Chapter 122: Pale One (2)
After the sparring, the female Frost Giant would walk beside the Pale One often.
They explored together, climbing the jagged ridges that bordered the realm, crossing bridges of ice that glowed faintly from within.
The Pale One saw where the world’s edge met a sea of frozen mist, where strange lights moved beneath the surface like creatures sleeping under glass.
Sometimes, when the pale one stopped to watch them, she would reach out and touch his arm. When he looked at her wordlessly, curious about the lands beyond, she pointed toward the horizon where a faint orange shimmer burned.
The land of fire.
He went alone at first.
The transition was gradual, with the white frost fading, and then smooth stone streaked with veins of ember light started to appear. The air was warm with steam rising up from the cracks where orange light glowed. If the ice beings were to come over here, they would melt like last time, but the fire didn’t melt the pale one.
The heat wrapped around him strangely, but it didn’t harm him.
The pale one ventured deeper, until the ground became a landscape of fire rivers and half-formed stone entities. They moved sluggishly, like creatures dreaming of movement, and when the pale one touched it, the rocks trembled before going silent.
The pale one looked around as it felt everything around here was more aggressive and faster than the frosty lands. When he closed his eyes, he could see vast networks of orange veins that stretched beneath the entire fire realm.
And he further saw the orange veins meeting blue veins, smashing into each other and halting in the middle.
But they were intertwined in a strange balance that didn’t break.
When the Pale One returned, the frost giants gathered around and looked at him with curiosity. While the female came last, stepping lightly between them, her form catching reflections from the glowing crystals in the ice.
The Pale One told her through gestures what he’d seen, leading her eyes to widen, and she reached to trace a line across his bronze arm, as though to feel the warmth that still lingered there.
From then on, they worked together.
They built massive structures of glacial towers of ice and orange light that caught the faint glow of the horizon. The giants shaped ice while pale beings traced crimson light through their forms, binding them with strange strength.
The constructs shined with energy and seemed to illuminate the area around with the giants roaring out.
The female was always near.
At times, she would hum softly, a low frequency that trembled through the ice, and he would match it, their sounds blending in the frozen air.
When they stood close, the frost between them would soften, becoming mist for just a second before freezing again.
The others noticed, but their gazes carried only quiet understanding.
Over time, their bond deepened.
When he sparred now, it was always with her. Reinhard noted their movements had changed, becoming less like battle and more like dance, maybe even communication.
Sometimes, when exhaustion took them, they would simply stop and stand amid the glittering remains of their duel. She would rest her massive hand against his back, the gesture gentle despite her strength. He would lean into it slightly, and a rare patience overtook him.
They never spoke words, but the silence between them said everything.
The world around them continued to change.
Frost structures reached higher while the towering cow continued licking the ice and wandered the horizon. The smaller ice beings continued to mimic their creators more intricately and build tiny constructs of their own.
And one day, when the pale being and the female giant stood upon a ridge overlooking all they had built, she turned toward him and pressed her forehead against his. The air shimmered where their forms met, frost and light merging for an instant into a single pulse.
A warmth spread outward, faint and golden, rippling across the frozen plains. The giants below paused, the towering frost giant glanced at them with a tilt of its head, and even the cow lifted its head before staring gently at them.
In that moment, Reinhard felt something ache inside him. The emotion wasn’t his, and yet it was, it filled the dream and made him stare at the duo with emotions he could recognize yet not recognize at the same time.
And then everything froze.
Before it all shattered and faded into darkness.
...
Reinhard woke with a sharp breath, his heart pounding like he had been running for miles. His eyes opened to darkness, to the dim blue of early dawn bleeding through the window. For a moment, he didn’t move, and then let out a groan as he brought his hands to his face.
He rubbed his face, feeling the sweat on his skin, and his fingers trembled slightly. "...Again."
Reinhard could still see it all when he closed his eyes. The cracking ice, the pale figure with long white hair and glowing red eyes, the frost giants standing around him in silent welcome. That strange world of endless ice and quiet creation.
He sat up slowly, pressing a hand to his forehead. "So after the frost giants... and that massive cow... now comes the Pale One."
The being had been unlike any of the others.
It was small but not weaker, and it seemed to be able to walk in the frozen world, albeit not as well as the giant. He was able to withstand the blows of the other frost giants and even ventured into the fire realm without melting.
Reinhard frowned as he recalled the way the pale one had walked among rivers of molten light and burning stone, but didn’t melt. The frost giants couldn’t have done that, as last time they would melt, and even the towering Frost Giant was affected.
But this one could walk through the land of fire and still live in the land of frost.
Reinhard leaned back in the bed as he stared up at the ceiling. "Maybe... He’s the bridge between them or something created from the clash of ice and fire, like that towering Frost Giant, and then frozen like the cow."
Or maybe he was made by the land of frost?
Reinhard remembered the moment that being had emerged from the ice, the bronze hands, the crimson veins, the eyes that glowed like living embers. He didn’t seem created the way the others were. The frost giant’s small kin had come from its sweat, the cow had come from the melting frost, but this new figure. The Pale One seemed as if it were created by the land of frost for some reason.
Reinhard exhaled slowly, the realization leaving a strange ache in his chest.
"Could that be where the other races were sealed in the ice as well? The towering cow was, and now the Pale One." Reinhard muttered.
He turned the idea over in his mind as he thought about the frost realm a bit more. It was at first filled with only ice and snow, but then the cow itself was something new. Then, with the cow licking away the ice, something new had been freed, and maybe that was the key.
Maybe the cow wasn’t just licking the ice for food, but it was uncovering.
Could it be that those things always existed and were just frozen? Reinhard thought as he realized the frost realm seemed to have always existed when he first started the dream.
"What if there are more? More like the pale one and the cow, trapped under the ice... Waiting." Reinhard whispered.
He could see it now in the endless fields of frost, the great cow moving slowly and its tongue licking away layer after layer of ice. Then it reveals what lay buried since the beginning. The pale being might’ve been only the first, and perhaps that creature’s endless work was not about nourishment at all, but awakening.
"Odin... Is that what you wanted me to see? Will you too be like the Pale One and the Cow? A being frozen in ice and waiting to be awakened?"
There was no answer, only the faint hum of morning wind through the cracks in the walls. Yet the silence seemed heavy, almost expectant.
Reinhard looked toward the window again. The light outside had grown brighter, but the color of it reminded him too much of that frozen world.
Reinhard sighed to himself before he glanced at the clock to see it was 6:00 AM and then moved his head back on the bed.
Before closing his eyes once more.