At night, the temperature was what could only be described as frozen. Even with the enhanced constitution that the system gave people of higher levels, Faye was not sure that she would survive the night with all her extremities intact. Frostbite seemed like it might be a real problem.
To combat the cold and take their mind off the invasive numbness that spread with the nightfall, they had started a larger fire than normal. They had stopped to camp in a wooded area so there would be plenty of wood.
“S-so, do y-you think they’ll do w-what we suggested?” Faye asked Gavan as she held out her hands to the blazing fire. She was not sure what she preferred, the stinging burns of being too close to the fire or the stinging cold of being too far away. “Also, t-this is awful.”
Gavan did not reply for a while, his teeth were chattering much worse than Faye’s had been. But soon he plucked up the energy to respond.
“They should,” he said, between chattering breaks. “That teleportation stone is a major problem.”
“What will the Administrator do, do you suppose?”
“No idea. If it were me, I would leave it sealed until we had our food situation under control.”
Faye considered the stone to be incredible. Compared to the stone of recall that she had used, the platform was capable of so much more… if it was made to work for them rather than go to some random laboratory.
“Do you think that the Primalists laid the stone?”
“No, it was not the kind of thing I expected from them. I think they stumbled across it.”
She snorted. “Pretty lucky stumble.”
Gavan was about to say something else, but Faye’s [Mana Sense] pricked at the back of her mind. She surged to her feet, throwing open her cloak and drawing her sword in a single movement, igniting mana that she had already surrounded the blade with.
The monster that had stalked them to their camp was already halfway into the clearing, its almost silent approach betrayed by the mana it was using to mask its steps.
Faye slashed out with [Blades of Flame], causing the projectile to intercept the monster’s leap. It was a dark predatory cat, but it was subtly wrong, as if its proportions had been taken by a child and elongated somehow.
It screeched and tried to evade her fire, but the arc was too wide and it clipped its shoulder despite its attempts. It had diverted to the side to avoid the spell, and that meant it was now standing partway in the open and Gavan was able to launch a spray of [Ice Shard]s that penetrated its hide in multiple spots.
The notification ding in her mind came immediately.
Congratulations! Your group has defeated a level 16 [Night Stalker].
Experience shared.
Faye’s eyes darted left and right. So far, the thicket was quiet, nothing seemed to move.
Gavan’s chattering teeth sounded before he spoke. “It was impatient.”
“Maybe it feels the cold as badly as we do,” she replied, with her cloak open to allow for normal movement the cold was invading her body rapidly. The fire at her back did barely anything to stop it, either.
“Perhaps,” the mage replied.
They waited. Faye’s sword blared with light, but it was her [Mana Sense] she was relying on. There were small flares of mana out amongst the trees, and further afield than that, but none were coming closer.
Sooner than she would have liked, Faye allowed the flames on her sword to peter out so she could sheath it. She turned back to the fire and huddled down near it, almost burning herself but welcoming the painful warmth regardless.
“There is one option,” Gavan said, “but we tended not to use it often because it blocks our vision as much as it offers protection.”
Faye was letting the shivers take over her body, temporarily, because holding herself still against the cold was giving her cramps in her back.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I can create a shelter out of [Ice Wall], which creates a space we can heat.”
“Do it.”
Gavan nodded. “Yeah, I was going to whether you wanted to or not,” he said, his teeth chattering.
A few moments later and with a burst of icy air that made Faye moan in discomfort, four walls surrounded their fire. The light reflected in the facets of the ice to create a bright interior. Then, with a small gesture, Gavan created two sloped walls for a roof. There was a thin gap between the two, which allowed the smoke from the fire to escape.
“Why don’t we do this every night?” she asked. Already, she felt better without the slight wind that sent icy daggers through her whenever it gusted through the trees.
“Because if someone, or something, wanted to, they could wait outside the walls and ambush us the moment we drop it.”
Faye scowled. “People would do that?”
Gavan nodded. “Some people would do pretty much anything.”
“Well,” she said, “before you take it down, can’t we cut a small peep hole first?”
“A ‘peep hole’? Why do you call it that?”
Faye’s mind blanked. “I have no idea.”
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Gavan shook his head. “Well, yes, we could. That might work against certain enemies. For others, it alerts them to where you will leave.”
“Well,” Faye said, shivering in delight as the warmth of the fire was finally captured and radiated back at them, “I think I can risk someone finding us in the middle of this frozen hellscape for a chance to be warm tonight.”
“My hands are tingling,” Gavan said, shaking them out. “I have not come that close to frostbite, before.”
Faye pulled another log out of their pile of semi-frozen firewood and put it on the roaring flames. The fire snapped and popped as she disturbed the embers, and she ignited a small portion of mana to ensure that it did not die out.
They both huddled close to the fire and talked about the spells Faye wanted to learn. She had a strong desire to learn how to heal as soon as possible, and Gavan thought that as their primary attacker she needed more offensive options.
“I’m not disagreeing,” she said, “but I do think it’s more important to make sure that if you’re hurt I can get you back up to full speed than it is for me to be able to kill more people. Anyway, I thought you wanted to give up the support role to me!”
Gavan chuckled. “I will be honest, giving you the means to take over a support role in the team would have been a best-case scenario for me, yes. I have been playing a role that was not meant for me almost the entire time I have been with the others.”
“That must have been frustrating,” she said.
“No,” he said, but Faye heard the undertone.
She did not push him on it.
“So, why the sudden change in heart?” she prompted.
Gavan sighed. “Because it no longer makes sense. It would curtail your progression too much. You are not a mage, nor does your class seem to lend itself to support well.”
Faye shrugged. “We don’t know that.”
“We do,” he said, with a shake of his head, “your attribute spread proves that. Support roles lean much more heavily into the non-aggressive attributes.”
Faye frowned. “The attributes aren’t offensive or defensive, though. They’re neutral.”
“Toughness makes you harder to hurt,” Gavan retorted, “I’m fairly sure that means defensive.”
She shook her head. “No, being harder to hurt, more resistant to attacks, that means you can wade into the melee more easily. It’s someone without toughness that has to stay back and worry about what they will do when someone comes for them. Basic healer problems.”
Gavan narrowed his eyes. “What makes you say that?”
“Well, it just makes sense, doesn’t it? You take out the enemy healers first.”
“You do?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, “take out their healers and they can’t keep their fighters in the fight. They have to leave the moment they’re hurt too badly to carry on. They definitely can’t recover after a fight. Battles in my world were often won or lost on who thought they would take the most casualties without a single blow falling.”
“That is not the conventional wisdom, here,” Gavan said. “Whilst there are some doctrines that might suggest what you say, the general sense from most people is that attacking the person who can heal themselves as you attack them is the losing proposition, as their allies can cut you down whilst you are distracted.”
Faye thought about it for a moment and nodded. “I can see how that would happen.”
“That’s the job of someone like Ailith,” Gavan said, holding out his hands, “a hulking guardian standing in front of you with a shield, taking up your attention, so that someone like Arran can come at you from the side.”
“But, in that scenario, the person Ailith is distracting, and the person who Arran attacks, has a healer as well. That means his attack is negated by their healing. Then, if the attacker gets past the guardian distraction, they can deal damage that is effective.”
Gavan grinned. “That’s part of the battlefield tactics. There is no one right way, no universal rule for battles amongst crested.”
Faye nodded. “I know, there are also people out there like that poison specialist. They can probably kill you without even coming close to you, if they know where you eat.”
“Aye,” Gavan said, darkly. “Poison masters are… often mistrusted.”
The fire was doing its job nicely, the air inside the ice walls was cosy enough that Faye felt comfortable opening her cloak and removing her hood. As she took the hood down, she had a sudden thought.
“Are there illegal classes?”
Gavan opened his eyes, she was not sure when he had closed them, and thought about it for a second before shaking his head.
“None that are explicitly illegal, no. There are plenty that will get you on a watch list, or that the Guild might try to… control, though. Are you thinking of that poison mage still?”
“Yes, and no,” she replied. “What about certain types of magic. Death magic?”
“Gods,” he said with an exaggerated shiver — though it was possibly a real one, “what makes you want to know about death magic, of all things. Is the ability to burn someone alive not enough for you?”
He had said it in a jesting manner but for a moment, Faye could only think about the people she had literally burned alive. She swallowed thickly.
“Nope, no, sorry I am just thinking of stories from home. Like the mage that can raise the dead, being vilified and chased out of towns. The mind-controller that gets mobbed and beaten. You know, the kinds of spells or abilities that are open to abuse.”
Gavan made a thoughtful face and shrugged. “All spells and all abilities can be abused, Faye. It’s about the person using them, rather than the ability itself. There are awful, horrible human beings that have had classes like healer who used their ability to heal the body to destroy it instead. With the right application of will, anything can be deadly, or seem evil.”
Faye nodded. “It makes sense.”
Just then, something started scrambling against the [Ice Wall] behind them and they both turned instinctively to look. The vague shape of something dark on the other side made the light shift and reflect in odd ways, but there was no way to tell what it was. Faye assumed it was another night stalker.
They were going to ignore it, but then with a start, they heard more scuffles and scrambling nails against the ice on the other side, and then another direction, and another.
The first set had climbed high enough to be above them, but the sound died out as it stopped madly scrambling for height.
Faye drew her sword, just in case the cat-like monster could slip through the narrow space Gavan had left for airflow.
She followed the progress of the shape and quiet sounds across the roof, waiting for it to reach the top of the two slopes. She did not want to miss it squeezing in when she was not looking.
Which is how they were blind-sided by something huge slamming into the wall behind them, sending alarmingly loud cracks spider-webbing across the surface of the [Ice Wall].
Faye spun to see the damage at the same time as Gavan, but her [Mana Sense] flared and she carried on her turn, changing it into a spin so that she could bring her sword back around to swing through the air above the fire.
The falling night stalker let out a curdling screech of rage as it dropped to the floor, but Faye’s sword sliced into its side easily and knocked it off course enough that it landed on its side, opened along its side and losing what should have been blood profusely. The black liquid hissing and spat as it hit the flames of the open fire.
Gavan stretched out his hand and summoned a small [Fire Dart] that he slammed into the head of the beast, killing it.
Congratulations! Your group has defeated a level 17 [Night Stalker].
Experience shared.
As the cat monster died, it let out a croaking sound that every other night stalker appeared to hear as they all started yowling and making a high-pitched screeching wail that seemed to make Faye’s eyesight waver. The beast that had slammed into the wall pounded on it again, spreading the crack a little wider, but it was nowhere near the power of the first hit.
“Alright, now I see why blinding ourselves was not a great idea,” Faye said.
“Normally, I take pleasure in saying ‘I told you so’.”
“Not so much this time?”
“No, not really.”
Faye let her mana seep into her hands and across her blade, imbuing it with extra energy so that it could ignite and stay that way for an hour or more. With the ignition of her blade, she pulled it up into a high guard and looked at the cracked wall.
“I don’t think we’ll be staying here, tonight. Neighbours are too noisy.”
“I will lodge a complaint,” Gavan said, then: “Ready?”
She gathered herself and breathed deeply.
“Aye, bring it on.”