9. Chapter 9 The Frost #2
Nott raised her hand. The bolt that formed wasn't the standard [Ember Bolt] she'd been throwing all through our last run.
It was brighter, bigger, and the amber light from one of the amplification crystals flared at her belt as she cast. The bolt crossed the chamber and hit the left creature in the chest and it didn't just stagger.
It flew back and hit the wall and the ice behind it cracked from the impact.
"Whoa. That was three times the kick you had on the standard run," I said.
Nott's expression didn't change. "The crystals work."
"The crystals more than work. I didn't know they could do that."
She raised her hand again. "I can sustain this rate for approximately six volleys before the crystal needs to recharge."
Liv's arrow took the right creature through the throat.
It staggered forward, clawing at the shaft, and Sif came out of the dark behind it and finished it.
Bjorna pushed through the cold pocket with her shield up, the frost forming on the blackstone surface as she moved, and she caught the center creature mid-lunge.
The reinforced shield took the hit and the creature's claws scraped across the blackstone and couldn't find purchase on the new metal Larg had laid along the bottom lip.
Bjorna drove forward and the longsword went through its chest.
The chamber cleared.
Bjorna rolled her shield arm. "The cold pocket slowed me. We need to move around them, not through them. The creatures aren't affected by them. We are."
"Tactical terrain," Nott said. "The dungeon gives them an advantage in their own environment."
"Great. The dungeon is cheating," I added.
"Dungeons always cheat," Sif said. She pulled her dagger free and checked the edge. "That's what makes them fun."
"You have a strange idea of fun."
"You love it." She caught my eye and grinned. "Don't lie. You loved watching me come out of the dark back there. I saw your face."
"My face was normal."
"Your face was doing that look where you try not to be impressed and you fail."
"I was concerned for your safety."
"You were staring at my ass. My pants are tight too, you know."
"I was not staring at your ass."
Liv cleared her throat. "Were you staring at her ass?"
"I was watching her execute a flanking maneuver with precision and skill."
"That's a yes," Sif said.
"Just move your ass," Bjorna said. "All of you."
[Cold Hollow. Depth: 3.]
The steps down to depth three were the worst yet. Ice coated every surface and the cold pressed from all sides. My fingers were going numb inside my gloves and my breath was coming in short clouds that froze in the air before they dissipated.
The creature in the first depth-3 chamber made me stop walking.
It was big. Not goblin-big, not brood-tender-big.
Bjorna-big, except made of ice and muscle and hostility.
Seven feet at the shoulder, hunched, with a broad flat body covered in plates of frost-crusted hide that looked like armor grown from the creature's own skin.
Short thick legs, massive arms, hands that ended in blunt ice-encrusted fists instead of claws.
It stood in the center of the chamber with its back to us, still as stone, its breathing the only movement, each exhale sending a cloud of frost into the air.
I counted one. Just the one.
"That's a problem," Bjorna said quietly.
It turned. Slowly, like it had all the time in the world. Its head was wide and flat, set low between its shoulders, and its eyes were dark pits in a face covered in frost plating. It looked at us with no urgency and no recognition that we were a threat.
"Sif, don't engage until I've set its attention. Nott, save the crystal. Liv, watch for anything else moving."
"There's nothing else," Liv said. Both ears swept the chamber and came back to center. "Just that one. It's alone."
Bjorna moved forward. The creature watched her come, its head tracking her movement.
When she was twenty feet away it charged.
The speed was wrong for something that size.
It covered the ground in three strides and hit her shield with both fists and the sound rang through Cold Hollow like a thunderclap.
The impact drove Bjorna back six inches, her boots scraping across the ice.
The reinforced shield held. The old shield would have cracked.
Bjorna braced and pushed back, angling the creature's momentum to her right.
Sif came from the left and put both daggers into the joint behind its shoulder.
The blades went in and the creature swung a backhand that Sif ducked, the fist passing an inch over her head.
She came back up and struck again, finding a gap between the frost plates on its flank.
Nott hit it with an amplified bolt in the back. The creature staggered forward and Bjorna met it with a [Heavy Strike] that opened a crack in its chest plating. Liv put two arrows into the crack. The creature went to one knee and Sif drove a dagger into the base of its skull from behind.
It hit the floor and the ice cracked under its weight.
We stood over it breathing hard. Bjorna's shield arm had a tremor in it.
I put my hands on her forearm below the vambrace. "Come here." The magic bloomed beneath my palms and the strain in the muscles released. She rolled her shoulder and the tremor stopped.
"Thank you," she said.
"That hit would have broken the old shield," I said. "Larg earned his money."
"He did." Her eyes went to the dead creature and then to the chamber ahead. "We keep going. Stay tight."
The second depth-3 chamber had two of them.
The fight was harder and longer. Bjorna had to brace three times against hits that would have caved in anything less than reinforced blackstone.
Sif was faster than she'd been on the standard run, smarter about her positioning, reading the creatures' swings and finding openings instead of chasing them.
She'd learned from the Brood Mother fight. It showed in every move she made.
Nott's second crystal flared during the fight.
She hit one of the creatures with back-to-back amplified bolts that punched through its frost plating and left smoking holes in its chest. Liv put an arrow into each hole before the creature could recover.
Between Nott's amplified firepower and Liv's precision, the two of them were putting out more damage than our standard run by a wide margin.
I healed a cut on Sif's forearm where a creature's fist had caught her on a dodge. The gold went in and closed it.
"My hero again," she said.
"That one was bigger than a paper cut."
"And you healed it with equal dedication." She flexed her hand and tested the arm. "You know, most healers don't touch you that gently. You have nice hands."
"Thank you. I moisturize."
"With what?"
"Honestly, nothing. I was joking. My hands are disgusting."
She laughed. "They're not disgusting. They're capable. And warm."
The passage ahead was narrow and the cold was at its worst. My coat was stiff with frost and my face hurt. Liv's ears were low, pressed against the cold, and even Bjorna had her shoulders drawn up against it.
"Something's wrong with the ceiling," Liv said. She'd stopped at the entrance to a wider section of passage, one ear angled straight up. "I'm hearing stress fractures in the stone above us. The ice is heavy up there. The weight is shifting."
I looked up. The ceiling was fifteen feet overhead, frosted stone layered with ice a foot thick in places. Cracks ran through the ice in thin lines, and one of them branched while I stood there, a slow split that sent a thin rain of frost particles down onto my face.
"Everyone stop," Bjorna said.
The crack branched again. A section of ice the size of a table separated from the ceiling and hung there for a second, held by a thin ridge of stone. Then the ridge broke.
The ice came down. Not just the one section. The ceiling fractured outward from the break point and ice and frozen stone came loose in a cascade, section after section, falling toward the five of us standing in a passage with nowhere to go.
I couldn't heal this. If the ceiling hit us, I could fix broken bones and internal bleeding and crush injuries, one at a time, one person at a time, if I could reach them, if they were still alive when the ice stopped falling.
But I couldn't heal five people at once from crush damage.
Healing was reactive. Fix what's broken.
But they weren't broken yet. They were standing and alive and the ceiling was coming down on all of them and what I needed wasn't a heal.
What I needed was to stop it from landing.
The instinct went through me before the thought finished forming. I planted my feet and threw my hands up and something inside me, something that came from the same place the gold came from, pushed outward instead of inward. It reached for the people around me and pushed out.
[Bubble. Hold fast.]
A dome of light spread from my palms. It went out in every direction at once, soft gold, the same color as [Mend] but shaped into a barrier that curved over the five of us and sealed at the edges.
The first chunk of ice hit the dome and shattered.
The second piece hit and broke apart. The cascade of frozen stone and ice slammed against the barrier in a roar that shook the floor under my boots, and the dome held.
I held it. My feet were planted and my arms were up and I couldn't move, couldn't take a step, couldn't do anything except stand there and hold the barrier in place while the ceiling fell on us.
The collapse lasted about ten seconds. Ice and stone pounded against the dome and broke apart and fell around us in a ring of rubble.
The falling stopped. The last piece of ice hit the dome and slid off and everything went quiet except for settling rubble and my own breathing.
I let go. The dome faded. My arms dropped to my sides and my legs went soft. I sat down on the ice-covered floor because standing wasn't going to happen for a minute.