Subrift Tales/Chapter 1

The year is 1804. The country is Niphora.
It was a typical spring day for the Niphora Scouts, camping deep within the forest. Towering elm trees were holding out their creeping branches like preying claws over the campfire. Although the tree-line covered the grove in merciless shadows, the blazing flames that the campers had built up was their saving grace, a second sun within the darkness.
Five children were sitting around the fire, no older than eight years old, recounting stories to pass their time. Each of them wore the same uniform - the forest-green jacket bearing sewn-in badges, cobalt trousers and red-blue striped ribbon around the neck. A small group of adults were watching at the edge of the grove, donning the same livery, waiting silently to give further instructions.
Among the boys at the campsite was Calon Azural. He was the second-youngest of the troop, having just turned seven years old, but was one of the tallest of the scouts by that fire. In exchange, though, he had a very small build, his uniform wrapping loosely around his skinny frame. In his boredom, he was tirelessly rustling his dusty blond hair, a seeming lack of hope in his sea-blue eyes. The rest of the scouts had been indulged in one of their tales - something about climbing a school wall, he last heard, though Calon was growing so weary that his focus was burning away.
Calon's dulling eyes slowly tried to open and concentrate on something that could remedy the absence of excitement. Immediately he met the flames, which were growing dimmer as the fuel was incinerated. With the air around the campsite cooling, he hoisted himself up and said,
“The fire's going out, what should we do?”
One of the other boys, with soot-filled white hair and deep green eyes, briskly turned his head and told him,
“Firewood, that's the answer. I'm not sure where you'd find it...”
“Maybe you can ask the instructors?”, another boy gently added - the youngest in the troop, he was the only one younger than Calon, with pale ginger hair that came close to covering his eyes.
“Uhh, sure!” Calon turned around to face one of the instructors, Mr. Kindlin - a Razaran man of twenty-eight years, with distinctive crimson hair. He was Calon's favourite of the instructors, with even the direst of orders from him never seeming too pressing. “Do you know where we can find firewood in these woods?”
“There's some good firewood just to the north of here,” Kindlin said, his calm and reassuring Razaran accent shining through. “It's great that you noticed, Calon. Keep it up and you'll end up with another badge.”
Calon remained silent, but smiled and nodded. Reaching into his jacket pockets, he brought out two of his most trusted tools. In his right hand was a bulky torch, powered by the winding of a winch on its side - it was difficult to use, but without the fire it was his best hope at finding light. The left hand held his compass, a large ornate disc that he could barely fit in a comfortable grip, though it was his only way of telling where the north was.
The unforgiving trees were looming their branches in the way of the north, so Calon decided to try and find another route. Moving the torch into his left hand, on top of the compass, he wound it furiously with his right. Before long he'd left his hand in a burning pain from the speed of winding - but at the same time, the torch was burning with a beam of colourless light.
Knowing that his source of vision would vanish in a matter of minutes, Calon started to hurry. The branches completely blocked the way that the compass was leading him, but they weren't in the way of a side path just to the left. He sprinted down this path and stole a precious moment to check the compass - the needle was just to the right of his forwards sight. With the turn to the left, this side path was bringing him back on track, so he kept on following the passage...
...and then he tripped. Suddenly, almost unexplainably, Calon was thrown down to the ground. With torch and compass still in hand he couldn't break his fall, crashing painfully to the ground as his equipment scattered out to the sides. Struggling not to scream out in anguish, he reached out a scraped arm for the torch he had dropped. The light was beginning to die, but as he turned the beam around he could see the mass of roots he had carelessly ignored - after all, with the darkness he was only focusing on pressing forwards.
Pushing himself back up, Calon checked his compass - still fully operational, north was still roughly ahead - and spun the winch of his torch once again. His hands were so sore that, before long, he'd barely be able to use them, but his frustration far made up for the pain. He kept on running forwards, hoping that the firewood would be in easy sight before long.
Calon came to another halt at a second fork in the path. The compass pointed directly down one path, and it seemed to show a dead end as he shone his torch on it. Piled up in masses in front of the treeline were a plethora of wood - pencil-thin twigs, logs that were almost a third of Calon's size, and a full spectrum of the in-between. Excited to complete his task, the boy ran into the hollow...
...but then, he tripped once again. This time, the protruding roots flung him a little way to the west - he could tell from memory of the compass - and he landed side-on in a patch of leaves. The leaves soon collapsed under the momentum, sending him crashing down and launched to the base of a slope. But I'm on level ground, he thought, how did that happen?
Lifting up his head and taking a look, Calon was in complete shock by what he saw - gone were the greens and browns of the shadow-filled forest, and in their place were towering walls of white, as if he were in a sealed room built from ice. He gazed back down to the ground, noticing the snow that covered it, his arms mostly buried in the frost.
Calon brushed the snow away, showing a floor of glazed ice that shone like water in the sun. With the powder out of his way, he had a solid ground that he could use to hoist himself up onto his feet. He was starting to feel the cold, his fingers barely able to move, and the frigid air seeping easily through his paper-thin clothes. Turning back to sprint back the way he came, he soon noticed there was no entrance - just a near-vertical slope, laden with snow that would be impossible to scramble upwards.
With no choice left, Calon scurried forwards, constantly tripping on the glazed ice and impeding snow. The world around him was blurring from the speed at first, but before long it began to slow down and come into focus, as the cold wore him out. Exhausted and shivering, he stopped and gazed at his surroundings - a wide, perfectly square-shaped space, with ornate pillars of frost towering near the corners. A chandelier of icicles hung down from the centre of the room's ceiling, and the powder on the floor had been neatly swept away, revealing a circular path of bluish ice around the centre.
Suddenly, screams ran out. Calon didn't recognise them - they weren't Niphoran, and his few lessons of Primordan language were of no help. The voices continued rambling. They were a pure gibberish that meant nothing. They were getting closer. Calon wasn't frightened, worrying more about his increasingly freezing body, but that all changed when he saw the sources of those voices.
They were human-shaped, but their skin was like graupel, their eyes glazed frost, and their heads were covered in great crowns of ice. They each wore a wrap of translucent, ice-blue cloth that covered half of their upper body - their arms and legs were undressed, but had armour-like sheaths of ice covering them. They continued speaking their unintelligible language, and while he didn't understand a world, Calon could tell from the way they spoke that they were after him.
Calon ran, but the ice made it difficult for him to find the right grip. After a few seconds of sprinting on the spot, he made for a dash down the snow, but with his feelingless legs he couldn't find make the correct grip and fell down once again. Slowly and clumsily, he pulled himself back up, coughing the powder that reached his mouth, but was soon buffeted by a wave of icicles from behind. The force knocked him forwards, but he landed smoothly and was able to carry on moving.
As his feet crunched down rapidly into the piling snow, Calon stole a glance behind him and saw the ice-people with raised hands, rings of diamond shards floating around them and soaring towards him. They were too fast for him to dodge, so he closed his eyes and winced as they pounded his back, leaving tears in his jacket. He continued his charge, but before long Calon found his foot dipping further than usual - it landed in the section where he'd wiped away the snow upon first landing, causing his balance to shatter and send him flying.
His hands struck the solid wall of snow in front of him, but to his surprise Calon saw the snow part away - behind it was a block of ice. Although it only stood at about a foot tall, any height would be at help to evade the attackers. Calon jumped up onto the platform, just as another barrage of crystals shattered where his feet had been a second before.
There was no way forwards, though. He was stuck on this podium, an easy target for the people who saw him as an invader. Frustrated, Calon kicked the wall of snow in front of him, but was surprised to strike a solid surface - the flurry parted slightly, and he saw another block of ice. He jumped up and landed securely, now realising that he had found a staircase out. His next lunge went into the unknown, but beneath the obscuring snow he found another step. Calon kept climbing up, slowing down as the jumps combined with the temperature made the task even more tiring, and all the while expecting to be pierced with shards again.
But not once did the natives attack him. He was almost to the top, out of the icy world. He could see the trees in plain sight. One final jump would lead him out.
Calon took the jump, but was met in mid-air with sharp biting pain. His aggressors hadn't spared him. They were merely saving their energy for a finishing blow. He fell down, landing on the thick viridian grass of the woods. Twisting mid-land, he curled up on the ground and waited for the cold feeling to stop. But it didn't - it felt worse, as if his entire body was freezing over.
He gazed at his hand, struggling to keep it in position with how numb it was, and noticed the swirls of frost that engulfed it. The ice looped down his hand and crossed along his arm, and with the massive tears on his jacket, he could see frost covering his shoulder as well. Then, with his trouser legs ripped open, more of the frozen pattern on his legs was plain to see as he looked down.
Frozen by the fear of turning to ice, Calon wanted to cry out, but there was no energy left in him. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the torch he had dropped, just to his left side. He defeatedly turned and took it in his icy, feeling-less hand. Pointing it to the sky, through a hollow in the blanket of leaves, he began winding with what little strength he had left.
...
The sky was dark as Calon's eyes came to open. His head was turned towards the deep cobalt air, a darkness overpowered by the light of a myriad of stars. He turned his head to view his surroundings, noticing a rail-omnibus closing its doors just behind him, steadily reaching further away. Calon could tell he was being carried, and as he eyed his surroundings further he recognised who had him in their arms. The red hair and immaculate scout uniform belonged to Mr. Kindlin, who must have seen the torch signal and come along to rescue him.
Even though he was far from that world of ice and snow, Calon was still shivering as though he had never left. Kindlin had wrapped him with a winter uniform, and while it was better than the torn clothes he'd been wearing before, it didn't seem to be helping - as if the cold was coming from inside him. Still bitingly freezing, Calon turned to face forwards, the direction Kindlin was bringing him, and saw his favourite place in the world, 54 Whitegust Close. The home of the Azural family was a rather quaint house of four floors, though its tight rooms made it smaller than most.
“Can you walk?” Kindlin asked, sympathetically. Calon said nothing, but nodded. The instructor set the boy down on the ground, holding a hand as he took stride towards-
Suddenly, Calon fell. His whole body felt stiff with the cold. He slipped out of Kindlin's grasp. Landing on his side on the cobbled path, he almost screamed with pain. His right arm was fractured, hardly able to bend. Tears fell from his eyes, freezing and splitting into fragments as they pattered on the ground.
As the doorbell rang, Kindlin reached down and hoisted Calon back into his arms. The door was answered by a rather tall woman with ash-white hair and the same blue eyes as Calon - this was his mother, Rilia Phirium-Azural. She was wrapped in a white dressing gown, clearly ready to rest for the night. On the sight of her son's sorry state, covered in frigid frost and with a badly damaged arm, the colour drained from her face. Kindlin shifted the boy into her arms, where he clung tightly to her in a whimpering fear. It felt so wrong for him to see Calon, often cheerful and active, suffering through this much turmoil. The boy couldn't have had worse luck, he told himself.
“Mrs. Azural?” Kindlin said, shattering the chilling silence. “I believe your son fell into a Subrift that affected him this way. He'll live, but he isn't at his best. He might even need to quit the scouts this way.”
...
Two years have passed. The year is 1806.
Calon knelt in shivering dread on the cloud-white covers of his bed. Two years had passed, and while he was used to the bitter cold pain, experience held no candle to the control the ice held over him. His movements were often stiff, fine-motor skills being twice as hard at times, and when he spoke the noise would be empty, a hollow voice that wasn't always understood. Worst of all were the sudden freezes, where he'd lose all control of his body whenever he needed it most.
Calon's weak body meant that he couldn't go to school - he'd been taught at home by his parents since that day - or try many active activities. Calon felt desperate to be his former energetic self again, to have fun and talk with friends, to see the great outdoors and not be restricted by his condition anymore. For now, all he could do was turn a weak, unfocused eye onto the bustle of the streets outside his window.
As his boredom started getting the better of him, Calon heard the sharp knock on his bedroom door. He gave a gentle, hollow response:
“Come in.”
Seren Azural-Phirium, Calon's father, prized the sticker-laden door open. He stood at six feet tall exactly, with tousled blond hair and brown eyes that were almost black with their dark shade.
“How are you feeling, Calon?” Seren walked over to sit on the bed next to his son, wrapping a comforting arm around him. Calon should have been warmed by the cradle and the gentle tone of voice, if not for the ice within him being so deep-rooted.
“The same as always...” He replied, shivering.
“You haven't had one of those sudden freezes, have you?”
“No. Not for two days.” Calon shuddered, then turned his head to face Seren. “Dad, do you... think that's a good thing?”
“It's good if they don't happen as often,” he told his son, “but I wish there was some kind of pattern. Don't worry, though,” Seren said calmly, as he pulled himself up and slipped a wad of papers into the boy's frosted hands. “I've got something to keep your mind off of it.”
Calon gazed at the sheets and sighed in hollow, icy dread - a maths worksheet. With various inhibiting factors from his condition, he had climbed his arithmetic mountain at a painfully slow rate. He barely knew his way around negative numbers, fractions and geometry, the building blocks that made most of those pages' meaning. Nevertheless, he straightened out the bed covers and plucked a pencil from the bedside table - a process that lasted a full minute. Glaring coldly at the small black font, he focused on the first question:
-542 - -237 = ...
The moment he saw the two back-to-back minus symbols, Calon was in a panic. He remembered there was some kind of rule - a minus and a minus makes a plus, was it? That had to be it, he told himself. Following this, he began trying to solve the sum in his head. Add 237 to 542 and you get seven hundr-
Suddenly, it struck. The pencil fell out of Calon's fingers as they went suddenly stiff. Sliding down the papers, it was flung far off the bed. Calon's body turned unbearably freezing in a split second, and with barely a response he fell back, his head collapsing into the pillow.
Brimming with frustration, Calon lifted his frozen arm slowly, painfully into the air. He glared angrily at the ceiling, and at the hand reaching up towards it. As his fury welled, he began seeing some kind of icy spiral in the air above him, encircling his hand. The surprise shocked him, chilled him to the bone - he wanted to close his eyes in fear, but at the same time was entranced by the beauty of the swirling snow. The spiral closed up and shaped into a shard of ice in his half-open palm, let off a bright silver-blue shine, and suddenly, all at once, blasted up to the ceiling.
Calon didn't move. He was awestruck to see the ice crystal shooting to the air like a rocket, shattering on the ceiling and throwing a sprinkle of shards down. The tiny fragments fluttered down like leaves on a windless day, and Calon could make out their constantly cycling reflections as they twisted lazily through the air above him. What was more, following that blast of ice he felt some of the cold disperse from his body - it was quickly returning, but the fleeting moment of rhapsody had an instant effect on him.
Category:Subrift Tales
Category:Stories
Category:Chapters