The dark figure didn’t move. Its rags undulated in the frigid wind of the cavern, which seemed to originate from nowhere at all, lit by a scant light that seemingly vanished upon touching the black cloth that covered the figure.
“You are back…” the words echoed from a remote corner of the icy cave, reflected on the deep blue surfaces.
“What do you mean I am back?” Ishrin yelled through the sound of wind. “I have never met you before today. Who are you?”
“You return,” the shape said, hissing. “To once more challenge our… destiny…”
Liù became agitated, and beside Ishrin his two companions also felt uneasy. They exchanged looks.
“I have never been here before.” Ishrin answered the question that was hanging in the air between them, unsaid.
“How does it know you?” Melina whispered.
“How do you know me?” Ishrin asked the ragged figure.
“You smell… like her…”
Ishrin tensed. “Who?” He demanded, fire in his eyes.
But the thing didn’t answer, instead contorting into an abominable shape of limbs and bones, twisting on itself with its hands making circular motions in the air. Even through the magically saturated air, Ishrin could see that something was building up, energies were moving and accumulating with each turn of those black limbs. A bolt of energy, terribly strong and blinding shot out from the monstrous figure. It cut through the air, ionizing it with its crackling energy, radiating heat and power that melted the ice below where it flew, aimed at Ishrin.
Then it stopped. Ishrin held his hand aloft as he screamed in rage and strain, and the bolt was frozen in the air, standing still. It was still shaped like a spear as it sped towards the party, its head like a meteor large and thick and its tail sleek and crackling, but it didn’t move. It shook lightly, its minute movements in unison with Ishrin’s hand. He was gritting his teeth and sweating as he concentrated on keeping the bolt from resuming its path, finding that his anger was providing him with more strength than he thought he could tap into. The universe resonated with his heartbeat, his control over the forces of reality stronger and his will sturdier.
Then with a swiping motion he deflected the bolt before his flow state could falter, and the magic hit one of the walls and exploded, sending shards of ice and rock flying in all directions, and tremors shook the whole mountain.
The two other members of the party didn’t have time to gawk, although Ishrin was certain that they would pepper him with questions later. What he did just now was not something someone at Tier 2 should be able to do. Instead they disappeared, dashing towards the tall figure that once again was standing hunched yet imposing under the monolith. Meanwhile Ishrin reached and grabbed, using his mind, the topmost part of the monolith and pulled it towards him. The ice strained and groaned, and large cracks began to spread through it, like a spiderweb of thin clear lines of fracture.
Liù lit up.
Melina, despite herself, was forced out of her state of fugue-like speed and found herself gasping for air. Her lightning quick dash was arrested in the blink of an eye, and a dark hand suddenly tightened itself around her throat, blocking the flow of blood to her brain. In a matter of moments, she felt her head grow light, and she vaguely saw a shape come to her rescue while a small nova of light was coming to life in the distance. The cavern was plunged in shadows, long and black as the new source of light grew more and more bright. Then the grip of the hand lessened, and she recoiled backwards, falling on her back until her reactive armor caught her fall and made her bounce back on her feet. She stabilized herself with wind magic, and vision slowly returned to color.
A severed hand was hanging from her neck, twisted, and covered in a cloth that was dark as night and reeked of something and burnt things, dripping an oily grey substance on her leather armor. Lisette on the other side of the screeching creature was keeping the thing busy with her blades, severing appendages and limbs that grew back as soon as they were cut. On the ground the tangle of discarded body parts was forming piles that dissolved into a black sludge.
Melina shook her head. She saw at the far end of the frozen lake Ishrin struggling with his arms outstretched, and following his gaze she noticed the cracks in the ice on the monolith. She then bent her eyes to the nova, spotting Liù.
“Lisette!” she called out. Lightning quick orders followed in a series of barks, rather than words.
Lisette grunted and dashed towards the monster, attacking it with renewed zeal. Melina too began to attack, weaving wind blades and melee dashes while shrouded in a storm of green that shredded the flesh of the monster that even now tried to grab her and stop her. Her reactive armor seemed to have no effect in stopping its limbs, and thus she had to spend a great deal of focus on dodging or severing the hands that tried to reach her rather than attacking. Lisette was doing the same.
But this was the plan all along. Melina surveyed the battlefield with a lightning quick turn of her head. She caught sight of ishrin’s hand, which was still pointing at the sky but now had only three fingers showing while the rest hid behind his palm.
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“3 seconds!”
Then, without waiting, she dashed in. At the same moment, Lisette too dashed towards the monster, arriving only a fraction of a second later. There was a clang of blades, the hissing of the monster and then… a blinding light. Melina and Lisette reappeared beside Ishrin, who was barely visible with the small nova that was Liù hanging in the air in front of him. From her chest and her outstretched hands, a beam of light powerful and terrible, much more than even the bolt of magic that threatened to destroy them, shot out towards the monolith. The monster was like a singular point of darkness amid the light, shrinking ever more as the beam overpowered it. Then, right as the pixie collapsed on Ishrin’s shoulder and slumped with her head against his neck, he pulled with all his might and the cracks that had spread through the monolith finally gave in. Several tons of ice, rock and severed machinery collapsed on top of what was left of the shadowy creature.
When the dust settled, silence was all that was left. The light below the monolith, that now hung severed and barely half as tall and wide, was dead. The hum of machines gone.
“Is it over?” Melina asked.
Lisette was already surveying the mountain of rubble, digging through the rocks. “I think so, yes.” She said.
“What you just did…” Melina said in a low voice, “no Tier 2 should be able to do that, and I don’t care how overpowered you claim to be. How?”
“Understanding,” Ishrin said, “colored by new insights into the nature of what this existence is about. I think about what Al—I think about what someone told me all the time, and the more I do, the deeper the insights I can gain from it.”
Melina did not miss the fact that Ishrin had almost talked about his ‘god’ by first name, but she had to drop the matter, for a soft hum had begun to resonate throughout the mountain again. Three heads snapped towards the central room almost in unison. Below the remains of the monolith was a square of four pillars carved out of granite, covered in ice. A faint light was crawling from underneath them, lighting them, following the lines that intersected and crossed on their surface, only to vanish at the top. Like water dropping down, except it went up. As the light gradually grew stronger, so did the hum of the machines that were coming back to life.
“We need to go.” Melina said.
“Agreed.” Replied Ishrin. “I think all we accomplished was slow it down. But it will be back. Let’s get out of here.”
They ran. They ran until they were out of breath, and then some more, until they felt like the overbearing tunnels and their eerie ice were shielding them from whatever was awakening once again in the room they left behind. It was a faint hope, they knew that they were being watched, but it gave them a sense of safety nonetheless, to put some solid rock and ice between them and the monster they had no more strength to fight.
“What was that room?”
Ishrin shrugged. “I think it was a gathering chamber. The beam of energy going up to the ceiling is probably what powers the rest of the mountain.” He said.
“Then… we need to destroy it!”
“Can’t.” Ishrin said.
“Why not?” Asked Lisette.
“I’ve taken a good look at the monolith before we left. It was already almost as big as it was before we took it down.” Ishrin said.
“Wait… does this mean that—”
“The mountain can heal, yes. At least, some parts of it can.”
The party rested at a small fire they set up in a room dug in the side of the corridor. This side of the mountain seemed to be more natural, with rock instead of ice covering the walls, and the temperature was higher. It was dimly lit, dry and, most importantly, sloping upwards.
“What’s the plan?” Melina asked.
“You tell us, boss.” Ishrin said, smirking.
“You and that attitude… come on. You know what I mean. This last fight was already hard enough, and I get this feeling that it’s only going to get worse from now on.”
The look she gave him was not warm. Ishrin sighed, but now was not the time to spill all his secrets and honestly, even though he knew he should at some point, he felt like he would never be truly ready to reveal the nature of the power that kept the world ticking to them. It would require not only that he talked about Albert which, despite his attitude, was a rather traumatic topic. But also about his wife, and who she might actually be in the grand scheme of things.
No, he would rather pretend they didn’t exist, while at the same time prepare to deal with them should their paths inevitably cross.
“I did not think of the last fight as hard.” Lisette said. The corners of her lips quirked up.
Is she… trying to lighten the mood?
Melina looked at her. “Excuse me? I got almost strangled to death back there. I didn’t even see the thing move to intercept me!”
“You did.” Lisette said. “However, I did manage to rescue you without much difficulty. The monster was fast and could regenerate, but it was not strong.”
“Ishrin, help me out. Please?” Melina said.
“I don’t know…” Ishrin smiled. “I thought that fight was a very good warmup, if anything.”
“Warmup?”
“Yeah! I mean, I didn’t even need to use my whole arsenal yet! The Pebble Sword is gathering dust, you know?” he said.
Melina wasn’t having any of it. “But then what? What if we meet a monster that requires us to use all we have to take it down?”
“Then we finally start improving!” Ishrin said, getting up and serious. He paced around. “It’s no good to fight easy fights, you know? You said that yourself, I think. Beside that minor hiccup where you got grabbed, everything went smoothly back there! There was a plan, a formation to execute, and we did so without difficulty. That’s nice and all, but not challenging enough to actually grow. This is good to polish our skills, not to improve them.”
“We could use rituals like you did with Lisette to gain strength.” She said.
“That’s just raw strength. Which is worth nothing without finesse and understanding. I think I have shown you what I mean with that plenty of times.”
Melina looked at the fire for a few moments.
“Fine. I concede to your crazy argument.” She shook her head. “Crazy. But it’s true, I got spooked when I got grabbed. That’s on me. I should use that mistake as a leaning opportunity instead.”
“That is indeed a great learning opportunity.” Lisette said, then she gave Melina a stiff thumbs up.
“Now,” Ishrin said. “You don’t get to ask us what the plan is. If I wanted to be the leader, I would have been.”
There was certainty in his voice. Despite him being a Tier 2, none of the girls had trouble believing him.
“Fine. I can take suggestions, though, can’t I?” Melina said.
“Yeah, of course.” Ishrin said. “The plan is always the same, for now. We keep going up until we find whatever this ‘lost spawn’ we are supposed to retrieve is. There’s only one way up for now. This makes it easy.”
“Before we go…” Lisette said. “I am troubled by the words spoken by the creature. Do you think they might be important to keep in mind?”
Ishrin blinked. “…Maybe?”