The city of Realmhome was fantastically large. Frost looked down upon it from the top of the Realmguard's Citadel at the very centre, which was suspended above it on a massive plateau. The only way up was a staircase of ungodly length, where Realmguard officers were currently getting busy running up and down for endurance training. They each had a pole slung over their shoulders and a water bucket on each side, training strength and balance like the monks did in the movies.
Frost pitied them. Ren, the man who had sold him into slavery, was a Realmguard officer himself. This, however, did not cause Frost to think of them all as bad. The were a dubious organization that seemed to profit off of the cluelessness of new Voidhunters, but it didn't change the fact that these men and women had been putting their lives on the line to destroy the distortions long before the Void was even a thought in Frost's head. He didn't respect the mentality of the organization at large, but the men and women within it deserved the respect more than any other.
The bad apples like Ren, and the ones that tried to stand in the way of his freedom, would be dealt with as he would anyone else.
He stepped closer to the edge and imagined leaping and soaring over the city, the sprawling and connected blocks of houses squatting with their smokestacks shooting up high. The Victorian style architecture dominated the frame of the city, but even stranger was the modernist tech that permeated it like the cars shooting down the motorways constructed from perfectly melded rocks like that of Rome, or the subway trains gliding with flawlessly uninterrupted motion across the tracks suspended in the sky. The buildings themselves were all small, with the exception of factories and other businesses; even in this case they did not exceed four stories tall.
The city, Frost thought, was not only an amalgamation of tech but a combination of many eras, as well as the things that made them great. It was dominated by the strangeness of the Void, a place that had no limitation to view distance, or any obstructions in the air. Frost could see to the ends of the world from atop the citadel, his view only interrupted by towering mountains to what he presumed was the North, if the concept of direction even existed here. There were forests creeping over the rolling hills and towns gripping for control across vast fields abundant with natural resources. Rivers twisted and expanded and ran into lakes. All of this stopped abruptly at a wall.
The wall was strange to behold. Frost could only see one to his immediate right, which was the one they were closest to. The rest that made up the sides of the square were out of sight, blocked by mountains or by the distance growing infinitely small. The wall, as far as he could tell, was a border to the world. After that, the world simply stopped existing. There wasn't blackness or whiteness, much like a blind man's vision there was simply nothing. It was a sight that his mind couldn't comprehend because it wasn't a sight at all. In fact, to call it a wall may have also been an oversimplification. This was a limit. An end to the world.
He understood what Belle meant when she said this wasn't a planet. This was a realm that existed in a place beyond the time and space of their own universe, connecting planets from either different realities or different distances. Was this Eternity's design? Or perhaps the design of one of his own creations?
[GreatGadly30: It's really beautiful, isn't it? In a strange way?]
This assessment wasn't entirely untrue. Of course, the 'Great Gadfly' was known for his unorthodox opinions, at least at the time.
"This place is really something, isn't it?" Klein asked rhetorically. Frost had forgotten that the man was at his side now.
"It almost makes me wonder if going home is worth the trouble," Frost replied truthfully. The situation had changed now. Was the freedom he was seeking on Earth in the first place? What if a way to bring back the dead existed here…?
Klein glanced at Frost to be sure that he was serious in his statement, and then quickly looked away. "No one's waiting for you back home, kid?" He asked in a slow and mournful tone.
Frost kept his eyes straight ahead, staring at the nothingness beyond the Void. "No one who cares," he said. "And you? Wife and kid back home, yet you choose to follow me?"
"I owe you my life–" He started.
"You don't owe me shit!" Frost barked. "I was going to kill that damned thing anyway. You just happened to be in the way!" He breathed quickly after hurling the words like knives, quickly rushing to regain his composure.
Klein took a step back and almost looked hurt by his words.
"Go home," Frost said. "Our debt is cleared. Go and find Belle. Tell her you were a fool and that I'm just some stupid kid. Maybe you can sign that contract and go home in peace."
The space between them was small but it grew to be endless the longer Frost spoke. This man was not a father figure, nor was he a friend. He was a man with things to lose, and someone like that had no business following him. Thank you for everything, Frost thought, but it's the end of the line. Trying to save this man and remind him of his name was what allowed Frost to keep his hope in that place. His motivation to bring freedom to the slaves had kept him alive, and Frost would always be grateful for that. He was alive because of this man and his once devout stubbornness.
That man that now looked at him with horror, like he'd severely misjudged Frost's character. Was there a feeling in the world worse than someone who'd once favoured you looking upon you in this way? Frost felt no sorrow, for he knew that he was doing the right thing for this man in the long run.
"Do you not understand?" Frost asked him.
[Translation service active.]
"It would have made no difference to me if you died back there," he continued. "Just because you happened to live doesn't mean you have to follow me around, got it!?"
Klein took a breath, stuck his hands in his pockets, and turned around to walk back towards the citadel. It seemed that he'd heard enough at long last. "You're a deeply troubled individual. I see that now." He paused, considering his next words. "Maybe there's no one to love you back home because you don't let them."
Those words stung deep in Frost's chest like a rampant disease. Klein walked away, leaving them to linger in his absence.
[GreatGadfly30: Lying doesn't suit you. But I understand why you did it.]
"Lying?" Frost asked. Lying and withholding the truth were two different things. He'd told the truth to conceal something he didn't want to reveal.
Frost sighed, the feeling in his chest fading. He stomped away from the citadel, starting down the massive staircase that had to be at least five hundred steps long. He didn't look back even once, and eventually found himself at the bottom with his slavery-weakened legs aching and his throat dry from the faint heat that lingered upon his body.
Frost fell back and sat down at the bottom of the stairs. His body still reeked and his wounds still threatened to reopen after whatever treatment he'd been given. His legs in particular hadn't quite healed since that fall on the mountainside. No to mention he still wore the clothes of a slave, which drew prying eyes that looked upon him with suspicion. He wouldn't be getting anywhere like this, no doubt.
His stomach grumbled as if to taunt him while he thought this.
Was this what it felt like to be an immigrant in a strange new land? If he didn't focus on the words directly, he could hear dozens of different languages all around him. The smell of strange foods wafted through the air. This world was like his own in so many ways, and yet it was so different. There was no longer just black and white, but different humanoid races entirely not just limited to the ones he'd seen on Dragonsfold. The feeling of this view expanding out before him was both overwhelming and euphoric.
New abilities, and a new world to make his way in. All of that could wait, though. Frost had a different task for now.
The Void, it seemed, had weather like any other place. Today was to be a scorcher among scorchers, with the stationary and eternal sun using all of its available power to torture the people below. Frost Direshard wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and set off into the streets to find a way home.