Years ago, probably about 50 or so...Niki appears in a sphere of numbers, clutching the icicle with her hand over her shirt.
The icicle is still attached to the ceiling, and it is actually quite long, almost reaching down to the floor.
She lets go of it and shivers. Her breath is quite visible as puffs of vapor against the chill.
She is currently in a massive cave of countless frozen stalactites. The ground is slippery with the slick of frozen and refrozen ice. The ceiling, despite being studded with a chandelier of icicles, reaches up quite high, a hundred something feet high. Many of the icicles occupy much of the airspace however.
There is though, a path that leads to an ancient stone structure in the distance. Quite tall and reaching up and around the hanging pillars of frost. A primitive looking statue of a frog sits atop this structure, quite tall and pyramidlike, though much steeper than perhaps expected.
This is the right place. Niki has arrived at the frozen cave home to the Jinglorian Frog Temple.
She checks the timestamp on Katie's message and prepares for another timehop.
Right now it is the year 1961, in outdated earth years. In Jinglria's time system, it's somewhere in the 440something SR range probably.
Her target is September 9th, 2016. Might take some extra oomph, considering it'll require crossing the Rift barrier. Shouldn't be too hard to navigate though, considering it'll be a stationary timehop.
Niki takes a deep breath and gathers her focus upon the target date, and soon she disappears once again.
September 9th, 2016: Cirno Present dayNiki appears once again. The cave has not changed much in the past 55 years, but the icicle she had appeared holding onto has been snapped off on the end.
Now she is in the right time and place. She shivers a bit more. She probably should have packed for colder weather. She uncaptchas the duct tape cape from earlier and puts it on, along with her trademark brown vest.
At this point, she remembers that she's still wearing her temporic disguise headband. Knowing that temporics can't stand the cold, she wonders if taking it of would make it less chilly.
She takes off the headband, revealing her true form once again.
She does not have bec-like horns nor skin as white as porcelain. She is a Caucasian human. Probably.
...it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference with the temperature however.
She puts the headband away and uncaptchas one of her hats. At least her hat never lets her down. She then puts on a black cap and begins walking towards the frog temple, still shivering a bit.
Eventually, she makes it to the base of the frog temple. Not wanting to waste her energy on climbing stairs, or slipping down them, she decides to do something she hasn't done in a while: fly.
Niki hops up and lifts slightly off the ground. She sometimes forgets that she has this ability.
She quickly ascends to the front door of the frog temple, and lands upon the ground lightly. She then walks through the doors into the temple.
The interior of the frog temple doesn't offer very much protection against the cold at all.
Niki walks further inside, teeth chattering.
Niki thinks back to her days working for Skaianet, back when she first had to seek out the frog temple with them. It was quite the expedition, with some pretty perilous moments. A couple of the elves that come along actually wound up perishing from some of the dangers present. Obviously Niki couldn't just go out of her way to save them, or she would risk actually dying for real, due to heroic action. She feels some amount of guilt, but at least they seemed to have more control over their fate than those who met their end via the game's meteors. Really, it was a messed up situation all around.
She doesn't like to think about it.
Though as she continues walking, it seems almost as if... almost as if she could see some of her expedition team's fallen members out of the corner of her eye...
It couldn't be them... could it?
She tries to ignore them, despite the fact that they seem to be spying on her from behind the pillars.
Then again, ghosts don't appear outside of the bubbles... or do they?
Niki just wants to get back to the others with Katie as soon as possible. The sooner she can escape from this broken promise of a planet, the better.
Eventually, Niki arrives at the
golden and
purple transportalizers, both leading to their respective dreamer moons in Session P.
The session that Thoren ruined with his own two hands.
She's shaking a little, and it's not from the cold.
Niki tries to get a hold of herself, taking in deep breaths. It almost looks like she's vaping she's breathing so much.
Katie is depending on her.
She has to go on.
Niki walks towards the purple transportalizer of Derse, and lets it whisk her away, back to the purple dusken city of her dreams.
➜
