Broken Lands

Chapter 318 – Ice, Fire, and Darkness

After showing itself, the Hunger seemed to shimmer, then disappear in the cold night air. Ci’an managed to track it, or at least that was what Sophia thought she was doing in the stream of images she shared across the mindlink; there was a glittering streak floating in the air in each picture, like the reflection of light off of one of the beast’s icy spikes.

The Hunger circled widely around the expedition, then approached where team Flying Stars waited. It was about thirty feet away from them, still invisible, when Meadow called out, “There are more ice beasts coming. They’re small so they got closer this time.”

“How many?” Arak sounded surprised, which was probably not a good sign.

Meadow didn’t answer. The reason for that was obvious a moment later, when dozens of icy creatures rushed into Sophia’s domain. The biggest ones were weasels, but they varied significantly in size, all the way down to beetles that looked like enlarged ladybugs the size of a small cockroach. There were frogs, small birds, a handful of bats, moths, and a bunch of grasshoppers or crickets; Sophia couldn’t tell the difference.

No, wait, she was wrong. In that quantity, the appropriate word was definitely locusts. They filled the air when the main group arrived.

Fortunately, they melted almost as quickly as they entered her domain. The smallest ones melted the fastest, at least if they were alone. The ladybugs and locusts could avoid it for a while if they clumped together, but even something the size of a frog would melt by the time it was four or five feet inside her control. 

Sophia fairly quickly noticed that the largest clumps had an outsized influence; they seemed to be trying to rip her mana away from her. It cost her more mana to maintain the domain than it should have, and the more that entered, the worse the drain got. It was far worse than simply dealing with a few wolves and bears; the bugs and critters were far smaller and weaker, but there were simply so many of them that they added up.

Dav, Jax, and Ci’an tried to help, but they were far better at fighting larger things; while they could kill the small ice beasts quickly, they couldn’t keep up with the numbers that were pouring in. Xin’ri was more effective, but it still wasn’t enough. She had to be careful to avoid incinerating Sophia’s feathers, and that meant she couldn’t just blanket the entire area with fire.

Xin’ri’s fire did seem to help the mana drain more than it should have, though, almost like the fire mana was making it easier to melt the ice beasts. That seemed entirely likely when Sophia looked at the idea again; perhaps “almost like” was the actual truth.

Sophia felt a particularly strong drain coming from a weasel covered in ladybugs. It was close to one of her firewater plumes and not near anyone else, so Sophia figured she might as well try making some fire mana of her own. She cracked the firewater plume open.

A gout of flame splashed through her domain. The ladybug-covered weasel didn’t just melt; it evaporated, as did a large patch of locusts that had managed to reach nearly as far into Sophia’s domain. The mana drain dropped precipitously, though over the next few moments Sophia noticed it started climbing immediately. The small bugs and critters didn’t seem as obviously dangerous as the larger ones, but she was pretty sure she now knew what was going on.

They had a shared cold aura. They were almost certainly the more dangerous but less obvious threat of the zone, something that could creep into a tent at night and freeze someone in their sleep. If you knew to be wary of them, it would be easy enough to defeat, but that didn’t make it any less insidious.

This probably wasn’t how they were “supposed” to be used, but it was working; it was wearing down the entire team. There really wasn’t a clever solution to it, either, unless they had a spell specifically designed to heat an area. Sophia’s domain, created with fiery skyeagle feathers, was the closest thing she had. 

Well, short of the climate control features on her tent. Those were specifically meant to keep the tent comfortable. They weren’t designed to stand up to something like the ice vermin, though, and Sophia suspected they’d burn out the tent’s mana channels. It was good but this wasn’t what it was intended for.

A large cold presence appeared in Sophia’s domain as she tried to figure out a better way to handle the icy pests. It wasn’t visible, but she could tell it was there by the way it pushed her domain away from itself. Weirdly enough, it wasn’t the sort of drain on her mana that the smaller creatures were. If it had an icy aura, it was keeping it contained.

That was probably a good idea if it was trying to be sneaky. 

If that was the Hunger’s goal, it wasn’t very successful. Sophia knew exactly where it was, and it had just bumped into one of the firewater plumes. She broke the plume and sent flame washing across the thing’s belly and legs, then projected her knowledge of its location to her team. Ci’an didn’t need the help, but everyone else probably did.

Jax reacted first. He tapped his chest armor, triggering a recent upgrade they hadn’t even gotten to use in the Arena yet. A beam of light shot from the center of his chest forward, towards the Hunger. A moment later, Jax turned into light and rode the beam to where he’d placed it: beside the Hunger. He materialized with his shield braced by both arms and smashed it into the Hunger’s side, sending it sprawling.

Ci’an was almost as fast as Jax. The Hunger froze for an instant, then began to move again slowly. Sophia recognized the effect; it was fighting off Ci’an’s visual assault, but it couldn’t simply ignore it. This was Ci’an’s true strength as a Nightowl; if you set her against any single enemy, even one stronger than she was, she could make it easy for others to kill.

Well, relatively easy. The Hunger might be slowed, but it was still a monster stronger than any second-upgrade Called. Its icy mane stood up on end, then giant icicles shot away from the monster towards Jax and Ci’an. 

A crash of sound echoed from the three that hit Jax’s shield. He missed blocking one, which slammed into his leg and tore through his armor. His Shield blocked most of what would have sliced open his flesh, but blood streamed from the injury. He managed to block all of the second set of icicles, but one of the ones that impacted his shield sliced into his left hand.

Ci’an was lucky. She threw herself out of the way, and the only icicle that hit her impacted the tip of her wing. The sheer force it hit with threw her into a spin, and she hooted in pain as she forced her damaged wing to catch air. Her sudden loss of altitude meant that the second set of icicles missed her entirely.

Before the Hunger could launch a third set, Dav was there. He split into two and stabbed the beast, cracking its Shield. Each time either blade struck the Hunger, it left thin glowing green lines behind that seemed to drip light exactly the same color as the Hunger’s eyes.

A thin line of fire connected Xin’ri’s staff to the Hunger. She aimed for its eyes, but when she hit, the fire simply splashed off. She adjusted her aim to its nostrils and the Hunger wailed in pain.

Both Jax and Dav shuddered as the wail passed over them. It didn’t affect Sophia, but she saw Xin’ri’s fire wink out and the Hunger suddenly moved with a smooth surety again. 

Sophia didn’t like that at all. 

The noise continued as the Hunger rose to its full four-footed height. Sophia could feel something now, something that pressed against her Domain. She pushed back, then heard Taika scream something over the mindlink. Both Davs and Jax turned and stabbed the Hunger’s throat. Only one of Dav’s blades penetrated; Jax’s and the other Dav’s sword glanced off the frozen ruff around the Hunger’s neck.

One was enough. The noise stopped.

The Hunger seemed to deform itself. Its mouth grew to four times its normal size, then it seemed to hop upwards and bring its distended mouth down over one of the Davs. Weirdly, it passed right through him.

It didn’t leave Dav untouched. Only an icy image of him was left behind, like the ice beasts they’d fought earlier. The ice-Dav’s eyes glowed with green fire. The second Dav evaporated in a poof of shadows, the same way it did when Dav dismissed his clone normally.

Sophia had a moment to fear the worst before Dav spoke across the mindlink.

“No. You don’t.” Dav sounded annoyed more than anything else. He didn’t sound like he was in pain or being eaten; he just sounded irritated. “Why do I keep having to do this?”

Sophia choked back a completely inappropriate laugh at Dav’s question, suddenly completely reassured. If he was bemoaning his life, Dav wasn’t truly worried and he certainly wasn’t in the pain that being eaten implied. He’d probably done something with his Call again; now that she started thinking, that was the only reason he’d dismiss his duplicate.

Darkness flowed across the Hunger almost as quickly as the ice had filled Dav’s form. Its green eyes and injuries inverted into purple light and the ice coating that covered it shifted into dark fur. It seemed to shift and warp until it looked more like a purple-tinted horned werewolf than the starved beast it was before.

He did still have too many muscles.

Dav leaned back, putting his weight on his rear legs, and swatted the green-eyed ice sculpture that looked like himself. It bounced backwards and one of its arms broke. “Kill it now, while it’s confused and mostly powerless. I can’t hold this for long.”

Dav spoke out loud instead of over the mindlike the way Sophia expected. His voice was deep, but it still sounded like Dav, somehow.

Sophia cracked open one of the handful of firewater plumes she still had floating in her Domain and directed the fire at the Hunger. It didn’t completely melt, but it was a good start. A second firewater plume and some help from Xin’ri were enough to melt the Hunger into water that disappeared into the snow.

Sophia returned to her normal shape, then frowned at where her feet met the snow. She was certain she’d melted quite a bit of it into slush during the fight, but somehow it was snow again, rather than the icy mess it should have been if it refroze. There was definitely some weird environmental effect keeping the area snowy; it wasn’t just the temperature. Right now, that was convenient, but it was something she definitely needed to consider in future sections of the Maze. They would probably obey the same rules.

When Sophia looked up again, Dav sat where the purple-furred wolf had been. He looked tired, but he already glowed with the green light of his Overflowing Health Call. Jax dropped down next to Dav and started to remove his damaged armor; he needed to bind the wound in case there wasn’t time to let Dav fully heal it before they needed to move on.

“That wasn’t what I expected when you said you could subvert spells,” Arak Shade stated from behind Sophia. “It shouldn’t have been able to simply eat you like that; a Hunger normally has to break a person’s Shield before it can even try to eat them. I assume you used your Ability early enough that it never hit your Shield?”