The Ice King

By Hudson Bader

Chapters 1-4

Narrative Writing

Fall 2023

Chapter 1

I woke up in bed in the beachside town of Sea Glass, a bustling tourist destination with beautiful beaches and nice parks. I slowly opened my eyes to see the plain gray ceiling. The paint has been peeling off, but I can't be bothered to spend the money to fix it. I pull myself out of bed and pull on a plain black hoodie and plain black sweatpants. I walk to the bathroom and try to calm my messy hair, while also brushing my teeth with the last drop of toothpaste out of the tube. I check the time and almost drop my toothbrush.

“Dang it,'' I say, and begin to run through the door and out into the busy streets.

I get to the yellow school bus of Sea Glass High the second it begins to drive away.

I swear under my breath and begin to chase it, yelling “Wait up! Slow down!”

I trip and cut my cheek on a rock. I bring my hand to my face. Blood.

I pick myself up and begin to make the long walk to the school, knowing I’ll be late. As I’m walking, I turn toward the sea and see something dart behind some rocks. I thought for a moment. If I see this thing, that is likely a squirrel or hermit crab. I’ll miss more classes, giving me more homework that I don’t want to do. But, I’ll miss more classes, saving me from the bullies and jerks.

“Sounds like a win,” I say, as I begin to walk down the beach toward the rocks at the shore.

As I get there, I check behind the rock. Nothing. Of course, there was nothing. What was I thinking, a sea monster would be behind it?

I sigh and begin to walk back toward the sidewalk leading to my school. But what I felt next I can’t explain. It was completely instinctive as I turned around and began to walk into the waves. A passerby might have thought I was about to go swimming and have a fun day at the beach. I wish that was so.

Chapter 2

I opened my eyes as my mind finally returned to me. All I remembered was turning around and then… And then what? Where was I? How long has it been? Why am I so wet?

And then I saw the fish. Definitely a pretty fish. I’d never seen one like it before. But why was it swimming in the air? Answer: It wasn’t. I was underwater in a room with stone walls and only a singular doorway to bring in the light.

But why wasn't I dying? I couldn’t breathe, I was deep underwater, and there wasn't even much light except for the doorway, a glowing orb on a stone table. My lungs burned and I screamed for air. I began swimming around frantically. Nothing. No pocket of water, no snorkel gear.

Slowly, the world faded to black, and I gave up. I breathed in, knowing it was hopeless. And then I closed my eyes. A few seconds passed. Why wasn’t I dead?

I breathed in again. Air entered my lungs! Fresh cool air that brought me out of my stupor. I reached my face to feel nothing there. No oxygen mask. No bubbles like in a movie. And then my hand went down my head to my neck. Gills! I had gills like a fish. I looked down and everything else was in order. No fins or scales. Just gills. I began to swim around.

“I feel so light!” I said out loud.

It felt exhilarating. I swam out the stone doorway to see a city. Like the mythological city of Atlantis, but abandoned. It was silent, but kind of beautiful.

I swim around looking at the fish and animals. I found a reflective piece of the wall and looked at myself. The gills started just below my jaw on either side, and the cut on. I also saw something floating on top of my head, so I reached up and grabbed it. I pulled it down to see a white crown. It was beautiful, with intricate patterns. I let go of it, and instead of falling to the bottom, it floated back to the top of my head.

And then I felt something. A rush of water as if it was parting for something. I turned around to see a great white shark the size of a semi-truck rushing at me. I darted out of the way just as the shark's jaws closed with bone-crushing force. Blood filled the water, but I felt no pain. I became scared of what I might see. A missing limb? A massive gash?

But what do I see? I never could have imagined. A trident. White and ornate sticking into the belly of the shark. It roared and swam away, the trident pulling itself out of the monster. It began to zoom toward me, pointing outward, ready to spear me like the shark it had just impaled.

It stopped in front of my face. It twisted quizzically as if it was asking a question. Suddenly, I just felt the urge to stick out my hand, hoping it wouldn’t stab through it like a knife through butter. But it didn’t. It slid its handle into my open palm. I raised it up triumphantly, examining the handle. It was white like a pearl and felt amazing.

I suddenly realized why this was used as an underwater weapon in mythology so effectively. It sailed through the water and would sail through the air on land. I threw it and it sailed through the water, before spinning around me happily and gliding into my hands.

Suddenly a weight like a massive boulder crashed into the back of my head. I spun out of control, flipping upside down from the blow. When the world stopped spinning, I saw my assailant. It looked like an octopus with 8 large arms, all laden with suction cups, but with the body of a strong human. He raised the spear he had just hit me with the shoe of. He raised the iron spear point outward, ready to destroy this intruder.

He ran forward on two of his many limbs and attempted to jab me with the razor-sharp point. The only thing stopping me from going unconscious from the hit before was adrenaline, but with all I had, I righted myself and jumped off a nearby wall. The octopus man thing hit the wall behind me, causing the tip of the spear to break against the rock. He threw the now useless wooden rod at the ground and began to run toward me again. All six of his not-in-use arms were ready to knock me down, like bowling pins hit by a bowling ball.

Where is the trident!? I thought frantically. I raised my arm, and like Thor's hammer, it came into my hand and wrapped my fingers around it. I threw the trident with all the force I could muster, and it missed.

“Uh-oh,” I said, before getting slammed into the ground by the octopus man.

The wind left my lungs (or more accurately my gills) and the world once more started spinning. He pinned me down and got ready for a blow right to the face, sure to knock me out.

I called out to the trident, and as it came to me, it speared the octopus man, almost going through him and hitting me. I pushed the corpse off me with a great heave and pulled the trident out of the creature.

Everything hurt from my feet to the top of my head. I took one big breath and decided to try to get out of this treacherous water. I turned around and looked up to see an army of similar creatures to the one that had just attacked me. Some looked like fish with fins and stripes, and some looked like sharks with large jaws, and in the group I spotted more octopuses too.

I did what any sane person would do and frantically swam away. Fish people whizzed toward me, and I had only seconds to spin and duck out of the way. It took only seconds for them to surround me. I fought as hard as possible, but for everyone I hit with my trident, three more took their place. Hit after hit, my vision began to fade to black. Before I blacked out, I saw shards of ice fly into the fish people, and then it faded to black.

Chapter 3

As a kid, I always loved the beach. I spent hours on the shore playing in the sand and swimming in the waves. I was a good swimmer, compared to most too. Every year in my old school, we had a competition for the best swimmer, and I came out on top every year.

Finding myself on the beach, I sat up slowly, only to fall back down with an immense headache. It was like a thousand hammers inside my head chipping away at my skull.

I slowly looked around. Next to me, there was a boy with a sort of rusty red hair. He had goggles perched upon his forehead, and a staff made of twisting wood converged to a floating gemstone at the top. He wore a black cloak trimmed with gold, and on his belt there were circular bottles with different colored shimmering liquid. He noticed me looking up at him and extended a hand.

“Good morning sleepy head!” he said.

His voice was boyish, which made sense as he looked like a similar age to me.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Well, before I answer that question, who are you?”

“I’m Oliver.” I said, as if it were obvious, which it couldn’t have been.

“Very interesting. Well Hello Oliver, my name is Scott.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. I slowly got up through the splitting headache.

“How did I get here?” I asked.

“Well, I want to know that a little too.” he stated. “I searched for a potion ingredient in Atlantis, and instead, I found a boy fighting off hordes of fish-men with a trident. How did you breathe down there?”

Did he not see my gills? I felt my neck. Nothing there.

“Uhhhh well.” I thought for a second. I suppose I don't see the harm in telling him about my gills. “Well, I had gills, but they seem to have disappeared, haven’t they?”

“Interesting. Well, I got your trident.”

I turned behind me. There it was, just like I had seen it underwater. I willed it to go onto my back, and it obeyed.

“You never answered me, by the way.” I said

“What?” Scott replied.

“Where am I?”

“Well currently I umm, don’t know,” he said.

“What?!?”

“Well, I’m uhhh currently being chased by the frozen. And I had to run.”

“What’s a frozen?” I asked, the puzzlement clear on my face.

“How do you not know? Stria is under control by the Ice King.”

“What’s a Stria?”

“It's the continent we live on!? Where are you from that you don't know where we live?”

“I’m from Sea Glass, California in the United States of America. How did I get here?”

“What a Cal-i-for-nia?” Now it was Scott who looked puzzled.

“Alright, so I’m in a place that I’ve never heard of that has never heard of where I'm from. Great. So why are you being chased by ‘the frozen’? Are you like a criminal or something?”

“Well, in the technical sense of the word, yes, I’m a rebel against the corruption of the Ice King. He freezes whole villages and turns the villagers into monsters that do his bidding. Magic is outlawed, and all alchemists and wizards like me were hunted down. Now Stria is going to be torn apart,” Scott said.

I looked at him as he watched the waves break. His face shone with determination, tinged with sadness and loss.

“Alright. Where is this ‘Ice King’?” I said standing up.

“What? Why do you need to find him?” Scott said.

“Well somebody’s gotta stop him.”

“Well, yeah, but you can't possibly think you’re strong enough to defeat him! You just started learning how to use a trident! Breathing underwater won't help you because it's a tundra where he is! I might be a good alchemist, but I can't even go close to standing up to him.”

He starts rambling on and on about how stupid this is, but I just started walking up the shore to the forest ahead.

This place was interesting. In one spot, mushrooms go as high as a house, and in others. The place was beautiful.

Scott began to follow as he let out a big sigh.

“This is stupid, we're going to die,” he muttered under his breath.

After walking for a while, we got to a village that used all the mushrooms as houses. It reminded me of some video game about some Italian plumber who protected little mushroom people and tried to save a princess.

We walked through crowds of the oddest sorts of people. Stout little green goblins rushed through the larger groups of people that looked like humans, but with pointy ears. We walked into a little restaurant in a mushroom, and Scott bought us something that could probably be described as a cheeseburger. I watched as he took out money to pay, but this wasn't any normal money. He pulled out shiny gold coins and put five of them on the table. Scott noticed my eyes fixated on the things, and he looked at me quizzically.

“Do you not have gold where you’re from?” he asked.

“We do, but it's worth a lot of money. The standard currency is green paper or a card with your money on it.”

“How odd. Little green paper? Why, that just sounds silly. Gold is much more practical.”

“Huh,” I said.

We sat at a table, and he started talking about Stria. I listened intently to every little fact of this magical place. After a while, the burgers came, and they were some of the best food I’d ever had.

We kept eating happily until suddenly CRASH! The door slammed open, and somebody ran in demanding cash from the register. The poor restaurant owner had no choice but to hand it over. The man wore black armor that had blue all over, and he had to have been at least 6 feet tall, but otherwise looked like a normal human male, probably around thirty, with traces of a brown beard on his chin and brown hair under his helmet.

“Hey!” I shouted “Over here! You’re going to give that money back. Now!”

I heard Scott start to mutter.

“Now you’ve done it,” he started whispering to me. “Shut up! That's one of the Ice King's three admirals! They could take you out with a single punch!”

I ignored him. I pulled my trident off my back, and Scott moaned some more in disagreement, grabbed his staff and tossed a blue potion towards me. I caught and looked at him, and he nodded at me.

“Oh, an alchemist?” the large man said. “And you are?” he mused, looking at me with a stare that would freeze anybody else solid.

“Me? I’m Oliver.” I said and downed the potion in one large gulp.

All of a sudden, I felt new strength, and I threw my trident with all my power. It sailed through the air and slammed into his armor, knocking him clean over.

I called it back to me as he jumped back up and shouted, “Why you brat!”

He ran toward me with surprising speed for someone of his size. In his hands, a sword of ice materialized, and he began to swing at my skull. I dodged and he swung again, but was knocked off balance by a blast of magic fired from Scott's staff, causing his sword to crush a couple of tables. He turned towards Scott and swung his massive fist.

Suddenly time slowed, and I realized I wasn’t fast enough to stop him. I only watched in terror as the fist swung down onto my unprepared comrade. Suddenly there was a bright white flash, and the Admiral flew across the building, crashing through a wall. It took me a few seconds to process what had just happened.

Chapter 4

A girl a little younger than me and Scott had saved Scott with a fast attack using the small sword in her hand. She was an elf with blonde hair and blue eyes. She looked at Scott, a massive grin on her face.

“I don’t like these guys,” she said matter-of-factly with a high-pitched voice.

“Thank you.” Scott said, stunned by the amazing speed of somebody so young.

She sheathed her sword on her hip and began to walk away.

“Hold up!” I yelled and began to follow. “How did you do that!?” I asked.

After all, it's not every day you get saved by somebody who isn’t even four feet tall.

She looked up at me and said, “I'm training to be a swordswoman,” as if that cleared it all up.

“I’ve never seen a swordsman who’s been able to do that before.”

“Well, I’m not like most, am I? My name is Sophia and I’m the top apprentice of Tashok, the thunder master!”

I looked at Scott, who shrugged.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Only the strongest fighter ever! He’s so fast he can run across Stria in 10 seconds flat.”

“This guy seems strong. He should join us, Scott.” I said.

“He won’t join you guys,” Sophia said.

“Why not?” I replied.

“Because he’s dead,” she replied. “The Ice King killed him, and now I need to avenge him.”

“Well, that works out for us, doesn’t it?” I said. “Because we’re taking him down too.”

“I’m interested,” she said suspiciously. “How do you intend to do that?”

Stay tuned! Hudson plans to write more chapters about the Ice King and the adventures of Oliver, Scott, and Sophia in the land of Stria.