The north mountain was rockier and had fewer trees than the slopes closer to Neverspring. Psycho was in the lead, his head on a swivel, constantly checking in with Snowy to see if she sensed anything. Jasper had calmed down since the violent sled chase and his “near death” experience. He had informed the group that the next encounter was with a harmless snowman used for comic relief.
Psycho wasn’t taking any chances. The trolls were supposed to be harmless and cute. But they had nearly died from that attack. This snowman might be funny in the children’s version of this tail, but Gandhi was making this run of the module harder. Jace had confided in Psycho that the supreme overseer for this realm had met personally with him, and the clever player had seen multiple instances where Gandhi had increased the difficulty of quests and adventures. However, the AI was fair, and you were usually rewarded if you overcame her challenges.
Psycho understood that Gandhi would influence any module Jace walked into, but he was surprised that special attention was also given to him and Draya. The werewolves and snow trolls were more than just an increase in difficulty. But the ranger took that meddling as assurance that what he needed – a powerful ice core – was waiting for him at the end of this.
Turning his thoughts back to the hostile environment around him, now lit only by starlight, Psycho worried that their next two encounters were supposed to be with living snow creatures. They wouldn’t give off much of a scent, and Snowy couldn’t warn them of their approach. As motion to their right caught the elf’s attention, he realized he was right, as the wolf didn’t even register the intruder.
“Hi, I’m Olaf, and I like . . .”
The group was uniformly startled by the announcement, but Psycho had already let three arrows fly by the time the others had turned to spot the new adversary. It was a squat snowman, no more than four feet tall, with spindly twigs for arms. It had shuffled into view around a thick tree. Psycho’s Rapid Shot attack cut off the introductory statement as all three arrows sunk into his chest in a tight triangular pattern. They passed right through the snow body and embedded into the tree behind him so the tail feathers still poked out of his center snowball.
“Oh, look at that. I’ve been impaled.” His voice showed little concern for the attack, and after another moment of contemplation, the snowman maneuvered forward, leaving the arrows in the tree behind him, the “wounds” in his chest closing up as if they had never been there.
“Hi, I’m Olaf, and I like warm hugs,” he said again, making it through his greeting. Psycho was beginning to agree with Jasper that this character might actually be harmless.
Draya hadn’t come to that conclusion yet. “Hug this!” she cried as she leveled her staff at the creature and released a fire blast. The ball of flame raced 100 feet to the snowman and consumed him. A puff of steam wafted from the attack, and a puddle of water sat on the snowy landscape, quickly turning to ice.
“You killed him!” Jasper cried. “You killed Olaf.”
“I wasn’t going to wait for him to cast some horrible spell on us,” Draya argued, already turning her back on the vanquished foe. “You saw how he was impervious to physical damage. It was the only way.”
“But it was Olaf,” Jasper pleaded. “He’s the main reason anyone even plays this module.”
Psycho managed a chuckle. “Well, that’s not why we’re here. Let’s keep going.” Snowy was still sniffing the air in the melted snowman’s direction, trying to see if there was anything she could detect, but the ranger ushered her along and led Draya further up the slope. Jasper spent a few moments lamenting over the melted character, wondering if he would magically resurrect, but Draya had used dragon fire, and Olaf wasn’t designed to return from that. Jasper shrugged his shoulders and hurried after his group.
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“Marshmallow comes next?” Psycho asked.
It had been ten minutes of hard climbing, but they had found a path that skirted around the mountain's eastern slope, guiding them to the north face where the ice castle should be. The trail had seen a few rockslides, and several ravines opened up on either side of them. Fighting the wind, cold, and unsure footing was hard enough. Psycho was not looking forward to fighting another monster in these conditions.
“Yes,” Jasper confirmed. “He is always hostile. If this module insists on leveling up the difficulty of each encounter, I’m not sure how it will make the snow fiend any worse than it already is.”
“You had to say that out loud,” Draya said, punching Jasper in the arm. “Now, there will probably be two of them.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to . . .”
Psycho held up his hand to silence them. Snowy noticed the elf’s tense posture and sniffed the air again but whined in distress that she still couldn’t sense anything. However, soon they all felt it. A slight tremor shook the ground. Around them, the rocks began to vibrate, and the ranger thought he had found the source of the frequent rockslides. He looked around and saw they were in a prime avalanche position.
“This way,” he whispered, leading the troupe off the path and into a copse of trees on the other side of a large snowbank. The ground here was more level and gave better footing for combat.
Now, the tremors were unmistakable, snow falling from the pines as the approaching monster took each pounding step. The trees parted, and a terrifying beast stuck its head through the branches thirty feet in the air. “Go away!” it shouted, its icy breath washing over the group. Psycho felt himself take damage from the blast.
He felt his arrows would be useless against this beast and drew his sword instead. Draya had been knocked to the snow by the monster’s yell, but she picked herself up quickly as the fiend worked its massive body through the foliage until it stood twenty feet before them. It was mostly snow but had icy claws and knees, frozen spikes protruding from its back and head.
“Go away!” it yelled again, holding off on any further attack.
Draya and Psycho braced themselves against the yell this time, and while they both took damage, neither fell.
“No,” Psycho said and charged. Draya aimed above his head and released a fire attack from her staff. The flames reached the creature first, but other than producing a cry of pain from the beast and melting a thin outer layer of snow, it didn’t do as much damage as the mage had hoped.
Marshmallow was more focused on Psycho, and as the elf drew near, he kicked at him. The ranger’s sword bounced ineffectively off the armored knee, and the soft foot hit him in the chest, throwing him into a nearby pine. With the elf temporarily disposed of, the snow monster turned his attention to the mage.
Draya wasn’t used to one of her attacks doing so little damage, so she changed tactics. After casting the fireball that had used all her natural mana to generate the avalanche, she had turned off her Dragon Scales so the 100 mana her dress gave her each round could go toward regenerating her pool instead of maintaining a spell. Now, she activated two more dragon abilities: Dragon Spirit and Dragon Breath. She hadn’t used the second one except in experimentation but was willing to improvise with the enormous snow fiend so close.
At level 17, she could do slightly more damage if she used her natural abilities than the staff, but it drained her mana, so she didn’t do it often. Now, she opened her mouth and gave the beast before her a taste of its own medicine. Fire spewed from her mouth in a constant stream that she could angle up and down. It didn’t last just one action but the entire round, doing triple the damage a normal spell would.
Marshmallow cried out in pain and stumbled back mightily. His skin melted in a torrent of water and steam. He could no longer maintain his balance and toppled backward, “splashing” into the snow. Draya didn’t watch but ran after Psycho to ensure the elf was okay. He was already climbing from the tree, picking pine needles from his hair.
“Are you okay?” she asked, puffs of smoke escaping her lips.
“Yes, I’m fine. What about the monster?”
“I took care of it,” Draya said as she offered Psycho a hand to stand up from the tree. With her staff in her other hand, she was stronger than the elf.
As he stood, he glanced over her shoulder. “Are you sure about that? I think Marshmallow is made of tougher stuff than the snowman was.”
Draya turned to see a whirlwind of frost and ice hovering over the small lake she had created, sucking up the water and reforming the massive creature. It only took seconds, and soon Marshmallow stood before them again, only now he was made entirely of ice, with spikes jutting from his limbs at all angles like he was an armored berserker dwarf.
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“I said LEAVE!” he shouted again, knocking Draya from her feet.
Psycho kept his footing and charged toward the monster. He was pretty sure his sword was long enough to cut through the fiend’s upper leg, but he had to avoid the kick first. This time, he was ready for it, nimbly rolling under the massive foot, rising to his feet on the other side, and striking hard against the beast’s thigh. Now that Marshmallow was no longer made of snow, the enchanted blade only chipped a few ice shards off. Psycho had to jump out of the way as spikes from the monster’s heels stabbed at him blindly, and the elf rolled to a safer distance.
Draya picked herself up and sensed she still had a few seconds of her Dragon Breath left. The spell lasted ten rounds unless extended by using 100 mana each round. Draya was using her dress’s ability to retain her Dragon Spirit, so she needed to use her breath weapon again before it expired. Once again, she drenched the mammoth creature with a full round of fire. Marshmallow melted, but not completely this time. The enchanted ice took more energy to destroy. Instead, rivers of water flowed down the fiend, forming pools in the snow. Each of them soon had a mini blizzard swirling around them. A few seconds later, half a dozen five-foot-tall ice creatures stood before the mage, hissing and scrapping their ice claws against their body. A few oriented themselves toward Psycho and rushed the elf.
“Not better,” he cried, dodging their attacks and slashing out at them. A bladed weapon was the wrong type against ice constructs, and he only chipped at them. Draya’s blunt staff was better for the task, and after parrying a few ice attacks, she returned the favor and shattered one of the creatures with a critical strike.
Marshmallow observed momentarily, watching his offspring battle these puny characters before joining the fight. Snowy nipped at his heels, but her teeth and claws could do little against his hardened exterior, and her frost spells were useless. Jasper hid in the trees.
Draya sensed the massive foe looming above her, and as she shattered the body of another mini-Marshmallow, she glanced up at him. He was thinner now after her attack, and she thought that it might be a good idea to melt him down slowly and deal with the more manageable babies. But the remains of the two smaller monsters she had defeated swirled about into the air and rejoined with the larger construct, increasing his girth and strength.
One round of the Dragon Breath remained, and Draya unleashed it at Marshmallow again. She aimed it only at the creature’s right leg this time, guiding the fire up and down the long appendage. When the spell expired, the limb was gone, and the monster toppled to one side. Four more of the smaller creatures formed, but Marshmallow couldn’t rise.
Draya rushed over to help Psycho, who had managed to hack apart one of the three enemies. Draya flanked another and brought a crushing blow down on its head. This allowed Psycho to focus on only one of the monsters, and a few critical strikes later, it was reduced to shards on the ground. The remains also swirled about magically and whisked off to their ancestor. Instead of reforming on Marshmallow’s chest from where they had come, they went to the injured leg, and already, the giant monster was almost able to stand.
“How do we kill this thing?” Psycho yelled, turning to find Jasper, but the fighter was out of sight.
“Chop off his leg and drop him down a chasm,” came the reply from inside a nearby pine.
“Not going to work,” Psycho said to Draya. “Maybe when he was mostly snow, but he’s too strong now.”
“Sorry about that,” Draya replied. Her Dragon Breath ability had expired, and she couldn’t cast it again until the next combat mode.
The four newly formed ice creatures were rising and approaching the pair. Snowy tackled one and brought it to the ground. The other three paused to regard this new adversary, but as the wolf’s teeth crunched the ice to shards, they decided Psycho and Draya were better targets.
“Can you hold them off for a minute?” Draya asked, an idea forming in her head.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, my weapon isn’t designed to cut through ice.”
“Use arrows,” she suggested. “Fire should slow them down.”
The elf nodded and pulled his elemental bow. “What are you going to do?”
“Try to work some magic,” she replied. “In a minute, lead Marshmallow over that hill.” Draya pointed back toward the trail they had been on. “Make sure Snowy and Jasper are with you.”
The elf nodded and ran in the opposite direction of Draya. The smaller ice creatures had just been about to pounce on the pair and decided to follow the elf instead. Psycho used his Rapid Fire ability to hit the first creature in line with three fire arrows. While the piercing weapon did almost no damage to the enemy, three blasts of 60 fire damage counted double against the cold foe, and it melted in place. The other two played hide and seek in the trees while Snowy finished chewing on her opponent.
Psycho watched as the remains of the two fallen creatures magically fluttered through the air in a gust of frosty wind and reformed the rest of Marshmallow’s leg. The beast stood up and roared. Psycho put three flaming arrows in his mouth.
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Draya returned to the trail in seconds, nearly slipping on a patch of ice. She came a few feet short of tumbling into the deep canyon bordering the ledge, grabbing onto a trunk whose branches didn’t start until they were ten feet off the ground. Once stable, she examined the tree, searching for a hole or hollow knot. Not finding one, she moved along the border of the canyon to the next pine. Five trees later, she found what she wanted and silently apologized to any animal living inside. She shoved her staff into the hole and released a fireball. The circumference of the trunk exploded into a shower of splinters, and the tree teetered for a few precious moments before it toppled down over the path and across the chasm. It sagged in the middle, but the wood didn’t break, and with fifteen feet of the tree safely on the other side of the gap, she felt confident it wouldn’t move.
Draya walked around the fallen tree and looked down into the canyon, her eyes straining in the darkness. With an elf as a companion, she could borrow his low-light vision, but only if he was in the same area. Still, the bright snow around her reflected the starlight above, and she could take a mental picture of the entire landscape. Once she had what she wanted, the mage rolled her eyes into her inventory, found her spell book, and got to work.
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Psycho and Snowy played hide and seek with the remaining two miniature ice fiends until the elf could get a clear shot at one of them, and the wolf tackled the other. Marshmallow was back to full strength and stomped through the branches, looking for the elusive characters. In his search, he flushed out Jasper and bellowed with glee as he identified a weaker player. An ice blast knocked the human from his feet, and as the monster marched toward him, Snowy ran up, grabbed the player by his collar, and dragged him back into the safety of the trees.
“We need to go now,” Psycho said once Jasper dusted the snow from his body. It had found its way down his shirt during the trip, and he knew he would be wet for the rest of the adventure. “Draya has a plan.”
“Where?” Jasper asked, moving deeper into the trees as Marshmallow stomped closer.
“Back the way we came.”
“Then let’s hurry,” Jasper stammered, looking up into the treetops, expecting to see the icy face looming down at them at any moment.
“The big guy has to come too,” Psycho replied.
As if on cue, the flimsy pines above them parted, and Marshmallow leered down at them. “Why won’t you listen?” he yelled. “You need to go!”
“Catch us,” Psycho taunted and then took off the way Draya had run. Jasper and Snowy were on his heels. The monster should have been able to catch them, but the tall trees slowed him down while the shorter characters moved beneath most of the branches. Psycho emerged from the trees first and slowed as he approached the path, weary of the slippery surface and the gorge beyond. Only it wasn’t there.
Instead, he saw Draya standing on the middle of a fallen tree, burning off several larger branches. The tree lay on a wide patch of snow that filled the canyon. Looking to his left and right, he saw the treacherous gorge in the dim light, but it looked like Draya had brought down another avalanche and filled this section. Psycho hadn’t heard anything; something this large should have produced a tremendous noise. The elf started to walk out to her on the snow, but she happened to look up.
“No! Psycho, don’t! You need to walk on the tree!”
He halted with one foot out over the snow and stepped back. Was it not stable? Behind him, Snowy came bounding out of the trees with Jasper slipping and tripping behind her.
“Stop them!” Draya cried.
Psycho did as he was instructed. Snowy’s claws dug into the ice and didn’t need help, but Jasper was practically skiing down the short slope to the path, and the elf turned and caught him.
“You need to walk on the tree,” Draya called. “Trust me, and hurry.”
They could all hear Marshmallow trailing through the woods behind them and didn’t need to be told twice. Psycho leaped to the fallen tree first and saw bits of burned branches where Draya had tried to clear a walkable path. The ranger added his own touch, using his sword to remove several bigger branches as he ran across.
Snowy was hot on his heels, and her large frame bent the thin trunk as she neared the other side, but the tree held. Jasper was slower and was only halfway across when Marshmallow burst out of the trees. His ice feet found perfect traction on the terrain, and he stopped short to evaluate the scene. He patrolled the mountain continually and was familiar with this area as most adventurers came this way. His primitive brain couldn’t properly discern how one could fill this gorge with snow without him hearing it. But when he saw Jasper trembling halfway across the tree, he didn’t question his vision further.
The monster stepped out onto the snow and fell straight through.
Once there was sufficient evidence that the landslide wasn’t real, all the characters saved against the spell, and the illusion vanished, leaving Jasper desperately clinging to the tree over a chasm that appeared bottomless in the darkness of night. To make it worse, as Marshmallow fell past him, his icy claws lashed out of the tree, spinning it slightly so the human now hung from the branches, his feet dangling in the open air. He watched as the snow fiend fell away from him into the darkness, and he cried in terror.
“Help me! My hands are slipping!”
“Can’t you just shoot him and be done with it?” Draya asked, growing increasingly impatient with the pathetic player. There had been a time when she didn’t want to cause anyone harm. But she had heard enough from Psycho and Jasper that this “module” they were in was another sort of “game,” and she wasn’t overly concerned for the human’s wellbeing.
“No,” Psycho said. “Then we would just have to start over.” He turned to the wolf. “Snowy, please go get him.”
A minute later, the familiar finished dragging the human off the tree, each step punctuated with an “Ow! That hurts!” Jace’s friends gave the fighter a few moments to collect himself.
“Actually,” the ranger said. “I think we need to be on that side.” He pointed back the way they had come.
As Psycho and Draya moved back up onto the fallen tree, Jasper swore. Snowy looked up at him and whined a question. “No,” he said begrudgingly. “I can do it myself.”