Einar (First Draft)- Chapter 6

As Einar peered through the wind and ice whipping through the air, he saw something dark lying in the snow. It was about the size of a cow's heart, and it looked to Einar as if it were made of stone. It had several tendrils protruding from it which were now burrowing into the ice and snow. They took the object with them, drilling further into the ice below. After a while, the drilling sound stopped. Einar sat in the cold, waiting to see if something else would happen. Suddenly, he heard a low rumble, and what looked like a massive hand made of ice pulled itself out of the snow. Once the entire arm had surfaced, it bent and laid the hand on the ground, pushing itself up and pulling the rest of the monstrosity into existence.

What now stood near Einar was a massive ice creature, It was structured like a human, but it was as least twice his size and the arms were thicker and more ham-fisted. Though the dark ice he could make out the stone heart, embedded in the center of its chest. He could not see a face, but it was straightening up, almost as if it was looking for something. Slowly, it began to walk straight ahead, and Einar realized in dismay that he was heading in the direction of the village. “We have to stop it,” he mumbled, partly to convince himself and partly to inform the other consciousness inhabiting his body.

“He looks dangerous, probably not a good idea. Besides, what did those people ever do for you?”

“It's not about that, they're still people. It's the right thing to do.”

“Ugh, you and your dangerous morals. Hey, I didn't manage to catch where that falling thing came from, but that ripping noise sounded familiar. It may have come through a portal.”

“All the more reason to destroy it then. Maybe if we defeat it we can find out more about who created it, and what they have against us.”

Einar got to his feet and pulled his axe out of his belt. It hadn't been sharpened since his fight with the dragon, but it would have to do. He charged toward the monster, swinging his axe directly in front of him and hitting it square in the leg. It stopped walking forwards and paused for a moment before turning around. The head did not move, but Einar felt as though it was looking him over, analyzing the situation. Suddenly, one of its massive fists plummeted downwards with a speed that Einar had not expected. He managed to jump backwards just in time to dodge it, landing into the layer of fallen snow. The beast straightened up again to its full height, and lifted its leg. Einar rolled to the side as the mass of ice smashed down on the ground. He got up quickly, and managed to get a swing of his axe into its other leg. The frost beast swung around and punched towards the ground again, but this time Einar was prepared. He quickly took a few steps back, raising his axe above his head and sending it straight into the monster's forearm. The axe stuck in the beast, and Einar held on tightly as it began to raise its arm again. It flung upwards with a powerful swing which managed to dislocate the axe and send it and Einar flying towards the glacier wall.

Einar hit the ice wall with a solid thud and slid down it, every muscle and bone in his body aching. He reached for his axe which was lying in the snow near him as the monster turned towards him and began to charge, one arm curled back and ready to strike. When the ice creature was only a foot or two away from him, he ducked and rolled downwards, avoiding its blow as it smashed its fist into the wall. As he sat in the snow for a few seconds watching bits of ice and snow fall from the top of the glacier, he noticed it could not pull its arm out. It was as if the beast had accidentally fused its own arm with the ice in an attempt to grow larger. Noticing that its chest was open to attack, Einar jumped in and swung at the ice surrounding the stone heart. His axe was not cutting into the ice as much as had had hoped, but there was still a decent dent in it. The monster swung its left arm forcefully at him. He rolled underneath the right arm right as the left arm seemed to fuse to the wall as well. As he rolled back into the space between the creature and the wall, he began to hack at its chest with all the force he could muster. As its legs started to try walking forwards as a last resort, he managed to sink the axe into the stone heart.

A blast of cold air hit him directly in the face, instantly turning the axe blade brittle and shattering it. The legs continued to charge forwards, and the arms gave in to the pressure and shattered, piling chunks of ice around him as the full body of the ice creature smashed into the wall, smothering him and causing a massive avalanche. Completely enveloped in ice and snow, the only thing Einar could hear was a frantic whirring coming from the stone heart which was almost touching his face right now. It was the same sound that he had heard when the tendrils were first burrowing into the ice, but this time it was slower and more grating, as if the crash had prevented it from working properly. Einar tried to move his arms to free himself, but the machine had already fused it all together, trapping him in a massive block of ice with no light or air. The voice came once again from inside his mind “Well I can't do anything about this. If you managed to somehow rip your lungs and throat out I could possibly give you the ability to breathe fire, but aside from that all I can do to save us is to let us get frozen, while all the while sucking the heat out of our body so that we freeze almost instantly. I'll stay awake, and once we have a chance of getting out of here I can thaw us out from the inside. Hopefully we won't have any lasting damage,.I'll see you on the other side.”

Einar could already feel the heat draining out of him at an alarming rate, and all he could do before he lost consciousness was to close his eyes. As the cold enveloped every part of his being, he prayed that the gods would save him from this, and then it all went black.