We finished our rest, refreshed and warmed up, not quite looking forward to the next leg of our journey but it was also not looking as bleak as before. We had just left the igloo I had conjured up when I noticed the snow beneath us shift and shake a little, as if there was a small, localised earthquake below us.

“Watch out, I think we’ve got incoming!” I called out, causing the others to look around in alarm. Preparing for the confrontation, I quickly drew the runes for Liquid Moonlight, letting an orb of it coalesce above my hand, while trying to get a better feeling for the shaking, where it came from and maybe what it was caused by. Sadly, It felt as if the shaking was coming from all around us, not either from one gigantic source, which I doubted, or from a lot of sources. I was about to suggest evasion when the first of our foes showed its ugly head. And an ugly head it was. Rai must have felt it just in time, he suddenly leapt aside, right before a pair of mandibles burst from the snow beneath him, followed by an unholy cross between an ant, a spider and a crab. My first reaction, despite my dislike for flames, was to kill it with fire. The next few ideas popping in my head all had to do with ending the creature, as quickly as possible and as violently as necessary.

I had the presence of mind to observe it and was not too happy with the result.

Ankheg, level 56

I had no idea what an Ankheg was supposed to be, but it looked vicious. Not because of its size - the Ankheg was only the size of a medium-sized dog - but because everything about its brown-grey body spoke of violent predation.

There was the pair of mandibles that had tried to grab Rai, serrated to ensure that prey couldn’t escape and leading towards a maw filled with more sharp teeth. It had six legs, all seemingly ending in sharp points - maybe to allow it to keep its grip on frozen ground, or maybe to impale weary travellers - and two arms, ending in crab-like claws, that looked made to grab onto prey and tear it apart. Or maybe to quickly burrow through earth and snow, but their first purpose seemed to be as weapons.

I felt the snow still trembling, so I called out an additional warning, just so that nobody would become complacent, now that we saw the enemy. Just seconds after that first Ankheg had tried to strike Rai, another tried for Adra and a last one forced me into a hurried dodge, almost making me lose the orb of Liquid Moonlight, which would have had unpredictable consequences. I would have to find those out at some point, but for now, we had enemies to fight.

I felt more than saw Sigmir use her red aura before she interposed herself between the monster and me, roaring out a challenge to get the attention of as many of them as possible. Ylva was next to her, guarding her back and making sure that nothing would get to her from behind. Our usual formation would be centered around her, as a bulwark to keep our enemies at bay, with the rest of us essentially hiding behind her. Here, that wouldn’t quite work; not only were our enemies all around us, the snow was still shaking, hinting at more enemies beneath us. In this case, Adra and Rai were trying to herd the Ankhegs towards Sigmir, using her steady presence as an anvil to smash the monsters to pieces.

I was still kneeling in the snow after my hasty dodge and decided to be careful in my counterattack - there was still room for massive blasts of magic later, if such became necessary. My first move was a defensive one, using the abundant snow to raise a thin column, only about a meter high but it would make it impossible for one of those things to sneak up on me.

With my own position secured, I started to attack. As I had practised, I unleashed thin bolts of Liquid Moonlight, trying to hit their leg-joints in an attempt to limit their mobility. I had considered trying for something more damaging, but their exoskeletons looked like they would shrug off most of my attacks and I had a feeling that simply using cold would be foolish; anything surviving in the frozen north would have at least some cold-resistance.

The blasts worked like a charm, their lack of mass allowed me to shoot them with an incredible velocity, making dodging next to impossible, but of course, it also limited the damage I could cause. But I was not after damage, what I was after was control. The Liquid Moonlight hit their joints and instantly hardened into something similar to my magical ice. I had no doubt that, given time and appropriate leverage, the Ankhags could break the ice freezing their joints, but until they managed that, the others had a far easier time.

After I had frozen up two legs of one Ankhag, Sigmir managed to knock that one onto its back with a well-timed shield bash, and once it was prone, she hacked into it without mercy, the chitinous armour obviously far weaker on their belly. Seeing her success, I focused on the one that was herded by Adra, freezing joints, allowing her to use her spear as a lever to flip it over. Once I was sure that she had it under control, I set out to help Rai.

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Sadly, while I had hindered two or three legs of the three Ankhags that had attacked at first, three more had tried to get at the others from beneath, forcing them to dodge.

I took stock for a moment, when I noticed that one of the Ankhags looked slightly larger than the others and was acting, for lack of better word, strange. Now, every one of those monsters seemed strange to me, but there was something that bugged me about that particular bug, so I kept an eye on it, maybe because it carefully stayed back, looking at the fight from the distance. I used Observe on it, but I got no more information than that it was an Ankhag and level sixty-one.

Despite its existence, I shot a few more bolts into the melee that had developed between the Ankhags and the rest of my party, trying to limit their mobility. But, knowing that I only had limited power left in my orb, I held back, watching my companions fight. Sigmir, Ylva and Adra showed in stark clarity why the first divide was, well, a dividing line.

Sigmir was strong and durable enough to simply shrug off most of the attacks directed at her, either by relying on her shield or by deflecting most of the force, letting her armour and body endure the rest. There were a few bloody scratches that told of that tactic but the deep gashes she had smashed into the chitinous armour of the Ankhegs showed the difference in effect.

Ylva had a worse match-up, lacking the armour and shield, figthing mostly behind Sigmir, but as I watched, she darted out, her jaws clamping down on the leg of an Ankheg before she ripped it off with a sudden shake of her head, leaving a wound leaking ichor.

Lasty, Adra, was using her mobility and reach to stay out of their reach, trying to stab at openings while moving backwards.

Rai was trying something similar to Adra but he was worse off, not only was he far weaker but his weapons lacked the reach to attack without risking counter-attacks. But he did me and my teachings proud, swiftly darting in, using one blade to deflect the monster’s attack before trying to get a precise strike into the gaps of their armoured bodies. Despite the fact that the monster he was fighting was higher-level than him, I had no doubt that he would win, unless someone interrupted their fight.

“Watch out!” Lenore warned me, drawing my attention back to the solitary Ankhag that had reared back its ugly head. I wasn’t sure why, but it reminded me of the few monsters that had some sort of breath-attack, about to be unleashed. My reaction was a simple one, I let the rest of Liquid Moonlight fly as a beam towards its maw, hoping to stop the attack. I was just a little late, but only just.

The silvery-white stream of Liquid Moonlight met with the neon-green stream the monster had spit out, causing a strange effect. I would have expected some sort of violent clash but that was not what happened. It looked almost as if the neon-greep goop the monster had spit was boiling, causing snowflakes to be expelled. Saying that I was confused would be putting it mildly but I had little time to consider the strangeness of the phenomena I was witnessing.

Before I had struck against the spit-attack, I had already used quite a lot of my Liquid Moonlight, mostly depleting the orb I had conjured at the beginning, so I was not too surprised when the goop-attack was still ongoing when my stream of Liquid Moonlight was depleted. But I had managed to get enough time for the others to get out of the way, hiding behind Sigmir who had taken a knee to increase the area her shield covered. No matter how the Ankhag tried, it was unable to get more than a few splatters past her shield, which I saw as a win.

Seeing its trump-card be so solidly defeated, the Ankhag let out a screeching scream and, with surprising speed, started to dig back into the ground, either retreating or fleeing. I felt anger boil up in me, that thing had tried to attack us and now it wanted to flee?! Not on my watch!

I activated Overflow and used the entirety of my remaining Astral Power in a single burst, forcing as much of the snow and ice around us under my control and smashing it together in a single point, right where the Ankhag was trying to get away. In the second I had taken, about half its body had vanished when an avalanche of snow smashed against it, crushing it with unrelenting power. I was quite lucky that I was already on my knees or I would have fallen over - moving such amounts of Astral Power was physically draining - but feeling the annoying bug being squashed was well worth it. The other bugs had similarly tried to get away but the combination of frozen limbs and the attacks of Sigmir, Rai and Adra had prevented that.

Ankhag diedYou gain 2250 EXP. For killing an opponent without a Traveller in your party, you gain Bonus EXP...Ankhag diedYou gain 2250 EXP. For killing an opponent without a Traveller in your party, you gain Bonus EXP

You reached Level 61.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Ice Magic [77/100]

After a quick look into the log, I joined the others and while I looked at the few scratches they had suffered we discussed if we wanted to take those things apart, for food or material. We decided against it, even if the idea to extract the goop that turned out to be a strange acid that, for some reason, didn’t dissolve snow but there was some damage on the wooden parts of Sigmir’s shield.

What clinched it was that I still felt a slight vibration in the snow, so we quickly made our get-away, not wanting to fight more of these monsters.