Only a hundred meters later the ground started to rise and the forest thinned out and ended a dozen meters after that. My power, that I was using to scout ahead, showed a jagged rocky slope with loose stones that would be somewhat difficult to climb underneath the meters of snow.

I had to slow my run down to a walk, clearing a tunnel through the snow and forming footholds in the stone. I could have moved at a jog if that's all I had to do, but I was having to reinforce the snow above me as I went so that it wouldn't fall down before I had gone past.

I had been noticing as I'd gotten further north that my direction sense for Chantelle was pointing upwards, maybe ten kilometers above the flat land of the forest. A twenty three degree slope, if I could go in a straight line, but I was having to go up and down peaks and valleys in the mountain. I was still making a direct path to where I could feel Chantelle was, it was just going to take a few hours more to get to her. Almost as long to make it the last twenty kilometers as it did to make it the first one hundred and eighty.

After two hours I'd climbed high enough that the ridge I was climbing along was free of snow. Not long after that, about ten kilometers away from Chantelle, I came across a cliff that was cut in a curve around the mountain. I had to get my light stone out to see it, as it was made entirely of enchanted stone that my power was unable to sink into.

In the light of the light stone I could see a meter wide path that was carved into the cliff twenty meters above me. It was sloping down to my left and up to my right, so I could follow it to the left and climb the cliff that way. But it seemed like a bad idea. It would take very little effort to knock me off the path. Even though I couldn't see how high the cliff was, it was easily high enough for a fall from the height I could see to be lethal.

The dagger setup of my sword could pretty easily be used to scale the cliff if I made a second dagger, but it would leave me almost as exposed as climbing the path, though less predictable as to where I was approaching from.

I decided to head to my right along the cliff to try to find another way in and headed down into the snow filled valley between my ridge and the next one over. I was able to rely on my Matter Manipulation sense, so I had put away my light stone. No reason to give myself away by carrying a beacon.

Half an hour later, and about two and a half kilometers around the cliff, I saw a light in the distance further down the mountain. Moving to the next ridge along, I could see several lights that were slowly moving. They made a line that pointed down the mountain, and up to the cliff.

Another two ridges along I could finally see where the lights were going. There was a tunnel going into the cliff, the entrance of which was well lit and guarded by eight winter priests in gold-trimmed robes. I watched as one of the lights approached the entrance, it turned out to be a wagon with two large bipedal lizards harnessed to the front of it. The wagon had a cage on it that was full of people. Two of the priests looked it over and then waved it through.

The ridge I was on was taller than the ones around it, and the road to the tunnel entrance was on a ridge three more along. I made my way to the ridge right before the entrance, leaving me fifty meters away from the priests. The next wagon coming up the mountain was at least twenty minutes away.

I got out my throwing blades and dropped my perception of time. I should have practised throwing them, but I thought I had a pretty accurate model for how they would work. They were pretty dense, weighing one kilogram each despite their thin profile and short fifteen centimeter length.

I calculated how I would need to throw them. The first several would need to be thrown with a slight arc, smoothing out the arc as I added more force so that they would all land at the same time. I held the eight blades that I would need splayed in my left hand and started throwing with my right.

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It took a little over a second and a half after the first one was thrown for the last one to leave. The first one hit the furthest priest between the eyes, going right through his head and burying itself in the cliff.

Over the next second the rest of the blades hit and five of the remaining seven priests fell immediately. Of the remaining two, one had the blade go through his throat and the other his chest. The second one clutched at his chest for a few moments and then fell down. The first grabbed at his throat to stop the blood that was spilling out but remained standing.

I half ran, half skidded down into the valley that separated me from the tunnel, leaping up the other side barely making footholds to launch from. When I arrived the priest was running through the entrance and up the tunnel. I followed him and threw a throwing blade through his heart, immediately dropping him to the ground.

I went back outside and collected the throwing blades I could, there were two that were embedded in the cliff out of reach which left me with a total of ten.

I headed back to the entrance of the tunnel, which was well lit with a strip of enchanted stone. It curved up and to the right, a gentle slope for wagons to climb. I was hesitating when there was a spike of fear from Chantelle, which caused me to start running.

After a two minute sprint I reached the end of the tunnel to find it sealed with a wall of ice. I was already sprinting as fast as I could, so I reinforced my body and slammed into it. And bounced off.

My vision dimmed a bit from my brain hitting the inside of my skull. It took me a few moments to shake the daze. I drew my sword, pushing heat into it as I swung at the ice wall to carve chunks through it. As the first chunk came free of the wall the entire wall started pushing down the tunnel.

The wall was moving faster than I could cut through it. The more heat I pushed into the blade the colder the ice got, directly countering the two methods I'd used to break through the ice in the past. I headed back down the tunnel at a jog, letting my Matter Manipulation power catch up with the energy I was using.

There was an ice wall at the lower exit of the tunnel as well. From my memory of the tunnel it was already four meters thick, anchored on four sides by the enchanted stone of the cliff.

Even worse, water had started flooding down from the ceiling.

I pushed more heat into the blade of my sword and swung it into the ice wall carving a meter deep cut into it at an angle. The water was already knee deep. I stepped to the side and made a mirrored meter deep cut in the wall, cutting out a triangle of ice seventy centimeters deep.

The wall had started moving up the tunnel as soon as I'd made my first cut, and by the time I'd pulled the chunk of ice out it was a meter thicker. And the water was up to my hips.

I ran up the tunnel, the water still falling all around me and rising to my ankles. The ice wall from the upper entrance was about halfway down the tunnel, as soon as I saw it I started cutting into the stone wall to my left. If I could cut myself an alcove I would be able to eventually dig myself out of the cliff... But as I cut a hole in the wall a flood of water gushed out, quickly rising until it was over my head and turning to ice where it met the wall.

I swam up the tunnel to get a breath but ran into the stone ceiling. With the two ice walls five meters apart the section I was in had flooded.

The ice walls had stopped moving, and the water pressure isn't increasing.

I started converting the carbon dioxide in my lungs into oxygen. Which hurt as much as refreshing my muscles. I could easily keep ahead of my body using air, though I still felt an irrational need to breathe.

A minute passed with the water getting colder and colder. I compensated by pushing more and more heat into it. I was pushing vast amounts of energy into my surroundings, but the water kept getting colder in spite of that. Ice started to creep closer to me, and shortly after the water turned to ice it became enchanted and I couldn't affect it.

Eventually I was surrounded by ice touching me and I had to push heat directly into my body to counteract the cold. But just as with the water, no matter how much heat I pushed I was losing the battle against the cold. My hands and feet froze first. I was able to slow the spread of the ice down as I had less and less mass to keep warm.

There was nothing I could do to stop it and finally my brain froze and my connection through the Mind Link cut out.

Am I dead?