Chapter 11: Killing ice monsters
MAX
I'm shooting bolts of lightning at the monsters that come close to us, giving the people around me a chance to escape the deadly waters, the island grows closer as time goes on and soon, Hester is pulling people out of the water and unto shore.
I remain behind, defending our backs, and trying to help as much people as I can, the monsters are numerous, but not endless, and soon Thuli is dragging the last person to shore, everyone is heavily injured and some are missing parts of their body that had been bitten out by the monsters.
Thuli is standing on the shore, staring at the sea, and I walk towards her and sit next to her. She's crying softly, I try to say something, but she doesn't give me a chance to.
"This is your fault." she whispers quietly, and I flinch at her words. "Over fifty people dead, because of you, because you didn't hold the wind like you promised you would."
Her words are scathing, and although I know I'm not at fault, it's hard to be sure when the bodies of the dead still float in the sea before me. Still, her words are untrue, and she probably wouldn't be alive now if I hadn't stopped that lightning, I wanted to save those people and I tried but I couldn't.
"These people you see now will be dead if I hadn't stepped up, if I hadn't absorbed that lightning, there wouldn't have been anyone left to save." I say to her, and although I can understand her pain, I won't take the fall for this.
I couldn't have saved everyone, I didn't create the storm, if anything was to blame for the deaths of those people, it was the storm, Thuli is silent for a while, and I don't say anything, the deaths weigh heavily on me too.
"I'm sorry." she says, its barely a whisper, but its enough, and soon she's crying in my arms, she pulls away minutes later and I move towards the healer to get myself treated.
After that, I walk towards Hester, who remains at the shore as he practiced with his talents. I can tell that he's in pain too, but he gives me a small smile when I reach him.
"I know now isn't the right time to talk about silver linings in dark clouds, but I tiered up, and that's definitely a silver lining in all these doom and gloom."
I chuckle at his words "I tiered up too."
We lie on the shore for a few hours, but sleep doesn't come, I feel choked, and stifled, which isn't surprising after what we just went through. I stand and walk towards the forest and Hester decides to come with me, there are several people awake and only the children even manage to sleep, some of the people nod at me and I dip my head to acknowledge them.
When we get into the forest, I sigh in relief, the environment calms me, and I breathe better, Hester is quiet beside me as we walk deeper into the forest, soon we are joking and laughing quietly.
It's a little past midnight, but the moon is bright and my senses have been heightened, so I have no problem seeing, the wind is quiet, swirling around me slowly as if sensing my mood.
After a couple moments though, the wind whispers of danger, but the wind doesn't become agitated, so I know its not a havoc causing kind of danger like the earlier storm. Still, it puts me on edge, I call to Hester, explaining the danger and we stop, listening and waiting.
It doesn't take long before we see the monsters, about half my height and made of ice, the monsters have multiple appendages shaped like swords, and the only animal that best describes them is a spider.
There's about thirty of them, and I ready myself, lightning crackling around my fingers while Hester has three water blades swirling around him.
When the monsters get close enough, lightning arcs out of my fingers, shattering a few monsters in seconds, I call on the wind, and the shattered pieces of the dead spiders slam into the others.
I turn to see Hester, cutting the last of the spiders into 3 different pieces, and I wince on their behalf. Hester has a manic grin on his face and I roll my eyes at him.
"Did you see that? water blades just shheeeshs, and cuts them to pieces"
I chuckle as the rest of the monsters are dealt with.
"Where do you think they came from?" I ask wondering if they were native to the island or from some kind of hive, I have no idea how magical monsters think.
Hester walks over to inspect what's left of the monsters he killed, because there's nothing left from mine. I walk over to him, but I don't find anything that serves as a clue or hint as to their origin, but they were so weak that we assumed they were low tiered class 2 monsters.
"we could find out" Hester says, and the simple statement gets my blood pumping. If there was a hive of these monsters somewhere on this island, then we'd be doing the people a favor by taking them out right? Besides it would be fun.
We only walk for a few minutes before we start to see signs of the ice monsters, we kill as many as we can, moving deeper into the forest and we start to notice the drop in temperature. Ice covers the ground in a circular radius, I and Hester try to keep our excitement down, but we fail, this if the first time we would be fighting together as a team.
We search the forest around us for the next few minutes, our feet cracking ice, we find a couple more of the spider monsters that Hester takes out, assuring us we were in their territory.
Almost two hours later, we finally reach the spiders home, leaving shards of broken ice spiders in our wake. The cave is massive that I could enter without bending, I summon lightning and in only a couple seconds, blue white lightning arcs above my palms.
The lightning lights up the cave, as we enter it, the first thing I notice is the chill. The cave is filled with pillars of ice, and its only a few seconds before we are found out.
The monsters rush towards us and I let Hester do the killing, as he gets more familiar with his talents and manipulating it, managing to add one more water blade to his arsenal.
We progress steadily, but the monsters seem infinite, they come at us like an army of soldier ants, throwing themselves at the spinning water blades without fear or hesitation.
After almost thirty minutes of steady progress, I'm assisting Hester, shooting out bolts of lighting to lessen his burden and help him keep up with the spiders. That strategy becomes useless a few minutes later, as the monsters increase in level.
They are stronger and faster now, so I call on the wind, manipulating it against the horde, and smashing ice spiders against each other. Hester's blade has more difficulty cutting into the monsters and before long I'm forced to actively participate in the fight, arcs of lightning swirl around me and I direct them to the monsters.
Clouds form around me, dripping tiny amounts of rain that Hester manipulates to kill the monsters, I form constructs from the clouds, turning them into spinning blades and they cut into the monsters with terrific efficiency.
I use more of my powers as the monsters get stronger and noticeably fewer, white gold lightning swirl around me like a blade cutting the monsters to pieces.
We've been in the cave now for over an hour, but there's still no end to the monsters, the cave has gotten colder and I see frost on the walls of the cave. The ice spiders have gotten a lot stronger now that I consider them stronger than the richtclaws I faced a month ago, definitely higher levelled destroyers, and although their numbers have drastically lessened, they've gotten much harder to fight.
After we kill the final monster that rushes towards us, I turn to Hester, who is slumped against the cave walls, panting heavily as the cold saps our strength.
"Would you like to go back?" I ask him but he refuses.
"The end can't be too far now"
We rest for a couple minutes before we proceed, turning the corridor, we find a pack of the monsters, as tall as I am and I estimate their strength to equal double that of the last wave. They rush at us with incredible speed, but I don't let them get too close before I create multiple blades of storm to strike at them.
I take out my daggers, channeling lightning into them, sparks arcs around me as I run towards the monsters, cutting and slashing at their joints, I take multiple cuts from their appendages but they are negligible. I manipulate the wind around my fists, creating a gust that shatters the monsters I hit.
It takes much longer to kill these ones, and by the time we are done, Hester has multiple wounds across his body, breathing harshly, he curses the cold and I wrap my arms around myself, giving myself a moment of rest.
After a few moments we move to the next corridor, expecting monsters, instead, we find ourselves in a room, very reminiscent of the cave room I found back on earth, a crystal just as similar spinning in the room, with silver markings swirling around its surface.