Apologies for the late update. I put this chapter up on DeviantArt, but somehow forgot the other sites… and then I didn't update at all last week. Sorry guys!
Cold wind wrapped around them, but Sonic hardly felt it. Which was odd. He'd been to Greenland, normally it was colder than this. He swished his tail, watching as it smoothed the snow. Maybe it was the transformation. That made sense. He shrugged off the niggling concern and started running.
He moved quickly, but not so quick that Pretzel couldn't keep up. And, he admitted, if he went too fast, he had a feeling he'd slide all the way to the ocean. Sonic shuddered and nearly slipped. His tail lashed, keeping his balance, and he grinned. The thing was actually useful. Who knew.
"How will we get back?" Pretzel's voice came as cold and clear as the howling gusts.
Sonic skidded to a stop. Or he tried to stop, yelping as the ice carried him several more feet then he intended. He dug in his heels and turned around, blinking in the whirling snow. No sign of the gate. He sprinted back a little ways. Still no gate, and now he didn't even know which way he had been going.
"...huh."
Pretzel rolled her eyes, but otherwise seemed surprisingly unbothered by being trapped in an icy wasteland. She's learning, Sonic observed with a grin.
Still, regardless of how unbothered they felt, they couldn't stand in the snow all day. Sonic squinted, trying to see through the falling snow. All he saw was white. A memory stirred in his mind at the purity of the snow, and he focused, reaching for the light that had twisted his body. It jumped eagerly to him, delighted that he actually wanted to access it. Sonic wrestled it down; all he wanted was the sight, he didn't want to lose control. Flickers appeared in the distance, gradually at first, and then suddenly his vision flipped and everything was black except for those distant, flickering lights.
He took a moment to adjust and then pointed. "I think there's a settlement over there."
He was careful not to look at Pretzel as he started running, not wanting to see that pure, deep, cold blackness. The light growled restlessly, and he shoved it down. He stumbled in shock when it went, not exactly meek, but not as difficult as it usually was.
He'd told it no and it had listened.
The light wasn't controlling him.
Exhilaration rushed through him at the thought. He hadn't realized how fully the light filled and twisted him until now, when it was partially hibernating, unable to bend his thoughts to make him believe he liked it, liked being controlled. Sonic's mouth curled. He leaned forward, letting the wind bite at his face and sting his eyes. He was running. He was free.
A distant voice called, and Sonic slowed, letting Pretzel catch up. She didn't say anything. Neither did he. Something was hanging in his throat and catching in his chest, but he didn't know what, wasn't sure what he needed to say. There was nothing to say. Wasn't there? He was pretty sure there wasn't. But there was something… was he forgetting something? Maybe—
Sonic yelped and dug in his heels as a rickety wooden structure loomed out of the swirling white. He grimaced and kicked snow from his shoes before cautiously stepping up to the structure, rapping his knuckles on the wood. "Hello? Anyone here?"
Silence. Stifling, suffocating silence.
Sonic shivered, the first time he had since they arrived. He glanced at Pretzel. She was still unbothered, calmly prodding at the ice, looking for all the world like she was born there. Maybe she was. Sonic smiled, and she glanced up at him suspiciously. The thing he didn't remember poked at the edge of his mind, and he opened his mouth to say something, the words hovering above his tongue… and then crunching footsteps made them both whip around, and the words were lost.
A short human, bundled in fluffy covering after fluffy covering, stared at them. His eyes were wide behind his scarf. "Who are you?" He demanded in heavily accented English. Pretzel rolled her eyes and resumed poking at the ice.
"I'm Sonic, and this is Pretzel," Sonic gestured at his companion. She didn't even look up. Very unhelpful.
The man's eyes darted around warily. "Why are you here?"
Well, if the human was going to skip the pleasantries, so would Sonic. "We're looking for information on Light Gaia. I don't s'pose you guys have some sorta temple?"
The human scrutinized him for a moment. "...yes," he said at last, his tense posture relaxing slightly. Sonic wasn't sure what he'd done to put the man at ease; maybe he'd proved himself sufficiently unbrainwashed? Ice cold shivered down his spine. The light still hibernated in his mind, just waiting for its chance to take command again.
"Where?" Pretzel demanded. It was a bad day indeed when Sonic was the politest person there.
The man pointed. "A few miles that way. It was on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea."
"Was?" Sonic echoed.
The man sighed. "It has been warmer, you have noticed?" Neither of them responded, but the man pressed on regardless. "The sun, it has been softening the ice." Pretzel's head jerked up, and her eyes flitted to the ice she'd been prodding. "The temple…" The man made a motion with his hands and an accompanying "sploosh" sound effect.
"It's… in the ocean?" Sonic echoed. As if to punctuate this revelation, the wind stilled. They stood in the eerie white silence, bright blue and warm light breaking through the clouds. The warmth sitting at the bottom of his chest stirred again. An entirely different feeling trickled down his back, like ice melting, becoming water, becoming ocean…
The man noticed the change in weather and sighed. "Yes, and our village with it. We have relocated, but even now, we may soon join it." He picked up a pile of wood from the ground and nodded at them. "I must get back to work. Good luck." He shuffled off, boots crunching on snow. Soft, wet snow, not rock-hard ice.
"Maybe I can breathe underwater," Pretzel mused, and Sonic laughed, a harsh, disbelieving sound that grated on his ears.
"Let's go" was all the warning he gave before he burst out onto the snow, legs eating up the white expanse. His red shoes stood out like drops of blood on the snow, and again he felt that odd laugh bubble in his throat. He ignored it.
They reached the cliff sooner than he expected. Maybe Pretzel was moving faster. Maybe his perception of time had become skewed with all this blinding white. Maybe the universe hated him. Wind howled fiercely, and he crouched behind what little buffer there was on the edge of the cliff. Pretzel flattened herself to the ground beside him and wriggled out enough that she could see the ocean. Sonic carefully shuffled after her, painfully aware of how easy it would be to slip.
He looked down, down and down, to the pitch black ocean. No, on second thought it wasn't pitch black. It was deep purples and blues and frothed with white, and somehow the colors made it worse. Made it seem alive. The waves crashed and clamored, and part of him wanted to laugh and run and race them, and another part wanted to scream and fly and fight them.
"It's beautiful," Pretzel whispered. There was no dryness in her tone, no bitterness, and without the usual sarcasm her voice sounded unusually small and sweet.
As if she heard his thoughts, Pretzel thwacked her tail on the ice and narrowed her eyes, her bite returning. "Over there." She pointed at a ledge somewhere below them. A white igloo clung to it, and hints of more buildings poked out sporadically all the way down the cliff.
"Okay, we got this," Sonic said, but it didn't come out as enthusiastically as he had planned. He scanned the cliff, picking out ledges and dents and crevices he could use to climb down. "Okay, okay, okay…" He had to force himself to stop chanting as he slid his legs over the edge, planting a tennis shoe on a jut of ice.
The wind howled and slammed against him, catching those stupid useless wing-things and trying to tear them off his back. He grit his teeth and slid down so he was on a ledge with the wall at his back. The wind kept him pressed there, pinned like he was part of someone's butterfly collection.
Pretzel joined him easily. For once, the wind was taking someone else's side. Stupid wind. Never liked it anyway.
"I got this," Sonic told himself, wishing his voice didn't catch and squeak like it did. He started to shuffle on the ledge, glimpsed the cold abyss, and gasped as it coiled around his chest, pulling tighter and tighter. He clenched his claws on the icy wall, trying to make himself move. He forced himself a few steps more, just a few steps more, and reached a ledge. He started to go forward. CRACK. Sonic lunged back with a cry as the ice tumbled down. His eyes froze on the bits of clear white, watching as they fell and fell and were swallowed by the ocean. He could imagine them all too clearly, black water closing around them, tighter than a strait jacket, suffocating…
"Sonic!" Pretzel shouted, her sharp voice cutting through the blackness. "We need to keep moving!" He couldn't see her, pressed against the wall like he was, but he heard her somewhere around his feet.
Sonic tried, he really did, but his claws were caught and his feet were glued and all he could see was black, black, black water.
"Please don't tell me you're hydrophobic," Pretzel growled, nipping futilely at his ankles.
"Actually," Sonic said, and his voice didn't sound like his. It was high-pitched and fast and full of hysterical laughter. "Normally I'm not! Normally I like the ocean! It's very cool! Really, really, really cool!" The cold pinned him, mocking, and the only warmth was the snake binding tighter and tighter around his racing heart.
The wind died down to a cool slap, but still the pressure on his chest remained. Claws scraped on ice, tiny chunks plummeting, and Sonic's eyes again chased after them before something filled his vision. He jerked his head up again. Pretzel hovered in front of him, wings beating hypnotically, dark against the blinding winter sky.
She fixed her green eyes on his, not meeting his gaze so much as studying it. Her head was tilted to the side, like she was trying to figure out a puzzle. "You're not normally afraid? Why are you afraid now?"
Irritation dragged his eyes back before the ocean could hypnotize him again. "It's not me! It's Light Gaia!" He blinked, surprised at the words. But it was his own voice, and they rang true.
A ghost of a smile, ancient and dark, flitted across her face. "You're right. It's not you." She looked down at the heaving sea. "The fear isn't you. Is it your master? Does it control you?"
Sonic took longer to answer than he should have, caught up once more in those white crested waves.
"It's not you," Pretzel snapped, her voice doing an excellent impression of claws raking across his ears. "It doesn't control you. It's an enemy, Sonic. You fight enemies. How do you fight enemies?"
The wind whispered, hissing, dangerous and familiar.
"You don't freeze and you don't hide and you don't give up." Her voices wavers and drops to a whisper, like she's talking to herself. "You can't let it win. You can't let him win. And if it wins, it will win, you keep fighting."
Sonic's foot slid along the ice, and his claws unhooked from the wall. The ocean continued to dance, and the coils continued to strangle him, but he ignored them, slipping into that rushing stillness only the wind knows, where feeling is left behind. He moved, calmly, carefully, fighting that hissing snake with every inch.
Pretzel grinned. She started to say something, maybe something encouraging for once, more likely something sarcastic and rude. And then the wind stopped whispering and started shouting, and Sonic's eyes widened as it filled Pretzel's wings like sails. She slammed into the ice. Her eyes widened and then closed. The only sound was an echoing crack. In dead silence, she tumbled, lifeless, into the black water, and was swallowed.