Nothing but White

Nothing but white. 

Every direction Orna turned, all that she saw was an endless emptiness devoid of color or hope. The snow was so thick, funneling through the air so pervasively, she may as well have been blind. Sight had become a hindrance, her eyes growing strained as she attempted to peer through the veil of infinite icy shards that spiraled and danced with a mania that made vision an impossibility. Hearing had also failed her, the howling gusts of wind removing any possibility of her words escaping the void she was trapped within. Nothing but the laughter of the snow as it assaulted her from every angle reached her ears, and they burned as the chilling horde of violent crystals tore at her flesh in a flurry.

First, she had turned red, numbed by the cold. The burning came after, every movement a tortuous reminder for her impending fate, of the horrible inevitability that nature had designed for her. Her body had become a burden, a tomb that trapped her soul in a singular spot on the frozen land that held her hostage. Beyond the point of shivering, her energy all but drained completely, she slowly dropped to the ground and onto her knees as her eyes closed shut and froze tight, accepting her destiny as the assailing white overwhelmed the last of her will power.

“That's it? This is how you want to go out?” 

The voice was familiar, an echo of the past in her final moments. More mockery as she slipped into the embrace of something far darker and absolute than the snow that piled around her.

“Ignoring me, huh? I came all the way here to save you, and you're ignoring me. How predictable.”

A spark of annoyance from within her started a chain reaction that cascaded into a flaming rage, igniting her last shred of willpower as she broke the icy binding from her eyelids to glare at the entity that decided to take her last moments of peaceful surrender and turn them sour. “What do you want?” Orna asked, her words immediately stolen by the wailing storm, her throat hoarse from the single attempt as crystals of ice shot down into her mouth with each word.

The prevailing whiteness was no longer all encompassing, the outline of a person stood in front of her. Formed of pure emerald light, sparks of green electricity jumping across its exterior as it crouched down to Orna’s level. The only features on the viridian mannequin of energy were eyes of empty black, voids into the unknown reaches of the abyss, and a matching smile of cruel onyx. The inky grin twisted into a frown of disappointment as it reached out in Orna’s direction. The sparks played across her skin, sending her into spasms of vitality, a few more grains in the hourglass.

“What I always want. I want you to live,” the specter replied as it stood once more. With its hand outstretched, Orna stared up at it indignantly. “Or you can die here. You can give up and let this triviality consume you as it has so many others already.”

Orna let the words linger in her mind for an eternity condensed into seconds, her hand instinctively ascending to grasp her warped rescuer. The two linked, the green jolts of the entity sending a second wind throughout her entirety. As she stood again, the elements did everything in their power to bring her low once more, to no avail.

“Smart decision. A rarity from you,” the entity said, releasing its grasp on her arm. “The snow is the most minimal concern now. If we continue forward, we won't be going alone. Though you already know that, don't you?”

Closing one eye, the ice was swift to reseal it with a layer of frost, and her lips were too cracked and numb to produce the words necessary to commune with the spectral entity. Instead, she shuffled forward with as much speed as she could muster, which was pitifully less than what she would require to escape the two-pronged assault of nature and the unseen enemies which roamed the fields around her.

“Close your eyes,” the phantom whispered, somehow its words coming in clear and crisp to her frostbitten ears. “Reach out and follow the sensation of my presence. Whatever you do, don't become distracted. Focus only on me, and nothing else.” 

The last sight she would see before casting herself into the thrall of her evergreen savior was the obtuse obsidian smile of the cruel-natured entity that she had no choice but to place all her faith in. Still, with the only other option being to join the myriad corpses underneath layers of snow, forgotten and preserved for eternity, she had nothing to lose by following the directives of her unexpected guide, no matter how unsettling it was.

All of Orna’s senses honed in on the haunting figure, and even with her eyes closed she could make out the green outline and kept it at the center of her thoughts. The two moved with as much speed as her body would allow, each step bringing her closer to her knees once again. A seed of desire had been planted while she was at her lowest, and every second she squeezed from life added sustenance, forcing that seed to grow into something superior. Springing forth from her weakness and surrender was a mighty desire to survive, to advance beyond the limitations of the flesh and the omnipotence of the storm. 

“Good. Hold onto that feeling,” the entity said, its voice echoing throughout her head. “Everything around us wants you to die, wants to see you crumble. Survival here means victory, but it will require more than you’ve ever had to give. Calm your mind, center your body, and ready yourself to do exactly as I say.”

Orna couldn't nod in agreement, or even produce a sound of acknowledgement. All she could do was plant her feet, bare down, and listen past the howling in the void. The sound was becoming so normalized by its consistency and prevalence, that the odd breaks in its pattern were glaring and obvious, as if an instrument in an orchestra was not tuned. From her rear, the deviations in the song became a rhythm of their own, a repeating chorus of something approaching faster and with purpose. She attempted to lick her lips, her tongue burning against the dry and sharp skin around her mouth. The predatory noise was practically upon her, almost so close she could smell the monster breaking through the endless white that allowed her to become easy prey.

“Drop. Now,” Orna’s emerald partner said passively, and she followed the order without thought or question.

She fell into the prone, immediately turning to  thoughts of giving up once again as her body tore itself against the icy shards and felt the relief of relaxing on the snowy ground that would become her grave. A horrendous snarl split the air, a noise that cut through the screaming snow and her own thoughts. A monstrous body hit the ice, skidding in front of her, but with her eyes closed she could only see her partner’s aura ahead. The sound of the creature as it pivoted cut through the wailing storm,  as it readied itself for another pass at her while she laid helpless on the ground, her elbows locked and unable to assist her in rising or rolling from the impending danger.

The entity cavalierly strolled over to Orna and crouched down, its umbral smile and leering eyes watching her squirm with amusement. “It won't stop until you're dead, just like the others. You can't beat it, can't kill it, all you can do is outrun it. Well, maybe you can't.” Offering its glowing hand again, Orna took it as the beast’s footsteps approached her with increased speed and enhanced bloodlust. “Don't stop moving until the wind is behind us.”

Heart pounding and body aching, Orna flew forward with more speed and force than she thought she was capable of, the electric energy from her ethereal ally sending jolts of renewed power throughout her body on the verge of death. Her legs broke from the fatigue and tightness, bolting forward as countless horrors dove in her direction from the unimaginable regions beyond her eyelids. 

Focusing entirely on the monochrome form in front of her, Orna emulated each and every maneuver she witnessed without fail. Dodging, spinning, lunging, jumping. She performed each task with an effortlessness that would have shocked her if she had the time or energy to process what she was managing to do. Her hands brushed the leathery flesh of one of her assailants, almost enough to break her from her laser focus, but not quite. The seed within had bloomed into a thorny flower of craven desire to do more than survive the encounter. She intended to live, and to have her revenge against everyone and everything that led her to the precipice of her own demise.

Aside from the beasts in the storm, there was the constant obstacle of the snow. The icy blades cut at her flesh with increased desperation as she fled to the edge of their kingdom of white. Each slice hardened Orna’s resolve, each slash strengthened her resolve. As the wounds increased, and as her tunnel vision narrowed, she lost herself in a metamorphosis. The viridian phantom ahead of her shafted as her pain increased. From the generalized form of a humanoid, to something more resembling a woman of familiar shape and size. Each step forward, brought the entity backwards until the two were practically overlapping. With each monster avoided, with every sliver of ice that bombarded her, Orna lost sight of the green vision more. Before she could comprehend what was happening, she was no longer following anything or anyone, instead she was maneuvering on her own, the voice of the specter still coming from within her head. The voice was her own, as it had always been. Her lips split open again as she smiled the obtuse grin of the green ghost that had leered down at her. The pain had forced her to forget herself, and with her identity restored, she couldn't lose.

The windy howl was growing more desperate, the craven beasts were lessening as Orna pushed her body past the realm of human and into the territory of something more. Something beyond definition. The light of her specter fully vanished from her field of vision as the cacophony of raging noises ceased altogether. Orna stopped in her tracks, the pain returning one-thousand fold as it caught up to her and sent her on her knees again. Unlike the last time, there was no snow cutting at her flesh, no predators charging from the void, no overwhelming sensory overload. There was only her haggard breathing, and her racing thoughts.

“Open your eyes,” Orna said, the voice coming from her throat was guttural and familiar. As she obeyed the command, using her hands to pry her iced eyelids open, she bore witness to the fruits of her hard earned freedom. The area ahead of her was a body of water that was iced over, so expansive that she couldn't see how far it went in any direction. She could see what laid at the end of it, far ahead and out of reach. A crystalline tower of silver that lorded over the region and cast reflected sunlight down with wild abandon. It hurt her eyes to look directly into the spire, the final test that awaited her if she could force herself to rise to the challenge. 

Looking down, her hands glowed with the same emerald light that had made up the core of her guide through the stormy region behind her. The shadow of the contained snowstorm she had escaped loomed overhead, a wall of whiteness that rose too far in the air for her to see beyond, cast over the ice fields and blocked the sun from warming her chilled body. The dark figures of the quadrupedal beasts stalked the edges back and forth as they bemoaned the loss of potential prey. Still, Orna’s emerald glow simmered just over her skin, the electric pulses of her own viridian soul ensured she could press on for the fight to come., the last tribulation quickly fading into memory as she turned from the haunting visages to her rear.

The sound of another body popping from the bubble of winter sent her attention to her right. A woman fell to her knees in the shadowy snow, heaving and choking as she punched at the ground with an aura of bright crimson cloaking her entirety. All the way down the coast of the frozen lake, more individuals sporting an aura that existed across the color spectrum, were making their way to the last tribulation, and entering the next gauntlet. The ice was covered with people making their way across the miles of emptiness towards the argent sepulcher in the distance.

“All right, let's do this,” Orna said adamantly, forcing herself to stand, even as her body begged her to stay down. The woman she was before the storm had died in the snow, and the person she was becoming wouldn't be complete until she crossed the daunting field in front of her. As she stepped forward, a monstrous leviathan sprang from the ice, a monstrosity of scales and fangs with a maw that easily consumed a group of a dozen souls that had made it halfway across, and diving back into the waters beneath. Not even a second later, the ice reformed, sealing the schism created by the horrors that swam beneath the semi-translucent ground. The shadows of the abominations moved back and forth, a constant reminder of the perils of continuing. “This is it.”

With her soul realigned within her body, the emerald spark driving her forward, she set her hardened gaze on the horizon, breathed in, and stepped out onto the ice. As the cracks shot out from her footfall, and the creatures took notice of her intense aura, she trekked on with a newfound determination. Never ripping her emerald eyes from the tower in the distance, she pushed on with clenched fists and a hard heart. For Orna, the trials were only just beginning.