Chapter 7: A Frigid Welcome

Blake's pulse quickened, and he drew his stone blade. The Usurpation agents were largely unimpeded by the icy terrain as they closed the distance, now near enough that he could make out the black bandanas they all wore. Although their boat had passed by the tower, the ice was thickening ahead of them. They could not go straight for much longer.

"What's the plan?" Felix shakily asked.

Celia held her iron sword tight. She did her best to look stoic, but her apprehension was evident nonetheless. "Can you get us out of here?"

"That's gonna be a problem," Blake remarked, glancing in every direction. "We have enemies to the right, and the drowned to the left. If we go further ahead we'll eventually run into too much ice to fit the boat, but if we try to turn back the agents will reach us before we can get clear!"

He hurriedly considered the possibilities. There was no way to manipulate the environment to their advantage like with Ray, and without that he doubted the three of them could fight off the dozen or so people who were giving chase.

"I think… the best chance we have is to turn and head for the drowned. It'll at least be easier to outsmart some undead freaks with no brains."

He grimaced.

"On the other hand, what if a bunch of them have tridents? What if the ice is too thick that way, too? Maybe it'd be better if we…"

"Our options are limited," Celia announced. "Felix, move us as fast as this ship will allow. Push straight through the ice, as far as we can go!"

As much Blake he wanted to voice his concern of finite space, and take another moment to consider a plan, it seemed Felix wasn't going to argue against her command. He brought a hand down on one of the buttons hard enough to slightly crack the wood block on which it was set. With a lurch, the boat accelerated through the ever-icier water.

"Good! We're already putting a few chunks between us," said Celia. "Go get yourself equipped; Blake and I will manage things out here. We need not tamper with the controls, correct?"

Felix looked concerned. "That's right, the ship's course is set. There's no other direction we can go, at any rate. But the agents didn't seem to have any trouble traversing the ice, and I'm worried they'll be able to catch up."

"One step at a time!" she blustered. "We've evaded them for now, and we can determine our next objective momentarily!"

While Felix ran back into the cabin to fetch his leather armor, Blake turned to Celia with a frown. "Are you just coming up with this on the fly?"

She narrowed her eyes. "We had no time to formulate a different plan."

"So you decided it'd be best to power ahead when our space is already limited?" Blake challenged.

"I would have loved to hear your suggestion in the heat of the moment!"

He clenched a fist. How was it so difficult for her to stop and think for a second? "Maybe we could've turned and gone toward the drowned instead. We'd probably stand more of a chance against them than the Usurpation, and there might have been a way out of the ice. It would've been better than this."

"I thought you said you were concerned about having to fight drowned," Celia snapped.

"Well, Princess, now that you're all rested up I thought we could have handled it!"

Her mouth was agape, and her indignant expression was almost bitterly satisfying to him. "How dare-"

The boat was suddenly rocked by a hard impact, and Blake heard the scrape of wood blocks against ice. Somewhere below his feet, the collision was followed by a horrible grinding noise, and their speed noticeably decreased.

"I knew this was gonna happen," he groaned.

Felix returned to the deck garbed in his leather helmet and chestplate, and looking very uneasy.

"We won't be able to go much further," Blake told him. "The ice is getting too thick!"

Another collision shook the boat, and the mechanical grinding noises from below deck worsened. As their pace further diminished, Felix looked at the Genesis Core map. "The other signal is still following us. They'll catch up in a matter of minutes once we come to a stop."

"We can't fight them all off," Blake said, "and there's nowhere for us to run on top of this ice."

"Hold on! I might have an idea." Felix put the map away and withdrew the iron pickaxe he'd mentioned from his inventory. "Does anyone have a shovel? Dirt blocks wouldn't go amiss either."

Blake racked his brain for what he could have been planning, but it wasn't clicking. "I've got both. The shovel's made of wood, though."

"Nothing sturdier? It'll have to do… Actually, that gives me another idea. Do you have wooden planks?"

"Yeah, eight left."

Felix nodded and set a crafting table on the deck. "Could you make three doors for us?"

The trio stumbled when the boat came to a dead stop, having crashed into something. Blake looked over the rail to see the surface of the ocean was frozen solid ahead of them.

"Doors?" asked Celia. "How are doors going to help us?"

"I don't get it either. But I'll take whatever he has in mind over another snap decision your nobleness would like to doom us with instead," Blake said dryly.

Ignoring the venomous look she was shooting his way, he got to work at the crafting table. He arranged six wooden plank blocks on its surface in a rectangle, and after some on-the-spot carpentry he'd created three oak doors. "Done. Now what?"

Felix took two of the doors and gave one to Celia, then returned the crafting table to his inventory. "Our only route of escape is down. Follow me, please."

The three of them hopped over the boat's railing onto the frozen sea, careful not to lose their footing. Felix used his pickaxe to dig a hole one block wide in the ice. "Now, we have to place these doors at the seafloor and stay close to them. I'll go first."

Before Blake could ask what exactly he had in mind, he'd already jumped into the water and sunken below the surface. "Suddenly I'm not so sure about this," he said. "I don't even know what he thinks doors are going to do for us."

Celia stared at the hole with apprehension. "I have my doubts as well… but I did not come all this way to have another Genesis Core fall into Usurpation hands. We will follow his lead for the moment."

She entered the hole after Felix, leaving Blake standing there with a wooden shovel in one hand and a door in the other. He felt more than a little ridiculous.

"Who knows? Maybe if I drown, the Bonemeal Core will be lost under the waves and the Usurpation won't be able to find it."

That prospect did nothing to make him more optimistic, yet he didn't have any better ideas. He took the deepest breath he could and plunged into the water.

As expected of a "frozen warm ocean," the temperature beneath the surface was neither frigid nor tepid but something halfway between. Blake's eyes stung when he tried to open them, so he forced them shut. In a panic, he attempted to resurface but couldn't find the hole he'd entered mere seconds beforehand.

"I can't see, and there's no way back up! I really will drown- no, no, what did he say to do?"

Desperately hoping Felix knew what he was doing, Blake allowed himself to sink until he felt solid ground, then firmly jammed his door into the dirt.

Nothing would likely catch him by surprise as much as the giant tree had, but suddenly finding himself in a block-shaped pocket of air behind the door came close. He was soaked, and his lungs ached as he exhaled hard. Yet he was able to breathe and see just fine, as if the water had simply repelled from the door.

"That's… a neat trick."

Celia and Felix were nearby, encased in their own small air pockets. The latter was pointing to him and making a digging gesture at his feet. Finally understanding the plan, Blake began to tunnel out a hole in the seafloor with his wooden shovel. After going a few blocks beneath the uppermost layer, he then dug a small crevice where the flow of water was blocked, returning as needed to his air pocket. Once it was done, he beckoned for the others to follow him into the hole, blocking up the tunnel with a dirt block after all three were safely inside.

The space was cramped, the air musty, and the visibility nonexistent. It might have been more comfortable to remain beside the doors. Despite the conditions, he couldn't deny that the cave made for a better hiding spot.

"Is everyone okay?" Blake asked, leaning against a wall and blinking in the darkness.

"I am," he heard Felix say. "I've got the doors, too."

Celia was still trying to catch her breath. "A bit too soggy for my liking, but otherwise I'm unharmed. Very clever, Felix! How did you know to do this?"

"Construction experience. Doors take up the width of a single block and the height of two, but the rest of the volume is empty space. Water just flows over it somehow, leaving a breathable gap. I've known this trick for a while."

Blake removed his waterlogged jacket. He was only marginally more comfortable.

"Does anyone have a torch?" he asked aloud.

The cave was filled by a gentle glow when Felix put one on the ground. His clothes and leather armor were also dripping wet, but his shorter blond hair clung to his face less than Blake's. Celia looked the worst off, with her white dress and long hair utterly drenched. She tried to wipe a few red locks out of her face, seeming dismayed.

"There's a problem," Blake said. "If they chase us down here, we've got nowhere to run."

They gathered around the torch to warm up as much as possible.

"Could you keep digging ahead?" Celia asked, looking at one of the dirt walls.

He inspected his shovel and found it already showed signs of wear. "This'll break before we get very far."

"They're here," Felix announced, his tone grim.

The map still showed the relative position of the yellow Genesis Core, revealing it to be somewhere above them. It, or rather its owner, appeared to be meandering around where the boat had come to a stop. With no other way to tell what was happening, the trio kept their eyes on the map's "Y" coordinates.

A few of the longest minutes in Blake's life passed in silence, apart from the stifled breaths of his companions and his own pounding heart. Being left buried alive crossed his mind more than once, as did the cave flooding and drowning them all. He wasn't sure which fate sounded worse.

"Look at the map!" Celia gasped, making both him and Felix jump.

Not once had the "Y" coordinate changed, and now the "Z" value was steadily increasing. The Core wielder was moving away from them in the direction they'd come from.

"They're leaving," she continued, "so we should get back to the surface now."

Blake noticed Felix's half-open mouth, like he'd been about to say something in response to Celia's plan. It was clear they had the same concern in mind, but for some reason Felix seemed unwilling to spit it out.

"Not so fast," Blake said for them both. "For all we know, only the one with the Genesis Core is on the move. The rest of their henchmen could still be up there, looking for us."

She tapped her chin. "You make a fair point. Very well, we can remain hidden for now. Let's at least attempt to make this space more comfortable while we wait; it's a tad cramped."

The three of them set about widening the cave by digging into the dirt with their hands- Blake in particular wanted to preserve his shovel in case of an emergency.

"A thought occurs," he said as he collected more dirt blocks. "You told me the radar you have was taken from a captured Usurpation team, right?"

"That's correct. Luxmouth acquired it about three weeks ago," Felix replied.

Blake frowned. "Ray also must've had one, unless he blindly made his way to the beach near my old home. So, if the radars can tell where I am, why didn't the team we just dodged come down here after us?"

Celia wasn't digging very fast, trying to avoid dirtying her white dress any further. "Perhaps they can't swim? It would explain why they froze over the ocean."

"They could've frozen a tunnel leading to us without having to enter the water," he countered.

With the cave widened to give them each a bit more space, they sat down to continue waiting. Felix inspected the map again. "The yellow Genesis Core isn't close enough to track anymore. I don't know where they are." He paused, then looked up from it. "Maybe they don't have a radar. These tools are pretty complex, after all, so only certain groups in the Usurpation could be given them."

Celia, still trying in vain to get her soaked hair out of her eyes, grinned. "Which gives us the edge as we prepare our next escape plan. I suggest we wait for another hour or so, then return to the surface. If we cannot travel any further by boat, we have no choice but to cross the ice itself."

Her eyes flashed toward Blake for just an instant, as if challenging him to respond. He was trying to brainstorm a solution of his own, but it had become quite clear that he and Celia didn't see eye-to-eye when it came to planning.

"Fine, I'll indulge her for now…"

What he didn't get was Felix's willingness to go along with her half-baked ideas. He knew her better, of course, so maybe he'd long since become numb to it. However, in the short time Blake had known him, Felix had displayed impressive ingenuity and adaptability. Did those traits not compel him to speak up against Celia even a little?

"It's not like he's her servant or anything; she said herself that they've been friends for a long time. Is he just too afraid of offending her?"

Unwilling to talk to Felix about that thought in earshot of Celia, Blake waved it off and tried to find a comfortable way to sit while they kept waiting.

Very little could get under Tara's skin. She, as the leader of Crimson Squad, prided herself on keeping a cool head in any situation. It was her tenacity which had gotten her the rank of Knight, as well as the far more prestigious responsibility of caring for the light Ice Core, and she refused to let her composure falter as such. Nobody would ever see her show a sign of weakness.

That was why, when an underling of hers had reported Lime Squad's carrier not returning directly to their outpost but instead trying to travel past, she'd merely stood up and strode out the door of her makeshift office with no change in expression.

"Sir Ray would not have deviated from our agreement," she had told her rallying soldiers on their way out of the cobblestone base, "their vessel must have been stolen. Capture the interlopers for questioning."

The carrier was beyond even Tara's reach by the time she'd made it outside, though that hadn't concerned her at the time. She may not have been able to freeze it in place, but trooper Crimson-6 had reported that it wouldn't be long before the thieves were in their grasp. "Three Inlanders seem to have stolen the carrier, but they're steering it straight ahead into the frozen sea," he'd said. "They'll have nowhere to run within minutes, Lady Tara. And once they've come to a stop, Crimsons 9 through 20 will be ready to apprehend them."

"As will I," she had replied before starting across the ice to follow them. Some things demanded personal intervention, after all. Ray had allowed his carrier to be stolen, and Tara wanted a look at the perpetrators. But when she caught up to her troopers, all that was to be found was the abandoned vessel, with no Inlanders in sight.

"Maybe they escaped through here," she heard trooper Crimson-18 say.

A quartet of her soldiers were gathered around a single-block gap in the ice, staring into the water. Her eyes narrowed. "Everyone climb aboard Lime Squad's carrier," Tara announced.

Once she and her underlings were safely on deck, she allowed the Ice Core's power to expel freely from her. The frozen waters in a wide radius instantly melted, but no corpses floated to the surface.

"As I suspected," she continued, "the thieves could not have gone below the ice. There would be nowhere to go, and they would have drowned. They must have traveled further on foot. Someone get us moving; we will continue our search."

Tara stood at the carrier's bow, then used her power to clear a larger path ahead. Nothing, not even the thieves' narrow escape, would faze her. But she would make them pay for the attempt nonetheless.