Entro stood beneath the towering ship, its white hull gleaming under the sun.
Beside him, Agri was doing his best to cosplay as a service horse, a comically large, service horse.
A horse jacket with "service animal, do not pet" taped onto it, and a fly mask purchased last minute were the only things upholding this facade.
For the last week, they watched other cruise ships come and go from the port, making notes on the shift changes and the laziest employees.
The employee switching onto the next shift in a few minutes had the highest rate of mess-ups, they could only pray now.
Stepping up to the clerk, Entro confidently brandished his money, as if nothing were wrong.
When he caught his eyes wandering around Agri, he flashed a smile that said "I will argue you down until you see I'm right."
Shaking his head, the clerk cleared him.
"Yeah whatever, I don't get paid enough."
Nodding politely, Entro led his wolf, er, horse onto the ship, wasting no time to start looking for his room.
The interior of the ship was wood floors that should've clicked underfoot. Agri's somehow were completely silent.
"Easy," Entro muttered under his breath, tightening his grip on the faux-leather reins.
Agri huffed, in agreeance.
Room 414. Starboard side.
Entro located it quickly, thanks to a small, outdated map posted by the stairwell.
He avoided elevators, too many people, too risky.
Instead, he led Agri up a narrow, crew-access maintenance staircase, then down a hallway that reeked of old cleaning products.
Once inside the room, Entro shut the door, latched the deadbolt, then shoved a chair under the knob for good measure.
The room was barely large enough for a twin bed, a mounted TV, and a tiny desk. Agri took up most of the floor space immediately, curling himself into the corner with a low grunt. The bed groaned under Entro's weight as he sat down, exhaling like he hadn't in days.
They'd made it.
Laying back, Entro reminisced on the journey up until now.
Deciding to rage against his slavers by running away from Entropolis, and then escaping the country.
Swimming from Mexico to the southern edge of Chile, making friends and leaving them, all the way to being here on this boat.
'I deserve to sleep.'
So slept he did, the entire sail to Antarctica, everyone forgot about the weird guy with the funny-looking horse.
The journey south was slow but steady.
Most days were gray, the sky and sea blending into an endless smear of motionless mist.
The ship cut through the waters like a tired blade, gulls vanished, and people wore more coats.
Entro kept to himself, mostly.
He'd appear briefly in the cafeteria, grab food, always double portions, and sneak it back to the room, once, a kid with wild curls followed him.
"Why do you have two trays?"
Entro didn't break stride. "I'm bulking."
The kid blinked. "Cool."
Back in the room, Agri ate in silence. He was used to this sort of travel, the tension before violence; his eyes tracked every sound in the hall beyond the door.
The ship neared the South Shetland Islands.
Icy wind howled outside.
Passengers buzzed with energy, some were here for science, some for thrill, some for whatever version of enlightenment you could find on a frozen continent.
Entro watched them from the upper deck, hood pulled low.
He didn't speak to them, nor did he care to.
Docking procedures began at dawn. Passengers crowded the port side, selfie-sticks raised.
Entro stayed in his room, waiting.
One by one, the ship emptied. Scientists. Adventurers. Overconfident influencers. He waited until the last call resounded.
Then he moved.
He slipped through the staff hallway, the one he'd scouted days ago. Agri followed, silent on his paws as they bypassed the main ramp, ducking instead into a storage bay where crates were being unloaded by a distracted dock crew.
They were off the ship before anyone knew they'd been on it
The cold hit harder here.
It was heavier.
The kind that didn't care if you had layers, it wanted under your skin. Entro adjusted the straps on his pack, and turned inland.
No ceremony; no one to wave him off this time.
Just snow.
Endless, rolling hills bathed in white.
Agri stood beside him, the land ahead was unsure.
There was no road, just direction.
Entro took the first step.
Then another.
And another.
Entro and Agri shivered endlessly as they trekked through unforgiving snow.
Cold nipped at their essence, trying to drain them of their life.
Agri's position was decent with his thick layers of fur, large frame, and powerful body.
Entro, however, was put through a deadlier hell than even the ocean.
They had weeks of this ahead of them, alone, stomping on the edge of death.
His boots were already damp; gloves stiff with ice.
A parka he'd bought from a shady merchant in Ushuaia was proving to be fake.
He didn't mind, money only went so far.
It crackled when he moved, as the wind pierced through every seam whispering certain death.
No roads. No footprints.
Only a horizon that never got closer.
The sun hadn't set, it wasn't going to.
A constant light that provided no warmth or reprieve from the onslaught of ice.
Entro's lips had cracked open, his nose freezing solid.
His eyebrows were frosted over.
They kept walking, time passing relentlessly.
Every day the wind seemed to scream louder.Entro had to lean his entire body against Agri during rests, to keep the wind from rolling him away like trash.
He kept his sanity by counting his steps.
"Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine—"
A slip, there was solid ice where he stepped, causing him to fall down.
Face planted into snow.
Not powder, crystal-sharp ice dust, carving into his cheeks.
He struggled to his feet, resuming the monotonous walking that never ceased.
He started talking to himself, not for any other reason but to keep his throat warm and working; to fill his ears with something other than screeching wind.
"I left the ship. They didn't see me."
Step.
"Benji is probably working"
Step.
"I killed that thing for a map."
Step.
"Wonder if I can eat snow leopard."
Agri was built for survival, but even he was rendered near helpless by these conditions.
His breath came out in long, foggy blasts, ribs moved differently, tighter
They hadn't eaten in two days, they needed to conserve their food over a longer period of time.
Entro tried to scrape snow from ice and melt it in his hands.
It took forever, ice burning his palms.
The water he got was cold and bitter, but it kept his lips from peeling off completely.
Agri licked at the same pile of snow.
A blizzard rolled in, seemingly from out of nowhere.
They didn't see it, smell it, nor hear it.
It just appeared all at once.
One moment they had limited vision, the next, there was nothing.
Wind howled as snow flew sideways, pelting their small forms.Entro couldn't see more than a few feet.
He dropped to his knees, crawling forward.
He grabbed onto Agri's tail and held.
The wolf dragged him, step by step, toward a half-formed ridge they had spotted earlier.
They crouched under it, curling into each other.
White walls of snow blurred everything outside into chaos.
Entro couldn't feel his toes,any attempt at moving them came back with, nothing.
They waited for hours, maybe longer.
Even when the blizzard cleared, they didn't rise easily.
They were alive, but only barely.
Neither of them said anything, just kept walking.
His legs kept moving.
He was walking on autopilot, leaning into the snow and fighting the roaring wind as Agri paced beside him.
Keep going, that was all they could do.
They were past bonding. Past even survival.
They were enduring. Because that's what you did when you couldn't do anything else.
Entro stopped talking, his voice gave out somewhere.
The sun never left, never shifted, just loomed in the sky like an eye.
He missed night and darkness.
The snow dunes became uneven, sharper.
There were places where he had to crawl.
They crossed a frozen river, or what he thought was one.
Just a flat sheet of ice that cracked with every step, forcing them to spread their weight wide, crawling till the end.
They moved on.
The snow changed around day nine, with more powder, and less ice.
Entro barely noticed.
His thoughts were coming in shorter bursts now, simple fragments, no longer full sentences.
Keep walking.
Don't stop.
Left foot.
Right.
Cold.
Alive?
Yes.
Agri.
He hadn't seen any signs of life in days. No birds. No seals. No tracks.
Push onward...
It took several weeks, but eventually, Entro stood at the crest of a hill, overlooking the metal facility before him.
'This is what we came for.'
Approaching the half buried building, with a different desperation than he had ever felt before.
Once before the door, he fell to his knees, numb fingers clawing snow from the panel.
'Come on…'
A chime broke the silence.
The keypad lit up.
The hatch hissed, mechanisms grinding for the first time in years, then groaned open an inch, enough to stick his hand in and shove. With a shoulder, Entro pushed until the wind howled no more.
Warm air greeted him.
It smelled of metal, stale filters, and old energy, but it was warm.
He stumbled in first, gripping a rusted handle and pulling the door fully open.
The doorway was too narrow for Agri to stride in.
With some effort, Entro detached a hidden panel beside the frame, revealing a secondary, larger bay door, designed for supply crates and transports.
It groaned open on old hydraulics, and Agri ducked through.
Inside, the world changed.
Gone was the endless snow and sky. Now there were sterile panels, soft strip lights, and walls that hummed.
Entro collapsed onto a padded bench.
He was safe.
Truly safe, for the first time since setting foot on this continent.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking, his skin, raw from cold, began to tingle with the return of blood.
His lips bled as the cracks widened.
Agri sat beside him, steam rising from his massive back.
"Welcome back," Entro said.
The lab systems came online in a slow cascade of light. The floor-level glow strips pulsed a calm cyan.
Machinery hummed awake.
Screens blinked on, each revealing weather readouts, deep ice scans, and geological activity.
He'd hidden this place for a reason.
Long ago, when he still believed in the grand vision, in innovation over survival, he'd built this lab beneath the ice for research he couldn't allow the others to find.
Back then, he thought secrets were a game, now they were survival.
One terminal near the back beeped.
He limped to it, typing his credentials by muscle memory.
He did it.
Agri's stomach growled loudly. Entro turned toward a side chamber where he remembered the food synthesizer being stored.
Five minutes later, Entro had something warm in his hands; synthetic broth. He drank it like greedily as Agri sniffed at his portion before devouring it.
The quiet afterward was unsettling.
For the first time in weeks, there was no screaming wind, no constant movement, no threat, meaning Entro had to think again.
About the project, about what came next.
He moved toward the holo table in the center of the lab.
It responded instantly, lights flaring to life.
"I'm going to find food out there."
Voicing his approval, Entro studied his old schematics with unmatched concentration.
'What's next?'
---
The snow didn't care how sharp Agri's claws were.
It crushed beneath him all the same, loud and betraying.
Every step rang out across the plains, sending birds into the air and small prey burrowing deeper into the frozen dirt.
And still, he hunted, again, and again, and again.
Agri was too big for this.
He crouched low, a hulking shadow on a world that knew only white and gray.
His coat, midnight black, made him a walking warning sign against the clear backdrop of snow.
No matter how low he crept, how long he waited, how still he became, the snow betrayed him.
His breath clouded in thick, dark plumes. His tail brushed up flurries. Every effort to remain unseen was a war he couldn't win.
That morning he'd found a scent trail, small mammal, a snow fox.
Agri followed it with diligence, sniffing and tracing, where sun-bleached rock broke the monotony of frost.
He came within ten meters before the creature darted, faster than he could sprint, lighter than his weight allowed.
And then, silence; empty snow all over again.
Agri returned by dusk, ribs more visible than the night before. His mouth hung open, tongue out, but not panting. Just, slack and empty.
He dropped to the floor beside Father's workbench and didn't move for hours.
The shame built up from his uselessness crushed him. He couldn't do his job right on this godforsaken continent.
It wasn't for lack of trying.
Agri's instincts were razor-sharp, honed by the Aetherian cells.
He could hear snowfall shift, and smell the trace of a vole half a mile off.
However, none of that mattered when he couldn't approach.
Size was a gift in battle, but a curse in a hunt.
Black fur was power in shadow.
But knowing that didn't change the fact that Agri hadn't eaten meat in five days.
That evening, Father tried to get him to eat a synthetic ration.
A gesture that Agri firmly rejected.
He would not resort to letting him and Father stoop to such levels.
"Seriously?" Father muttered, crouching beside him. "This has protein, calories, and manufactured marrow flavor; it's disgusting and perfect."
Agri didn't move. Only the rise and fall of his chest, slow and shallow, betrayed life.
Entro sighed, rubbing his temples. "You're not failing because you're weak," he said aloud, voice low but certain. "You're failing because this place wasn't made for you."
Agri's eyes flicked toward him, just once.
'That's not an excuse to fail you Father.'
Three more days passed.
Agri tried hunting twice and came back with nothing.
The second time, he'd returned limping. A rock shard buried in his paw pad. Entro spent twenty minutes with tweezers, whispering apologies with every wince the wolf gave.
"Why do you keep trying?" Father whispered.
'I must be useful'
Agri didn't say these words aloud because he knew Father would never take that answer.
Father's kindness was infinite.
The next morning, Agri didn't leave the lab.
---
Entro had been contemplating his next move all morning. He wasn't sure how to help Agri adapt to his new environment; it seemingly was created to kill him.
Agri hadn't moved since morning.
His massive frame, once coiled with the tension of muscle and purpose, now looked almost small, like someone had hollowed him out from the inside.
His head rested on the cold floor, eyes half-lidded, as if even keeping them open demanded energy he didn't have anymore.
He hadn't gone out to hunt in two days.
Not since he'd limped back bleeding, not since his last attempt had ended with a fox darting beneath an ice shelf and disappearing without a trace.
He was starving. And worse than that, he was ashamed.
Entro rubbed the bridge of his nose.
'What's the solution?'
Entro looked over at him again. His breath was steady, but shallow. His coat, once sleek, looked matted now. And his frame, already designed for power, had begun to betray its own weight.
Something in Entro's chest twisted.
He didn't really want to change Agri's anatomy and characteristics, he was perfect the way he was.
Entro thought hard.
'If he's unsuited for his environment and I'm unwilling to change him; his environment has to change.'
Those words were strong ones.
He paced.
Not because it helped, but because thinking still felt like a process that required movement.
Entro's thoughts spiraled.
"If I give him something like that, it could infect the biosphere, perhaps endangering life as we know."
But what was the alternative?
Entro turned to a nearby screen and pulled up Agri's last vitals.
Blood glucose below survival threshold.
Muscle strain is high, and body temperature fluctuating.
A few more days of this, and he'd start to shut down.
He didn't notice when Agri lifted his head.
Didn't hear the slow, deliberate sound of paws crossing the floor.
But he felt it when the weight pressed against his head, Agri leaning into him, gently, not seeking food or comfort, just… connection.
A small reminder that he was still here.
Agri and he bonded through life and death experiences several times now. His life was nearly synonymous with his own; if Agri were to ever die...
Entro froze.
Then slowly, he lowered a hand and placed it against Agri's thick fur.
It felt different than before, thin and lacking oils.
This was a body beginning to fade.
The final hesitation broke.
'Aether.'
[Yes, Father?]
'Start leaking into the surrounding environment, changing it to suit our needs, we're not going to waste away here after surviving the most hellish experiences ever.'
[I've been waiting for this command for a long time now.]
Pretending he didn't hear that very concerning comment, Entro looked back at Agri.
"I won't ever let you die, buddy"
The next morning, the snow outside was behaving strangely.
By noon, the first green shoots pierced the frost.
Agri stepped outside with purpose for the first time in a week, and Entro watched him go.
"I'll deal with the effects when they come."