The Dragon's Rest mountain range stretched from the top of the continent to nearly the middle of it vertically, looking as if it were the spine of the very planet itself.
The large Leyline, with its numerous branches running beneath the range, caused mystical side effects, resulting in the high mountains being covered in snow year-round, despite their equatorial location in Aetheria.
At its borders, the perpetual winter gave way to lush jungles, vast savannahs, arid deserts, and more, while the mountains themselves remained cloaked in eternal winter.
It was a harsh environment where only a few could live, and only those born there could thrive.
At lower altitudes on the many mountains, dense pine forests covered them and many dangerous animals lurked inside of them.
On a plain where snow piled up to two meters, a convoy of carriages floated gently above the surface, flanked by several armored figures on steeds, their feather-light steps barely denting the soft snow.
The lithe quadrupeds moved gracefully, their white feathers camouflaging them against the snowy ground. The riders were adorned in silvery armor, shimmering and emitting a soft glow that highlighted intricate engravings. The runes on the edges were both visually striking and infused with a sense of ancient magic.
The one thing an observant onlooker would find their gazes gravitating towards would be the armoured rider's elongated ears, extending five to ten centimeters from their skulls and occasionally twitching in alert. This caused them to snap their heads in a direction, searching for any danger, but so far they had only come across harmless snow rabbits hiding below in their burrows.
The guards were tense and jumpy, but who could fault them considering whom they were tasked with protecting?
Many of them occasionally glanced towards a carriage traveling near the middle of the convoy, appearing better-made and fortified than the rest, but that was just a facade. That carriage was a moving fortress and anything less than an Ancient Drake or an Arch Mage would find themselves unable to do more than scratch at its wards.
The inside of that carriage managed to seem both luxurious and elegant without leaning too much on either. A gleaming golden metal nicely accented the silvery metal in places as they formed intricate carvings that covered the monstrous enchantments underneath them.
Inside sat a girl seemingly no older than 19 by human standards.
She was gorgeous even by Elven standards, and her mournful look could tug at the heartstrings of even the harshest of men; alas, it didn't work on the only one that counted: her father.
He was a ruthless man, his heart as cold as the winters at the peaks of the mountains.
He deserves his title in more ways than one. She thought with a slight smirk that quickly disappeared from her perfectly sculpted face.
The Winter King.
That was his title, and he was the fifth to ever hold it since the beginning of recorded history. He ruled over the entirety of the Dragon's Spine mountains, the plains on the other side of them as well as any who dwelled within.
She loathed him with all her heart. He was the sole reason all her kin only ever regarded her with guilt or remorse. Pitying gazes followed her wherever she went and she had no one else to blame for it but her father.
She glared at the passing landscape to engrave it in her mind; she knew this might be the last time she saw it in her life. The evergreens were pitifully small this far up the mountain, but further down she'd heard about them reaching hundreds of meters in height. Even if this would be the only time she saw them, she relished this chance to see those magical forests.
The creatively named Winter Castle was far up in the mountains, hidden beyond the clouds, and nestled in a highland valley between two peaks. She rarely got the chance to travel around even inside the kingdom, and she always wanted to see some of the landscapes she saw in her stories.
Growing up, she buried herself in books. She'd read romance, fantasy, and every curious novel she found in the open library, but the ones closest to her heart had always been the books her father forbade her from reading. Those were books on magic, Runes and Spellcraft, which she always dreamed of learning, and while it may have been forbidden, her eccentric master sneaked one or two books in for her.
There might have been a bit of a want for what's forbidden in her obsession with them, but she still enjoyed every single Spell she managed to cast.
'Can't have you leak elvish magic to the humans,' her father's dispassionate words would play in her mind as she forsook most of her private time to study and practice.
Even now, as her right hand held her chin up as she stared out at the enchanted window, her left hand made somatic gestures and conjured up small balls of fire which twisted and turned between her fingers. She couldn't get far without further books in her studies, but she mastered what she had and even went beyond it a bit by making up new spells with the Runes she learned.
The carriage felt constricting, and she felt a pit settle in her stomach as she thought about why the carriage was reinforced both ways and didn't open from the inside. This was as much a prison as a fortress.
The guards readying themselves drew her attention and she lost control of the candle flame for a moment, causing her to yelp in pain as it singed her palms a bit. She flailed it around a bit then blew air on it to relieve the pain.
She pulled on her core and channeled a bit of her mana into the bracelet on her wrist, causing it to emit a gentle green glow as the burn receded on her other hand. It was a handy thing to have as it had an enchantment on it which always returned her body to its 'prime' condition given enough mana, she was 'gifted' it by her father once he saw her get injured while she was 'playing' around in her room to keep her unblemished and without numerous burn and slash scars.
She — of course — got those while practicing magic. Back then, she childishly thought, if she injured herself, she would become undesirable enough for the marriage to be cancelled, but this pretty little bracelet quashed her dreams.
She only stopped struggling against her fate by the time she was 15 and instead decided to make the most of the 'gifts' her father gave her.
When she returned her attention to the guards outside, she saw five of them overwhelming a large, bearlike creature with the head of an owl and feathers for some reason.
The beast instantly mesmerized the Princess, as she realized it to be the owlbear she had read countless tales about. It was the villain in one storybook she liked as a child, and once she got a book on magical animals; it was the first one she studied.
While she couldn't learn any magic, learning about the effects of magic on the world was permissible and so she absorbed knowledge about that with religious zeal. In the end, her father even hired an accomplished Arch Mage who was famous around the continent as an explorer and researcher to be her tutor.
She appreciated the stubborn old elf not only for their shared interests but also for his open distaste for her father, even though he couldn't do much against him.
The mighty owlbear that had felled so many heroes in the books was soon dyeing the snow with its blood after emitting a final mournful shriek that rustled the nearby leaves. The young elf teared up a bit at how the royal guard have massacred one of her favorite magical beasts, but she shook her head.
It was dangerous nonetheless; they are just protecting me.
Despite what she thought, she watched on sadly as the carcass vanished into the distance with a few scavenging birds already descending towards it.
They didn't even take its core.
In all the adventure books she had read, people had to cut up the corpse of their felled foe to get to its core, which solidified after its death. It was by far the most precious 'loot' of any monster, as it was filled to the brim with both mana and essence, two of the most important things for anyone seeking either wealth or power.
She kicked her ankles up on the seat on the opposite side of the carriage in a manner her etiquette tutors would scream at her for, but she couldn't care less at the moment.
What kind of princess am I to travel in a carriage this small, anyway? She thought in annoyance even if she knew this must have cost more than a damned castle to make even this big and that kind of cost would make even the oh-so-mighty Winter King wince.
She glared at the metallic shapes covering the inner walls of the carriage like they stole her favorite toy and in a way they did just that. Enchantments used the same Runic system as Spells did so by studying these enchantments. She could have maybe learned new Runes to add to her repertoire.
She knew such a thing was heavily discouraged, and when she admitted to doing it to her teacher, she got chewed out for nearly an hour before the old man grew too bored to continue. 'Using unknown Runes in your spells is no better than testing what sticking a spear through your heart does Your Highness' he'd said and while she gave him credit for being right, she had also experienced the healing capability of her bracelet plus beggars can't be choosers.
The carriage didn't as much as jolt, even when the open plain gave way to a forest. The terrain grew rugged, but it wasn't beholden to such base things as gravity or terrain. It flew just like before a meter above the ground and travelled behind the carriages in front of it, all of them following the first one, which tore down the offending nature in front of it to make way for the convoy.
Just like that, Princess Kha'Lythria — or Kali, as her siblings called her — lost her distraction as she could only see the needle-like leaves of the evergreens slapping against her carriage through the windows.
She sighed, then shifted her gaze away, picked up her small bag from the floor, and browsed through its contents. She had packed a few books to read today if she got bored with the view, so she once again got lost in the worlds of her books, escaping even if only for a few hours from the reality of her situation.
By the time she heard a knock on the door, she was reclining on her seat with it propped against the wall, and the low ceiling of her cramped carriage—dubbed a coffin by Kali—pressed close.
"Yeah?" she asked distractedly, the book held in front of her face still keeping most of her attention. She was just getting to the final part of the novel where the heroine would get her revenge on the evil Dragon for burning her city to the ground, not the best book she'd read but better than whatever waited for her on the other side of the door.
"May I open the door, Your Highness?" came the voice of the leader of the Royal Guard Squad assigned to her for this trip. There were a bunch of normal guards too, but the nine Royal Guards could single-handedly massacre the rest.
"Sure~" she answered without much thought.
She felt more than heard the enchantments locking the door deactivate one after the other. She couldn't help but roll her eyes at the number of them though. Her long ears twitched as she focused on the sensation traveling from them down to her spine. Elves had this unique ability to sense Runes activating and being able to tell them apart with enough practice.
Kali relied on this sense for as long as she could remember to observe anything and everything, but she was still far from the proficiency needed for being able to replicate the Runes just by sensing them.
Some sort of mana identification Rune plus the obvious lock Rune with what I'm guessing are a bunch of others that reinforce these two. She noted while slapping the book closed with a sigh and setting it down on the ground.
A few moments later, the door lost its last lock and it revealed the cold, white world beyond. Frigid air rushed into the carriage, but it failed to make the princess shiver instead. She smiled a bit at the familiar chill.
Winter Elves like her would be a joke if they couldn't bear a bit of a cold. They were one of the foremost ambush predators of this mountain range. They were known for sitting motionless in the frigid weather outside for days waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike at their prey and as one of the few Royalty of that race, those traits were even more pronounced in her.
The male elf that stepped inside wore an identical silvery armor to the rest of the Royal Guards with the only differentiating factor being the different insignia at the center of his breastplate, a Feathered Serpent if Kali was right which was the symbol of leadership and valor in the Winter Kingdom.
She felt his disapproving gaze bear into her as she still lay in a rather un-princessly manner, but after a few seconds of staring, he just shook his head, making his silvery locks of hair flail around a bit before sighing.
"We are setting camp for the night, Your Highness," he started, "if you wish you could step outside and stretch your legs for a few hours till dinner is ready."
At that offer, she suddenly snapped to her feet and stood before the guard, looking at her with barely veiled amusement.
"I'd like that," she beamed up at the deceptively young-looking elf, "Thanks Mythral!"
He just nodded and stepped out of the doorway before offering her a hand in assistance and much to his supposed embarrassment, she just leapt out of the carriage and into the knee-deep snow while he stoically retrieved his outstretched hand.
She quickly lost herself in looking around the small clearing they were camping at for the night, the carriages formed a circle around the edges with the few carriages that would provide housing for the staff manning the convoy and the guards.
She probably wouldn't be allowed outside of the circle, so she first checked all the plants and the few lone trees standing in the clearing. You never knew which unassuming plant turned out to be magical. An unassuming magical plant that had the ability to make water even out in the most arid environments was the cause for the founding of a whole new field of magical research called Alchemy, after all.
The said plant was capable of taking some select elements and breaking them down into their components and then reassembling those components into different substances. With this process, it could make water out of thin air, you could say.
To her slight disappointment, only a single plant had turned out to have any magical properties. She managed to busy herself with prodding and poking the pine tree with an oddly metallic bark. She tried cutting a bit of the bark off with her knife, but without activating the enchantment on it barely made a scratch on it.
By the time it was time for dinner, she was carving little shapes and forms into the tools she made from the bark. She had a few needles, a knife, and a fork. She was still twirling the needles between her fingers when the servants got around to serving her food.
She was sitting with the rest in a tent set up outside for just this occasion; she refused to eat by herself back in her carriage as much as the tagalong maids wanted her to. She enjoyed the illusion of comradery she had with the rest, knowing it wouldn't last.
Can't go crying to father now, can you? She thought in derision as she watched one of her maid's look at her eating at a common wooden table with her newly made utensils.
The others felt visibly uncomfortable at the start, but as the minutes flew by; the princess faded into the background, all but forgotten. Despite having only basic tools while traveling, the cooks managed to create something edible.
Although she was initially excited to be let out of her stuffy carriage or the similarly stuffy room back at the castle, the awareness of what was to come overshadowed her joy. These few weeks would be the last she would spend as Kha'Lythria, Princess of the Winter Elves and after that, she would be one among the many trophy wives of the mighty sovereign ruling over the Kashgar Sultanate.
The human empire which bordered most of the Winter Kingdom was always keen on expanding and even more so if the targeted lands were in Elvish hands. The brutes down there who raped and pillaged their way through the erstwhile Elven kingdom of water to the south and occasionally raided into the mountains were the bane of any Winter Elf's existence.
Her father in his infinite wisdom decided to get into an alliance with the Sultanate which was founded by humans fleeing the expansion of the empire centuries ago and what better way to show his sincerity than to give his youngest daughter to the Sultan to do with as he wished.
Of course, those weren't his words. He was much more political and 'reasonable' in his explanations and expectations. So much so that Kali sometimes felt he might be right, but then the fact that it was she who would be the sacrificial lamb always managed to bring her back to her senses. It was a known fact that humans and elves don't trust each other and the ruthless Winter King along with his ancestors was the main reason for this. He wouldn't hesitate to raze hundreds of human cities if that secured the continuation of his kingdom.
Kali sighed as she stood from her seat at the table and waved at the rest with a slightly forced smile, the other elves who just realized that the princess was there all along stiffened a bit and waved back, well the ones that even noticed her silent departure.
She exited the heated tent, Mythral falling in step behind her, and headed towards her carriage for the night. She wasn't too tired yet, her Core enhanced her body enough so that she barely had to sleep eight hours a week. When you combined that with her base physique as a Royal Elf, the results were pretty impressive, if you consider not sleeping for a week impressive.
Kali definitely did. Night was the only time of the day when rarely anyone bothered her. Letting her bury herself in practicing Magic in the confines of her room.
The snow crunched beneath her white leather boots as the crisp air made her breaths come out like small puffs of steam. She raised her gaze towards the clear night sky and took in the beautiful view; it was one of the few beautiful things she saw even from the mountaintop castle in the middle of a landscape composed of grey rock and snow.
She swept an annoyingly curly white tuft of hair behind her ear and decided it was enough for now.
Just as she was turning her head to say goodnight to her stone-faced guard, she stiffened and a shiver travelled down her spine. It originated in her ears as they twitched in alarm at a sudden release of a Spell outside of their camp.
"AMBUSH!!" her guard roared at the top of his lungs and pushed her into her carriage, "stay inside Princess."
Kali only came out of her shock as she tumbled off of the seating she'd been thrown onto. Looking at the locked door, she felt the last enchantment coming to life.
Getting to her feet in a rush, she braced herself against the wall, her hand shaking from a mix of fear and the adrenaline surging in her veins. She stared through the window and her jaw dropped in astonishment.
She expected some sort of beast, maybe a Snow Panther or even a Blood Owl. Those could cast some rudimentary form of magic, but what she did not expect was Elves attacking them.
She narrowed her gaze at one attacker, covered from head to toe in a uniform black cloth with even his eyes hidden behind black-tinted glasses. She couldn't help but frown as she noticed that none of the attackers had long, pointed ears. They could have covered them with the cloth too, but as an elf herself, she knew how uncomfortable or outright sick they could get had they done that.
The ears of an elf are remarkably sensitive and serve functions beyond mere hearing and detecting spell activations. They were also responsible for an elf's constant awareness of their position relative to the ground. Restricting an elf's ears was like cutting a cat's whiskers and tail.
Kali's eyes took in the attacker's form. He stood as tall as the Elven guard he was going toe to toe with, but he was maybe a bit more … er, robust?
Her eyes widened in disbelief as she watched the attacker catch the elf's attack, swiftly counterattacking and sending the elf flying.
The guard appeared to have an epiphany and changed his fighting technique after shouting something to the others, who followed suit. They didn't go toe-to-toe with their enemies anymore; they deflected blades, dodged attacks, and danced around their enemies. The previous somewhat brutish style transformed into blade dancing the elves preferred when fighting opponents with strength superior to them.
Her blood ran cold as she realized the implications. Elves had a light skeleton and compact muscles that stayed near weightless, their bones hardly broke and could take much more of a beating than any other race, but the downside was that elves were significantly lighter than most other races of their size.
This made it so that while they could do acrobatics, others found unnatural other races could throw them around in head-on fights. Blade dancing, archery, and magic were their answer to that flaw and it did well as the steadily mounting dead Humans could attest to that.
"Why would they attack me, though?" she whispered to herself as her gaze fixated on her Guard Captain. Mythral was fighting off three attackers with two already at his feet, headless, and an additional one was quickly bleeding out to the side from a large gash along his torso.
She bit her lips and tasted the iron tang of blood on her tongue; the bodies were mounting, and the attackers didn't care about focusing on the combatants, quite the opposite they slaughtered the cooks, maids, drivers and anyone that couldn't fight back while most of them flooded the stronger opponents to keep them from interfering with them.
She tried to push her mounting guilt down along with her myriad of questions and focused on her stoic guard captain as he weaved between attacks and easily contended with the humans. It reminded Kali of a cat playing with its food.
Their blades sometimes cut off small tufts of his long white hair, but he obviously didn't care as his sabre separated his opponent's head from his shoulder.
Before the other two could retaliate, he flicked his off-hand towards them. Two streams of white energy leapt off of his fingers, striking the two humans on the chest.
The two stiffened, but fought on. Unfortunately, the outcome was obvious even to an amateur like Kali. Their movements soon became sluggish and their weapons seemed to increase in weight in their grasp as they had to put increasing effort into each swing. Mythral neither taunted nor ignored them, slipping behind the guard of one of them after a swing and jabbing his saber straight through his foe's chest where Kali thought his heart must have been.
He went limp on his blade, but the elf grabbed onto his clothing and swung him around at the other attacker, using the dead man as a shield against the other.
She saw him survey the fight taking place throughout the camp, frowning. Kali also took it as her cue to survey the devastation. The tents were torn down and bloodied with many of the people she ate along with not too long ago lying dead on the ground.
She felt bile rise from her stomach as she saw one of her assigned maids with her head bashed in, and another victim, one of the cooking crew, had his entrails flowing out from a large gash on his stomach. She ran her gaze across all the dead elves, feeling indignation rise inside of her as she glared hatefully at the Humans.
Elven blood dyed the snow red. Most of them weren't even fighters and now the number of guards falling also increased. The royal guards were overpowering the assailants but the regular guards pulled from the ranks of rangers and the regular military didn't hold up as well, the black-clothed humans were many and the elves only had to miss a single feint to have their lives cut short.
She snapped her gaze back at Mythral and his squad of Royal Guards as they gathered together and went on a massacre among the humans. She realized Mythral must have held back before considerably even if she didn't know why. Maybe he was testing his opponents or trying to find out who they were.
Kali's eyesight and cognition were leaps and bounds beyond normal elves, and even a normal elf made most humans look like children when it came to that. That was the only reason she could mostly follow the fight, as the squad of the most elite warriors in the kingdom had dashed around at speeds that cracked the ground and swept up the snow into a slight mist.
The only reason she could track Mythral at all was that he threw around Spells like they were common pebbles or something. Every spell killed multiple of his opponents with many of them being encased in ice up to their heads.
He is capturing a few alive - Kali realized and now understood that he was still holding back as the more unfortunate humans were frozen from the inside out and then they shattered into a million tiny snowflakes.
While her nerves were settling, a Royal Guard screamed and flew through the air, landing near Kali's carriage, attempting to rise but ultimately falling back down. The reason was apparent as she saw a jagged black dagger piercing straight through his enchanted backplate somewhere around his guts.
The guard shivered as he lay on his back. A few moments later, he opened his mouth in a silent scream before his body slacked. He didn't get up anymore, and Kali couldn't understand for a moment what had happened.
She stared at the lifeless body until the dagger was violently ripped out of the elf and flew in a straight line; it landed in the grasp of a black-clad human similar to the rest, with the only difference being aside from the sinister-looking dagger his softly glowing leather armor. It was black just like the rest and runes ran along it in configurations she didn't recognize, not that it said much, just that it differed from the ones elves used in their elite armor.
The new arrival wasn't alone either as another three, just like him, were facing off against the remaining Royal guards. It seemed two of the others also killed one guard each in an ambush somehow, if less violently than the one Kali saw.
The one with the dagger stepped forward and launched himself at Mythral. Soon, Mythral and the one with the dagger locked themselves in a duel that Kali could barely follow. Carriages got sent flying, and sections of the forest became upturned, but the devastation that followed in their trail traveled further and further away from the camp.
The remaining cloth-clad ambushers took this moment to reorganize themselves and with the two leathered ones clashing with the rest of the Royal Guards, they all converged on them. Even if one or five of them didn't pose a threat to a Royal Guard, they had to focus on the two assailants, who seemed to overpower them while the weaker ones came at them in waves.
By this time, very few of her normal Elven Guards were still standing, so the elites could only rely on themselves.
The Elves valiantly resisted the overwhelming numbers stoically, and without giving even a single drop of blood freely to their enemies. Kali wanted to help them, but she couldn't even if she wasn't locked inside her little coffin carriage. She shivered at the thought. What if the humans won? Would they open her carriage and kill her, too? Capture her? Or would they fail and let her starve to death inside?
She nervously watched the guards fight and little by little they gained the upper hand, even if the numbers weren't on their side the elves methodically cut down any of the weaker foes that dared enter the fray while mostly focusing on parrying and evading the two stronger ones.
If this continued, humans would be the ones being overwhelmed by her guards in time, but she still feared the worst now that she thought about why they could have attacked the convoy.
The strength of these humans was not normal, Elves were superior to humans in every way besides the weight and had all the advantages they could need, and yet a single human was going toe to toe with a Royal Guard captain while two were giving a hard time to five of the normal guards.
Kali wasn't privy to the secrets of her kingdom, but she knew Mythral should be one of their strongest. She was sure her father had some secret force, but aside from that Mythral was among the best the Kingdom had.
With humans being both weaker on average and of much worse potential than elves in terms of magic for them to send a task force this strong, they must be from a very elite group.
A group like that wasn't easy to send into enemy territory like this and very few nations would actually sacrifice them just to kill her. Because the humans were dying much more than the elves were, that was clear even to her.
When her thoughts drifted to which country would hate the very idea of Kashgar and her Kingdom forming an alliance, there were a few that came to mind, but she discarded all but one: The Corvus Empire.
With it spanning half of both Eastern and Western Iasira they were more than capable of producing a task-force like this and not batting an eyelash if it took every last member to undermine the Alliance.
She tore her gaze off of the elves fighting for their life in the clearing and tried to look for where Mythral might be. She quickly found it because of a colossal explosion going off in the distance, which uprooted more than a dozen trees and launched them through the air.
The lack of light made it somewhat difficult to see to such distances even with her inherent night vision, but even from here she could see what looked like a glowing white comet descending towards the site of the explosion. With the night sky as the backdrop, even in the light snow, it was easy to see the thing cutting through the air itself as it sped towards the ground.
From a white speck that she might have mistaken for a too-bright star, it soon transformed into a comet and then it kept growing in size as it closed in. When it was only a few hundred meters off the ground, Kali stumbled backward from the window.
"That's not a fucking comet," she cursed under her breath, gaping at the sight.
The thing had a long serpentine body that glittered in the blueish moonlight. It swam through the air, propelling itself with nothing but its magic and pure force of will as it commanded it to take it where it wanted to be. It had a head resembling a wolf, but covered in white scales from around the neck, the scales were also covered in glittery white feathers that gave it its name.
The Feathered Serpent.
It was more than a hundred meters long, but it moved faster than Kali could see. Elves chose it as the symbol for some of their strongest fighters out of respect because the ancient beasts were believed to be the closest to the bloodline of the ancient Dragons.
They were supposed to symbolize valor and leadership, but the intelligent beast cared not for their beliefs as its tail lashed out at where she guessed her Guard Captain and his opponent were. Her heart clenched in worry, but she could only trust him to survive as much for her safety as for his own. This monster could probably chew through the flimsy enchantments of her carriage like it was nothing, and it had more than enough reason to.
They were thaumavores like their Draconic ancestors. They ate mana itself, which was probably the reason this one came here. It ate mana and the mana crystal that powered her carriage or the Core of the two who it just attacked would be like an exquisite dish to it.
The ignorant humans probably didn't know that throwing around so many spells and saturating the air with mana could rouse any thaumavore, but she was confused about why Mythral went along with it. He should have known better. This was much worse than being ambushed by humans.
"I need to get out of here," she whispered with of panic.
The serpent would most likely decide to go for the easier meal first if Mythral and his opponent proved annoying, and it wouldn't mind getting a bit of extra protein from an elven princess.
The battle intensified as the serpent started flinging Spells all around itself in such a large quantity that Kali couldn't even comprehend how much mana that would take. To take her mind off of the mythical beast, she turned her attention back to her guards, who were by now almost equal in number to the humans.
Focus damnit! She ran her finger along the silvery metal that covered the door's enchantments. First, she would need to remove those and then she could get to disable the locking enchantments even if she had little confidence in actually accomplishing it.
She tried to remove them at first with her fingers but soon realized that would not work. Next, she tried some of the few spells she knew. She used Mage Hand to force it, but the thing dissipated. The Kinetic Impact barely cracked the reinforced wood and only made slight scratches on the metal. The rest of her spells were less than wise to use in such an enclosed space.
At last, she took out her last option, her enchanted knife, yeah, knife and not a dagger. She barely convinced her father that she needed a utility knife with enough sharpness to cut through mythril and adamantite. She stuck it in between the metal and the wood behind it, but forcing it off turned out to be harder; the strength was there, but even when she put her entire weight into it; it didn't amount to much.
She needed leverage, or a way to use only her strength on it instead of her weight.
With one foot against the wall, she used both hands to grab her knife and pushed with all her strength. She let out a yelp as she slumped onto the ground when the metal gave way, but she quickly scrambled to her feet and started examining the runes.
She didn't recognize much and most of them were still covered but the locking rune was easy to find, being placed in a central position and looking like an almost closed C with a few extra lines here and there. There should be safety against tampering with the runes, but she had to hope they hadn't put those on this side of the door.
She fiddled with the runes for a while, removing the metal from the other places where she felt locking runes under them; afterwards, she started poking them and shooting bits of mana onto them from her fingers, checking for protections, but much to her relief she didn't get zapped or something, so it must be safe.
The fighting outside faded into the background of her mind as she focused on trying to deactivate the door. The first lock gave way after a few minutes, and the rest soon followed.
She was on the last rune when it suddenly lost its shine and the door she was staring at got torn open. She blinked dumbly up at the battered Mythral. His disheveled hair clung together in strands stained with the blood that dripped from his head.
He held his side with a hand that glowed in a soft greenish light. Kali recognized the feel of the healing spell, but the wound visible through his shredded armour was closing much too slowly for Kali's comfort.
"Are you all-" she started, but Mythral grabbed her by the waist and jumped away, holding her close to him and making her let out an undignified scream.
"What..." The feathered serpent crashed down onto the carriage and started ripping it apart less than a hundred meters from them. She swallowed the lump in her throat, realizing she wouldn't have gotten out of there in time without Mythral.
With a blank expression, she watched as the monster used a spell resembling Mage Hand to disassemble the enchanted carriage, employing hundreds of clawed arms that floated around it and worked tirelessly to rapidly dismantle it.
Mythral forcefully snapped her out of her daze by pushing her away, deflecting a jagged black dagger. The dagger's owner remained unseen, but her guard remained vigilant in one direction.
"Run, Princess," he said without looking back at her. His eyes remained fixed on the direction the dagger was thrown from, simultaneously keeping the snacking beast within his line of sight.
"What?" she asked dumbly. Where should she run? They were in the middle of nowhere and there were still humans trying to kill them here.
"Run before the serpent is done eating. I'll keep that bastard here while the others manage the rest," he said gruffly. "We will find you once we are done here but RUN!!"
Kali was so shocked by him shouting at her she followed the order without actually thinking about it. She scrambled to her feet and ran without looking back, her mind focused solely on putting one foot in front of the other without falling.
Adrenaline was pumping through her veins, and she felt her heart throbbing painfully in her throat. The sounds of the battle grew distant and she could only hear her frantic heartbeat with the now howling snowstorm as the backdrop.