Broken Lands

Chapter 316 – Melting

The wolves arrived first. Meadow’s vines rose from beneath the snow to catch the feet of their opponents. It was really all she could do against wolves, and even that wouldn’t be possible if her vines still required real soil to grow from. The ground here was rock or frozen; it worked against her, as even the wolves could force the vines out of the ground if they pulled hard enough.

Of course, that meant that they weren’t biting their enemies or breathing on them. That was enough to make the vines worthwhile. Meadow didn’t try to tie down the wolves the way she would have in a more hospitable environment; there was no point. The moment her vines were tugged out of the ground, they were no longer hers to control anyway.

One wolf tripped as a vine caught its foreleg. Meadow didn’t wait to see what happened to it; she moved on. The next wolf was only delayed a little by the tug on a hind leg, but while it delayed, a brightly shining sword crashed into it and sundered it into separate pieces of ice with no remnant life.

Meadow paused momentarily, shocked, as she tried to understand how a second upgrade fighter could kill an ice wolf in a single blow. It would indicate skill and power if he used an element that was antithetical to the wolves, but Jax was Light-based, and Light didn’t oppose the ice-wolves. It was nearly ineffective, in fact. 

He clearly wasn’t using just Light. Meadow would ask about that, after the battle. Every team had surprises like that, ways to cover someone’s weaknesses. 

Her vines didn’t stop; they weren’t as effective without her control, but they still knew who the enemies were. Meadow turned her attention back to them and found that they’d trapped a bear’s foot long enough for Rockfist to give a vivid demonstration of why he used the name Rockfist.  Jace had brought down a bear that threatened to swing wide around them, while Xin’ri had managed two wolves. That made some sense; the wolves were running faster.

Meadow had to wonder if Xin’ri was enhanced the same way Jax was. One second upgrade fireblast shouldn’t really leave an ice wolf lifeless. Damaged and melting was more reasonable, but what Xin’ri’s attacks accomplished looked more like something from the peak of the third upgrade, not the second. 

She used her vines to grab another wolf, then a bear, then two wolves, as she watched the fight. Most of her attention was on team Flying Stars; she knew her team’s capabilities. Snagging the bears was useful but not necessary, even under normal circumstances. They could manipulate the snow, but Jace would deal with that; where Willow’s powers lay in plants, Jace’s lay with the elements. He couldn’t completely prevent the bears from doing anything, but any bear that grabbed the snow with its mind would find it moving in ways the bear didn’t expect.

Not that there seemed to be much of that happening. The bears seemed unusually clumsy with the snow, wielding it as a chilly distraction rather than the hazard it normally was. Meadow could only mark that down as being the difference between third upgrade ice bears and second upgrade ice bears; they clearly didn’t have either the control or the power of the better versions she was used to fighting. It made the fight far easier than expected.

Meadow caught the foot of one of the bears and anchored it in place, coincidentally next to one of the floating blue-and-red feathers. The feather seemed to blossom in a gout of fire that sprayed across the bear’s chest, melting halfway through the thick ice. The bear stiffened and fell to the snowy ground, paralyzed or more likely truly dead.

The snow splashed, almost like water. Meadow frowned; she was certain it had been light, puffy snow with a slight crust when they started the fight, but that wasn’t what it moved like now. Was the fire-field Sophia created really that strong? It was obvious that the blue-and-red feathers were an enchanted item. Just how much aurichalc was Sophia planning to spend on this fight if she’d already started using consumables? For that matter, why was she bothering using them on monsters her teammates were easily destroying?

The wolves’ icy breath was far more of a danger than the bears’ totally useless snow control. The first time one of the wolves used it, it completely caught the dark-haired Flying Stars man, Dav?, completely off guard; he was running towards it and it turned and spat a fierce icy gale at the man and knocked him off his feet and covered him in icy rime. 

Meadow knew what that felt like. She’d been hit by the wolves’ breath before. It would chill you to the bone, numb your extremities, and make you clumsy and disoriented. She reached out to the bush nearest Dav, one that was within Sophia’s fiery field. It had been slowly gathering warmth; she sent that warmth towards Dav in a rush of heat and leaves, warming him carefully. Too much warmth was as bad as too much cold, but she had to give enough to break the wolf’s icy remnants.

Dav seemed to move a little quicker, so she’d hit the balance or close enough. It was always a tough thing to judge, and these wolves being within a warm zone and only second upgrade meant she’d aimed low. It was good to know that her guess was right.

Dav’s blade seemed to flicker and pass through the ice wolf’s neck, leaving the icy form untouched, but the wolf fell as if it were a real wolf whose head had been severed. Meadow had to believe that they were all using something that helped them kill the ice beasts.

Unless … maybe it was the fire field Sophia was somehow maintaining with the red feathers? It didn’t seem that strong to Meadow, but perhaps it granted a power opposed to ice to those who fought within it? That would definitely suit a spellcaster who controlled an area the way Sophia did. It wasn’t that different from some of Meadow’s Abilities, either; unfortunately, they were ones that simply weren’t useful against ice beasts. 

Meadow shifted her attention to Swell. Her teammate was a water mage, but he was also a swordsman like both Jax and Dav, with a completely different weapon. His swordsmanship took after his element; he used a hunk of enchanted steel twice as wide as their swords and almost half again as long, sharpened only enough to make it cut if he put enough force behind it - which he did partly by controlling water that was embedded in the sword’s blade and hilt. 

Swell moved with precision, but it was the precision of a wave, not of the air; he would knock you over, then take your feet from you if he had the chance. He was faster than Rockfist but not quite as sturdy. They made quite a duo when they worked together.

What mattered here is that he shouldn’t be able to break an ice beast into three pieces the way Rockfist was; he could probably kill them outright, since they were second upgrade, but she should still be able to get a better idea of whether or not the fire field was helping him by watching.

It was. In fact, it was helping so much that Swell wasn’t even using his sword. He’d grabbed the meltwater with his water magic and was using it to knock one of the bears into another. How was there that much meltwater? The snow was soft, but it wasn’t turning into water that fast. The fire-field was warm, but it wasn’t that warm.

Meadow blinked and took a closer look at the ice beasts. They were visibly melting as they moved into the field Sophia established, as if the heat was far hotter than it really was, or like the ice beasts were nearly melted anyway. That didn’t make any sense; they normally radiated cold.

These were second upgrade beasts, not third, but this still seemed odd.

Meadow grinned and directed another of her heat-bushes to throw some of Sophia’s heat at one of the wolves. It took a step, then collapsed as the leg she’d hit snapped under its weight, melted nearly completely by her simple redirection.

The next few minutes found Meadow humming to herself as she happily disabled a series of ice beasts with far less effort than normal. Some of her vines were even able to immobilize the beasts until one of the frontliners could come and put them out of their misery.

A roar rang out in the distance as the last bear fell. Meadow looked up, surprised. That was much louder than it should have been to announce the end of one wave and the beginning of the next. It was almost like the roar that happened if everyone attacked the first wave and angered the Hunger.

Almost exactly like that shout, in fact.

Meadow looked across the snowfield and found ice beasts emerging from hiding places under the snow across the entire mountain slope ahead of them. More ice beasts topped the rise in the distance as she watched. There were hundreds of ice beasts out there. Meadow knew they could manage it. It would be better if they had a true siege mage, but the only siege mage with the expedition was Wildfire, and Meadow doubted the Shade would let Wildfire attack. He was good for one, maybe two, siege spells in a day, and he took more than a day to recover if he did two. He was a resource best saved for when it was truly desperate.

On a good expedition, Wildfire might never cast a single spell. Meadow liked those expeditions.

“Everyone, ready in your teams.” The Shade’s voice spoke as if he were only a few feet behind Meadow instead of near the link-gate. Meadow knew he’d sound that way to everyone. She didn’t know if it was an item or an Ability; she suspected an Ability since she’d never heard of an item as good as what he could do. “Many different kinds of ice beasts are coming. They will be enraged and not at their best, but there will be a lot of them.” 

The Shade’s voice shifted to speaking to her alone. “Willow, what’s closest?”

“Foxes and weasels.” She knew he’d hear her, so she didn’t bother trying to shout or to locate him. She did turn to glance behind the group, but the area directly around the gate was clear of ice beasts and so was everything downslope from them. “There are some to the sides, above us, but nothing below. At least, nothing below that’s shown itself yet; I didn’t do a full ground-check.”

“Too much risk of angering the Hunger early,” the Shade agreed. “He’s angry now, so please do the ground-check. Let me know if you find anything.”

Willow nodded, then extended her magic out to sense for any plant life that was in the area. This was almost the worst sort of area for her, barren as it was. She could feel the tiny creatures that lived despite the snow, but they could do nothing for her. She was going to have to do it the hard way, inch by inch, covering the entire gate area with her plants and her magic. It would take at least three times as long and completely drain her mana, but it was worth it to know there was nothing under the snow they stood on. “Rockfist! And, uh, Jax. I’m doing a ground-check, looking for anything hidden near us. It’s going to completely drain me, but at least we won’t be surprised.”

“Sophia says there isn’t anything in her Domain,” Dav answered quickly. “She can’t tell farther than that, but if there were any ice beasts hidden when she started, they’re dead now. Really dead.”

Meadow nodded. That was good; it meant there was a space she didn’t have to check, which would let her search farther down the mountain. Maybe she’d even have a little left afterwards. She’d worry about what it meant that a second upgrade Called had not only a Domain but a Domain that she could control well enough to have people count as allies and not announce itself after the battle. 

She had more than a few questions.