The Ice Lands

by William Dickey

  †Timber Classic Marlin 336C†

  Damage: 120-130

  Durability: 100/100

  Requirements: None

  Additional Attributes: Scope (Range x 2)

  Description: Solid hunting rifle with a classic lever action that strikes a delicate balance between portability, balance, handling, and firepower. With moderate recoil and a large magazine, it is a potent weapon.

  Bolevard put the weapon in his inventory, foregoing the second deer leg. One leg was enough to last the two of them a few days and he would go out for another experience hunt long before then.

  Bolevard made his way back and after an hour climbed the long ladder of vines to the small wooden cottage Sylph had made in the trees. As he walked through the door, the sweet aroma of freshly baked sugar cookies inundated Bolevard’s nose. Elves, or at the very least Sylph, had a serious sweet tooth so this occurrence was quite common.

  “You have to try one of these,” said Sylph as she turned around with a tray and gasped.

  “I’m afraid I ran into a bit of trouble,” said Bolevard.

  “You’re hurt, what happened? Was it… them?” Sylph asked. She was already moving Bolevard to a chair to look at his shoulder.

  “No, it wasn’t them. At least I don’t think so. It was just an old man hunting in the woods. I think he mistook me for a wild animal,” Bolevard explained.

  “At least there’s that, but I still think you need to reconsider these escapades of yours. It’s dangerous outside. You should stay here where it’s safe,” said Sylph.

  “No,” said Bolevard. “If anything it makes me more certain. We can’t just keep holing ourselves up in here. If we do, we won’t have a clue what’s going on when something inevitably stumbles into our path.” Bolevard had been trying to convince Sylph of this for the last several weeks, but she refused to budge. Now that they had run across some danger, Bolevard hoped she might reconsider.

  “The hunter was carrying this.” Bolevard withdrew the weapon the old man used to shoot him and tried to show Sylph. Sylph took the weapon and set it outside of Bolevard’s reach.

  “Stop moving. I need to fix this,” said Sylph. Sylph cut Bolevard’s shirt so she could get a better look at his wound. Bolevard and Sylph still didn’t understand the weapons of this world and how they worked, but whatever Bolevard had been shot with, it had gone straight through him, which was actually a good thing since it meant nothing had to be removed before Sylph began treatment.

  Bolevard felt an uncomfortable stinging sensation as Sylph slowly worked her magic. Sylph could have used a bit more power and dulled Bolevard’s nerves around the treatment area but she didn’t want Bolevard to become too comfortable with her magic. Making it too easy could cause Bolevard to be careless and it wasn’t a big step to go from injured to dead.

  As Sylph worked, Bolevard kept at his convincing.

  “I bumped into someone in the forest today. What if more are to come? His weapon is a bit weaker than the ones our captors used, but it is still incredible compared to tools of our world, or at least the tools of my people. I know nothing of the elves. What if they all have such weapons? We can’t remain in the dark about the details of this world. We won’t be truly safe until we know what we’re up against. And the first step to arranging this is going where there are people and learning,” Bolevard argued.

  Sylph’s work was finished, but she still said nothing back, so Bolevard continued.

  “I know that this could be risky, but if we just sit here, we don’t know when problems will arrive. This way, we’ll be careful and together. That is the way we survive.”

  They both sat in silence for a moment, finding enough comfort in each other to consider their options with a clear head.

  “You’re never going to stop arguing for this. Are you? Okay, we can go and learn just what awaits us in this world, but we take it slow and be careful,” Sylph finally conceded.

  “Isn’t that what I said.”

  “Couldn’t you have found a better place to land?” I asked Wy-1 and Wy-2 as I dove to the side to avoid an icebeast’s frost breath. My Low Temperature Resistance kept the move from freezing me like it had Bearballs but the sharp shards of ice inside of it would still cover me in small lacerations if it hit.

  “We’re in the middle of a nest of monsters, I don’t think they could have landed in much worse,” said Zelus as he continued casting lightning to slow the beasts down and allow him to avoid a face-to-face confrontation.

  “You really shouldn’t be complaining,” said Wy-1.

  “There were no signs on the surface, there was no way for us to have known what lay under the snow,” argued Wy-2.

  It was the second day since we left Doraga. After packing up camp in the afternoon, we spent another evening on the backs of Wy-1 and Wy-2 as they followed the coastline north. During the first part of the flight, there was simply forest on one side and a vast ocean on the other, but as we continued up into colder regions, the vibrant trees faded and turned into frosted barren twigs. A few years ago, the area was a productive forest but the persistent and expanding cold killed all the trees, turning the terrain into an endless expanse of frozen toothpicks jutting straight up out of the frozen ground.

  We set down earlier than the previous day, about an hour before sunrise. The air had grown so cold it started to freeze up the wyvern’s wings. The easy part of our journey was over and we settled down on a clear hilltop, knowing that in the coming days we’d all be walking.

  The landing went fine. Everyone off loaded and much like the previous morning, Zelus, Rose, Titania and I set up the tents while Wy-1 and Wy-2 rested and the other Doragans scouted our surroundings, making sure the place was safe.

  As I wasn’t with them at the time, I cannot attest to the thoroughness of their search, but you know how it ended up. We had another of Albert’s tasty concoctions as the sun rose and were just getting situated in our tents when we started to feel the ground rumble underneath us. At first, I thought it was an earthquake. I was from California and was no stranger to that phenomenon, but then large chucks rose from the ground like pillars of ice. It took a few seconds, but the pillars shook themselves, tossing aside the snow they were covered in, revealing their true forms.

  They looked like great serpents made of ice with a series of jagged spikes running the lengths of their entire bodies. Their white coloring blended in perfectly with the snow, making them difficult to spot while they lied on the ground.

  The interface called the dozen feet long, three-foot-wide ice snakes that I’d briefly called pillars Ice Anaconda Elementals. There were ten of them, but the anacondas were just the start. Hundreds of smaller ice serpents, small enough to fit under my boot, scattered from around the larger anacondas, fanning out around us like a giant net. Then, shortly thereafter, another form rose in a tsunami of snow that flattened the hilltop in which we’d made camp. The interface labeled this final forty-foot serpent an Ice Jormungandr.

  The beastmen would make a hefty meal for the medium sized anacondas so I was a bit surprised when one of them suddenly pounced at Wy-1 with its mouth open wide to gulp him down. Fortunately, Wy-1 was ready. He thrust out his sword into the relatively soft upper palette of the serpent’s mouth. I say relatively soft because his blade only sank in a few inches, but it was better than strikes against the snake’s scales, which did next to nothing. In reaction to the strike in its mouth, the anaconda exhaled an icy gust, affecting Wy-1’s hand. His hand grew stiff and was inundated by the sharp stinging of frostbitten flesh. The damage wasn’t anything permanent, but it forced Wy-1 to relinquish his blade and pull back.

  At that point, we all knew we had a real fight on our hands and couldn’t help but blame each other for falling into this mess.

  “Bearballs, you were the one who ran a security check of the area. How could you miss something right under our feet,” Rose complained as she tried to put as much distance between her and the ice snakes as possible, she was m
ore of a long distance fighter.

  “Exactly, we were busy searching our surroundings. You were at camp, setting up tents. Why did you not notice anything?” asked Bearballs.

  “Enough of that both of you,” Izusa shouted. “This is not the time to assign blame. Bearballs, Bullseye, Wy-1, and Wy-2 focus on the big one. You do not need to kill it. You just need to distract it long enough for the rest of us to get rid of the smaller ones.”

  Everyone snapped into action and started moving into their respective positions. Bearballs, Bullseye, Wy-1, and Wy-2 moved towards the giant Jormungandr while everyone else took on whatever anaconda happened to be nearest to them, the small serpents weren’t worth bothering with, most would be killed in the aftermath of the other battles and whatever was left could be cleaned up afterwards.

  As Bearballs headed for the Jormungandr, he passed near Titania who was already engaged with one of the anacondas. The serpent lashed out with its icy breath, which Titania deftly dodged by rolling to the side. Unfortunately, Bearballs wasn’t paying enough attention and got caught by a piece of the ice breath. It was barely anything, not even enough to bring pain much less injure Bearballs but the beastman still took it personal.

  “Is it not enough that we let you come along, the least you could do is stay out of the way,” Bearballs complained. Really, Bearballs should have been paying more attention, if he was, he would have been able to avoid the ice blast entirely. But he couldn’t blame himself, not when Titania was such an easy target.

  You gained 7 EXP

  You gained 11 EXP

  …

  …

  You gained 6 EXP

  A handful of the small ice serpents died as I stomped my way to the nearest anaconda.

  ‘It looks like these things are awfully brittle. One good smack and you could finish them,’ said Mai.

  I wasn’t the only one to attack that particular snake, Izusa charged it as well. She was closer and frankly more intimidating so the anaconda focused its attention on her. It fired its icy breath, forcing Izusa to step back and allowing me to approach unchallenged. I lifted my gravity spear and swung downward. Just before striking the middle of the serpent’s length, I pushed the button on the spear, turning it up to its maximum weight. The spear clanged uselessly off the snake’s icy body.

  “Really brittle,” I nodded at Mai.

  ‘It is,’ Mai reaffirmed. ‘It’s not my problem that you can’t slam your thing down hard enough.’

  The serpent’s tail whipped around and sent Izusa back a dozen feet, allowing its head to direct its icy breath towards me and I wasn’t nearly as speedy as Izusa who’d failed to dodge. Fortunately, the butt of my spear was already facing the ice snake. So rather than try to duck out of the way, I pressed the second button. A jet of flame roared out of the back end of the spear. I did my best to aim the flame to counteract the ice shards that would kill me by a thousand cuts if it got through. The move worked well, only a couple shards struck my feet, which were well covered, and there was a secondary benefit I hadn’t anticipated. The fire glanced the side of the serpents face and about half of that face shattered and fell away.

  “What the hell was that?” I exclaimed to myself though for me there was someone else to answer.

  ‘Like I said they’re brittle. There’s more than one way to shatter something than to hit it with a heavy stick. Sometimes I wonder if you’re nothing but a dumb brute,’ said Mai.

  Like warm water cracking a cold glass, fire could crack the cold brittle bodies of the ice serpents.

  “They’re weak to fire,” I announced to the group. Most couldn’t use this fact, all they had were torches at best which weren’t nearly enough but Rose and Zelus could. Rose had already been using fire to negate an anaconda’s ice breath. She quickly doubled her efforts, overwhelmed the breath, and took a chunk out of the snake. Zelus had been using illusions to trick a snake and allow Talia to get in a few hits, but he soon switched and used a fireball to kill an ice anaconda.

  Meanwhile, I upped the flamethrower on my spear and slashed everywhere I could, swiftly killing two anacondas.

  You gained 747 EXP

  You gained 842 EXP

  The experience notifications proved the snakes dead and even before they stopped wriggling, I moved onto a third.

  While I was doing that, Titania used a rather deft move to finish off one of the anacondas by herself. She took her broadsword and buried the hilt and pommel underground so that its six-foot blade stuck straight up out of the ground. Then all she had to do was lure out the snake and get it to lunge at her.

  As Wy-1 had proved early on, none of them were strong enough to pierce the mid-sized serpents with a blade even in a weak spot like inside the mouth so Titania didn’t rely on her own strength. The anaconda’s raw power was turned against itself as Titania dove out of the way at the last moment and the snake impaled itself on her blade, slashing its entire head in two straight down the middle.

  Titania retrieved her sword. She was quite pleased with herself. Rose, Zelus, and I may have been doing a better job with the snakes using our fire magic, but she was the first of her ‘countrymen’ to take one of the enemies out with a blade. After all the problems with the Othans and her own struggles with confidence, Titania needed the win.

  It looked like the magic users had the anacondas handled and all it took was a glance to see how poorly Bearballs, Bullseye, Wy-1, and Wy-2 were doing against the 40-foot Jormungandr. Bullseye’s axe was broken into pieces and strewn across the ground. Wy-1 and Wy-2 were holding their own keeping the beast distracted as they took turns slashing at either side of it. And as for Bearballs, well he probably should have been called Blueballs, as he’d been struck by a wave of ice breath which turned his complexion pale blue.

  Titania moved to help the four of them, charging forward and delivering an over the head slash across the side of the Jormungandr’s head just behind its skull where the scales were thinnest while Wy-1 dodged another wave of breath.

  “I thought you were supposed to be fighting the smaller ones,” said Wy-1.

  “I was, but I thought you guys could use a hand,” said Titania as she pulled back and dodged the Jormungandr that just snapped at her in retaliation for the deep cut she delivered to its neck.

  “We don’t need the help of a Fallen, we’re perfectly capable of handling this thing by ourselves,” said Bearballs. After being chilled out, he’d hung back for a minute, but having the help of an inferior was something he absolutely refused to let happen. He quickly charged back into the fray and slashed at the ice snake with a pair of daggers but unlike Titania, he hadn’t targeted a weak point and the strikes failed to do anything but scuff a few scales.

  The Jormungandr ignored Bearballs. It was preoccupied with something else. The large ice creature released another frost blast, but oddly enough, it wasn’t using it to attack anyone. The snake had turned its head as near to the wound Titania created as it could, the center of the blast was far from its target but a piece of it still reached. At first it looked like the snake was trying to repair itself, use the ice breath to seal its wound shut despite the fact that there was no blood, though the wound was deep enough that there would have been if the ice snake had any.

  When the snake stopped and resumed targeting the five warriors surrounding it, the wound was sealed and a small protrusion replaced the gash. At first, no one thought anything of this and the battle resumed its stalemate. The five warriors couldn’t break the serpent’s scales and injure it and outnumbered and out sped the serpent couldn’t catch any of the five. But after a couple minutes, the five knew that the Jormungandr’s earlier action had been far more insidious than patching an injury. The protrusion grew until it became a second head, identical to the first in every way, including possessing the ability to exhale ice. Now the group faced two potential sources of attack instead of one.

  “See, this is why you should not be here. All you do is make everything worse,” said Bearballs.


  “How was I supposed to know that it would do that?” Titania snapped back. There had been a number of snide remarks both during her brief visit to Doraga and in the two days since she joined the group, she had born these tribulations with understanding and restraint. But this recent comment had gone too far. Bearballs stepped on the desperate strand of hope Titania acquired from my motivational speech.

  “Do not tell me you would not have wounded it if you could. The only reason why you are blaming me is because I was the one who did it first,” Titania continued to lay into him, but it didn’t do any good. Bearballs’ mind was set and once a person is like that, they’ll only change in extraordinary circumstances.

  Titania settled back down and returned to form. The battle found a new balance with the five warriors in the inferior position, but they held. Titania looked over to where I was helping the rest clean up the last of the anacondas. We were down to the last two, one of which also had two heads. Titania looked to where she’d slain her anaconda, the body was gone. It had resurrected with two heads and returned to the fight. This realization did no good for Titania’s faltering ego.

  While all this was going on, I was getting especially frustrated with two heads and correspondingly two sources of ice, the anaconda easily defended all my attempts at burning it with my spear. I even tried to add in a few directly cast fireballs, but it wasn’t enough. Izusa tried her best to distract the thing and provide me with an opening but the two-headed snake wouldn’t bite.

  Eventually, Izusa had enough of being ignored. She used her twin swords to repeatedly slash one of the snake’s necks in the same spot until she broke through. One of the heads fell to the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces. The remaining head hissed in annoyance as two protrusions began to grow in the vacant neck hole. If allowed to continue, in a few minutes the serpent would have three heads. Of course, I wouldn’t let things go that far. I took advantage of the reduced ice breath and levied all the fire my spear could muster, waving around the back end of my spear in a frenzy until some of the flame got around the anaconda’s counter.