As it turned out, killing a lava monster wasn’t as easy as whacking it with a stick. Even one infused with gravity.

Mr. Erin darted about, barriers popping up to catch him as he flung his water jets in quick succession. The monster roared, the lake below bubbling and rising as chunks flew in the weasel’s direction. Sasha squeezed GT, trying to calm her nerves. Dangit. How am I supposed to focus when he’s over there fighting for his life?

From what little she could glean, the legionnaire was a freak of nature. Mr. Erin had shot it hundreds of times, but all to the same effect. The water sizzled on impact, not even penetrating its sludgy body.

He tried crushing it under gravity, but that didn’t work either. Its body reformed the moment he dropped the field. Even trapping it in a barrier only made the thing more angry, the lake of lava always readily available no matter what state the main body was in. Cripes. Maybe if- She jumped to her feet.

“Mr. Erin! Watch out!”

The weasel whirled, wand raised as the magma stopped in its tracks, hovering frozen directly in front of him.

“Don’t…guh…don’t worry about me, Sasha.”

He flung the lava back, the stream arcing through the air and slamming into the legionnaire’s body. It did no damage, magma running down its white frame.

“Just focus on strategy!” he called. “I’m fine!”

Despite his words, she could hear the waver in his voice. Every time he blocked an attack, his arms trembled with the effort, the weasel’s breathing growing more labored as the fight went on. It took all her willpower not to move from her spot. As much as she wanted to, there wasn’t anything she could do without getting in the way. Cripes.

She hated it. Hated having to sit and watch. But the Stem Portal was growing bigger by the second, so she had no choice but to suck it up and use her head for once. There must have been a way. She looked down at the lava, watching as it flowed across the Frostum landscape.

Dangit. Think, Sasha. Think. How do you kill something that spits out lava?

If she had power, they might have been able to tag team it. Mr. Erin would trap it in a barrier while she went to force the portal closed. But at 1% power, that option was off the table.

Maybe they could try going inside it? It had a mouth. Maybe it had organs and such, too? They could jump inside and…be immediately melted alive by all the lava. Cripes. She wracked her brain, even going so far as smacking her head to get some thoughts rolling.

“GT? Little help here?”

The staff was quiet a moment.

“Have you tried dousing the lava?” it asked.

“Yes. Multiple times. In fact-“ She pointed ahead to her still-fighting liaison. “He’s doing it right now.”

The whisps of steam rising off the monster did little to hinder its attack patterns.

“Ah. Then perhaps we need a stronger source.”

She raised a brow. That was, until she really took a look at how Mr. Erin was fighting.

Every time he shot the monster, the water jets turned immediately to steam, that much was true. But it was also true that the monster’s roar rose a tad with each attack. Not a large amount, but enough of a jolt that Sasha could take notice.

“It is not immune to dousing,” GT said. “We simply need more to attack with.”

She looked across the river. To the edges where the lava sizzled. To the peaks of the mountain ridge.

“What about snow?” she asked. “You think that would work?”

The staff paused again. “I believe it to be possible.”

She smiled. “Good enough. Hey, Mr. Erin!”

The weasel dropped back, a barrier encasing his body as a hand of magma rose from the lake.

“I do have an idea!” Sasha shouted.

The lava squeezed around the field's edges, Mr. Erin bracing within.

"I'm all ears, Ms. Panther!" he called.

"What if we try using the snow. If we can douse it enough, it might go down?"

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The weasel grunted, signals pouring out from his body.

“And how…do we manage that?”

With a loud scream, he forced the barrier to expand, pieces shattering away as the lava hand broke apart around him. He dropped to his knees.

"There's plenty of snow up on the mountain!" Sasha shouted.

Mr. Erin's head rose. She pointed at the distant ridge. A gold mine of ice and snow just waiting to be utilized. The weasel looked from it to the legionnaire, finally giving a slow nod. Sasha grinned, jumping to her feet.

"We can try leading it to crash," she said. "Make it kill itself."

Mr. Erin smiled back at her. "That might work, Ms. Panther. Or we could skip the middleman."

"Huh?"

Mr. Erin drew a line with his foot, his legs spreading apart as he looked directly at the monster.

"It's a good strategy," he said. "Let's see how far we can take it."

The lava came spewing forth, but Mr. Erin didn't even try to dodge. His wand raised, the weight slamming against him as he slid backward, signals pushing back until the lava jet froze in front of him. What's he- His arm twisted, the fiery stream getting deflected. And completely missing the lava monster. It crashed down in snow.

"M-Mr. Erin?"

He didn't respond, another coming his way only to meet the same result, the weasel twisting and deflecting it in the same direction. Though when it hit, Sasha noticed the weasel smiling. As more and more came flying, the realization slowly began to dawn. He wasn't just deflecting the blasts. He was aiming them! Straight at the mountain!

You clever weasel.

Another blast rocked the peak's foundations, the whole structure trembling from impact. As was Mr. Erin himself, the weasel's growing more strained with each deflection. But he was still smiling. Even as he was kneeling on the floor, he was smiling. A lava palm soared in his direction, the weasel straining to catch the entire thing. His teeth gnashed with the effort, eyes locked forward as he roared back at the beast.

"Good...bye!"

The hand soared backward, flying with expert precision across the lake of lava. Across the path of ice and snow. And finally crashing into the quaking tower of ice ahead. That was all it took for the rest to come flooding out.

A tidal wave of snowy powder came rushing down the peak, ice and rocks getting dragged along as the stream became a river. A wave. A tsunami. It kept growing and growing, Sasha's enthusiasm dying out as she saw just how big a chain reaction Mr. Erin had caused. Holy cripes. The lava monster was barely more than a spec by comparison.

"S-should we start running? Mr. Erin? Mr. Erin!"

The weasel was slumped over. Sasha leapt across the field of barriers, dropping next to him.

"Hey! Mr. Erin! Wake up! I said wake up!"

His eyes were slow to open, Sasha only noticing then how beat up his body had become. He tried to lift his wand, to no avail. Sasha looked back to the avalanche, which had just crossed over the lake, enveloping it completely.

"Mr. Erin," she said.

With no other choice, she hugged him close, bracing for the impact. The roaring of the monster grew quiet, along with everything else around them. There was only the rushing of the falling snow. And then nothing at all.

Here it comes.

She waited for the pain. Or the chill. Anything.

Any second now.

She opened one eye. Then the other.

"H-huh?"

They were hovering in the sky, the ground below them covered in snow and ice.

"Apologies for the scare, Ms. Panther."

She pulled back, Mr. Erin's weary gaze looking up at her. As she noticed his glowing wand, she also noticed the barrier surrounding the two of them. The stupid weasel had protected her again. She wiped her eyes.

"Please don't make a habit of doing stuff like this," she said.

"Sorry. I guess I overdid it a bit."

She groaned in response, the barrier falling away as they both dropped into the snow. The world around them returned to it's normal quiet, the legionnaire silenced by the crushing avalanche.

***

In his weakened state, Mr. Erin couldn't sustain his walk for long. Instead, Sasha had to carry him both after closing the Stem Portal and to close the Root one. As heavy as he was, she didn't mind it as much given she'd lost her coat to lava. Having him on her back kept her warm.

"First thing we gotta do is find a hot springs planet," she said. "Did they have hot springs where you're from, Mr. Erin?"

"On my planet, we called them hot tubs. They tended to be gender segregated."

"Oh. Ours was too. Never really understood why. It's always annoying trying to talk to someone across a wall, y'know."

She shook her head remembering how they had to create talking funnels so they and the boys could chat. It was annoying, but it was just something they got used to after a while. If only they'd had commpads back then.

"There are reasons for these things, Sasha," Mr. Erin said. "You'll probably find out event- Oh. We're here."

She stopped at the second distortion in the air. It had grown big enough to fit inside but was relatively small compared to the giant Stem. Sasha set Mr. Erin down, pulling out GT to perform her contractual duties.

"I'm curious, Sasha. Were you ever allowed to roam freely on Shiny?"

"Hmm? I dunno." She pulled the staff out, the Root vanishing into a black mist. "Define free. Pretty much everywhere we went there were cameras. It was just something you got used to."

"And yet you still noticed."

"Well, yeah. I may be willingly ignorant, but I'm not stupid, Mr. Erin."

He chuckled. "No. I guess you aren't."

She smiled back at him. With the portals closed, they could finally return to the warmth of their ship. No more shivering on the worst planet the gods/spirits ever created. I swear if the next world is another tundra, I'm jumping out a window.

She kneeled down to help the weasel back up.

"Would a summer planet do?" he asked. "Somewhere that's tropical all year round?"

She giggled. "Now you're talking my language, Mr. Erin."