Walking through an alien blizzard behind a ten foot tall furry creature was not how I expected to spend my Tuesday night. Or Wednesday morning. I had honestly lost track of what day it was, and given that I was on a planet with two moons and a sky that looked like a screensaver from the nineties, I figured time zones were the least of my problems.
Koro moved through the snow with surprising grace for something his size. Each of his steps left a crater deep enough to bury a small dog, and I found myself walking in his footprints just to avoid sinking up to my knees in fresh powder. The wind howled across the frozen plain, driving ice crystals against my face like nature's own sandblaster, and my Green Meadows Security windbreaker continued to prove itself completely useless against temperatures that would make a penguin file a complaint.
"So," I said, my teeth chattering so hard I could barely form words. "Prophesied One. That's a new one. Usually people just call me 'hey you' or 'the guy who wrote me a parking ticket.'"
Koro glanced back over his furry shoulder. His blue eyes reflected the dancing aurora overhead, giving them an almost hypnotic quality. "The ancient texts speak of a small warm being who would arrive when Thundra needed them most. One who carries the tool of the Ancients and bears the mark of the Nexus."
I looked down at the remote still clutched in my frozen fingers. Its screen glowed softly, showing the same message it had displayed since I arrived.
[MISSION: STOP PLANET THUNDRA FROM BECOMING A COSMIC POPSICLE.]
[TIME REMAINING: 71 HOURS 42 MINUTES.]
"Tool of the Ancients," I repeated. "It called me a janitor, Koro. A janitor. I don't know what kind of ancient prophecy includes a cleaning service, but I'm pretty sure your ancestors were messing with you."
Koro made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been him clearing snow from his throat. It was hard to tell with a face that furry. "The Ancients had a strange sense of humor, small warm one. Or so the elders say. I have never met one myself."
"You've never met an Ancient?"
"The Ancients are gone," Koro said, his deep voice carrying a weight that cut through the howling wind. "They vanished long before my grandfather's grandfather was born. They left behind only their tools, their structures, and their prophecies. And now you."
I processed this information while trying to feel my toes. Key word: trying. My feet had gone numb about ten minutes into our walk, and at this point I was genuinely concerned I might leave a couple of them behind in the snow.
"Okay," I said slowly. "So let me get this straight. An ancient alien civilization disappeared thousands of years ago. They left behind a bunch of prophecies, one of which said a 'small warm being' would show up with a magic remote. And I'm that being. Me. Ray from Green Meadows Residential Complex. The guy who once called in sick because I didn't want to deal with a particularly aggressive squirrel."
"The prophecies do not mention squirrels," Koro admitted. "But the signs are unmistakable. You carry the Nexus tool. You arrived in a flash of light. And you are very, very small and warm."
"I'm average height for a human."
Koro tilted his head. "If you say so, small warm one."
I decided to let that one go. Arguing about my height with a ten foot tall alien seemed like a losing battle, and I was already losing the battle against hypothermia. Priorities.
The landscape around us had begun to change as we walked. The flat frozen plain gave way to rocky outcroppings and jagged ice formations that jutted out of the ground like the ribs of some enormous buried beast. In the distance, I could see what looked like smoke rising against the aurora painted sky. Actual smoke, not just mist or snow. It meant heat. It meant shelter. It meant possibly not dying tonight.
"Is that your village?" I asked, pointing with a shaking hand.
Koro followed my gesture and nodded, his fur rippling like a field of white grass in the wind. "The village of Kel'Nara. My people have lived there since before the Freezing began. Though in recent cycles, 'lived' has become a generous term."
"What do you mean?"
Koro stopped walking. He turned to face me fully, and for the first time since I had landed on this frozen nightmare of a planet, I saw something other than reverence or confusion in his massive blue eyes. I saw grief.
"The core of Thundra has been stolen," he said. "Taken from the heart of the planet by a being we do not understand. Without the core's warmth, Thundra is dying. The cold grows stronger with each passing cycle. The snow falls thicker. The ice spreads further. And my people freeze."
He gestured toward the distant smoke with one massive paw. "The smoke you see is not from cooking fires or forges. It is from the funeral pyres. We burn our dead to return their warmth to the planet, in the hope that it will buy us a little more time. It never does."
I stood there in the snow, shivering, and felt something shift in my chest. It was uncomfortable and unfamiliar, like a muscle I had not used in a very long time. I think it might have been my conscience.
"Your people are dying," I said. The words came out flat, stripped of my usual sarcasm by the weight of what Koro had just told me. "How many?"
Koro's ears drooped slightly. "When the Freezing began, Kel'Nara was home to three hundred Yutari. Now fewer than one hundred remain. The young and the old go first. The cold takes them in their sleep, and they do not wake up."
I thought about my apartment. My lumpy bed. My stack of unpaid rent notices. Mrs. Higgins banging on my door every morning demanding money I did not have. Max covering my shifts without complaint. Old Bill's cryptic smiles. The stray cat, Chairman Meow, who I had been secretly feeding for six months.
I thought about how all of those problems, which had felt so overwhelming just a few hours ago, suddenly seemed very small and very far away.
"Show me," I said.
Koro blinked. "Show you?"
"Your village. Your people. I need to see what I'm actually dealing with here." I held up the remote, its screen still patiently counting down the hours until Thundra's core froze completely. "This thing says I have seventy one hours to fix your planet. I can't fix something I don't understand. So show me."
Koro stared at me for a long moment. The wind howled between us, whipping snow into spiraling patterns across the ice. Then, slowly, his face shifted into what I was now certain was a smile. Not a pre eating expression. A genuine, relieved smile.
"You truly are the Prophesied One," he rumbled. "The texts said the small warm being would have a heart that burns hotter than their size suggests."
"Yeah, well, don't get too excited. My heart is currently trying to prevent the rest of me from becoming a Ray shaped ice cube. Let's keep moving before my internal organs unionize."
Koro made that rumbling laugh sound again and resumed walking. I followed, clutching the Nexus remote like a lifeline, my mind racing with questions I did not know how to ask.
Who stole the core? How do you steal a planet's core in the first place? What kind of being had that kind of power? And why did they take it from Thundra, of all places? Was it random, or was there a reason?
The remote's screen flickered as I walked, and a new line of text appeared beneath the countdown.
[CORE LOCATION DETECTED: FROSTFANG PEAK.]
[DISTANCE: 47 KILOMETERS NORTHEAST.]
[WARNING: ICE WYRM ACTIVITY DETECTED IN TARGET AREA. EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION.]
"Of course there's a wyrm," I muttered. "Because why would saving a planet be easy? Why would anything ever be easy?"
Koro glanced back. "You speak to the tool?"
"It speaks to me. There's a difference. And it just told me where your core is. Frostfang Peak. Forty seven kilometers northeast. Also, there's something called an Ice Wyrm guarding it."
Koro stopped walking again. This time, the expression on his face was not grief or relief. It was fear.
"Frostfang Peak," he repeated, his voice dropping to an even lower rumble. "That is the mountain of the ancients. The place where the first Yutari were said to have emerged from the ice. No one has climbed it in generations. The path is treacherous, and the cold at the summit is said to be absolute. Even our warmest furs cannot protect against it."
"And the Ice Wyrm?"
Koro's ears flattened against his skull. "A creature of the deep cold. Older than the Freezing, older than the village. Some say it was left behind by the Ancients to guard the mountain. Others say it is the mountain itself, given form and hunger. All agree on one thing. No one who has entered its territory has ever returned."
I looked down at my khaki pants. My polo shirt. My useless windbreaker. Then at the remote in my hand, counting down the hours until an entire planet died.
"Great," I said. "Fantastic. I'm going to fight an ancient ice monster in business casual attire. This is fine. This is completely fine."
The remote's screen flickered again.
[ENCOURAGEMENT PROTOCOL ACTIVE.]
[YOU CAN DO THIS, JANITOR RAY. PROBABLY.]
"I hate this thing," I said. "I genuinely, deeply hate this thing."
Koro tilted his head. "The tool offers encouragement. That seems kind."
"The tool is passive aggressive and I don't appreciate its tone."
We resumed walking. The smoke from the funeral pyres grew closer with each step, and as we crested a rise in the frozen terrain, I saw Kel'Nara for the first time.
It was not what I expected.
The village was built into the side of a massive ice cliff, with structures that looked like they had been carved directly out of the frozen wall rather than constructed on top of it. Warm light glowed from within the ice, diffusing through the frozen surface in soft blues and gentle greens. It was beautiful in the way that things on the edge of destruction often are. A fragile beauty that could shatter at any moment.
And in front of the village, arranged in a semicircle around a massive pyre that crackled with blue white flames, were the Yutari.
They were smaller than Koro. Some were clearly children, their fur still fluffy and white rather than the thick, coarse coat of the adults. Others were elderly, their movements slow and their fur streaked with gray. They all turned to look as Koro approached, and their eyes, blue like Koro's but somehow dimmer, fixed on me with the same reverent confusion I had seen in him.
"The Prophesied One," someone whispered.
"The small warm being," another voice added.
"He is very small," a third voice observed. "And he appears to be vibrating."
"I'm not vibrating," I said through chattering teeth. "I'm shivering. There's a difference."
Koro stepped forward and raised one massive arm. The assembled Yutari fell silent. "The Prophesied One has agreed to help us," he announced. "He will travel to Frostfang Peak and retrieve the stolen core. Thundra will be saved."
A murmur ran through the crowd. Hope and disbelief in equal measure. I could not blame them. I looked about as heroic as a wet napkin.
"Before we celebrate," Koro continued, "the Prophesied One requires warmth and rest. The journey to the peak will be long, and he cannot survive it in his current garments. We must provide him with what protection we can."
An elderly Yutari, her fur almost entirely silver, stepped forward. She moved slowly, leaning on a staff carved from what looked like solid ice, but her eyes were sharp and clear.
"I am Elder Nara," she said, her voice creaking like old wood but carrying surprising authority. "I tend the memory of the village. I know the old ways, the old paths. And I know something of the mountain you seek to climb."
I stepped forward, trying not to shiver too obviously. "Any advice would be appreciated. Especially anything about not dying."
Elder Nara studied me for a long moment. Her blue eyes seemed to look through me rather than at me, seeing something I could not perceive.
"There is a blizzard coming," she said finally. "A great one. The worst we have seen since the Freezing began. It will arrive before you reach the mountain, and it will not relent until the core is restored or the planet is lost." She reached into the folds of her fur and produced a small pouch. "Take this. It contains fire moss. When crushed, it produces heat. Not enough to warm a village, but enough to keep one small warm being from freezing solid."
I took the pouch. It was warm to the touch, pulsing gently like something alive. "Thank you."
"Do not thank me yet, Prophesied One. The mountain will test you. The Wyrm will hunt you. And the cold will try to claim you." She paused, her ancient eyes meeting mine. "But I have seen your arrival in my dreams for many cycles. And in those dreams, you do not die on the mountain. You stand at its peak, holding the heart of Thundra in your hands, and the planet sings with warmth once more."
I swallowed. "That's a lot of pressure to put on a guy who just wanted to change the channel."
Elder Nara smiled. It was a surprisingly warm expression for someone whose species I had met less than an hour ago. "The universe rarely chooses those who seek greatness. It chooses those who are needed. And you, small warm one, are needed."
I looked down at the remote. The screen had updated again.
[NEW OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE BLIZZARD.]
[ADDITIONAL OBJECTIVE: DO NOT GET EATEN BY ICE WYRM.]
[NOTE: REWARDS WILL BE SIGNIFICANT. PROBABLY. STOP ASKING.]
I sighed. "Fine. But when this is over, I want a raise. And a vacation. And possibly a new pair of pants."
Koro placed one massive paw on my shoulder. The warmth of his touch seeped through my useless windbreaker and into my frozen bones. "Rest now, Janitor Ray. We leave for Frostfang Peak at first light. The blizzard will not wait, and neither can we."
I let him guide me toward one of the glowing ice structures, my mind still reeling from everything that had happened in the past hour. Yesterday I had been worried about parking tickets and rent. Today I was supposed to save an entire species from extinction.
The remote pulsed warmly in my hand, its countdown continuing to tick away the seconds.
Seventy hours remaining.
Seventy hours to climb a frozen mountain, fight an ancient ice monster, and retrieve the heart of a dying planet.
I was going to need a lot more than fire moss and positive thinking.
I was going to need a miracle.