The Adventures of Armin

     The first thing I remember was a voice. I heard it as if in a dream, yet it was so clear, as if the speaker was right in front of me. It was a girl’s voice, and she conversed with another person.

     “I have seen something like those symbols before. It was a long time ago when I was in the Lost Desert.”

     The other voice was an echo. It sounded distant, but I could faintly make out the words. ”Please... take me there. Help me save my sister...”

     “The Lost Desert is far. I don’t know...”

     “I can pay you. My family is wealthy...”

     “I hope you've packed your summer clothes! Let's get going!”

     The next thing I remember was light. Pure, cold, gleaming white light, like the light of the sun when it reflects off the peak of Terror Mountain. It shines into our cave in the morning, and tells us when it’s time to wake up.

     So I did.

     I was in the sleeping chamber of my family’s cave, a perfectly natural place for a Bori of eleven years old to find himself in the morning. I turned lazily over. As I did so, I happened to glimpse the corner where my parents usually slept. I closed my eyes, refocused my bleary vision, then opened them again. My tired eyes hadn’t lied. My parents were not there.

     I made an effort to sit up now. I felt like there was a rock in my head that clunked to the front of my skull as I moved. I was so dizzy... I leaned forward with my head in my hands till the room stopped spinning, and when it did I spread my fingers. With my hands still half covering my eyes, shielding them from the coarse light, I could see for a certainty my brother and sister were not in their beds.

     “That’s strange...”

     It must have been later than I thought. I gathered myself up, wrapped my blanket around me, and took some tottering steps to the mouth of the cave. There the colour of the sky caught me off guard. It was yellow, and the sun was a molten orange ball, sunk halfway below the western peaks. It was evening, not morning!

     “What the...?”

     I turned back towards the cave, my confusion mounting. Where was my family? My head spun again. The rock seemed to shatter in pieces and clatter every which way in my skull. I felt myself reeling toward the snow...

     And then I saw the fighting.

     “Armin, defend yourself!”

     It was my father. He handed me a slingshot. The next moment he was locked in combat with an... icy... skeletal... monster?

     “Father?”

     I looked up and all the Bori were there, all my people. They were fighting for their lives with everything they had: slingshots, bows, knives, claws... In a heartbeat I saw my friends, my teachers; there was my mother! She was hiding my two siblings behind a frozen stalagmite and telling them not to make a sound. The creatures plowed through my people as if they were snow in their path. They were everywhere, an army.

     And the leader of that army...

     “The Bringer!” The words were croaked in my own voice. Was it my memory, or reality? It hardly mattered. I pounded to the mountain’s entrance, through the winding, wildering tunnels I knew would lead me to the Great Hall, to the Heart of Bori Mountain. There, I stopped. I gasped. The blanket I still carried slid off my shoulders onto the floor.

     “No... No!”

     Everyone I’d ever loved stood frozen before my eyes, like statues, sculptures carved in ice. There was my friend James and his two older brothers. There was Donny, the owner of the Toy Repair Shop. And...

     “Father!” There my father stood, in the very place I saw him in my vision. He was poised as if still in combat — they all were, I soon realized — though the skeletal hoards were nowhere to be seen.

     A thought came to me then. I frantically began to search for the stalagmite I knew had sheltered my brother and sister. I was relieved to find them still crouched there, cowering in each other’s arms. A few paces away stood my mother, sword in hand. I traced her path — she looked as though she had been on her way to help my father when she was petrified.

     I reached up and touched her frozen face. “You were so brave, Mom...” The tears started in my eyes.

     But my blood stood still as theirs did. It was cold in my veins, and for a moment I wondered if I was freezing too, if I would soon be joining the ranks of the paralyzed...

     Then it occurred to me. I had been frozen! I’d stood in this cavern too, for time immeasurable! The Keeper of Time had done this, not the Bringer. Our leader froze us to protect us. I was frozen...

     And yet I was awake. Here I was awake, moving, breathing... The blood did course through my veins, though at that moment it stood still in my bewilderment and horror.

     Here I was awake...

     But why?

     For days I pondered this question. Hour after hour I would walk among my people, hoping, searching for an answer. I was waiting for them to wake up.

     At first I longed for my parents, for my mother or father to magically thaw, wrap their arms around me, tell me everything would be okay. Then I thought of my brother and sister. If either one of them were with me, I knew I could play the big brother and take comfort in comforting them. It always helped to play the big brother...

     It came to a point where I just wanted anyone. If a Bori I had never met were to unfreeze then and there — even if they were the worst Bori in the world — I had a feeling they would quickly become the closest friend I’d ever had, so lonely did I feel, so beyond lonely. I couldn’t take this solitary existence. The very possibility of being the last of my species alive; maybe even the last Neopet alive...! It was eating me up from the inside out.

     I had no idea how much time had passed.

     Over and over, over and over, the same thoughts played through my head. The chaos, the fighting, the sounds of metal on metal, and the most horrific battle cries I’d ever heard... At the forefront of my mind, of course, was the question: when would my people wake up? But most agonizing of all —and I don’t mean to sound selfish, Reader, but it plagued me! — was the question of my own condition: why was I awake? Why had I unfrozen before them?

     I was Armin, and I was small. Just a regular kid, barely eleven years old, always shrimpy for my age. I couldn’t imagine I was chosen to be first to rise. It must have been an accident...

     Ah, what a terrible accident!

     I sat on a rock and stared into the Heart of the Mountain. The massive red gem was our salvation, and our doom. It came to me in waves, the fragments of a memory, as I stared into its crystal depths, something our leader had told us while we were in our petrified state. He used some kind of magical telepathy; it was as if his voice spoke straight to our souls.

     The Heart of the Mountain had saved us, he said. The spell would keep us frozen, trapped within the ice and sustained by the Heart, until the Bringer of Night’s demise assured our safety once and for all.

     But the Bringer sought the Heart himself — this news had come to the Keeper in a dream. The demigod’s search for the gem was what led him to attack us in the first place. Now if the Bringer were ever to return, find the Heart and take it for his own, my people’s life source would be cut off...

     I stared, stared into the Heart. My existence, everyone’s existence, was indelibly connected to it. I watched the light from the skylights reflect off its jagged surface, scattering crimson ripples and waves and shimmers on the floor. Then I heard a voice.

     ”What was that?” asked a woman who seemed so familiar... I leapt off the rock and whirled around, trying to find this mystery speaker. A harsh rumbling sound filled the cave, like heavy stone grating against stone. Then there was a shriek. ”Ah!”

     I suddenly felt dizzy. The voice, I knew it! It was the voice from my dream a few days ago! In all that had happened I had almost forgotten!

     An echo rattled through the cavern, like little stones falling from the sky. Or was it the boulder bouncing in my head again? The walls were closing in...

     ”Help me!” cried the voice.

     “I can’t help you,” I muttered before my world went black and I fell to the floor.

      “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

     I woke up on the floor of the Great Hall. My people stared down at me through unseeing eyes. I heard the voice no more.

     It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten since the day I woke up. The pale sunlight glowed through the skylights in the cave. It was the morning of the fourth day.

     I must have been hallucinating. The voices must have been a product of hunger-induced delirium, I thought to myself. Nothing more.

     I had to find something to eat. The first place I looked was the community food store, in a cavern through a tunnel off the Great Hall.

     “Uh-oh...”

     To my amazement and horror I found our entire food supply rotten, decayed beyond recognition. That was my first clue as to how long we’d been frozen.

     I supposed I had no choice but to forage for food. I discovered a grove of berry bushes a little ways off from my cave. I couldn’t remember if the bushes had always been there, or not. I was grateful to find my family’s dishes right where we left them, no worse for wear than a little eaten with rust. I put the berries in a pan and heated them over a fire to thaw them.

     “Yuck...”

     They were mushy and sour, but they would do for now.

     My mother and father used to hunt for our family. They tried to teach me — eleven years old was plenty old enough to learn to be a provider, they said. But I could never bear the idea of taking a wild Petpet’s life. Even now that it was a matter of survival, I cringed at the very thought. No, I decided, l would have to find some other source of food if I intended to stay alive.

     For the first time the thought of leaving the mountain presented itself as a real possibility. I wasn’t sure how to get to Happy Valley on my own; I had only been with my father on supply trips for the colony. It frightened me to realize I didn’t even know if Happy Valley still existed!

     But I did know one thing: if I planned to hold onto any last glimmering hope of survival... I had no other choice but to make the trek. Gathering my wits about me (I had nothing else to gather about me), I set out right after breakfast towards the south.

     It wasn’t long before the snow began to fall. Not that snow in Terror Mountain was any novelty. If there was one thing I’d learned as a Bori, it was to always be prepared for an unexpected storm. My fur was thick and my clothes were warm; nature and knowledge had done their best to protect me. I braced myself against the wind and tried to focus my steps in a southerly direction. But south was hard to find without a compass, the moon, or the sun.

     ”It can’t be much further...” I heard the words as if they were my own thoughts. But the voice was much more optimistic than I felt...

     And it was decidedly female.

     “Where is this voice coming from?” I cried out loud to the snow, my confusion and frustration growing. I was beginning to feel lightheaded again. The light was fading. No! I couldn’t pass out now! I couldn’t...

     ”What is happening to me?” The voice spoke the words as I thought them.

     Suddenly I felt an irresistible urge, as if the storm was pulling me in one direction. I knew that direction wasn’t south, but I felt I had no choice but to comply. I staggered on; it was as if my steps were involuntary. Then I saw it, something green buried beneath the snow.

     “What in Neopia?”

     I was exhausted, but my curiosity got the better of me. I knelt down and began to dig with all my might. It didn’t take long to uncover the thing completely and realize it had a face, arms, hands, legs — all frozen stiff, caked and shimmering in ice and snow. It was a girl, an Usul. And she was dead.

     No. She shuddered at my touch. A ripple of light flitted through the crystal round her neck as she did so.

     All at once the storm seemed to dissipate; at once my head and my pathway seemed to clear. I recognized landmarks around me — trees, stumps, jagged snow-covered rocks. I could see Bori Mountain in the near distance. Could it be I had been walking in circles all this time?

     I laughed! I’d never been so happy to get lost!

     “It’s okay,” I told the Usul. “Help is on the way.”

     I took a breath, grabbed the unconscious Usul under the arms, and proceeded to drag her to the shelter of my family’s cave.

     By the time I had the Usul warmly situated under four blankets and had built up the biggest fire I could, with all the firewood I could gather... I admit I was about ready to collapse from overexertion. I wrapped my own blanket around my frail body and plunked myself down by the fire. Now, for the first time, I took the liberty of looking at the mysterious Usul.

     She wore a long green coat with beige fur trim, and I thanked her lucky stars and mine that she hadn’t worn a white one, or I probably never would have found her. She had long brown hair that had been crushed by the weight of the snow, but was drying now by the warmth of the fire. As the minutes passed, the Usul was looking less and less like the corpse I’d originally thought her to be. I could see the blankets moving up and down as she breathed. Sometimes she would groan in her sleep, and I would think she was waking up.

     But she didn’t. Not for a long time.

     Outside the snow had completely subsided. The sun would be setting soon. It felt like a lifetime since I’d eaten those berries... I went out to pick some more, for myself and for my friend, whenever she woke up.

     All of the sudden, I remembered a dish my mother used to make. There were a few select species of trees in Terror Mountain whose bark could be boiled to make a nutritious soup broth. It was nobody’s favourite recipe — it tasted like just what it was. Still, my mother always insisted on having it for dinner the night before a long journey. It would give us strength, she always said.

     Taking advantage of my razor-sharp Bori claws, just as Mother used to do, I collected all the bark I could find. Then I went to the stream and filled a pail with water, and when I returned to the cave, there was the Usul, awake! She had thrown off two of her blankets and was sitting up, staring at me.

     “Hello,” I greeted timidly, unsure what else to say.

     “Hello,” the Usul answered, and I recognized immediately — the voice!

     “It’s you!” I cried impulsively, providing no explanation whatsoever.

     “It’s me,” said the Usul, not seeming to require one. “Did you... save me?” she asked with an embarrassed hesitance. “The last thing I remember was getting caught in a snowstorm. I thought I was almost there, but then... my legs just gave out on me.”

     “Thank goodness you’re okay!” I heaved a sigh of genuine relief. “I dragged you here across the snow. I really thought you were dead!” I laughed — which probably wasn’t the most appropriate thing to do, Reader, but I was in borderline hysterics. Here was a living, breathing Neopet! The first one I’d seen in days — maybe years, for all I knew! And it wasn’t just any Neopet, it was the voice! The one that had been speaking to me all this time... I was so overwhelmed with emotion, I didn’t know what to do!

     The Usul took up an immediate air of familiarity. “Did you really drag me here? A little boy like you?” She caught herself, abashed. “Uh, no offence.”

     “None taken.” And I tried to hide my blush. “I’m not really that little.”

     I turned my back to make the soup while the Usul watched the stars come out in the darkening night sky. Finally we sat down to eat together.

     The Usul was the first to speak.

     “So, err... what are you?” Somehow I knew this was going to be her first question.

     I took a deep breath and prepared to tell her everything about myself: my family, my people, and our plight. “I’m called Armin, and I’m a Bori. My people live inside the mountain. That’s if there is anyone else left...”

     To be continued…