The Maid and Her Princess [On Hiatus]

The Horror in the Deep (HotFQ final)

V.

The lift descended straight into hell, Madoka was convinced. Specifically, the hell belonged to the fathomless being encased in an infinite glacier. Its eyes did not move and if she were to stare at them for too long she felt like she would lose herself within them and her soul would be snatched. Both girls hesitated to step on the ice that kept a thin barrier up between the eldritch and their own two feet.

"What do we do?" Audrey mouthed to Madoka. The two observed the ominous being for a moment before noticing the altar. It was similar to the one in the forest. The odd and symmetrical pillars jutted infinitely into the glacier and even pierced the creature's... Madoka did not even know how to describe what it pierced.

It hurt to look at any of it, like a stake being driven through her eye slowly as she observed it. From the distance of the lift, the creature seemed like it was many colors of paint smeared across a flat canvas and depending on the angle it went from blurry to blindingly sharp. If she moved her head and kept her gaze, the shape would warp her perspective inside out. Her vision went black, feeling Audrey's fingers lay across her eyes.

"Stop looking at it," Audrey warned. Madoka remembered the mutilated servants and soldiers in the King's throne room so she heeded the former princess's command. "It's got some kind of cognito-hazard on it. And, yes, that word's meaning is just as unpleasant as it sounds before you ask."

"It's... indescribable," Madoka gasped as the darkness calmed her down. She did not realize she must have been going blue by holding her breath in a horrified suspension. A being so dangerous it could kill with its presence, Madoka had trouble processing that feeling.

"We have no choice but to walk, don't we?" Audrey said. "Please be frozen, please STAY frozen. I know objects appear closer in the ice than where they actually are. Or was that a mirror? Anyways..."

Madoka said nothing but followed Audrey's lead and set one foot on the glacier. She was not sure what would happen but she suddenly wished she was back up on the bridge. It was not like an extra bit of weight upon the ice would wake the creature below them up, right? She gulped as she forced her other foot to move.

"Come on," Audrey spoke. A glow burst from her bag. Ares was speaking to her. "Don't you know what is underneath your precious altar? Why does walking have to be so scary?"

The creature remained still beneath their feet. Madoka still could not bring herself to look. The altar was close. The alien aura from its ruins marched across her skin with a clammy and crawling wind.

"Do you think the thing beneath us is the Frost Queen?" Audrey asked. Was she asking the talisman or me? Madoka wondered.

"Maybe this is the thing that ate the Frost Queen," she mused, staring at the ceiling as they walked. Above her, the spires of the Frost Queen's palace looked like upside down castles. Some were frozen midway in their descent. She sensed that Audrey gave her a dirty look.

"Come on, that's dark even for you, Madoka."

"Just looking at it makes my skin want to crawl off my body," Madoka complained. Their steps crunched against the ice.

"Just a little more, Madoka," Audrey encouraged her maid by squeezing her hand. "Then I can return this library book— I mean talisman to the altar."

"I'd like to ask Ares how its altar ended up here in the first place," Madoka sighed. Her neck began to feel cramped so she forced herself to look ahead at the altar. Between an alien feeling and a soul-rending frozen god, she sighed.

"It's not like you to be so vocal," Audrey commented. "Let's get through this. I know you can—"

「I have been waiting to see you for a long time, Madoka.」