Outside, the snowstorm roared to a feverish crescendo, the words and commands spoken between the four humans huddled within their outpost drowned out by the screams of the wind and the clattering of the windows.

Snow began to force its way into their warm refuge, drifting in as icy lines that very quickly clouded the air with a cold mist. In the chaos and cacophony of it all, Walid desperately gestured for them to move away from the window facing the perimeter– a window that exploded open the moment they turned their backs to it.

Gales of ice and snow and silt surged into the tiny room, instantly whiting out the small abode and cutting their visibility down to mere centimetres from their faces.

Qingxi’s ears twitched, the dust and ice clearing away from her face as she kicked up her own winds in stubborn defiance. She heard the sound of ice crystallising, called into place by Walid to form spires that faced the breach in their walls.

Immediately after, those same crystals shattered and screamed cries of pain that reached Qingxi’s ears, and she moved entirely on instinct.

Her hand on the hilt of her blade, she drew the Instrument in a wide arc before her, throwing her own mana into its rend to send forth a wave of cleaving air that split the snow before it.

The air before them cleared at once, revealing briefly the sight of a great white hound, its furs stained blood red in a clean line across its body, before it was sent sprawling back onto the ground beyond the perimeter’s palisade.

Qingxi felt her skin go numb and her muscles go weak for a brief moment, her strength returning to her not moments later. She leapt up onto the broken window, resting a foot on its ledge as she peered out onto the cleared pocket of air that lay before them.

Verily, thrashing within the snow, was their target. It gave her one final glare, before melting back into the perfect whites of the fluffy landscape and leaving a fading trail of red as it dove away.

“That’s a Fiend alright,” Soleiman gasped, still pressed up against the wall.

“Plan, Mr Walid?” Qingxi sheathed her blade, her eyes and ears scanning the uniform landscape as the curtains of falling snow began to cloud her vision once more.

“We stay here, and we shoot it.”

A sharp cry sang out from his whistle as he stuck his head out of another lattice window, pausing midway in delivering the tone occasionally to inform the other outposts of the battle’s commencement.

“What if it tries jumping up here again?”

Walid gestured using the musket in his hand to Qingxi’s one, laying on the floor from when the window had first been burst open.

“We blow its brains out, point blank.”

Rumi stuck her head through the broken window, joining Qingxi in squinting futility through the utter whiteout of a view.

“We can’t see a thing, though!” she turned to look back at him, though soon the air between them grew cloudy too.

Qingxi put her hand back onto her sword’s hilt, bending her knees slightly as her ears focused on an unseeable point in the distance.

“...Shit,” he mouthed. “You and Soleiman stay here, we-”

The entire stilted outpost shook as Qingxi leapt from the window, sending a shower of brilliant orange sparks through the thick snow as her blade clanged against the jaws of the hound.

The air cleared as the whorls and eddies that Qingxi had manually imbued her blade with dispersed outwards, allowing the three of them to see as she landed outside of the perimeter while the hound slammed against the outpost’s wall and fell onto the palisade’s edge.

She kept her eyes locked with the beast’s as she flicked her blade, holding it out to her side as she stood in some mockery of the shaggy thing before her. Her entire body, her ears, rogue strands of hair, her gi– everything fluttered in her personal wind, enveloping her and her great cleaver in a clear aura that stood in stubborn rebellion to the cold of the north.

“Qingxi!” Soleiman clamoured to the window.

Qingxi’s eyes briefly flicked up in a panic towards him, though that fear vanished the very moment the beast lunged directly at her.

She slashed her blade inwards, using the weight of the blade to help throw herself to the right and out of the way of the thing’s barbaric lunge.

The snow parted, and the beast spun on the spot.

It threw itself at her again, its white fangs flashing even in the whiteout.

Qingxi swung her leg up in a great arc, booting the Fiend in its chin and slamming its maw shut as she threw it above her.

Watching as it soared through the air with its own momentum, she thrust her blade back into its sheath.

“Qingxi!” Rumi stuck her head out of the window beside Soleiman.

“Just wait and shoot!”

She leapt after the beast, digging her feet into the snow just as it landed and began to regain its bearings. She swung her blade out again, its glittering silver shining even in the whiteout.

The cleaving projectile dug deep into the beast’s underbelly, pounding it against the woods of Yellow Rock’s palisade and sending droplets of its blood intermingling with the falling snow.

She leapt after it once more, her blade biting into wood as it frantically threw itself off of the wall to avoid the attack.

She immediately yanked the cleaver from its place, swinging it in a spiral through the air and beating back the encroaching snow as she landed on the far side of the Fiend.

She eyed it down as she held her blade before her, watching as their outpost loomed behind it. Their gazes locked, neither combatant willing to make the first move.

“Now!” Qingxi yelled.

Thunder fell upon the battlefield twice over, sprays of blood erupting from the beast’s chest as the roundshot bullets of Walid and Soleiman’s guns burst through it.

Watching as the hound listed over in pain, she leapt forwards, catching it dead in its ribs as she forced her weight against her great blade and forced it onto its two hind legs.

She fought against it, the thing thrashing left and right until it finally seemed to surrender to having Qingxi’s blade buried deep into its chest.

“Now!”

There came no response.

Her eyes flicked over where the outpost had been, a pure wall of white now in its stead. The snowstorm had surged to a near unmatched ferocity in the few moments she and the beast had locked themselves in their struggle, the crying of the winds and the thickness of the blizzard blotting out all sight and sound.

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She felt as a growing pressure began to weigh down on her, first evident in her ears. Soon, it pressed hard against her skull, squeezing her eyes and tightening her lungs. It crushed down on every part of her body, and as her eyes turned to the beast she found that her grimace had been met by two glowing, sadistic eyes.

“Overpressure?” Soleiman lifted the warm mug of coffee to his lips.

“Something the Fiends have a nasty tendency of abusing,” Lauka responded.

“That’s when…” Soleiman thought on it, going through the aisles of his library of the mind. “One balloons their mana lobes out, right?”

“With the specific goal of crushing the lobes of their enemies.”

“Right,” he nodded. “And when that happens…”

The snowstorm continued to creep up on the two combatants, Qingxi’s wind shield very slowly petering out as it retreated closer and closer to her skin. A light numbness began to creep up on her skin, and she felt as her muscles began to weaken.

At once, she lifted one of her feet up, planting her boot against the beast’s underbelly. She unsheathed her blade from the flesh of its chest, kicking up the roaring winds of her Xiafan Blade right inside of it.

The burst of slicing winds surged outwards in all directions, cleaving apart the curtains of white that had fallen upon the battlefield and sending the hound back, howling in pain as ribbons of red burst from the wound in its chest.

There, Qingxi lowered her blade as she heaved, drawing in gusts of bitingly cold air with each inhalation as she fought off the crawling paralysis now coursing through every bit of her body.

“They end up feeling paralysed?”

“Mm,” Lauka put forth her mug in response. “At least, that’s what all the written encounters say. It’s always a slight pressure– as their lobes press up against one another– followed by a paralysis– as the mana is forced out of the victim’s lobes by the expansion of the Fiend’s.”

Soleiman recalled the recorded encounter with the Three Eyed Deer back in Shirobanegawa, how its author had stated that the deer regularly paralysed them and their comrades in engagements. And though he believed that the Hundred Burning Embers had refrained from using Overpressure against Qingxi, he nevertheless chose to believe Lauka’s assertion.

“So why do you think so many of them use it?”

“...I can’t say,” she set the mug back down onto the table. “Maybe though…”

Qingxi stumbled backwards, putting as much focus as she could in her stores of mana, swirling beyond her comprehension in abstract lobes that she could not see. That she could not control. It was as though she was trying to force her heart to beat faster, acting on an impossibly stubborn force that acts entirely automatically– independent of what she intended.

Nevertheless, though, the pressure faded. The Overpressure had begun to wane.

Lauka looked Soleiman dead in the eye, scaring the rim of the mug away from his lips as he stared back at her– Pallas dozing away unbeknownst to the both of them.

“...It’s because we don’t.”

The Fiend roared.

Sheets of torrential rain erupted from its body, blasting through the air and tearing through the weak wind that Qingxi had just barely managed to stir up in her short recovery. The heavy droplets peppered her body, sending her stumbling backwards before she managed to set up her wind shield in full.

A whistle cried out from the stilted outpost Qingxi had come from, it and several others in the distance suddenly made visible by the much less intrusive rain.

The deluge of water that surged about her and the Fiend lit up with the flashes of several muzzles, each and every one of them staring down the great hound. The very moment the lightning faded from the air, the thunder struck.

The Fiend cut its roar short as blood burst into its throat, forcing it back onto all fours as it struggled against the pain of having several holes shot through its shaggy form.

Qingxi lunged forward, stumbling as she did so as the spots on her gi that had been struck by the droplets of water froze over and fought against her every movement.

The deluge grew heavier, and though Qingxi remained dry, she still continued to struggle against the ice in her fabrics as the outposts began to fade from view, one by one. Leaving only the one she had come from in eyeshot.

Her eyes returned to the beast before her, and she saw as the last traces of red vanished from its white coat. She had managed to break the last of the remaining ice, though something about the freezing cold across her skin and the sight of the woundless Fiend before her kept her frozen in place anyway.

If it really was regenerating that quickly, then there would be no way to defeat it aside from killing it in a singular, perfect blow– directly to its brain.

One cleave to cut open its skull, one cut to slice apart its faculties.

The thing dove back into the snow beneath its feet, returning to surging around under the white like some underwater beast. It raced in circles about her, as she placed her sword back into its sheath.

The rain fell even harder, and with each droplet that pounded against her wind she felt as her shield fell towards her. She felt as the pressure began to build with each gust and gale, filling her ears and pressing in on her eyes.

Overpressure. Yet again.

And she had no windblades left to interrupt it. This was something she would have to fight off entirely using her own lobes.

She shivered as the cold bite of her still wet fabrics lingered against her skin, her brows furrowing as she put her all into focusing yet again on the mana stored within her lobes.

But the beating of one’s heart is not something that can be controlled on a whim.

She felt the raindrops smash against her body in some places, faltering gaps in her wind shield opening up as the crawl of paralysis once again caressed her pale, ice-cold skin.

The beast lunged at her, though she evaded its attack.

Once more, though she parried its blow.

Again and again, the thing leapt from the rain and from the snow, making attempt after attempt to break her ever weakening guard.

Until it did, cutting a gash in her skin before disappearing back into the whites of the earth.

The rain rushed in through the open window, sending Rumi back the moment a single one of them slammed into her forearm.

“What do we do now, Mr Walid?” Soleiman clutched Qingxi’s gun in his hands, its flintlock pressed tightly against his chest in an attempt to shield it from the rain.

“Stay here,” he said, tightening his coat about himself as he approached the window. “Wait for the rain to part.”

Walid thumped onto the ground by the palisade, the deluge of rain bouncing off of his cloak as he rose to his full height.

“Mr Walid!”

“Stay there-”

He stumbled backwards, his eyes bulging as he fell to his knees, the wind knocked out of his lungs by the sudden force of the Overpressure washing over him. The torrent of water solidified while soaked within his clothes, arresting him in place as he struggled to regain his composure.

Qingxi’s eyes darted to the swirling circle of movement about her, watching as it stopped dead in its tracks.

“Shit,” she mouthed.

It burst from the snow where it froze, leaping and lunging and chomping at the bit to ensnare Walid in its jaws.

She rushed forward to intercept it, falling onto the snow as her frozen clothes fought her movements once more.

Walid’s back slammed into the palisade behind him, sending fragments of fabric and ice in all directions as the fangs of the hound crushed up the gauntlets of ice he had formed about his arms.

“Mr Walid!” Rumi called, peering out over the window and trying her best to withstand the bullets of water that barraged her soaking wet, near frozen, chullo.

“I… I have an idea.”

She turned to look at Soleiman, two cartridges clutched in his right hand as he held the muzzle of Qingxi’s heavy gun upwards.

Back on the battlefield, Qingxi sprinted towards Walid, lifting her water-logged pants as best as she could through the mushy snow as the hound pounded him again and again against the palisade behind him.

It yanked him from the wall, thrashing him about and trying to lift him off of his feet in some instances.

Qingxi set her blade square, trying with all her might to muster up enough wind to propel herself the last few metres.

But Walid had already been thrown off of his feet, and before even the tiniest of eddies were able to form he had already been lifted high up into the air– higher than even the sharp ends of the palisade.

Then, Soleiman’s figure emerged from the window directly above the two of them, the glint of his gun barrel shining briefly as he pointed it directly towards the top of the hound’s skull.

The gun’s hammer slammed against its frizzen, the entire mechanism still dry and unspoiled by the rain. The shower of sparks that sprung forth from the clink then poured into the gun’s flashpan, finally setting off the three cartridge’s worth of gunpowder in a singular shot.

The three bullets thundered from the smoking mouth of the heavy musket, their flattened forms smashing against the hound’s skull and blowing bits of flesh and bone apart as though they were raindrops slamming into the ocean’s rippling, liquid surface.

And just like that, the rain fell silent– and the Fiend’s great, shaggy, lifeless form collapsed onto the wet snow beneath its feet.