A FrostyCounteroffensive: Mending the Mirror

[Fenri]

Fenri approached the barren earth just before the Iden Strait at the edge of the Desert of Aeon. The desert was quiet, howling winds wailed across the frozen, sandy flats and Fenri crossed them silently. His nose twinged as the subtle, but pungent odor of scorched glass sifted through the frozen ground. He got a firsthand view at the site of automated artillery that assailed the unlucky pair of interlopers who unleashed a scourge upon all of Vescrutia.

But for what? What could they possibly have gained exploring the Strait of Iden and returning with nothing to show for it but scars and regret?

Fenri’s curiosity overcame him in the dead of night for days after having his hand forced, aligning himself with the B’halian Empire to preserve the longevity of Diamond Dust. It irked him, left a sour taste, just felt bad, but their mission always stood larger than any one generational struggle.

Although Akundae’s ambitions put the Empire at the center of Vescrutia’s next great paradigm, like the phases of the moon, this too would pass.

Diamond Dust would persist.

The calmness at the edge of the Strait of Iden intrigued him, the scene was far less dynamic than what he observed from the front steps of Cold Frontier, watching Zero and Zeik navigate the gauntlet of turret fire. Fenri traversed the field time and’s time again over the weeks since Zero and Zeik retreated, every time he did he wondered more fervently how the two of them, together, could come back from their journey… defea— unsuccessful. Whatever their intention was, this pervasive malaise that sat atop the realm couldn’t have been their goal.

The sea still roiled, and Iden out in the rolling sea laid silent, a crimson-grey aura basking the quiet island in sinister, ominous light. Fenri’s frustration welled within his heart the same as it did every time he journeyed here alone to make sense of the state of affairs. His first few trips found him joined by David or Lana, Frankie even joined him once to give more lighthearted support, but his deep seated determination outlasted the open ended strategy conversations between them. Unfortunately, his trips devolved from meditations on solutions to rumination on the shortcomings of Arcturus’s most infamous remnants.

Nobody but Zero and Zeik knew exactly what happened here.

So Fenri stood there, breathing in the frigid, salty air and convinced himself to finally travel to Iden in person to assess the situation firsthand, regardless of what danger lie waiting there.

The Frozen Moon of Diamond Dust stepped off the coast of the Desert of Aeon, onto a frozen block of ice grown in response to the flick of his wrist, and started across the Strait of Aeon.