9. Chapter 9 The Frost #3
The passage around us was buried in rubble. Broken ice and shattered stone piled in a ring where the dome had been, and the ceiling above us was open to rough bare rock, the frost and ice scraped clean by the collapse.
Nobody said anything for a few seconds.
"What the hell was that?" Sif said.
I pulled up my Status. The skill list had changed.
Class: Healer
Level: 33
Skills: Mend, Smite, Mercy, Sustain, Bubble.
"A new skill," I said. "[Bubble]. I didn't know I could do that."
"None of us did," Bjorna said. She was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read, her dark eyes steady, her shield still on her arm. "Are you all right?"
"I'm tired. Really tired. Give me a minute."
Nott crouched beside me. "You cast a wide-area barrier without prior knowledge of the skill's existence. The System granted it in response to the stimulus."
"I didn't mean to. I just didn't want the ceiling to land on you."
"Well, it didn't," Liv said. She sat down beside me and put her hand on my arm. "So thank you for that."
"You're welcome. I'm going to sit here for a little while if that's okay."
"Sit as long as you need,” Bjorna replied.
I sat. The cold came back in as the adrenaline faded, and my hands were shaking, and the drain from the skill sat in my chest.
Bjorna gave me five minutes. She spent them checking the route forward and clearing rubble from the path, and Sif worked beside her in silence.
Nott sat near me and said nothing, steady and quiet, her hands folded on her knees.
Liv stayed beside me with her hand on my arm and her ears scanning for anything coming through the settled debris.
I got up and gained my bearings.
“I’m fine. I’m guessing it was so taxing because I unlocked it so suddenly and put it to work,” I said.
[Cold Hollow. Depth: 4.]
The passage opened into a larger space and the temperature dropped again, hard. My breath froze before it left my mouth. My eyelashes stuck together when I blinked. The ice on the walls had become structural, holding the stone together instead of coating it.
Nothing moved in the corridor ahead of us.
The creatures had thinned and then stopped. The passage held no runners, no stalkers, no brutes. It was empty and silent and the cold was so intense that the air seemed to hum with it.
"Even the brutes don't come down here," Bjorna said. Her voice was low.
Claw marks ran along the ice walls. Deep, wide gouges scored into the frozen surface, each one as long as my forearm. They cut through the ice and into the stone underneath, three parallel lines spaced a foot apart. Whatever had made them was bigger than anything we'd fought.
"Those are fresh," Sif said. She ran her fingers along the edge of one gouge. "The ice hasn't filled them back in yet."
More marks ahead, deeper and wider. A section of wall had been crushed inward, the stone behind the ice cracked and displaced by something that had leaned against it and deformed solid rock.
"What has that kind of mass?" I said.
Bjorna didn't answer. She was reading the signs, her eyes moving from the claw marks to the crushed wall to the passage ahead. Her jaw was set and her grip on the shield had tightened.
"Check your gear. Drink water. Eat something. We go in together and we stay together."
We sat against the wall and ate and drank in silence. The cold made everything harder. The water in my pack had started to ice at the surface and the dried meat was stiff.
"The standard boss was the Brood Mother," Bjorna said. "This isn't the standard run. Whatever made those marks is bigger than the Brood Mother. I can't tell you what it is because I don't know."
"That's reassuring," I said.
"I'm not trying to reassure you. I'm telling you the truth. We go in ready for something we haven't seen before."
"I appreciate the honesty. I also appreciate that we have a portal scroll if this goes sideways."
"We do. And we'll use it if we need to. But I don't plan on using it. We’ve done very well so far."
Sif checked her daggers one more time. Nott sat still with her hands on her knees, her eyes closed, her breathing even. Recovering from the casting, if I had to guess. Liv had her ears locked forward, pointing down the passage toward whatever was ahead.
Bjorna stood. Her eyes went to Sif, then Nott, then Liv, then me, and she nodded.
We moved deeper.
The passage widened into a cavern. The ceiling was high, lost in shadow and frost. The floor was a sheet of ice so thick it was translucent, and beneath the surface something moved, a massive dark shape turning slowly under the ice.
The claw marks on the walls converged here, dozens of them, layered over each other, all pointing inward.
From deep in the cavern, something breathed. A long, slow breath that came out as a cloud of frost that filled the far end of the chamber and rolled toward us across the ice floor like fog.
Then a shape stood up in the dark. It was massive. The head alone was higher than Bjorna's eight feet. Broad shoulders, thick arms, white fur matted with ice. It stood on two legs and its eyes caught the dim light and reflected it back at us, two pale points in the dark.
The cold intensified. The temperature in the chamber dropped so fast that the moisture in the air crystallized and fell as a fine snow around us.
Bjorna set her shield.
"Together," she said.