I was swimming in the black void of nothingness. I felt nothing for a while. It could have been minutes or days, I couldn't tell. All I could feel was an overwhelming coldness encasing me, holding me tightly. I tried moving, opening my mouth, shouting, but my body didn't respond. I could not feel my limbs, or any part of myself, like detaching my consciousness from reality.
Having nothing to do, I tried recollecting my memories, but they felt very distant and hazy around the edges. Gathering all the information I could felt like trying to hold freezing water in my hands. After who knows how long, I started remembering details about who I was and why I was in this state.
My name is Eli Ross, I just graduated high school, and planned on going to a science university. I always loved science, especially space, but due to my innate curiosity, I absorbed as many useless science facts as I could. I could easily grasp concepts, and once I understood how something worked, I could always remember.
I had a father who raised me alone, as my mother passed away when I was very young. My dad was very strict, but I knew he loved me, and I loved him too. He was always there for me. An image flashed into my mind; his face drenched in terror as he burst into a blue haze that came toward me. His expression burned into my nonfunctioning retinas, and my stomach crumpled up from the terror and worry.
What happened exactly? I tried prying my inner eyes away from the scene and focusing on anything else to distract myself. I tried waking myself up, multiple times in numerous ways but nothing helped. So, I just drifted along quietly in the black inky nothingness while also feeling completely entombed.
Then after what felt like an eternity, the blackness vibrated slightly, and a blurred flickering dot of light pierced through. Excited by something breaking the boredom, I tried concentrating on the sensation of seeing something and tried out my other senses as well. In the distance, a dull and quiet voice called out impatiently.
" -long is this gonna take? It's bloody cold down here." His voice came distorted and distant as if his voice came from a very old radio. Although he was whining, the deep baritone still radiated confidence.
"He's almost out. Is the xin really coming from that scrawny kid? I've never even seen a beast with this much leakage." There are at least two of them, I thought, still on my mission to collect as much data as I could to better understand my situation.
"He is the source, no question about it. It's weird, but I guess with this much power he could've easily frozen himself in this cave." The third voice was higher, so I guess the source was a woman. So, I was frozen? The blue glow from my father… According to my very limited knowledge of hypothermia and freezing, this will not be a fun ride.
Suddenly I felt warmth in my legs (my legs, I felt my legs!), spreading out like hot lava as it got hotter and hotter. As I slowly regained my senses, pain flooded my brain as every cell in my system felt like thousands of glowing hot needles piercing them. As time went on, something slowly burned me, it just got worse and worse.
I screamed, but of course, nothing came out as my body was still frozen from my belly button and up. After what felt like hours of pure agony, I felt the ice around me give, and I crumbled to the ground. I groaned, then took a very shaky painful breath, barely a sip of oxygen, as much as my lungs let me. My mouth was filled with dry cotton balls, even breathing was excruciating. I heard a low rhythmic hum as my blood began slowly circulating again, sharp sand flowing and scraping in my veins.
After a few more small mouthfuls of air, I tried to open my eyes. I met with the now familiar but very unwelcome prickling feeling, as my sandpaper-like eyelids slowly parted, scraping my eyeballs. A spark of light pierced my eyes, so I closed them reflexively, which sent another stab of pain to them.
I was grabbed by strong and steady hands and laid on something soft which I imagined was a blanket of some sort. I wanted to tell them to stop trying to heat me like a frozen pizza and do it more slowly so I don't die from the pain, but I still couldn't speak, only animalistic groans escaped my body.
"Don't try to move, you're still half frozen. I honestly have no idea how you're still alive," the girl snapped at me.
Me neither but I was very much still alive, I don't imagine death hurt this bad. I tried to move my arms slowly, and I heard popping sounds like glass breaking in my muscles. As I said, not fun.
I was wrapped in another layer of blankets and slowly felt some warmth creep into my bones and aching muscles. After a few minutes, when the pain subsided somewhat, I tried opening my eyes again. Adjusting to the brightness of the flickering flame, I could take out three figures standing over me.
One was a hulking tower of muscles, wrapped in loose clothing, a longsword strapped to his waist. What is this, a cosplay event? I could almost laugh at how ridiculous carrying a full-on sword sounded, he looked completely serious though. He had dark greenish hair and a face carved out of marble, but his expression was soft.
Next to him stood a tall slimmer man, who looked a lot more modest. He had a bronze-looking pipe hanging from his mouth, with creases of orange dim light glowing in the side of its bowl. As he observed me, he slowly let out puffs of fragrant white smoke. He was almost completely bald, with a circle of grey hair surrounding his head like a crown.
The girl looked the weirdest among the three figures. She had deep crimson-colored hair, which transitioned into a wheat blonde as it fell down her shoulders. It was like she ran out of hair coloring halfway while dying it, however, it somehow looked natural. She also had red eyes, which were almost frightening, but I had to admit they looked cool. She looked so out of place and confident at the same time, it was really confusing. I can't deny however that she looked absolutely stunning. A sight for my sore, frozen-pizza eyes.
We were in a cavern, I could take out the curving concrete roof as if a giant worm dug it out. Next to me was a ginormous glacier, which took up most of the cave. A vaguely human-shaped hole gaped in the middle. That's where I was in? The ice itself looked dirty and ancient, with multiple layers of dust on it.
Shutting my eyes, I lay down in a more comfortable position, resting and healing. As more and more warmth seeped into my body and slowly eased the pain as the cells melted back and started working again, the intense stabbing feeling subsided a bit. Now it only felt like an uncomfortable prickling sensation, as if swimming in a sea of cacti.
I moved my fingers and toes a bit, then slowly worked my way up my body, checking if my muscles worked. When I felt a bit more stable, I sat up. I was dizzy and disoriented, but I started regaining control over my body.
The girl put a bottle to my mouth, and I took a huge sip, immediately choked on it, coughed violently, and tried to throw up but only managed to gag, as my stomach was completely empty. Nice introduction. When I calmed down a bit, I took a small sip this time, fighting the intense thirst. I swirled the water in my mouth, rehydrating my dry tongue then swallowed. It burned down like hard liquor, although I could tell it was pretty cold.
"Thanks," I said finally. My voice sounded like rocks being kicked on concrete, as I hadn't spoken in a very long while. I broke into an intense coughing, and my lungs burned with each breath. When I calmed down, the large man spoke to me.
"You feelin' better, kid?" Now I could even take out a beard that covered his face, tied up in a knot below his chin. I nodded, tried to stand up, and wobbled a bit, he quickly came over to hold my arm until I was stable enough to keep upright on my own. "Careful! Okay I got you. Hey, we haven't even introduced ourselves! I'm Milo. This here with a pipe glued to his mouth is Patrik, and the little she-devil is Tara. Don't let her beauty fool ya, she's a demon inside."
To this, Tara just rolled her eyes but didn't say anything.
"Nice to meet you all. I'm Eli, thanks for taking me out of the ice. Are you with the army? Or some kind of government rescue?" My voice hadn't come back fully, and I managed to add two full-on voice cracks in this short speech. But at least I didn't have a coughing attack this time.
"Not at all. I don't know what you mean by government, we don't really have that here. Tara here tipped us off on a large xin signature underground, so we came prepared to fight, but it was just a kid," Patrik eyed me warily. "It is very curious, however, how a boy your age can have this much xin leak out of him. If I had to guess you have at least twenty layers on your crystal."
"I have no idea what any of that means," I answered the unasked questions simultaneously raising six eyebrows.
"How long have you been down here?" Tara asked me, looking at me intensely.
"I honestly don't know. At least a few weeks. But judging by the state of the station, it could be much more." I felt a wave of worry and uncertainty wash over me. "A massive meteor came down on top of us, and I was trapped here… are they still falling? Is it over?" Suddenly remembering why I was down here. It was one of the last places where we could keep ourselves safe from the apocalypse. Tara's eyes widened and furrowed her reddish brows in confusion.
"It's… over, yes. What is the last thing you remember?" Tara asked me suddenly. It took a moment until I could gather my thoughts and could answer her.
"My father and I took shelter here in the subway with around a hundred other people. We were trying to get as far away from the surface and the meteors as possible."
She was thinking, I could practically hear the cogs in her brain turning. Before she could ask her next question, I started speaking.
"Okay. So... How long ago was the last meteor shower?"
She looked at me almost apologetically. "It was... very long ago. People were struggling to survive so we don't have many records. But it was around 1200 years ago."
My heart sank and I had to sit down, afraid I would give in to nausea that rushed over me. I was down here for more than a millennium? How is that even possible? I was frozen, so I guess my body was preserved... but this was too much time even for that.
"So, you're saying... How did I even survive for this long?" I needed time to process this.
While my internal turmoil boiled, looked at the glacier once again, and in it, I saw another man in the reflection. He vaguely resembled me, and when I got closer to the ice wall, he did as well. I wiped down a layer of dust to get a closer look. The man in the ice dusted off the other side of the reflective surface at the same time, inside the reflection. Our hands were touching, but that was impossible, right? That can't be me.
I didn't have a strong build, or large muscles, but this person looked one step away from a skeleton. His, or I guess my ribs poked through my pale grey skin, as well as every other bone in my body. I had no fat, and just enough muscles to keep me moving somewhat. My hair reached my thighs, and it was pure white. My eye color became white as well, with a small accent of blue. Okay, I can understand the hair-color change, I'm a thousand years old. But I'm pretty sure the color of your eyes doesn't change the older you get. I glanced down to check my body to confirm, and sure enough, I looked horrible. I had to sit back down again.
"That would start to explain the massive xin pool you have, but what we have in the atmosphere as ambient xin still wouldn't be enough for that growth," Patrik said, pipe in his mouth, almost grumbling to himself. "You would have needed a large source of energy nearby. Since you must have used up quite a bit for keeping your body alive as well..."
I couldn't even process what he said. I just sat there, looking into the reflection, with my miserable self looking back, with a lost and confused face. I need to get my shit together.
"We should get out as soon as you can walk, Eli. I'm afraid this place isn't the most structurally sound." Milo warned me, and I agreed. I stood up, trying to keep my balance, when he came over to help me.
I took a few small steps, leaning on Milo, and heard crunching sounds from my muscles. Each movement sent a sharp pain through my legs, frost still scraping against my bones. After a few minutes of "walking", my legs and feet warmed up a bit and I could move a bit more easily.
We reached a set of ancient-looking escalators, half embedded in stone, and covered in dust and rubble. I slowly and clumsily took step after step up the steep stairs of what remained of the escalator. After about a hundred, some boulders blocked the path, and the tunnel took a turn exchanging the dark metal steps for a smoother stone floor. We marched in a line quietly, led by Patrik who held the brass lantern, illuminating the cave walls.
"So, what's xin?" I asked. They all turned toward me curiously, and I could see in their eyes they started to believe me. I felt like an alien.
"It's a power source. It's in the atmosphere, the stones, the plants, humans, and every living being. It gives you abilities to control the world around you, or to strengthen your body."
I started thinking as we started marching again. This was a bit familiar, although it didn't have a name back then. After the first meteors fell, before the power grid went completely offline, and while we still had communications, people were popping up, having strange abilities manifested amongst them. Some could produce fire, freeze or create water, create hurricane-like winds…
We never had the time to thoroughly investigate and research them, but one thing was clear: The cause was the meteors. The people close to impact sites were most affected, as well as weird mutations in plants and animals.
"I have some questions for you as well, old man," Tara said, startling me as I lost my train of thought. "What's a subway?"
"It's an electric train that runs in underground tunnels like these. They transport people. Or rather, transported." I croaked.
"Electric?"
She seemed interested in the past and made sure to thoroughly interrogate me on every little detail. Her expression stayed the same curious but calculating as if sizing me up and constantly thinking of ways to overpower me if I turned against them. I answered all her questions the same way a parent would answer a curious child's every "but why?" question, but my mind was racing. I was still dwelling on the things that happened, and soon the memories of my last moments before being frozen resurfaced.
My father's face, his eyes, and the blue glow that turned me into a glacier. That's how I was saved from the rubble and the house-sized meteor burying its way into the subway. Now I was in a completely different world, that seemed to house some kind of magical power. I don't belong here.
After a few minutes of climbing and answering Tara's questions about the ancient world, we finally reached the surface. The cold fresh air hit me, as I gazed up seeing the moonlight shine through the treetops. This was again a reminder of how much time passed, as the city I used to live in completely disappeared and nature slowly consumed its corpse, turning it back into a forest.
"We should settle down here for the night and move on tomorrow. It has been a long day." Tara seemed to be the leader of the small group, as the two men put down their large bags and started to set up tents.
Patrik sat down, pulled out a small box, and started refilling and cleaning his pipe. He emptied out the ash, cleaned the bowl with a towel and stuffed it with dry leaves of some kind. The orange lines glowed on the side of the bowl as he inhaled the soft white smoke. A soothing herb smell filled the air as he offered me the pipe as well. Since my lungs still felt like they were full of sand, I respectfully declined.
They offered me a tent that Milo was setting up and I graciously accepted. It was a cold night, and I had a lot to process but I wasn't feeling tired at all. Milo set up a few rocks around a pile of dry wood and picked out a metal wire, putting it on top of the pile. Tara then kneeled down next to the pit, put her hands on one of the logs, and it suddenly ignited. Orange sparks flew, the freshly made fire licking the laid down logs. My eyes widened.
"Holy...! Can you use fire magic?" I asked dumbfounded. She held up her hand, a small flame dancing atop her fingers. Now the reality of my situation really started setting in.
"Well, I can create fire, whatever you want to call that. That's how I melted the ice you were in." I could only stare in awe. That's why I was interested in science, arguably the closest thing you can get to magic, without actually using magic. But this was completely different. I felt so overwhelmed, the new information just kept coming in.
"How did you get in the ice? That part still bugs me about this story. Did you freeze yourself?" That was a great question. I turned toward Milo to answer his question.
"Well, it's still hard to remember. But I think my father did it somehow. In the last moments... we heard a huge explosion above us. We didn't even have time to realize what was happening. The ceiling crumbled to dust, and I remember seeing him... It was like he exploded into some kind of a blue light." Suddenly I remembered his terrified expression, knowing he was facing certain death, but still trying to save his son... I cleared my throat and held back my tears. "I think he saved me. Somehow freezing me so the meteor couldn't kill me."
They looked at me with sorrowful expressions. There was no one else in the cave. Only I survived.
"The meteor..." Patrik mumbled; brows furrowed in a thoughtful expression. "If you were the only one left there... Your body probably absorbed all the power from that chunk of pure xin. That could explain it..."
I excused myself, and moved a bit further away into the forest. I needed to process all this, and there were too many people. I remembered the last moments with my father. Losing him hurt much more than being thawed out. Trying to distract myself, looking at the alien scenery, I got lost in the sight of the massive forest, as well as my thoughts. A few minutes later I heard soft steps and leaves crunching behind me. I quickly turned away and wiped away my tears that managed to escape.
"I'm sorry about your father. You seemed close." Tara put her hands on my shoulder softly.
"Thanks." I only managed to croak out this much. "The world completely changed. I don't know what to do anymore." I confessed. I felt lost.
"Well, maybe we could start with a simple meal?" She asked softly.
Suddenly I heard soft sizzling, and the smell of roasting meat filled my nose. My stomach grumbled loudly, completely empty. I started to understand that I somehow survived by absorbing the xin from the meteor, this magical power sustaining me, but the fact that I hadn't eaten in more than a thousand years was painfully obvious.
"Have you tried duckdeer yet?" Milo asked me, turning the meat on the improvised grill. Seeing as I haven't even heard of such a creature, I shook my head. He offered me some of the soft, tender meat with a piece of bread. I chowed down hungrily, the lightly salted taste filling my mouth. I chowed down in huge gulps but had to slow down and take smaller bites so my stomach could keep its contents.
It didn't work. I threw up almost immediately. So instead, I ate only a few small bites of the soft bread, and that was enough to give me the worst stomach ache I ever felt. I guess starting the digestive system back up wasn't as easy as filling your belly full after a thousand years.
Finishing the humble meal, we started getting ready for the night. Patrik volunteered to be first watch. I was thankful, having eaten a bit, a newfound exhaustion came over me and I could barely keep my eyes open on my way to the small tent. I thanked them for the meal and headed for the tent, went inside and lay down. Despite being so worn-out, somehow, I couldn't sleep, and my thoughts circled around my father. The guilt and grief tore at my insides. I blamed myself for his death and wondered if things turned out differently, he could still be here.
Having these kinds of thoughts running through my head, my body slowly gave in to the soft bed and I drifted off to sleep.