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It had seemingly been hours since any normal being dared the wild, biting cold. After one life's candle nearly died out in the tearing winds and beating rain, the storm calmed down. The stilling air became increasingly colder as the last drops of the sky's sorrow froze into an icy white that blanketed the land.
"When winter broke into Niwen…"
"Life seemed to blow out like a candle…"
The watermill, usually a constant low rumble, was frozen. The village, absent of the din of hundreds of happy moki voices shouting and expressing their carrier's glee as their carriers lived and ran about in games and excitement, instead now abandoned into a cursed silence. All that remained was a battlefield, just as frozen in time as the rest of the forest.
All was still, deathly quiet, with no signs of any recent life. Even so, in this sorrowful and frozen land of a once great power, a spirit landed at Niwen. A raft left behind at one of many cold gravel beaches, a short trail of prints leading a treacherous path scaling the rocky cliff side. The being stood in the thigh-deep snow and closed his eyes, pointing his nose up to sniff the icy air.
The peace lasted only until he dropped his nose back down. The snowy bushes shook violently while a couple rare birds far above, flying through the merciless breath of winter, noticed a sudden thud that shook the ground beneath them, followed shortly thereafter by the sound of shattering crystals of light. Once more, silence ruled.
Ori
Seconds passed as the foul, purple silhouette of the giant toad gazed directly into his decidedly fearful eyes. The tension in his arms rose so high it felt as though he'd been hanging off a wall for hours. His sight was blurry and dark, and it certainly didn't help that his environment seemed to swirl around him like the first and last time he ate a fruit that was a little too ripe. Very slowly, the creature drew its arm back, until suddenly lashing out with it again to rake its claws along his side in a movement not unlike an ocean wave. His body, already jumpy, dodged involuntarily as he leapt into the water. A loud thud echoed behind him along the wall, breaking off hundreds of boulders looking to follow him. Unable to tell quite how many of the stones were falling close enough to him to be a threat, his attention rapidly found a new danger to worry about when there was an even louder splash in front of him followed by a hellishly strong sucking force pulling him towards the new splash. It was slow at first, but with every passing instant the force grew faster until he was moving so fast he couldn't tell where he'd been in the water behind him. So distracted was his attention that when he started looking for something to escape with, his entire environment had changed, becoming even darker and somewhat fleshy. A slippery tongue held him above a dark void signifying a one-way gate to a hell he never hoped to visit. Slipping through the hole would be the end of whatever time left he had here, and he had so much more to do! Frantically looking in every direction he could, his head whipping around in a desperate search for something, anything to hold on to or change the situation enough to alleviate even a little of his disadvantage.
There! On the ceiling above him hung a dark purple mass, webbing about and sticking along the inner cheeks of the toad. His weapon already in his paws and rising, he let out his best warrior's cry and took several forceful swings at the tongue; the slashing sounds echoing as though the swings had already happened ages ago. Jumping as high as he could off the slippery underground floor of the mouth, he attacked the purple skin with everything he had. The toad screamed and groaned in pain, forcing it to open its mouth was all he needed as he swung himself up to a pendulum of flesh hanging in the middle of the giant throat and stopped time.
The cacophony of noise silenced as the world froze around him, leaving only his own fiercely beating heart to set a rhythm. His short reprieve gave him all the time he needed to line up at the perfect spot. Letting loose, his body shot forward while a great spear of trailblazed the path ahead and embedded itself in the fleshy walls of the toad's maw; its screams opened it ever wider.
Shooting out the front, it was looking like he might escape when a very familiar voice erased all hope from the situation, said so seriously and so violently that it could have echoed through a near-endless space.
"Let's finally end this."
Something else seemed to control the beast beneath him, its ever-cloudier, primitive mind driving it to move forward regardless of its injuries. A purple gust of wind in the shape of a fist drifted toward him, so slowly that were it not for its unpredictable magical nature it would not have posed a threat in the slightest. Alas, oddly-shaped purple clouds of miasma were not something he was going to risk today, and he was forced to slide on his back beneath the belly of the toad to avoid it, taking an opportunistic slash with his weapon lengthwise as he slid. The toad screamed louder, as though it were millions of demonic cries echoing through the empty landscape and growing ever louder and more forceful until, abruptly, it stopped.
What remained of the toad vanished, leaving behind a purple cloud slowly shifting into motes of light before dissipating, life rapidly fading from whatever still held it. A calming wind of all things, much different from the storms of emotion and battle, spoke loudest to him.
"Watch over this land and the moki… child…"
His arms felt like they were made of the densest heartwood, unbelievably heavy and rigid, not capable of even the slightest movements. His whole body stood leagues above the landscape, stretching from his roots to the top as though there was no such thing. Powerful energy relentlessly pursued an infinity of destinations, flowing like a river through him in all sorts of directions, but all stemming from his very top, his very own green crown. A sphere of glowing light and an orange tone rested in the center, both everywhere and infinitely compressed, and he knew it to be the source of it all. With a warmth beginning to overcome his thought process, a soft female voice whispered, "Ori… you're alright… wake up little hero… We need you… alive."
Although a tree was not meant to have a heart deep in its core and he knew it, he could still feel a soft beat growing evermore distinct and stronger. Trees weren't to have organs, but his guts and limbs became warmer still and he felt an undeniable urge to breathe coming from deep within…
…
A gasp of ice cold air forced its way into his lungs, mixed with a not insignificant chunk of powdered snowflakes that drove him into a coughing fit. A white blanket had covered him beneath the surface, hiding the outside world from him in a very much mutual situation. How long had he been underneath the snow? It was clearly winter, or at least Niwen had gotten a whole lot colder since he fell asleep, but which winter? How long had he been asleep — was it even sleep? More and more questions filled his head in a relentless flood of panic, almost breaking the dam of his own understanding and throwing everything he knew into jeopardy.
He had more immediate problems. He had no idea how far the surface was from his current position, how thick the snow was, but it was worth a try. At the very least he had to get out of here, his next-to-nothing knowledge leaving the topic of rescue in a very vague camp of uncertains much like nearly everything else. Determined to save himself before investigating his situation any further, he began to dig.
It wasn't an easy task, shoving all this snow out of his way while it cascaded down his face and blinded his vision, as much use as that was. To his luck however, it hadn't turned out to be too much for him, making his self-service rescue possible.
Outside, the still, icy surface bulged before eventually breaking as a bluish-white paw burst forth from the snow, grabbing at the freezing air and sweet freedom. Shortly thereafter, a glowing head revealed itself to gasp down a lungfull of icy, but blessedly oxygen rich wind.
"It's snowed, uh… quite a lot. Just how much time has passed?" he asked no one in particular, marveling at the unfamiliar landscape.
It was quiet. The white flakes continued to fall soundlessly to the ground, their muffling properties devouring each and every noise far before it could reach even his ears as though he were in an empty room. Judging by the invisible buildup, it had been doing this ever since he had fallen asleep, remaining a constant in the timeless universe he now found himself in. Only the sound of snow crunching beneath his hooves as he sank up to his knees in the powder made itself known, and only because he tried making noise at all. The cold hugged his legs like an unwelcome friend, and so tightly that his veins closed with a stinging pain only moments afterward. He took deep, sharp breaths to alleviate the aching, fortunate that his tolerance allowed him to remain focused and relaxed in the icy cold. He'd always had some level of affinity for it, and its usefulness proved itself again as he sorted out his problems with idle drawings in the snow beneath him.
Interrupting his attempt at understanding, an angry growl came from deep within his stomach as it tried to remind him of more pressing matters, its desire to be filled overshadowing much everything else in its last attempt to get him to step forward and eat. Ori was famished. He felt as though his insides had been hollowed out by greedy cupped hands, leaving him completely empty and weak. With what his… resurrection or whatever it was that brought him back, he felt as though whatever force provided him with the blessing had forgotten the more primal, mundane needs of mere mortals like him. Now that he thought about it, had he even died? Was he dead now? And who was the strange, soft, and so very familiar voice that had spoken to him at the end of his dream, if it had been more than that? His head tried to wrap itself around whatever had happened, but it was no use. The thoughts manifested themselves as rounded eggs, with not a point to grab and start, uselessly burdening his already rapidly shrinking mind. Or at least it felt like that, he was never much for poetry.
"Did I really… kill him?"
Guilt hit him like the Spirit Tree itself had fallen on him, sinking his mood down so low it resembled the dreary, dead environment surrounding him; a silence void of icy cold broke only with a soft, weakening wind brushing through the dead branches clinging onto their last few leaves. The sun above him tried its best to break through the blanket of gray clouds, but it was far from enough, the ground illuminated by only the softest, weakest rays that provided none of the warmth they should have. It was though the jealous specter of winter had smothered summer right in the middle of time delegated for it. For all his time in the snow, he hadn't the time to deal with the repercussions of his cave adventure, and it didn't seem like the world planned on letting him off the hook anytime soon; its hatred for his wellbeing bubbling and festering underneath the surface and breaking free in constant ruptures.
Of course, right as he lamented his simultaneously absolutely terrific luck in survival with his constant misfortune in having to use it, one more literal embodiment of that hatred showed itself, soft steps lightly crunching the snow as another spirit bolted out of the dense forest, shooting through the thorny underbrush of the bushes to nearly flying over the meadow, nearly invisible against the white backdrop. Ori held his breath to make immediate eye contact with what he hoped beyond hope might be another actually thinking spirit, one of his kin he could actually talk to. Of course, it was not to be, as while they looked as lost has he was, their slightly weaker light and lack of even the smallest sign of despair and fear a real living being would show at the prospect of being hopelessly lost in a twisted version of familiarity revealed them to be one of the many false spirits he had fled from earlier. It wasn't long before it noticed him, and once that happened there was nothing that could dissuade it from its coveted fight to the death.
Ori was already prepared for the worst, (having expected nothing better) and was not surprised at the sudden, robotic action. "I knew you were one of them," he scathed, preparing his weapon for yet another fight in the endless chain he was forced into. To his surprise, though, his weapon was only a shadow of its former self, almost bendy in its structural integrity or lack thereof. It was still more than sharp enough to defend himself, even if it felt more like a blade of particularly stiff grass than any magical weapon ought to. Only a moment passed before the false spirit entered his range, and with a skilled, albeit exhausted pirouette, sliced completely through the false spirit and shattered it into tiny, shiny shards not unlike fragile crystal, much like all the others had been. The short engagement, hardly even a fight, ended as quickly as it started, and Ori sighed. "How depressing. They're probably just as confused as I am, and yet here I stand while he does not. Where are you coming from, strange spirits? Or are you even real spirits, rather than hollow machinations of whatever magic binds you?" Reasoning about the origin did remind him of that moment back in the cave with all the false hallucinations his manipulated mind thought up down there, his first of many brushes with death he would rather have liked to avoid. "Whatever the case," he relented, "I can only hope there aren't more of you out there, and this sudden winter's had at least one upside." Dropping his right arm to the side where the blade still rested, he placed the edge of his left one on his chest to help ease the shock of at least seemingly murdering yet another family member.
"I hope you will find peace… brother…"
…
Stumbling through the irritatingly deep powder, Ori scouted out a suitable tree for him to climb. The arboreal layer above had always been more his territory than the ground, regardless of his hooves. While he was in no immediate danger per se, reaching a relatively safe high spot to observe his surroundings and take stock of the whole situation would greatly increase his chances of living to see next week, as well as give him some idea of what to do next. Advanced climbing skills had been one of the first disciplines he'd learned from Kiri alongside the necessary sword techniques, and he'd had a knack for it from the first minute he'd been born. Normally, that meant that nearly every tree he came across was only a skip and a few kicks different from a high-speed ladder. Now, however, with the cold biting down and making the trees brittle while dragging its icy fangs along his limbs, the former ease with which he ascended disappeared almost entirely. Even so, his previous… planning, if he could call it that, hadn't provided him with any alternative options.
"Well, now what?" he thought, standing at the base of the tree. "This one's been the best I've seen for nearly 10 minutes now, yet it still would take me hours and a possible few failed attempts I don't have time for just to get up there! They probably wouldn't hurt, the snow's pretty soft, but this already isn't a good situation and the last thing I need is to break something or pass out in the snow again just for getting unlucky on the way down." He sat there for a few minutes, hashing out one possible method up the tree after another before realizing a flaw somewhere and tossing it out to move to the next one. He'd ran through nearly 15 or so before sighing and realizing there was no way he was getting up on his own. "Figures. All my skills and resistances, and I can't even climb a tree. What I wouldn't trade for flight…" He'd taken nearly a dozen steps before it struck him. "Of course! Ku can fly; I can call for Ku, she always hears me!" Paw to his forehead, he shook his head a few times at the obvious solution not just at climbing trees, but safety in general. He could have gotten out the second he hit the surface, but hindsight was crystal as always. More confident in his chances, he widened his stance to take a deep breath.
"Kuuuuu!" The shout echoed off the sparse trees before being swallowed by the silence. Although the shout felt unnaturally loud in the quiet landscape, and was quite impressive from such a small creature, Ori got the sense that not a soul had received his call. Not even Ku.
It wasn't time to give up yet, even if his hopes were plummeting back to pre-idea levels. Curiosity got the better of him, as normally Ku came after only one call. Ori was more than aware of just how exceedingly terrific his sister's hearing was after a couple questionably permissible late-night trips he'd made when he was younger, not to mention that she was able to hear her tasty grubs squirming underneath logs in mid-flight. The skill was essential to her survival, and while he hadn't much for metrics, Ori would have bet highly that Ku was one of the most capable owls out there when it came to the sense. "Kuuuuu! Where are youuu?" he called again, more desperate this time. There was still no sign of any answer, and a deep seated rock of worry settled in Ori's gut. Something had to be wrong, she would never ignore a call from her smaller brother, especially after such a period of absence! If she wasn't injured or… worse… then they must be separated by a truly vast distance, farther than the entirety of Niwen in some direction. That, or she was underground somewhere, impossible as it would be to get her giant body underneath anything. That hadn't been as much of a problem back when she was small, he remembered, and his mind wandered back to the beautiful moment in time where she was first laid into his arms after hatching, where even he was larger than she was, so soft and tender. She had already scored his heart through and through, and she hadn't even done anything yet… "Wait!" he thought. "But I ran from her my first night alive, she certainly wasn't smaller then! But how…?" Was this another one of his mysterious memories he'd been reliving since the first one on that particular night? "That… clearly isn't possible. I'd have to have lived for longer than I can even remember, much longer than I have now." He scratched at his head, pondering the problem further and trying to find a suitable explanation. Try as he might, it just wasn't possible. The only thing he had to explain that "memory" would be that he'd somehow lived twice, ridiculous as that was. And yet…
An ice-cold wind blew right across the face of the little spirit, shaking him from his thoughts and bringing him back to reality. It was so cold that his veins shrunk like one of the water lilies that made their home on the many lakes throughout Niwen after being poked into a fire by a certain curious child, (not that he would know who that would be) so quickly that he flinched from the pain. "I guess it was too cold for her to stay and she left the island, hoping the weather would change soon. However long ago that was or wherever she left to," he thought. With a sigh of weak disappointment, his hope for getting anywhere near the top of at least this tree eventually faded away completely.
Tossing out the problem made room for him to wonder about other things. Other problems bounced around before a rather important consideration made its way to the front: "I hope Mori made it back home safely. His travels should have finished before the snow came, but what if they hadn't?" He was concerned at first, but taking a moment to consider the raw intellect his fluffy friend possessed was enough to dispel it for now. "He's probably fine," he said aloud, more to convince himself than anything. The trees continued to pass by.
He had been walking for nearly half an hour since trying to call Ku when his sight came across a tree that couldn't have been a better candidate for climbing. Still a little miffed at the last one and still unable to come up with anything else to improve his survival odds, it was worth a try. "Attempt number one!"
"Attempt number five…" Hard hooves made contact with one of many unfortunately slippery spots on the tree and his grip failed, his paws swinging for a branch too late. Looking on in disbelief, he slowly slid down his achingly slow progress until eventually the tree cut its friction entirely and he tumbled the last few meters down right onto his backside with a thud, burying his tail beneath. "Ouch," he complained softly, rubbing the pain away with a wince. "I guess it just isn't happening then." He stood up to turn away and try something else when something small and hard followed after him and struck the center of his forehead. Thankfully, it wasn't very heavy. Picking up the round thing from the snow beneath him to better observe it, he noticed an orange shimmer locked behind the thick clump of solid ice. It was a fruit! His hungry little mouth was already watering at the prospect of getting to finally eat something, but Ori knew he had to disappoint it, at least initially. The fruit was frozen enough to have the consistency of a rock, while his jaws were far too pitiful for harder nuts as it was. Although he was aware of such facts, he couldn't help but give it a quick bite anyway.
It was a poor decision. His small teeth that were only ever intended for the soft peels of fruits and the occasional vegetable when he was feeling it met with the strong, stony barrier. Ori flinched at how cold the ice was, letting out a muffled moan of pain and distress at the hardness of the fruit. Worse however was his small tongues attempt to lick the ice away. A stinging pain at the tip of his tongue as though the ice had latched onto it with fangs let him know it was stuck. The only thing left to do was pull it off, at first gently but next with enormous strength. It hurt, but eventually his tongue freed itself with a final tear that made his eyes water. Shaking his head to regain control, he set a deep glare at the frozen fruit in his paws, trying to find a way to melt the ice. He really needed something to eat, and there was a fruit right there!
Blinking at the cold object already stabbing his paws with icy agony, he tried a third option and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, confident that his body heat would eventually melt the ice and free the food for him. It was far colder than he was warm, sadly, and even with narrowed eyes and a desperate resistance against spitting it back out, he had to. All he'd managed to do was cover the crystal in a thick coating of disgusting saliva and give him some rather painful ice crystals lining the sides of his mouth. Sniffing and wiping his tears away on the fur of his arm, he gave up. "It's no use," he mumbled, "I'll have to keep it until I can warm it up somehow." Nevertheless, he resolved to keep the frozen bundle next to his mouth, letting his breath run over its surface in gusts.
Nearly an hour had passed since he had picked up the fruit, and it felt like his paws had nearly frozen off his arms as he struggled through the endless ice-cold landscape. The fruit helped cement the fact that climbing trees wasn't an option, and he was forced to drag himself across the top of the deep snow, sinking up until the snow was hard enough to support him. Worse, he was nearly certain that snow had fallen since he had woken up, and it really was just building up that quickly. "If it's just going to fall that fast, I may as well wait here and soon the tops of the trees will come to me!" he laughed darkly. He was nearly at the end of his already limited reserves of strength, but there was nothing else to do other than move forward and hope his situation might improve through sheer luck.
"We need you, Ori…"
That was certainly a change, hearing strange voices echo through his ears. The voice didn't quite feel normal, like it hadn't come from his environment but rather from… inside, if that made sense. Specifically, inside his head. He wasn't quite sure if it was a change he liked, but heck, he'd take anything at this point. "Who… are you?"
The voice seemed to ignore his question as it kept communicating with him.
"We are in danger, Ori."
Although he was sure this was the first time he had ever heard whomever was speaking's voice, it held a strange familiarity. It was as though he had heard them far before his own time, feeling so long ago as to have never have happened at all. The whispering began to guide him with a gentle, imperceptible force that moved him all the same in a direction he hadn't chosen on his own. Even such, he couldn't help but feel his destination, whatever it was, would be coming into view soon.
Moving along, his breath had finally managed to warm up the ice and free the encased fruit. Mind you, it was still icy cold, but he couldn't wait any longer and so he greedily munched the fruit with abandon. It was hard and his little teeth hurt, yet he did not care. The satisfaction of finally eating something solid surpassed any pain from his mouth, his stomach nearly having given up hope earlier rapidly capitalizing on anything it could get. Wolfing down the last bite, the little spirit gave a sigh of exhaustion, though not unpleasantly. "Thank you," he said weakly. "That felt… good." He was too tired to work more on his vernacular, however woefully inadequate it was. Even so, he had no time to lose, whoever had helped him both knew him and needed his in return. With new strength, he continued along the white path through the forest.
…
He couldn't quite pinpoint when it had happened, but a strange darkness had somehow snuck up on him and covered every aspect of his environment. The sound of wind had vanished, one moment there and gone the next. In fact, every sound that had surrounded him before, not that there really were any other than his footsteps and breathing, had disappeared entirely. In their place eldritch noises of some twisted version of wind took their place. And, just if it hadn't been enough for him, Ori felt watched in every direction he turned, some evil force steadily approaching him.
"Can't imagine anything good coming out of something this creepy…," he whispered to himself, constantly looking around for danger of any kind. His heartbeat climbed with every step he took as he unconsciously carefully calculated every move he made like light steps would make everything go away. "Of course it had t—" Ori silenced immediately. He could have sworn something had just moved not twenty steps ahead of him. Was it the person with the voice that had spoken to him earlier? No, he was never that lucky. It was those lifeless, ghost-like spirits without a modicum of self-preservation again, and they were closing their distance. Strange whispers like the ones he had heard before spread through the environment, and even though the spirits kept their mouths clamped shut, the voices found their origins somewhere in their vicinity.
He'd seen these before, and so without hesitation the child summoned his sword. However, unlike before where these creatures had swarmed him like angry pugilists, his new opponents created their own weapons out of nowhere, with none of the movements Ori usually did with his. Eyes widening, he took one careful step back as his sword slunk down to his hips, curling behind his back just a bit. A deeper stance than he was accustomed to fighting in. He quickly remembered Kiri's words back from the more advanced lessons he'd been put though: "If whomever you're fighting manages to be a tad intimidating or if the number of opponents is too high for you to handle, go into the deeper stance. It's not meant for fighting in, but it's great for dodging and escaping an intense situation as quickly as possible, which should always be your first priority in those cases." Ori disregarded that last bit, he didn't plan to flee at all. His eyes were full of determination to reach the Spirit Tree, no matter what it took.
There he stood still. Careful and patient, waiting for the first sudden movement to lash out while his head slowly scanned the area and made sure there wasn't any threat coming for his back while it was exposed. The emotionless spirits slowly drew closer, until suddenly and simultaneously breaking into a high-speed charge straight at him. Ori took a sharp breath in fear, but he was more than prepared for it. The first spirit ran right at him, no fancy turns or dodges, the peak of their weapon pointed forward like a spear. All Ori had to do was take a quick step to the side and a swipe up at the weapon from the bottom, and it was flung into the air, useless. He wasted no time while it was there to spin around his axis and use raw strength to slice his opponent in two. No sooner than he had finished did he have to roll forward, the next spirit having jumped into the air to crash their sword into the ground. The move was a poor one, and left its user exposed and stuck for far too long to avoid the blade ramming into his throat. Not losing track of what might happen next, Ori's gaze was transfixed on a gray-white bush. He was already expecting the one that flew out of it and impaled it on the peak of his blade, his strike catching their weapon to spin around their wrist before coming back into the soft flesh of their torso.
The enemies were no match for Ori's rather impressive combat abilities, but with every attack he deflected, every swing he made through air, flesh, and bone, he could feel how his strength faded. "Wha— what's happening to me?" he asked himself, breathing heavier than he would normally. Usually he was still quite capable of going even after multiple hours of training, but at the moment he felt as though he might just fall asleep on the spot. "I feel… so very… dizzy…" This was no time to rest, he was in a combat zone! The next wave of attackers had already announced themselves as they leapt from the bushes, and this time there were more than twice as many as before. "How would it be that there are so many of you?" he weakly asked, not expecting an answer. His eyes widened further as he came to another realization. "I can't fight an army!"
With what little strength he had left, he needed a plan, quickly. In desperation, he tried to climb one of trees surrounding him; he had no chance against so many of the false spirits.
Suddenly, he heard a deep cry from the foggy horizon, followed by an earthshaking thud from behind him. The powerful quake shook his flimsy grip and tumbled the child into the snow for a sixth time.
From upside-down in the snow, he couldn't quite tell what it was. A tall silhouette, at least twice as big as the false spirits it killed, spinning around and flinging their clearly mutual enemies in every which way. No matter how many came to attack them, the figure countered their numerous attack and struck them back with fatal blows. Thousands of crystals crushed into dust, or at least more than Ori could count later, they had defeated the whole gang of false spirits.
Still lying on the snow and nearly unconscious, Ori's heartbeat rose to panic levels as the being looked in his direction and approached him with thundering steps. As it came closer, he could tell what they were. It was a spirit twice as tall as he was!
The powerful being closed their distance to Ori even more, their aura threatening and spelling certain doom for Ori if he couldn't somehow escape right now. "Only one left. What are these things?" asked a manly voice, boredom of all things entering the tone after such a ridiculous display of power. Although Ori could tell that this spirit really was one of his kind, it didn't seem like the understanding was mutual. The large spirit hefted his weapon, it looked as though he was about to attack Ori as well! "How could it be that such a lovely island be reduced to invasions by such terrible darkness?"
What? Ori tried to use his voice, but try as he might, he couldn't emit even a peep in return. With the bigger spirit approaching him he scrambled back, still unable to stand straight. His expression morphed into a combination of panic and fear as he rose his right paw and internally pleaded for his life. "Something's strange about this one," the voice critiqued. Was he somehow familiar with the false ones? How many had he fought off before? How was Ori supposed to know? At this point, the only thing he knew for sure was that he needed to escape this situation somehow, but for the life of him he couldn't think of a way to do it. He felt weaker and weaker with every breath he took, and he couldn't even beg for his life as his voice shut off right as he needed it. All he could do was stare deeply into the eyes of what made itself out to be a warrior and hope he got the message. That he even cared.
Clearly he did, as the giant hammer with which the larger spirit had dominated in battle with disappeared from his paws as he knelt down, his eyes still a little higher than Ori's. "Are you… scared, little one?" Although Ori was more than a little irritated by the complete dismissal of any danger from the larger spirit, relief that he might actually survive drowned it out completely. The child gave him a weak nod, and the spirit before him gave a sigh of relief himself. "Wonderful. You can't possibly imagine how glad I am that there are still living ones among the dead on this island." It was getting harder for Ori to follow along with his words, and he felt an exhaustion like he had never felt before growing along his whole body as his eyes nearly fell shut from the weight of what felt like not sleeping for days on end.
"You need to get out of here. Come with me."
His words seemed to echo hundreds of times in Ori's head, distorting off to weird places he'd never imagined. His mind was rapidly shutting down, drifting into unconsciousness despite the situation. With his whole body numb, he almost didn't notice the snow approaching his face until it blacked his view completely.
"Let me help. I'll carry you."
And here we finally are. The next chapter. You've waited long enough. I really hope, you enjoy it, as it took the most time until now and is currenty the longest of the series.
Thank you for your patience. For those who thought that this project will shut down, I will never cancel this story. No matter how long it takes, no matter what comes into my way in rl, I will write this story until the end. Though, I had to learn that a story is never good rushed. A chapter like this one just will take longer than a few weeks to make, including the editing process and the polishing.
So, be sure that the next chapter and every other will come, I just can't tell when it's done.
Thank you for following our story.
I wish you a great day.