secretofthefox: (question)
Sol ☼ Thomas "Tan" Moore ([personal profile] secretofthefox) wrote2016-07-04 02:33 pm

Memory 48

Neutral Trivial: the core of Ice
Won: Day 226
Game: story of a girl

Summary
This starts right after Memory 36, after Tan and Fiere have noped out of talking with Alex because the guy's kind of a (crazy) jerk.

Tan isn't really paying much attention to where he's walking through the hallways of the cathedral, though he doesn't bother with any stairs. He's just super pissed off and ranting at the walls about how Alex is an asshole who dares to claim that murderous rampages are a good thing ever, though in many more words than that and possibly even with some fruity language involved. Half of the ranting is because he is that pissed. The other half is to keep himself from starting to cry.

Fiere follows, his temper significantly less flared up (as always) but not trying to calm Tan down. In fact, he agrees with every one of Tan's points, and as far as he's concerned, Tan has every right to be mad at Alex. Fiere is mad too, after all.

He stops, however, when something crunches under his feet. A thin sheet of ice, like one that might form over a puddle when it's cold enough for everything to freeze, but hasn't been cold for very long. And then he actually takes a look at his surroundings, and...

"...Fiere?"

"Yeah?"

"All of the ice melted when Jess died, right?"

"Yeah...?"

"Then... What's this?"

In front of him, practically covering the wall, is a large crystalline structure, made entirely of ice. It's taller than he is, and probably as thick as he is tall, and protruding haphazardly every which way in a manner that only natural fractals can create. Its mere presence has the ground frozen around it.

Within the ice, black wisps of Null are trapped, to the point where the natural sparkle of the ice is dulled considerably. But looking past the Null... It's hard to see what, but there's something trapped within. Something that looks like it might be organic.

"I'll go get Jennie," Fiere says, knowing instantly what his human is thinking. "Be careful, okay? It looks like a lot."

"I will."

And after Fiere runs off to retrace his steps back to the group, Tan flexes his arms a little, says a quick invocation for flames that will burn the Null and melt the ice but not harm anything else, and looses a golden flame over the crystal. It's difficult, more difficult than he was hoping. It's loud, with the screeching noise the trapped Null makes as it burns. A little painful, too, as little bits of Null try to get past his flames (but they can't get past the flames within him, not this way). But while there's something trying to keep this ice here, it's weaker than Jess was, so he does manage to melt it eventually.

When it's melted into a puddle on the floor, he actually goes down on one knee to catch his breath, because gosh. But what had been hidden in the ice is a white bear, probably a polar bear, but are those supposed to be that small? It's the size of a mid-sized dog, yes, but bears are usually bigger, aren't they...?

Jennie comes in, getting halfway through asking what's going on before seeing the bear and running up to it, immediately using the melted water around it to start the healing process. (If she thinks something can be done to save it, it's alive, isn't it...) Norbert and Rena also come in, wondering what's going on (and, you know, not against the concept of making sure Tan is okay). Fiere returns after all of them, tail idly swishing.

"Is that...?"

"I think it is."

Considering the difficulty of melting the ice, he'd be more surprised if this wasn't Jess' spirit companion.


What He Learns
☼ Character introduction: the bear (no name given)
☼ Alex is still an ass.
☼ but that matters less than suddenly ice
☼ everything should have melted when Jess died
☼ but here is a large ice crystal
☼ that is trapping a lot of Null
☼ and also trapping (protecting?) a bear
☼ he melts the ice and burns the Null away
☼ that takes a lot out of him but he does it
☼ the bear is probably Jess' spirit companion
☼ or at least that would explain why the ice was there, and so hard to melt
☼ the bear is probably alive
☼ ...that explains why Jess' spirit companion was MIA, but leads to further questions


Notes
Mac is kind of a runt. But no one really minds all that much.