If one could describe a slab of ice as angry, this would be the epitome of that instance. The shining example in question had been placed on a wide pedestal in a frozen room hidden within the sharp angles of unknown time, watched over by an entity of coriaceous flesh. A being with a lanky body made of a strange, sinewy meat that sags and sloughs off continuously, smelling of rot even in temperatures well below freezing. The bestial head with its beady eyes of lustrous silver watched and studied the contorted features of the bitter detainee trapped in the infinitely angular prison of ice. More than mere slab, it was a complex construct of containment indescribable to the naked eye. Frozen with a vengeful look of righteous fury as she vowed to enact revenge on what she claimed was an injustice, the woman inside, kneeling as if to stand, had been solidly imprisoned for her own good. The more the entity looked into his prisoner’s furrowed green eye, the more he wondered if he should just leave her encased for a millennium or two. She was bound to strike at him the moment she was released, but perhaps it might have been best to get that farce over and done with. Finally, after what seemed like countless hours of contemplation, the eldritch entity raised his finger and raked it across the air in front of him, causing the geometrical prison to burst into hundreds of living crystal entities that skittered along the ground, disappearing into the walls around them.

  The woman jumped up almost immediately, miscalculating the lack of force pushing down on her, stumbling around before getting her proper footing back. Searching emerald eyes with an etheric glowing hue of blue searched the room around her. Her focus quickly honed in on the figure in front of her and her look of abject fury returned. “You!” she yelled, immediately running and leaping off the pedestal toward him, swinging down a newly materialized scythe of pristine frost. Gripping the handle, she placed her bare feet down on the curve of the blade in mid-air, bringing her weight down upon it to kick the weapon further as she landed. But instead of her target mincing under her feet, she had instead landed on the hard, smooth surface of the ground. She had expected to chop her toes off with that technique, but her weapon simply cushioned her landing instead.

  Her intended mark had easily sidestepped her attack. A bestial, animal-like face stared down silently at her with piercing beads that managed to send a chill through her icy core—made all the worse from his staggering height.

  “Where in D’mona’s infernal moon is my sister?! What have you done with her?!” Zulema while looking up at him. The glacial scythe dropped out of her hand and dissolved in mid-air. Her hands now gripped twin sickles that were quickly hurled toward Derleth’s face.

  “Why must you fight me, Orphan of Macha?” asked Derleth in monstrously guttural words that struggled to escape his throat. The projectile weapons the priestess had thrown at him dissolved into snowflakes as they made contact with his face. “How many times will you endure this fallacy before you are satisfied?”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Don’t give me that shit! I saw her! My sister was here! What did you do with her?!” The priestess jumped into the air and stepped onto a newly materialized block of ice, almost slipping as she landed. From there, she leapt again, landing on his broad shoulders. Locking her legs around his neck, she continuously materialized a blade in her hand and brought it down on the back of his head. “Where is she?! Where?! Where?!”

  “Your sister is not here, nor was she ever. What you saw was a blurred illusion in the frost of an interdimensional portal, influenced by your deteriorating emotional state. You were hysterically lashing out at shadows and so I placed you in stasis until I deemed it was safe.”

  “W-What…?” Her flurry of stabs slowed down. “But then who came to visit you? And why? What went on out there?”

  “I have already told you. I was visited by… an old acquaintance, who seemed only to wish to keep tabs on me. Nothing more, nothing less. I managed to keep her distracted, and for now it seems our future mission is in the clear.”

  “But Alma…” Zula stared at the myriad blades jutting out of the back of his skull, all of which gradually began to dematerialize into the ether. Her arms dangled at her sides, saying nothing as the thought of seeing her family again quickly faded into oblivion. “Let me down.”

  Derleth knelt down, waiting for the sullen woman, whose feet were still digging into his neck, to get off his back.

  “I’m still mad at you, but thank you.” The priestess clambered off, her bare feet slapping against the smooth ground surface. She did some mild stretches, using the intricately designed pedestal she had awoken on for balance. “Where is this place? Some needlessly lavish trophy room in some far-off dimension of labyrinthine design where you keep your most prized possessions?”

  “I suppose that might be an apt observation… after a fashion.” The lanky beast shrunk down, his tall form seemingly crushed and compacted into a shorter but much wider body. In a blink, he looked almost human once again. “It is a place I have not visited in a very long time. Its origins are steeped in a typical quantic paradigm, but it would be a chore to explain. Let us return. Now that there’s one less watchful eye on our backs, we are free to discuss what comes next.”

  “Right… Mission… I guess I really have no other recourse, do I?” Her shoulders slumped.

  “No,” he replied bluntly.

  “Please do not reply to rhetorical questions I mumble to myself. My situation is depressing enough without you butting into my inner thoughts.” Zula followed behind him as he walked down the hall of icy crystal. Around her were stands and pedestals and walls that appeared to house things that simply could not register as discernible shapes in her mind. She could somehow tell something was there, in front of her eyes, but try as she might, she could only gleam the spaces between them. The floors, the walls, the ceilings all bent and folded in geometric shapes the further she walked. If she hadn’t been well-steeped in madness as a Priestess of Macha, her mind might have snapped already trying to understand the physics of the place. “Where exactly is the exit to this garbage repository? I don’t see any doors. I’m not even sure this is ground we’re treading upon.”

  “There is indeed an exit, though not one perceptible to your understanding. That being said, you should prepare yourself. This will not be a pleasant experience.”