◼️⬛ || 𝕯𝖊𝖘𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖙 || ⬛◼️

??? || 102 || ???

...

But what life did you even have left up there? What aim? 

...

Just wander the barren and frozen desert for the rest of your days?

...

 For how long had any sense of time evaded you? 

...

.

You kept going, you had nothing left for you up there.

There were more creatures, you found out.

A skeletal figure with a large, toothy grin. A ring of fur lined its neck, spikes clustering around its head and trailing down its pitch dark shoulders. For a moment you swore its pink-red gaze flickered, blinked at looked at you. 

...

It was encased in ice, you told yourself. Long dead, you nodded and kept looking.

...

A canine the size of an elephant, golden-blonde fur stark against the mouldy ice. Fierce, frostbitten eyes stared at you, all six of them. Three heads, all with teeth bared in a snarl revealing rows upon rows of teeth, some almost as long as your arm. Sunken deep within its broad chest sat an antique pocket watch the size of your head, eternally ticking away.

...

It's heads followed you, you noted. Not everything was dead in here, in fact, it seemed everything was still well and alive. You kept moving.

...

A bird.

You blinked. What was a bird doing here?

You laughed to yourself. Out of all the mystical creatures a bird confused you the most? Maybe your dregs of sanity were finally slipping through your fingers.

A long plume curling delicately over its head, a beautiful turquoise colour. Sleek and elegant, perhaps the size of a car. The edge of every feather was tipped in black, like they had been dipped in fire and cruelly glued to the creatures body. It blinked at you, shifting its head every so slightly. Amethyst eyes... A skull imprint emblazoned on its forehead.

In that moment, you realised the ice around this bird was melting, slow but surely. You stared at the bird and it stared back. You kept moving.

...

You looked up for the first time since you started your expedition. A silhouette fled your gaze, swimming further into the depths. You rubbed your eyes, and the silhouette was back, face pressed against the ice.

Jagged teeth millimetres from you face, a somewhat human face snarling against the biting glacier, eyes that had long lost their humanity. One a stark red, the colour of blood, and the other a cold blue, like the water depths of the Atlantic ocean. A tail frozen behind it, looking ready to propel the predator through its prison bars to finally lay the killing blow on its prey.