Skye is the Limit by Phenomenal Pen (best time to read books txt) 📕

“Pull up those levers and turn those wheels clockwise,” Mage said.

Man-At-Arms executed the instructions. They were in a small chamber that housed several steam-tech control panels filled with gauges, levers and wheels with handles. They were vintage UIs that challenged his Gen Z brain but, luckily, their objective was simple enough: shut off all the valves and decrease the pressure above ground, in turn building up the pressure underground.

Man-At-Arms watched with relief as the gauge needles leaned to the left, which was the direction of least number in that world. He had recognized the design from Hordo’s pocket timepieces, whose clockwise was counter-clockwise on the surface world.   

“Good,” Mage said, “the pressure is decreasing.”

They had already thrown off their Nidhoggr disguise and were in plain sight of any Orc. But because the hack devices were broadcasting, every Orc, even the ones assigned to monitor and operate the Machine Room, was frozen in a state of trance. It was surreal.

Their Anima bracelets crackled and then they heard Nethril’s voice.

“Guys, I know where Fairy is. You’re not gonna like this.”

****

Influenced by Nethril’s scouting, the Ice Throne unfolded to the rest of the Dreamwalkers in the suspenseful manner of an FMV (Full Motion Video). It felt eerie because it was as though their eyes were being guided incrementally through the vision and were unable to see all of it at once.

“What the heck?” the Count exclaimed.

“It’s a cutscene,” Man-At-Arms explained over the Anima radio. 

The Ice Throne stood on a stair-like set of rimstone dams. The foot was also frozen over up to a sixty-foot arc. Mage had explained that the ice served as a sort of carpet to keep the bare ground and sweat-inducing magma at bay. Two Ice Nidhoggrs flanked the bottom of the stairs like Chinese guardian lions but neither were keen on protecting the throne. They behaved and were treated more like toy dogs despite their size.

The top of the dams glistened like an ice rink and the throne was an assembly of massive blocks of ice. The two Orc princesses stood on either side of the throne and, because of the ultrasonic hack, were also as rigid as statues. Behind them towered what used to be a mineral spring waterfall, long frozen into a giant curtain of icicles.

“That’s the Orc Mother?” the Count asked as he and Bear Tooth looked up. They were both crouched behind a cluster of stalagmites.

The Orc Mother defied imagination. Like Mage had warned, she was thirty-five feet tall and looked massive even from where she sat. She was double-Janus-faced, meaning she had four faces running down the sides of her head, probably so she could see threats better.

Speaking of seeing, she had beady eyes just like her progeny but she had them way up her foreheads and sprinkled 360 degrees like overkill spider eyes. Her flesh was moss and her hair and ears were webbed fin. Her hair in particular would’ve looked like a Mohawk but because her head was quadri-faceted like the carambola fruit, it suggested a star every time she looked down to scan her small pets and handmaidens.

Her noses were flat and had flared nostrils. Below them, instead of mouths, she had leaf-shaped organs fused to her skin by sinews. The organs would vibrate and send out ultrasonic signals. Right now she was cocking her head quizzically and her leaflike vocal organs were vibrating rapidly as she tried to figure out why her brood had turned catatonic.

“Uh, guys, she’s onto us,” the Count said. “What do we do?”

“Maintain your positions,” Mage instructed over the radio. “Nethril, you reported that you have located Fairy.”

“Yeah, she’s right there,” Nethril radioed back. She was crouched high on a pile of flowstones. Always but especially now, her Anima avatar lent her the vision of a hawk.

“Where?” Man-At-Arms asked. He and Mage were at the rear of the Count and Bear Tooth.

“There. Look at her chest.”

Everyone turned their upward gazes to the spot. Indeed, the chunk of ice that contained Fairy was hanging from an anchor chain slung around the Orc Mother’s fat-covered, almost invisible neck.

“Why’d she have to use her as a lucky charm!” Bear Tooth cried out.  

Everyone shared his frustration because, apart from the fact that Fairy was twenty feet above their reach, the Orc Mother was as bulky as a sumo wrestler. She was also as naked as a fertility goddess and would’ve scandalized the Dreamwalkers if it weren’t for the pair of plunger-shaped metal bra she wore.

In her rotund belly, there were two openings. Via the trusty 5G sitreps of dream world, they all became aware that one hole was like a permanent C-section where, to replenish the colony, adult-sized Orcs would be delivered en masse while individually wrapped in amniotic sac. The other hole was through where she would be regularly fed by long lines of slave Orcs bearing and dumping whole herds of domesticated cattle and sheep; her favorite.     

Eww, Nethril thought as she visualized the scene. Her thoughts were interrupted by the crackle of her Anima bracelet.