Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2016 17:43:05 GMT -5
(Thread Power Level: 2,700)
A lonely space pod soared through the black depths of space, within slumbered a being of great and terrible power, or more importantly, the potential for such. Glacia lie dormant nestled within her body, frozen in the absolute zero temperature of space. Lying in a kind of cold induced stasis as she traveled. Her long tail pulled close against her body, pulsating lightly as it lie cradled in her slender arms. The Kold Demon was feminine in form, though in truth genderless. Glacia referred to herself chiefly as she, favoring female pronouns that suited the higher pitch of her voice compared to most of her kind. The black horns on her bio-organic helmet gleamed as they reflected light from the hundreds of twinkling stars in the black void of space itself. They each struck out a foot and a half from the side of her crowned head, pointed to a mono-molecular tip and harder than any other organic substance in the universe. Glacia quite prided herself on them, polishing and filing them when she was awake. Her helmet was constructed of an absurdly dense bone, pearl white in color with just a tinge of a blue under tone. Within sat a large organic gem stone, dominating most of the space on her head. It was a deep blue shade in color, perfectly smooth and unfathomably hard. Reflecting light like an azure planet resting proud atop her head like the crown jewel of an empire. Glacia's eyes were shut, dreaming of the world as it should be. Of the promise of new days, of the vengeance she would seek. Cold red eyes filled with a caustic fury that was kept in check only by infinite ambitions. She relished the thought of conquest, control, usurpation, domination. Glacia crazed these things most beings craved water and air, longed for the taste of food on their lips or the warmth of a fire at their backs.
Within her mind the memories of a million years stirred and whirled in the fabric of reality as perceived by her mind's eye. She saw her distant ancestor Chilled, most fearsome of the space pirates the Galaxy had ever known. Witnessed him coming into contact with the Saiyan known as Bardock. The two battled, and Chilled was easily able to overpower the damned monkey in his normal state. But then... then Bardock transformed before his very eyes. He transcended, he became something more powerful than ever before. A super Saiyan, a being of legend, power beyond all scope of reason. Chilled fought as hard as he could, though he could barely match the strength of the newly improved warrior before him. He was bested, nearly killed by his own attack and blasted into the cold depths of space itself. There he lay, wounded and dying until his own men could retrieve his body and perform immediate medical recovery to keep the Kold Demon alive. But, Chilled had lived, by his own will and drive. And he had carried on that message, that legacy of the hated Super Saiyans with him, until the day would come when they could be seen again. The memory became distant and clouded after that. Thoughts and emotions swirling together in one as Glacia stirred in her slumber. Then it all fell to void and slipped away into the abyss that is darkness itself. Only then did she rest peacefully again, returning to her silent slumber.
The Kold Demoness' body grew still and she exhaled slowly in her sleep. Her breath frigid, coming out as a misty vapor as she slept. Her body was small, not much beyond four foot and eight inches tall. Her frame was svelte, yet surprisingly curvaceous for one of her kind. With well defined curves and generous feminine proportions to her form. Glacia's tail however, was long and thick, thicker than one of her thighs at its base and over twice as long as her body was tall. It took up more space in the cramped confines of the pod than the rest of her body did. A deep purple color in nature, with a dark blue tip that ran several feet in length. Strong enough to crush the life out of lesser beings, fast and deadly enough to serve as a whip when needed to. Her reptilian feet had only three long splayed toes, they sat unmoving at the seat of her padded chair. It had been some time since Glacia had moved at all, her pod had been traveling on auto pilot for years now. Its destination had long been preprogrammed into the on board computer guidance system. Glacia drifted back into her dream like state, her mind once more wandering into the histories of her genetic legacies.
The Kold Demon's mind swirled and the visions parted, revealing the ancient warrior known only as King Kold. He had sired two sons, two beings of great and incredible power unlike any of their race seen before. The first, Glacia knew only of as Frieza. He was said to be the stronger of the two, and flaunted his strength callously in his reign. The second, her forebear, was called Cooler, and this was the ancestor she was more intimately familiar with. He had watched from the shadows as his younger brother received the bulk of their parent's affections. Resentment and hatred grew deep in his heart, living under his younger brother's shadow for all of his life. It led Cooler to think of ways to circumvent his limitations, to think of a future beyond merely his own lifetime. He had trained, night and day for many years, working to perfect his techniques while his brother hungered for power in the form of immortality. Frieza had clearly failed in his goals, as he no longer walked among the living, his mission ending in defeat and destruction, how and where though Glacia's mind could not show. Perhaps she would look into this detail at a later date, if any such records still existed to even be found.
The memories flashed forward, to Cooler watched over the Saiyan nursery, speaking to his minions that he deigned to assist his brother, allowing several of the space pods to escape and flourish in the galaxy at large. To where they disappeared to she could not say, only assume. The Saiyans lived on though, their progeny continuing throughout the ages, so clearly they had flourished despite the loss of their home world. That gave some sliver of hope for Glacia, her world would some day be fully restored. But her memories continued to hinge on Cooler, he grew distant from his brother and father, retreating to his own accord to work in secrecy. He had toiled day and night, discovering a form stronger than that of his fourth form, his base form. Something, grander, more powerful. A state beyond even that of a Super Saiyan. It was magnificent, and then it was gone. Cooler had been slain by a Saiyan from earth, his secrets lost with him. She hoped to once more unlock his secrets, the power was within her, it had to be. Glacia was of the line of Cooler, he had sired at least one child before he perished, and that had been her distant ancestor. A Kold Demon of, unfortunately, little note in her genetic memory, perhaps they had simply hidden to avoid outright destruction, especially as her family fell so far from grace.
The histories became far sketchier after the point of Cooler's death. Glacia tried her best but the memories were garbled and jumbled together. Events shifted and overlapped in her mind, it became impossible to deviate a clear timeline. All she was certain of was that her house had been shamed, brought to the brink of ruin by the deaths of Frieza and Cooler. Their great estates and grand wealths diminished as the empire they had built began to crumble around them. The Planet Trade Organization suffered setback after setback, defeat and failure one after another all mounting in an endless procession of failures. Her ancestors had not held the strength of Frieza or Cooler, nor even their father King Cold. They had watched unable to act as all they had worked for had been brought to ruin around them. Eventually the cursed Brenchians had risen up in revolt, damned traitors finally showing their true colors. It had been the spark needed to trigger a much larger revolution. The hundred races of the Planet Trade Organization all rising up against their Kold Demon masters, assaulting her kind from all sides. The empire that had been wrought was fractured into a thousand pieces and claimed like vultures at a kill by those who stood victorious. Now Planet Kold was little better than a desolate wasteland and Glacia was none the better for it, there could be no empire without a capital, and the world she called home was very much in ruins. If the Kold Empire was to be born again a new, she would first have to restore her home. That would take time, resources, men sworn to her cause, and soldiers to protect what was reclaimed. She could only sigh within her mind's eye. Time was all she seemed to have, but hopefully it was all she would need.
The space pod began to jostle and stir as it struck a patch of turbulence, and Glacia was slowly roused awake from her stasis. She stirred in her place, eyes opening slowly as thin sheets of ice broke loose from them as they blinked away the sleep. Her hands moved from their arm rests, snapping away icicles that had formed within the pod as they moved to rub the sleep from her eyes. Her breathing became heavier, inhaling deep breaths of air within the well oxygenated pod. Though Glacia did not technically require air to survive, breathing was still a biological reaction to stimulus, and she felt the frigid air fill her lunges as her chest heaved up and down with each breath. It was peaceful, waking up after so long. Like still being in a dream, or maybe a strange nightmare. As she finished rubbing the sleep of a long journey from her ice crusted eyes Glacia moved to tap a button on the arm rest control console. It brought up a star chart, outlining all the major planetary bodies in the immediate vicinity. She tapped another button, causing the map to zoom in on quadrant Kold, then subsector Kold, then Planet Kold No.1 itself. It sat there on the view screen like an ice covered jewel, a brilliant white and blue mixture, the azure orb she would once more call home. She let out a long sigh in sight of it, moving her hand to touch it through the holographic monitor. Naturally Glacia's hand pressed through the illumination and she grimaced, clutching her fingers and looking at her hand in displeasure. "Soon..." She thought to herself, "Soon I will be home."
And so the Kold Demoness sat in stoic silence, watching her home world in the display, smiling softly at it rotated slowly. It was a marvelous planet, and it was hers, it should be hers. She was the descendant of King Kold, greatness ran in her blood line, even if she was not great. Yet. As the orb she called home spun into view the Tree of Life came into view. The perverted doppelganger of the all powerful Tree of Might, her people were craftier than their would be destroyers. They had poisoned the tree, twisting it into a beneficial form that created life, rather than absorb it to spawn its cursed fruit. It stood thousands of meters tall, piercing through the cloud banks high into the atmosphere. It was massive beyond all size and scale, jutting from the planet's very surface like the stem from some great galactic fruit. How such an organism was even first conceived Glacia could scarcely wonder. Where had the leviathan tree originated, were there others beyond the seed the Brenchians had in their possession? Was even of this universe? It could easily have come from another realm, perhaps even from the after life itself. The possibilities were as endless as the tangled mass of branches that spouted leaves beyond all hope of counting.
But Glacia did not have a lifetime to think on the nature of trees, no matter how obscenely powerful they were. She stood up with a stretch, arching her slender back and stretching her arms high over her head. Rolling her head the Kold Demon cracked her slim neck, the popping sounds audible in the minuscule spaces inside the space pod. She rolled her shoulders next, causing a similar chain of reactions as rigid muscles were worked free and loose for the first time in entirely too long of a duration. Twisting her waist the Kold Demon twisted from side to side, shaking ice from her chest and back to shatter against the steel casing of the floor. She grabbed at the base of her tail, feeling the smooth violet skin, inspecting it for any obvious injuries or imperfections. Her tail hung limp on the floor currently, it had no real reason to be moved, but none the less she gave it a few solid shakes to knock off the rust from an oppressively long journey.
With her modicum of exercise complete, Glacia scratched at her chin with her long pointed nails, summoning a ball of ki energy as she finished. Brilliant blue in color and shimmering with light. She flickered it away in a heartbeat, grimacing slightly. It had taken more concentration than she had hoped for. She was rough, out of practice and in desperate need to gather her strength. Upon her arrival she would need to think of a stratagem for the future. Maybe there would be others whom she could ally with, or perhaps she could coerce support from the weaker members of her kind. It was too early to make such guesses. Glacia looked to the console again as she retook her seat, checking the readings on fuel supply. They were beginning to get very low, and she hoped that it would be sufficient to reach Kold Planet No.1 before she was left drifting aimlessly through space. That wouldn't kill her, she'd survive in a the vacuum of space as easily as a planet's surface, her kind had no real need for air to breath. But, it would take eons to fly the rest of the trip under her own power. Worse, if she exhausted her Ki too greatly, she may be too weak to finish the journey. Glacia adjusted the engine power, hoping an that a deceased rate of fuel usage would widen her margin of error for getting home in time. After that all she could do was sit back and wait.
Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, and hours became days. Glacia could do nothing but sit on the lackluster throne within her derelict space pod as she watched the numbers counting down on her distance to Planet Kold No.1, closer and closer with every moment. The thought of walking and flying on her own two feet felt almost as good as the promise of beginning to rebuild her family's legacy brick by brick. However, with each moment the fuel gauge continued to diminish, leaving a worrying sensation sitting in the pit of the Kold Demon's stomach. Worry and doubt began to creep into her head as she considered shutting down some of the non-critical systems to maximize output to the engines. As she closed her eyes to drift back into sleep she could only hope the calculations she'd run through the navigation computer were correct. And so Glacia drifted back into dreams of the past, and the ancestors long since dead and gone to the winds of time. Visions of battles she had not fought, places she had not been, and defeats she had not suffered all danced in her mind in a whirling series of fragmented memories and flashes of light and emotion. Glacia's fingers dug tight into her armrest, leaving deep claw marks in the metal.
When she awake again the Kold Demon was in a cold sweat, she blinked heavily, rubbing the gem on her head with one hand as she tried to orient herself on her bearings again. The dream had been so much less, decipherable this time, it was worrying indeed. With another sigh Glacia exhaled through her nose and reopened her command console to check on her space pod's progress. Planet Kold No.1 was close, she could see it through the view port of the space pod. So tantalizingly close, she could almost feel it. The once tiny dot of pale azure light on the horizon was now a growing marble on the inky blackness of space itself. Glacia pressed her hands to the view screen and looked as closely at it as she could. It was beautiful, so alien and yet so familiar seeing it again from space. She waited giddily as a new born hatchling in her pod as it drew ever closer. Her eyes still carefully monitoring the fuel supply, watching it creep down to below three percent total capacity. It was a continual source of worry, especially as the meter continued to grow lower and lower on the monitor. Her excitement at returning home was still outweighed by the thoughts of running critically low on fuel.
Within the hour Glacia was within spitting distance of Planet Kold No.1, looking out over the vast white globe before her. It stretched across almost the entirety of her viewing screen, though she was still thousands of miles away. Space had a funny way of screwing a person's perspective on distances when dealing with objects so vast. The moons of Planet Kold No.1 were far to the left and right of the tiny space pod as it darted through space on the last leg of its journey. Unfortunately, her space pod simply did not have the energy to go on, red lights flickered within the pod as the fuel supply reached minimal levels. Warnings that life support would soon fail and power would be cut to the engines flashed as Glacia could only shrug and sigh. "Damn it, so close. Alright, I guess I have to do this myself." With the flick of a switch and the press of a button Glacia had the agile little craft powering down to offline mode. She disengaged the main door and moved out into the open bleakness of space. It was cold, absolutely cold, there was technically nothing colder than the absolute zero temperature abyss that the Kold Demon presently floated through. Not that she mind, it didn't phase her kind in the slightest.
Glacia shut the entrance door on her space pod, shutting the hatch and sealing it tight behind her. She made sure to double check it was sealed tight as it had been before, after all, the last thing she needed for her only methods of space travel of any convenient variety. Drifting around to the back side of the craft the engines were still glowing red hot as she pressed her hands to the back of the space craft. Perfectly smooth and round, aside from the rivets and the seams between the plates of the outer hull. With a heave Glacia pushed on the back of the craft and began moving it forward under her own power. She flew as fast as she could, an aura of blue Ki surrounding the Kold Demon's body as she pushed the the space pod towards the planet itself. It wasn't terribly heavy, and in space the momentum was working in Glacia's favor. Huffing and puffing as her and her craft zipped through the emptiness of space into the upper atmosphere of the planet. As the curve of the world around her began to dominate the surrounding and one of the Kold No.1 moons began to orbit directly behind Glacia.
Once fully in the atmosphere and under the power of gravity Glacia flew back around to the front of her space pod for the second time, Quickly opening the hatch Glacia slipped back inside and shut the door behind her. She quickly took her seat against and hastily flicked the craft back on to whatever little power remained. Her hands moved to flip a number of switches on the command console, making sure what little energy remained was used to land the space craft. Glacia set coordinates near what remained of the Royal Palace, a great ruined blight growing larger below her. The space pod glowed bright red as it burned its way through the upper atmosphere, igniting the atmosphere around it. It bucked and kicked against Glacia's control, causing her to grit her teeth as the craft came in for a bumpy landing. Then in a moment it punched through the stratosphere, beginning to slow its descent greatly. Decreasing down to a speed where it ceased slowing down to a more reasonable speed as it came in for final approach.
As the space craft slow down to landing speed it banked hard for the southern recesses of the capital. Glacia guided it away from the ruins of the massive structure towards the snowy hill country, hoping for a soft landing in the deep snow banks. She braced for impact as the ground loomed closer and closer below her. Then in one great and terrible moment Glacia's space pod impacted the ground, kicking up a great cloud of dirt and snow as it forms a crater on impact. Glacia was rattled from the impact, clenching her teeth as she shook her head. "Could have been smoother." She told her herself as she kicked open the entrance hatch. The space pod was utterly depleted of fuel and had no power left. Glacia didn't much mind, after all, she was technically home. As she stepped out she was hit by the freezing winds of Planet Kold No.1, the wind whipped across the frozen plains and through the frozen hills. The entire atmosphere was frozen, the entire ecosystem adapted to live in the frozen hell that was her home. "Home." There was that word again, it brought a sense of warmth down in the depths of Glacia's heart. With a heave she lifted up her space pod with one hand, holding it balanced above her with minimal effort. "I suppose I should find a place to rest." She spoke only to herself, flying off with the space craft towards the ruins of the capital city to make herself a new home.
Word Count: 3,802
Reward: Zeni
A lonely space pod soared through the black depths of space, within slumbered a being of great and terrible power, or more importantly, the potential for such. Glacia lie dormant nestled within her body, frozen in the absolute zero temperature of space. Lying in a kind of cold induced stasis as she traveled. Her long tail pulled close against her body, pulsating lightly as it lie cradled in her slender arms. The Kold Demon was feminine in form, though in truth genderless. Glacia referred to herself chiefly as she, favoring female pronouns that suited the higher pitch of her voice compared to most of her kind. The black horns on her bio-organic helmet gleamed as they reflected light from the hundreds of twinkling stars in the black void of space itself. They each struck out a foot and a half from the side of her crowned head, pointed to a mono-molecular tip and harder than any other organic substance in the universe. Glacia quite prided herself on them, polishing and filing them when she was awake. Her helmet was constructed of an absurdly dense bone, pearl white in color with just a tinge of a blue under tone. Within sat a large organic gem stone, dominating most of the space on her head. It was a deep blue shade in color, perfectly smooth and unfathomably hard. Reflecting light like an azure planet resting proud atop her head like the crown jewel of an empire. Glacia's eyes were shut, dreaming of the world as it should be. Of the promise of new days, of the vengeance she would seek. Cold red eyes filled with a caustic fury that was kept in check only by infinite ambitions. She relished the thought of conquest, control, usurpation, domination. Glacia crazed these things most beings craved water and air, longed for the taste of food on their lips or the warmth of a fire at their backs.
Within her mind the memories of a million years stirred and whirled in the fabric of reality as perceived by her mind's eye. She saw her distant ancestor Chilled, most fearsome of the space pirates the Galaxy had ever known. Witnessed him coming into contact with the Saiyan known as Bardock. The two battled, and Chilled was easily able to overpower the damned monkey in his normal state. But then... then Bardock transformed before his very eyes. He transcended, he became something more powerful than ever before. A super Saiyan, a being of legend, power beyond all scope of reason. Chilled fought as hard as he could, though he could barely match the strength of the newly improved warrior before him. He was bested, nearly killed by his own attack and blasted into the cold depths of space itself. There he lay, wounded and dying until his own men could retrieve his body and perform immediate medical recovery to keep the Kold Demon alive. But, Chilled had lived, by his own will and drive. And he had carried on that message, that legacy of the hated Super Saiyans with him, until the day would come when they could be seen again. The memory became distant and clouded after that. Thoughts and emotions swirling together in one as Glacia stirred in her slumber. Then it all fell to void and slipped away into the abyss that is darkness itself. Only then did she rest peacefully again, returning to her silent slumber.
The Kold Demoness' body grew still and she exhaled slowly in her sleep. Her breath frigid, coming out as a misty vapor as she slept. Her body was small, not much beyond four foot and eight inches tall. Her frame was svelte, yet surprisingly curvaceous for one of her kind. With well defined curves and generous feminine proportions to her form. Glacia's tail however, was long and thick, thicker than one of her thighs at its base and over twice as long as her body was tall. It took up more space in the cramped confines of the pod than the rest of her body did. A deep purple color in nature, with a dark blue tip that ran several feet in length. Strong enough to crush the life out of lesser beings, fast and deadly enough to serve as a whip when needed to. Her reptilian feet had only three long splayed toes, they sat unmoving at the seat of her padded chair. It had been some time since Glacia had moved at all, her pod had been traveling on auto pilot for years now. Its destination had long been preprogrammed into the on board computer guidance system. Glacia drifted back into her dream like state, her mind once more wandering into the histories of her genetic legacies.
The Kold Demon's mind swirled and the visions parted, revealing the ancient warrior known only as King Kold. He had sired two sons, two beings of great and incredible power unlike any of their race seen before. The first, Glacia knew only of as Frieza. He was said to be the stronger of the two, and flaunted his strength callously in his reign. The second, her forebear, was called Cooler, and this was the ancestor she was more intimately familiar with. He had watched from the shadows as his younger brother received the bulk of their parent's affections. Resentment and hatred grew deep in his heart, living under his younger brother's shadow for all of his life. It led Cooler to think of ways to circumvent his limitations, to think of a future beyond merely his own lifetime. He had trained, night and day for many years, working to perfect his techniques while his brother hungered for power in the form of immortality. Frieza had clearly failed in his goals, as he no longer walked among the living, his mission ending in defeat and destruction, how and where though Glacia's mind could not show. Perhaps she would look into this detail at a later date, if any such records still existed to even be found.
The memories flashed forward, to Cooler watched over the Saiyan nursery, speaking to his minions that he deigned to assist his brother, allowing several of the space pods to escape and flourish in the galaxy at large. To where they disappeared to she could not say, only assume. The Saiyans lived on though, their progeny continuing throughout the ages, so clearly they had flourished despite the loss of their home world. That gave some sliver of hope for Glacia, her world would some day be fully restored. But her memories continued to hinge on Cooler, he grew distant from his brother and father, retreating to his own accord to work in secrecy. He had toiled day and night, discovering a form stronger than that of his fourth form, his base form. Something, grander, more powerful. A state beyond even that of a Super Saiyan. It was magnificent, and then it was gone. Cooler had been slain by a Saiyan from earth, his secrets lost with him. She hoped to once more unlock his secrets, the power was within her, it had to be. Glacia was of the line of Cooler, he had sired at least one child before he perished, and that had been her distant ancestor. A Kold Demon of, unfortunately, little note in her genetic memory, perhaps they had simply hidden to avoid outright destruction, especially as her family fell so far from grace.
The histories became far sketchier after the point of Cooler's death. Glacia tried her best but the memories were garbled and jumbled together. Events shifted and overlapped in her mind, it became impossible to deviate a clear timeline. All she was certain of was that her house had been shamed, brought to the brink of ruin by the deaths of Frieza and Cooler. Their great estates and grand wealths diminished as the empire they had built began to crumble around them. The Planet Trade Organization suffered setback after setback, defeat and failure one after another all mounting in an endless procession of failures. Her ancestors had not held the strength of Frieza or Cooler, nor even their father King Cold. They had watched unable to act as all they had worked for had been brought to ruin around them. Eventually the cursed Brenchians had risen up in revolt, damned traitors finally showing their true colors. It had been the spark needed to trigger a much larger revolution. The hundred races of the Planet Trade Organization all rising up against their Kold Demon masters, assaulting her kind from all sides. The empire that had been wrought was fractured into a thousand pieces and claimed like vultures at a kill by those who stood victorious. Now Planet Kold was little better than a desolate wasteland and Glacia was none the better for it, there could be no empire without a capital, and the world she called home was very much in ruins. If the Kold Empire was to be born again a new, she would first have to restore her home. That would take time, resources, men sworn to her cause, and soldiers to protect what was reclaimed. She could only sigh within her mind's eye. Time was all she seemed to have, but hopefully it was all she would need.
The space pod began to jostle and stir as it struck a patch of turbulence, and Glacia was slowly roused awake from her stasis. She stirred in her place, eyes opening slowly as thin sheets of ice broke loose from them as they blinked away the sleep. Her hands moved from their arm rests, snapping away icicles that had formed within the pod as they moved to rub the sleep from her eyes. Her breathing became heavier, inhaling deep breaths of air within the well oxygenated pod. Though Glacia did not technically require air to survive, breathing was still a biological reaction to stimulus, and she felt the frigid air fill her lunges as her chest heaved up and down with each breath. It was peaceful, waking up after so long. Like still being in a dream, or maybe a strange nightmare. As she finished rubbing the sleep of a long journey from her ice crusted eyes Glacia moved to tap a button on the arm rest control console. It brought up a star chart, outlining all the major planetary bodies in the immediate vicinity. She tapped another button, causing the map to zoom in on quadrant Kold, then subsector Kold, then Planet Kold No.1 itself. It sat there on the view screen like an ice covered jewel, a brilliant white and blue mixture, the azure orb she would once more call home. She let out a long sigh in sight of it, moving her hand to touch it through the holographic monitor. Naturally Glacia's hand pressed through the illumination and she grimaced, clutching her fingers and looking at her hand in displeasure. "Soon..." She thought to herself, "Soon I will be home."
And so the Kold Demoness sat in stoic silence, watching her home world in the display, smiling softly at it rotated slowly. It was a marvelous planet, and it was hers, it should be hers. She was the descendant of King Kold, greatness ran in her blood line, even if she was not great. Yet. As the orb she called home spun into view the Tree of Life came into view. The perverted doppelganger of the all powerful Tree of Might, her people were craftier than their would be destroyers. They had poisoned the tree, twisting it into a beneficial form that created life, rather than absorb it to spawn its cursed fruit. It stood thousands of meters tall, piercing through the cloud banks high into the atmosphere. It was massive beyond all size and scale, jutting from the planet's very surface like the stem from some great galactic fruit. How such an organism was even first conceived Glacia could scarcely wonder. Where had the leviathan tree originated, were there others beyond the seed the Brenchians had in their possession? Was even of this universe? It could easily have come from another realm, perhaps even from the after life itself. The possibilities were as endless as the tangled mass of branches that spouted leaves beyond all hope of counting.
But Glacia did not have a lifetime to think on the nature of trees, no matter how obscenely powerful they were. She stood up with a stretch, arching her slender back and stretching her arms high over her head. Rolling her head the Kold Demon cracked her slim neck, the popping sounds audible in the minuscule spaces inside the space pod. She rolled her shoulders next, causing a similar chain of reactions as rigid muscles were worked free and loose for the first time in entirely too long of a duration. Twisting her waist the Kold Demon twisted from side to side, shaking ice from her chest and back to shatter against the steel casing of the floor. She grabbed at the base of her tail, feeling the smooth violet skin, inspecting it for any obvious injuries or imperfections. Her tail hung limp on the floor currently, it had no real reason to be moved, but none the less she gave it a few solid shakes to knock off the rust from an oppressively long journey.
With her modicum of exercise complete, Glacia scratched at her chin with her long pointed nails, summoning a ball of ki energy as she finished. Brilliant blue in color and shimmering with light. She flickered it away in a heartbeat, grimacing slightly. It had taken more concentration than she had hoped for. She was rough, out of practice and in desperate need to gather her strength. Upon her arrival she would need to think of a stratagem for the future. Maybe there would be others whom she could ally with, or perhaps she could coerce support from the weaker members of her kind. It was too early to make such guesses. Glacia looked to the console again as she retook her seat, checking the readings on fuel supply. They were beginning to get very low, and she hoped that it would be sufficient to reach Kold Planet No.1 before she was left drifting aimlessly through space. That wouldn't kill her, she'd survive in a the vacuum of space as easily as a planet's surface, her kind had no real need for air to breath. But, it would take eons to fly the rest of the trip under her own power. Worse, if she exhausted her Ki too greatly, she may be too weak to finish the journey. Glacia adjusted the engine power, hoping an that a deceased rate of fuel usage would widen her margin of error for getting home in time. After that all she could do was sit back and wait.
Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, and hours became days. Glacia could do nothing but sit on the lackluster throne within her derelict space pod as she watched the numbers counting down on her distance to Planet Kold No.1, closer and closer with every moment. The thought of walking and flying on her own two feet felt almost as good as the promise of beginning to rebuild her family's legacy brick by brick. However, with each moment the fuel gauge continued to diminish, leaving a worrying sensation sitting in the pit of the Kold Demon's stomach. Worry and doubt began to creep into her head as she considered shutting down some of the non-critical systems to maximize output to the engines. As she closed her eyes to drift back into sleep she could only hope the calculations she'd run through the navigation computer were correct. And so Glacia drifted back into dreams of the past, and the ancestors long since dead and gone to the winds of time. Visions of battles she had not fought, places she had not been, and defeats she had not suffered all danced in her mind in a whirling series of fragmented memories and flashes of light and emotion. Glacia's fingers dug tight into her armrest, leaving deep claw marks in the metal.
When she awake again the Kold Demon was in a cold sweat, she blinked heavily, rubbing the gem on her head with one hand as she tried to orient herself on her bearings again. The dream had been so much less, decipherable this time, it was worrying indeed. With another sigh Glacia exhaled through her nose and reopened her command console to check on her space pod's progress. Planet Kold No.1 was close, she could see it through the view port of the space pod. So tantalizingly close, she could almost feel it. The once tiny dot of pale azure light on the horizon was now a growing marble on the inky blackness of space itself. Glacia pressed her hands to the view screen and looked as closely at it as she could. It was beautiful, so alien and yet so familiar seeing it again from space. She waited giddily as a new born hatchling in her pod as it drew ever closer. Her eyes still carefully monitoring the fuel supply, watching it creep down to below three percent total capacity. It was a continual source of worry, especially as the meter continued to grow lower and lower on the monitor. Her excitement at returning home was still outweighed by the thoughts of running critically low on fuel.
Within the hour Glacia was within spitting distance of Planet Kold No.1, looking out over the vast white globe before her. It stretched across almost the entirety of her viewing screen, though she was still thousands of miles away. Space had a funny way of screwing a person's perspective on distances when dealing with objects so vast. The moons of Planet Kold No.1 were far to the left and right of the tiny space pod as it darted through space on the last leg of its journey. Unfortunately, her space pod simply did not have the energy to go on, red lights flickered within the pod as the fuel supply reached minimal levels. Warnings that life support would soon fail and power would be cut to the engines flashed as Glacia could only shrug and sigh. "Damn it, so close. Alright, I guess I have to do this myself." With the flick of a switch and the press of a button Glacia had the agile little craft powering down to offline mode. She disengaged the main door and moved out into the open bleakness of space. It was cold, absolutely cold, there was technically nothing colder than the absolute zero temperature abyss that the Kold Demon presently floated through. Not that she mind, it didn't phase her kind in the slightest.
Glacia shut the entrance door on her space pod, shutting the hatch and sealing it tight behind her. She made sure to double check it was sealed tight as it had been before, after all, the last thing she needed for her only methods of space travel of any convenient variety. Drifting around to the back side of the craft the engines were still glowing red hot as she pressed her hands to the back of the space craft. Perfectly smooth and round, aside from the rivets and the seams between the plates of the outer hull. With a heave Glacia pushed on the back of the craft and began moving it forward under her own power. She flew as fast as she could, an aura of blue Ki surrounding the Kold Demon's body as she pushed the the space pod towards the planet itself. It wasn't terribly heavy, and in space the momentum was working in Glacia's favor. Huffing and puffing as her and her craft zipped through the emptiness of space into the upper atmosphere of the planet. As the curve of the world around her began to dominate the surrounding and one of the Kold No.1 moons began to orbit directly behind Glacia.
Once fully in the atmosphere and under the power of gravity Glacia flew back around to the front of her space pod for the second time, Quickly opening the hatch Glacia slipped back inside and shut the door behind her. She quickly took her seat against and hastily flicked the craft back on to whatever little power remained. Her hands moved to flip a number of switches on the command console, making sure what little energy remained was used to land the space craft. Glacia set coordinates near what remained of the Royal Palace, a great ruined blight growing larger below her. The space pod glowed bright red as it burned its way through the upper atmosphere, igniting the atmosphere around it. It bucked and kicked against Glacia's control, causing her to grit her teeth as the craft came in for a bumpy landing. Then in a moment it punched through the stratosphere, beginning to slow its descent greatly. Decreasing down to a speed where it ceased slowing down to a more reasonable speed as it came in for final approach.
As the space craft slow down to landing speed it banked hard for the southern recesses of the capital. Glacia guided it away from the ruins of the massive structure towards the snowy hill country, hoping for a soft landing in the deep snow banks. She braced for impact as the ground loomed closer and closer below her. Then in one great and terrible moment Glacia's space pod impacted the ground, kicking up a great cloud of dirt and snow as it forms a crater on impact. Glacia was rattled from the impact, clenching her teeth as she shook her head. "Could have been smoother." She told her herself as she kicked open the entrance hatch. The space pod was utterly depleted of fuel and had no power left. Glacia didn't much mind, after all, she was technically home. As she stepped out she was hit by the freezing winds of Planet Kold No.1, the wind whipped across the frozen plains and through the frozen hills. The entire atmosphere was frozen, the entire ecosystem adapted to live in the frozen hell that was her home. "Home." There was that word again, it brought a sense of warmth down in the depths of Glacia's heart. With a heave she lifted up her space pod with one hand, holding it balanced above her with minimal effort. "I suppose I should find a place to rest." She spoke only to herself, flying off with the space craft towards the ruins of the capital city to make herself a new home.
Word Count: 3,802
Reward: Zeni