Chapter Text
December Holiday was. Fucking. Pissed. Kris Fucking Dreemurr did something to her sister, and now Noelle wouldn’t leave her room. Dess had tried to figure out what had happened, but between the locked door and Noelle’s muttering, she couldn’t catch more than a few words. One was all she needed though: “Kris”. As soon as she heard that little shit’s name, Dess grabbed her old wiffle bat and ran out the door.
It was kinda nice in a way. Nostalgic. Kris really hadn’t been themself since Azzy disappeared, despite Dess’s best efforts to keep them involved with herself and Noelle. Seeing them prank Noelle again almost made things feel normal. And so Dess had to kick their ass. To keep things feeling normal.
Dess started marching down towards QC’s, monsters diving off of the sidewalk to get out of her way. Kris always went to QC’s around this time on Tuesdays for the free ham sandwiches. Sure enough, there they were, walking out of the door with hot chocolate in one hand, ham and cheese in the other. Unaffected as ever by the absurd sweet/savory combination.
“Hey, Dreemurr!” Dess yelled. Kris caught sight of her and her bat and immediately sprinted in the other direction. “What’s wrong, Krismas?!” Dess started chasing them, “I just wanna talk to you!”
Kris ran down the block, staying just ahead of Dess. They kicked open the door to ICE-E’s, not dropping their sandwich or spilling their hot chocolate, but then they stopped. Even through Dess’s red haze, she noted the shock in Kris’s body language as they stared into the p”e”zza place. It only lasted a second, though. Kris looked over their shoulder at Dess, almost caught up to them, and then… jumped? into ICE-E’s.
Dess kept running, taking the turn around the ICE-E’s doorframe at speed. By the time she noticed the darkness emanating from the doorway she was already falling.
When she came to, Dess was face down, lying somewhere hard and… sticky? She could hear rushing water and people laughing. In any other circumstance, it would have sounded like a pretty good time, but Dess’s head was pounding from the fall. She peeled herself off of the ground and saw that the ground was the same yellow tile as ICE-E’s dining room. The second thing she saw was that, despite the pitch-black sky and lack of obvious artificial lights, every surface she could see was illuminated. She was standing in some kind of enclosed plaza in front of winding paths marked by stanchions and the belts between them. She was alone.
Dess didn’t understand… anything that was happening, so for want of a better plan she started ducking under belts, moving in the general direction the path was leading. After a couple turns, Dess reached another open area divided by a row of turnstiles under a sign emblazoned with “ICE-E’s W8ER PARC”. In front of each turnstile was a stationary queue of monsters, though none of species Dess had seen before. At the back of one queue was a short figure wearing a knight’s armor, sword, and shield and a half cape.
Dess walked up behind them and tapped their shoulder, “Hey, what’s – KRIS!?” Sure enough, when the person turned around, it was Kris except, “Why are you blue? What are you wearing?”
Kris just looked her up and down as if to say, “what are you wearing?” What was she wearing? Dess looked down. Instead of her ratty flannel and jeans, she was wearing armor not unlike Kris’s but matte white with a blue snowflake embossed on the chest. There was a large shield on her back in the same colors. The fur on her hands had darkened in contrast.
“What the fuck?!” Dess yelled, furious. The other people in line jumped and ran to other queues. Kris didn’t react, “Did someone take our clothes? I’m gonna beat the shit out of them!”
Kris just shrugged, “Probably just happened.”
“You think?”
“Magic.” They nodded.
Dess sighed and deflated, “I guess that makes as much sense as anything.” Then she added darkly, “They better hope it just happened or I’m gonna beat the shit out of them.”
Kris smirked, “The person who stole our clothes better hope no one stole our clothes?”
“Yes, you little twerp.” Dess said, ruffling Kris’s hair, “If they exist, I’m gonna make ‘em wish they didn’t.”
Kris and Dess walked up to the turnstiles. They both patted their pockets. No tickets, “So, you think ICE-E’s gonna come eat us if we jump the gate?” Dess asked, grinning down at Kris.
“Yes,” they said in their usual monotone.
Dess snorted and vaulted the turnstile, Kris right behind her. They were halfway to the next passage when, from nowhere, they heard an inhuman (and distinctly non-monstrous) voice bellow, “GIASFELFEBREHBER”. There was a deafening crash behind them, and the ground quaked.
Dess and Kris froze. “Hey, Kris?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s right behind us, isn’t he?”
There was a pause as Kris looked around. “Yeah.” another pause, “Told you.”
ICE-E roared. The sound was somewhere between an elephant’s trumpet and a car engine with no muffler. It sent a chill down Dess and Kris’s spines. Dess had been about to snap at Kris’s smartassery, but instead she yelled, “SHIT! RUN!”
Kris broke into a dead sprint, and Dess was right on their heels. Dess glanced over her shoulder as she ran, and sure enough there was a 7 ft. sweaty ice cube with a canine snout and a snorkel mask hauling ass after her. The ground shook with its every thunderous step. When ICE-E reached the passage, he fit in perfectly and kept running, sliding against the walls. Dess looked back ahead and barely had time to make the hard left turn in the hallway. They kept running until they heard ICE-E slam into the corner, coming to a dead stop.
Kris and Dess stopped running. Dess was panting with her hands on her knees, but Kris barely seemed to be breathing hard. Before Dess could catch her breath, however, ICE-E started running sideways at them, quickly gaining speed. “Oh, what the fuck,” Dess groaned, turning to run again. Kris was already running.
Dess’s lungs were burning. She’d been following Kris through this twisting p”e”zza hallway for so long that even they were visibly flagging. The laminate flooring was alternately sticky and greasy, making keeping their footing that much more difficult. They must have run miles at this point. How much longer could it go on? What little oxygen wasn’t keeping Dess’s muscles working was helping her brain furiously try to think of a way to escape.
Even that was diverted to alarm when Kris suddenly tripped, skidding on their front before stopping ten feet away. Dess struggled to a stop, her hooves scrabbling for traction on the tile. ICE-E was gaining on them quickly, erasing all the ground they’d gained while he turned. Dess was trying to help Kris up but was close to collapsing herself. ICE-E was only feet away, facing them again and bearing down with his teeth bared. Dess could barely think, everything drowned out in white hot panic. She felt Kris lean into her, and the panic sharpened into purpose. Dess grit her teeth and put her shield between them and ICE-E. She felt a rush of cold pass through her body, and in the next instant there was another loud crash.
Dess kept her eyes screwed shut for a heartbeat longer. When she didn’t feel icicles tearing through her, she opened her eyes slowly. She saw a wall of ice spanning the whole corridor in the space between herself and ICE-E. ICE-E’s snout was pressed up against it, collapsed like an accordian.
For a few seconds, the only sounds were Dess and Kris panting for breath. Dess held her position crouching over Kris with her shield up, waiting for any sign of movement from ICE-E. The silence stretched on for what felt like minutes before Dess heard, “GIASFELFEBREHBER” again in ICE-E’s strange voice followed by the sound of his footsteps receding down the corridor.
As soon as the echoes of ICE-E’s titanic tread faded, Dess collapsed backwards, knocking Kris back to the floor with an exaggerated groan and lying on top of them. “Fuck. Everything hurts. You still alive, Kris?” She felt Kris shake their head beneath her and chuckled weakly, “Yeah, you might be right. Maybe we’re dead. Maybe this is what we get for saying ICE-E could kill the angel.” Kris snorted at that.
Dess allowed them both a couple minutes to just lie there before she got to her hooves with another groan and offered Kris a hand up. “Come on,” she said, tired but firmly, “we should get out of here before it comes back.”
Kris took Dess’s hand and pulled themselves up. They took stock of the new wall that had appeared in the corridor and said, just as monotonously as ever, “You did magic.”
Dess gave a short sigh and replied, tersely, “Yeah. Not thinking about that right now.” Just getting them both home was plenty to worry about.
She turned to leave, but Kris said, “Wait. Make us some stairs. Let’s go over.”
Dess paused, processing what they said and then turned back. “Uh, sure. Worth a shot I guess.” She didn’t really know how to do that. Her first guess was to just picture a block of ice in the middle of the path and concentrate on it really hard.
After about a minute, Kris spoke up around a mouthful of the sandwich they’d brought from QC’s, “Nothing’s happening.” Dess felt something change in the air, as though everything had let out the breath it had been holding. She hadn’t noticed the pressure building, but she knew intuitively that it was important.
“Wait, Kris, shut up.” Dess’s tone seemed to impress upon them that she was serious, “I think I got it.” Dess stared at that same spot on the floor and pictured ice stairs again. Now that she knew what it felt like, she could sense the rising tension. It built and built, setting her teeth on edge until it was almost vibrating her bones.
Dess threw a hand forward, and there was a crack like a gunshot along with that same wave of cold from earlier and a cloud of white mist. When the mist cleared, she and Kris saw another vertical wall of ice, perpendicular to the first.
Relief flooded Dess as the tension broke, “Hah!” she cheered and pumped a fist, “Did you see that shit!?”
Kris gave her a golf clap but said, “That’s not stairs.”
Dess looked from Kris back to what she’d made, her excitement fading. It was, in fact, not stairs. “Well, shit. So much for that.”
Kris put their hand to their chin thoughtfully. Dess let them think. After a second and with no warning whatsoever, they walked over to the ice wall, grabbed the edge, and pulled it down. Dess yelled in shock and jumped forward, trying to get Kris away from the cascade of razor-sharp shards of ice that was about to fall on them. Before she could, though, the ice hit the corridor wall. It didn’t break as she’d expected, instead forming a ramp up to the top of the wall.
Dess straightened up out of her lunge and tried to look calm before Kris could see her panic. “Nice one,” she said. Kris bumped the fist she offered them, and she said, “Teamwork, bitches.” Kris grinned and gave a little half-bow, gesturing for Dess to go first.
Dess rolled her eyes and slugged their shoulder as she walked past them up the ramp, grinning all the while. She was surprised to find that, despite its perfectly smooth appearance, her hooves had no trouble gripping the ice. Even at the steep angle, Dess was able to almost run up to the top of the wall. Kris, on the other hand, was not. When Dess reached the top and looked behind her, she saw Kris a couple of steps up from the bottom using their sword as a crutch.
Dess cupped her hands around her mouth for effect and called, “What’s wrong, Krismas? Does the magic ice not like you?” Kris just flipped her off and kept walking a step at a time. Dess reached out and pulled them up once they got close to the top.
From the top of the corridor walls, they could see a long way. The labyrinth stretched in all directions around them, maybe a hundred yards on a side. The entrance was off to the left, and in the other direction was a water park, as advertised. It was a twisting mass of plastic slides in every warm shade and also ice blue. Beyond the park was a shimmering orange lagoon stretching to the horizon and a boardwalk. From the pier came a column of twisting, billowing shadow flowing up into the black above. Even against the jet sky, the pillar stood out, darker than darkness.
“I’m not a fuckin’ nerd like you and Noelle,” said Dess. Kris just snorted and rolled their eyes, “but I think that might be where the boss is.”
“Gamer senses.”
“Shut up.” Dess took a look at the hallways between them and the path forward. There were a lot of open hallways to cross, “I guess we can just go around the edges.”
“Speedrun strats.” Kris nodded.
Dess chuckled, “Yeah, getting the trick second try’s still a pretty big time save even with the safe strats afterwards.”
She felt Kris raise an eyebrow without looking at them, “Not a nerd?”
“Yeah, well, speedrunning’s cool, and,” Dess faltered before huffing and snapping out, “and Azzy got me into it.” It’s been years since he disappeared. She could think about him without it hurting.
There was a pause. Then Kris said, “Save the animals.” Dess just nodded. They walked in silence for a while. The floors up here were still sticky.
"So hey,” said Dess with a non-zero amount of forced nonchalance, once they got to the edge of the maze, “If this whole… place is supposed to be a water park, then what’s this?” She gestured at the labyrinth they were walking around.
“Mascot hunting ground” Kris sounded totally matter of fact as always.
Dess snorted, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that part in all water parks where they set the mascots loose to eat gate jumpers.”
“And snack thieves”
“Oh, that was one time!” Dess yelled, throwing up her hands. Yeah, her dad had mislabeled their lunches at the festival like three years ago, but, “Let it go!”
“mmm… No,” Kris ran ahead before Dess could respond. Dess couldn’t keep a smile off her face as she shouted and chased after them.