The Frosted Files:Open Eyes

// Chapter 11 \\

    Have you ever held a candle in a pitch black room, watching the light barely dance across the surfaces you could barely distinguish? The way the light shifts and moves, barely touching the edges of furniture, hardly flashing off the glass and stone around you. And you walk around this dark room, your tiny, tiny candle flame held close, staying along the path you know is safe, just from muscle memory from many many times running into tables and chairs, and suddenly you hit a wall, find a doorframe, and next to the doorframe is some strange lever, maybe a centimeter protruding from the wall, facing slightly down.
    Alexi opening the amulet for me was like flipping that switch on, the light flaring into being and blinding you, the ceiling fan spinning and flinging papers everywhere, extinguishing your little candle flame.
    When I made contact with the blue energy, I felt the cold of Winter itself chill my hand down to the bones, and I pulled it in, the energy flowing up along my arm in the blink of an eye.
    Winter, the Unseelie Cohort, possesses a powerful magic bound in nature itself. I used that magic and loopedit around the chains binding my arms together, and felt them freeze. My skin stuck to them, but that hardly mattered - after a few moments, I strained against the chain and they broke.
    Locke had started to turn to face me, pistol following his eyes. The burn of the amulet flared, and I kicked him in the back before he could fully turn, and the Winter magic along my arm surged down and out. Locke went flying back, frost forming along the floor beneath him as he flew back and hit the wall.
    "You should know by now, Locke, that you'll never beat me. And you know why that is?" I asked, starting forward. I sensed more than felt the big Russian, Matvey, start running toward me, and acted on instinct, raising a hand and making a fist. Another surge of magic left me, and I staggered, almost falling, and looked to my side. Matvey was enclosed in a large hand made of ice, the same blue energy swirling and mixing with his orange smoke.
    The base of my skull tingled, and I half-fell, half-leapt to the side as the report of my revolver sounded again. I tried to send out a burst of magic, but the blue swirls around my limbs tightened painfully. Guess we'll have to do this the old fashioned way.
    I got up, dodging another shot, and started toward Locke, feeling a small amount of the Winter magic flow into my legs, giving me a small speed boost.
    "Because I'm Fate fucking Frost."
    I threw a right hook into his jaw, his confusion still clear on his face, and felt a tooth break out through his cheek skin. I followed up with a left to the gut, and he doubled over, nearly dropping the gun.
    He took me by surprise with an uppercut, though, and I fell back, blood welling in my mouth. Touche.
    I leaned up and saw him raise the gun again, and I raised my own hand in defence; not for the shield rings I had now embedded in my nanotech hand, but because I could still see the line connecting my hand and the large ice one holding Matvey.
    Locke stalled, looking between Matvey and me. Then he made the mistake of pulling the trigger.
    I closed my fist, and I heard the sickening crunch of bone and flesh at the same time the gun sounded. The shot went wide, and I tried to get up, but slipped on a red substance I really did not want to look at, and fell onto my chest. The gun sounded again, missed again, and I pulled up the blue-green shield, holding it over my head. I felt another shot hit it, and then Locke cursed.
    I could have modified my gun to hold more than six shots, sure. But I never needed more than six, and if I did, I had my tech.
    So Locke fumbled for bullets, and I got up and ran to him, driving a shoulder into his chest, into the wall. I heard something else crack, and backed up, letting him fall down.
    The amulet was slowly pulsing now, pale purple light barely escaping. I could try another magical approach, since he seemed to be mostly ignorant to that, and I had some level of know-how.
    I held out my tech hand, and called upon the heat around me.
    See, when it comes to magic, physics still applies. Usually, at least. To move air, you need enough energy to push it. To liquify earth, you needed to pull that water and energy from somewhere else.
    And to make fire, you needed heat.
    I pulled heat from the Matvey soup, from the room, from Locke himself, and a purple-blue fire started to form along my fingertips, barely visible. I pushed some magic into it, not the blue Winter energy, but the purple-ish mist I just now noticed floating around me. I pushed that into my hand, into the spell, and the flames grew brighter, bigger.
    Plunging the hand onto Locke's throat, I began to squeeze.
    Fire does wonders against flesh. It did not, unfortunately, smell like bacon though, and I gagged, nearly puking.
    As I pushed my face to the side, Locke pushed a thumb into my eye. I yelled, letting go of his neck, and yanked his arm away, throwing him behind me and into the Matvey soup. He slid a little, and I heard him gag as he tried to get up. The fire in my hand had died when Locke had tried to blind me, unfortunately, so I turned towards him and started going at him again, although a bit slower. I was tired and in pain, and the magic use was taking a toll on me.
    He stood in the middle of the room, and I flipped a hand up, as if I was throwing a ball underhand. The effort it took was a lot more than usual, but I felt a small ball of force fly out and hit him, sending him back a few feet. He kept his balance though, and finally got a few bullets into the gun.
    I raised my arm to bring the shield up, and felt a bullet tear through my shoulder.
    I let out a short yell before biting it off, grinding my teeth. That bastard shot me with my own gun, and actually hit.
    The blue energy was still wrapped around me, and as I was heavily breathing, I felt some flow in my nose.
    Things started to feel a little off, but not in a bad way. It was like I had popped a full pack of spearmint gum and chugged an ice cold bottle of water, but to all my senses, and it was absolutely amazing.
    I took a deep breath as Locke started to stand, and felt a lot better, bloody mouth or not.
    The shield sprang into life again, in front of me, and I pushed it against Locke. The shield, a quarter-dome usually shaped like the very popular star-spangled comic book hero's shield, was now inverted, according to my will, cupping towards Locke. The bottom of the shield ended at his knees.
    Oh well.
    I began to push.
    I don't know why, to be honest. I don't know what drove me to try to kill him in this way, other than it felt right. Locke had put me and my loved ones through entirely too much pain, and I wanted his death to be dragged out until he begged to be killed.
    He started to scream as the shield pressed into him. I heard one of his knees snap, but he managed to get the other up into the shield. I kept pushing, and I heard flesh start to rend, the meaty tear drowned out by Locke's annoying screaming. Gods, it was loud. I pushed harder, further, and he started to run out of space; he could only take half breaths now, because that was all his lungs could expand.
    And I exhaled, a dark purple mist flowing from my nose and blocking my vision for a moment. I stopped pushing, standing still as my head started to feel heavy again, as my senses started to warm up and thaw.
    I blinked, and saw Locke barely able to breathe, and pulled away. The shield died, and I grabbed Locke by the collar of his shirt.
    He looked me in the eyes, fear dancing across the windows to his soul, inviting me in.
    That feeling you get when you're trying to sleep, and feel like you're falling; that's how entering Locke's head felt.
    When I landed, spread eagle on my stomach, I groaned and looked around.
    It was a dark alleyway, a single streetlight off to the side giving some light. A refrigerator box sat on its side beside a dumpster, occasionally shifting, occasionally letting out a small groan that sounded like a young-ish kid.
    The alley had something off about it, but I couldn't place a finger on it, so I approached the box.
    I looked down at my hands, hoping for the nanotech prosthetic so I could flip on a flashlight, but to no luck, only seeing the blue-tinted skin I had seen previously.
    After my eyes adjusted, I looked into the box, and saw a bundle of clothes, blankets maybe, huddled in the corner. The bundle shivered, and the groans came from it, so I reached over and pulled.
    The kid yelled, his voice high, and I narrowly avoided a knife to the hand. I pulled away, and the kid leapt out of the box, his rusty kitchen knife in hand. He looked a lot like Locke, nearly too much so - the same hair, in the same style, the same nose, the same scar on his lip.
    That was odd. The scar on his lip had faded years ago - he had gotten it during a drinking game in college, back when we were considered friends. He certainly hadn't had it as a child.
    I slowly crouched, and held my hands out in surrender, to show I was no threat. The kid was breathing heavily, and I noticed a small stuffed panda under his non-knife arm, worn and torn but carefully repaired with love.
    The eyes on this kid were wrong, though. They looked a little too large, a little too bright. Blue isn't usually a bright colour when it comes to eyes, not bright in the sense that I could see the individual lines along his iris, but his were, and I could.
    This kid wasn't Locke.
    So then who was he?
    The kid still had the knife pointed at me, threats whispered under his breath.
    "Easy, buddy, I'm no threat. Look, I haven't got anything." I showed my hands, pulling the sleeves up of my strange mind cloak.
    The kid slowly lowered the knife, hesitant. He started to come forward, slowly.
    A loud noise out in the main street startled him, and he ran back into the box, curling up under the clothes.
    I huffed a sigh and turned towards the main street, and started walking out. As I got to the entrance of the alley, I ran face-first into an invisible wall.
    My eyes began to water, and I clutched my nose, whispering swears under my breath.
    "What the fuck is this?" I reach out, and slowly touch the invisible wall.
    It pulsed with energy, some strange, static feeling magic.
    Turning to go back to the kid, I caught a knife to the chest.
    Wait, that wasn't supposed to happen.
    I still had a hand on the wall, and I felt it lurch into my arm, and everything started to rewind, as if someone had hit the button on a remote. I jerked my hand away, now facing away from the wall, and saw the kid quietly trying to sneak up on me, knife ready. He saw me, and ran back to the box.
    "That was... strange."
    I started towards the box, tripped, and fell out of Locke's mind.
    He yelled, louder than ever, and tried to pull away from me, scrambling back into a corner of the room. Terror, pure, undiluted fear showed on his face, in his eyes, through his body. The greenish energy around him was darker, just like the wet spot on his jeans, and swirling faster, more sporadic.
    The amulet was burning, nearly searing my skin through my shirt.
    I blinked, and my mind started to go foggy again. The light was dimming.
    I opened the door.
    "Get out. Leave. Never, ever, ever, show your fucking face in my town again, or I'll send it to your mother in a box, next to your dick."
    Locke scrambled up and out, spilling on Matvey on his way, face planting hard. As he got up and ran out, I grabbed my pistol, and slammed the door, leaning back on the wall beside it.
    Closing my eyes, I let out a sigh, and slid down the wall. The amulet fully shut off, and I couldn't see the magical energies anymore.
    I didn't feel good, both physically and mentally. This situation kept getting worse and worse, stranger and stranger. What had I gotten myself into?
    I held my head in my hand for a moment longer, and I heard a knock on the door. It opened, and I felt someone sit next to me. Looking over, I saw Destiny looking at me curiously.
    "Hey buddy. How'd your mission go?" I asked, forcing a smile.
    "Successful, boss. Enemy neutralized non-lethally, efficiently, and on a mass scale. How did yours go?" They tilted their head.
    I grunted. "Well enough, I suppose. I'm alive, and Locke's on his way out of my town, tail between his legs."
    Destiny said nothing, but leaned over and hugged me. I leaned into it, knowing this was just their way of re-joining my tech system. As if on cue, I felt Destiny begin to dissolve, melting back into my tech's hiding places.
    "Destiny, bud, before you go."
    "Yes, boss?"
    "Stay active for a bit. Rejoin, but stay alert. I need a moment to rest my mind."
    "Sure thing boss. I'll be here."
    They fully slid away, leaving me physically alone.
    Not for long, it seemed. I didn't hear anything open, break, or shatter, but Destiny whispered to me through the tech; She seems nice.
    I looked up to see a red lady standing above me, leaning down to look at me, a wide smile showing off very sharp canines on her face.
    Her black and white hair, full streaks of one or the other flowing from her head to roughly waist length, was pulled back, showing off a set of white horns that curled up and back, but mostly up. She was dressed like a pirate, an actual pirate, not a slutty modern version of a female shipmate - leather and thick brown clothes, belts, boots, and plenty of jewelry. She had just put something in her pocket, and held a hand out to me.
    "Hi, nice to meet you, half-blood."
    It took me a second to realize that this was not, in fact, a hallucination based on stress. Destiny saw her, which means-
    "Holy shit, a demon!" I tried to dive to the side, resulting in me now laying sideways pretty much where I was before.
    "That's not nice," she said with a pout, straightening up. "I was just thinking, 'hey, maybe the oh-so-wonderful Fate Frost may need a helping hand, what with all that wild magic being thrown around', but no, you're just as much of a prick as they say."
    I had no comeback to that, so I just stared.
    After a moment, she laughed a little. "I'm just joking. C'mon, let's get a drink. I know a good place," she winked at me.
    I stood unsteadily, and she grabbed my hand, and suddenly we were zipping through the city, blinking in and out of places faster than one could actually blink. Within a few moments, we were in a bar that looked well kept, lots of warm woods and leather.
    The man behind the bar, a curly haired, darker skinned kid, maybe Italian roots, was polishing a glass and did not look phased whatsoever to our sudden appearance.
    However, he looked up at me and rolled his eyes.
    "Karma, I told you to stay safe, and you bring the wild magic slinger back to my bar? Thin ice, miss, thin ice." And he went back to his glass.
    I looked her over. "So, Karma, the teleporting demon, where are we?"
    She smiled at me, and patted a seat at the bar before taking one next to it. "McAlister's Bar, West side of Arbitrium."
    "West side... we crossed the entire town?"
    "Sure did. Sit."
    I sat. If she could teleport like that, I'd hate to see what she could do with ill intent.
    Thief hopped up onto the bartop. I dunno how he got here, but here he was. I absentmindedly scratched at his plant material, receiving the wood chipper pur.
    "Your familiar is nice." Karma said, holding a handful of sunflower seeds out to Thief. I don't know where she got them, but the little plant cat started happily munching away.
    "Familiar?"
    Karma looked up at me and blinked. "Oh, buddy, did you not retain any of that information that amulet gave you?"
    I huffed out a breath and crossed my arms.
    She started to smile. "You totally didn't!" She laughed.
    "Oh, shut it, demon. Tell me, what's a familiar? I mean, I'm familiar with the term, but how does that work?"
    "Not a demon, firstly, and secondly, fuck off, meanie."
    I blinked at her.
    "Excuse me?"
    "Fuck. Off. Meanie."
    I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose, taking my glasses off for a moment.
    Lucky for me, Alister, the bartender and supposed owner of this place, as his nametag read, was listening in. "With you two specifically, either your soul rubbed off on hers, or hers on yours. Some folk are born with a familiar, some are made, and some are found, like with you two." He said, nodding between me and Thief.
    I thought back to when I was inside Thief's head, and the sickening hellfire chain bound in the tree. How the tree had soothed the pain and healed the burns, both mine and the cats.
    "Wait, 'her'? How can you tell?"
    Both of them were quiet for a moment, before Karma started to giggle again.
    Alister set his glass down. "Frost, buddy, do you see a vine dick on the cat? No? It's a girl."
    I felt my ears start to burn as Karma started fully laughing. Thief was purring, still enjoying her treat.
    "Yeah, well, whatever. It's not like I'm a herbalist. Zoologist? What would the science even be for this little fucker?"
    Now Alister started to let out a little chuckle, the surprisingly deep-voiced kid lowering his head and holding a hand over his mouth. I had two magically savvy people laughing at me, while my cat sat here eating sunflower seeds.
    "Okay, okay, Frost, let's make a deal, okay?" Karma said between the chuckles of her dying laughter.
    "I don't deal with demons, sorry sweetheart." I crossed my arms. To be honest, I didn't care if she was a demon or not, I was just a tad pissed at being laughed at.
    She pulled a little vial of dark red liquid out from her pocket, holding it up.
    "I have your blood, dumbass. Think of the stories, the folk tales. Think of what I could do with this, Frost. Either you hear me out, or I have a little fun later tonight." She smiled, but it held none of its usual warmth, instead promising burning flames and pain, laced with mischief.
    I rolled my eyes, but held out a hand. "Fine, fine, let's talk, demon."
    "Not a demon, but deal." She took my hand.