“Hey… Heller, look at that. Are they digging something up?” Tetra called out in an incredulous tone, “Is that some kind of building?”

It took me a moment too see what she was talking about: The lizard-monkeys were ripping into the ground with their four powerful arms, spraying dirt and stones behind them. There was what looked like a buried stone structure at the center of their efforts… And this wasn’t very far from where Wulfric’s squad was supposed to be… I tried not to get my hopes up.

“Let’s t-take a look!” I replied, carefully adjusting my course. The entire horde contained too many beasts for me to reasonably handle before becoming too tired to move, but that’s partly what my Ice powers were for.

I focused on an image surrounding the structure we saw, creating a three story tall wall in a circle around iy, trapping only a few dozen beasts within, and then worked on making the ice walls both thicker and taller, creating a platform for myself as I prepared to touch down.

“Get ready!” I yelled, putting all my focus on the landing. The last thing I wanted was to slip off the edge and tumble into the clawing mass of green and grey flesh below.

We slid and nearly fell upon landing, but I had accounted for that by making a barrier around the platform which helped me regain my balance.

“By the spirits that was fun!” Said Tetra, slightly out of breath as she stood back up, with a big smile on her face. I could tell that she had been a lot more nervous than she was letting on, but I appreciated her efforts to stay calm.

Walking over to the edge of the platform, I saw that the beasts below were already at work both trying to tear the wall down and scale it… and some were attempting both at once. It wouldn’t take long to get rid of the ones inside, so I braced myself to mow them down - nearly all of them would be within range of my ice shards.

I glanced back at Tetra, “Keep watch on the wall.” I said, nodding towards the other side. “I’ll clear the field.”

She gave me a salute and moved into position, and I turned back towards my task… but then I had second thoughts. Practice in our training room under Academy had taught me that my ice shards could chip stone pretty badly, and I didn’t want to risk compromising the structure any more than it already was.

Bloody beast… if I was fully grown I would just jump down and take care of them myself… but my eight-year-old frame simply wasn’t strong enough yet. I had long ago decided that I should wait until I was older before modifying my actual body – mostly because of how damned expensive it was (years worth of Qi at a bare minimum), and also because I didn’t want to risk stunting my natural growth – but I often dreamed about being as strong as even a regular adult again. I had been a pretty big guy in my last life, and being physically weaker than everyone else was something I still felt incredibly uncomfortable with.

But that’s what powers are for. I spent a moment mentally designing what I wanted, and then proceeded to summon my Ice Warrior. I had designed it after what I might look like in another ten years, and I gave it a pair of longswords (my current favorite weapon) with which to lay waste.

It took less than a second to will my intention into my construct – which I had named Iggy – picturing it going through the sword forms I had spent the last four years practicing. I wasn’t anything close to an expert yet, but I felt that I was getting a solid foundation down. It was probably too early for me to be practicing Dual Wielding, but I couldn’t help it – using two weapons at once was an idea I had always loved, as impractical as it turned out to be in reality.

It took the beasts a moment to notice Iggy as he… yeah, what the heck, it’s a boy… as he leapt off of the shelf I had built him on, stabbing down at the unsuspecting backs of a pair of beasts. I nearly cheered as ichor sprayed up over Iggy’s head, but he was already moving on to the next opponent.

--------------------------

I had to fix Iggy numerous times, and re-create him from scratch once, but the beasts stood little chance against my icy champion within his frozen arena of death. Part of me was sickened by the scene of slaughter before me – dark fluids spread across the grassy ground, pooling in the depressions near the stone shelter, smeared liberally across the surrounding walls of ice – but another part of me… another part of me reveled in the violence, as well as my part in it. I had always felt an unusually strong draw towards fairness or justice, not to be confused with ‘good’, and I had to admit… killing the bad guys felt GREAT!

Once that was done I joined Tetra on her patrol along the top of the wall, following her to the trouble spots and slaughtering the more intrepid climbers. I then built an inverted-wedge (like a triangle with the steepest slope facing downwards) shaped ledge jutting out of the wall, designed to foil any of the lizard-monkeys who managed to make it up this far. The last thing we wanted was an ambush while we checked the underground bunker for survivors.

A winding staircase with a roughened surface took us down to the ground inside my impromptu fort. The smell was enough to make me gag, so I covered all the corpses I could see in a thin layer of ice – it helped, but there wasn’t much of a breeze within the three story tall walls of ice surrounding us…

Tetra wrinkled her nose against the smell, but otherwise ignored it. She pointed at a metal hatch built into the top of the stone structure, which we could now see was composed of large blocks of granite all smoothly cemented together. It actually looked a lot like the construction we had seen in the complex under Academy.

I nodded, moving over to knock on the door. I choose one of the rhythms we learned in Master Jaduk’s class, a common code that meant ‘all clear’. The steel was pretty thick, so I had to create a gauntlet of ice around my hand before I could hear more than a quiet tapping sound.

Nothing happened. I raised my fist to knock again, harder this time, when I heard a faint shout from the other side of the hatch! “Identify yourself!”

Tetra and I looked at each other, smiling in excitement. It looks like Wulfric was okay!

“Heller, and I have Tetra with me! The area is secured, there are no beasts in sight!” I yelled back as loud as I could. It was technically true… if you discounted all the dead beasts…

The silence stretched on for a moment longer, before we heard the faint screech of metal on metal from inside the stone building. Moments later the hatch opened partly, and I could see chains looped around a thick handle and trailing back down below.

“Hello?” I called, trying to peek inside the widening gap.

“Where is Omylia?” Asked a cautious sounding male voice.

I shared another look with Tetra.

“We got separated. Is Wulfric with you? Can we come in?” I asked.

The hatch was gradually raised, just enough for us to squeeze through. “Has Merrik arrived? Where did the beasts go?”

He obviously didn’t have that good of a vantage point if he didn’t even notice the walls of ice all around us… although, from his perspective they probably just looked like a cloudy sky…

I motioned for Tetra to go first, sparing another glance around me before I quickly followed. We heard the hatch shut behind us, and the squeal (much louder from this side) of the bolts being slid back in place… but we couldn’t see anything. It took a few moments for our eyes to adjust, and when they did we saw what looked like a miniature version of the safe-rooms in the Garrison.

“Woooahhh… so this is how we keep safe when we go scouting?” Asked Tetra.

Nobody replied, until a woman at the back of the room waved to get our attention. She pointed at a large bundle of rags on the floor, surrounded by some kind of dark oil or… OH BLOODY BEAST!

I rushed over, my heart pounding, and barely paused to look before tossing off the top layer of rags to see what was underneath. The woman tried to stop me, grabbing my shoulders, but I drained all the force from her actions by manipulating the Qi around her, effectively turning myself into an immobile object. I had tried using the same tactic against the lizard-monkeys – once I had my wits about me – but thier supreme advantage in numbers was overwhelming, and simply didn’t allow me a chance to react in time.

After removing the last cloth covering I saw Wulfric’s face, pale, no motion visible. I heard someone gasp beside me, probably Tetra, but the beat of my heart pounding in my ears drowned out nearly all other sound. Fuck this, I don’t give up so easily. I reached out, trying to apply Temporary regeneration… knowing it would fail if he was already dead. TR might be useless against existing injuries, but if he was just barely hovering at death’s door it would at least give me an extra fifty minutes to think.

… And I felt the power take hold. My knees folded as I collapsed with relief. He wasn’t dead... or at least, not fully dead. There was still hope. Maybe. I reached out again, trying to clear my mind and assess the extent of his injuries through my secondary healing ability… but the power kept slipping from my grasp. Messing with existing injuries was infinitely harder to do than simply forcing a body to maintain it's current state… it required somehow figuring out what was MEANT to be there, versus what was WRONG. I could probably design a more robust healing ability that might handle such things a lot easier, but last I looked into it powers in that category were well out of my current budget.

Taking a deep breath, I focused on feeling my body fall back into relaxation, clear of all outside thoughts. A solitary candle flame, into which I fed all distractions… And there he was…

… But there was nothing I could do. His injuries were well beyond what my healing could deal with. I could tell that he was just barely hanging on, his heart nearly stopped and his brain activity almost non-existent. I practiced healing him, knowing that even if I messed up Temporary regeneration would bring him back to where he was now… but nothing worked… too many of his organs were either shut down, or in the process of shutting down.

“Don’t let anyone bother me.” I rasped out to Tetra, who was busy arguing with at least one of the soldiers. I didn’t even make myself comfortable as I slipped into my soul-form, racing to access The System.

Alright… so what the heck could I do… I went through a bunch of possibilities, reviewing my Cultivation Technique again. In order to stabilize my cultivation base what I had done was create a complicated series of checks and balances each power had to go through, as well as establishing thought routines and mantras, broken up into a system of runes (based on Chinese-characters) and syllables (based on English) that I had put together.

What I had discovered was that the more rules a Cultivation Technique had, the stronger and more stable it was. So, me being who I am, I had probably gone a bit overboard… I had created a complex web of how different types of powers could interact, as well as what kinds of limitations or enhancements I could apply to different power categories. Nothing outside the rules was allowed.

I could theoretically design a power in well under an hour… but there was always more to tweak, extra perks to add or ways to save on CP cost. My Battle Healing power, for example, took me about a week to figure out… and even now I wish I had spent longer, been a bit more detailed.

But that was just the start of the process. After the power was designed I needed to write it down in my custom rune-script, and then channel power into the thought patterns it invoked while reading the runes aloud. I had noticed that the last time I added a new power, which was the only one I had created since my… ascension? Anyway, the first power since I gained the ability to see Qi energy… that when I was channeling power into my runes, ambient Qi energy always seemed to mix with my own power as well. I didn’t quite understand it, but it had led me to formulate a theory…

What if, and I knew this was crazy, but what if I could channel my own Qi into someone else, forming a pathway, and then force ambient Qi in with it? One of my hundreds of rune combinations was the ability to create Allies – or minions – but I had never considered using the power on someone who was already alive: I always figured it would just create an artificial lifeform.

Wulfric was dying because most of his organs were failing, and there was nothing I could do to heal his organs. But… what if he didn’t need them anymore?

I felt a rush of hope as I got to work, no longer feeling so powerless. I had twenty-four CP to work with, and forty-two minutes to design and implement a power I had never attempted before.