Fear and Hunger

Towering high above the clouds, something watched Gerhart and Ryllis, looking down at them like ants. Something ancient. Something that predated creation itself.

And it was patient. Unmoving. It waited for the knight and the girl to approach. When they finally left the arctic woods and passed by a frozen ravine, Ryllis felt its presence.

Sitting on top of Huey, the comfort she felt from her friend’s furry back was replaced with an ominous sense of dread. Like insects crawling under her skin. Her eyes darted around, looking for the source of the unease.

The pond of ice beside her was rock solid, hiding nothing beneath its surface. As was the frozen waterfall that formed a pillar of frost stretching up the jagged cliff face. But when her gaze finally landed above the cliff, she made eye contact with it. The cause of her consternation. Merely looking at it petrified the air in her lungs.

Eyes innumerable. Twitching. Neither open nor closed. They were spread out across an immense ring-like edifice supported by a foundation of stone. The ring’s monumental breadth was beyond comprehension. Only the bottom quarter of it was visible; the rest was obscured by fog and mist, held back by the sky.

Given the titanic size of the structure, Ryllis’s fragile mind failed to fathom it. Its existence defied the laws of physics. It was an architectural impossibility. It was not just big. It was...wrong.

Her human intelligence worked against her; the soft brain and its synapses were crushed by the weight of imagination. It wounded her mind to visualize its true scale—scraping the edge of the cosmos itself. But the size of the structure was only scratching the surface of the mental anguish the girl faced. It was the fact that it was alive.

The eyes of the edifice, each one stretching as large as a building, belonged to a creature whose name was not yet known. Avian. Squid-like. Something in between, but neither one nor the other. The eyes rotated in their sockets, hinges of connective tissue fused into the stone of the ring-like structure.

But its eyes, in all its involuntary behavior, were unreadable. The window to its soul was shut. It was not hostile, amiable, or detached. It simply was.

“I’ve warned you not to look at it,” Gerhart addressed the hyperventilating girl, standing in front of her to block her view of the megalith.

Ryllis felt the oxygen in her lungs decrystallizing. Her veins unclogged, blood flowing once more. Sensing her distress, Huey stretched its neck, reaching behind to nuzzle her, offering comfort for the disquietude in her soul. With the support around her, she quickly calmed down.

“S-Sorry,” she apologized. “You said it’s some kind of demonic portal, but you didn’t say it looked like that. Just what is that…thing…”

“A gateway to the Frozen Hells. That’s all you should know,” his answer was curt. “If you ever feel afraid—”

“Close your eyes,” she repeated his earlier advice.

“Good.”

He did not wish to burden her with the entire truth. The fact that winter was not a natural occurrence in the world.

That snow was brought about by the existence of that very portal.

Older than the world itself, the portal only appeared thousands of years ago when the first demons made landfall. Forged in the gelid pits of the Frozen Hells, its arrival brought about an apocalyptic ice age, an era when demons ruled the known lands. Over time, the world warmed and the cycle of seasons became what it is today. Humanity returned from the brink of extinction, but the north remained a permanent polar wasteland, known to all as the demon realm.

Even though the primordial demons have long since perished, the portal stands, despite the many attempts to destroy it. Gerhart even remembered the Hero attempting to level it with a meteor. The cryovolcanic ore of the edifice, a material that originated in the Frozen Hells, was unscathed. Its countless eyes did not even blink.

While the entrance to the Frozen Hells has been locked for centuries, its eyes continued to watch its surroundings. Its reason for doing so forgotten, relegated to the annals of history. And for Gerhart and Ryllis, they would go past its watchful glance, putting the unnerving sensation behind them.

But as the cliffs faded out of sight, leading them to a canyon, a new sensation emerged. A grumble—originating from within Ryllis. As the sound escaped her belly, a flush of red rose to her cheeks.

“W-Wow, it sure is windy here, isn’t it?” she forced a chuckle, trying to mask the embarrassing noise with a lie.

With the air in the canyon stagnant, shielded from the harsher winds above, she did not fool anyone. Especially Gerhart.

“Let us take a break here,” he suggested, sparing her the shame.

The girl quickly got off her mount, resting by a nearby alcove in the rock face. Taking out a pouch from her bag, she began to snack on the crowberries and rose hips inside. The tangy flavor of the fruits swirled in her mouth, reminding her of the time she spent with the tribe.

While she found enjoyment from her meal, the knight was less than pleased.

Looking at the Amarok pup lazing by her side, he instructed, “Tell your dog to hunt.”

“His name is Huey!”

“Tell it to hunt.”

“He’s…just a puppy,” she patted the head of the gargantuan puppy as she tried to feed it a berry. But Huey did not react; it did not even recognize that tiny speck as food at all.

“Then how would you sustain it? With magic?”

She recalled how the tribe’s mages would gather regularly to pool their mana together, offering it to the demon dog in a spectacle of shimmering scarlet. The air glowing, humming a comforting, albeit ghastly tune. For high-rank demons like the Amarok to maintain their physical bodies, they either fed off offerings of mana…

Or the death and destruction they caused.

“I didn’t know Huey was coming…”

“You’re evading responsibility,” Gerhart pointed out, restraining himself from adopting a parental tone.

“I-I’m sure it’ll all work out! Right, Huey?”

The dog had a quizzical look on its face. While it may be unable to understand human speech, it was perceptive. It could read its master’s expression like a book, sensing her hope. Her hesitation. Her self-doubt.

The knight sighed, a cloud of cold wind funneling out of the gaps in his helm. He had to remind himself that his travel partner was just a child. A Hero, supposedly. But lacking the wisdom of one.

Unable to bear her naivety any further, he unsheathed his misericorde. The schwing of his blade pierced through the air with a high-pitched scream, causing the hairs on Ryllis’s neck to stand. Her eyes widened. So did Huey’s. The demon dog instantly felt the danger rippling from the knight. It got up, tail tall and stiff as a tree, voicing its warning with a bark.

But Gerhart cared not for their protests. He stabbed himself in the gap above his couter, the plate protecting his elbow. Maroon gushed out of his upper arm, bathing his dagger in a sanguine shower. Ryllis dropped her pouch of berries, covering her mouth in shock. It was a distressing sight for her.

But even more so for Huey. Drawn to the scent of blood, its primal urges roared from the depths of its soul. Yet, its mind fought back against its feral nature. It knew it was no match for the Gore Knight; attacking him now would lead to a repeat of the result of their battle yesterday. And so, in stopping itself from starting a fight right in front of it, a war was waged within. A war between instinct and intelligence.

The knight held out his weapon inches away from Huey’s snout. Delicious liquid dripped from the tip of the blade to the surface of the snow. The demon dog growled, gnashing its teeth as it forced its jaws shut, refusing to let its tongue out to lick the forbidden nectar.

Gerhart and Huey did not budge, both parties unflinching as an uncomfortable tension tied the two of them together, taut as a tightrope, about to snap any second. Ryllis froze. Wanting to look away, yet unable to do so. Her heart raced. Muscles tensed. Words unable to escape the vice in her throat.

All she could do was watch.

After a few seconds that lasted an eternity, the knight moved the bloody blade away from the nose of the pup, pointing the weapon further down the canyon.

“Make yourself useful,” he commanded, voice resonating like the military commander he was in the past. Like thunder shattering the language barrier. Gerhart communicated his intent perfectly to the demon dog.

Huey charged off deeper into the canyon. It disappeared in a blink, whisked away by its blistering speed. The scent of corrupted blood lingered in its nose. In its mind. An invisible beacon guiding it to its prey.

“Huey!” Ryllis cried out. “Why did you do that?!”

“I’m teaching it a lesson. To survive.”

“You’re scaring him! Don’t you see how afraid he is?!”

“Yes.”

The knight slowly walked toward the girl, casting a colossal shadow over her, painting the ice-white cliff black.

“And if it means teaching the same lesson, I won’t hesitate to put the same fear into you.”