Ice

Every day seems to stretch longer and longer and each night shorter and shorter. Not that it matters; I never sleep. Why would I ever need to sleep anyway; I do not need rest nor sustenance.  My existence is nothing but servitude.  My master waits behind his closed door for some hero to best me, but none ever do.  They are weak and burdened by flesh; it bores me.  I wait for a challenge.  I want to face a foe that does more than roll around until I smash them with my ice sword or freeze them with my ice magic.  They never learn either.  I would have expected the fools to learn and adapt, especially since every corpse stays preserved as an ice statue.

But I feel that as the years go on, I lose more and more of what artificial sanity I have.  I sometimes feel that a statue is missing, somehow gone; yet I later find it in a different position somewhere different in my arena.  I remember each battle vividly, so it disturbs me when a statue moves.  Then again, I sometimes swear that a hero wears the exact same armor and wields the exact same weapons as some other vanquished hero.  It almost seems like they can come back to life, then fail to kill me again.  But this is a preposterous thought.

Sometimes I think about what would happen if someone did manage to kill me; a preposterous thought.  They would have to be extremely strong to kill a fifteen-foot tall suit of armor enchanted with ice magic.  Some days I long for that challenge after growing bored with some insolent would-be hero. Some days I long for that sweet release, a rest from this eternal servitude, but then I wonder, what is there except nothingness after death for me.  I am not truly alive.  I am sustained by nothing more than dark magic.  This makes me strong.  I am not weighted down by foreign concepts such as morality.  In fact, I would not even know what morality is if some fool had not said something of how “failing was against his moral code” and how “I was an evil creature that felt nothing for every life that I had snuffed away”. He was correct; I feel nothing and I do not care about each foolish hero that tries to kill me because my sole purpose is to protect and serve my master.

Ironically, he does not care what happens to me.  He does not care if I survive a battle.  If I fail, he still has countless other servants that can protect him.  Each one is progressively stronger than the last one.  I do not know who or what all serves my master, or how many beasts he has created with his magic.  All I know is that the servant before me was a creature of metal and flesh.  He was a large, undead soldier with a body that has become riddled with spears and arrows.  He used each spear to impale his enemies and deflect their attacks.  But he is long dead, slain by some lucky hero that soon fell to me.  He was the first line of defense in this massive citadel, I think.  I know that my master created three of us to defend him in the beginning. I was made last.  The Undead Giant was created first and the Flame Knight was made second. The Flame Knight is stronger than I am, he must be, for he is fire and I am ice.  He looks exactly like me, a fifteen foot tall suit of grey armor with flames coursing through his body, giving him shape and bursting from every crack and crevice, however I have ice instead of fire.  He wields a massive great sword coated in flames.  He guards the room after mine.  I can only imagine his boredom and the torment that it causes him. His blade has never been quenched by the sweet blood of some idiotic adventurer, but mine has countless times.

The people of this realm call me many things; Ice Guardian, Frost Knight, Snow Bane, and many other names.  I only accept one name, Ice Knight, for that is what my master calls me.  They fear me, but they believe that I can be stopped.  I can, but no one has been able to.  They foolishly march in with weapons ablaze, but the flames are puny, they cannot harm me.  One such fool ran in with no armor and a sword as large as mine.  He rolled around constantly, but his speed did not save him in the end.  Since he had sacrificed his armor for speed, he had also sacrificed the prospect of surviving one of my strikes.  I still remember the sting of his blade as the flame raked my left leg; icy armor crumbled off.  He did the same to my right leg, and each time he did, he dodged all of my attacks. I was growing desperate because this hero seemed like he could possibly defeat me, so I slammed the ground and created an ice wall directly in his path.  He rolled right into it.  I took this opportunity to swing my sword and end him for good.  The tip scratched his breast and brought about his icy demise. The wound infected him with my magic and it froze him solid.  I was debating whether or not he should be left as statue or smashed to show him who the superior warrior was.  I decided that he should stay a statue, because he served as a trophy.  However, I saw his sword lying on the ground and walked over to it.  I crushed it under my foot; weapons like those were dangerous, but the prospect of only a half shattered knife as opposed to a fiery great sword seemed much more advantageous to me.  I have not faced an opponent like this in years.

I wish for a challenge, but I am also worried that I may face an opponent who can kill me.  It seems paradoxical but death terrifies me, yet at the same time seems to be my only cure.  I know that there is nothing for me there, yet I yearn for the rest and sweet release of it.  I hear the locking mechanism on my door turning, which means that some hero has come to face me.  Maybe he will kill me, but it matters not, for even if I fall, the curse of this eternal protection will pass on to the Flame Knight, and some other beast after him, and another after him, and another after him, until some hero is finally able to best us all and put an arrow in my master’s head.  Maybe today is that day, and maybe it is not.