Using the strands like a makeshift elevator, I was pulled upward.
[User has entered: Arena of Frost]
'An arena?' I questioned as I closed my eyes as streams of frigid air crossed against body from above.
It stung and tingled.
My body began to freeze. Shards of ice crystallized on top of my body - drying slowly as water began to be drawn out as it built up.
A jolt.
I felt my ascent slow as my shell hit a wall and I rocked to a halt.
Opening my eyes, I looked at my body.
'It's cold.' I thought.
Wiggling my body, I watched as the chunks of ice that had covered my foot break off and fall down the hole below me.
I turned my head.
"Sim are you alright?" I called out. I glanced backward while realizing that I was still mute and he was still deaf.
Through the fibres that my shell was stuck against, I saw his body. Huddled against my shell, he poked two eyes out and stared at me and waved.
He was fine.
Gesturing with my eyes, I told him to free my shell from the webbing.
Not wasting any time, I looked around at the new room that we had arrived in. Dangling against a wall near the ceiling, I was able to see the entirety of the room. It was a giant cube. White-walled, the room seemed to be made completely out of the same material as the corridor I had just ascended from.
But one thing was definitely different.
White mist.
Mist streamed across the floor of the room like someone was adding dry ice to water nearby. Streaming in from the ceiling above, the mist looked like white serpents as they slithered across the floor. Like they were looking for something, they merged, crossed and twisted together into stormy waves of mist.
Finally, as if they found what they were looking for, they dived down headfirst through the hole that I had come from.
'We have to be careful.' I thought. 'It's likely the thing Sim saw is hiding within the white shroud.'
Diligently, I didn't waste any time and scanned the room for any hint of grey that the beast that Sim had described to me.
'Nothing.'
Nothing jutted out or seemed out of place. There was only white. A white expanse. Or the Labyrinth of White which was definitely aptly named...
Suddenly, I felt my body drop as I swung down and forwards.
Sim had freed me from the wall.
As I gently rocked, I turned back and signalled to Sim that I was about to move.
Turning back forward, I looked for a placed to drop to.
'I don't want to remain hanging and become the perfect target for the grey-white coloured creature.'
There was only one way forward and that was into the room. Taking a chance, I held on tightly to the fibres that were still attached to my foot.
Like on moving back and forth on a swing, I shifted my weight back and forth. I needed great precision. I didn't want to get stuck on the wall once more.
But just as I had that thought, my body struck something.
The wall! The wall that Sim had just freed me from.
'Dammit.' I thought internally.
Like a droplet of water hitting a placid surface of a calm lake, my impact against the wall spread throughout the room as the entire room vibrated.
'If it didn't know I was here, it definitely knows now.' I thought to myself.
Quickly, I gestured to Sim to try to release me once more as I looked around vigilantly for signs of the creature.
'Nothing in the mist.' I thought as I rotated my head around and looked at the walls. 'Nothing. on the wall either. It seems like it didn't notice...'
'Or maybe it's not even in the room anymore?'
But my speculation was soon confirmed to be false as I felt the wall behind my body shake. I felt waves of vibrations hit me as my body reverberated with it.
Quickly glancing around, I looked for the source of the movement.
I titled my head upwards at Sim.
"Sim hurry up." I gestured while I confirmed it wasn't him.
I looked around for traces of grey, a movement, something.
Another vibration hit my body as my body shook and bounced with the current.
'It's below me!' I thought as I quickly looked downwards.
I caught the edge of something.
A hint of grey.
Quickly, I shifted my head up and looked at Sim. Knowing what I was indicating to him he replied.
"I'm going as fast as I can!"
Looking down once more, I looked and waited for the familiar flash of grey.
'Please don't be it.' I prayed.
But it was.
Seconds later, I saw an appendage poke out from the wall two shell-lengths below me.
Sharp-tipped, grey and covered in tiny hairs it poked out from within the deep fibres. Intriguingly without breaking the strands, it seemed to pluck them like finger-picking a melody on a guitar.
The filaments of the wall vibrated. And me with it.
'It's using vibrations to find us!' I concluded.
Seconds later, it moved.
Its body, creating a lump on the other side of the wall shifted upward towards us at a fast pace.
'It's coming!' I thought as I took in a deep breath.
Shifting radically, I felt the wall bounce as it moved.
I felt it.
Crawling from behind the wall my shell was stuck to, I felt it pause and stop.
My heart dropped.
'It's on the other side.' I thought as I could almost feel its heart beating as the filaments moved ever-so-slightly.
Bump. Bump. Bump.
It pounded. It wasn't its heart, but mine.
I dropped. My body dropped.
Surprised, I realized Sim had released us once more from the sticky wall.
A near miss.
As I looked upward, another appendage had shot out through the wall at the place we just were!
I was under the crunch. I knew I couldn't remain dangling once more.
Quickly, I swung back and forth again. Not looking upward anymore, my only thought was to swing and swing carefully.
After a few swings, I built up enough momentum.
Melting through the fibres that kept me aloft with my mucus, I swung forward into fell.
Cold air chilled my body as I fell down and landed on top of a bed of white filaments nearly missing the hole that I had ascended from.
...
What? If the room was made of the white sticky filaments... Why would I jump onto it?
I knew it wasn't sticky. Yup. I knew from the start. I'm a smart snail. Yup. Super intellect told me.
What? How was I that confident?
Because I knew. I knew deep down.
Hmmphh... Okay fine. I didn't know and I just took a chance, okay?
It was called the arena of frost. I knew that "frost" was for the cold. So the arena... the arena must have meant the room itself.
Then I had the thought: 'Why would an arena be an arena if it was sticky?' So, I took a chance and leaped.
It was either that or sit and wait to get attacked like a stupid snail.
Okay fine. I didn't think. I just reacted based on instinct.
Cough... cough...
So continuing with day 21...
It was hard. Like hitting a wall, I felt my body slap against the white floor. It shattered. Taking a gasp of cold air, the mist cleared around me as the floor shattered under my weight.
But I didn't "fall" through as I expected.
I only broke through the layer of ice that had solidified over the filaments below me.
Shards of ice poked into my flesh as I was pulled back upward by the elasticity of the interwoven fibres.
Wincing in pain as I felt the shards slowly melt from the heat of my body, I realized that I was alright.
As the floor beneath me shook from my landing, I quickly I looked around. I was able to see for a brief moment before clouds of white mist begun to cover up my vision.
'It's gone.'
...