I was paying strict attention to the numbers coming out of the lava lake.

The original numbers of servant creatures in the caldera were basically all dead by the end of the second hour of our assault, which surely pissed that King Firecobra off. But more Elementals were crawling continuously out of the lava pool, keeping up pressure on me as long as things were also coming from behind.

Of course, things had really started slowing down from behind, which relieved pressure on Cryoclasming, and let me apply more pressure forward.

We began to advance downslope again, standing on our Disks and sending out death in various forms as we did so.

The Mick started taking opportunities to engage in physical combat, since it gave him a chance to stretch his legs out and actually kill things faster than just Sharding them would allow. Since anything that could survive a Cryoclasm was tough enough to be a threat, it wasn’t just a slaughter... although they were weakened enough that one good hit from a Coldphased Smior was generally enough to do for them. If nothing was close enough to Cleave, he sent out more Shardings.

That generally wasn’t a problem, however. Seeing him over there by himself having fun, he got plenty of attention as the Elementals naturally tried to surround him. They made fine Shard targets for Reaping as needed, or Master Fred would put up Walls of Icefire to secure The Mick’s flanks.

Killing forward accelerated, and now the lava lake was being smashed repeatedly by Cryoclasms, not just the caldera, and the magma was blackening, freezing, cracking, splitting, steaming, and getting hit again.

Naturally new Elementals couldn’t come out of those areas closest to us, and I kept pushing them back, back, back...

The lava pool was a thousand feet across. Elementals were now being slaughtered at its edge, further extending the frozen influence plunging into the crimson goo as pyromana became cryomana. The air temperature was actually dropping from the sheer amount of cold magic I was putting out.

When the ambient temperature around me was less than 180 F, Snowcasting began to kick in once again as my personal air temperature fell below freezing.

Not much later, it fell below the Severe Cold threshold, and Tier Two Ice Magic was kicking in. It wasn’t huge on the overall scale at +2 per die, +4 Caster Level to magic using Cold, and effective +4 to Save DC... but it was the equivalent of a snowstorm turning into a howling icestorm as far as potency of the Ice Magic went, and those jetsilver ice feathers were now howling for blood as they raged out.

I was getting something like +6 per die with my Cold spells right now, so even the Cryoclasms were spitting out something like 4d6+24 BASE damage against fiery creatures, before any Kickers, and the Elementals weren’t taking it very well.

The King could only watch as we pressed out onto the lava lake as it rapidly crusted over. There were plenty of streams and flows to the sides venting any pressure from below, and they rapidly began to surge as dark stone grew with jetsilver haste under terrifying feathered assaults of icy force.

I could imagine some of his confusion. He could sense the beginnings of the Ritual of the Burning Heart upon me, alluding to mastery of Fire magic, but my continued usage of monumentally lethal Cold magic was pushing him back, back, and back from his seat of power.

Even the cracking and splitting of the lava under me was faltering under the continual impact of cold magic, the stone getting thicker, harder, and colder despite the limitless pressure from below.

The boys just went along with the show, aware of the true target, playing their parts and soaking in the Karma with me.

I naturally hadn’t forgotten my Duskstopped Stone Shape at V, and it worked perfectly well on frozen, i.e., solid, magma. Cold was associated with Earth because Earth was the frozen state of all matter...

I reinforced the ground underneath us as I walked out over the lava pool, pushing that big firecobra back. Jetsilver coated the rock beneath us as Sleipner trundled out on his little glowing fields of force just above the jagged stone and ice, ready to reverse and dodge at sign of any real threat.

-There’s definitely a bigger one down at the center of the pool, waiting for us,- Master Fred /informed me, after an intense gaze directed down at the heart of the lava pool.

Well, that meant there was no reason to keep this second stringer around, didn’t it?

I swirled up a Paired Crown of Stars, fifty-six glittering Shardstars circling around my head, bringing the celestial sky down around me in a galaxy of silver force magic. The temperature around me plummeted hard enough to start snowing carbon dioxide, and that big Firecobra realized a bit too late that he probably should have buried himself down in the lava and just waited for me to leave.

The jetsilver Shardray Spellwarped all those Shards into a single apocalyptic driving line of cold that literally chilled the eyeball just to look at it... and then they hit the glittering prism in midair, and fractured into two equally powerful Split Rays. Frozen oxygen and nitrogen along their paths condensed in hollow tubes and foot-long icicles of solidified gas, hovering there for a crazy second before shattering as the Rays faded, and they fell in misting shards to the lava below, instantly creating dozens of black rocks along the path.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The Shardrays drove into that massive Fire Cobra on the opposite side of the lava lake, and dumped a whole lot of anti-heat into it. Its whole crimson and molten-cracks midsection instantly went cold black edged in cutting silver, spikes of frozen gas spurting off it as the chill swarmed up over its head and down to the lava in under a second.

We all looked at the gleaming statue of gleaming black and glittering silver frozen there, before there was a muffled ripping and crack from below the lava’s surface, and it fell slowly, grandly over into the molten stone, instantly freezing the magma that came into contact with it even as it slowly faded from sight.

“Jesus Christ and his mother!” The Mick muttered, blinking his eyes rapidly to clear them as the shockingly cold wind burst past him and half-quenched the Elementals in the area. Feeling the film on your eyes freeze in the heart of a volcano was a new experience for him. “Just how cold was that?” he had to ask. The nearest Elementals also seemed to be pretty distracted. The Ray of uttercold probably looked to them exactly like a death ray looked to us.

“224 times d6+7.” Sucks to be vulnerable to Penetrating Cold, and someone totally abusing the hefty Shard limits of a Crown of Stars.

It was definitely my biggest single kill spell effect, made only better by the fact it could just wait around and be triggered when I needed it.

Master Fred was looking down rather intently, and smiled thinly. -It was starting to rise. It’s going back down,- he /reported.

There’s something to be said for overwhelming displays of power doing their thing.

We had reached the center of the lava lake. Our way out was actually starting to get chewed through and melt behind us, but that was fine. I could just refreeze it as needed.

The icy black frozen magma began to shift, smooth itself out, and jets of lava rose from the pool below and flowed rapidly through a complex Pattern drawing itself into existence just inches ahead of the molten stone.

It wasn’t necessary, but it sped the effort I was making up nicely. As multiple channels of lava connected themselves, the Pattern shimmered with a fell and uneasy light that hooked into the surrounding manafield.

A Blighter normally preyed upon greenery and plant life, but in reality, any area thick with elemental mana was susceptible to being Blighted, as I had proven in the previous volcano.

My fist closed, and I brought the fire to me.

The surrounding Elementals, especially those closest to me down below, screamed as they were torn apart and the pyromana they were so dependent on here was very, very painfully torn away, leaving a great gaping hole in the flow of it... and totally disrupting the control that Fire exerted over the landscape.

It all gathered and fed into my heart, pure and unfiltered fire mana, restoring my shadow of the Ritual of the Burning Heart, one more step towards completion.

Five more of these to go!

There was a huge gouting column of molten lava as the true Firebaron of this area surfaced with a scream of outrage. I had totally corrupted this lava pool; touching it was utterly revolting to any creature of Fire, a yawning defiled emptiness they could do nothing about.

The Fire Linnorm went coiling into the air, its roar of wrath and doom like a shockwave as its aura of dragonfear slammed down on us with the psychic awe of the primal power of the oldest of dragonkind.

It was turning to bathe us all in primal dragonflame when the Spellflare hit it first.

It was a powerful beast, casting at Twenty like its minion of a Firecobra, a master of fire magic, old and terrible and wise... and I tore its magical defenses apart into wild magic feeding back into it.

It was quite a show, eight different defense or Buffing spells getting disrupted and feeding back into it in a polycolored pyrotechnics show that had nothing to do with fire whatsoever. At least 25d6, by my estimation... not the sort of damage you want to be taking in the middle of executing an action, like, oh, maybe intending to Counterspell. Messes with the concentration...

A Crown of Stars was playing about my head. This one was Consecrated, and when I Spellwarped it, I did Split Ray it, and Energize it.

It was lightning damage.

That linnorm was probably a couple thousand years old, one of the last of its kind, terrible and mighty and thinking itself a mighty lord of all that it surveyed here in this land, building itself an expanding kingdom of servants and minions.

I hadn’t missed the torc of starsilver around its long and slender neck, and since I hadn’t targeted it, it was working just fine.

It might be expecting force damage if it had worked out how good I was with Shards. It was definitely expecting cold damage. My use of lightning took it completely by surprise.

70 x 21 points of damage speared into magically-reinforced scales that could deflect some cannon shots, conducted right through them, and went rampaging about its insides, clearing its spell resistance without even noticing.

Its breath never got out of its lungs as everything inside it seized up rather abruptly, and both its eyes blew out, making me curse silently about more goldweight lost. What was it with dragon eyeballs? Was that why they were so valuable here? Black and silver arcs of lightning danced the full length of its ascending body as it twitched and convulsed... and slowly and grandly began to fall.

It was in mid-fall when the Itemize hit.

With a ruffling sound, its whole body, including the extended tail still in the lava, unwound and transformed. A great Scroll swirled and fluttered in midair, fully ten feet high. It began to spin as all the elements of that hundreds-foot body transformed into paper and flapped and fluttered as they gathered together and were sucked into the forming Scroll.

The massive roll of paper fell right into Master Fred’s arms; he grunted as he caught it, despite himself.

I promptly Reduced it to 5% of its size, turning over a ton of paper into merely forty or so pounds of densely rolled parchment. He hefted the resulting Scroll with some amusement, and turned around, looking at the surrounding Elementals and creatures who were vacating the lava pool beneath us in all directions... but not onto our little expanse of frozen stone.

Completely remorseless about it all, I began to pick them all off. With their Firebaron dead, they were out of command and were likely just running now. I had no reason to chase them down, and I wanted the comps off the big ones.

Chained Shardrays starting at the biggest of them, Split so they’d go off in different directions, began to rip through them in sudden jetsilver silence, and then the Bursts added onto the spells exploded among the tightest clusters of the smallest of them, blowing them apart and scattering them in all directions from the force of the strikes, what few who survived.

The linnorm’s closest servants died one after another, unable to get out of range of the terrifying cold coming for them, and I simply kept walking across the pool of lava, Master Fred taking care of freezing us a path as I filled the caldera with terribly still black and silver Rays of uttercold.