Liliana gripped tightly onto the reins of two ponies who wanted nothing more than to bolt in any direction other than where they were at. The whites of their eyes showed as they strained against the reins and Liliana’s iron grip. She was lucky they were lower leveled than her, lucky they didn’t have as much Strength as her, otherwise she’d have lost their mounts and there would be no hope of returning home on time. As it was, she barely kept herself from bolting. Fear and adrenaline were pumping through her in a heady rush that demanded action, not stillness. But stay still, she did, as she had been ordered.
Lelantos was crouched before her, his bulk a barricade between her and danger, little though it would do against the Hoarfrost Bears that Silas was facing off against now. High Rank 4, they were teetering on the edge of Rank 3 at level 259, 260 and 263. Nothing outside of Silas’ capabilities, but he had to spend time protecting her as well, making sure to never maneuver the fight in a way that would leave her open to danger. He kept his back to her the entire time, never letting one of the beasts pass his defense.
Liliana had thought she’d seen battle. Had thought she’d fought. But her experiences felt paltry, akin to a child playing with sticks in mock fights, compared to what she saw now. The power she felt thrumming through the air, shaking the ground and splitting the air itself as the four Rank 4s fought against each other. Each attack, each skill and spell used, was fatal to her, as sure to end her life as any assassin’s blade. The worst part was, there was nothing she could do. If Silas fell and those bears turned their attention to her, there wasn’t a single thing in her repertoire that would do more than tickle these beings so far above her, they may as well be gods. The gap of two Ranks and over a hundred levels was simply that severe.
She could only stand here as Silas’ axe rose and fell, as it spun through the air with enough force to cleave a hundred year oak in twain. Liliana could just hold tight to the reins of their two ponies and wrestle her own fear and instincts down, making herself as little of a liability as possible as Silas fought on with a yell and blast of some skill or another. She could simply act the part of frozen statue as first one, then two, then finally three bears’ bodies thudded to the ground. When the final foe was felled, the silence that descended was heavy, suffocating. As if the very mountains themselves were holding their breaths and waiting. When Silas stood straight and returned his weapon to storage, Liliana could finally take in a breath of chilled air, tasting the copper tang of blood on the wind. Still, Liliana did not move, her mind still filled with fear that was far slower to leave than it had been to crash into her.
“It’s safe,” Silas called out after several more minutes of silence and Liliana went to take a step forward only to discover her knees were locked, subconsciously she must've done that to keep herself from bolting in mindless fear. Her foot stumbled, and only the locked grip she still held to the reins with kept her from falling face first into the snow despite her Dexterity.
“Are you alright?” Silas asked and Liliana looked up, noticing he had moved closer to her.
“No,” she said honestly, her voice strained as it tried to get past the fear still clogging her throat.
“Good. Fear is good. It keeps you from being stupid,” Silas nodded, but he took the reins from her hands, gently uncurling her fingers from their frozen grip with a tenderness that belied his rather crass words.
He didn’t hesitate to wrap two large hands under her arms and lift her onto her pony, while he still held the reins. The ponies had calmed greatly with the removal of the immediate threat and the return of the human who offered them protection. As with most beasts in this world, the ponies held more intelligence than their earthen counterparts. They understood Silas was strong, and staying with him guaranteed a better chance of survival.
Lelantos padded to her, nosing her gently before his form turned ephemeral and dissolved into the summoning stone at her neck. He was too slow to keep up with the ponies and too low leveled to keep out safely in this area; she had only brought him out half in panic and half because she knew if she was to even have a chance of survival if Silas fell she’d need him. Nemesis couldn’t survive this cold. She stayed in her stone. In this dangerous territory she had chosen to venture to, the only other living being she had to depend on other than Silas would be Lelantos.
“We’re going to be seeing more fights like that. We’ve passed into the area where Rank 3s begin to appear regularly. Whatever you're looking for, it better be close or neither of us might make it back out of here,” Silas warned her as he got onto his own pony and they started forward. Liliana didn’t need to check a map to verify what Silas said. She had memorized it already. She knew where they were, knew the danger they were in. So did Silas. She’d shown him the path they had to take. But this was the only way, the only way to end this deadly game she had been playing with the duchess once and for all.
“We're almost there,” Liliana said, but the assurance sounded more like a prayer made to deaf gods who cared not for the trials and tribulations of mortals.
“Did you get their cores? And their livers?” Liliana asked, and Silas nodded, tapping his jeweled gauntlet that was his storage device.
“I got everything.” He assured her, and Liliana sighed in relief. Good. They needed those. Arguably, it was the easiest for them to acquire, if one discounted the fact that Hoarfrost Bears traveled in packs, quite unlike what one would expect from ursine creatures. If one ignored that their teeth and claws carried the ability to inflict immediate frostbite on any skin they touched. Or that their breath could slow one as the cold leeched into your very bones.
“Whats next?” Silas asked, and Liliana took a steadying breath, steeling her courage. She had to do this. The familiar rage and hate burned away the last traces of fear, cutting through the hesitation and doubt with a honed edge.
“Water from the Seeker’s Spring,” Liliana told him and Silas, for his credit, didn’t balk. Then again, she had told him already what they needed to accomplish on this trip, had been bluntly honest about the dangers they’d face on this task. She suspected this was his way of silently checking that she was still prepared to go through with this, offering her a chance of turning back before they were too far in, without doing her the dishonor of saying it outright.
“Basilisk?” Silas asked, another silent offer.
“Yup,” Liliana said, silently declining his offer again. She would see this through. This game ended in only one of two ways. With her death or with her stepmother in chains. And she was not ready to die yet, not until she’d gotten her revenge.
[https://i.imgur.com/wtMoTrS.png]
Liliana sat in front of the campfire, knees pulled up to her chest and arms wrapped around them as she stared at the dagger sitting a foot away from her on the ground. They’d cleared the snow out of their campsite, revealing the cold, hardened earth beneath it. It was that same frozen dirt that her dagger had been laying on for the past hour as Liliana tried to get her Mana to do as she wanted. Out of any affinity, Telekineses was the hardest one she’d tried to use yet. It required her to carefully mold her Mana into her intent before sending it out from her body, and while it was out of her body, she still had to maintain control over it.
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Unlike elemental affinities, this one required precise control and utter concentration to get even the smallest bit of progress. She’d barely nudged the affinity percentage up to 3% despite the time she’d spent on it since acquiring it. As it was, she’d only gotten one, arguably useless, spell from it. [Shove]. By forcing her Mana out in a wave, she could push something, but it was weak and the Mana cost for it was ridiculous for such a weak spell.
Right now she was attempting to forge her Mana into the shape of a hand, grasp onto her dagger and lift it from the ground. She had no way to be sure, but she imagined that Natalia used something similar to move her many blades. Hundreds of Mana-made, invisible hands that wielded the blades around her form. The problem Liliana was coming up against was that the further from her the Mana got, the more its form destabilized. A foot was as far as she could keep some semblance of shape to it, and even with that, the Mana could barely nudge the dagger, if it did anything at all.
“How far are we from the last item?” Silas asked, interrupting her concentration. The Mana hand she could sense but not really see with her eyes dissipated like mist on the wind.
“We’ll be there tomorrow,” Liliana responded, her voice tired.
She was exhausted. One week, five days. That was how long they’d been gone from the manor. A week of hard travel in harsh winter weather, then days of traversing through the Frostfang Mountains. Day seven of their trip, their first day in the mountain’s territory, had been easy. The first few hours of the second day in this hellscape had been the same. But as if the Hoarfrost Bears had been the starting signal, their travels had become increasingly more fraught with danger. Despite the cleaning skill Silas had, the both of them were in bad need of a long bath. Even with the impressive needlework Silas had shown in the camps after his fights, his clothes were obviously worn down, metal dented and gouged, leather sporting holes where it couldn’t be patched and cloth thin or tattered at the ends. Bloodstains that had refused to be removed decorated his once pristine clothing.
Despite her lack of participation in fights, Liliana’s own clothes hadn’t fared much better. A particularly close call with a level 296 Cockatrice had shorn off half her cloak. Her aid with skinning and butchering the creatures Silas felled had left her with her own permanent bloodstains in her hems and sleeves. She could feel the road grit and dirt etched into her skin and hair, hair that she hadn’t dared to release from its braid since they'd started for fear she’d never get it back under control.
She had a near constant chill that had seeped deep below her skin, latching onto her like a leech that refused to leave no matter how close she got to a fire. A bone deep weariness had sapped at her energy day by day as she came face to face with beasts that could kill her with a lazy flick of a tail or paw. Fear had eaten at her with each new encounter, so much so that she could hardly summon adrenaline with the latest creatures they’d run into.
She was exhausted, dirty, cold, and so sore she felt she’d never know a day without pain again. She wanted to go home, where the threats weren’t so obvious and constant. Where she could rest in a soft bed and soak in a hot tub, where she could slowly thaw her body.
But she was so close now. One more day and they’d have what they needed. They could go home then, escape this frozen hell called the Frostfang Mountains and never again step foot in its direction. One more day and Liliana would have everything she needed to get hr revenge, and she could finally avenge Astrid.
“Do you know what we’ll be facing?” Silas asked and Liliana shook her head, troubled by this. She had researched, scoured every book in the manor. There was nothing about what they’d face, because anyone who went there simply didn’t return to let anyone know what they’d found.
“Guess we’ll find out tomorrow then,” Silas said, and Liliana envied the easy way he accepted this uncertainty, or at least he appeared to do so. Liliana dragged her eyes from his face to stare once more at her dagger. She’d try it one more time, then she’d go and pray she could sleep enough tonight to regenerate some of her energy. Maybe tonight she’d be free of nightmares.
Liliana focused on the dagger in front of her, letting her ever present anger and hate fade into the background until it became nothing more than white noise, mixing with the screeching wind and crackling fire. Anger had unlocked Telekinesis, but she’d found it was useless for trying to force any skills or spells from it. It destabilized her Mana faster, made her careless and rough with it.
She needed the precision of a clear mind, not the untamed power of rage. She understood now why Natalia had chastised her so much for letting emotions like that control her. Liliana would never have been able to master Telekinesis as a slave to her anger. She’d have failed again and again, no matter what the woman taught her. Like trying to forge a sword with a flawed ingot, she had a fault that would crack and shatter when pressure was applied. The woman’s words had been harsh, and perhaps a touch untrue, but they had been necessary for her to be able to learn Telekinesis and eventually learn what Natalia would hopefully deign to teach her when they met again.
Liliana let her mind fade of such thoughts until it was empty, still as a pond on a windless day. She slowly pulled Mana out of her core, carefully and methodically forming it into the shape of a hand. She built the shape thread by thread, not willing to rush this and risk the entire construction unraveling. When her hand was formed, she directed it out, keeping a thread of Mana tied to herself so she could direct it even with it separated from her.
It crept through the air at a snail’s pace so Liliana could pull it back the second she felt it unravel. It reached the dagger without destabilization, though the further it got, the harder Liliana had to concentrate to continue keeping it under her control. With a glacial slowness, the fingers of her construct wrapped around the hilt of the dagger and began to lift it. Liliana held her breath as the dagger shuddered. She felt the hand falter, going misty at the edges. She drip fed it more Mana, careful to not overload it and undo her work. Gradually it regained structure and as it did, the dagger lifted from the ground. A centimeter, two, three. It hovered an inch above the ground, rising another until it was clearly floating above the ground, wavering but stable.
Liliana tried to raise it higher, but the entire structure destabilized faster than she could react and the dagger clattered to the ground as the Mana faded away into the air. Liliana let out a deep breath. Despite the lackluster results, she was smiling for the first time in weeks. It was a weak thing, fragile and easily broken, but there. Because she had finally succeeded.
You’ve discovered the spell [Grasp]. Would you like to accept?
Liliana could come up with a thousand excuses for why she didn’t notice the danger. The notification that had popped up on her screen. Her weariness, her exhaustion. The growing wind that disguised any noise in its gales. It was Silas’ shout of fear, true heartrending panic that alerted her to the danger that had strolled into their camp. That had escaped both their notices until it was right upon them.
Liliana’s eyes looked up, and she was caught in a blue stare. Eyes so different from her own, these were the blue of a fire at its hottest, swirling with secrets and knowledge she would never know. Decades, centuries of knowledge, danced in those fathomless eyes. Liliana knew, even before [Identify] popped up to tell her exactly what had stopped a yard from her and now held her in its endless gaze, that they had just come face to face with why no one had returned from the exact quest she had put herself on.
Minori
Guardian of The Frostfang Mountains
Inari Kitsune
Level 526
Rumors exist of a divine being that lurks deep within the reaches of the Frostfang Mountains, a white ghost that none have seen or lived to tell the tale of. Believed to be a guardian spirit of the mountains, none are willing to tread within her domain for fear of her wrath if she feels her territory and the denizens she protects are threatened. The Guardian of the Frostfang Mountains is believed to be the daughter of Mors and Luna, the God of Death and the Goddess of the Night and Souls, with dominion over Death, Darkness and Souls themselves.
Rank: 1