Spells Under Pressure

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Authored by BronzeRattle
Incomplete! Started on April 2 2024.
Spells Under Pressure is my side project to distract from writing Mutiny. Therefore, it won't really have progress until the latter is done.
Reading at least Winter Turning in the canon is advised before reading this fanfiction. Feel free to fix obvious typos.
Story note: This story has a lot of internal dialogue and mental events, often saddled between actually said dialogue and real actions. Thoughts are in italics and internal dialogue is in "quoted italics". Also, the main character One uses they/them pronouns.
=== Summary ===
When One becomes Two
Self-identity is puzzling for One. Staying in the Diamond Caves, a dark labrynth holding endless trials, was the Creator's final will. She never said anything about binding with another voice, a second personality with just about nothing in common with their existing personality except for also knowing the Creator.
Now an unknown amount of time since then, Two grows restless for a world out of the caves. One has to discover if jeopardizing their god-given mission to uncover the truth of what goes on above the ice pays a price.
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SPELLS UNDER PRESSURE
Wake up
An IceWing stirred in the darkness. It was the Creator's voice. They looked around, creaking slightly, and frowned. It wasn't real. She wasn't here.
It was just a memory.
"Expecting someone?" A voice slithered into their thoughts.
"No." They shoved the thought down into the mental underworld. Maybe if they tried hard enough they could push Two there and get him to stay there.
"I know everything that goes on in your snowflake-sized head. There is no hiding it from me. We are well beyond that stage in our...relationship." Slowly, One's mental fog morphed into the "lounge" as Two called it. His familiar IceWing-esque features were prominent peaks beyond everything else.
One imagined their identity there as a persona like his, hissing at him. "Leave me alone."
He feigned terror. "Ooh, I'm soooo scared! Let me move a claw length away in this tiny mindspace." He dissipated in the lounge, his presence briefly dimmer.
One sat down, thinking, trying to recall the features on the Creator. IceWing. Lanky. Uniquely greenish. Sharply angled horns. Strict countenance demanding their attention, and only theirs. There was no Two. There was no useless, lazy, indifferent voice sharing their consciousness and eating up their precious thought process.
Somehow it was getting harder to recall the Creator with every passing...time. One could swear she had worn a necklace. Maybe. Possibly. They could forget how she looked like, but as long as they didn't forget her mission-
"Yes, the useless mission," Two's low voice sneaked back in.
One ignored him. It was their duty she bestowed upon them. Upon One. Not-
"If I hear you complain about me one more time in your thoughts, I'm going to smash this statue's talons against the ground so you can actually have something to yell at me for." Two threatened them. He crept up to One's peripherals breathing cold breath down his spine. "This mission isn't even a mission."
"Of course it is!" One exploded at him. "How could you say that?"
"What kind of mission involves sitting around a cave all day with dead IceWings? What evil are we fighting against? Boredom?" As if to mark his point, he let loose a yawn.
One glared at him. "We are not dead."
Two cocked his head. "Are you sure about that? What makes this," He pointed a talon at a smooth sheet of ice through the window of the outside world, "any better than them?"
One slowly looked up. An IceWing stared at them back, gleaming like ice, because they were exactly that. From horn to talon, glossy, slightly scratched, thick ice replaced bone, scales, and blood. It was always jarring for some reason, as if seeing their reflection for the first time in years. "You are annoying," was One's only comment.
"I know I am. And I will continue to be for the rest of this spiteful life." He dissipated in the mental gloom again, but not before sitting the IceWing abruptly on the ground.
Oh Two.
== Thawed ==
"One."
Two was shaking One. Dozing off, they pushed him off. "What in moons do you want?"
"Don't you realize that our Creator was a massive idiot?"
One blinked, rubbing his eyes. "You woke me up to talk about this?"
"She couldn't even make me a new body and stuck me with you. I think that justifies my theory of us being like those IceWing statues." He looked out beyond the glass.
They just shook their head. "We are not them."
"How so?" Two had his arms crossed. He was ready to argue his point to the end.
Whenever that was.
"We have the mission. We can move. We can talk in here," One answered his question.
"What if that's the case with the rest of them?"
"Have you ever seen a statue move?"
Two flared his spines, but before he could speak, 
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Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
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