Dream.
Summary: Dead men don't dream. They remember.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is merely a fanwork, and my only profit from this is practice in writings and self-amusement. Also heavily inspired by Frostpunk, this chapter.
Chapter 02: a winter storm in Atlas.
Jaune Arc dreamt of hoarfrost. Of howling winds that froze metal gears. Frosted steel brittled and cracked, oil froze in pipes, as blood in veins.
Man and faunus trudged onward. Atlas must survive.
(Atlas was besieged: that crown jewel of a glorious age now stood before more than just the assault of an endless tide. It had held out for so long, but Svartenvinter had come. Ice and snow had formed Atlas, and now ice and snow would be its end.)
Four thousand strong, an army marched, not to conquer but to relieve. Airships of steel took off, before the Storm they were Icarus. Soaring wings clipped by razor hail, scattered by the Blackest Winter storm. Turning blades shattered inside frozen turbines, pilots diving to their icy deaths in burning coffins of metal. Ships fell, but men persisted. Gears pulled out from the wreckage of the ship. A prayer for the fallens, and nametags collected. Engines rumbled to life. Their compass pointed only one direction: North.
(The Blackest Nights had come. Refugees flooded in from the tundras and cold snow-borne plains, before the trainline was cut or the storm too great to pass through. All bore frostbites and horrid tales of the coming darkness. Ancient Grimm stirred from beneath the ages old ice, despair thawing black sinews and pushed forth frozen bodies.)
Hail whipped into windscreens, threatening to crack with every gust blown. Headlights cut into the storm, vision less than the transport just in front of them. The thin strip of burgundy plummetted with every mile they took. Men and women huddled around the onboard radiators for every precious puffs of heat. -40°C. And it's only getting worse.
Then the first engines refused to start.
(Ice, Dust and steel. That's what Atlas was made of. Ice in eyes and steel in bones, steel forming the great hab-block and domes and skyscrappers that allowed life to grow in that hail-borne scape, ice on the backs of those toiling and laboring day and night inside enormous mining complexes and factories as patricians above them feasted and danced. The stalwart defender looked on with grim eyes, and steeled themselves. Atlas was the Jewel of the North, but a jewel cut is still a jewel, and with a diamond hard-shell the defenders began to dig in.)
"Damnit!" A man banged his hand fruitlessly to the metal carriage above his head. The red wrench clattered to the feet deep snow. "It's not the engine, it's the fuel! It's all frozen solid inside.".
-60°C. Fuel froze inside pipes. One by one engines of steel sputtered and died with the last puffs of heat from frozen exhaust pipe. Tanks trapped in mud, Walkers in snow, or just simply abandoned, forming little hills in the snow from their carcasses salvaged of all they were worth, like dead whales adrift in an ocean of ice.
Desperate faces turned to him for guidance. Hundreds of pallid face, blue and white with frost.
"...We keep moving." He said. The Dust cores were salvaged. Little balls of fire, lanterns lighting up a precious spot with warmth in the dark. Scores of men huddled around each, as their feet slogged through the metres deep snow.
(Food and heat was rationed, distributed to the swelled up populace by cold, faceless algorithms. Minefields laid, floodlights erected and fortifications reinforced with watered sandbags. Glass towers clamped down reinforced shutters, whatever airships left in the once Great Fleet grounded and turned into improvised housings for the refugees. Men and women that never before picked up a sword or gun armed themselves, while trainees and squires swapped their practice arms for real ones and headed up the wall, joining Atlas' garrison in the defense of the city. The storm came ever closer. It's just over the horizon now.)
-70°C. Chilled bones sung with chattering teeth and the deafening howls of frost all he could hear. Thoughts slowed like slush, breaths froze on face. Knees deep in snow, they lugged forward, glassed eyes stung blind in the dark. Staggered steps stumbling forward, symphony of ice and beating hearts their marching drums. Every hundred feet another went missing, wandered off or collasped. They could no longer muster the breath to say a prayer now, the bodies left to freeze and refrigerate in the cold.
How long, a fragmented thought arose. How long have they... why...?
His body felt so numb, so heavy, arms hugged tight to his chest as he could barely able to muster the strength to limp forward. Shadow surrounded him. Darkness of winter. His eyelid blinked. They felt so heavy. Cold. Too cold.
Blue eyes snapped open, and gazed around. Red eyes circled them. Leering, predatory. Determined to claim what the cold yet not.
(An eye for an eye. A debt for a debt. He swore on the grave of an old friend. Help will come.)
A promise... yes, a promise. The thought crawled up his mind. "Help is coming." The knight breathed out, the promise frozen in a crystal mist of ice particles. He pulled Crocea Mors out, frozen metal biting into his hands. Others followed suit. A hoarse warcry escaped his throat. "Help will come!"
(It was on this forlorn, forsaken hope that the Atlesian had held on. They just need to hold on for another day. The stalwart defender proclaimed. Help is coming and all they needed to do was hold out. Another day then another. Time bought with blood and lives, time for help to arrive, time to dig in further and further as mines dug deeper into the crust of earth, mining out Dust and vaults of shelter. It was warmer underground.)
Bang... bang... bang... muffled gunshots lost in the hailing winds. Dust ignited in closed-off chambers, hurtling their charge forward along rifled barrels toward their destinations. Clang... clang... clang... blades clashed with fangs, metals with darkness. The song of combat sung in his ears, and Death danced with him. He could still see her eyes, as his own laid frosted. Just a different form, red not silver. Her cold pale hands guided his blade to their marks, firm yet gentle like the first time they touched. She guided him to duck. Weave, spun. Thrust sheath up, claws slid on iced metal which cracked and hissed. She guided his arms forward. Black ichor splattered onto his skin, hot and steaming. A beastial growl escaped two throats at once. A swift kick turned one to gags, then dust. More Grimm came. Shaking hands gripped onto the hilt of arms tighter.
("Form up!" He remember saying that shout not for the first stand. "We make out stand here!" He shouted it again once more time. Not for the first time that all the brilliance and skill and sparks of genius, all of the tactics and strategies and luck means nothing. All once again comes down to this: the strength of men that dared to stand firm, whether with feet of clay or frosted in ice.)
Viscera sprayed from torn open veins. Bloody ichor like sweet nectar, steaming ruby and onyx gems rained amidst the snow and cooling corpses. Unrelenting assault, continuous strikes unbroken despite tendons tearing in frost. Men rallied behind his back. Red and black blood spilled as a wall of assorted weaponries pushed forward by flesh and aura into the tide of black fur, like drowning men struggling agaisnt the might of the sea, men and women swimming upstream a river of blood. Grimm's, and their own.
Howls of wind hid the enemy till they were too close, Dust that refused to ignite in with a fizz. Frostbitten arms reacted too slow, soul fire not enough to thaw out the frost in bones. Defiant eyes stared up at the beasts that would take their lives, a warcry that died in ripped throat. Bodies littered the icy snow, bodies that does not disappear into acrid smokes. Bodies so white they melded into the snow beneath, as the tiny circle tightened and tightened, like the noose around the neck of a prisoner.
(Again it was not enough. Never enough.)
"TAKE THIS!" The mechanic shouted, almost knocking him over when he shoved something into his hands. A huge and burly miss-match of metal components surrounding a Dust crystal the size of a football... A fuel core...
Jaune Arc did not wait for him to finish. He just knew what to do. Pumping every last drop of aura into that red crystal, till it burnt hot in his hand like a lump of coal, he took sprint. Forward.
(No... this is wrong... the old man stirred in his seqt.)
Claws ripped and bite at him, trying to tear him from the ball. Too late. Power reached critical charge. A sneering smirk grew on the suicidal man's face. Red fire poured from the crack that spreaded on the ball, until the entire surface was red.
A pinprick of a second later, ice turned to fire.
(This is wrong-!)
Aura shattered. The fire burnt his skin. Body parts flung into the air, black and red streaks in the blue-ish white background. Howls shrieked all around, and no one was pinning him down. Darkness was washed away by blinding light, scampered away back to the dark fog they rose from. Before the ice beneath them cracked.
No-!
The ground splitted under him, dragging him down with it. Fire winked out under the icy waters. His combat gears pulled him down further to his watery grave the more he flailed, his blistering skin quick-cooled as the melted metal plates melded to his skin as he tried to scream. No no no no-! His scream went unheard as arctic water filled his lungs, thick like ink. Pain, agonizing and uncontrolable cut through his bones and flesh worse than any winter night. He writhed, flailed, and all he did was sunk, sunk, sunk-
(This wasn't what happened-!)
Black rings replace the tide of furs and teeth in his vision. He felt Death's arms softly wrap around his neck. His last breath came out, bubbles of air floating upward in the icy pond. His struggle ceased. The dim light above recede...d... so far... a...way.
Eyelids dipped down.
Darkness.
('Comm'on, Jaune. Wake up.')
Blue eyes shot open in the coldness and silence. Where-?
('Wake up.')
The words rang out again, softly beckoning him to look up.
Who...?
Death's pale hand pulled him deeper, beckoning him to cease his senseless struggle.
('Comm'on.' A visage of a smile. Eyes filled with warmth, voice with kindness. 'Don't sleep like this.')
A hand reached out for him in the dark. A single spot of light shone bright, the spot that had led him forward. A hand, a single thread, his lifeline. Her hand, stronger than the grip of death herself.
His heart beat in his chest, warm blood fighting agaisnt the creeping cold.
All this time he had thought forgotten.
('You're gonna catch a cold if you sleep like this, Jaune.')
Jaune reached out, grasping and never let go again. He pulled, and somehow the surface became closer to him despite what was weighing him down. He pulled, and pulled, and-
(Blue eyes broke the surface of the icy pond. Jaune Arc woke up. He was sitting on a train.)
A/N: As you can see, this chapter took quite heavy inspiration by Frostpunk, an awesome video game by 11-bit Studio, the trailer rap by Stupendium and ten days in Canada without a sweater or even a jacket. They're awesome (except the forgetting to pack sweaters part), I say it again, and totally should be tried.
Svartenvinter: Blackest Winter, in broken Nordic, courtesy of Google translate.