes like a really pretty lake is alive in there, and pink lips.

I cannot hope that Valline brought one of his long-lost cousins without asking for my permission or even informing me about it. No. It cannot be it. I know every member of the Blancort clan, and the figure that is standing in front is not one of them. Most probably, I have never seen this face in my entire life, except from my own shadow.

I turn away from the mirror to look behind me, hoping that this is just a misunderstanding. But I find no one else besides me that is in this bathroom. I turn back to the mirror, and yet I am still caught by surprise by how breathtaking and angelic this figure gives out for.

Then it is official. This is another one of my life crises. I turned into looking like a Blancort....

I blink for a couple more times, making sure that this is real, and not just another continuation of my nightmare. I know how to tell the difference between a dream and a reality quite well. In my dream, everything happens so fast. But in real life, it does not matter how much you want to escape from it, you still cannot run away from the truth that you are currently facing.

I do not know how else to react. First, a doll. Then, a demon. And now, a Blancort. I don't even know how to turn myself back into my own appearance.

It was different from before. I knew how to turn back because I was not myself at all back when I was infused into a doll, and I knew how to become a wizard again just by one touch from this realm. But with this, I know that I am still myself inside. Even my consciousness knows that. And yet just by one look and everything shatters to unknown pieces.

Did someone.... turn me into looking like this?

But is this even all? If this is only a prank or an illusion, then there must be a charm that I can break easily. But my eyes cannot find anything unusual about my body ─ not even when I unwrap my towel and wrap it back on. I cannot find anything out of the ordinary, yet everything I take a look at myself in the mirror, everything feels so wrong.

I am Arsene Noirmelns, Queen of Darkness and the leader of my clan. Our family is known for its dark powers and black features. How can I look like an angel just dropped from the sky right now? This is not me, no matter how many times I close my eyes and look back at the reflection of the current state. I am not meant to be from the light, but from the dark. It is not because of the discord, but more because I was born so. And yet, each time I take a look in the mirror from this point, all I can see is....

....Her.

That this is the moment when I started to panic. When I am panicking, I can really be out of control. This level of panic is beyond all of the things I have faced. I could explode with unlimited energies when I found out that my friends ─ my fellow teammates, the Alphas ─ were dead. But I knew back then that I had to control myself or else I would only make it worse. But now.... what kind of restriction that is able to hold me back from having so much powers, is it the one that is controlling me instead and hurting all the things I feel highly endangered of?

I thought that my eyes are going to turn black again, like it they always do when I use so much power. My visions would become blurry by the black shadows that are dancing from the frame of my sight. But not now. If anything, instead of getting darker, the blue pair of jeweled eyes even looks much more radiant than before. It becomes so alive, I can almost see life from there, through the mirror.

And this is when I feel myself getting burned.

Not the bad kind, actually, but it still feels like a sharp slap of a metal door across my face, making it sting so bad that I can almost not feel anything anymore.

From my shoulders, the edges of the white hair, and my arms, light fire.

Not just any fire, though.

But the bright one.

The white fire.

Just like Valline’s and his family’s.

Still staring in shock from across the big mirror, I raise one of my palms and bring it up near my face. The hold I have been so frightened and scared of letting go is shaken off and weaken, blooming a hand with an igniting white torch inside.

The fire is not very big, but not small either. It is medium, and steady. Under control, unlike how I imagined it would have been.

After all, I was never one to tell how it is going to be. How it feels like to have the power of light.

And, oh! It is never like what I have ever thought it would be.

My pale fingers graze over the wooden door, knocking it with the rest of the panic and fear that I still feel running through my body. I become so aware of everything, suddenly. From the small, harmless creatures that are just trying to keep themselves dry the rain by hiding from the old trees and caves near me ─ or even from those who are still ten miles away ─ to each dropping sound that the raindrops make until it is absorbed by the earth.

I am still shivering through ─ either from the fear or the coldness of the rain, or even both or none at all.

The time that the creatures that lives just at the other side of this door took a while to open the door is already too unbearable for me. Nonetheless, I must be patient if I want the help. So I wait for so long until I can finally hear footsteps coming from the inside, slowly and lazily getting closer to the front door.

I can hear the clicking of the door being unlocked, and the swing of it being open. Finally!

That is when his half-sleepy, half-frozen magma eyes lifts up to its fully consciousness and takes my figure in. Well, at least what he can take from me through this thick black coat, which pretty much covers my body from head to toe, nothing even slightly being revealed.

“Arsene? What are you doing here?” Banri asks out of concern and unexpectation.

“I need your help,” I say without revealing the movement of my lips to him, my entire body still blanketed by the coat.

He raises one of his eyebrows. “What kind of help?”

The rain is still pouring down outside as I am standing still in silence for quite some time, thinking whether my decision to come here in the first place is right or wrong, before suddenly making up my mind for real and just putting my trust on my best friend.

“If you can keep a secret,” I raise my hands to let down my hood, making Banri gasp in shock as his eyes becomes wider than I have ever seen him on, “then it is for the worst kind of problem that needs to be eliminated as soon as quietly as possible.”

“Holy creatures! You’re white!” he exclaims in surprise.

- END OF BOOK FOUR -