4.1.25 - The Unmelting Ice of Frozen Joy pt 5
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Chapter 5: The Castle of the Frozen Mountain
[Image: The trio speaking with Forest King Rizzoff amid the regrowing forest, his crown of roots glimmering faintly in the sunlight.]
The forest was healing—but not yet whole.
As saplings pushed through broken roots and light returned to the canopy, Forest King Rizzoff knelt before the trio, his moss-crowned head bowed low.
Forest King Rizzoff:
“Oh great ones, the forest is starving. We are in need of saviors—to defeat the one who cursed me and retrieve our stolen fruit of golden nectar.”
Zsolista perked up.
“Golden fruit!? That sounds delicious. Tell us more.”
Rizzoff's voice softened.
“It is called the Loquata. Grown only in the heart of this forest, its nectar heals the land and awakens life. Without it, our balance breaks. The Ice Witch—Elsanna—stole it.”
Baby blinked.
“Wait… that’s the fruit the witch gave us! She dropped it into the oasis!”
Rizzoff's eyes widened. His leafy beard trembled.
“You’ve met her. Then you know—she resides atop Mount Sheydlandia. It was she who cursed me. She turned me into her monstrous guardian… and I blocked the very path to our salvation without even knowing.”
Realization crashed over them like thunder.
Boka:
“We’ll fix this, noble king. We’ll defeat the witch and bring back your Loquata.”
Zsolista:
“Wait… Mount Sheydlandia? That’s also where the Unmelting Ice is!”
She leaned forward.
“King Rizzoff, do you know where to find it?”
He nodded solemnly. “A legend speaks of eternal snow hidden near the summit, just beyond the witch’s Frozen Castle. But beware: she commands a colossal Ice Snake and a Mountain Troll with icicle horns. They must be past victims of hers. If she turned me to a forest monster then I fear who those two really are.”
Armed with warnings and a deeper purpose, the trio set off—not just with spells and snacks, but with a vow to right what had been bent by betrayal.
They departed the forest slowly, with the leaves bowing low and the wind at their backs. Baccyardigahn did not say goodbye in words, but in the gentle hum of roots shifting and creatures watching from high branches.
As the trees thinned, their laughter quieted, replaced by silence and snow. The trail narrowed into a spine of icy stone. Moss gave way to frost. Ferns turned to cracked lichen. The air grew colder, sharper, holier.
They were no longer walking a path.
They were climbing a threshold.
Mount Sheydlandia awaited.
[Image: The trio hiking higher into the snowy mountain, the trees thinning into stone and snow.]
Their path twisted upward.
What had once been a lively forest trail grew austere and sharp. Trees gave way to stone, their roots retreating like shy creatures into the mountainside. Streams froze mid-babble, icicles blooming from their mouths like frozen laughter. The sky paled to a slate-gray whisper, and snowflakes spiraled like ancient messages trying to find a landing.
The forest’s music faded, replaced by a hush too ancient to name—a silence that felt watched. Even the wind grew reverent, sweeping softly between cliff edges as if not to disturb the secrets etched into the mountain.
Still they climbed—over icy ledges sculpted like forgotten staircases, through knee-deep drifts that swallowed their steps, across slick, slanted hills where echoes of old chants shimmered faintly in the snow. Their footprints vanished behind them in seconds, devoured by the cold that wanted no memory of them left behind.
[Image: A glowing Frozen Castle nestled against the mountain’s peak, with a gargantuan Ice Troll lounging behind it.]
Then they saw it.
The Frozen Castle—an eerie fortress carved directly into the peak, glowing faintly with frostfire.
Behind it, like a glacier given breath, lounged a Mountain Troll. Icicle horns twisted from its brow. Its mossy fur had frozen mid-sway.
Zsolista:
“He’s… napping. But that nap could end very badly.”
The trio crouched inside a snowy cave, watching from above. They began to plan.
But then—the moat moved.
Snow slid away in delicate sheets, like lace being pulled from a banquet table. Ice cracked like thunder—but beautifully, like glass chimes struck by moonlight. Beneath the trembling surface, something shimmered.
Not just a creature.
A vision.
Scales like spun crystal. Eyes that pulsed with pale blue flame. Fins that curled at the edges like frozen silk. The Ice Snake rose slowly, unveiling a form that shimmered not with menace, but magnificence. Its body moved like liquid artistry, light bending around it in flowing waves. As it stirred, the snow surrounding the moat lifted gently into the air—not disturbed, but mesmerized.
Its breath created delicate frost-lilies that bloomed in the air and vanished before touching ground.
This was not merely a guardian.
It was a relic of an older, more enchanted world.
The Ice Snake had been guarding the castle all along.
[Image: An enormous Ice Snake coiled around the castle, its body shimmering like liquid crystal, blending with the frost.]
A serpent.
Coiled tight, wrapped like a silver ring around the castle. Its body shimmered like moving glass, its breath fogging the air in sleepy bursts.
The Ice Snake had been guarding the castle all along.
Zsolista:
“There’s no way inside without waking both of them… unless…”
She rummaged in the Bag of Wonderment and pulled out a strip of Chamelonautaur jerky—rare, magical, slightly chewy.
One bite—and her body shimmered.
She flickered. Then vanished.
Boka:
“That’s the jerky! Boka-boka\~ Let’s go invisible!”
Each of them took a bite.
In an instant, their colors melted into the snow. They became scentless, soundless, unseeable.
[Image: The trio, now invisible, stepping through the snow toward the castle’s edge, with the Ice Snake and Troll looming near.]
They crept.
Step by step through the snow-blind quiet. Each crunch of ice underfoot felt like a drumbeat in a symphony of silence. The Ice Snake’s breath pulsed in a rhythmic mist, casting prismatic halos that painted the snow in sleepy rainbows. It shifted slightly in its coil, and the mountain itself seemed to lean with it.
Past the serpent’s massive coils they tiptoed, cloaked in invisibility and sweat. Past the troll’s shadow—a hulking mound of fur and frozen moss that radiated sleepy menace. Its chest rose and fell like a collapsing avalanche.
The castle’s front gate shimmered with enchantments too strong to challenge—flickering runes that hummed with locked intent.
Instead, they scanned the sides, eyes flicking between carvings in the ice and crevices tucked beneath drifts. Magic buzzed faintly through the stone, hiding its warnings in the frost.
There—half-buried in snow—a sewer grate.
Zsolista:
“Ew. Gross. But… it’s our only way in.”
Baby:
“At least it smells bad enough to hide our trail. It’s-a-baby\~”
Boka:
“But if this sewer water washes off our jerky magic… we’ll be visible again!”
Still, there was no other choice.
They pulled the grate aside and slipped inside.
[Image: A dim, dripping sewer tunnel beneath the Frozen Castle, with the trio creeping through with wrinkled noses and wary steps.]
Darkness swallowed them.
The tunnel breathed with a damp chill, as if the walls themselves were alive and mildly displeased to be disturbed. Drips echoed from unseen ceilings. Slush squished beneath their boots. Somewhere ahead, faint pulses of frozen magic pulsed through the sewer like a heartbeat in hibernation.
Magic danced across the walls in strange patterns—sigils that moved when no one looked directly at them. They traced familiar shapes: icicles, wolf-fangs, a closed eye.
Their noses wrinkled at the heavy scent of frost-moss and ancient runoff. Their footsteps slowed, not just from caution, but reverence.
They weren’t just beneath a castle.
They were inside a sleeping spell that remembered every trespass.
But nothing could stop them now.
Above them: a witch.
Before them: a Loquata and a shard of eternal frost.
And around them?
A castle asleep… waiting to awaken.
Chapters for Unmelting Ice of Frozen Joy
Chapter 1 of 8: The Unmelting Ice of Frozen Joy
Chapter 2 of 8: The Slobbery Squirrel Stampede
Chapter 3 of 8: The Loquata of Desire and Fire
Chapter 4 of 8: The Curse of Forest King Rizzoff
Chapter 5 of 8: The Castle of the Frozen Mountain
Chapter 6 of 8: The Heart of the Frozen Castle
Chapter 7 of 8: The Choice Beneath the Ice
Chapter 8 of 8: The Last Drop of Loquata
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I am on a roll, I am trying to knock these out sine I already have it written down in my phone.
My cycle is so weird right now haha. I tell the kids a story verbally then i try to remember bit and pieces of it by writing it down in my phone then I create an expanded version in the blog. Then I run it through to ChatGPT to make it more polished and book like.
I feel like this is now the modern way of writing a book, instead of fielding it to an agent and getting rewrite request. I am the agent and I have my writer /polisher finalize the very amateur version that I write.
I do find that it stays very well with what I wrote and it only embellishes it some. AMB says its like when you have an essay and you need 1000 words but you only wrote 500 so you re-write by using fluffy words and have more word salad/vomit in there to meet the threshold haha.