The Giantspire Mountains were tall, but I hadn’t had much difficulty gliding smoothly above their jagged peaks in my magically enhanced thermal airship. At first, the mountain range seemed to spread endlessly to the north, but the airship made excellent time. With some limited, though crucial, energy shield type protections from the winds above the peaks, I was able to avoid some of the typical challenges inherent to navigating a thermal airship in that type of environment. My personal shielding also prevented me from suffering from the effects of that environment myself, though I just had my awakened constitution to help me with the thin air at that altitude.
In any case, it first came into view as a sort of fuzziness or haze in the distance as I rocketed north over the Giantspires. As I pushed forward, I realized that it was not a haze, it was a storm. The winds swirled with ferocity in a front that crept out to cover the horizon everywhere before me. All the devices and technology and spiritual strength in the world wouldn’t guarantee my safety if I sailed into that tempest. It was a kill screen.
The scale of the storm provided plenty of warning and even at a good clip I had plenty of time to turn my airship around and sail back the way that I came, but I didn’t. Instead I set a course to run parallel to the stormfront and then worked to keep a constant distance from the edge. I tracked my course relative to some recognizable hits in the magic compass field that were still within my range and what I noticed is that I was constantly forced to turn slightly back toward the inhabited portion of the region to maintain my distance from the stormfront. It seemed like it was a straight line, but the edge of the storm front was a radius, at least here. I spent a few days riding this edge and the results were consistent. I was traveling the circumference of a large circle. The storm wasn’t just a kill screen, it was the edge of the map.
This was a very interesting revelation. It wasn't anything definitive, but it raised some intriguing possibilities. It reminded me of what Galan said about looking into the beyond and it being blurry. I assumed it was an analogy, but was Galan being literal? I wanted to talk to him and to Lierin on this topic as soon as possible. Whatever the source of the storm, it undoubtedly required an absolutely massive quantity of magic particles to keep something like that going all the time. The storm cut off the possibility of future exploration beyond the Giantspire Mountains, at least for now, so I used the magic compass to plot a course to Eastern Tear and swung my airship back toward my friends and, hopefully, some answers.
***
Jim and Karen were striking a punishing pace through the Giantspire Mountains. With their physical stats the two of them were holding up well and the daylight sunglasses that they had procured for the climb allowed them to operate as well visually during the night as they could during the day. Kelly lacked raw strength, but was by far the most adept climber among the group, so she was also holding up relatively well all things considered. One would think that Sarah might be a disadvantage in this environment, but her extremely high Intelligence and Charisma were actually the best combination on the team for handling the environment, at least ever since Sarah got the hang of summoning.
Sarah had managed to summon an absolutely monstrous alpine ibex shortly after entering the mountains. Not that the ibex was a monster, it wasn’t corrupted, it was still a natural creature, though one with a high magic affinity that had also grown physically huge. Sarah had been getting a free ride through the rocky terrain courtesy of the beast, who she had named “Rocky.” Rocky was good with the party due to his bond with Sarah, but he was still territory, so the team was also getting some free ground based combat support. Rocky gave anything that got too close on the ground a good shove with both horns. Needless to say, they weren’t approached from the ground very often.
For what came from above, they had Sarah. Her red magic had come along almost as well as her summoning. She rotated fire and lightning based magic to devastating effect against threats from the air and could provide support magic, including white magic, when Karen was too busy bashing heads to heal. They were camping just below their final ascent to the sacred spring when they faced their first major challenge.
Kelly was keeping watch in the light of a small fire fueled by a magical device discharging a magic crystal. This was the lightest weight way to have access to instant fire on their climb, but it also ensured that there were plenty of shadows to support Kelly’s stealth skill. As a result, Kelly was undetectable as the ice elementals began to pour into the camp. The elementals were made of ice and roughly humanoid in form, but roughly twice the size of an average human. The monsters had jagged protrusions of ice on their arms and legs as well as elongated, tapered fingers and toes that could be used like claws.
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The elementals went right for her sleeping teammates, but Kelly immediately raised the alarm to wake the team. After slipping back into stealth, Kelly delivered a vicious leaping dagger blow to the back of the lead elemental's head. Kelly struck true, but her dagger did relatively little damage to the ice monster. However, Kelly too had come a long way since her training sessions in the Emerald Sea and she used the dagger and her momentum to swing herself higher and deliver an off hand strike with a fire enchanted dagger that split the elemental’s head in two and cut cleanly through its shoulder to sever its left arm completely.
Unfortunately, the elementals didn’t bleed and they didn’t need their heads to function. As Kelly dodged back into the shadows, she put some distance between her and the elementals and switched to her short bow and exploding arrows. However, the time that Kelly had bought with her attack and the confusion it created was enough for Jim to get on his feet. Jim’s ability to harden his hands and feet while he struck was damaging to the elementals, but his ability to project force into his target was absolutely devastating. The elementals shattered with each of Jim’s strikes. Jim had taken three down in the time that it took Karen to enter the fray and the tides quickly turned in the adventurers’ favor.
Fully empowered Karen was smashing through any elemental that approached her and Sarah. She wasn’t as potent as Jim in quickly dispatching the monsters, but those that faced her quickly lost combat capability as she broke arms, legs, hips and torsos with every strike. Rocky was willing to strike at anything that got too close, but within the first thirty seconds of the fight nothing could make it into his radius. Sarah was cleaning up the elementals that Karen disabled with multitarget fire and lightning spells. The fighting stopped shortly before dawn and the party made the decision to make for the spring before whatever resistance remained could reorganize.
After taking a few minutes to reset and prepare, the team (plus Rocky) began to push through the final ascent as quickly as they safely could. Within an hour they had made the spring, which was guarded by what might very well have been the mother of all ice elementals. The monster stood twenty feet tall at the shoulder and it, somehow, gave a mighty roar as the team approached. It seemed likely that this giant elemental had connection to the smaller elementals that had ambushed the team at their camp, as met the team with an aggressive charge and seemed to be aiming to deliver the first blow.
The party immediately split up and positioned themselves around the giant monster. Kelly slipped into the shadows cast by the early morning sun as she worked her way behind the elemental and set up a position from which she could soften it up with her remaining supply of exploding arrows. Kelly was surgical with her attacks, always striking when the monster was off balance and using the explosions to nudge the giant elemental’s attacks off target.
Karen dodged in and out of the monster’s melee range with heavy strikes to its legs and Jim used his superior mobility to reach higher on the elemental to attack its torso and arms when opportunities arose. Wherever Jim struck ice and snow were blasted off of the monster. This much larger elemental generated icicles and chunks of ice to throw at the party, which kept everyone on their toes. Sarah was again on Rocky’s back, using the beast's incredible agility in the mountainous terrain to dodge the elemental’s attacks as she launched a constant barrage of magical attacks.
It was a fierce melee for just over four minutes, which is a long time for a fight of this type. It was an eternity to keep up that kind of effort, but the team had managed their resources well to that point. There was just so much mass to the elemental that it took a long time to bash and blast it into oblivion. Once they took out both legs and the monster was down and struggling to fight back, they went from well oiled combat team to blender set on crush. They wanted to finish the fight before they ran out of gas and the natural regeneration of the elemental, which was bolstered by the environment in the mountains, allowed it to recover enough to do additional damage. An exhausted party of humans against an elemental with a second wind was a recipe for disaster.
Out of arrows, Kelly shifted to her magically imbued knives and struck the downed elemental with a flurry of attacks. Karen and Jim joined in with their respective weapons and skills while Sarah took a breather to conserve and regenerate her resources in case additional casting was needed. Once the elemental was no more, they took stock of the situation and, after a quick scout of the area by Kelly, they all paused to regenerate and heal any wounds. They had effectively cleared the area and could focus on collecting the eternal ice once they had recovered. Then it was just the grueling hike back to Eastern Tear, but on the bright side it's all downhill from the summit.