"WHERE DID SHE GO!?" Fishy had to shout as the storm was raging above them, angry at Fishy's magic that dispelled it earlier, returning fiercer than before.
"I don't know?!"
Ziu tried to act calmly, looking and feeling the walls of the concrete, trying to listen in to any vibrations that he might be able to uncover, but the storm just drowned out any noise he could hope to hear.
"We've got to go in…"
"We have no other choice!" Fishy charged into the building Clara was last seen at. Trampling down the steel door as he ran in wielding his short sword that reflected his white hair into the snow that piled up behind them. They stepped into the building that was as bare on the inside as it was the outside. The thick bland concrete walls trapped everything inside. There was one room with no privacy, no bed, no way to make food, nothing. Even the door's cold steel was sealed as tightly as possible, or at least it was before Fishy broke it.
Fishy looked around and saw a family of four hiding in the corner, surrounding Clara who had her hood and clothes ripped apart.
"You bastards!" Fishy and Ziu angrily attempted to jump towards them, only to be stopped by Clara who blasted them back with a pulse of freezing water magic.
"Don't misunderstand things," Clara said as she approached the soaked intruders. "They weren't hurting me."
"Well… good thing you stopped us. But what about your clothes and our hypothermia?"
"They said they were cold so I gave them some of my clothes. I've got a repair kid on me so I can fix it."
Fishy looked towards the family that consisted of two parents and several kids that were hidden in their arms behind them. Cowering in fear at the two strangers from outside that barged in.
"I'm sorry…" Fishy apologised and turned to the door behind him that he broke down but was quickly replaced with a wall of snow from the storm, doing his job for him. "I fixed the door…"
After calming down and shovelling out the snow quicker than the storm could bring it back in, Fishy and Ziu sat down on the cold concrete floor next to Clara who held a small child in her arms. Rocking him back and forth as she wrapped him tightly in her clothes whilst he twirled with her pink frozen hair.
"Are we going to get an explanation?"
"Oh!" Clara remembered what she was doing. "These guys are part of one of the outer cities. They have no way of getting food or water and have to live off what they are given by the Tanban empire. I've told them we don't have anything on us."
"We are looking for a way to get into the capital." Fishy turned his attention to the oldest one, a skinny man whose bones could be clearly seen through the number of holes in his damaged brown cloth that he wore over his upper body. The man glared at Fishy as if he was insane and tried not to laugh in his face.
"No sane man would want to go to the capital." He said in a rigid voice. "You'll die before getting in there."
Fishy didn't take no for an answer and asked him again.
"Sadly we don't have a choice. Take us to the capital."
The man scoffed as he lifted his finger, pointing to the door that Fishy had recently repaired.
"Keep walking that way and you'll get to the wall. We'll await your return."
Fishy and Ziu picked up their things and stormed out the house with Clara quickly following behind when she put the kid down. They continued to drag themselves through the blizzard hoping that they were still walking in a straight line. They looked back but could no longer see the house they were just in. It disappeared as if it was an illusion created to try and save them from the madness. But, as they kept walking, the blizzard opened up as if it was the similar magic that Fishy used earlier to disperse it.
They looked into the open area that they had taken their first step into on fresh snow. A giant concrete wall hundreds of feet tall loomed over them, blocking their path. With the wall in front of them, they turned around to see the entrance back into the blizzard. A large white field of snow as if it was being halted by magic, unable to enter this region with only tiny particles breaking through.
Fishy approached the wall, asking, "How do we get in?"
He rested his hand against it but quickly pulled it away from the cold isolated surface of the wall. However, it was not because of the wall that made him retreat, but because of an object buzzing past his ear and landing in the snow next to him, quicker than he could see. He looked down to the small cylindrical indent in the snow below them and looked up to see where it came from.
"Um… Fishy…"
Looking down on the three of them were several guards, all pointing magical weapons that looked as if they were rifles taken from Fishy's world. The guards that wielded them were wrapped in dark fuzzy coats and hats that protected them from the sheer cold, as well as their faces which couldn't be seen by anyone below.
"Why is there a gun in this world?" Fishy said to himself as he sheepishly stepped back from the wall with his hands up.
"It's a magical weapon," Clara explained. "We should leave. We don't want to anger them."
Their vacation from the blizzard was only temporary, as they quickly had to jump back into the demon's cold breath that tried to rip them apart.
"We knew you'd be back." The same man said as he welcomed the others into his house, having placed a few sheets of paper down for them to all sit on. "How was it? Did you get shot?"
"Nearly…" Said Fishy as he attempted to defrost the broken shards of wood that they found in the house, hoping to use them to create a small fire.
"It's no surprise they shot you. You can enter through the front gate but they don't want you to enter. This was a warning."
"How do you survive?" Ziu asked.
"We get given food and water to last a week. They give the same amount to everyone regardless of family size. We are the largest family here, the four of us."
"No one will help each other." The woman, who the others could only assume was the wife, spoke. "The supplies we get are enough for 2 people. We are the only family that still has all its members… and even then…"
The wife spoke as the pain was brought back to her mind. Fishy looked at her and the situation around them, unsure of what truly was happening in this part of the world.
"Cannibalism," Ziu spoke, as if out of turn. "It's not pretty but that's what happens. I've heard stories from some of the knights who heard rumours."
"You're kidding, right?" Fishy couldn't believe what he had just heard, but the isolated and sunken expressions confirmed it. As if they were guilty of a crime they couldn't but commit.
"We can still hear the screams sometimes. The first night it happened. The blizzard couldn't drown it out. We tried to go on for as long as we could... but it just..."
Clara was unable to listen to any more. She darted up and walked into a corner with the youngest son that was so fond of her before. Walking over to a crib that housed a new addition to the 'family'. A small girl who looked as if she was only just born the other week with an innocent smile, unaware of her situation and her potential end. But it was just enough to calm down Clara's sickness that climbed in her stomach, but it couldn't stop the tears that fell from her face.
"How she was born is a mystery…" A voice spoke inside Fishy's mind, only for him to repeat it out loud as if he had thought it.
"How she was born is a mystery…"
"Tanba is still in a civil war. They may not fight, but this is the war." The wife spoke, looking after her smiling daughter in the crib. "The west was left to die whilst the east continued to rise. But even then, it's not as glorious as it once was."