Fall from grace

[DoF Archive]

Date: 3/24/1998 4:19 PM Central Standard Time
From: NovaShayde

"Prepare. Yes. The First Test emerges in time. What do they measure time? Ah yes... days. How many more, I wonder? Now is as good a time as any. It would seem we will need a form more fitting to movement."

It has become unbearably cold within the bedroom of Nova Grey Shadow. Despite the beginning of the warming seasons, Nova can still see his breath fogging the air before him with every exhalation. The windows aren't open... and still, the sun shines brightly outside. Yet it is still bitterly cold. Grey Shadow knows what it is. The Opal.
His colorless gaze falls upon the blue gem resting on the nightstand by his bed. There's even a patch of ice beneath it. His distaste of magic comes mostly from experiences with his father, a master of magic, and the fact that Nova watched magic drive his father slowly insane. There is another reason, however... he just could never understand how it works.
One can dismantle a gun and see exactly why and how it fires. Swords are sharp, and thus they cut. But magic... magic is something he cannot take apart and understand. It's not sharp... yet it can kill with merciless power. To be honest, he hates magic.
He accepted the Opal because it is a position of honor. He didn't know the gem would go crazy on him. It weighed him down. He couldn't keep it from icing everything it came in contact with. It just wouldn't obey his thoughts... he had even tried talking to it. And still no control.
And now he has removed it from his armor. He'll bring it to his challenge, leave it on the ref's table and forget about it. Even if he wins, he has no intention of keeping the bauble. He turns out the light to his bedroom and shuts the door, leaving the house hoping that he doesn't return home to find an ice castle in place of a house. The thing has a mind of its own...

"Indeed."
The opal stirs. The patch of ice beneath it creeps out, dropping over the edge of the nightstand. A lone, jagged icicle slowly inches its way toward the ground. Almost as if ice were a slow stream of river water, the icicle flows to the floor and quickly an icen puddle forms.
Ice creaks and groans eerily as the puddle begins to rise slowly, stalagmites of ice jutting this way and that. The spires intertwine, circling around one another until no single stalagmite remains discernible. Slowly the ice rises, smooth and sleek... flawless. A foot. A calf. A thigh. A hand. An arm. A shoulder. A head.
A finger stands, icen, humanoid for the most part. Sexless. Featureless. It's face a mask of pure ice. No eyes. No mouth. No nose or ears. Simply a perfect oval of smooth ice. The head turns downward, ice creaking and yielding to the coercing of icen musculature. It looks upon the Blue Opal, Icedancer without truly seeing. It lifts the gem from the table, turning it over in its hand.
Slowly it brings the opal upward until the gem touches its forehead... and sinks within an icy "forehead" as if the Opal were merely a pebble sinking beneath the surface of a pool of water.
"We do not leave the fate of our future in the hands of the Holder. The test is ours to perform. The human is flawed... impatient. He fights well... but he is not one to be left to his own devices. We cannot take over his body. It produces far too much heat for our comfort. So it must be done that we exhibit our sentience to this silly sport in which a treasure such as ours is set as stakes."

It lays in wait for Nova to return. Dormant. Resting. It awakens as it registers the heat of his body moving through the front door.
Nova Grey Shadow never stood a chance. Flash frozen within a sheathe of pure ice, the cold seeping into his very molecules. The Icedancer knows the range of this man's power. It knows he could merely speed up the molecules of his very body to the point of extreme heat and melt the "display case" in which his body now rests. It makes no room for error. If it so choose, Nova Grey Shadow would never emerge from the cold stasis in which he
rests, but it is not cruel. Every human has a life span, and how unsporting it would be to disallow the man his time on dirt.
No, the ice will melt once the Test is over... it examines the man through the ice. A face. A name to go with it. A more aesthetic form than a faceless being. The barren plane of the Icedancer's face shifts. Icen hair falls in jagged waves. Cold, blank eyes hollow out. An icy bridge of a nose rises. A crack forms in the ice between the newly formed nose and chin, a grimace... of pain... surprise? No matter, it is how Grey Shadow looks
trapped within the ice. The edges of the newly formed lips curl upward.
For all intents and purposes, the being appears to be Nova Grey Shadow. Almost as if a spirit, the dim light of the waning afternoon that filters through the windows refracts through the translucent body of ice. The Icedancer returns to the bedroom, donning clothing that was left on the floor by the imperfect human. Nova Grey Shadow... yes... but much, much more. The flaws removed. No skin. No bones. No blood. Merely smooth, perfect ice.

And within the body of ice, the blue opal rests within the head... the brain. And a grey star twinkles beneath the chest... a heart....