Sub-Zero Expedition

I could feel the temperature drop rapidly as we approached the sub-zero zone. I could tell we were getting close by the white landscape in the distance.

"Lassie I will be docking here soon, I don't feel comfortable getting too much closer to that area." The captain said

"That's fine by me, I'll need to prepare anyways." I responded

It didnt take the captain very long to dock the ship, and after he gave me the go-ahead I jumped off onto the shoreline making sure to avoid landing anywhere close to the lava.

As I watched him sail away I remembered back to what he had said while we were traveling, that the next boat would take a while to get here to pick me up. Luckily it wasn't all that far from Urbs Inferni, the only real challenge was the lava in the way.

As I slowly made my way towards the white-covered landscape, I slowly felt the temperature drop. Once I had reached the sub-zero zone it was in fact below zero, I guess I can't make a joke about hell freezing over, seeing how it already had…

As I looked at the 'snow' I realized something rather strange, the snow was rather shiny and upon closer inspection, it was much denser and far heavier than snow should be.

I did a few quick tests and found out that there was no snow in this area, all the white powder I was seeing was in fact quartz dust.

This posed a bit of an issue. Firstly, the temperature was in no way natural, but secondly, I couldn't enter.

If it was just snow then I wouldn't have an issue with traveling through it but because it was finely ground quartz powder if there was a storm at any point while traveling through it, I would most definitely die of internal bleeding.

Inhaling the quartz powder would shred my insides, likely causing me to die either of my lungs filling with blood or the powder would suffocate me.

I was very fortunate to have developed something that would help in situations where the air might be toxic.

I pulled out the mask that I had built and slipped it over my face, it was made from void metal and had two large filters that stuck out from the front there were a few types and cables that led around to the back of the mask where phials of aer essentia are to be plugged in.

The mask covered my entire face with the eye sockets being like my goggles of revealing, the mask was a dark purplish-black color with a few pipes glowing a bright yellow leading towards the filters on the front of the mask.

Now better equipped I made my way properly into the sub-zero zone. The outer portion of the zone was a large tundra the ground was covered in about 30cm of quartz powder (1ft-ish) and ranged from finely ground powder to small rocks, this carried on for about 1.5km (.93miles) before the scenery changed.

The second layer was much similar to the first, except now there was a light storm that reduced visibility, there were also much larger quartz crystals that stuck out of the ground. They easily stood at 7-12m tall (22-39ft) the temperature had also dropped going from around 0C to -10C with windchill (32-14F).

The third layer was much different, after traveling for 2.5km (1.5miles) I had reached the third layer. The storm had picked up significantly and reduced my visibility to only a few hundred meters ahead of me, the temperature had also dropped to -20C (-4F) with windchill. The landscape had also changed going from rather flat to a steep incline, the 'snow' was also starting to cut into me causing bleeding in areas where my skin was exposed.

The upside was that I hadn't come across any monsters yet, although the only monsters that would even be able to survive here would be some form of golem.

It had been about 6 hours since I started traveling, the storm had slowed down my speed much more than I would have liked. From my calculations, I had only traveled about 3.5km (2.1miles) which was rather pathetic in my opinion.

I was getting hungry at this point and hadn't properly eaten since I first entered, so I decided to look for a place to rest that was out of the storm. Unfortunately there didnt seem to be a cave or place that wasn't plagued by the storm, so I decided to try heading back the way I came.

Much to my surprise, I made it out of the sub-zero area in only 2 hours compared to my 6 hours while trying to enter. This caused me a little bit of suspicion, I knew the storm was bad but it should have taken a similar amount of time to exit as it did to enter.

As I had the golems make camp I thought about the possibility of a curse or hex on the storm or area causing it to behave the way it did. I did however come upon quite the find when I was making the golems using animation powder I had spilled some on the quartz powder.

At first, I thought that I had just wasted the animation powder but when I moved away I watched as the quartz powder followed me, and upon closer inspection, the quartz powder was in fact a large number of smaller golems.

The lifetime of these golems was much shorter compared to the others animated using animation powder, this would need further study as there could be hundreds of different uses for golems of that size.

After my discovery, I ate a little bit of food and took a short nap before preparing for another venture into the sub-zero zone.

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Word Count: 983

Stella has finally made it to the sub-zero zone! Although the snow turned out to be something else... Suggestions and power stones are always welcomed!