NOVEL NEXT B3 | 58 - Frozen
Light slowly bled from the sky as the sun set further to the west. It shone its orange rays over us, the trees on the other side of the lake casting long shadows that made the water appear almost black. Despite how beautiful a sight it was, all three of the people present were staring at me.
Teddy and Borks, perhaps sensing the danger through our connection, watched the lake’s outwardly calm waters, their hackles raised.
“A monster?” Deklan asked, his eyes flicking to the water before returning to me. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said, mate. There’s a monster down there.”
“Big enough to eat alligator gar?” Maria asked.
“It doesn’t feed on anything,” I replied. “It’s alive but frozen in time, as if it’s hibernating. That’s the sense I got from it, anyway.”
Dom’s face had gone serious. “How big are we talking...?”
I pursed my lips as I thought for a moment, then turned and paced out some steps. When I was around eight meters away, I faced them. “This long.”
“How...” Maria swallowed. “How wide?”
I shrugged and walked back toward them. “The surrounding area is soaked with chi, so I couldn’t tell where the actual body ends.”
“Could you beat it?” she asked in a whisper.
“I think so, but I can’t say for certain...”
As we all stared at the lake, we slipped into a solemn silence. My enhanced mind started working overtime, attempting to understand how such a creature could end up in the middle of a relatively small lake.
The jungle mudminnows, in all their horrifying glory, had come into being because of experimentation by the followers of Ceto. Did that mean the monster was of their creation? Or was it something much older, something they weren’t even aware of? What if their experiments had been an attempt to wake it up?
As I tried to determine how long it had been sequestered here, I recalled the creature’s chi. It was ancient. Its power was indistinguishable from the world’s essence, making me believe it predated this time period and the machinations of Ceto’s followers. With that information added to the equation, one answer leaped out to me.
“I think...” I paused and cleared my dry throat. “I think it’s been here since the power disappeared from the world. The followers of Ceto were active thousands of years ago, right?” The same thoughts ran through my mind. No matter how many times I reconsidered, I reached the same conclusion. “I don’t think this creature, whatever it is, will wake up until more power returns to the world.”
Silence reigned, only broken by a soft wind rustling the leaves above us.
“But if more power does return...?” Maria asked, voicing what everyone was thinking.
I nodded. “Then it will probably wake up.”
I sent my awareness back down below the lake, bypassing the guppies, mudminnows, and alligator gars. The monster’s existence drew me in. Understanding that I’d gleam no more information, I withdrew once more. As I opened my eyes, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“There’s not much point in thinking about it, is there?” Maria asked, resting her head on my shoulder.
“Nope,” I agreed. “It’s a future problem. I don’t see it waking up any time soon.”
She shook her head softly, her hair bouncing against her face. “True as that might be, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself from worrying about it...”
I shot her a grin. “I might have just the thing to keep us occupied.”
“More fishing?” Deklan asked, the prospect snapping him from his introspection.
“No,” I laughed. “Well, not yet, anyway. Let me check something first...” Without another word, I leaped up to the branches of the biggest tree I could see.
“Great,” Maria said. “He’s finally lost his marbles.”
“To be fair, you could argue that I never had any marbles in the first place...” I climbed further up the tree, clinging to it as I poked my head above the canopy. When I spied the giant mountain to the north, I couldn’t help but smile.
That makes things easier... I thought, hopping down to the ground.
Still smiling, I faced the brothers. “So, fellas, have you had a chance to do any carpentry since you arrived in New Tropica...?”
***
“Fischer?” Maria asked from behind me.
“What’s up?”
“Why the frack did you bring a saw with you?”
I turned around from the tree I was cutting, raising an eyebrow at her. “We were camping. What if we needed to cut something?”
“Well, aside from your ability to flick a tree in half, we have Teddy and Borks with us. They could have just cut it down and made lengths of wood the same way that Corporal Claws does...”
“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” I asked.
She squinted at me. I walked over and looped an arm around her back. “I want to saw the wood myself because it’s going to be wet, so we’ll need to rely on the System stepping in and transforming it. I thought the more involved I was, the better.”
“Okay, that makes sense, but I still don’t understand why you brought a damned saw.”
“I’m prepared for any and all situations,” I replied, wiggling my eyebrows at her. “It must be nice to have such a reliable and attractive boyfriend.”
“And humble,” she said, rolling her eyes at me.
“How could I forget?” I bent and kissed her on the forehead, earning a cute little smile from her. I called out to the brothers, who were back beside the lake, “I won’t take long cutting all this.”
“No rush!” Deklan yelled back, not bothering to look my way as he waited for a fish to bite.
Dom was too busy to reply. He pulled up a jungle mudminnow, made a disgusted look when its legs touched him, and swiftly dispatched it.
“It’s kinda handy having resident bait catchers,” Maria said, pulling me into a hug.
“Agreed,” I said, rubbing her back. “I’d better get back to it, otherwise those two will fish up every mudminnow in the lake.”
“Didn’t you say there were thousands?” she asked as we separated.
“Don’t underestimate them.” I nodded toward the brothers, who were both pulling up another mudminnow. “They are fishing machines.”
As I started sawing again, Maria was heading their way, likely going to ensure they didn’t actually pull up every single one of the weird little fish.
A half hour later, I had all the wooden panels ready to go. They were wet, of course, but hopefully that wouldn’t matter.
“What about wheels?” Deklan asked as he and his brother stared down at the plans.
I shot him a wink. “I’ll be heavily relying on System shenanigans for those. If that doesn’t work, it won’t take too long to carve some. I just didn’t want to chop down an old tree if I didn’t have to. Don’t give me that look, Borks. It’s because most of the trunk would be wasted, not because I’m lazy.”
When he wagged his tail in response, I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’ve been hanging out with Claws too much.” The wagging only increased.
“Are you sure we need to do this?” Dom asked, scratching the back of his head as he continued studying the sheet.
Deklan gave him an odd look. “What do you mean?”
“Well, can’t we just use Borks’s dimensional space?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Have you smelled how stinky fish can get after a while? What if we can’t clean it out?”
“Oh...”
Borks gave a reassuring bark, making me laugh. “I know you’re not bothered, but you enjoy the smell of stinky fish. I don’t want everything we put in there to come out smelling like week-old eel.”
“Yeah, I’m vetoing that idea, Borks,” Maria said, reaching over to scratch his head as she triple-checked the plans. “Let’s start—wait, did you bring nails?” She asked me. “Or are we using joints?”
“Only someone extremely prepared, intelligent, and astoundingly handsome would go camping and think to bring a hammer and—”
“You brought them,” she interrupted, sighing.
“Ah-huh,” I replied, grinning as I retrieved a leather pouch from my back pocket. “If we all do this together, we might even get lucky and have it count as another group project. Everyone ready?”
“Ready,” they replied.
With Borks and Teddy helping brace wooden panels, the work began. We were a well-oiled machine, putting the project together in no time at all. As I picked up the last piece of wood, I focused on my intention. Planting it firmly in mind, I put the wood in place. Everyone reached out and touched it, and I could feel their wills extending and joining with mine.
I was getting used to the act of shaping people’s wills as we made things together. With my enhanced awareness of chi, it was only natural that I slip into the role of support, assisting others to reach their fullest potential. This time, though, I found myself mostly unneeded. I still had to chip in and mold the brothers’ essence a little. Maria, Teddy, and Borks, however...
Their intentions were perfect.
They’d been a little scattered at first, but as they felt my will, their chi readjusted. It was astounding, and after only a moment of consideration, I realized why they were so capable.
It was because of our experience yesterday, when our souls were connected as one. They had a bone-deep understanding of me, just as I understood them. Something about that bonding had made our joined crafting capabilities much, much more potent.
With our wills pouring out into the surrounding world, it happened. Power swelled from the ground, whirled around us, and rushed in toward the two wooden structures. We’d built the lid first and set it against a tree, but as the chi seeped into it, the large piece blurred. In the blink of a cultivator’s eye, it melded with the base.
Power came from all of our cores, oozing into the wood and distorting it. It blurred, bulged, then snapped back into place. As I blinked rapidly, taking in the completed project, a smile spread over my countenance.
Just as planned, four wheels had appeared from thin air. They were as large as a wagon’s, meaning they could easily traverse uneven terrain. They were attached to a base the size of a, well... it was also the size of a wagon. That’s where the similarities to one ended, however. Its sides were short, only a meter or so tall. Now that I looked for something to compare it to, it reminded me of the pop-up campers people seemed so fond of back on Earth.
I stepped forward, running a hand over the wood. The panels were no longer visible, the entire body having transformed into a single structure as if it was carved from a giant tree. The lid was joined to the top somehow, and half worrying that it had sealed, I lifted it. The heavy lid came up slowly, the pieces fitting snugly together.
As I stared down into the space of my mobile esky, I laughed. “It’s perfect!”
“So the fish go in here?” Deklan asked, running his hand along the bottom of it.
“Exactly.”
“Won’t they go bad in here, too?” Dom scrunched up his face. “If this gets in the sun, it’s effectively an oven... right?”
“They could go bad, but you’re missing a vital piece of information.”
I’d only told Maria the rest of my plan, and we both shared a grin as confusion colored everyone else’s features.
“If you’ll join me,” I said, leaping up to the top of a tree.
A moment later, all of our heads poked above the canopy.
“See that mountain toward the—”
A sharp crack split the late afternoon air.
Because of our enhanced cognition, we all turned in time to see the look of sheer terror on Teddy’s face. With his ears pinned back and the whites of his eyes showing, he seemed to plead for help.
Like the moment you lean a little too far back on a chair and begin to fall, Teddy well knew that he was at gravity’s mercy. After what was only a moment but must have felt like an eternity for my newest pal, his head disappeared from sight, plunging below the canopy.
There was a loud thump when he hit the forest floor, immediately overshadowed by our raucous laughter. Teddy’s ears were still pinned back when he returned to the treetops, choosing a thicker branch this time.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, abashment radiating from his core.
Seeking to change the subject, I pointed at the northern mountain once more. “What do you all see?”
“A mountain?” Deklan answered. “I don’t see—ohhhh!”
“What?” Dom demanded, his head darting back and forth. “What is it?”
I grinned. “What color is it?”
“It’s white, but what does that—Oh! It’s covered in snow!”
“That’s right, mate. And chunks of ice, if we’re lucky.”
I pointed down toward the ground, where our makeshift esky on wheels sat.
“We haven’t made an oven, fellas. We’ve made a fridge.”