Chapter Text
The snow plains are exceptionally beautiful this time of year. The high cliffs divert the worst of the inclement weather blowing it straight over, leaving the lower ground blanketed but traversable. Even though Lynx likes to expedition alone, she doesn’t often feel unsafe and never feels lonely. She is a small enough target that the dwindling Fragmentum creatures can’t spot her, and if they do, she isn’t worth the energy it takes to catch her. Even monsters need to stay warm.
Lynx packs up her tent from the night before and slings it over her back. Since the Eternal Freeze ended (she wonders when they’re going to pick a better name for it), the planet is slowly warming. One day, the snow plains might be a tropical destination. She’d better savour the snow while she still can.
Actually, she thinks to herself as she trudges through the thick snow, that probably won’t happen. The snow melt from the top of the cliffs will funnel into the caverns and create new rivers as the rocks crack from the temperature shift. The outer fortress of Belobog will act as a dam well enough, but the Underworld might be subject to leaks and falls. When it eventually gets warm enough that snow doesn’t fall, the planet is still exceptionally subject to precipitation, and flash floods will become their new problem. Lynx kicks at the snow with her boots. She’ll have to get a new wardrobe by then.
She hums at the sun, an unusually clear day, but a lot more of them have been coming recently. This is how she loves to spend her days: alone in the snow, thinking about geology and the future of her planet. She’ll get to see so much when she grows up. But for now, she trails the same circuit around the abandoned old city to get away from the real one. How nice it would be to live in the future instead of the present, she thinks.
She is thinking so much that she doesn’t notice the sun going behind a roiling cloud, and is only snapped to when the temperature takes a sudden plummet. The wind picks up fast, and so does the sleet, pelting sideways into her. The snow plains are protected, sure, but the walls only cover three sides. The wind doesn’t usually blow this way.
Lynx hikes up the hood on her jacket and turns her back to the onslaught of weather. She’s going the wrong way, but better than going directly into it. Her visibility is dangerously down, with the blizzard mists and her hood blocking her vision. She needs to get somewhere safe and fast, but where can she go? She drops her supply bag and searches for the nearest big rock, but she has found herself somehow in an area without any. With any luck, the walls will provide enough latent heat and texture to fend off the worst of it. She runs.
Luck is not on Lynx’s side. Ahead of the wall, the ground drops about six feet. Lynx can’t see it, her depth perception hampered by panic and snow. She trips, falls, lands badly on her shin. She screeches, barely audible over the howling wind, as pain and rocks dig into her leg.
“Ow,” she whimpers, hoping it would make it feel better. It doesn’t. Her face is too frozen to cry, but her chest heaves as she drags herself the final distance to sit against the wall. It may be slightly better, but it’s hard to tell with how horrible it still is. Her leg is throbbing. Wet and ice seep into her clothes, and if the storm doesn’t clear up soon, she is going to be in huge trouble. And even if she doesn’t die, she’s injured with no way out. And even if she does find a way out? Gepard will never let her go out alone again.
Staving off the thoughts, she keeps her hands busy, packing snow together to form little cubes which she stacks next to her. Eventually, she’ll be able to make a little wall to hopefully keep the wind away. Her fingers are frozen under her gloves, but she keeps working, trembling and hurting and praying for a miracle.
She doesn’t know if the hulking silhouette in the blizzard counts as one. Half of her wants to scream at it, hoping that it might be a person. The other half, the growing half, wants to hit herself. What kind of person just wandered the plains in a storm? It is probably a monster, and it probably wants to kill her. She stays quiet, not taking the chance. But as the shadow gets closer, it seems the chance is about to take her instead.