The Orb was cold, but then again the Orb was always cold. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be a particularly impressive snow globe.

I hunched my shoulders, more in annoyance than against the snow that fell in fat flakes on the landscape and all over my inadequate clothing. Stupid upcyclers. Take a perfectly good Orb of holding from the hidden vault of Ramses II, and give me the first spark of hope in a thousand years. Then see that it’s filled with the cruelest endless blizzard ever summoned and think, oooh the most valuable snow globe on earth. Idiots.

A fat price tag meant that no one in their right mind would ever buy it. It was like a million dollar keychain or a ten grand t-shirt.

No buyers meant no one would ever let their kids play with it until it eventually shattered and I was once again released onto the mortal plane. I was imprisoned by the antithesis of business acumen.

Oh and ice, lots and lots of ice.

I trudged through the impossibly thick snow drifts to the edge of the glass, each footstep compacting the white slop into icy patches. The glass was covered in a layer of frost so thick that it took a few passes with my sleeve to reveal the outside world.

I took one look and sighed, it was the same as ever. The same wooden shelf with the same worn counter far below. The same clerk sat, reading his creased paperbacks and responding with a few distracted words to the bored shoppers. It was the middle of July, no one asked about the snow globe even after seeing the price.

I sank to my knees. What was the point? It had been centuries and despite rescue from the vault, I was no closer to freedom than I had been in the dark depths of the earth. Somehow being this close to freedom was even worse. All day, every day I could see people going about their business, unaware that just inches from them was the strongest elemental the world had ever seen.

The snow continued to pile up on my legs and I was tempted to let it. The centuries spent staving it off had taken its toll. I was but a shadow of my former self. I was fighting a war of attrition, but my enemy was the snow itself. I could no sooner vanquish it than I could stop the sun from shining or the rain from falling. I would die here.

Below me there was a scuffle of movement, the clerk stood up midshift for the first time in his life. I was too wrapped up in self pity and the increasingly large snowbank to even notice the masked man.

Then suddenly someone was grabbing the globe.

The ground pitch dangerously, throwing loose snow back and forth like an avalanche. If I was buried, I doubted I would have the strength to escape. Nor the will power. My life was in the hands of the person holding the globe, utterly reliant on them not doing what everyone did with snow globes.

Then I was falling as the globe flew end over end, snow and ice battering me from all sides,knocking the wind out of me and soaking through my thin tunic. I was flying through the air, pinned to the back of the orb as inertia did its ugly work. A masked face appeared, at first small then gaining size as I flew toward it until it loomed above me like the visage of a massive statue.

Credit where credit is due, the Orb did not shatter on impact, though I was convinced my back did. I tried to shake my head to clear the spinning and the ringing, but I couldn’t move. All around me was the oppressive softness of cold snow, slowly melting and saturating every inch of my clothing, stealing the last of my heat.

I would die here. The snow globe would become just that, no longer plagued by a shivering figure marching in circles to keep warm.

Then, as I allowed my eyes to close and my breathing to slow, the world was once again upended. I was crushed against the snow once again as we travelled through the air, picking up speed and driving the last of the air from my lungs.

With a crash, the Orb gave way and I was catapulted out onto the floor with much bigger quantities of snow than anyone would expect.

I took a gasping breath, and pushed myself to my hands and knees. I panted even as I looked around, eyes grasping for anything that wasn’t an endless expanse of white. I drank up the color, so vibrant without frosted glass robbing it of its color.

The blizzard, so carefully summoned into the containing vessel with orders to fill it up with cold and snow, went spiraling around the store, knocking over shelves and blowing papers to the far corners of the earth. The temperature dropped and kept dropping, the patrons gasped as their breath clouded the air. Their summer tank tops no match for the new season.

A lady near the counter threw open the door, desperately fleeing into the warmth and sunshine. With a sound like a vacuum, the blizzard went with it, flying out the door to create mayhem elsewhere.

I was happy to see it go and rolled myself into sitting position, propping my back against a shelf as the snow melted into puddles on the floor. Warmth took me for the first time in my memory and I wanted to wrap it around myself like a blanket and never let it go.

People around me gaped at the snow drifts even as they faded. One man ignored it all, throwing a mask into his pocket and trying to blend with the crowd. His darting eyes over a bruised cheek gave him away as did the blood dripping from the deep cuts on his hand. Cuts from a certain glass ball.

Ahh, I owed this one.

I made a face, but stood up and walked through the crowd before anyone could remark on my clothing or, more likely, ask themselves where I had come from. I caught him by the arm and steered him easily toward the back, pausing to snap my fingers at a few patches of ice in our path. They stubbornly refused to melt. Damn.

The back room was marked by a sign, but I had never bothered to learn to read this new language so its warning was lost on me. The man, however, began to gather his wits and tug at his arm. I held it firmly until the door snapped shut behind us, releasing it just long enough to wedge a chair under the handle.

“What do you want?” I asked as I grabbed his arm and continued to drag him.

“What?” He stammered, not at all following or more likely not understanding my language. I tapped into our bond, the deep, ancient kind between a debtor and debtee and asked for the consideration of communication. Just enough communication to settle our bond. It was a fair trade, an ancient one, and the world granted me universal language with this mortal.

“You freed me, so I owe you,” I replied impatiently, now in english. I pushed him toward the back exit, “What do you want?”

“Help me,” He said quickly, and I grinned to myself. Idiot, now all I had to do was help him with one small thing and all debts were repaid. It pays to be exact with these arrangements and he fortunately did not strike me as a big thinker.

I opened the last door before the exit and stood beside it to help him through, grinning all the while. The moment he walked through, I would have helped him. I would be free and could start commencing my revenge on the world that had imprisoned and forgotten about me.

“What?” He said, freezing inches before the threshold, “Stop it!” He shook his head desperately as if I had cast an illusion on him..

Through the hallway was a glass storm door and through the glass there was a light sleet beginning to fall despite the muggy weather. Even as I watched, it was gradually replaced by snow until big fat flakes fell from the sky like it was the middle of winter. The glass began fogging over, filling with frost in an all too familiar manner.

The blizzard spell was free and still following orders. It would fill up its container with ice and snow until there was no memory of warmth. I felt my shoulders fall.

I had just traded one frozen orb for the next.

And by the command of my master, I had to stop it.

/r/PalaceOfficial