Thrown Away

The guards dragged Lucien all the way back to the council building and threw him inside.

Lucien’s head was throbbing painfully, and he was covered in snow.

“Well, hello Mr. Lucien Verglas.”

Lucien slowly raised his head and recognized the person standing before him as Mr. Armos.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Lucien asked.

Mr. Armos shot Lucien a look like he was looking at the most repulsive thing in the world, “Don’t you dare speak you piece of trash!”

The guard whacked Lucien in the head again, blurring his vision.

“Sir what do you want to do with him?” one of the guards asked.

“Well, we were ordered to execute him on the spot if he chose the mage class, but that is too swift a death. That would be boring.”

Mr. Armos looked at a map of Cleardale and its surroundings hung on the wall.

“There’s a deep hole that leads into one of the mountains in the Wasanola Ice Tops correct?” he asked.

“That’s right sir.” One of the guards confirmed.

“Throw him in. That way he’ll die a slow painful death or maybe a monster will eat him before that happens.”

“Understood sir.”

“I’ll be returning to the capital now. Let me know by carrier pigeon when the deed is done.”

The four guards dragged Lucien back outside and to a nearby stable. The guards saddled up four horses and attached a small sled onto one of them.

They threw Lucien in the sled and chained him up to it so he couldn’t bail out, then rode off south towards the Ice Tops.

They passed through town and everyone stopped and stared as they saw Lucien get carried off.

…

After about four hours, Lucien felt the sled stop moving and raised his head to look at his surroundings. They were high up on the side of a mountain.

Lucien tried taking in a breath of air, but it was so thin due to the high altitude he barely got any in.

The guard that pulled the sled with his horse began to unhook the chain tying Lucien to the sled. He then lifted Lucien out of the sled and threw him on the ground.

The guard grabbed the back of Lucien’s neck and pushed Lucien further up the path towards a flattened-out area.

It wasn’t until Lucien was ten feet away that he saw a hole about ten meters in diameter that dropped down into the mountain.

‘Oh God!’ Lucien began to struggle and flail, but he could barely do anything because of the restraints.

The guards forced Lucien closer and closer until he was right up against the edge. Then using a key, one of the guards unlocked the neck bracelet, then the leg and hand cuffs. Lucien did all he could to try and get away from the hole, but one of the guards pushed him over the edge.

Lucien felt weightless as he fell, air whistling past his ears.

His body hit the bottom of the hole about thirty feet down with a dull thud.

Lucien’s entire body ached in pain from the fall. He was sure that bones were broken in places.

He looked up the walls which were completely vertical and covered in ice.

‘Is this it? Is this how I’m going to die?’

Lucien was cold, tired, and felt broken inside.

“This is it. The world crumpled me up and threw me away, just like a piece of trash.’

Lucien slowly closed his eyes and as his body went numb.

“Don’t lose hope!”

Lucien opened his eyes at the sound of Kalin’s voice in his head, but then close them again.

“I can’t do it!” Lucien cried.

“Know your place!”

“You’re just a piece of trash!”

“You’re lucky you even get to live the way you do.”

“Who let that in here?”

“Filthy Verglas.”

“SHUT UP!” Lucien yelled as all the voices and faces in his head criticized, insulted, and laughed at him. “That’s right… I can’t die here. I have to repay those dirtbags for doing this to me! I must show them who is truly trash!”

He stood up slowly and looked all around him. He noticed a small opening in the side of the wall and began to limp towards it.

He was just small enough to climb into it. He crawled for about ten feet before it opened up into a large cave with ice all around. It was significantly darker inside the cave of ice than in the hole.

He continued forward. The cave seemed to move deeper and deeper into the mountain.

“I need to establish a source of food and water first. However, I might just die of hypothermia before I can even do that! I guess I could always eat the ice as a source of water. As for food, I haven’t the slightest clue.”

Lucien continued to walk aimlessly deeper and deeper into the mountain. Every now and then the cave would split into two or more possible pathways. Some led up, others down, others just led further down along the same level.

Lucien became utterly lost. The cave was an unending maze.

He started to get frustrated. He was hungry, thirsty, tired, and numb from the below freezing temperatures.

He picked up a rock and threw it against the wall of ice, breaking a couple of pieces off. He grabbed one of the smaller pieces and chomped down on it and began to chew it. This helped his thirst a little, but that was all.

He continued to walk around for what seemed like days. He could barely see anything and didn’t find any food.

He wanted nothing more than to just collapse and fall asleep, but Lucien knew that as soon as he did fall asleep, he wouldn’t wake back up.

He pushed forward, getting weaker and weaker, colder and colder, until he lost all feeling in his toes and hands. It felt like his stomach was eating itself.

There was no way to figure out what time of day it was or even how long he had been down in the cave.

He continued to walk around clueless until he collapsed to the cold floor.

‘Food… I need food… so… tired… and hungry…’

He heard growling that echoed throughout the cave.

‘What was that?’

Lucien would have been scared out of his wits, but he was too weak to react properly.

The growling and snarling continued to grow louder as the creature grew closer.

The creature started to become visible to Lucien. It was crawling on all of its six limbs. The creature had white fur and a large muscular body that was at least seven feet long with an elongated head with two long horns and two long fangs.

‘A Vazuron?’

The vazuron pounced, but Lucien stood and jumped with all the strength he had left. The vazuron snapped at Lucien with its mouth but missed and slid over the ice a good ten feet before using its claws to dig into the ice to stop itself.

Lucien was now standing with the cave wall a couple of feet behind him.

The vazuron turned to face Lucien again and prepared to lunge again.

It was taking all the energy Lucien had just to keep himself from falling over.

‘It’s over… I just don’t… have the energy…’

The vazuron launched at Lucien once again as Lucien began to fall forward.

Crash!

Lucien hit the ground and the vazuron ended up sailing over Lucien and into the wall.

Lucien felt something warm touch his skin and begin to surround him.

‘What’s this? It’s so warm…’

Lucien slowly opened his eyes and saw that he was lying in a pool of yellowish green liquid.

‘Is this blood?’

He turned his head while still lying on the ground. His vision was blurry at first then began to clear up.

The vazuron was lying motionless on the floor of the cave with icicles protruding out of its body. Its blood was oozing out from these wounds and forming a large puddle around Lucien.

‘Is this what they call luck?’

Lucien slowly raised his hands and placed the palms of his hands on the cave floor and pushed with all his might but failed and collapsed again.

‘No… I can’t waste this opportunity…”

Lucien tried again and this time managed to push half of his torso off of the floor and turn his body to face the vazuron’s dead body.

Lucien didn’t have any energy. All that was moving him was his will to live.

‘I must… survive!’

He began to crawl very slowly along the cave’s floor, through the pool of blood towards the creature’s corpse.

He reached the corpse and grabbed the fur and began to pull himself up. He grabbed a nearby rock that had a slightly sharpened edge and raised it high before stabbing it in the vazuron’s side. Thankfully, the rock penetrated its skin.

Lucien pulled down hard, creating a deep cut. More yellowish green blood began to pour out of its body. Lucien then dropped the rock and stuck his hand in the corpse, grabbed whatever he could and pulled it out.

The flesh smelled awful. To Lucien, it looked somewhat like meat, but he didn’t have a choice…

‘I’m so… hungry, I need… to eat!’

Lucien chomped down on the flesh of the vazuron. It was absolutely disgusting. He could taste the creature’s blood along with the smelly flesh. It took everything he could to not cough it up and swallow. He gaged and coughed, very close to vomiting.

He looked at the rest of the flesh in his hand and wanted to vomit just from looking at it. However, he forced himself to take another big bite out of the monster’s flesh and swallowed it whole so as not to taste it for too long. He did this until all the flesh in his hand was gone.

He slipped on the icy floor and collapsed next the creature’s side. Pushing himself closer to the creature’s side so as to get some warmth from the white fur coat as well as from the pool of blood, he began to fall asleep.

…

Lucien had no idea how long he was asleep for, but the blood had stopped flowing out of the vazuron’s corpse and had frozen over.

His stomach hurt, but for some odd reason he could see better now.

‘Interesting.’

Although his stomach hurt, he was still very hungry. He decided he should eat more, so he picked up the rock he had dropped earlier and began to hack away at the dead body again, cutting away pieces of flesh that he thought looked the most edible.

He stopped, set the rock down, and then began to take large bits and swallowing whole. The meat was drier now, which help it go down a little easier, but it still tasted absolutely horrible.

Lucien felt full and then used the rock to break some ice apart in order to eat it as a source of water.

After he had his ‘breakfast’ he stood up to start walking around again but realized he didn’t have any clue where to start exploring.

‘I can’t just start walking around aimlessly. I need a strategy of some sort. Right now, I only have one source of food that should last me a good while.’

He shivered due to how cold it was inside the cave.

‘Right, I need to figure out how to deal with the cold. I can cut of the fur as a blanket, but I don’t have the slightest clue about how I could turn it into a coat so I can explore the cave without going into hypothermia.”

He thought long and hard about how to deal with the cold and then had an idea.

‘If I can learn to use ice magic, the cold wouldn’t be a threat. Instead, it would become dependent upon it, right?’

Lucien didn’t have the slightest clue if this theory was correct. All he knew was that he needed to become immune to the cold. He also knew he had to learn how to use magic but didn’t know how to begin.

He clenched his fists together then loosened them again.

‘No, that didn’t work the first time I tried it. How to I draw it out?’

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then exhaled and began to focus on his body, his nervous system, his limps and muscles. He took another deep breath and focused on relaxing as much as he could, which was difficult due to how cold it was.

He felt a strange warmth begin to swell up in his chest, and then begin to flow into the other parts of his body.

He opened his eyes, but as soon as he did, the warmth faded away.

‘Was that it?’

He closed his eyes and tried again. The warmth swelled up again and filled the rest of his body. He then tried to focus this energy through his arm and into the palm of his hand. His hand started to feel cold, but it felt good.

While still focusing on the palm of his hand, he slowly opened his eyes and saw a mist forming in the palm of his hand.

‘Oh wow! Is this magic?’

He focused all his willpower into the palm of his hand and the mist grew larger but then it stopped.

Lucien began to breath very hard.

‘Wow, that drains my energy fast. However, this feels different. It’s not exhaustion from physical work like running. It’s a different type of exhaustion. I feel… almost empty.’

Lucien now had a starting point which restored his hope in the possibility of his survival.