< Khionne | Harbinger Spaceship >

Everything is blurry. 

"Why did they choose this ice cube of a planet," Delyth walks up to me, wrapped in a thick lilac blanket.

We're on one of the Harbinger spaceships. From up here I can see the vast field of white, snowy mountains and forests. The planet is beautiful, I'll give it that. It's like a winter wonderland but that's all it is. There's no way they could use this planet for farming, hunting, or anything resourceful.

So why did they choose this planet?

"Let's get some rest," She's already in bed. 

Delyth peeks out from under the blankets and scoots over to make space for me. I climb into bed and she instantly clings to my arm and presses our bodies together. She's warm. I can feel her breath on my skin and the subtle rise and fall of her chest against me.

Then there's the red flash of the emergency lights. Ice breaks through the spaceships walls like nothing I've seen before. Someone shoves a rifle into my arms and everyone is looking for the enemy.

The spaceship spins, my back hits a window, shattering it, and I'm suddenly flying through the sky. My suit materializes instantly and it takes most of the impact from the landing but it still hurts like hell. 

<Khionne | Harbinger Crash Site>

Dante was right about the darkest depths of Hell being frozen over and a long time ago someone forgot to lock the gates. 

I've never felt so cold in my entire life.

I'm buried deep in the snow, I can barely breath, my fingers are numb as hell and my whole body hurts but I begin to dig myself out immediately. My right hand breaks through the top layer of snow and I can see the sky, I grab onto what feels like part of the ship and pull myself onto the surface.

"Okay," I breathe out.

At least now I'm out of the snow. The metal sheet I'm kneeling on is in fact part of the ship, it's actually one of the back doors, but it's not really attached to anything.

It's way too quiet, did we get rid of whoever was attacking us or did I really land that far from the ship?

As i'm gasping for air I hear what sounds like metal forcibly bending overhead.

What's making that sound-

The back half of the ship is being held up by the ice peircing through it. I mean, enormous, intricately shaped ice spikes that look like they shot out from the ground in spiraling paths. 

It... looks like the planet itself tried stopping us from landing.

My breath hitches.

Don't freak out, Elliot.

My breathing quickens. Do not. Freak out.

I just have to find the front half of the ship. It couldnt have landed that far. Yeah, everything is going to be fine.

And then I make the mistake of looking fifteen feet in front of me and there he is.

William. He's frozen mid crawl, as if he had been trying to run away from something or someone, his arm is still reaching out to pull himself further away. 

Everyone is dead.

I shake my head. Nope, there is no way I'm the only one who survived this. I need to get up onto the ship.

My whole body is trembling due to the freezing temperatures, my breath is instantly vaporized. I lap around the ice structure, there's no easy access to the ship but after a few slips and slides I manage to climb up.

"Sorry, man, but I need this more than you do," I offer my apologies to a frozen corpse as I rip the rifle out of his hands. His fingers breaking off in the process.

The ship is lopsided, the walls are bent over backwards, wires are strung out of place and there's gaping holes through the ceiling and floor. Every step I take echoes.

"Elliot?"

"AHHH!" I jump in place and my heart races.

"What a pussy," well, now I know who it is, Magnus coughs, "come on, help me up."

I follow his voice through the darkness, flickering lights aiding me here and there, "Are you the only one here?"

"Not sure, I just woke up," he groans in pain, "my leg hurts like hell."

The closer I get the more I can see and well... things look rough. He's loosely holding onto a gun, he's bruised and bloodied and his hairs never been messier, his leg is...

"I don't think it's your leg that hurts, brother," his right leg is five feet away from the rest of his body.

"Huh? What are you..." Magnus glances where I'm looking at and I can only imagine what it feels like to see your own leg snapped in half, "What the fuck!? My leg is across the room and you think it doesn't hurt!?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know if it hurts or not? Your leg's not even attached, no nerves equals no pain... I think?" I don't know, I'm not a scholar so whatever, "stop screaming, they'll get you a new leg once back on the mothership."

We have better things to worry about. I need to get him down from here and then we can go look for the other half of the ship.

"Don't go anywhere, I'm going to find a medkit." 

Magnus looks at me with disbelief, "Don't worry, I'll try not to roll too far away."

"Atta boy," I stand up and head further into the ship, there's two medical rooms on the ship. The one at the front of the ship is bigger and has more supplies but the smaller one in the back should have enough things to treat Magnus.

Getting to the medical room is easy. Way too easy. I find the medkit and some rope and make my way back to Magnus who's still whining about his leg.

"They better give me a leg made out of solid gold," He opened his mouth and bit onto a rag, "or diamond."

"Sounds heavy," I open the medkit and pull out a tourniquet, slide it over his knee and begin tightening it.

"Hm, you know what else is heavy- AH! Stop, stop, stop! That's tight enough!"

I glance up at the exit, the sun is still high enough in the sky to set out, "We need to start moving," I slip the rope behind his back and under his thighs, we struggle a bit but with some shuffling around we manage to tie the ropes into a makeshift harness. I tie the end of the rope on a metal beam and drag him to the exit.

Magnus peers over the edge, "Woah," he's looking at the ice, "Don't drop me."

He slings his gun over his back and grabs onto the rope hard enough that his knuckles turn white.

The initial drop pulls me forward a couple feet but I manage to hold my ground and lower him in slow constant intervals. Half way through he opens his mouth to tell me something but I get distracted by the sharp whistle of an arrow cutting through the air.

The dead weight is immediate, the center of gravity shifts and I lose control of the rope. I'm dragged the rest of the way out of the exit and I'm falling again. This time I'm not lucky enough to land on snow several feet deep but instead land on the cold hard ice.

My vision blurs.

Magnus is laying on the ice beside me, an arrow lodged from one temple to the other. 

There's another whistle and I lift my arm over my head to protect myself, I see my gun dangling on the ship so I reach over and take Magnus' gun and turn around.

There's a handful of them, Frostborns. The name given to the aliens on this planet. 

I take aim and shoot, one down.

An arrow strikes my arm, I didn't even hear the usual whistle. I groan and break the front end and pull it out through the back. I toss the broken arrow on the ground and hide behind a pillar of ice.

There's two to my right, one behind the pillar in front of me and Three to my left. Seven- no, six in total.

"I know I shot your guy but you shot mine! Let's call it even and move along!" 

I need to start paying attention to mission briefs, I can't recall if the Frostborn are intelligent sapients or not but it's worth a shot.

Everything goes quiet, the footsteps stop and I can hear muttering but the translator embedded in my head can't pick up the voices, "... speaking... tongue..." is all I can make out.

I guess they're wondering how I can speak their native tongue. Or they're planning on cutting my tongue off for speaking. Hopefully it's the former or I'm about to have a really bad time. I peek around the pillar and a flying arrow nicks my cheek. They're not the welcoming type are they?

I huff, everything hurts. My arm is bleeding, the cold air makes it hard to breathe, I fell twice from great heights. Today is just not my day.

The slowly setting sun casts a shadow of the Frostborn in front of the pillar, I raise my gun and follow his every movement. He signals the rest of the group and then runs around the pillar with his bow already drawn, I throw myself onto the ground and shoot. 

His arrow lands where I had been a second ago. My bullet hits his throat. Two down.

One of them cries, or whines, and another one hisses in what I can only guess is anger.

Now that I don't have to watch my back I feel a bit more at ease. I crawl towards the Frostborn I just shot, take his dagger and clip it to my suit.

There's more whispering, this time I don't catch anything.

I climb up a spiraling ice column and shoot one through the chest, two through the head and the last one through the knee.

The Frost born I shot through the knee screams out in pain, I drop from above and walk over to him. He hisses at me and bares his two sets of canines. 

"Have you come across more like me? What about the rest of the ship?" I point to myself and then the ship above our heads, "I know you understand me and I can understand you so speak."

"I'm not speaking to you, alien!" He yells out.

"Come on, man, you already addressed me, answer my question or I'll put a bullet through your head," I gesture to one of his friends, "Like that one."

The hissing only gets worse and I can almost hear growling but I'm not quite sure if it is. He reaches behind his back for an arrow and I shoot the ground beside him. 

That stops him from reaching.

This is getting nowhere, I raise my gun and put my finger on the trigger. I try not to look at it for too long because it's uncomfortably similar to a human. If a human was seven feet tall, had long pointy ears, and tinted skin. This one has a blue hue to it. Two others had a green cast.

Just as I'm about to pull the trigger the gun is knocked out of my hands.

The Frostborn is quick to tackle me down despite his injured knee and we end up sliding around on the ice. I hold onto his bow and we begin a game of tug of war.

"Why is he still alive? Have you forgotten the generals order?"

The Frostborn pinning me down with his bow suddenly stopped fighting, a slight tremble ran through his body. His pupils shrank and his eyes widened. 

I moved my eyes toward where the voice was and found a Frostborn towering over us. He was easily ten feet tall, had muscles bigger than my head and held a glorious sword in his left hand. 

If this isn't the general then who is? Who could be more worthy than this guy?

"Yoten," the Frostborn on top of me stands up and bows his head at him.

Yoten, dismisses him with a nod and walks towards me.

"Your people attacked first-"

He grabs me by the throat and lifts me from the ground, I reach up and dig my nails into his forearm. My hands barely wrap around the whole width.

"How many of you are there?" He asks.

They either haven't come across other humans or want to see if we give the same answer. 

"Twenty-five..." I struggle to speak, "but there will be more... and they'll kill you all unless you let me live."

Yoten narrows his eyes like he doesn't believe me his grip tightens slightly but stops the moment he hears the whistle.

This time an actual whistle can be heard, behind Yoten a Frostborn on what resembles a horse trots up to where we're at. 

Oh. So that's the general.

"Norre," Yoten gets down on one knee, forcing me to kneel beside him in the process. He tells Norre exactly what I said and shoves me forward. 

I shoot him a glare and then look up at Norre, "If you let me go I can communicate with the Harbinger Mothership. We're not enemies."

The general tilts his head, "you don't know that and neither do we," at least I tried.