“Look at it!” Chilly said. He stood at the edge of the gigantic white branch, marveling at the scenery far below. Rolling hills, full of blooming daffodils, and waving seas of grass.

“We're outside!” Chilly cried up into the open air. “We're out of the dungeon!”

He rushed forward, an unconscious skip in his step as joy bubbled up from within. He twirled, reveling in the fresh, cool air as it flowed over his smooth scalp. It wormed its way into the cracks in his gear, pulling away the scent of death, smoke, and brimstone.

He felt renewed.

He slowed, the grin on his face so wide that it was starting to hurt his jaw. A welcome kind of ache. There were clouds! Grass! The Sun! Chilly let out another joyous laugh. He probably wasn’t out of the dungeon. There was no way it was this easy, but still! He wasn’t out, but he was out. Outside of the claustrophobic tunnels, and free to breath easy under the light of the sun.

The scenery was exactly how he would expect a fantasy landscape to look. With the perfect mix of mundane and fantastical. The rolling hills far below were brilliant emerald green, but not of a color so saturated that they weren't something he wouldn’t have found on Earth. In the center of the landscape, the gigantic white tree cast an imposing shadow. Its stark white bark was an unnatural contrast to the vibrant tones normally found in nature.

The tree was so grand that its upper branches pierced the sky. The storm above obscured its upper branches and cast a grim shadow on the land below. So great was its girth that Chilly had trouble judging its size. He recognized that he was standing on one of its branches, one as wide as an interstate, but couldn’t quite wrap his head around the sheer scale.

The more he stared, the more little details popped out to him. The white bark shimmered and shifted in the overcast light. There looked to be puffs of clouds that danced around the main trunk, drawn up and down its length with little regard for air currents. And if he squinted he saw a staircase circling the trunk. It was a tiny little thing, little more than a squiggling shadow on the tree’s white bark.

The tree couldn’t hold his attention for too long, as he let another burst of laughter echo in the open air.

“I'm outside,” Chilly whispered to himself. He couldn’t get over it. “Oh, I’ve missed this.”

Excited, he turned to the penguins, ready to share this moment with his friends, only for his thoughts to grind to a halt when he saw them.

Something was wrong. The surrounding penguins looked funny. For one, they were not happy. A prevailing gloom hung about them, juxtaposed with his own happiness. In addition, they physically looked wrong, as if a child had taken the beautiful fantasy landscape and poorly photoshopped the penguins on top, with little regard for lighting. Instead of being illuminated by the overcast sun peeking through the clouds, orange-yellow highlights flickered like candle flames over their white and blue plumage. They stood out, seeming to not belong of this world. The penguins in the back were even worse off, almost fully dark and difficult to see despite the abundance of light. If he squinted, those in the back looked like little penguin shaped rifts into deep space.

“What...” Chilly started, a hint of fear coloring his voice. “What’s going on? Why do you guys all look like that?”

The penguins simply looked up to him, a deep sadness in their eyes, as the light from Chilly’s cape flickered dimly in their dark eyes.

His eyes roved over the silent penguins, studying them, watching as the only light that fell on their slight frames seemed to come from his skills rather than the sun above. Somehow they had been disconnected from reality when he had walked out into the sunlight. They weren’t interacting with the photons in the air in the normal manner. As if they were having trouble manifesting. Were the vampires? Or was there something more fundamental wrong with Realm Walker. He continued studying the penguins, afraid that this place was somehow hurting them. Afraid that if he continued, they would not be able to follow.

“...please say something.” Chilly whispered, he took a step back towards the dark cave mouth. “Please don’t leave me.”

The penguins seemed to cock their heads in confusion, then shook their heads firmly, practically in unison.

Chilly froze. “You won’t leave me?”

The penguins shook their heads firmly again, some gesturing with Realm Walker in indecipherable patterns.

A great weight lifted off his shoulders. If the problem wasn’t with the penguins, then perhaps there was something wrong with the environment. Now that he thought about it, it seemed unlikely that he could go someplace where these powerful world travelers could not.

His eyes lit upon one particular penguin that stood apart from the rest. It didn’t register a name tag, but still, it was unique. It was more playful than sad. It leaned up against the open air leading off of the branch as if it was made of solid stone, seeming to revel in the novel experience. Upon closer inspection, its feet were not aligning correctly with the white bark of the branch.

Chilly narrowed his eyes. That was different. It wasn’t just the light that failed to reach the penguins. On closer inspection, most of their flippers were clipping into the floor, as if they were game characters whose hitboxes were not matching up properly with the game world.

What if it isn’t real, Chilly wondered, as little discrepancies filtered into his awareness. How the wind was always coming from the same direction, without gusts or billows that gave real wind life. Or how his voice echoed even though he was apparently standing a thousand feet in the air. A strange calm descended over him, as his eyes focused on the penguin who was leaning on the open air.

He made his way over to the playful penguin, feeling the branch underneath tilt down, and the bark grow slippery near the edge. He slowed, fear entering his subconscious as he tried to ignore the mile-long fall ahead should he slip.

“Step by each, Chilly. Step by each,” he muttered. He shuffled closer to the edge until the penguin was but a foot in front of him. He crouched down, sitting on his butt with a hand stretched backward for maximum stability. It was hard to ignore just how far down the ground was below. Only a couple feet in front of him, the branch disappeared over the void that was the brilliant landscape.

Being so close to the edge was exhilarating, but Chilly had eyes only for the penguin. He scooched forward and brought a hesitant hand up. The penguin looked at him gleefully, then stepped aside and pointed his sword at the open air in excitement.

Chilly's hand extended forward, slowly moving past the penguin, getting closer and closer to where it was pointing its sword. Suddenly, he felt resistance. His hand stopped, laying flat on open air as he felt the smooth texture of cold stone beneath his palm.

“Whoa,” Chilly whispered. He raised his hand, sliding it over what felt like a rough stone wall, and felt the dissonance between what his eyes were telling him and what his fingers felt. He got up and brought his other hand to rest against the invisible wall. He pushed against it, but the open air didn’t budge in the slightest. Invisible ridges of cold stone dug into his palms, as he played his hands over the surface. Curiously he knocked on the air, creating a hollow clink as his iron gauntlets tapped against something solid.

“That’s trippy,” Chilly said conversationally. “Right boys, looks like we have ourselves a broad scale illusion of some sort. I’m initiating Blind Man Protocol.”

One penguin in the back giggled.

“Hey!” Chilly pointed at the offending penguins, “I’m making this up as I go, but all this looks real to me. I’m going to need a penguin to walk in front of me at all times to make sure I don’t fall into a hole or trap. A visual touchstone, if that makes sense.”

The penguins nodded along.

“Good. What else?” Chilly said, “I’ll need you to identify monsters, especially if they are invisible in some way. Oh, and snap me out of it if I get charmed or something.”

The penguins nodded eagerly.

“Right,” Chilly said, he turned to look down at the vista. It was still beautiful. The air was pleasant and fresh scents of nature made him happy. But the magic was gone. He knew it wasn’t real, he wasn’t actually free from the dungeon, and the sun wasn’t real.

He couldn’t let his guard down. This was a classic charm effect; get him to focus too hard on something fake while the dangerous thing snuck up on him. A part of him wanted to hate the dungeon for tricking him. Making him hope, but that wouldn’t be productive. There was no use in hating something that was simply doing what it was designed to do. You hate the shooter. Not the gun. He sadly tore his eyes from the vista, focusing instead on the penguins before him. Luckily, the fact that they looked so out of place made it easier to remember that none of it was real.

He glanced at the sun high above. He would at least enjoy the good weather. Just...not too much.

“Onwards, my feathered friends,” Chilly said, pointing at the main trunk. “To the tree and hopefully food and water!”

They made it as a group to the central trunk of the tree. Chilly made sure to only walk in the footsteps of a penguin. The path was long, so Chilly conversed with the penguins on the way.

"If we do manage to find Haley, how are we going to convince her to help us?" Chilly mused.

“You’re a Vigor/Endurance focused dark souls character, level strength and git gud,” said Eamond the penguin.

“Get good, huh?”

“And don’t go hollow skeleton.”

“Strength… Hollow...You're saying I should compliment her and flex my muscles.” Chilly surmised. He winced at his arms, knowing what little lay beneath. “I don’t know about that. How about...she’s probably wearing armor, right? I could complement that. Yeah, that should work. I can compliment her breastpl-. Shit, uh, I'll compliment her... Helmet? Yeah, that should be fine.”

“Dark Souls?” another penguin perked up.

“Yes, you people are using obscure references again,” Chilly waved off the penguin. “Just a compliment might not work though. Flattery will get you nowhere and all that. I’m going to be asking her to risk her life.”

“I have plenty of those! They taste good!” the penguin hopped up.

“Plenty...oh you mean essences?” Chilly said, feeling in his plate vest for the tiny stash he had brought with him. “You sure they taste good? They kinda just look like rocks to me.”

“Join the Void!” the penguin declared.

“Oh, I get it. Haley will join ‘the void’ if I give her some ‘dark souls’ because they ‘taste good’!” Chilly made an exaggerated wink at the penguin. “So she is like a mercenary! That’s cool, that's cool.”

Chilly ruffled through his stash of essences and pulled out his only Essence of Diamond. He held it up in the overcast light. “Girls like diamonds right?”

The penguins collectively facepalmed.

Chilly snuck them a nervous glance. “Oh boy,” he muttered. “This is going to go great...”

They didn’t run into any trouble or pitfalls as they approached the massive trunk. Above them, the storm rumbled. The black clouds were now large and imposing, drowning out the sun and casting them into a dim twilight. The trunk became a wall, entirely eclipsing everything in its bulk. The tiny swirls of storm clouds that flowed down the trunk became darker as they neared. He noticed them mostly because they were darker and denser than the surrounding air, not to mention more prone to having little flashes of lightning passing through them. Out of curiosity, Chilly sent an identify at them, and was surprised when a little blue box popped up.

“Storm elemental, low level,” Chilly pointed, “you see it too?”

The penguins nodded. That was reassuring. Hopefully, the illusion wouldn’t be able to fool the system notifications.

As he approached, the staircase encircling the tree from top to bottom, grew clearer. It was composed of expansive steps, wide enough for a dozen people to climb abreast. That explained why he had been able to see them from so far away. Up close, they were imposing, just another example of the scale of things here.

He looked up, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, or is there something hidden up there?”

The penguins looked, firelight reflecting off of their eyes. They shrugged.

“There aren't any illusions up there?” Chilly asked.

The penguins shook their heads, and some held their flippers close together as if holding a very small object.

“There are, but not many? Or are they small?” Chilly clarified, and nodded when they confirmed. He approached the edge carefully, trying to get a look at the landscape below. It was still nerve-wracking, despite knowing that the drop didn’t exist. To his surprise, a penguin stepped forwards and blocked his way before he could get to the edge.

He raised a brow, “there’s no wall here?”

The penguin nodded.

“Cool, thanks. Could you peek over the edge and tell me what you see?”

Some of the penguins ran towards the edge at a full sprint. They peered down, turning their heads in excitement and pointing like tourists in a new country. Chilly patiently waited for them, though it was hard reigning himself in, as he watched them excitedly looking at something that he couldn’t see.

A penguin returned to him, as one of its brethren exclaimed, and made a gesture indicating a big object and having its mind blown. Chilly ignored the penguins in the background and focused on the one in front of him. It put both of its flippers on its shoulders and rubbed them, shivering slightly as its beak rattled.

“It's cold down there?” Chilly said, “Do you see ice or snow?”

The penguin nodded three times.

“Good enough for me,” Chilly said. He took a step towards the staircase but arrested his motion with a jerk. “Could...one of you lead me down there?”

A penguin rushed back to him and led him down the stairs. They climbed down, the penguin making sure to hug the tree trunk, with Chilly close behind. He hoped that the penguins would give him more details about what they could see when they got around to talking. It was a little stressful, knowing that nothing he saw was real.

The stairs were of the same white wood as the main body of the tree, as if someone had worked tirelessly to carve a passage into the thick trunk. Someone might have done just that, but more likely this was simply the work of magic. Or maybe just another illusion, and this was in reality a staircase made of rock.

Chilly didn’t let that get to him though. It wasn’t real, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy it. There was something exciting about being underneath such a big storm, which clung to the tree like a canopy. He let the lightning-charged air renew him, but kept his eyes on the penguins to ground himself. However inconvenient, he had missed real weather. Yes, he would enjoy this change, but wouldn’t let it drive him to make mistakes.

No monsters blocked his path; all the storm elementals stayed higher up in the canopy. However his passage still slowed, his knees and thighs burning as the stairs wound on and on. He descended down the trunk for what felt like an hour before reaching the bottom.

He eagerly stepped off the white wood staircase and onto the sea of grass, only for it to vanish beneath his feet. Instead, a freezing cold overwhelmed him, as his ankle sunk a foot into a layer of powdered snow. The overcast light of Kellington’s Boughs receded, to be replaced by a sourceless cyan glow that reflected off the snow. He shivered. A frigid wind had replaced the gentle eddies of spring from mere moments before. The green grass and flowers were nowhere to be seen, and even the trees that had previously dotted the plains were replaced by spires of ice and snow.

A quick inspection revealed that he was in a canyon of some sort. Steep frozen walls full of snow and ice blocked off either side of the ravine. Spires of ice blocked off the view in the distance, but there were no immediate enemies in sight.

“No illusions right?” Chilly asked the penguins, and they confirmed. It looked like the illusion surrounding Kellington’s Boughs had faded.

He wrapped Starfire Aegis around himself for warmth and turned around to see what the tree really looked like. It was a pillar of snow-speckled rock. The staircase did exist, circling the pillar, with a line of ice frozen around its outer edge. It looked like the rain falling from the storm clouds above Kellington’s Boughs fed the Frozen Gulch. Or...wait. Were those clouds actually there?

Bah! Chilly followed the pillar upwards until it vanished in the gloom. The sourceless blue glow that lit the environment faded the higher up he looked, until it disappeared entirely before a ceiling of some sort revealed itself. It seemed he was in a mind-bogglingly large cavern.

Chilly shivered again but crouched down into the snow. His thirst raged at him. With relief so close, he could barely restrain himself. He yanked off his helmet and shoveled snow into it as fast as he could. He filled it to the brim, and then packed it down further before filling it to the brim once more.

With shaking hands, he wrapped the helmet up in his cape. The plasma rippled, sending heat into the metal helmet. The snow inside mesmerized Chilly as it melted. He licked his lips, but couldn’t help himself, and grabbed a ball of snow from the ground and shoved it into his mouth.

“Ha...cold,” Chilly huffed, as he mashed down on the snowball that slowly turned to water in his mouth. Water trickled down, soothing his parched throat, but not nearly enough to satisfy. He shot a look around but still didn’t see any enemies. He grabbed another ball of snow and shoved it into his mouth.

By now the snow in the helmet had mostly melted, and he guzzled it down.

>

>

>

The chunk of half-melted ice clinked painfully against his teeth. Chilly barely noticed, euphoric at finally finding water. What he did notice was the strong taste of ash and sweat in the water. He grimaced, overturning the dirty water and scouring the helmet with fresh snow. Then he filled it up again and wrapped it up in his cape.

This time he patiently waited for most of the snow to melt. He brought the lip of his helmet to his mouth, and drank greedily. The water was like ambrosia, quenching the deep thirst that had been his constant companion for what felt like years.

>

>

>

Chilly refilled the helmet with snow, and when it was mostly melted, he gulped it down.

>

Chilly fell backward - the nearby snow rapidly melting due to his cape - contentment radiating out of him. For the first time in a while, he felt satisfied. The dull discomfort in the background that he had grown used to was gone at last. The penguins around him cheered. He lay there in bliss for a minute. Simply existing.

His stomach rumbled piteously.

“Ah,” Chilly sighed, “I’m hungry.”

“Hi hungry, I’m dad!” Poidude chirped.

Beside the penguin manifested a cloud of dark smoke, out of which strode another penguin.

It stepped beside Poidude and with a hearty twist of its body, slapped Poidude on the back of its head. Poidude fell flat on its face.

Beside them both, NickXenix shrugged.

Chilly blinked twice at what had transpired then groaned.