Chapter 30
Alsen instantly cast a flying spell.
But the others were falling. And he had a rope tying himself to four other people. He couldn’t carry that much weight. Even if he could, then what?
He flew down with them.
The floor had collapsed into massive, ice slabs, all falling into an abyss beneath.
Luna controlled her descent, kicking herself off the ice to aim for what the opposite side of the cavern would be. Alsen pulled on the rope, directing everyone’s fall in that direction.
They still fell. The thunderous crashing of ice into the floor announced that the bottom was getting close. Alsen checked the others’ landings. Luna, Kern, Malick, and Derell were going to fall on the clear side with nothing falling above them.
Arleria still had a large block of ice falling above her. Alsen flew to her, caught her in his arms, and flew to the others. They landed. Alsen slowed his landing with the flying spell. He descended cleanly on his feet.
Luna landed in a crouch. Kern rolled with the landing a couple of times before he stabilized. Malick landed hard, using his arms to protect his face from the floor. Derell crashed on the floor with a shout of pain.
“Derell!” Arleria shouted. She struggled in Alsen’s arms. He laid her on the floor. She rushed toward Derell.
Alsen looked up. Easily fifty feet of straight ice cliff separated them from the cavern they fell through. Way too much. The yeti, as he decided to call the being, didn’t fall, likely seated at the edge of the prepared collapse.
Arleria knelt above Derell, running a scan. Luna and Kern rushed to Malick, helping him turn, checking his wounds.
Alsen realized how little he could do. Healing was a part of magical research he never dabbled in. Why bother, when an entire healthcare sector existed?
But he wasn’t on Earth anymore, so they couldn’t simply call an ambulance.
Arleria switched to a treatment spell. Pink strings connected her hand to Derell’s body, working inside while he grimaced with pain.
Kern caught Malick’s arm while Luna braced his back. Even Alsen could see the arm was badly broken. Kern jerked the arm, snapping the bones back together. Malick screamed with pain, panting afterward.
Arleria looked up from Derell at Alsen, raising an eyebrow.
He only shook his head. “I have no healing capabilities, sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” she whispered, refocusing on Derell. “I would have gotten crushed by the ice if you didn’t fly me away from it.” She finished another treatment spell on Derell, tugging him to try to get up.
Alsen stepped in, helping him up to his feet. He pulled him up without effort. And he barely stopped the smirk, because he kept forgetting his ninety-something points in strength also worked on physical strength, so it always came as a surprise.
Derell stabilized, face still twisted with pain. “I can move. Mostly.”
Malick already stood, his left arm hanging limp in a cloth triangle Kern made out of his cloak. “I’m functional.”
Functional and capable of combat were very far away. Alsen looked around for an exit, seeing two tunnels that led out of the chamber. Luna already stood by one of them. He motioned at her with his head. “Luna takes point.”
Nobody argued. They headed into the tunnel.
The cold slowly hit them. A cold that pressed into the skin and kept pressing until it reached the bone.
The ambient magical chill from the surface was nothing compared to this.
Down here, the ice was old. The cold had centuries of depth behind it, stored in the walls and floor and ceiling, radiating inward from every direction.
He resummoned the heating spell, but he had to push far more power into it. That stabilized it, but the mana cost nearly doubled. At this rate, he’d burn through his reserves in less than half a day.
Arleria wrapped her arms around herself. Without the fur coat, her enchanted robes clearly couldn’t keep up. Her lips were already losing color.
Damn it. Alsen shrugged off the coat and draped it over her shoulders again.
“Alsen—”
“Put it on.”
Luna, from across the cavern, didn’t look. She very specifically, very deliberately, didn’t look.
Arleria put the coat on.
The lower caverns were a world unto themselves.
The passage wound deeper into the mountain, sometimes wide enough for them to walk three abreast, sometimes narrowing to shoulder-width gaps they had to squeeze through.
The ice walls pressed close, pale blue fading to near-white in the deeper sections.
In places, the ice was clear enough to see through, revealing the dark rock beneath, and within the rock, veins of something that glinted in Alsen’s light like trapped starlight.
Luna led. She moved carefully but without hesitation.
The first obstacle was water.
An underground stream cut across their path, maybe six feet wide, running through a channel it had carved into the ice over what must have been centuries.
The water was crystal clear and fast, its surface steaming where it met the frigid air, which meant it was warmer than the cave, so probably just above freezing.
Falling in wouldn’t kill instantly. Yet the cold shock would immobilize the person, and the current would do the rest.
Luna found a crossing point where the channel narrowed to four feet and an ice shelf jutted from the near bank, creating a natural platform. She jumped across first, landed, tested the far side, then waved the others over.
Kern jumped. Alsen flew over it. Malick jumped, barely, his boot scraping the far edge.
Derell couldn’t make the distance with one functional arm for balance.
Alsen had to fly back, grab him by the back of his armor, and half carry him across as he jumped.
Derell said nothing during the process, which was its own form of thanks.
Arleria hesitated at the edge. The gap wasn’t wide, but she realized how dangerous the water was. Being the shortest member of the group didn’t help.
Alsen extended his hand from the far side.
Arleria closed her eyes, waited for a few seconds, and then jumped. Alsen reached out, caught her as she was about to fall short of his side, weighed down by her robes and the coat. He pulled her onto himself on the far bank in a jerky motion. As she stabilized, holding on to him, he slowly let go.
They continued. The passage descended, then levelled, then ascended slightly before dropping again.
The ice formations grew stranger as they went deeper.
Columns of frost that had grown from floor to ceiling, fused into pillars that the passage wound between.
Shelves of ice that jutted from the walls at angles, some of them large enough to walk on, others barely wider than a hand.
The whole cavern system felt grown rather than carved, organic in a way that stone caves were not.
Nothing lived down here, not even the frost harpies.
They started finding bodies, though. The first one was a human or close to it, frozen solid, skin blue-white, limbs locked in a posture of crawling.
It wore the remnants of traveling clothes, a heavy cloak, boots, a pack still strapped to its back.
The pack was torn open, contents scattered and frozen into the ice beneath it.
The harpy claw marks on its back were unmistakable.
Nobody spoke. They walked past it.
They found more. An alcove branching off the main passage held a pile of them.
Animals, mostly. Mountain goats, a bear, something with antlers that Alsen couldn’t identify.
But people, too. Five, maybe six, it was hard to count where the frozen limbs overlapped.
These were older, the ice having grown over them, encasing them in translucent tombs that preserved every detail.
Expressions locked in their final moments.
Hands reaching for nothing. Mouths open.
The previous adventurer groups that had come to deal with the harpies, Alsen realized. Those who made it up the mountain.
Alsen figured this might have been the harpy’s larder. They dropped the more dangerous enemies here, and waited for the cold to get them. They kept moving, finding over a dozen more bodies along the way.
The passage narrowed. Then narrowed again. Then forced them into single file through a gap in the ice that barely accommodated Derell’s shoulders. On the other side, the cavern opened into a long, low chamber, the ceiling maybe seven feet high, the floor sloping upward toward the far wall.
The far wall was solid. Ice over rock, unbroken, stretching from floor to ceiling. No gap, no crack, no passage beyond.
Luna walked all the way to it. She pressed her hands against the ice, ran them along the surface, knocked in several places, listened.
She moved to the left wall, then the right, checking where the chamber’s sides met the back wall.
She crouched, examining the floor where it met the base of the wall.
“This is a really unfortunate dead end.”
“Unfortunate?” Derell spat. “We should have gone through the other path.”
“Those led down,” Luna said, voice cold.
“And most were blind. The air moved in this direction. But it was most likely a play of the wind caused by the halls with pillars. The exit is most likely somewhere in the ceilings, hidden and narrow, so that frost harpies can crawl through, but no one else.”
Alsen paused to think. They continually moved up through the mountain. He mapped their path in his head, realizing they were already at or above the level of the cavern they originally fell from.
If his mind map was accurate, then the wall at which Luna stood was the edge of the mountain. He walked almost to her, motioning at the wall to his left. “This one, right?”
“Yep. About this much.” She motioned with her hands, one flat, the other showing an angle. “Twenty to thirty feet, I think. How much power do you have left?”
Closer to the twenty, as far as his measurements went. “Enough.” Somewhere around a half to two thirds, as far as his estimates went.