He Fought the Encroaching Ice
Sybrus froze- only slightly more figuratively than literally. He instinctively knew the identity of the frigid object beside him. He would inch away, until he was far enough away to quietly stand-
“Not- so- fast, Steel-Man.” spoke Icekommander’s hollow, booming voice as cold fingers closed around Sybrus’ mechanical left foot. The cyborg felt no pain, but a brutal stiffness set into his leg. With a grunt, he spun his body around, living foot crashing heavily into his enemy’s head. The grip loosened for a split second, and Sybrus leapt free. He tripped backwards over something as he landed, crashing into a wall and eliciting a grunt of pain from a deep, thick voice- Jiefin, perhaps. He had no time to consider. Sybrus made another blind leap, colliding with a door. His hand raced to the handle and twisted- it was locked! The hissing sound of frosty wind emanated from somewhere behind him, along with the sliding sound of ice against ice as a blade manifested itself in the frozen man’s hand.
Sybrus spun about, slipping silently to the left to avoid giving his position away to the ears of Icekommander. He slid his hand across the wall- cold metal as far as he could feel. He wondered if his enemy, who he could hear stalking around in the enclosed space, could sense his heat.
Sense! Of course! Instantly picking up on Sybrus’ thoughts, his mechanical mind sprung into action. A sharp pain coursed through his head as the second intelligence hijacked his visual centers and began displaying its own sensory readings. Scans of the room revealed several comatose bodies- infrared showed them to still be warm. Sybrus swung his head around, in an attempt to look around, the imported images imperfectly syncing with his actions. All he needed to see, however, was the great, heatless void approaching him. He crept backwards, looking again to see Icekommander continuing his advance. On an instinct, Sybrus looked upwards- the roof was low- and familiar. Compressing downwards then leaping off of his digitigrade left leg, Sybrus crashed through the flimsy roof tiles, and scrambled into the thin space. Shimmying through the wiring, he moved over the door, and kicked out a tile, flipping downwards to the floor with an awkward grace. He looked back at the door, realizing an aching, maddening discomfort in his head as he calmed down. With the sudden mental pain of having a knife roughly pulled out of a wound, the visuals provided by his mechanical portion disconnected. Sybrus gave a brief cry of pain and disorientation before his eyes reasserted themselves. Opening up to blinding light, he staggered against a wall and slumped down, until the sharp headache and dizziness faded away. His eyes, now used to what was actually dim light, instantly recognized the hallway- it was one of the service tunnels under Carnivale, near the former administration complex. Sybrus knew this place better than any other on the island- his ‘home’ was a locker room perhaps two minutes distant, the computer terminals were just down the hall...
But what to do with Icekommander? He hadn’t beaten him by simply leaving him in the room, the man was still inside.
A cracking noise drew Sybrus’ attention back to the door. An advancing layer of frost was spreading over the aged wood. He squinted as several cracks began to open ever wider, realizing only at the last second his danger. Sybrus leapt backward as the brittle, weakened door burst from a blow from behind. A large, blunt piece struck his living arm, eliciting a pained shout. Sybrus whipped out the cylinder from his pocket, flicking it out to its full length and assuming a combat pose. Calmly, Icekommander stepped out of the empty doorframe. For the first time, Sybrus took a long look at him. The man was tall and strong, holding a shimmering glacial blue blade and flanked by two frost-fringed imps. While his initial appearance suggested a young man, the way he carried himself- mock-regal, but still with a strange dignity, refuted such an impression. And the man’s eyes- they were the eyes of someone ancient beyond years, but not yet tired- deep blue chasms, within which could have hidden centuries of experience.
Sybrus stepped backward, not leaving his defensive stance, as Icekommander advanced, as cool and collected as his namesake.
“Sybrus Brayne.” boomed Icekommander.
“Present and speaking.” responded Sybrus, a touch of a grin bordering his mouth.
“I have heard much about you on this island- they say that you are something of a gentleman.”
Sybrus shrugged, noncommittally, his mechanical arm clicking with agitation.
“So, are you a knight, a warrior who will not lower himself to killing his disarmed opponent? Or are you a coward, mechanical man? Did your guts leave you along with the rest of your body, are you afraid to spill blood, afraid to end that which cannot be recovered?”
“It’s a preference- I’ve never had the need to kill anyone here who I couldn’t just as easily knock out.”
“Well, that’s hardly going to work now- I can be incapacitated no more easily than that steel insect on your arm could rest.”
Sybrus noted that his mechanical half was continuing its frantic clicking and twitching, acting entirely of its own accord.
“Well then, I’ll just have to be creative.”
“Good. I have high expectations from you.”
“You don’t say?” responded Sybrus, suddenly swinging his staff into Icekommander’s head, the bladed tip cutting in deeply. Icekommander blinked, then grinned, his eyes burning with a cold fire.
“I do say.”
With that, Icekommander ripped the staff out of his head, twisting it around as Sybrus struggled to prevent the man from ripping the weapon out of his grip. As the two figures fought a tug-o-war for the staff, the two imps leapt at the cyborg. Instinctively, Sybrus kicked out at the first beast with his living foot. The creature- a tiny biped with an oversized, round jaw and a row of spikes down its back, made a stab at his foot before being deflected and skittering down the hall. The second ice-imp, thin and spiderlike, scuttled towards Sybrus before hurling itself at his leg. He jumped out of the way, simultaneously tugging his staff out of Icekommander’s grip, cutting of several of the iceman’s fingers, which almost immediately began to regenerate. Sybrus kicked at the second imp, his clawed mechanical foot closing around the creature and constricting. Taking advantage of the cyborg’s distraction, Icekommander swung his sword down towards Sybrus, who desperately rose his staff to parry. The frozen sword rested on his shoulder, cold seeming to radiate from it. Sybrus pushed it back, taking another two backwards steps, crushing the imp in his claw-foot as he did so. He jumped back on one foot, shaking the shards out of the other, as Icekommander began to advance once again.
“Is creative your word for running away, Brayne?”
“Well,” grinned Sybrus as he parried another blow from the sword, “I do my best work when I’m on the run.”
“Then you’ll need to be faster.”
With that, Icekommander’s attacks stepped up in speed. His heavy, steady blows transformed into a storm of strikes, glassy shards of ice scattering with each assault. Sybrus continued to meet the sword at every swing, wincing as the minute shards cut into his flesh. For a second, he lost control of his body as the mechanical brain once again took over, twitching his arm into a rapid spin, deflecting an icicle which had been hurled by the first imp, who had apparently recovered and caught up with the fight. Icekommander seized the opportunity and struck during his enemy’s distraction. Sybrus ducked, the cruel blade carving a streak in the flesh of his right arm. Sybrus’ organic half was tiring from the repeated, forceful blows- he couldn’t keep up the toe to toe battle for much longer. Sybrus looked up for a split second to regain his bearings. He didn’t have to fight for much longer either. Feinting to the left, he then dodged rightwards, rolling into an open door and sprinting down the hallway, rushing around a corner and out of sight. Icekommander broke his steady advance and ran after his quarry, the surviving imp close behind. He raced past the corner, to see- a room. There was a great deal of machinery in it, and ductwork along the roof and walls. He flicked his arm, and a new imp materialized, replacing its predecessor, who was still partially lodged in Sybrus’ foot.
“Find him.” Icekommander scanned the roof and-
Sybrus leapt down from his position high on a wall, crushing the newly-created imp underfoot and cleaving the other in half with his bladed staff.
“Why do you even use them?” he asked, before leaping back up into the ceiling’s ductwork. Icekommander growled with irritation.
“You’re less of an adversary than I had hoped for. You know can’t win by running away, Brayne!”
Sybrus slipped through the tightly-packed maze in the ceiling, seeking his destination.
“Maybe not, but you can’t win by shouting empty threats. I thought you were a hunter.”
The temperature throughout the room seemed to fall, as the taunted Icekommander followed the trail of noise and dislodged dust through the room, carving a path in the wall out of annoyance. Suddenly, the forward movement in the roof stopped, replaced by the sound of Sybrus pounding at a barrier, then trying to push himself backwards.
“Found a dead end?” Icekommander lifted his sword against the roof. Frost spread from its tip, freezing everything in contact with the metal, including Sybrus’ living flesh. He winced in pain, and continued pounding against a metal panel above him until it gave away, allowing him to lithely slip through. A few seconds later, he emerged from another gap in the roof, at the end of a dimly lit, grated chamber at the end of the room. Icekommander spun his sword around in his hand, continuing to drag it against the roof, spreading ice around the doorway. He advanced into the chamber, as the ice closed in on Sybrus precarious perch on the wall. As he advanced, he spoke, once again in his deep, calm voice.
“Yes, Sybrus Brayne, I am indeed a hunter. I have played with you, as a cat would with a mouse, and the time for batting-around has concluded.
With a lunge, Sybrus threw himself at Icekommander while his sword was away from his body. The frozen man instantly lowered his weapon, allowing Sybrus’ clawling arm to seize the roof and swing overhead. Spinning out of the chamber, he pounded at a jury-rigged control panel attached around the edge of the entry portal. A great metal door crashed down over the entrance, with only a small, round glass window to see through. Icekommander’s furious blue eyes rose to the window as he placed his hand against the door, beginning to freeze it. Sybrus paused for a second, then flipped a switch. Throughout the chamber, jets of fire burst from the grates as the furnace activated. Sybrus stood back for a second, then peered in, watching Icekommander’s face shift into an angered snarl as his work to freeze the door open was rapidly undone. After a few seconds, the figure ceased his attempts, and simply stood in the raging inferno. His expression began to shift- Sybrus was unsure whether it was a grin, or his melting flesh. Icekommander held up his hands at the level of his head, as if to show Sybrus what he had done, as his peripheries started to lose definition. His fingers began to drip and sizzle, then melt. Some slowly shrank, others fell of entirely. His head, still grinning, mouthed several unheard words as the lips began to steam off. His hands were now barely-defined, shrunken stubs, his face a cartoonish sculpture. As the icy flesh gave away, the back of the cranium collapsing and the jaw falling off, only the two stump arms and vivid blue eyes remained in place, piercing into Sybrus’ soul, until at last even they surrendered to the heat, the arms breaking off and falling into the flames, the left eye falling out, the right remaining grotesquely balanced on the melting cheekbone for a few final seconds, ending its existence with a lonesome glare. The figure collapsed, all remaining peripheries melting and boiling off into the superheated air.
Sybrus turned away for a few seconds, then looked again. Nothing remained, except for a small ball of dark ice, impervious to the tremendous heat. The cyborg gathered a haphazard collection of containers and cloth rags from around the cluttered room, before returning. He turned off the furnace, waited a few seconds, then opened the door. A harsh wave of dry heat struck him, but he ignored it, reaching out to throw a rough cloth over the small sphere. Pausing a few more seconds, Sybrus reached in with his staff, deftly flipping it around, impaling the rag and lifting its contents. Despite the separation from his hand, the wrapped sphere was still frigid beyond belief. Gingerly, he dropped the ice into a jar, packed it with more rags, then sealed the lid tightly. He then placed the jar into a thick metal container, packed it in, then sealed its locking bolts, wrapping tape around the seal. He paused for a moment, staring at the motionless box. It was cold, but now bearable. He picked it up- it was just light enough to be carried with ease. Hoisting the cold box over his shoulder, Sybrus headed purposefully out of the room.
As he walked towards the observation tower, he considered his ‘conversation’ with Icekommander. The man was a hunter, without a doubt, and Sybrus was by no means an aggressor. However, he could not be said to be an exclusive defensive improviser either- deactivated heating systems do not often rewire themselves.
Sybrus’ mind, however, was already drifting elsewhere. He wondered if life remained in the small entrapped sphere, he pondered again the circumstances that had brought him to Carnivale, and perhaps for the first time realized just how close his journey was coming to its conclusion.
