I felt a slight shudder as a large green four-armed-monkey-beast slammed into the upper thigh of the Ice Goliath I was riding, but luckily the damn thing was having a trouble maintaining its grip on the slick surface of my creation. I was starting to realize that the grey ones were the weakest, and most expendable, as they were pushed in droves into (and under) the legs of my construct by the stronger green ones.

Reaching down to absently slice the lizard-monkey on my thigh in half, I extended razor sharp blade from my other arm which I used to wildly scythe through the creatures surrounding me. The smell of their blood was overpowering, but I hardly seemed to be making a dent in the horde.

Bloody beast there were a lot of them. I wanted to create some walls to break them into smaller groups, but I needed to find Tetra’s group before I blocked my field of view. The tower of ice that had sprung up in front of me earlier was still present, so I swung one of Goliath’s arms in that direction and focused my will on blasting out as many ice-shards as I could at the beasts between myself and the tower.

Grey-black blood flung into the air, accompanied by the eerie clicking howls of the lizard-monkeys, as dozens of them fell within seconds. I sent a command and Goliath dashed through the field of twitching corpses… I could only be grateful that the cold was probably dampening the smell somewhat.

As I arrived at the tower I created a series of steps, charging up them… only to slip on the first step and nearly barrel head first into the hard ice of the tower. Changing my plan, I fused one of Goliath’s hands to the wall itself, then proceeded to climb the structure by alternating between hands and feet, breaking and making connections one by one.

Then a loud bang next to my right ear caused me to start, nearly losing my grip and tumbling back to the ground. One of the bastards had actually managed to climb up Goliath’s back! All I could see was its sharp claws as it tore at the protective covering that was the only thing stopping a second decapitation.

What I needed was a third arm. I forced myself to adjust my mental image of Goliath, hoping the whole thing wouldn’t fall apart… and a human-sized arm grew out of the protective covering beside me, a gleaming blade replacing its hand! I couldn’t turn my head enough to see my attacker, so all I could do was swing wildly and hope for the best.

We were several stories up already, not far from the top of the ice structure… but if I tried shaking the beast off I would risk snapping off one or more of Goliath’s limbs – or accidentally tear myself free from the tower – and having to start the climb all over again. I created a series of spikes for good measure, and moments later I heard another loud shriek as the beast fell back down to the crush below.

I breathed a sigh of relief, but wasted no time finishing my climb up the tower, quickly crossing the top and checking what was on the other side… it was Tetra and her group! Spirits be praised, she’s... oh beast… I could see blood staining the icy ground around her. Her squad was down a few members, but the rest had set their backs to my massive ice structure in order to wage a final stand.

I needed to get to her, and fast! Temporary regeneration was useless against existing injuries, and my slower healing powers worked too slowly to be useful on the battle field, but TR would at the very least stabilize her injuries by not allowing them to get worse (or better).

“Tetra!” I called down, cringing as my voice bounced back off my protective covering. I melted the ice around me, keeping my guard up as I checked for any more attackers coming my way. The structure was shaped like a miniature mountain range, with no apparent rhyme or reason… it must have been continuously building the entire time I was unconscious… but the top was clear of beasts.

Turning back to the squad on the other side of the wall I abandoned calling down to them – there was just too much going on. So I returned to my original plan – segment the battlefield. A moment of focus saw a gigantic box spring up around the squad down below, effectively eliminating the lizard-monkeys greatest advantage; superior numbers.

The squad moved tighter together, startled by the sudden appearance of yet more ice on the battlefield, but they continued to pick off the few remaining beasts. I jumped after creating a winding slide that I was hoping would take me down next to Tetra without breaking any more of my bones, gritting my teeth as I slid down at breakneck speeds, nearly cresting the edge of a few dangerously steep corners.

Finally spilling out next to her, I was nearly skewered by the soldier nearest me, who just barely pulled his blow in time. I didn’t say anything, simply reaching out and applying TR to Tetra right away.

The result was immediate. Her wounds wouldn’t heal, but she must have immediately felt the familiar rush of energy as she suddenly jumped up, spinning around to look at me. Spirits, but she was moving well for someone so grievously wounded! Or…

“Heller!” She gasped, throwing herself at me, left-over tears splashing across my cheek. I held her for a moment, trying to ignore the questions each of the soldiers was asking me. A few of them were asking if Merrik made all this ice… and one was asking why I was naked… but I didn’t have time to deal with any of their crap.

“Let’s f-find Wulfric!” I hissed into Tetra’s ear, not even waiting for her reply as I wrapped both of us in a band of ice which quickly grew into a column, projecting us towards the nearest ice wall. I focused on making a shelf for us to land on, covering the surface with tiny spikes to provide grip so we wouldn’t fall.

“We will come back soon!” I called down to the five remaining House Flameward soldiers, two of whom were arguing that they needed to subdue and capture me immediately. Luckily for them, the other three seemed to have a lot more sense… or a lot less courage. I had just blatantly ignored their questions, and their orders, after all.

“What the beast happened to you!” Asked Tetra, her eyes wide. “And is Wulfric okay?”

I created another ring of ice around us, wincing and shivering as the small amount of body heat I had gained from carrying Tetra was sucked away. This time I made something that looked more like an octopus - the extra limbs making it much better suited for climbing over rest of the wall - and started taking us back to the top.

“I-I c-crashed, and I got k-killed.” I managed to stutter out, “D-d-dunno where h-he is!”

Tetra was silent for the rest of the journey, and once we reached the top she took off her blood-soaked outer shirt and handed it to me… and there was hardly any blood on the inside. Well, no wonder she hadn't been acting injured! I didn’t bother asking who’s blood it was as I gratefully pulled the soiled garment over my shaking arms.

“This is bad.” Said Tetra in a quiet voice, surveying the scene around us. There were thousands, at the very least, of the lizard-monkey-beasts all around us, though the vast majority of them were far off to the south, barely visible even from the top of my four story wall.

We had learned at Academy that a horde this big was never to be engaged… likely due to the strength of whatever creature was capable of leading this many beasts. Memories of the God-Wolf flashed through my mind, and for a moment I was shivering because of more than just the cold...

Tetra looked at me again, “Can you fly us?”

I paused for a moment, unsure if that was truly wise, but I failed to find a better plan. There didn’t seem to be many beasts far off in the distance… except to the south. It looked as if the main body of the horde had moved ahead towards North Stone Village, leaving a mere seven or eight hundred behind to deal with us…

“M-more like g-glide. C-c-can’t r-really g-get much higher.”

She nodded, giving me a smile. “What have we got to lose?”

I started laughing, rubbing my arms to try and warm myself up a little more. TR could keep me from getting hypothermia, but it didn’t do much to increase my comfort… if anything it made things worse, continuously healing me only once the cold was bad enought that it registered as damage... which was well past the point of incredibly uncomfortable.

I spent more time on the wings than I had before, searching for the weakness that had caused me to crash... I think one of them had started to fracture under the strain? That was both the beauty and flaw of ice… I could freeze it solid enough to be nearly as hard as steel, but it would still shatter or snap if I made it too thin or forced it the wrong way. Of course it was a lot more durable when I was actively manipulating it (a welcome side-effect of my power), but it would have the same properties as actual ice if I was focusing elsewhere.

My main advantage was volume. Anyone with steel tools could dig through one of my ice walls given enough time, but I could create a new one in seconds. As far as I could tell it was thousands of times more than I would have been able to make or manipulate if I had gone with iron – I considered it a good trade. Plus there was water in the air all around us, giving me a huge advantage, while with iron I'd have had to somehow carry my own supply.

“L-let’s give it a s-s-shot!” I said, smiling at tetra as I finished forming a gigantic pair of wings attached to a solid harness of ice. I tried to minimize the contact between anything cold and my bare skin, but there had been a few places where I had little choice. I DEFINITELY had to buy a power which let me deal with the cold long term. My plan to rely on generating heat with my Ion Shield was obviously flawed, given my current situation. As soon as I got my hands on some metal I'd be able to get it up and runnikg again.

Wait… Bloody beast! I looked back to the soldiers below us, seeing one of them still yelling up at us as another attempted to scale the wall. I should have grabbed one of their swords to renew my Ion Shield!

But there was no time, and Wulfric’s life had far greater priority than my comfort. I took a deep breath, made sure that Tetra was secured to the harness I had built for her, and pushed off the wall while following Tetra’s directions.

“He should be that way!” She said, pointing off towards the east. “It’s been about ten minutes since the attack first started, so we have to find him fast!”

What the beast! I felt like it had been hours! But the timing sense I had built into TR confirmed her words: It was showing that I had 41 minutes of protection left. Not bad… but ten minutes was a long time to try and survive a beast assault of this magnitude. Even the shadow wolves hadn’t had nearly a tenth of the numbers we were seeing here… I could only hope that the warning we had sent ahead arrived in time…

My new wing design was working a hell of a lot better than the last one, and I was actually able to maintain my altitude after some practice. I started firing off bursts of ice-shards down at the lizard-monkeys following us from below, trying to get them to scatter… the last thing I wanted was to find Wulfric only to bring half the horde along with me.

“Over there!” Yelled Tetra, yanking my attention back to my original task. I followed her finger, seeing another swarm of beasts off in the distance, separated from the group attacking my ice formations. I aimed towards it, noting with relief that most of our pursuit had broken off in favor of returning to their original task of killing Tetra’s previous squad.

All this use of my powers was starting to take a toll on me, but I had built up my endurance a great deal over the last few years. I was hoping I would be able to last long enough to find Wulfric and get somewhere safe… although… I had no idea how we would find somewhere safe in this mess…