Mal'Thorn and his guards followed me as I left the fortress and I took a moment to seal the fortress behind us. It was dark outside, though the ice walls that the winter priests had raised to surround my fortress were now taller than the trees of the Forest. The tops had priests on them who were lighting them up with light stones.

The wall was still ten meters below the level of my entrance, and they weren't making any attempt to bridge the distance yet. My stairs went down and through the only gap in the walls. Why they would leave a gap for me puzzled me on our walk down the stairs until I realised they were using the stairs as a single point to guard, in the same way as I had designed my fortress.

It would only take me some extra effort to break through their wall, or even tunnel under it entirely, but so long as there was an easy path we were more likely to use that than anything else. Mal'Thorn and his guards had lit up their own light sources, the orbs on the tops of their staffs, and there was some activity at the bottom of the stairs as we approached.

There were two ranks of higher-level priests forming up, with the gold embroidery on their blue robes. The area under my pavilion was well lit, and I recognised the only low level priest as the spokesman whose life I had spared. He had a large bruise on his temple, and he had a black eye.

"Hello again." I said. "Sorry about the black eye."

"Hello." He said. "Considering what you did to the people around me I count myself lucky to be alive."

"True enough." I said. "You were polite, and seemed like a decent sort. Why are you with winter? Your god is trying to end the world."

"I was tested and found to have an affinity for winter." He said. "Only one other person from my village was the same, and he was eaten when he tried to escape the training camp we were sent to."

"Eaten?" I asked.

"By snow burrowers." He said. "I've seen worse since then. So long as I'm loyal I, and my family, are safe from winter creatures. Humans are the only ones who are able to become priests, so they need us."

A priest behind the spokesman priest cleared his throat. I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Our orders are the same." The spokesman priest said. "To keep you here until the Head Priest allows you to leave."

"Wasn't that to stop me from getting to my fortress before?" I asked. "Not that it matters. I am leaving, through you or not is entirely your choice. Though... You know I could just drop the ceiling on the lot of you?"

"It was judged that that would be against your character." The spokesman priest said, glancing up nervously.

"I guess it is, at that." I said. "I will kill you all in combat, though. What is your name, by the way? I keep thinking of you as 'the spokesman priest', which is a bit unwieldy."

"Ryan." He said.

"Let's see if we can get you through this again, Ryan." I said, and prepared my sword. "Shout out if any of you submit."

I could pretty easily go around them, the roof of the pavilion didn't look guarded. But I was looking forward to testing my new abilities against a serious opponent. I'd given them a clear warning, if they still chose to fight then their lives were their own responsibility. The higher level priests all linked together, their hands on each other's shoulders, and started to chant. Ryan was left out in front of their ranks.

I dropped my perception of time down. The trick would be finding the maximum speed I could go while refreshing my muscles without blacking out due to pain. I crouched in a sprinter's crouch, my back foot against the stairs. My long-sword was out horizontally from my side at waist height of the priests.

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There was a priest to the left of Ryan who had his palm facing me. My first target. I dashed with a conservative amount of energy from my muscles, gritting my teeth at the pain as I started refreshing them. I brushed past Ryan, and the targeted priest's eyes widened. He moved his palm down to counter my strike as I aimed between him and the priest next to him. There was nothing he could do, nowhere to redirect the blade to. I cut him in half and continued through to the priest behind him in the second rank. And cut him in half, too.

I put my foot down to stop, having moved the entire five meters in one dash, to find that they had iced the floor of the pavilion. I turned and stabbed my sword into the ground, slingshotting myself around it back into the ranks of the priests.

My sword was long and sharp enough to cut through both ranks of priests at the same time, so I simply held it out at the perfect angle as I slid along the ice, meeting almost no resistance with my blade. When I ran out of priests I stabbed my sword into the floor again, bringing myself to a halt. I turned back. The priests were falling in a wave along where I had travelled. There was blood everywhere, except on me. For the first time in a large scale battle I had avoided bathing in the blood of my enemies.

There were still twenty priests alive, not counting Ryan, in two ranks of ten in the opposite direction from the one I had gone. They were just now throwing their arms into the air. Mal'Thorn and his guards were on the stairs where I had left them.

I raised my perception of time. "Are they surrendering?" I asked Ryan.

He looked at me over the twenty dead and dying priests, then looked to a priest furthest from me, in the back rank. That priest nodded.

"Yes." Ryan said.

"Good." I said. "The Forest Keepers and I will be leaving now. I have more important things to be dealing with. I would recommend taking your army and leaving. I'm sure getting rid of you all will make it to the top of my list at some point. Touching my fortress would put you at the top of my list immediately, so don't do that."

The remaining priests left, heading directly away from me. I waved Mal'Thorn over.

"You seem to have gotten even stronger." He said.

"This is what it will take to kill the head priest of winter." I said. "Though I may have to work out a less lethal way of removing people. They don't seem to be getting the message not to interfere with me. And it is hardly the fault of these little guys."

"I suspect they will stop throwing lives away to no effect." Mal'Thorn said. "But it will ultimately depend on the sanity of a god who is trying to end the world. If your enemies are all being driven by a god then all that leaving them alive does is let them come after you a second time."

I sighed. "On balance, I would prefer not to kill them." I said. "If it is a choice between them and my people, though, I will kill them all. They can stop it at any time."

I shook my head. "This is where we part ways." I said. "You will be okay getting back to your people?"

"We will." Mal'Thorn said. "My Forest Sense is telling me that the winter priests are focused around your fortress. Until we meet again."

I waved to Mal'Thorn and headed off to the north. It was pitch black, and the snow was several meters deep by this time. I could run at a pretty constant thirty kilometers an hour, evaporating the snow immediately in front of me to create a tunnel and the snow above falling down as I passed.

It felt as though I had acid flowing in my veins instead of blood, and I wasn't getting used to the pain as I went. I had my power soaked into the ground and snow in front of me and was using it to detect and dodge the trees ahead of me. After ten minutes of running I came across the ravine. My memory of it had placed it at only ten meters across, so I sped up to leap over it.

As I reached the treeless stretch I could sense the voids in my power that were the trees on the other side, fifteen meters away. I made it comfortably. A few seconds later I started to see the walls that made up the Arachne maze. Horizontal threads of ice that filled up the space between the ten meter gaps between tree trunks. They went from the ground to the tops of the trees, and the branches of the trees on the inside of the maze path had been cut away.

Chantelle was still two hundred and fifteen kilometers to the north. I remembered the last time I had come through this maze. I could cut through the maze in the same way as I had then. But I had another option this time. My sword was strapped to my back, and I clipped my staff next to it and started to climb the ice wall in front of me.

The top was right at the top of the tree tops, and was about five centimeters wide and curved. I couldn't use my power to sense where anything was, it not travelling very well through air and not at all through the magic threads that made up the wall. I took out my light stone. The wall I was on ran roughly east to west, and there was another one ten meters to the north, and another one ten meters after that. I could make a standing leap to cover most of that distance, and then climb the rest of the way up the next wall. Repeat for each wall on my way north.

I would have to stop to rest to allow my energy refreshing to catch up, the maze being about a kilometer wide. I got three hundred meters in before having to stop. The light from my light stone revealed hundreds of eyes in the dark. There were half a dozen Arachne waiting at my next landing place, and a lot of ice spiders.