In the time I had sequestered myself away from the storm outside it had gone from terrible, to insurmountably awful.

Before it felt like I was moving through hard and heavy cold wind and rain.

Now… Now it feels like… I can’t even describe it.

All over me there is pain. Pain from the cold, pain from the hail hitting me with the wind's sheer ferocity as it beats down at me, pain from the lacerations building up on my skin and cutting their way through every scrap of my clothing.

I can’t see anything. Both my arms are crossed over my face to block the flying shards of ice from my eyes, but even through the pinhole that I’ve made between them all I can see is a turbulent grey mist.

I still can’t hear anything either, only ringing, but that might be a good thing. The cataclysmic level of this storm is I’m sure making the shrieking wails that I’m certain are surrounding me sound absolutely terrifying.

So far, I’ve somehow made it some distance without falling yet, courtesy of me not being able to see where I’m going and so maintaining this snail’s pace as I move forward.

It’s not good enough.

I know the way back to the Side Branch like the back of my hand, even blinded, but I’m hours away from the building even on a clear day and in this mayhem it could very well take me days to get there, days that don’t exist.

But even with the obstacles in my path, I don’t give up.

The storm doesn’t give a shit about my resolve though unfortunately. The next instant after that reaffirming thought the wind somehow rises even higher and throws me against a building I didn’t even know was there, knocking the breath from me.

On the ground once again, struggling to breathe, I soon resort back to crawling, crawling in the muck, where I discover that being next to the side of this building is actually kind of holding back some of the storm's fierceness.

With a better method now, I continue to struggle forth. Time is an illusion I can no longer make out in this world I occupy, nothing changing in the dark grey blizzard that suffocates me, with only my suffering to mark any difference as it escalates and wears me down.

I keep on, the buildings that should be there growing sparser as I march forward. The hailstorm is of course mana infused and the simple wooden buildings of this island settlement are buckling from the weight of it all, breaking under the pressure as they are literally flattened into piles of wood and stone. Unless they’re instead being obliterated completely.

Every few minutes I’m feeling a whoosh go over my head, petrifying me everytime, as what I know is a frozen meteor is flung onto the city. Each time it happens I know it means someone’s death, every time thinking it might just be mine, so merciless are the projectiles released by the Underfrost.

People I can only assume are waiting and praying in their homes, trapped by both hope and despair for the coming days that such fates may not be meant for them. No one cares enough about anything else enough or is suicidal enough to be out here confronting the brunt of the disaster.

No one but me.

I stupidly continue on, only thinking of Kara, alone and afraid, how I’ve failed and abandoned her in her darkest hour after all she has done for me.

But as I soldier on I surrender to the fact that my reaching her… is becoming impossible.

With so much water and ice coming down, streams and what may soon be rivers of cold water filled with chunks of ice are rising up from the ground, now beginning to rise past my knees.

The whole city… is about to flood.

From what I can see through my arms the day seems to be also turning into night as the murky grey all around me is transforming into stormy black, and as I bear my exhaustion, now at the point where I can no longer keep moving forward…

OOMPH

I’m swept off my feet.

Now face up at the storm and the hailstones, the size of grapes now, hammering down on me, I instantly turn my face away from it all, and figure out what has stolen me away.

I can’t see anything, the ringing in my ears is the only thing I hear as well, but I can still feel. Feel that what I’m now laying on is wood through the scraps of skin exposed through my tattered clothing. It's supporting most of my body above the water and carrying me with the newly created current to wherever it is I am now heading. It feels like it might be a part of some sort of wooden fence.

I… I can’t do anything. The hailstorm is beating me down into submission at every second onto my… raft I guess… and my raft is pushing me up, preventing me from falling into the rapid waters as I move to wherever this new river is taking me.

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I… I can’t… I… I… I’m done. It’s over. There’s nothing I can do now, nowhere I can go except into the ice river swelling below me.

I’m… I’m going to die.

I… had so much time.

I had all time maybe.

But this… this is how I die. On a rickety wooden fence floating on a river of ice in a land where I should never ever have been. Leaving Kara to die alone and frightened.

I curl up.

I curl up and cover my face with arms as I wait for the end. I’ve done…I’ve… it doesn’t matter.

And so I wait, on my raft, cold, bleeding, hurting, and resigned. The current carrying me forth through the river streets of Millawen, which were at the same time I sensed were quickly dissolving as buildings collapsed into pieces around me, accompanied by bodies and whatever else could float in this now icy floodplain.

I just waited. Waited as I grew colder, grew numb, and just waited for it all to be over.

But as I stood on the precipice of my end, ready for death… something happened.

ROOOOOOAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!

Another roar!

The pain jolts me from my surrender as I clench in agony, my ears feel like they must be shattering. The torment ends thank god, but something has surprisingly changed.

The hail… it has stopped.

Through the frost that has built over my eyelids I pry them open to look out…and to see the unbelievable.

Amongst the floating rubble of what was formerly the city of Mellawin, I see the Tower. I see a hazy purple figure floating in front of it. I see the Underfrost.

It’s gigantic, the size of a mountain, standing there, surrounded beneath it by a corona of liquid ice that guards and exalts its pale and mighty squid-like form.

But I’m not focusing on the nightmarish beast. I’m focusing on the purple figure floating before it, standing opposite in challenge.

Dread fills my stomach, even on the edge of death and accepting of the following plunge into the abyss, the memory of that man brings me horror.

But as I look closer, even from as far away as I am, I see that it's not a man, but a woman.

Before I can take that thought any further however, said woman moves. She raises her arm, and merely… slices her hand across in front of her… and a rift opens up.

A rift in the world… in the middle of the Underfrost.

There is no sound (not that I could hear it), there is simply a gash before my eyes now, separating the Underfrost’s top from its bottom.

It lasts for but an instant. A sole world silencing moment. And when the moment passes, the gash is gone, and the Underfrost…

…is tumbling to the ground, coming apart as it does.

I have no thoughts, no words, no feelings. Only complete disbelief as the beast falls and its glory ends, coming apart, defeated, as it hits the water beneath it.

…which then prompts a wave.

The Sorceress of the Albert family disappears, so does the Underfrost, so does the sky as what now approaches in the aftermath of their confrontation is a tsunami of ice and debris coming down on the remains of Mellawin city, coming down on me.

Shit.

The last thought in my head, as the wave hits.

***************************************************************************************************************

“Cough, cough, co-cough…”

I’m alive.

How in holy hell am I alive?

It’s the very first thought that pops into my head as I cough and gasp for air.

The second thought is… Oh holy fuck!

I ache. Everywhere.

I open my eyes and see the sky. I'm sore, no, scratch that. No point pretending to be tough, I’m in absolute bloody agony.

But even with the overwhelming pain, I know I have to move. Decades of survival instincts were kicking in as they pushed me up and out of my immobility.

There are pieces of wood and other such rubbish and mud laid all over the top of me, but I brush it all aside as best I can before spending the next ten or so minutes getting myself to my feet. Well, one foot anyway.

My ankle was broken. Some of my ribs, on both sides, were too, as well as a couple fingers, a collarbone and on top of all that I had a dislocated shoulder, which I then spent the next ten minutes figuring out how to put back into place. To add to my list of injuries, my entire body is a very repulsing colour made up from the blues and blacks of bruising mixed with the reds of wounds all over my torn up skin

After examining myself and doing the best I could do with my injuries, I found a piece of driftwood that would serve well enough to act as a crutch, and started walking.

All around me it is flat, except for the debris of course. Most of it is either bits of wood, mud or bodies, however there is also the occasional different something or other. The thing I’m most interested in is food, which I occasionally pick up in whatever absolutely destroyed state I find it in and gobble it down. I’ve eaten rotten rats and cockroaches before, a few squished and dirty pieces of food ain’t gonna be a problem for me.

I march on under the midday Sun. Though I don’t know where I am, I know where I’m going.

That wave that picked me up must have wiped out almost the entire city and beyond as with no obstructions I can see straight across these ruinous plains, all the way to what remains of the city of Mellawin. And so that’s where I start hobbling towards.

On the way back I picked up what I could. Food, water, clothes, shoes, pieces of cloth to wrap my injuries and even, somehow, a full purse of coins to my delight.

I keep walking though, aware of what I’m likely to find when I get there, but still needing to see it for myself nevertheless, my desire for certainty pushing me through everything my body was throwing at me to stop.

I limp through the day, through lands soaked in mud and covered in bits of city, but with each hour I grow closer still and soon, as the Sun begins to set and the moons and stars start glowing in the sky, I make it to the borders of Mellawin.

I see some people. Mostly Warriors of the Coalition moving about in the distance and the occasional zombie-like figure (what I suspect I look like right now) moving through the fresh ruins, lost.

I have no idea how many survived what I know is definitely the most destructive monster wave to ever hit this city. The only reason some semblance of it remains… is because of the Sorceress who killed the Underfrost.

The memory causes me to look at the only perfectly untouched structure still standing along the skyline, the Tower.

His Tower, what I must now assume to be her Tower, the Sorceress’, after he returned to the Albert Clan capital. Them replacing him with her, another Master Sorcerer by the looks of things.

That spell… that rift… it was…

Forget it. There’s no point even thinking about it.

I travel further into the city, the streets still present even if the buildings and houses that bordered them are less than so.

What is still around however are the blocks of ice that the Underfrost had thrown through the sky during its rampage, still solid as rock as they sit motionless in the hundreds, dotted throughout the landscape.

The sun is well and truly setting now and I’ve finally found a pathway back to the Side Branch, to Kara.

I neither rush nor move slowly as I begin to approach. I just keep my pace, difficult as it is, as I see another hill size block of the Underfrost’s ice coming up ahead.

Even when I make it to the front of that big block of ice, where the Scholar Association Side Branch No.1 for the city of Mellawin once stood, until I’m at last standing right in front of it.

Only then do I stop, before I kneel down and cry.