The Elementals - The Ice Princess

Chapter 1

9 Years Later

My chest hurts and I am almost out of breath from running. I try to pull in as much oxygen as I can to continue my dire escape, but the acrid air makes my lungs burn even more. The taste that it leaves in my mouth is something that I would liken to battery acid and when I swallow I can feel it burn my esophagus on the way down. It only takes me a brief moment to realize that I am back in the same dream that has been haunting me for the last five years. In fact, it's been happening more and more that these days I go to bed almost expecting to have it more times than not. I am being chased through a strange world that I don't recognize.

Everything passes by so quick that I cannot focus on any one thing in particular. The only sounds I can concentrate on are my heavy breathing and the crunching sound of everything behind me being swallowed up into darkness. I am once again running for my life.

Everything to my left and right blurs into the background and loses all clarity. Colors bleed into one another, like a picture that has been colored with crayon and left in the sun to melt. There are no sights to see or no paths to follow, just globs of color. I can only focus on two directions, what is directly ahead of me and what is directly behind. To be honest, neither direction gives me much hope. The darkness that is chasing me is getting closer. I glance back at it and it seems to envelop all that it touches leaving only decay behind. No face, no hands, just a cloud of instant death for anything that is devoured as it's touched. Trees that were once ripe with life end up empty, devoid of anything that would resemble a regular, healthy tree. The leaves are completely stripped away and the bark has the look as though it has been singed by fire.

They bare a strange resemblance to the kind of tree that I would find in my Legend of Sleepy Hallow fairy tales. Ominous, like they themselves are ready to reach out and grab you. In a way, I feel very much the terror that Ichabod Crane must have felt when he was being chased by the headless horseman. The only difference is that I would prefer the horseman to what is behind me. My heart races as I do anything in my power to put more distance between the cloud and myself.

Pure fear makes me push harder, through the pain to stay one step ahead of it, but I already know what is coming. Eventually it will catch me. It's inevitable.

In a short distance, I will run out of room to run and I will have a choice to make. The cloud or the chasm. It doesn't matter which one I choose, I know I will die in this dream. If I choose the chasm, I will have to try and make it across, something I have never done. If I choose the cloud...well, I don't want to choose the cloud, ever again.

The chasm it is. I've tried running around it and jumping over it, but it seems to grow or stretch and I never make it over. I wonder what I will try this time. However, time is not something on my side, I can see the chasm dead ahead. At the speed I am going, (I'm almost positive I am going faster than before) I don't want to risk slowing down to change direction so I decide to try jumping it again. Maybe I really am running faster than before and I can use the momentum to clear it. Maybe this is the time things will be different.

Up ahead I see a tree stump. It's the same stump I used the last few times I attempted this jump and didn't make it. It's perfectly round and sits approximately twelve or thirteen inches out of the ground. Judging by the color, a healthy brown, the tree wasn't cut down that long ago. Moments after my feet leave it, I am sure it will be a disgusting stump of rot and decay.

The dark mist is right behind me, I can feel its coldness on my back and a sense of panic springs up inside me. It almost feels like icy claws are reaching out to grab my arms and stop me from this attempting this jump. This is the one that I make, I can sense it.

My muscles are screaming at me now in pain, urging me to stop, but I can't. With one last surge I plant my foot on the stump and jump with all my might. I look at my target on the other side of chasm, the spot where I am willing myself to land. It's a flat spot in between two large, sharp looking rocks. If I don't land perfectly in between those rocks, I will impale myself on them at worst and only break an ankle at best.