So, Tamara has personality issues, according to my partner. She's so right.
The inside of the building was just as cold as it looked from the outside. It didn't bother me much, but I hated to think of how tough it would be to navigate the frozen floors.
I heard something. Faint, but growing louder as I headed toward it. Speaking.
I rounded the corner, sliding on the ice. Was there Food?
Stop. I had to get a grip.
Flicking out a long tongue, I tasted the air. The fear of the syndrigasti was prominent.
They were in the room in front of me. Some sort of office.
I slipped inside it. My shadow blended with the darkness so that I was effectively invisible.
There was a small group of them in the center of the room. A girl with long hair. A guy wearing a lot of makeup. More people, and an old ymbryne getting their attention.
Careful to not touch the frosty ice encasing the wall, I edged closer. They were speaking. Words I had to concentrate on to understand.
"…The Wights have been here for days now, but I believe they will give up soon, and then we will attempt to build up the defenses they have demolished again."
I didn't really understand it, but thinking hard, I decided that they were speaking about us. I recalled that the reason I was here was to herd them outside. I wasn't sure what to do.
At once, I realized the voices had stopped abruptly. And Foods – the syndrigasti – were staring at me.
I realized that they had lit a candle, and it was casting my large shadow across the wall.
"They've found a way in!" one of them cried, and immediately thing became a bit more chaotic than I would've liked.
The ymbryne and the others hurried into an icy tunnel at the other end of the room, and the long-haired one faced me.
Instincts took over. I shot out my tentacles, knocking her to the ground, and bolted.
The Hollowgast part of my brain was screaming to fight, but I did not want to hurt someone who could help me. Even if they were Food. I pushed my mind to overcome the urge to devour the girl and raced down the ice-filled hallway.
I passed strange scenes in the ice. Other Hollows, syndrigasti, our leaders… all frozen in place. It occurred to me that we had been battling Food in this loop for a while. When had this happened?
The girl wasn't following me. I slowed down, taking a turn into a frosty corridor.
I was lost.
A Hollow, lost. Imagine the leaders seeing this.
But I had bigger problems. The passage was sealed off by a thick, clear wall of solid ice, depicting a Hollow lashing out at a blood-splattered syndrigast. I looked away.
I was trapped in a giant ice cube. If the girl came after me, I was dead.
That's a good thing, I told myself. The more of us that die, the safer the world will be.
"I know you're there."
I whirled. The girl was blocking the exit.
"You will not have a chance to tell the Wights that you are losing," she said. She was a bit eerie, appearing to stare at me even though I knew she couldn't see me. Her face was devoid of emotion, although her voice was very forceful.
I shifted from side to side, agitated.
"You and your allies will go," she went on, spreading her arms. I was no longer listening.
Don't corner a Hollowgast. Don't corner a Hollowgast.
I shot out a thick black tentacle, silencing her. She was shoved down but came right back up again.
This time she didn't say anything. Instead, she shoved the air in front of her, and a hurricane-force gale of freezing cold slammed into me.
Ah. So that was her power.
As the ice crept up my limbs and I struggled to break free, she nodded to herself, admiring her work, and left the corridor.
A block of ice was covering me now, and the pain of unimaginable cold was beginning to curl around me. I watched helplessly while the ice filled the room, feeling less jumpy and more tormented by the second.
Was I going to survive? Or would I be entombed forever, preserved in ice like the poor syndrigasti and terrible monsters that I had passed minutes ago?
As the ice closed over my head, I heard a voice call, "Althea! Miss Wren has found more peculiars!"
Huh….
My breathing slowed, my thoughts became sluggish, until everything faded out.
Other POV
"They took Miss Canary!" one of the children wailed.
It was true. Evan had unlocked the kids from their handcuffs, and after a brief summary of what had happened, they had noticed the missing ymbryne.
"What do we do? Where do we go?" asked a boy in tears.
Evan thought fast. The children couldn't stay in the loop; it was bound to have slipped. But they couldn't come with him and Tamara. It was hard enough taking care of each other.
"Are there any other loops nearby?" he asked. "Like, that haven't been raided yet?"
"Yet," grumbled a girl. "But no, none nearby. Miss Canary was talking 'bout how the Wights were storming all the loops, and how there were only two left aside from ours. But now ours is gone." She looked quite upset about this.
Evan didn't know what to say. He couldn't take them into the 21st century because they would just age forward. He and Tamara were from the present day, so they would be fine, but what could they do about Miss Canary's wards?
"Okay," he said decisively, clapping his hands together. "Once Tamara wakes up, we'll head out of the loop. And then we'll go find another loop, quickly."
As if on cue, Tamara let out a groan and sat up off the floor. She tested her arm, surprised to see it was fine, blinked, and said, "I'm not afraid anymore."
Evan stared at her. "Huh?"
She looked up at him, a determined gleam in her eye that he'd never seen before. "The Wights? The Hollowgasts? They're just a bunch of flippin' idiots. And after an experience like that, I don't care anymore. I might die next time, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't change what they are. And where they'll go. Besides, nothing could possibly rattle me more that what's already happened." She took a shaky breath. "So I can't be afraid. Because if I was afraid, I'd be dead."
There was silence. Then, the twelve children broke into applause.
"So inspirational!" cheered the girl who had thrown the bowling ball at the Wight. "So motivating!"
Evan tried to find words, but they were absent. Finally, he stuttered, "Wow. I mean, you were – you sort of – had trouble with danger before."
Tamara shrugged, but inside she was curled up and petrified. "Let's not go looking for any, though. I'm still not sure I can handle more."
He nodded. "Okay."
Tamara waited a bit before adding in a rushed whisper, "But I kind of want to do one last thing before we do anything else."
Just to clear something up, the ice-building raid in Althea's backstory happened before the part where our Hollow friend comes in. And our Hollow comes in before Jacob and Co. get there. And yes, the Hollow is a character from the books.