10. Chapter 10 The Yeti #2
"How cold?" Bjorna said.
Liv took a second, both ears adjusting, pulling something from the passage ahead. "Cold enough that I don't want to find out. The air currents inside those pockets are barely moving. Whatever's in there isn't just uncomfortable. It's lethal."
Nott stepped forward and raised a hand. A faint shimmer of heat rose from her palm and she pushed it into the passage ahead.
The heat met one of the cold pockets and the boundary showed itself, a visible line where the warm air hit a wall of something colder and stopped.
Frost crystallized at the contact point and fell as fine powder.
"I can detect them," Nott said. "The thermal differential is extreme. Liv is right. These would stop a heart."
"Wonderful," I said. "So we have wall spears, thin floors, and pockets of instant death. This is exactly the dungeon experience I was hoping for. The full moon has delivered in spades."
"It's a gauntlet," Bjorna said. She was reading the passage ahead, tracing the surfaces. "The dungeon tested us with creatures for four depths. Now it's testing whether we can navigate without fighting." She looked at Liv. "You're our way through. Call every step."
Liv nodded. Her ears locked forward and she started walking. “This is a lot of pressure to put on a girl. I got it, though.”
She was incredible to watch. Every few steps she'd stop, adjust, point left or right.
"This side. Stay against the wall. There's a pressure plate three feet ahead, in the center of the passage.
" We'd move. "Stop. A cold pocket, eight feet, fills the passage floor to ceiling.
Go left, there's a gap along the wall, single file.
" We'd file through. "The floor's thin here.
Spread your weight. Bjorna, go last, you're the heaviest."
Bjorna’s brow raised. “Excuse me? I’m the heaviest?”
“Bjorna, really? We’re going there?” Sif laughed.
“Fair enough,” Bjorna replied.
The corridor opened into a wider section and the ceiling was lower. Icicles hung from the stone above us in dense clusters, some of them as long as my arm, catching Nott's flame in points of reflected light.
"Stop," Liv said. She listened. "The icicles are rigged. There's a trigger mechanism in the floor. If we step wrong, they come down in sequence. Left to right. The safe path is against the right wall."
We pressed against the right wall and moved through.
Behind us, a chunk of ice fell from a crack in the ceiling and struck the ground and the icicles released.
They came down in a wave, left to right, each one punching into the ice floor with enough force to crack the stone underneath.
The sound was like a drum roll played on crystal.
"That would have killed us," I said.
"That's why I'm here," Liv said. She said it simply, without performance.
"You are the best scout I have ever met and possibly the best scout who has ever lived, and I am incredibly grateful that you are in this party. Am I laying on the compliments thick enough?" I joked.
Her ears went pink. "I'll take it."
The last section of the gauntlet was the worst. The passage narrowed to a single file and the cold pockets were spaced so close together that Nott had to project heat ahead of us continuously to map the gaps.
Liv called the route and Bjorna followed her directions without question, leading from the rear, calling when to stop and when to move.
Sif took a glancing hit from an ice spear that caught her upper arm and opened a shallow cut.
I healed it on the move, reaching forward and pressing my hand against the cut without stopping.
"Your bedside manner is getting more efficient," Sif said.
"I'm adapting to my patients' lifestyle choices."
"My lifestyle choice of being in a murder tunnel?"
"Yes. That one."
The gauntlet ended at a doorway.
Cut stone, ten feet tall, set into ice-covered rock.
The surface was smooth and old and the cold coming through it was the worst I'd experienced all night.
The air on the other side pressed against the stone, heavy and pushing, like it wanted through the cracks.
Frost had formed around the edges of the frame in thick white ridges.
Bjorna put her hand on the stone. She pulled it back. "Final rest. Check your gear. Drink water. This is the boss."
We sat against the wall. The cold made everything slower.
I drank water that had iced at the surface and ate a piece of dried meat that was as stiff as leather.
Bjorna checked her shield. Sif ran her whetstone across both daggers.
Nott sat still with her eyes closed. Liv's ears never stopped scanning.
"I can't brief you on what's in there because I don't know," Bjorna said. "We go in smart, we stay in formation, and we react to what we find."
"That's reassuring," I said.
"For the last time, I'm not trying to reassure you. I told you the truth back at depth four and I'm telling you the truth now. We don't know what's in there."
"I know. I appreciate the honesty. I'd rather have that than a pep talk."
Bjorna looked at me. Something in her expression was steady and direct. It wasn't worry. It was confidence in us. "We're ready. We've been ready since the Brood Mother."
She stood. She put her shield on her arm and drew her longsword and looked at the door.
"Together."
The chamber beyond the door was enormous.
The ceiling was lost in shadow and frost, high enough that Nott's flame couldn't reach it.
The floor was solid ice, thick and translucent, polished smooth by something moving across it.
The walls curved inward at the top, forming a vaulted space that swallowed sound.
The cold was absolute. My breath froze on my face and my eyelashes stuck together when I blinked.
The creature stood in the center.
What we’d fought on depth four had been big.
This made it look small. Twelve feet tall, standing upright on thick legs, the body a wall of white fur crusted with ice so thick it formed armor across the chest and shoulders.
The arms were as wide as Bjorna's torso.
The hands hung past the knees, massive and blunt, each finger as thick as my wrist. The head was broad and heavy, set low between the shoulders, and the eyes were pale and flat and they were already looking at us.
It breathed. The breath came out as a rolling cloud of frost that spread across the floor toward our feet.
Around it, arranged in a loose semicircle, six creatures waited.
They were similar to the frost runners from depth one but bigger, leaner, their pale fur longer and coarser.
They sat on their haunches like dogs at heel, their flat eyes watching us with the same silent attention. They were a pack, a guard detail.
"That's the biggest thing I've ever seen in a dungeon," Sif said. Her voice was quiet and steady, reading the room.
"Those wolves are a problem," Bjorna said.
"We can't fight the big one with a pack circling us.
" Bjorna looked from the boss to the wolves to the chamber layout.
"Sif, Liv, you handle the wolves. Kill them fast and then join the big fight.
Nott, split your fire. Bolts on whatever needs dying.
Daniel, you heal everything that bleeds.
" She raised her shield. "I take the big one. "
"Bjorna, that thing is twelve feet tall."
"I noticed. Stay behind me."
The wolves hit first.
The pack broke from the semicircle and came at us from three angles, fast and silent and coordinated. Two went straight for Bjorna, cutting between her and the boss. Two circled wide toward the flanks. Two went for the back line, for Nott and me.
Sif intercepted the flank pair and put a dagger through the throat of the first one mid-stride. The second one snapped at her and she sidestepped and drove the other dagger into its skull. Two down in three seconds. She was already moving toward the next pair.
“Are these wolves related to you, Sif?” Liv asked sarcastically.
“Not closely, I’m afraid. I’m from much better genetics.”
Liv's arrows took the ones coming for the back line. The first arrow caught a wolf in the chest and it tumbled across the frozen floor. The second arrow hit the other one in the shoulder and it kept coming, and Nott dropped it with a bolt at close range.
The two on Bjorna bit at her legs and she kicked one away and caught the other with a [Shield Bash] that sent it spinning across the ice. Sif got to it before it recovered.
"Move!" Bjorna shouted. She was already closing the distance to the boss. The creature's pale eyes tracked her approach and it didn't move. It waited until she was fifteen feet away and then it moved.
The ground shook.
Its first step cracked the ice. Its second step sent a tremor through the floor and into my knees.
It reached Bjorna in two strides and swung a fist that was bigger than her shield.
She caught it on the blackstone. The impact was louder than anything in the dungeon so far, louder than the depth four creature, louder than the ceiling collapse.
Bjorna's boots slid backward across the ice.
She gritted her teeth and held. The shield held.
The creature brought the other fist around.
Bjorna ducked. The fist went over her head and hit the wall behind where she'd been standing and the ice cracked in a web that ran ten feet in every direction. Chunks of frozen stone fell from the ceiling.
She came back up and drove forward with a [Heavy Strike] into the creature's knee. The longsword bit through the ice plating and the creature stumbled, and for a half second there was an opening.
"Nott!"
Nott's bolt slammed into it dead center, amplified and bright, punching through the ice armor and leaving a smoking wound. The creature roared. The sound filled the chamber, vibrating through the frozen walls, and frost fell from the ceiling in a fine snow.