A Loveless Tundra

by Dworthy

Prologue

The jet streams whipped around, attempting to bring the upper atmosphere back to thermal equilibrium and undo the uneven heating of the sun with high-speed air movement, though constantly hindered (and thus, made long-lived) by the very rotation of the planet. This phenomenon was, for the most part, just a novelty for the local scientists and something of an invisible nuisance to those on the frontiers of societies practicing local weather control, as the air over nine kilometers up has less than a third of the equivalent oxygen content of sea level. This is fatal for most of the flight capable species, and any exceptions will usually find the low air density blocking their wing’s effectiveness at gaining altitude, assuming the freezing air doesn’t force them to descend.

Still, nature always has a part in history, and as luck would have it, an unusually large number of macroscopic creatures called changelings ended up launched into the air by a spherical shell powered by love. This was entirely unintentional, and most of them were barely conscious for most of the flight, given that unexpected physical trauma and rapid temperature changes are not conducive to continued awareness.

One outlier, who was hovering a good distance above the rest of their kind due to a reluctance to partake in combat, ended up gaining much more altitude than the others, and lost consciousness entirely from the pressure and temperature changes. The initial trajectory intercepted a jet stream almost directly overhead, and the limp body was quickly flung by the strong winds northward. Despite mostly being a black carapace pocked with holes, the changeling caught the wind fairly well, though the rapidly deteriorating wings flapping uselessly in the buffeting jets made such a prospect rather poor in results.

Of course, flight by any object with zero awareness and less than the escape velocity is doomed to end by gravity, and its inexorable pull brought it down and out of the jet stream. Even if that had not happened, the stream was about to make a sudden bend in another hundred kilometers or so, and that would have ejected the changeling anyway, though far further north.

Returning to the most interesting thing in kilometers, the literally-battered-by-thin-air changeling was quickly dropping to the ground. The fall was particularly chaotic as the near-useless wings made the rotation particularly unstable and rapidly shifted around the terminal velocity. Nevertheless, rapid descent was guaranteed.

The rapidly approaching ground was covered by thick clouds. Most flight capable creatures, thanks to magic suffusing the environment, were perfectly capable of interacting with clouds under normal circumstances. This did not include speeds that were usually only flown by daredevils attempting a Sonic Rainboom. The changeling’s form smashed a hole through the clouds with ease, slowing the fall down far more effectively than the gradually thickening air, and the far floatier snowflakes helped a little, too.

Below the expansive cloud cover, only briefly marred by the descent, an expanse of snow stretched ever onward. Precipitation such as snowflakes was fairly rare at these areas normally, with how little water is in the air, but the area held a mostly forgotten curse that locked away the center from the outside space-time, as well as ancient evil whose legacy had long degraded into holiday tales. Overall, despite the definite evil lurking in the area, these circumstances were extremely lucky for the creature forcibly set apart from the hive, as it changed the fall speed from most likely fatal to survivable… maybe.

Out of all the natural surfaces on a wet planet, snow might just be the best for minimizing the physical impact of a landing. Unlike most other materials, the fluffy nature of undisturbed snow provides a massive crumble zone, spreading out the force needed to stop over time. In fact, this distribution tends to be the deciding factor for the survivability of any large fall, as the lethal factor is the necessary acceleration to stop the fall at the moment of hitting the surface of the planet again. There have been a few tales of wingless ponies surviving falls from the cloud cities of the pegasi by landing in hay bales, though also a couple on the surprising rigidity of water at high speeds. To be short, when falling near terminal velocity, avoid bodies of water if a perfect diving position is impossible, as it would be just as bad as landing on bare mountain rock.

All in all, the changeling had a great deal of luck, not only having the help of the weather to slow down, fresh snow to provide a soft landing, but also managing to land on a snowbank, all without even being aware of what was happening. Outside of the wings ripped to uselessness and hypothermia slowly setting in, the hapless victim of circumstance was entirely uninjured from a very, very fast journey.

Now, this creature would go on to change the fate of the entire species… assuming death of frigid temperatures or starvation is avoided.

Author's Note:

Non-Technical Summary: Thorax gets launched higher than Mt. Everest's peak, hitches a ride north on a jet stream, and manages to stick the landing in the tundra near where the Crystal Empire ends up returning, all while unconscious.