I stood in the center of a deformed circle of fallen, burning mushrooms, grinning as I looked up through the wall of mist-lit smoke at where I knew Palefang to be.

The beasts who had been called by the convergence had fled at his display of power, but they would return soon enough. And because Palefang wasn’t answering or echoing the call, we’d both be targets in their eyes… and I could hopefully use my [Animal Bond] to push the frenzied monsters toward attacking him and not me.

I used my [Animal Bond] to vanish from his gaze, finally doing what I’d been able to do all along.

I heard his cry a moment later: a savage thing that scraped at my ears, loud as an avalanche. Something glinted in the firelight as it came streaking through the mists: not Palefang, but a volley of dozens of icy shards, each of them hurled through the full length of his claim and with the power of his [Channel], each moving so fast that the air around them blurring and whistling as they shot toward me.

I lurched to one side, moving faster than he’d ever seen me move to avoid the first volley, then another. As I did so, I heard him make one massive, bark-shattering leap from the tree he had been clinging to, colliding with a nearer one a moment later but losing several dozen meters of altitude.

The next volley of ice crystals was a hailstorm, hundreds of them flung through the air to blanket the area around me with piercing death—but I’d moved to the most unobvious cover I could find, a slight depression in the earth that I formed into cover, simultaneously depressing and raising to portions of the earth to give me a small lump of earth to hide behind.

The ice obliterated my earthen cover, penetrating through two feet of loose soil with ease—but their points broke against the skin of my body and the wrist I’d raised to protect my face, doing little more than bruise me.

Meanwhile I felt the mana in the air around me aligning—and I pushed myself to my feet just in time to sweep one hand through the air and tear a segment out of Palefang’s lightning bolt, which lit the air a moment later with a tremendous boom, but failed to reach me.

He tested me, throwing two more bolts, bearing down on each with more focus, more determination, trying desperately to force the mana into the air before I could extend my claim and knock it away, but they were each impotent, reaching down through the red mist and ending a dozen feet away from me.

“Hah!” I cried, knowing that he was burning mana that he couldn’t replenish: naturally, his first tactic would be to stay far above me and attack from where I couldn’t retaliate. The longer he spent wasting his mana, the better… and soon the frenzied beasts of the primeval convergence would reach him, while the circle of burning fungus and his volley of spells, particularly lightning, were enough to frighten them away from me….

Palefang let out another cataclysmic roar, a wall of sound that met my ears and made my grin widen: I guessed he’d realized what I done to him, how much of his mana he’d wasted and couldn’t recover, and that this had been my plan.

A moment later, I saw a massive spider fall out of the mist above, a shard of ice stuck through its head.

Palefang appeared above me, a great white cat with red eyes whose massive form trailed the glowing mist as he finally broke the cloud layer to slam into one of the great trees, expertly landing in an explosion of bark, then clinging to it with ease, muscles bulging and rippling under his sleek coat. I could see fog billowing out around him, saw flakes of snow and chunks of hail falling from the path he’d made… and I had to wonder….

Palefang leapt again, moving toward another tree….

[Surge of Might] was focus-limited, but I’d practiced the pinpoint flash of frenzied intent that accompanied the use of [Surge] skills so much that it was almost as much a part of my nature as bending mana for the sake of throwing lightning.

I surged my [Strength], bringing my bow up as soon as Palefang’s feet left the bark beneath them, tracking his path through the air and launching my arrow with great speed and force, my bowstring lashing at the air around me with a sound like snapping steel cable as it sent the arrow screaming through the air….

The arrow struck the cat in the side just as he reached his next tree, knocking him backward just enough to throw off his landing, his claws scrabbling at the bark….

For a moment I thought I had him, but I saw him form hunks of frost binding his legs to the bark—they were there for a flash, then shattered as he took his position, then leapt again, still trailing snow and fog.

I didn’t launch a second arrow, sure that he wouldn’t have leapt if he felt I might knock him free—and hoping that the less I hurt him now, the longer it would take him to realize I’d cut him off from healing. Instead I focused on channeling airborne mana into myself and [Surge of Might], replenishing my resources.

Palefang was fast. I’d need them.

Palefang completed a circuit of me that he’d begun while I was above the mists. It wasn’t a true magical circle, but as I watched the heavy flakes of snow that followed him, I realized what he’d been doing: he was creating a small blizzard, claiming all the air above me to be sure that its moisture would fall to the battlefield below, which he no doubt also intended to freeze before confronting me.

He was going to bury us in snow and ice—an element that he could manipulate but that he thought I couldn’t. He’d cut me off from my sense of the terrain beneath me, plunge us into foggy darkness, kill anything from the primeval convergence that dared to interrupt, burn away the airborne mana that only I could absorb, and fill the world with a substance that he could use while forcing me to fight in hypothermic cold.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It was the most mana he’d spent, I was sure—only this wasn’t a waste, but a beautiful piece of spellcraft that made perfect tactical sense.

“Yes,” I whispered, grinning as I watched the falling snowflakes begin to thicken. I’d avoided deflecting his ice shards with [Frost Magick] because I wanted him to throw as many of them as possible. Now it was clear that I’d need the skill just to move about without slipping and to maintain my claim and gaze.

It was a good thing I had a boon for it, and my [Life Pool] was so close to empty that [Life Magick] was useless:

[Elemental 1 / Frost 1 / Mana 1]: [Frost 1]

- [Life Magick 6]: [*Primeval 5] + 200 Essence

[*Primeval 5] + [Frost 1]: [Frost Magick 6]

[Frost Magick 6]

[*Primeval 5] + [Frost 1]

You can move frozen substances within your claim. Moving a substance is easiest when you move it toward or away from you.

You can reduce temperatures within your claim, and you can conjure frozen water by assigning [Focus] to sustain it.

You can sense frozen substances within your gaze, and extending your claim or gaze through frozen substances is easier.

I reached into my own body with my [Frost Magick] and froze a delicate set of circles and runes onto my skin: my abdomen, my throat, my forehead, my forearms, my outer thighs, and the tops of my feet.

The skin died instantly as it crystallized, lighting up my senses with fine lines of pain at the edge of the runes—but I needed them. [Aegis] stopped harmful temperature exchanges, but Palefang was strong enough that I needed a spell of protection, which in this case meant a spell to heat my own flesh when I got too cold.

Palefang bounded off the last great tree to land in the circle with me, snow falling around him as the air filled with billowing fog. He was a beautiful creature, his eyes seething with power and fury, his coat marred with unhealed scars—one thin gash across one eye, a set of three gashes across his back, and an impressive set massive tooth-marks that spread across one side like a constellation. He was proud of his injuries.

And he was massive, perhaps nine feet tall at the shoulder. His weight snapped the corpses beneath him like twigs.

I was shooting arrows before he landed, missiles hissing with force to punch clean through an unleveled animal, one arrow striking him above one paw while two struck his back. Palefang landed, bounding forward to pounce, and I dropped my bow to grab my spear, surge my [Strength], and launch myself forward with a speed he hadn’t yet seen from me.

It was clear that he wasn’t expecting me to charge back, and I met him while his paws were in the air, my spear sinking deep into his neck as my feet danced sideways across the ground to bring me out of the path of his lunge as I thrust him to one side.

We pulled apart. I landed in an unsteady roll, dropping my spear and calling my bow to my hands to shoot an arrow at Palefang as he scrabbled to gain his footing across the clearing, a promising gout of blood pouring from the hole in his neck. He hissed, charging me again—but slower now, cautious of my spear.

He took another arrow for it, and I grabbed my spear and launched myself at him once more, bow still in hand, then leapt into the air just before we reached one another.

Palefang saw me crouch and spring, his head tracking me as I flew into the air—and he lunged to snap at me at the best possible moment—but I thrust down with my spearpoint, scraping it across his muzzle and pushing him down and away from my ankles.

My momentum carried me high into the air over him as I turned, and I used my [Earth Magick] to push the spear down into the ground where I’d land, then shot another quick arrow at the spinning cat, planting it into his flank, my motions too fast for proper aim.

He pounced before I landed, sure that he could strike me mid-air before I could maneuver again, but I reached into the earth with my [Earth Magick], forcing the soil to cling to my spearpoint as I grabbed its upright haft and tugged myself down to the ground, causing Palefang to sail over me—at which point I let go of my bow and drew my knife with my free hand, surging my [Strength] and cutting upward into the cat’s belly as he snapped at the air where I’d been.

The knife plunged deep into his flesh, cut a gash along the underside of his chest, then stuck in his belly as my [Surge of Might] wore off and the knife was yanked from my wrist.

!—[Surge Pool] 60/100

Palefang howled as he moved past me, one back paw slapping my face into the ground, and I flipped onto my belly and pushed off of the snowy soil to come up onto my feet and called my bow to my hand, loosing another two arrows at him as he rounded on me once more.

The fog had thickened, air growing frigid as the pebbles of hail that had fallen early were coated with softer snowflakes. I saw Palefang release a huge amount of mana as he spun, shot an arrow at his eye that he deflected by dipping his head so that it skidded off his brow, then watched as he snarled and cast his spell, sending a gust of icy air toward me before he pounced.

I channeled mana into the frostbitten scars that I’d drawn into my skin, cooking my flesh even as I pushed out with my claim to stop him from freezing the air around me. At the same time, I grabbed my spear and threw myself to one side, still within his frost spell but leaping to avoid his lunge—but I wasn’t fast enough, and one of Palefang’s paws sliced neatly into my calf as he sailed past me.

Steam rose from my rune scars as I came to my feet, my motions imbalanced by the sudden weakness in my injured leg—and I sensed Palefang coming toward me again too fast, dropped my spear to draw my second knife and drive it upward at where his jaws were moving to snap at my shoulder.

He pulled back in a flurry, lunged again before I could gain my bearings, and I threw myself back out of the way of his claws only to feel his maw close around the tip of my bow, which I held in one hand.

I felt a note of panic ring through my body, dropped the knife to grab at the bow with both hands—but it was too late. Palefang wrenched backward, dragging me across the snowy, corpse-strewn ground, then tore it from my grasp and leapt far to one side to pin the bow against the ground with one paw and then snap it into pieces, the enchantment bursting in a flurry of blue sparks.

I called my spear and knife to my hands, sheathing the knife and leveling the spear at the cat. At the same time, I banished all the arrows that I’d planted in him, opening their wounds now that they’d had time to shred and cut his flesh while he moved.

I faced Palefang from across the snowy, fog-filled clearing, then smiled as I watched blood begin to run from his wounds.

It would all be over soon.