The Northern Aberration (8)

While walking through the snowy, barely navigable streets, I realized that, despite my resistance, I could still feel a bit of the cold nipping away at me. 

It was only natural. I could control my mental state, thoughts, and senses as accurately as I wanted to, but I couldn't deny reality. I wasn't blind, deaf, numb, and insane. 

Not to mention, with how aggresive the effects of the illusion were around me, it was amazing that I was still managing to even hang on.

I trudged onwards through the snow, tried my best to block out the sound of shearing wind blasting past my ears, focused on each minute step as I kept moving forward. I just had to singlemindedly keep moving forward. 

I thought about Rin. 

With how fast this thing moved, her body was probably already frozen into a block of ice by now. I would be surprised if her papers actually did survive this infinitely worsening cold. 

I thought about Alyssa. I hoped that she had actually listened to me and gotten out of here. It wasn't like she had any reason to stick around, when she and I didn't get along that well during this regression.

I wondered if, deep down, some part of me had purposefully pushed her away after seeing her die. 

I decided not to dwell on it too much.

Before realizing it, the surroundings around me began to change.

The paved streets felt much more solid than slippery. Looking down, I almost felt my heart drop out of my chest.

Somewhere along the way, I had shifted from walking over snow-covered frozen asphalt, to walking across a frozen chasm. The entire floor was made out of ice, stretching over an abyss that seemed to stretch on infinitely down below me. I took a deep breath, trying my best to steel my nerves...but it definitely was terrifying.

It was like I was walking into a foreign dimension, a hostile place of nothing but cold that wasn't meant for people. The rest of the architecture didn't help in warding off the feeling

The buildings had also shifted, from being made out of concrete to a reflective ice, taking on weirder and weirder shapes that I couldn't understand. They bent and stretched in ways that didn't make sense, defying the laws of gravity and simple common sense.

No longer did this place look like anything human. If anything, every bit of humanity was now stripped away from all of it. Like the 'Infectious Winter' hadn't just taken over the people that stepped into its' territory, but was slowly taking over the entire land of the North, shifting it, transforming it.

This place was slowly ceasing to be the North anymore.

It was becoming a land of eternal, uninhabitable winter and frost.

I shook my head, trying not to get distracted. I tucked my suit in closer to my body instinctively. It was starting to get cold enough to the point where I could physically feel the cold starting to numb my body, but this wasn't nearly enough.

Even if I died here, I needed to see what the cause of all of this was. What the 'Infectious Winter' really came from.

Soon, everything faded away into the arctic chill. There were no more odd shapes of ice that appearaed along the path. No more frozen corpses. Even the snow had cleared up, giving way to a completely open path.

It expanded out into a wasteland of flat white.

I turned to look behind me...there was nothing there.

I paused for a moment. Taking in a deep, shuddering breath. I could feel myself rapidly losing all body heat. It was too late to turn back now.

I turned around and kept moving through the wasteland. Step by step, I carried myself, singlemindedly focused on the goal of seeing the source of the 'Infectious Winter'.

That was when I finally saw it, in the distance. A single polar bear, resting on its' stomach. It's pale white fur was wrong for a bear, more reflective, and almost jagged-looking, like the edges of broken ice. It was so pale that it almost entirely blended in with the flat layer of snow covering this frozen wasteland.

I slowly approached it. There was nothing better to do, and I definitely wasn't in any sort of fighting condition.

As if sensing me, the bear stirred, before rising from whatever slumber it had been within. Its' eyes were...human. Not those of a feral, instinctual animal, but eyes that held extreme intelligence and complexity.

It regarded me...and then, in a voice that stilled everything, it spoke.

"You've given up on your life, human. To willingly step into the cold, while knowing you will perish..."

It stood on its' hind legs with an eerie casualness. There was no lack of balance as it strode towards me, easily closing the distance.

"Tell me...what is it that you're here for?"

I thought about it for a little while...no, I was actually just stunned into silence for a long time.

I had never seen an intelligent Abnormality. Not to say that some couldn't have their own version of intelligence, but they were limited beings, by nature.

Forced to exist based on pre-existing concepts, they were like AI programs that, while certainly capable, could only act within the boundaries of what they were based off of.

Even the doppelganger, a supposedly perfect copy of me, was just copying my known actions, thoughts, and reactions.

There are many stories about speaking bears, and speaing animals, in general. It wasn't weird that the bear was speaking. It's that...it actually understood what it was saying. It wasn't a mismatch of gibberish and barely coherent noises like most Abnormalities.

"...what are you, exactly?"

The bear didn't even take time to consider the question. It acted like it already knew that I was going to ask this.

"I am what you call 'The Infectious Winter'. I am one of Mother's children. The child representing the neverending winter. Polaris."

It lifted a clawed paw up, preparing to kill me, most likely. I could only look. With how weak I was beginning to feel, and how much of the cold had already seeped into my body, I wasn't going to be stopping it. Much less fighting it.

It spoke not another word to me, as it brought the claw down, and I was cleaved in half with a single blow.

The world immediately went dark...

Imminent death of skill holder detected.

Conditions met.

Activating Unique Skill: Regression