Chapter 30 #2
He pulled on his power, molding the spell. He ducked, aiming his arm at the wall at about a forty-five-degree angle.
Lance of Annihilation.
The power burst from him, and the wall in front of his palm ceased to exist.
The beam drilled through the ice wall in an instant.
It continued through the rock behind it, the stone disintegrating in the lance’s path.
It crossed the tunnel beyond, then more ice and more rock, all the way until it burst through the mountain on the other side, offering a view of the cloudy sky.
The edges of the tunnel glowed briefly white before cooling to orange, then red, then dark. Cold mountain air rushed in through the opening, meeting the cave’s cold in a collision of temperatures that created an instant fog bank.
While Arleria and her group stared, Luna walked to the opening. “I go first with Alsen. We’ll clear the rest. Everyone else try not to die.” She climbed up into the fresh tunnel.
Alsen graced Arleria and the group with an awkward smile. Luna was right. He knew. But she didn’t have to phrase it like that. “Sorry,” he whispered and climbed after her.
The others followed, Kern doing his best to help Malick and Derell. His eyebrows only formed a grim confirmation. Both of their fighters were wounded, not gravely but enough to not be able to fight effectively.
Without them, Kern and most importantly, Arleria, would have to fight in melee, a distance neither of them specialized in. All four of them were now close to being dead weight.
A system pop up flashed through Alsen’s mind before he reached the tunnel’s end through the fog.
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: ENEMIES DEFEATED – FROST HARPIES (2)]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 1000]
[CURRENT LEVEL: 19]
He neither saw nor heard it. He reached the end. Luna caught his arm, and helped him up over the edge. Two dead frost harpies lay on in the tunnel behind Luna, bleeding from multiple spots. Luna had her spear braced by the wall, the tip still glistening with teal blood.
No screams.
He stayed by the rim. The harpies didn’t even use their screams on Luna, nor on Derell or Malick, come to think of it. That practically confirmed it in his mind. The harpies sensed magic, and screamed at it. In the first fight, the harpy screamed as a response to his flying spell.
In the second fight, he had the heating spell activated.
Derell was coming up, pushed from behind by Kern. Alsen grabbed his arm when he got close, and pulled him up with ease. Derell’s eyes slightly widened at Alsen’s strength.
Kern slid back down, and helped Malick. Alsen pulled him up as well.
Finally, Arleria climbed up. She needed only a little help. At last, Kern came up. The collapsed chamber lay behind them, on the hole’s other side. The tunnel itself snaked up ahead.
Luna grabbed her spear, and led her way into it.
As they walked, Alsen leaned to Arleria. “The harpies seem to scream at mana. If you empty yourself of mana at the start of the fight, it shouldn’t affect you so much.”
She scanned him with a quick look. “But that’s impossible.”
Oh… Alsen shrugged. “Try to stay behind then. We’ve got this.” He sped up to catch up to Luna, canceling his heating spell, withdrawing all his mana into himself.
The tunnel led up to what had to be the last level before the mountaintop. Whatever created the harpies awaited them up there.
The tunnel opened into a dome.
A vast, clearly designed dome, the ceiling arching a hundred feet above them in a curve too smooth to be natural.
Ice sheathed every surface, thick and ancient, glowing with a faint blue luminescence that had nothing to do with Alsen’s floating light orb.
The orb actually dimmed in comparison, its pale glow swallowed by the ambient light of the chamber.
Luna stopped at the entrance, one hand on her spear. Alsen stopped beside her. Behind them, Arleria and the others filed in, their footsteps crunching on the ice floor, each crunch echoing through the vast space.
The source of the light hung in the center of the dome, suspended twenty feet above the floor.
An ice-blue sphere, maybe six feet across, spun on no visible axis.
It seemed to be made of pure mana, concentrated into something visible, something that existed on the border between energy and matter.
Alsen had never seen anything like it. The thing pulsed with a rhythm that reminded him of a heartbeat, each pulse sending ripples of cold light cascading across the dome’s walls.
Five tendrils of frozen energy ran from the sphere to the dome’s walls, anchoring it in place like the spokes of a wheel. They met the walls at even intervals, each anchor point marked by a formation of ice that had grown around the connection.
Beneath the sphere stood the yeti.
Not hunched over now, easily ten feet tall, with arms that hung past its knees and shoulders broader than Derell and Malick standing side by side. White fur covered its body, matted and thick, crusted with frost.
He watched them enter.
Luna dropped her backpack, spinning her spear in her hand as she stepped toward it.
The walls moved.
At least ten frost harpies, clinging to the ice like bats, their wings folded tight against their bodies, crawled over the walls toward them. Their ice-crystal spines caught the sphere’s light, scattering it into tiny prismatic bursts across the ceiling.
Cages of pure ice lay lined up along the wall. Four of them, each with a drake inside. Two lay motionless, the other two stirred as they entered. The drakes’ eyes flashed with recognition.
Yeah, Alsen also recognized them. Those were the bastards that terrorized the Oak Library.
Well, then. Alsen pulled on his power, swiftly molding the spell.
Lance of Annihilation.
The energy speared forward, disintegrating the yeti’s body and head, piercing the mountain wall, continuing up into the sky.
Then the sphere pulsed.
Blue light swarmed from it, fluttering downward, flowing into the remains of the yeti, catching them before they even fell. The light filled the gaps. White fur sprouted from raw magic. Bone materialized, then muscle, then skin, all of it knitting together in a process that took about a second.
The yeti grinned. The harpies screeched.
But Alsen didn’t have any mana prepared in him.
The sound still hit like a physical force, amplified by the dome’s acoustics, every harpy on every wall joining into a single, devastating chord. The dome became a resonance chamber, the scream bouncing from every surface, multiplying, compounding.
It sounded awful, but he didn’t experience any whiteout, only his ears starting to ring.
Behind Alsen, Arleria collapsed.
She dropped to her knees, hands pressed against her ears, her body curling inward.
Kern flinched but stayed upright, his jaw clenched. He nocked an arrow with hands that shook.
Luna bolted forward, jumped to the wall, and stabbed the closest harpy. She continued moving, seamlessly withdrawing the spear, moving on to the next harpy.
Derell and Malick took stances by Arleria’s sides, forming whatever guard they could.
He had to lessen the number of harpies. He had about three big spells left in him. Without waiting for the power to properly gather, he formed the motes as the energy flowed.
Indirect missile. Times four hundred.
The missile barrage exploded from him. Three hundred for the harpies, a hundred for the yeti. He focused on the areas away from the cages. The missile barrage hammered the walls, explosions thundering through the dome.
The missiles tore into the yeti’s body, destroying it along with the orb’s light that was rebuilding it.
The wall to his left cracked, then shattered.
An entire section of the wall fell away, and sharp wind blew in through the opening.
Two of the orb’s anchors were annihilated along with several frost harpies.
Other harpies were injured, teal blood splashing from their bodies.
Luna reached the cages. With a swift stab, she shattered the ice chain holding it closed. With her leg, she pulled the door open as she moved to the second cage, where she instantly stabbed the sealing chain.
The drake tumbled out of the cage, stretching the wings, glaring at her, then Alsen, and the yeti. “You’re from the library,” he growled, focusing on Luna.
She smirked. “And you’ll be able to express your eternal gratitude later.”
Two frost harpies landed around Luna. Kern hit one with an arrow. Luna stabbed the other with a spin, then finished the first one, and she also kicked the door open. She bolted off as the drake started getting out.
The yeti raised its arm. Energy erupted from the ice orb, worming out before bolting toward Alsen and the group behind him.
Four harpies already landed near him, so he had to block this at the last second, with the most instant shield he had. The one he used against the ogre club way back, in particular.
As the projectiles got close, he snapped up the spell.
Shield.
Blue shield flashed into reality in front of him. The yeti’s spell hit it, and the shield didn’t flinch.
The harpies screeched. Alsen used all the mana in him for the spell, so he only got deafened for the split second. The scream shattered the shield, but also the yeti’s projectiles, so both spells vanished.
Kern’s arrow flew past Alsen’s shoulder. It hit one harpy in the head, making it crumple like a puppet with cut strings.
Arleria only twitched on the floor, completely unable to move.
Alsen pulled his mana into the circle underneath himself. At the same time, he sent out the M2 scan.
The three harpies around them changed.
The scan returned to Alsen the details of the room. Almost all its magic came from the orb in the center. It wasn’t the source of the energy, however. It connected to something, something beyond the physical, the real.
Something like the Pellicle, he reasoned. With two anchors gone, the orb already swirled in an irregular, unstable pattern.
One harpy launched itself at Alsen, the other two at Derell and Malick.