Broken Lands

Chapter 317 – Hunger

“Flying Stars, we’ve pushed the Hunger to attack us with everything it has.” Arak Shade’s void sounded like it was coming from every single one of Sophia’s shadows, but it still came through clearly. 

Sophia had never been happier that she could somehow hear while using her best defensive Ability. She might not need it yet, but she’d expected the wolves and bears to be a lot worse than they turned out to be. Being overcautious was better than becoming dead.

“You and team Rockfist will be the main target, since you were the ones fighting when it decided we were too effective.” Arak’s voice was why, almost amused. He clearly wasn’t worried about the fight; he was taking it seriously, but he somehow reminded Sophia of her father when he was teaching her how to handle a dungeon. Everything was under control; this was simply a learning opportunity. “It’s either going to send hordes of its ice beasts at you or charge you itself. Given how effective you were, my guess is the second. Be ready for a very large creature that looks undead but isn’t. It will have some sort of frost or ice Abilities, but there is a lot of variety in Hungers. The one Ability they all share is the one that gives them their name: they can eat their victims and reconstitute them as ice statues under their control.”

Sophia was not happy to hear that the Hunger was specifically not undead. It would probably not be nearly as affected by the fire-tinted mana field created by using fire skyeagle feathers for her Domain since it wasn’t ice; not being undead meant the True Death she lent her friends wouldn’t be useful either. Those were two of her best tricks right now.

Well, she could still blunt its ice magic, whatever it was. Hopefully it would be more like the bears’ magic than the wolves’ blasts; the bears gave her time to work, and that meant her fire was much more effective. The firewater feathers she’d added to the Domain should be useful, as well; they held Sweetwater’s third upgrade sweetfire, and that meant they were absolutely incredible when they were unleashed on second upgrade ice monsters. Hopefully they’d work well on a second upgrade Hunger, as well.

She was going to have to find someone else with third upgrade fire she could store. Before they left, fifty Firewater Plumes filled with sweetfire seemed like a lot. She’d already used four of them and the big fight for the zone hadn’t even started yet.

Okay, some of that was because she was testing how well they worked on the bears as well as the wolves. For the bears, she needed to add a touch of True Death, while the wolves were fragile enough (or maybe just small enough) that the sweetfire was enough on its own. She still needed to find a way to replace them.

It was too bad she couldn’t capture other elements the same -

Wait. Who said she couldn’t? Well, her Ability only talked about fire, but really it was all about using conflicting Affinities to create a more or less stable object in the shape of a feather, which let her control it. Sophia grinned internally; if there was one thing her Arcane Affinity was good for, it was controlling other mana types. 

That

was the piece she’d been missing, the thing that would form the center of her new Grand Talent. The Grand Spell and Grand Ability she’d pieced together from the Challenges they’d done were useful, certainly, but they were missing something that tied them together. She didn’t see the whole picture yet, but she could see a corner of it. Perhaps she could tie that into the wordplay Sweetfire pointed out, use the concept of a “plume” somehow.She was going to have to figure out a better place to store the feathers, too. When they were a tool she used to prepare for a big fight, keeping them in her backpack was fine, but if they were a part of every fight she did, she’d need a better place. She wasn’t certain if she could manage to capture them with an Ability and hold them ready; that seemed like a bit much if she commonly filled them with mana more powerful than she could cast.

Although … now that she thought about it, Sweetfire’s mana didn’t actually seem that powerful to her. That was probably because his Core was actually lower than hers, despite his higher level -

A loud scream interrupted Sophia’s musing. She focused on the world around her as she tried to suppress her embarrassment at getting distracted when monsters were headed her way. She couldn’t do anything about them until they entered her Plumed Domain, but she still should have been watching for them.

The ice beasts split and flowed around the pair of teams that started everything. None of them strayed onto the slush-covered ground below Sophia’s Domain. It was a relief and annoying at the same time; Sophia had nothing to do but listen to Arak Shade’s instructions. Most of them were for other people, but he returned to her team over and over again as the fight progressed.

“It cannot be much longer.” Arak Shade sounded positively frustrated after the third time the scream rang across the mountain. “One shout like that usually heralds the Hunger. This one is unusually willing to throw its ice beasts at us without showing itself. The only time I’ve seen that before was when we had a strong enough ice-controller to contest the Hunger’s control and actually steal the ice beasts from it.”

Sophia couldn’t directly talk to Arak, but her thoughts spilled out across the mindlink to the rest of her team anyway. In her frustration at continually preparing for battle and having nothing happen, she didn’t filter them as well as she usually tried to. “They are the walking dead, frozen in an imitation of the forms they had in life. Death and ice twined together into a monster. That’s why True Death worked and in fact why Fire was useful; they should not have melted so easily but they were the concept of Ice rather than the temperature. Nothing given shape by lost history.”

She really didn’t like the ice beasts. They were undead in the purest sense of the word, a spirit bound to serve another instead of being set free to head to wherever it would go after death. If the spirit was willing, Sophia had no problem with that, but these were not willing. It was slavery and nothing more.

“Sophia says they’re undead,” Dav translated for her. “I think she’s saying that more than just ice mages could control them.”

“Is that how you were killing them so easily?” Meadow moved forward to stand close enough to Dav to easily talk. “I meant to ask about that.”

Dav waved at the feathers tied to the sword in his hand. “Sophia can channel some of her Abilities through feathers, and that means through weapons and armor with a plume. It’s limited, but it means that undead of any sort are far easier to kill than they should be. Undead and constructs; I thought these were the second, but Sophia thinks they’re the first.”

Meadow glanced across the team. “That’s useful. There aren’t that many undead in the Maze, but there are some. Maybe more than I thought. Statues come to life are more common; that’s what you mean by constructs, I think. Does she have a limit on how many people she can enhance that way?”

Dav shrugged. “We haven’t found one yet, other than how much mana it takes. Well, that and you have to be close enough to her. It’s not exactly limited to her Domain, but it’s close to that.”

Dav was wrong. Sophia knew her ability to infuse things like Death’s Embrace into her friends absolutely was limited to the area covered by her Domain. The thing was, Dav couldn’t see the edges; she usually didn’t keep feathers out at the far sides. The mana also didn’t shut off if you stepped outside; instead, it would fade. It would fade even faster if it was used.

So maybe Dav wasn’t wrong after all. She couldn’t add mana to the effect outside her Domain, but if she established it and then someone stepped outside, it might still work, for a bit.

Meadow head turned away from Dav to look out across the snow field. “Something big is moving. Finally. I think it’s the Hunger. I’m not going to be able to help in this fight; I can barely keep enough mana going to feel that thing coming in, and it’s huge.”

“Fall back to my position, Meadow,” Arak Shade stated firmly. This time, the voice didn’t come from the shadows; it came from the man himself. He stood inside Sophia’s Domain as though he’d teleported into position. Sophia would have sworn he wasn’t there a moment earlier. “Flying Stars, the Hunger may be vulnerable to whatever you’re doing against its minions; that’s the only reason it would be hanging back after this long. It will attack soon and it’s coming right here. Do what you need to do to kill it. Rockfist, back off; you can step in if they’re in trouble.”

“It’s circling around us,” Meadow reported as she walked back to the expedition leader. “There, you should be able to see it now. I think it wants a look at us before it attacks.” She pointed down the mountain, not towards the portal but off to the left of it. Sophia could see a shape that seemed to glow in the darkness, closer than the darker line of snow-covered trees.

“I see it,” Ci’an stated over the mindlink, then shared an image.

The Hunger was built like a beast, more or less, clearly accustomed to running on all four limbs. Its front limbs were longer than the rear, giving it an unusual gait, and its whiplike tail was probably not for balance; it simply wasn’t big enough. Sophia wouldn’t be shocked if it could rise onto two legs, but if so that was likely only to claw its enemies or to feast.

The first impression of its body was that it was starved, with wrinkled skin showing a clear outline of its skull and musculature, but there was far too much muscle on it for it to actually be starving. If anything, it looked overly muscled; what looked like ribs at first glance clearly wasn’t. 

Like the monsters it raised, its eyes glowed an unhealthy green. Ice formed a spiky mane that continued down its spine and out to the sides of its body, but dwindled to nothing before it reached the tail. 

“That is definitely not an ice sculpture.” Sophia wasn’t sure why she said that, but it was all she could really think of to say. It didn’t look like anything she’d ever fought. “A nightmare, maybe, or something created by a wizard. Maybe a weapon of war?”

“Why does it have to have a real origin? Couldn’t it just be something corrupted by ice, or made by the Maze?” Dav sounded interested, but Sophia noticed that he gripped his sword a little tighter. He wasn’t happy about the monster, either.

“Talking to Sophia or Ci’an?” Arak asked pleasantly. Sophia hadn’t even realized Dav spoke out loud as well as silently before the question. “No one knows where Hungers come from. What we do know is that they can turn into the ice and snow they control and move faster than you expect. It’s baiting an attack; when it realizes we aren’t going to be taunted, it will come here. It should run, and sometimes Maze monsters will, but never a Hunger.”