Enrei marched aimlessly, in the direction of Shanyang or the next outpost. Her attempts to contact the Boatswain were in vain, from praying to talking to herself, she even did something dreadful like sitting and meditating during a dire time like this.
When all seemed lost, and she were to march to her death… She heard an offputting birdsong. Not because it wasn’t beautiful, but the only birds within the Hoarfrost were vultures fleeing from the wilds and those were more often harrowing then calming.
And then it hit her, Enrei began to mimic the birdsong etched onto her mind. The one, which in a realm of perpetual darkness carried as naturally as the wind… Once, she found a proper rhythm she blinked.
The sun which peeked through the peaceful morning of the taiga is hidden behind the veil of a cosmic cape mimicking a clear night sky. Lanterns dangle, and distant stars come to life in the place of trees.
Enrei, found herself on a boat eternally in motion, yet never moving an inch along the tranquil river. Before her is a gateway, and perched atop, the Boatswain wears a soft smile, the blazend halos of her suns settling on Enrei as her plume bathes the realm in soothing light.
Naturally, her voice blended perfectly with the wind.
“You’ve returned, Enrei.”
A wind forged comet loosely orbited the Sentinel, each breath and word spoken threatened to pull it from her.
“With an offering, I see… A powerful one.”
As her heartbeat is chased from her, Enrei found her voice.
“Yes… It… It is for you, Boatswain… I… I think I took it off of the Chieftain.”
The Boatswain plucked the comet with grace, placing it within a lantern where it shined a new.
“You did, and you did excellently.” Her tone remained passive with the compliment, her wings folding over.
Enrei fidgeted for a moment.
“You seem to have something on your mind, O’Sculler of mine, what troubles you?”
The Boatswain raised a feathered brow.
“I—I know I uhm…” The words choked in her throat, would… Asking it act as her paving the road? “I– came to ask you… I, I need a teacher.” She swallowed, squeezing her three charms. “I–I know they’re at Shanyang but… If I go, there as I am now… I…I won’t be able to… Save them.”
“Hmm…” The Boatswain nodded, “You will. But you don’t seek mine.”
“Y–You’d teach me?” Enrei gasped with surprise.
“I offer equal rewards, for equal offerings.”
There’s a brief pause.
“If you seek to train beneath a worthy master, return to the wilds breath.” The Boatswain reached forward, her claws glistening with moonlight. “When your heart sings for the moon, you will hear the calling of it’s lance.”
Her claws pressed against Enrei’s heart it washed with a golden light, bringing back it’s beat.
“I—I can’t return to the wilds! What if– What if–” Enrei chewed her lip.
“Child, they will not perish in the time you grow…”
There’s a brief pause as the creeping warmth of the Hoarfrost’s chills.
“Until next time…” The Boatswain waved as Enrei’s vision went black.
Enrei came to gasping for air in a cold sweat, before her is a dead beast and naturally, she grasped for the icy flame above it. A gentle hum followed her heartbeat, scanning around it only grew louder in one direction… The way she came.
----------------------------------------
Pulling her hood down, Enrei thanked her newfound resistance to the cold. If she came here normally, dressed in all her layers she still would’ve frozen solid beneath the baleful gale lashing all around her.
The squalls she experienced were likened to voracious beasts, then the Wilds themselves could be considered an all-freezing apocalypse which threw air like stones within the powerful, all-encompassing gusts.
At Least it made a pretty display, all the frozen tree’s spread their canopies like lightning in clouds, some tangles others stood dominant, each shared the trait of translucence with captured Ice Qi shining within them like candlelight.
All this decorating a snow pack several feet deep, if it hadn’t been frozen like ice she would’ve sank long ago.
Regardless of the inherent beauty, ‘This place is hell…’ Enrei remarked, keeping a low profile she avoided frozen debris lashing around like whips. One managed to shatter away a piece of tree.
Despite danger lurking beneath every shade, Enrei steeled herself and continued forward. Above all the howling of wind and beast, she heard the song harmonizing within her heart like a cantata.
And it filled her with focus, to completing the wider piece given to her by the Boatswain… More importantly, it gave her a path to get stronger.
Through the thick frost veiling her vision, Enrei discerned a solitude mound, a frozen carcass of a Frost tusk with a certain amount of ambient Qi giving it a certain freshness.
‘Galazard’s don’t hunt for sport…’
The beast responsible for the slaying evident by the chunks of flesh scythed from the musculature and raking wounds muddling the once white hide.
‘Something scared them off…’ Scanning her surroundings, Enrei instinctively notched an arrow. Even with her Qi dispersed, she’d like to be ready.
Catching an icy flash within the crown of the surrounding tree’s; her core roared with warning. Driving her feet, Enrei pivots into a dodge as an icicle cut through wind like a rocket and shattered like glass against the snow.
Quickly, Royan drank from the near infinite well of Ice Qi as the first plunged down lashing out with a maw full of teeth and two scything arms where Enrei stood moments prior.
She stared at the crude monster, a mix of hound and caiman scales of icy blue with plumes of sickly white fur at the elbows of all eight limbs. Raised its head, shaking the snow off as it scanned around, only to meet a charged arrow from Royan, piercing through the beast's skull and freezing it solid.
‘Galazards don’t hunt like that…’ Enrei remarked, notching her second arrow she darted between trees to evade the falling Galazards.
A Galazard built more like a bear then wolf drops beside her, the ground quaking beneath its eight limbs as it roared into the cacophony of wind. It’s scything blades glint with Qi as they cleave into her mother's robe, shattering the defensive enchantments woven into the fabric.
The enchantments served their purpose, instead of losing her arm Enrei hissed from the pain as blood froze around her bicep, falling to the snow like warm rubies. Deftly, she dodges the beasts subsequent strike, firing Royan the impact and freezing half the face solid.
Her core tingled as a malicious Qi began to force into it, and throughout her body. ‘A venom?’ The Sentinel grimaces, immediately coursing her refined Qi to push out what little seeped into her core and cleanse her body.
Dispersing the frost, Enrei is unable to get far. All around the surrounding white paints a shadow play of the pack, circling the duel like a school of ravenous sharks.
An eager Galazard lunged out, meeting an arrow to the face.
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‘They can sense me like this…’ Enrei scowled, these beasts were a far cry from what she normally dealt with when they crept from the Wilds… Just what the hell were they dealing with in here?
‘Second thought… I don’t want to know.’
She’d take this pack of Galazards over whatever they adopted to hunt and hide from. The roles may’ve been reversed, and some changes were done but they were a recognizable foe within this frozen pandemonia.
Dodging another lash from a tailing Galazard, she rewarded eagerness with the end. Chewing her lip, she drew another arrow.
‘I need a distraction…’
Royan quickly soaked the unrefined Qi in the air like a sponge in the ocean, the usual regalness the bow carried whipped and lashed with primal intent as the arrowhead formed a dense beacon. Countless howls and calls joined the wind as the Galazards turned covetous, ravenous, drawn in like a swarm of insects to a crumb.
Galazards she’d been taught to fear, a monster numerous like a flock birds. Even across the skirmishing packs exiled from the wilds she practiced this, but, every monster, even them had a similar weakness. Spirit food delivered on a silver platter.
Filled with power, the arrow cut through air and whistled like a rocket as a frosty tail grew behind. Impacting a nearby tree, the earth shook as Qi exploded into a large crystal brimming with Qi. Moments later, the snow filled with tremors.
Lesser Galazards let their speed surmount grace, tripping into one another and spawning a bloodthirsty feud to the Qi-radiating Crystal. Enrei ran through the encroaching stampede as if she were ghost.
Sinking into shadows, her breath of safety is short lived. The wounded Alpha pulled itself from the frigid floor, howling and roaring it charged her like a bull. She fired an arrow, but it failed to hit.
Dodging the beast, the ice froze within the Alpha’s cut. Enrei came to the conclusion, Royan’s jagged horns lacked enough power to sever the thick neck and deal with the wiser members of the pack which answered the Alpha’s call. In desperation, Royan is discarded in favor of Fang.
Enrei’s bone tingled and chilled with a tremoring sensation as she grasped the ivory blade, making her grimace as she swung the top-heavy blade. Frost and sinew are cut through like paper.
Fangs effect failed to take place, but it did little to mull the effectiveness. In one fell swoop the Alpha’s head is lopped off, spinning into the air raining blood rubies. She needed to learn this blade, Royan, naturally sucked power from the surroundings for her.
But the Chieftain must’ve been more than an idiot, he was an idiot that could use an Artifact.
Galazards closed in all around, Enrei couldn’t draw her own Qi from the surrounding unless she wanted to risk drawing more beasts, dangerous beasts. Her attention is drawn to something larger, an Icy flame no larger than a torch carried the pride of a raging bonfire; though jagged horns sprout from it like a nailed mace their rounded edges give a sense of formality, and deftly, Enrei scooped it before the gales could sweep it away from her.
She remembered the trick she did with Royan, pouring and holding the flame within the notch; allowing the power to grow and fester… She squeezed the flame, drawing more Galazards from the crystal which slowly faded into obscurity.
The surrounding snow tremored again as the pack closed in, Enrei wreathed the blade with the flame like oil, giving the bone color an icy hue. The first trio of Galazards came to test, eager to devour the refined Qi within this ocean.
Fang met first, cleaving into the open maw. The ambient Ice Qi stood still, offering a moment of clarity within the blinding storm as if they were in the eye of a hurricane. Thereafter, the blades energy cascaded out as a flooding wave turning the first monster into a sculpture of twisting bones and spikes of ice.
The wave carried through it and followed her cleaved motion, shimmering, jagged teeth as if the wind itself became the maw of a great ghost, the squeals and howls of the Galazard silence, the Qi leaving them as sculptures of ice and bone, twisting and contorting in perpetual agony,
Enrei had little time to stare in awe at the blades frigid power, despite it, a rope is wrapped around her neck and each second threatens to fasten the noose. She clutched the nearest primal flame and wreathed fang, despite the cold clutches encroaching all around…
She grinned, a certain thrill running through her veins.
Enrei danced and cleaved through the gauntlet, relying on her mother's practices and improv. Slashing, freezing and reaping throughout the cold as the snow beneath her turned black and melted through intensity. By no means was it one sided. Her mother's robe is left in tatters, wounds rake across her like a battlefield.
If adrenaline stopped pumping, she would pass out. Even sooner, if her wounds hadn’t frozen over, she would have bled to death.
But the final Galazard is slain, and Enrei’s chest heaved, shunting the final ounces of venom from her soul. ‘I knew the Wilds would be dangerous but…’ She gripped the blade, collecting Royan she spoke aloud. “Just… What were you thinking...?” Her tone doesn't carry hate, nor sadness just a genuine... Why... She shook her head from the past, turning back to the present.
She’d wantonly walked into an ambush set by the monsters fresh hunting patterns. It offered her plenty of the frozen flames to use, and knowledge on using the Fang but…
‘Another slip up like that and I won’t surv–’
The nights howling turmoil is far from over, a beast fell from the branches ahead of her washing up a plume of frost-covered snow while the ground trembled .Large like a boar, it replaced matted fur with an armored carapace. The long tail started thin, then broadens into an ovular shape coated with spikes like a mace.
It wasn’t in any manuals, nor readings on the monster. The only word she could imagine is an exhausted and hissed,
‘Fuck…’
Enrei bolted for a nearby tree, before she could do so the ground trembled, even the beast stumbled from the sudden tremor frantically gazing across the snow with a sense of desperation, curling its tail around as spikes of ice grew along the carapace.
A massive beast with mismatched fur and scales burst from the snow like a whale to the waves. In an instant, the beast that had fallen is swallowed whole like a pill. The beast before her now is nothing but grotesque, a gross weavery of an alligator's head and a snake's body, given six legs which barely keep it off the ground and two sickeningly long and thin arms ending in three claws. And like mountains, fins of solid ice shimmered along it’s back.
Enrei’s sight met the gluttinous beasts baleful, rage filled sight as it let out a guttural roar flaring its gills. With haste, Enrei’s aching legs carried her far, and fast as the Snake-Gater chased after her with a rapacious zeal the crunching of snow, corpse and tree mixed into the cacophony of destruction.
Her Qi is dispersed through the surrounding Hoarfrost, her presence should be just a vigil to the beast, yet it sniffed her out through the failsafe, even the veiling nature of the Ice Qi is little to the keen sense of smell and spirit.
Enrei fires an arrow, barely cutting against the thick hide and rough scales before skirting off.
‘This strong with such a low core?’ It had made no effort to conceal it’s own Qi, from the pressure… She’d guessed it’s at the very end of the Qi realm. ‘Even mother would have trouble holding against it…’ Enrei grimaced.
Plain arrows weren’t going to cut it, and while she had fired a charged one… A sheath of ice coated the hybrid’s face like armor. With the corpses already reaped, it left her without a way to increase her fire power.
Enrei took a breath, she needed to think. She had to think, were she suicidal, she could charge the beast with Fang and pray. But she isn’t fond of grasping at strings… If, she can get it to sit still…
The beast charged wantonly after her, bursting through tree and snowrock; bursting through it staggered but continued nearly unimpeded.
Enrie grimaced, she could wear down through attrition, but it’s a fight she knew she’d lose. One of the grossly long arms swiped, just shy of her cottontail. Taking a breath, she drew in her Qi from the surroundings followed by Royan, which drank from the ocean and herself.
Weaving off to the side, she guided the beast through thickening tree’s leaving it in a constant state of staggering, equally her sight turned above and below. One to look for arches, the other obstructions.
When she cut beneath a pair of arching trees she skidded to a stop, leaving singe marks in the snow as she loosed Royan’s rage upon the trees. The sudden shard of ice impaled the dull beast, before it could break free the conjoined tree’s fall atop of it bringing a mound of heavy snow.
Still, the creatures' arms greedily lashed and whipped around as it began to writhe for freedom. Seizing her chance to seal it’s fate, Enrei drew Fang and rushed forward. Gritting her teeth with a grunt she plunged the blade straight into the bowed head of the beast carrying all her rage and fury.
In an instant, her sides are wrought with pain as the claws rake across her flesh.
Hissing through it, Enrei twisted and wrestled the blade in the beast's cranium, fit to end it. In a final bid for life, the beast slaps her away with a sickening crack of ice. She rolls across the stone like snow, quickly coming to a stand she stares at the dying beast as the taste of iron filled her mouth.
Her adrenaline ran dry, and with it her head pounded, and chest heaved. Every breath burned her lungs, every beat threatened to explode her heart… Each step she took, using Fang as a cane earned a sickening crack from her enervated legs… Defiantly, Enrei marched onward and followed the song of her heart, ignoring the blood freezing by her nose and down her forehead.
‘It’s getting louder…’
Without warning, Enrei’s legs give out forcing her into the hard snow… Still, her weak arms reached forward, and she pulled herself onward… Her vision darkening, strength and vitality slowly drained away.
The song of her heart played louder then it’s beat, even the whistling of the Boatswain surrendered to it as the distant pattering of beasts played in her ears.
‘I can’t…’ She thought into the abyss, ‘Fall here…’
A sudden warmth and bright illumination washes over Enrei, her bones cracked as her heavy eye’s open despite the melting snow atop her.
Golden and iridescent wings follow and outreach her shoulders, perfectly aligned with the bright moon making the lunar body appear but a jewel to them.
She knelt down in front of Enrei, and though her face and much of her physique is shadowed by her dimming vision, The Sentinels blood red eyes met what she could only describe as the emeralds of an angel.
“You look broken…” Her gentle tone carries a certain, warming regalness with each syllable. “I can fix that.” With the beats of her voice, the moons song fully harmonized with her heartbeat even the Boatswain's whistles are cast into the dark.
Enrei couldn’t keep her eyes open beneath the gaze of the warming light, even as she tried to stand, she only met the earth and with it… The physical debt of her journey came to reap it’s pay with a long-awaited rest.