I could hear the group as they hurried down the hill. The snow under their shoes crunched as the sound of their laughter filled the air. Echoing off the hills oddly. My face felt like it was both on fire and freezing as I debated digging myself deeper or getting out of wherever I had fallen into.
The decision was made for me as someone yanked on the collar of my shirt. I was pulled up and placed on my feet by someone who didn’t sound at all strained as they pulled off such an awkward lift. “Are you ok?” Michael’s voice sounded as though he was trying to hold back the laughter that threatened to explode out of him. The rest of the group wasn’t so kind. They were all still laughing, even Lance.
Funny how the guy could still laugh at any mistake or situation I found myself in. “I’m fine,” I spluttered as I tried to get the last of the snow out of my mouth. The stuff was cold and gritty and not something I wanted to try swallowing. Who knew what was in the stuff? I had to spit several times to get as much of the melted liquid out as I could.
It was only a few seconds of my doing this that I found that they were still chuckling as they waited for me. Their bemused expressions made me realize what I was doing. While in the real world, I would have to worry about all the chemicals mixed into the snow, such things didn’t exist here. Or it did but it wasn’t nearly as toxic.
That realization alone relaxed something inside of me. It even allowed me to snap at the tiny jabbering voice at the back of my head to shut up. The thing listened to me but only after giving one last verbal jab. This is still a game. You will have to return to reality at some point. It was right, but it didn’t have to remind me of that fact. No matter how much I wished it wasn’t true, I knew that this place was nothing more than a fictional place and that I would have to return to reality sooner or later.
“Watch where you step.” Victor pointed at a fairly smooth portion of snow before lightly tossing something at it. A section of snow the size of my head caved in. “There are places in the snow where ice formed over a hole before more snow piled over it.”
“How far do we have to walk?” I asked as we started up the next hill. My eyes constantly scanned my path for similar-looking sections. Either there were none or I was still missing them because they were suddenly nowhere to be found.
“Probably an hour to get to the barn. Another half hour to get to the edge of the forest.” Michael chuckled as something flew across the group and nailed Lance in the side of the head. The explosion of pure white had me scrambling, looking around to find where the attack had come from.
To my shock, Jeremiah stood off to the side as he casually tossed something in one hand. Without warning, his arm blurred as the white object vanished. Its blurred trail was obscured by the scenery around us. From the sound of someone growling, it had struck Lance, again. “What the hell?” I asked, though, judging by how everyone around me was scrambling along the ground, there was little chance I would get an answer.
Their hands dug into the softly packed powder. Looking almost as if they were all digging a hole to hide in. Still a bit weary of the freezing stuff, I didn’t join them. Instead, I watched as Michael, Linda, Victor, and Patric all skillfully packed balls together.
As if planned out, each of their arms blurred. The packed snow vanished. Three puffs of snow were the only signs of where they had hit. While those three missed, one managed to nail the guy square in the chest. The impact of which was so hard that it caused the guy to slide a foot back before finally causing him to topple to the ground.
The sounds of crunching and scrambling told me that the group wasn’t done. If anything, it sounded like they were just getting started. I chose to ignore the people around me. My eyes were instead locked onto Jeremiah. His body was as still as a statue.
As I watched, the air, which had been fairly still throughout the walk, started to pick up. As it did, it picked up a bit of the powdered snow. This wasn’t something that was all that odd, or at least it happened all the time in movies. I had even seen something similar happen one time when the temperatures dropped well below freezing for a prolonged period of time. Slowly, the snow around Jeremiah started to spin as it started to resemble a dust devil, only made of snow.
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“You really want to add magic to this?” Victor laughed. I turned to look at him, confused as to why he would ask such a thing. That was when I saw just how many snowballs they had gathered. Their arms were loaded. If I had to guess, the only reason they stopped making them was because they would be unable to carry any more. Each of them looked prepared to rain hell down on Jeremiah.
A soft crunching sound behind me caused my head to flick in his direction. Jeremiah stood in the middle of his little snow devil. His long leather coat fluttered around him, looking like it wanted to join the snow in its energetic flight. As I watched, small spheres of snow, no larger than a nickel, formed around him. They grouped together as more of them formed out of thin air. As their numbers increased, the sight resembled that of a carrier and its escort. The balls even managed to get into a v formation.
His smile had me scrambling back. It was wide and maniacal. Not a smile you wanted in someone that was about to attack you. Both groups watched me, making sure that I could get far enough away before lighting the fuse.
The moment I stopped, the battle started. Missiles of snow flew back and forth. They came out of the swirling air around Jeremiah like machine gun pellets as he sprayed his targets. In response, the other side fired their collection. While they were fewer in number, they were much more accurate. Some even manage to explode after intercepting a pellet. The powder hung in the air, taking out quite a few other shots before finally fading.
I watched in utter awe while the shots that made it to the vortex froze in mid-air. Moments later, they practically disintegrated before being reformed into yet more snow pellets. As one, most of the new weapons were launched at Victor who looked to be readying something. Michael yelled and stomped his foot hard. Whatever he did caused a wave of snow from the point of impact. It raced across the distance, growing as it did so.
The wave engulfed the latter half of the missiles, but the rest were too fast. They flashed across the space to where Victor stood. Just before they hit him, he tossed a ball in a random direction. As it hit, he vanished from where he stood and appeared at the impact point.
An impact point that just happened to be behind his target. With a fast spin to gather momentum in Jeremiah’s direction, he threw the last of his ammo. Instead of getting torn apart by the wind, it passed through. Slamming against Jeremiah’s back, causing him to once again stagger.
As the whirlwind stuttered, Patric took advantage. He melted into his shadow only to appear out of a shadow cast by one of his balls. A ball that was just outside the range of Jeremiah’s control.
Suddenly standing just behind Jeremiah, hands full of snow, he dumped it down the guy's back. Jeremiah cried out as he jerked forward. “You asshole. That’s fucking cold.”
“You asked for it.” Patric’s voice was quiet. The only reason I could hear it was the silence of the frozen world around us. Given how he sounded, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the guy was grinning, even as Jeremiah grimaced while he tried to get the snow out from between his shirt and skin.
As the group gathered back together, the rest of them smacked Jeremiah’s back with a fist full of snow. Each of which caused a small explosion and sent snow up under his cowboy hat where it either got stuck in his hair or fell onto his neck. My stomach hurt from just how hard I was laughing as I watched their antics.
Eventually, we resumed our trek through the snow. As we did, Linda tapped the top of my head. It wasn’t because I was shorter than her. Okay, I was shorter than her but not by much. She was sitting on Michael’s shoulder and that was likely the only place she could reach. “What did you think of the fight?”
“It looked fun, though I have no clue how you guys did any of those moves.”
They all chuckled a bit but Jeremiah was the one to speak first as he asked me a question. “So, you know how skills work in most games?” I nodded. Skills were fairly straightforward, though how they reacted with each other could create some interesting, or broken, effects. “Here, the system doesn’t just limit what you apply those effects to.” Jeremiah’s hand waved off anyone that was about to contradict him.“Yes, they will be more effective for the weapon they were built around.” He gestured to Victor, “For example, Victor has skills that he applies directly to the arrows he uses. Technically a snowball is just a very, very dull and short arrow.”
I thought about that. He wasn’t wrong but it just felt, odd. Most games I played required that the player only use sword skills on swords and refused to let them work on anything else. If what he was saying was true then it would open up some interesting, and some stupid, combinations. Combinations that no one could predict. Ones that would allow for players to fight above their weight class. The very idea had me practically salivating for a class. Too bad I had to wait for level ten.
For the next long while, I ignored the rest of the group as I fantasized about various combinations that I knew I would never get to use. I simply justified it as me planning for future fights. But who was I kidding? I was having a blast coming up with ideas.