Paul
He couldn’t believe how fast everything went wrong. As the cold sank into his armor and his joints stiffened, all he could do was watch the Bear wreak havoc. Aftershock tremors fractured Ice into tens of thousands of pieces and sent cracks up the stone wall.
On the parapets, Ansbach called to his Wolf, “Stop staring, lazy mutt! Whip out the big guns! We’re ending this right the Hell now!”
The White Wolf growled but did its master’s bidding. Standing in the air above the Ice field, the Wolf raised its head and opened its mouth to reveal a vibrant viridian spiral Rune of Wind on its tongue. The air stirred, lifting specks of Ice, small debris, and ruffling the Wolf’s fur as it spun faster and faster.
Cassie steered clear, monitoring events below from above. The mages on the wall that long since stopped shooting at Cassie stared at the rampaging Bear in horror. Paul saw the hair on their heads billowing in the blustery breeze.
Rana didn’t seem to notice any of this, as if wearing blinders.
The Toad girl launched herself, muscular thighs working like steel springs, and threw a punch at Verglas with all her momentum. The Ice mage brought his red shield to bear and blocked the fist, dead-on. Letter tiles scattered in all directions from the impact, though Paul heard the snap of finger bones breaking.
Rana stuck her tongue to the surface of the shield and made to jump away, but Verglas’ arm was quicker. The sword lashed out and cut the toad girl to pieces.
No, Paul wouldn’t let that happen.
He tried lifting his arm, but the cold slowed him too much. He tried opening his chest plate, but Ice jammed the hinge shut. There was nothing left but his weakest beam, his eye laser, which he shot at Verglas’ hand.
His first volley went wide of the mark, angled poorly. Repeated Actualizations taxed his dwindling reserves and a brain on fire with pain. Paul drifted across realities that never were, struggling to remember where he was and what he was doing, but he recovered. He took careful aim and shot true.
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The observant Ice wizard protected his grip with a sheet of spreading Ice that blocked Paul’s eye beam. However, the slight delay allowed Rana to hop out of the sword’s range, leaving behind a severed tongue.
Paul couldn’t relax for a minute as Rana circled the mage to flank before he recovered from his sword swing. Verglas blocked with another brittle Ice pane which shattered under Rana’s bloody fist. She didn’t seem to care about her wounds in her obsession with defeating the wizard.
Despite concentrating on Rana’s life-or-death struggle, Paul couldn’t help but notice the rising Wind. A bitter gale collected thousands of Ice shards from the ground and bombarded everyone on the field. Over the drumming of hail on his armor, he heard a sound like buzzing bees. The creeping cold finally clutched Paul’s heart when he saw the mounting forces above at play.
A vortex formed around the White Wolf, and a thin funnel of debris descended to touch the arena floor. The Wolf was accelerating an enormous volume of air, creating an infant tornado through sheer dominance of its Element. And the wind spun faster.
Vlam and Rasant, who’d cleared the slime from his face mere moments ago, were caught in the air currents like boats in a whirlpool. Cassie’s wings fluttered with fright as she and the two mages fought a losing battle against the tide of Wind drawing them into the center of the vortex.
The tip of the funnel licked the ground, grabbed hold, and grew. Paul slid downwind, armor screeching and scraping against Ice, fingers digging for purchase, unable to stop himself. Howling Wind snatched at Praxithea’s Water bubble and flung the witch into the tornado. Even Kleodora was swept along, turtling in her levitating boulder. Only the mages on the wall resisted by clinging to the parapets with their legs kicking uselessly in the air.
Ansbach showed no more immunity than the others despite being the Wolf’s master and a Wind mage. If anything, his lightweight body seemed more likely to be sucked into the cyclone. He wrapped both arms and legs tight around the stone battlements for stability.
Then Lea and Kenta reappeared. The two of them had ascended the other side of the wall unmolested and now emerged to attack the mages from behind. Kenta’s hair strands simply nudged the first three and pried Ansbach off his rock, letting the Wind do the rest. Lea and Kenta watched the four mages careen into the vortex from their secure positions hiding behind the parapets.
As the Wind dragged Paul across the floor, he got a clear view of the Bear—not currently interested in him. Standing on Ice, the creature of Stone was separated from its Element.
It did not like that.
The first slam of its paws had broken the Ice plain. The Bear now reared back and delivered its second slam in an upheaval of dirt and rock. Stone spires rose, boulders leaped and crashed, the mountain shook with another landslide, and something critical broke inside the wall. The structure wobbled, and sections gave way, the whole thing ready to fall.