Chapter XCIII (93) - Polar Glacier’s Collapse
Kizu scavenged the parts of the dire bear the best he could. He was never very talented at butchering and extracting useful bits of animals. It was by far his weakest point in brewing. For plants, he knew effective techniques to gather and preserve the most magically potent components. But the crone always had become irate whenever he accidentally mishandled or messed up harvesting animal corpses. She hated him wasting resources and usually took control. So, while he managed to slice some uncharred hair and clip off a bit of its nails from the massive bear, when he tried to gather some of its eyeball, the organ deflated and sprayed his face with a rank liquid. Gagging, he tried to wipe it off, but the fluid was sticky and all he managed to do was get it all over his arms. Mort found the scenario extremely amusing. At least, up until the monkey found out that Anata didn’t want him to ride on her. She still held a small grudge about him biting her during the fight. And Kumiho remained distasteful of the familiar. Which left Mort with only a stinking, sticky Kizu.
“Let’s return,” Kumiho said as she stepped towards an exit. She held several of the larger shards of broken crystal seal. “I suspect whoever put the seal here also left behind that monster to watch over it. With the guardian now slain, it should be a simple path home.”
“One moment, I want to recover my gloves.”
Unfortunately, the massive beast had landed face-first in the ice with his gloves pinned against the floor. He set his back against the face of the creature and enhanced his strength as he shoved himself into the bloody jaw.
The effort made him woozy, but the dead creature’s neck bent and the head to crumpled to the side.
Unfortunately, while his enchanted gloves technically still worked, they were now stretched to the point of uselessness. He packed them up, though he didn’t expect to salvage much from them. He wasn’t holding his breath on being skilled enough to repair the damage. At least he’d gotten good marks on his midterms from them. They’d served him well while they lasted.
With a final look back at the corpse, he couldn’t help thinking that Ione would have killed to have seen this monster in person. He wondered if she would actually be able to summon something like it if she studied it enough. Knowing her, probably.
As he stared up at it, the head of the monster slumped. The metal spike protruding from the top of its spine, right where the neck met the head, slipped out with slurp.
The rusted metal clanged on the glacial floor. As it touched the ice, it sent a shockwave through the entire cavern. Kizu grabbed a hold of the wall to steady himself. A shard of the shattered crystal seal jabbed into his palm, piercing his flesh.
“What did you do?” Kumiho whirled around to face him.
“I-I just wanted my gloves!”
The glacier shook and a massive icicle fell from above, narrowly missing Anata’s head. She yelped in fear and fell backwards, slipping on the ice and splashing into the shallow pool of water.
The white worm creatures living in the water started leaping up and splattering themselves on Anata. She swatted at them, desperately trying to get them off of her. Their scraggly legs crawled up her as they piled on. The longer of the creatures attempted to wrap themselves around her arms like bracelets.
Kizu dashed over to his niece’s side and dragged her to her feet. Her clothing was completely soaked. He yanked off the slimy creatures and threw them to the side.
Mort snatched one of the smaller worms from Anata’s hair and bit into it. Kizu could taste the bitterness of the bug as his familiar spat it out. The monkey glared at him, as if blaming him for the wretched taste.
Then the glacier shuddered again. Not with the same strength as the first time, but Kizu still barely managed to maintain his balance and catch Anata before she fell back into the water.
Go now! The others awaken.
The demand came from inside Kizu’s head again. It didn’t bother elaborating but Kizu took the warning to heart.
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“Kumiho! How do we get out of here?”
“Through the wall! It’s all falling on top of us regardless.”
The Kitsune woman charged herself with lightning, hovering as the static leaped from her body. Unlike lightning seen crackling in storms naturally, hers was scarlet like that of her eyes. She was pulling all of her strength.
A large chunk of ice fell from above her but was vaporized by the lightning before it got within a meter of her.
The shards from the shattered seal, on the other hand, appeared to amplify the lightning. They reflected the electricity back at her, creating a loop of gradually increasing power.
Every hair on Kizu’s body stood on end as he watched the Kitsune woman. He opened his mouth to ask her which way, and felt his tongue go numb from the electric current in the air before he voiced more than a syllable.
She raised a hand and cast a bolt into one of the thinner walls in front of her. It blasted apart.
Kizu chased after her, Anata in hand. Her wound from Mort’s bite earlier pressed against his sticky palm, slightly rejuvenating him. Not a lot, as it already scabbed after several minutes of healing. But it gave him enough blood to jump whenever the ice started to collapse under foot or debris threatened to crush them.
The glacier continued to shake and reposition. Kizu felt the momentum of the icy floor slowly sliding off to the side. It reminded him of Owl’s Respite back when the boat was still half-submerged in the lake. The glacier was a slowly sinking ship, but on an entirely different magnitude.
Howls started echoing down the caverns. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly where. They were mangled screeches, not entirely human sounding. Kizu desperately wished they were just panicked polar bears, but they sounded far higher pitched than any bear’s roar.
Faster!
Kizu did not need any encouragement. He dragged along Anata, who clung to him with one hand while her other still clutched at her damp, purple bat plushie. She slipped several times but Kizu caught her and towed her onwards.
He warned Kumiho about their pursuers but she couldn’t hear them clearly with her electricity crackling around her. More than once, Kizu had to direct her to aim a bolt of lightning behind them to cut off the creatures tracking them. It mostly worked, resulting in the shrieks fading.
Even still, Kizu had a few scares as he heard the creatures getting dangerously close through the side caverns.
Mort watched his back while Kizu plowed forward after Kumiho. The familiar alerted him just in time as two pale blue hands reached out from a crack in the wall. Their nails brushed against Anata’s skin, causing the girl to cry out in fear. But, thanks to Mort’s warning, Kizu was already pulling her out of reach.
He lunged forward, shoving his niece to the side as he grabbed the creature’s wrists and lit his hands aflame. The ice walls surrounding them wept as he increased the temperature higher than he’d ever attempted previously. Instead of red and orange flames, his fire turned a wicked shade of blue. The creature howled in pain and attempted to jerk its hands back but Kizu enhanced his grip, holding them in place for several seconds until the creature pulled back with such force that it lost its knuckles and fingers in Kizu’s grip.
Kizu dropped the smoldering charred flesh and bones on the glacial floor. Anata stared at him, wide-eyed in fear. He’d forgotten she really didn’t like fire. She still let him grab her hand, though she tensed at his touch, as if expecting to be burned by him. He dragged a stunned Anata behind him and chased after Kumiho who had continued forwards, forging a path for them.
Finally, after over ten minutes of scrambling through the collapsing glacier, Kumiho burst out the side of the glacier and into the open air. The ice wall they had climbed up an hour earlier was illuminated by the aurora above.
But now the wall was slanted, the entire glacier having shifted as it collapsed. Instead of an incline perpendicular with the sea, it had become a slope all the way down to the ocean below. Larger bits of the collapsed wall snowballed down the glacier before splashing into the water below.
“I’ll go first,” Kumiho said. “Follow after me. I’ll catch you at the bottom.”
A second later, she’d thrown herself out onto the ice and was sliding down the incline on her feet, her hands spread to either side as she balanced herself with an elemental spell.
There was a roar above them and Kizu looked up and saw three polar bears. They glared down at him and Anata. Behind him, Kizu heard another of the humanoid screeches echoing through the caverns. There was only one way forward, he had no choice but to trust the Kitsune woman.
Kumiho had reached the foot of the glacier and leaped over on top of a large slab of drift ice.
“Okay Anata, hold on to me,” Kizu instructed his niece.
She obeyed, hugging his still sticky arm.
With his other hand, he got out his ruined gloves, hoping to use them as a way to slow and control their descent. Cautiously, he stepped out of the cavern and onto the slope.
His foot slipped out from under him.
And then they were gone.