Today, Ingrid was learning two very valuable lessons. The first was that caves were not nearly as straightforward as books made them out to be. She didn’t have the slightest clue where they were, and only recently did she have the idea to try marking walls so that they didn’t get even more lost. It was less effective, given the fact that they didn’t really have a concrete starting point, but it was better late than never. The comforting light from that first tunnel she and Natalia had fallen through was long gone, leaving a dim, floating bulb of light from the illian’s hand as their only method of seeing where they were going. Both of them could see better than a human or esper or orc could in the dark, but it wasn’t comfortable by any means. Plus, given Natalia’s poor eyesight, Ingrid wasn’t sure how much she could see under normal circumstances.

Whenever they could, they tried to follow paths that took them upward, but many of them dipped and curved around lower corners. Ingrid couldn’t even tell if they were actually at a higher altitude than where they’d begun. After traversing the labyrinth for about an hour, Ingrid noticed Natalia starting to slow down. Crashing through the wall of ice had clearly hurt her more than she was willing to let on. Why did her friends have to be so prideful? Even so, she wasn’t going to push her friend further than she was able to go.

“Natalia, should we take a break for a moment? We’ve been searching for a while, it might be good to rest,” she offered, trying not to bring up the limp that hadn’t previously been as noticeable.

“I’m fine,” Natalia grunted, twitching her wings in annoyance. “The sooner we find a real exit, the sooner we can get some proper rest.”

Ingrid clicked her tongue. “That’s true, but I don’t think that we’ll be able to do that if we push ourselves too hard. Even the ice in the cave has been getting more prevalent as we’ve gone on. Making sure there isn’t a repeat of my mistake earlier would be good, yes?”

“I don’t see a massive foggy abyss here. I must have missed it,” she said dryly.

“I was more referring to slipping and falling in general, not specifically off of a cliff.”

“Ingrid, I’m fairly certain that falling on a patch of ice wouldn’t be anything more than a nuisance to either of us.”

“Well, yes, but–”

“Why are you so adamant about this? Let’s just keep going alri–”

“You’re hurt, you’re covering it up, and you’re trying to keep moving when clearly you need a break!” she snapped. Her heart dropped. She definitely hadn’t meant to say that.

“I told you I’m fine. I want to get out of here so we can get some actual rest!”

Ingrid took a deep breath, steeling herself. “We can’t get out of here at all if you push yourself even further! Normal ice is incredibly strong, and this has proven to be something beyond that! You dive bombed for who knows how far, then smashed through an enormous sheet of it!”

“And I can still walk, so I can still move! I’m pissed off about my wing, but I’ve been through wo–”

“I don’t care! We don’t have a proper healer. Sit. Now.”

Natalia glared at her, staring as if she was looking for something. Despite how hard her heart was pounding, Ingrid didn’t let it show.

“Ugh, fine,” she grumbled, slumping to the ground to sit. Clearly, she was irritated, but at least she wasn’t pushing herself.

Ingrid let out a sigh of relief as she plopped down next to her. “I understand wanting to get out. I do too. If you make your injuries worse though, it’s going to make everything harder,” she explained. “Not just whatever this mountain has to offer, but this entire trip. We aren’t in a sprint, this is a marathon. If one of us becomes indisposed now, we may not be able to finish.”

The other woman didn’t say anything at first, just shifted to rest on her side, letting one of her wings spread out on the ground. “I don’t like that you’re right,” she grumbled.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Being right.”

Natalia winced, letting out an amused huff. “Alice is rubbing off on you,” she mused, a smile already beginning to return to her face. “I have been told that I can be a little… stubborn, at times like this.”

“Who told you that?” Ingrid tilted her head in curiosity.

“Let’s just say a man I looked up to greatly. I’d prefer to leave it at that.”

“I understand. Not everyone is willing to divulge every little piece of their lives. It would be rude to force you.”

There was another beat of silence.

“You bounce back and forth quite a bit, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

Natalia cracked her neck, a shiver going down her good wing. “I mean there are times where you’re timid as can be, and others where you’re far more assertive. What’s that about?”

Ingrid clicked her tongue, looking down at her boots. Natalia hadn’t even met her until she started advocating for herself more. Of course it would look like this to her.

“Well, committing to things is something I’ve always struggled with. For a while, I tended to just try to avoid conflict on principle. I still do, but disagreements are inevitable. I’ve been trying to make decisions more and stick with them, as well as taking more charge of the group. Does that make sense?”

Her companion nodded. “It does. If you decide upon a course of action, you should be able to stick to it. Even if others try to dissuade you.”

“Well, not entirely. They may have valid points in those attempts. Regardless, I believe Alice’s advice has had merit. Particularly in combat. I don’t believe I’ve had many opportunities to follow it in our time here. We’ve been saddled with a fairly direct path. It’s a little infuriating at times, but I’m trying to make the best of it I can,” she explained, sighing. Just thinking about the mess they’d gotten themselves into made her feel tired.

Natalia raised an eyebrow. “That was… Alice’s advice?”

“Yes, why do you ask?”

The illian furrowed her brow, looking deep in thought for a moment. “Well, if I speak candidly, are you going to be irritated? You showed care for my well being,” she gestured to her leg and wing. “I might as well be mindful of yours.”

“Um, I suppose I appreciate it. I think if it’s something that will irritate me though, it might be best to hold off on it. I should be fine as things are.”

Natalia paused. “Okay you know what? I’m not letting you give that to me after your whole speech about me doing that.”

Ingrid opened her mouth to retort, but quickly retracted. “Alright, that’s fair. Do you really think this is that important?”

“It might be. It depends,” she shrugged. “But don’t you think Alice has been a little hypocritical with that bit of advice?”

“What do you mean?”

She thumped her wing awkwardly. “Admittedly, I’m more of a ‘new’ addition to your group, so I’m not entirely sure how things were before. Still, if she told you to be more decisive, get a better handle on our group, et cetera, hasn’t she been the one going off and doing things on her own without checking with anyone?”

“That isn’t true! She always lets me know when she does something, or has an idea!” Ingrid shot back. Her lover was anything but a hypocrite! She’d shown nothing but the utmost care for her, what reason would she have to go back on her own word?

“Alright, I’m not doing this to jab a spear into your relationship,” Natalia assured her. “But in Kydanthus, she pickpocketed without telling you, brought us to that shady bar, and–”

“The bar was an idea that she told us about. Also, once we had finished, I was the one who made the call to rest in the city for a day. She didn’t argue.”

Natalia’s wing twitched. “Okay, I’m going to let that slide. Do not interrupt me. Again though, she didn’t inform you of her pickpocketing. Then proceeded to do it again, which got us caught, then daisy chained us into this mess.”

“Maybe she didn’t, but we needed money! She was only doing what she had to do!”

“Did she check with us beforehand? There were plenty of other things we could have done for money. You or Malori could have offered healing services, we could have checked for a mercenary bulletin, hell we could have sold off excess gear or offered Kallen’s disgusting fucking ogre strength. There’s plenty of manual labor that requires brute force. We had options. She didn’t give us the time to explore them.”

Ingrid’s head started to spin. What the other woman was saying made sense, but it shouldn’t have. That heart to heart with Alice by the fire should have dealt with some of this. Alice wouldn’t go back on her word, would she? She shook her head. Of course she wouldn’t! That was her lover, the woman who had proven more than once that she’d go to any length to show that. She wouldn’t lie about something like this. Ingrid felt ashamed for even entertaining the thought.

“We were trying to keep a low profile, any of those things would have drawn unwanted attention!”

“And getting arrested didn’t? I think this is literally the most attention we could have drawn. That argument is a moot point,” Natalia huffed. She furrowed her brow at Ingrid. “What about now? Colette told us to stay put, yet here we are. You were the one that wanted to listen to her.”

Ingrid looked away. “Alice must have had her reasons for that. Besides, you agreed with her.”

“I did, that doesn’t make what happened less relevant. Rather than supporting your decisions, she talked you out of them because of a petty hatred for the Archmage for some reason that none of us will probably find out.”

What was the point of this? Why was she trying to pick apart everything that Alice did? Weren’t they supposed to be on good terms with each other? This certainly seemed like the opposite. She doubted Natalia was trying to drive a wedge between them. If she was actually hell bent on splitting the group so she could get Amalthea to declare war, multiple golden opportunities had already passed. The thought made her more anxious. It made the prospect of her words being genuine that much more likely. Even still, Natalia said herself that she was a new addition to the group. She didn’t know Alice like Ingrid did. Despite it all, it was still the same Alice. Nothing would change that.

The silence dragged on even longer, neither daring to break it while they sorted out their own thoughts. Soon, they were likely going to have to get up and continue their desperate search for an exit.

Natalia sighed, breaking the silence. “Look, I meant it when I said I didn’t want to cause a problem. No offense, but you haven’t seen much of the world. You haven’t met others or seen these situations before. I have. I don’t want to see another naive, hopeful person find themselves in a net they can’t crawl out of until it’s too late. I don’t think Alice is malicious. She might not even realize she’s doing it. Just give it some thought, okay?”

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Ingrid clicked her tongue as she rose to her feet. “Let’s just keep moving.”

There was another beat of silence before Natalia made any motion to get up. She let out a long sigh. “Okay.”

The ice was getting thicker. What had previously been normal caves with bits of ice around stalactites and puddles was quickly becoming a dense coating of pale blue on the walls, ceiling, and floor. Ingrid found herself forgetting when the last time she had seen actual stone was, and wondering if they were simply walking through the tunnels of a glacier. As breathtaking a sight it was, she couldn’t afford time to focus on it. Every step was a struggle to force her boots into the ice, slowing progress to an agonizing crawl. It was maddening. The only silver lining she could find was the constant focus on each individual step made it easy to get her mind off of what Natalia had said. They’d continued on in silence since that break, neither daring to be the first one to speak.

It was a blessing she was beyond thankful for. The thought of such things being said about the love of her life was enough to make her blood boil. Even with that in mind, she knew Natalia was truthful when she said she didn’t want to drive a wedge between them. That knowledge made it significantly easier to keep pushing forward into the tunnels without having intrusive thoughts eating away at her.

Marking intersections and walls was getting far more difficult as they continued. The ice became stronger, and it was much harder to see marked sections at a glance against the pale backdrop. Their uneventful march was soon interrupted as Ingrid slipped once more. This time, she was able to catch herself with her second ice pick without much issue. It wasn’t the first time either of them had slipped when walking through the icy tunnels, but the sound was noticeably different. An echo reverberated through the tunnels from up ahead. She glanced back at Natalia.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yes, there’s definitely a room up ahead. Do you think it’s another one of those bigger intersections?”

She shook her head. “Those weren’t nearly as loud. This may be an actual one.”

The statement had as much hope as it had dread. On one hand, having a landmark to navigate around was practically a gift from the gods. On the other, why was it there in the first place? Excitement or desperation pushed them forward. She couldn’t tell which. The volume of their footsteps increased as they approached, the cracking of ice at their feet echoing off of whatever lay ahead.

Already the tunnels had been surprisingly spacious, with enough room to comfortably fit either far larger or far more creatures within. Exiting out into the massive, icy room however was enough to give her vertigo. Attempting to look up at the high ceiling almost caused her to fall backwards. The room was an enormous cylinder, rising up into the sky for hundreds of feet until Ingrid wasn’t sure if she could even see the top.

“What the hell am I looking at?” Natalia breathed, just as awestruck as Ingrid.

The sense of awe was short-lived.

“Shit!” Ingrid let out a high pitched yelp as she turned around, falling flat on her backside as her heart jumped into her throat.

“What? What’s wro–Oh,” the other woman murmured, seeing what had caused such a reaction.

In front of Ingrid was a creature nearly as big as the leader of the skolopen they’d fought. An alarmingly thin quadrupedal form, each limb having three separate joints along them. At the ends of the unsettlingly long limbs were three curved claws, each twice the length of Alice’s dagger. No eyes were visible on its round head, giving it the appearance of a faceless humanoid, pale gray skin pulled taut across its spindly form. In fact, the head had no features at all; only a large mouth open to reveal rows and rows of razor sharp teeth. Said mouth was open wide enough to fit Ingrid’s entire torso inside, its two front limbs outstretched to grab whatever lay in front of it.

“What is that?” Natalia asked, placing a hand against the block of ice it was encased in. “What are… any of these?”

“Could you hold on a moment so that my heart stops beating out of my chest?” Ingrid chuckled nervously, clutching her shirt. The spindly creature was far from the only thing encased in the wall of ice. Creatures of all sizes and types were frozen in from ahools to mammoths to even a giant or two. It was like looking at a colossal trophy room. “If it matters, I believe this is a ghoul… but there are just as many things I’ve never seen or heard of before. Where did they all come from?”

Natalia ran her fingers along the wall, closing her eyes. Lingering on a few cracks and gashes, she furrowed her brow. “It goes without saying, that these things probably weren’t all in the wall when they were frozen. But…” she placed a hand in front of the ghoul, and another against the floor. Her hands started to glow with magic, heating up both chunks of ice. She pulled her hands away, revealing the difference in the two blocks. They’d both refrozen almost immediately, but significantly more of the floor had been burned away than the ghoul’s prison. “It’s older. Like they were moved from a different location. Clearly they’ve been frozen for a long time. Around the mountain though? In here? It’s fresh, even if it has an annoying habit of freezing itself back over.”

Carefully rising back to her feet, Ingrid cast another glance around the room. There was another tunnel on the far end, but the walls were pockmarked with several more of them. Why would there be caves that lead into a drop that big?

She stopped.

A lump began to rise in her throat as she finally began to realize the implications of everything they’d seen. Enormous creatures encased in ice. Apex predators fleeing like their lives depended upon it. Supernaturally powerful ice. Tunnels carved through the mountain, complete with exits into open air.

The low rumbling from above them quickly communicated her realization to Natalia. Despite its size, the room shook under the enormous steps. A hulking form lumbered into view in the mouth of one of the caves, about thirty feet above the floor. Pale blue and stark white scales lined the massive front legs, with a gray coating of them on its underside. All across its back were spikes that looked as though they were made from the ice, becoming more predominant the closer they were to the creature’s head, crowning the front of its snout with a thick horn. Red, predatorial eyes peered down at them as frigid air expelled from its nostrils. As the enormous wings rose up, veins of light blue visible through the membranes and flecked with more chunks of ice, there was no mistaking what she was looking at.

A dragon.

“Time to move!” Natalia bellowed, grabbing her arm and making a sprint for the tunnel on the other side of the room.

The dragon roared, causing the entire room to shake from the sheer volume. Opening its jaws, a jet of frost shot at them like one of Natalia’s beams. Barely thinking, Ingrid thrust her staff down, calling upon the stone buried beneath the layers of ice. A wall of rock shot upwards, sending shards of frozen material exploding outwards as it managed to block the dragon’s breath. The wall quickly began to turn white with frost, before shattering under the force of a swipe from the dragon’s claws. Ignoring the pain of debris slamming into her back, Ingrid kept up running after the illian.

“How are we supposed to get away?” she cried frantically. It was a better question than how they were going to slow down on sheer ice.

“You think I know?”

Another deafening roar was enough to make Ingrid’s teeth chatter. In front of both of them, the ice rose up like a wave until it formed a solid wall, blocking their escape. Natalia’s wings spread out, glowing golden with light as she dove forward. In a blur of motion, she struck the ice, instantly melting a hole through it. The piercing sound of metal upon ice rang through the tunnels as she tried to catch herself, only barely succeeding. Ingrid managed to jump through the new hole before the wall slammed back to the ground. Another explosion of ice sliced through her arm, sending a searing pain through her entire body.

The nimble steps of the enormous monster shook the room, threatening to make Ingrid stumble and fall. Dragging her staff along the ground, she channeled her magic just like she had when breaking into Berith’s camp. She forced her hands apart, tearing a small tunnel open on the far wall before the larger one curved.

“In there! Get ready to catch me!”

“The hell does that mean?”

She didn’t answer. Natalia had a significant lead on her, giving her more than enough time to rush into the passage and turn to face her. Running as fast as she could, Ingrid leapt forward. Pain exploded from her knees as she landed on them, her momentum sending her skidding across the ice as she turned around. The dragon was alarmingly close, its slavering jaws threatening to tear her completely in half. Thrusting her arms forward, four columns of stone pierced through the ice and shot forward to block the dragon’s path. They only succeeded in slowing it down for another moment, but it was enough. As soon as she felt the scraping of her crampons against rock rather than ice, she threw herself backwards, bringing a hand up to block the entrance to the passage with another wall of stone. There was a grunt from behind her as Natalia caught her before she lept back to her feet. Straining her magic, she summoned another series of walls to further block off the entrance.

Realizing they actually had a brief moment to rest, Ingrid slumped back into the wall, sliding down it until she was sitting on the floor panting.

“What the hell kind of luck is this?” Natalia sighed as she crumpled to the ground, nursing her bad wing.

“I thought it hurt to move that wing at all?”

“It does.”

The sound of rock and stone being destroyed quickly made itself known. The dragon was digging after them. Ingrid let out a defeated groan as she struggled to her feet, her entire body feeling sore for a million different reasons.

“We need to keep going. It’s going to catch up to us if we stay put.”

“What a pain,” the illian grumbled as she forced herself up. “Which way do we go?”

“I don’t know. We have to go quickly though, we only have so much air in a space like this.”

“I hate this damn mountain.”

As they were running, there had been a tunnel off to the right that seemed about level with the one they’d rushed into. With no other ideas, Ingrid began parting more and more stone, hoping to navigate her way to an open cave before both of them suffocated in a rocky prison. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus harder. Even after all they’d faced, stone shaping was still much more of a struggle than working with plants. Plants were living things, she could communicate with them. At the very least, she could detect where exactly the dragon was. The answer was closer than she wanted it to be.

Focusing her mind solely on the stone in front of her, she hoped that it might come to her more easily, but her injuries and exhaustion were getting in the way. She could feel her progress starting to slow down. There wasn’t any time for a rest to recover her energy though, unless she was alright with the idea of being dragon food. She very much wasn’t.

Slow progress was still progress. She furrowed her brow as she pushed forward. It was an odd sensation, like an image coming into focus. The open tunnel was close. Wait, how did she know that?

“Everything alright?” Natalia asked.

“Yeah! Um, yes, I mean. I was just startled by something,” she lied. Something felt off. The dragon was still attempting to dig in behind them, but it felt like there was another consciousness present. It was far too vague to grasp though, like it was staying in the far corner of her periphery no matter what direction she looked. Was it telling her where to go?

Confused and slightly concerned, she began moving towards the opening she felt. It was another few minutes, but the rock seemed slightly easier to shift. She felt almost energized as she parted their burrow into another sheet of ice. Resealing the new entrance, she forced the stone forward rather than apart, breaking through the sheet. Both women took a deep breath of the fresh air, thankful to be out of the stuffy passage. Ingrid was so ecstatic she didn’t even question where the air was actually coming from.

“Okay, that probably bought some time,” Natalia huffed, glancing hopefully at Ingrid. “Don’t suppose you have any other bright ideas? That wasn’t sarcastic by the way, you just saved our lives.”

Ingrid clicked her tongue. What could they do? There was no way they could fight that thing without Alice and Kallen, and they didn’t have the slightest clue where either of them were. Most of the mountain was far too dense to search for life through, so that was out of the question. She couldn’t even sense the dragon anymore.

“For now, I think all we can do is keep moving and hope it doesn’t find us. We can’t fight it. I’m not even sure if we want to,” she sighed. “We need to find whatever is making the Dark Zone too. I have a feeling the dragon may have something to do with it.”

“You don’t think there’s a dragon at every single one of them do you?”

She stopped. “Let’s survive this one before we start lamenting what comes after. Please?” There was a hint of desperation in her voice.

Natalia pushed her hair back. “That’s probably better. We try to regroup with the other two then, and with any luck, we run into something useful. Gods this sucks.”

Ingrid tried again to focus on the strange presence, but to no avail. It remained just out of reach at all times, just a distant observer. She looked at the forked paths in front of them. One went upwards, while another dipped lower into the mountain. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. Something had offered her guidance before. If she opened her mind, perhaps it would do so again. It must have looked strange to Natalia, suddenly standing completely still with her eyes closed. If it did, the illian didn’t say anything.

The lower path.

Her eyes shot open. Once more she didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t even know why the lower path burst into her mind the way it did. There was an odd pull in her gut telling her to follow it though.

“This way.”

“Down? Shouldn’t we be trying to go higher?”

“I know, it’s just… Something about this. This is the right way.”

“Right way to where?”

Ingrid stopped. She didn’t have an answer to that. There wasn’t even an inkling of what they were heading towards. It just felt right. “I don’t know.”

Not waiting for another response, she started her trek through the cave. Letting out a tired sigh, Natalia followed her.

They made sure to keep a brisk pace. At least, as quick as they could without slipping and crumpling like paper. If they got out of this alive, Ingrid never wanted to see ice ever again. Most of the time she found herself walking without even looking at which path she was taking. It became more instinctive than deliberate, just walking in the direction that felt right. If Alice were here, it probably would have driven her insane. If Natalia was irritated by it, she didn’t make it known. Then again, they didn’t really have much else to go off of. A hunch was at least more than they had had a short while ago.

Something about it didn’t sit right with Ingrid though, even as she continued to follow it. The strange distance that the consciousness had was unsettling. She’d hoped that maybe if she continued to listen, it might at least begin to clear up, maybe give her some inkling of what it was. It was still just as far off and out of sight as it had been in their escape route though, and with no sign of getting any clearer.

It could have been significantly worse. They could have been pursued by the dragon. No matter how badly she wanted to just avoid it, a sinking feeling in her stomach was telling her that the odds of getting out without coming to blows with it were slim to none. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to make another escape burrow like that again. If she could, she wasn’t sure how many more times she could. Something like that was endurance work, and far more difficult than large, singular uses of magical power. Did either her or Natalia even have the strength to fight something the size of her manor? What were they even supposed to–

She stopped, glancing around. The instinctual feeling guiding her had vanished in the blink of an eye. It was jarring, having something be there consistently and then suddenly being gone the next moment. Frantically looking around for some sign of where it might have gone, she saw Natalia tapping on a random section of the wall.

“Ingrid, I think there’s a room behind the ice here,” she called out. “Do you mind breaking it? Melting through the wall is far too slow.”

Bewildered, she walked over to the ice wall, trying to sense the rock on the other side of it. Shifting the stone like putty, she beckoned it forward and scooped the ice out of the way, chunks of it flying by them as they were displaced. Her confusion only multiplied as she moved the rock out of the way. Before them was a small room, definitely sized for a humanoid rather than a dragon. The only object housed within it was the centerpiece of the circular chamber. A small, white box with a ceramic totem rising out of it. Carved around the totem were dozens of magical runes crammed into the tight space. She could feel the overwhelming amount of magic radiating off of it with a dull hum. Natalia was the one to break the silence.

“I think we may have just found one of four.”