Time slowed. My blade sliced the chair I had been sitting at, half cutting and half melting through it. I had to push more heat into it as I started through the table on the same swing. Mal'Thorn's guards grabbed Mal'Thorn by the hands and swung him up and over the back of the chair he was sitting at, getting him clear of the half of the table that was moving toward him.

I made it through the last of the table with my sword coming horizontal. I re-set my feet and thrust forward, aiming to stab my blade through the head priest of winter's heart.

He hadn't introduced himself, so I decided to call him Rat. Rat had his palms raised and had one sliding along the side of my blade as it approached him. He was actually cooling the blade, despite the amount of heat I was pushing into it. He was also pushing it to the side, redirecting it to stab into the chair behind him.

A chill headed up the blade and started to affect my hand. I flooded the sword with heat, forcing it against the winter power within it. If I wasn't allowed to affect spell affected or living things, I'll be damned if I would allow Rat to affect my blade.

Rat stood up and stepped cleanly back from his chair as my power started to overwhelm his in my sword. I tore my blade from the ice of his chair and glanced over my shoulder to the entrance. I had my battle simulation up, so I knew I had enough time. There was a wall of ice blocking the entrance.

I turned to face forwards again and heard a tearing sound. Ice shards were tearing through the tent wall to my right. Ten centimeters thick at the back they came to a point over twenty centimeters. And there were hundreds of them. They were coming through the wall on the opposite side of where Mal'Thorn and his guards were, but some of them were angled downwards.

There was no way that Mal'Thorn and his guards would survive the attack. I did warn him that he would be on his own if it came to hostilities... But I considered him to be an ally, even if I didn't think I was a vassal of the Forest Keepers. And he had declared war on winter in response to them being treacherous in their dealings with me. I wanted to kill Rat. But I would save Mal'Thorn first.

I had a clear view of the ice shards, and had measured their velocity. I knew what paths they would all take. So I turned my back on them and leapt to stand in front of Mal'Thorn.

"Stand still, I'll deal with them." I said. Or attempted to say. What they would have heard was st'ndst'l'ld'lw'tem. Completely unintelligible.

I slowed my perception of time down as far as I could, my senses dimming to blackness, and wrote a quick program to translate my speech to understandable speeds while I was still sped up. I brought my perception of time back up, the shards had barely moved. I said it again, and left the translation program to drone it out at normal speeds.

I would need to clear the shards that would enter the area we were standing. If I superheated my blade I could cause an explosion of steam that would affect the paths of the other shards. I'd still have to directly affect a dozen of the shards, and absorb the heat from the steam coming towards us. Could I absorb the shockwave that would be coming toward us? It would be in the air before the steam, but it was worth an attempt. I could absorb the force with my body, but the Forest Keepers wouldn't be so lucky.

My speech translation program was just finishing as I turned back to face the shards. They were around a second away, and exactly where I'd predicted. I started pushing heat into my sword, raising the temperature of the entire blade. A fire. A bonfire. A furnace. A blast furnace. Hotter and Hotter. I concentrated the heat on the edge of the blade and got it close to the temperature of the heart of a volcano as the first ice shards came within range.

I would need to wait to time my swing to hit all of the needed shards in one swing. Right about. Now. The first shard I hit exploded violently, as predicted. I'd come at it at an upward angle, and the majority of it exploded upwards and away from us. The second and third I aimed more to the left than up, and my blade followed the shrapnel from those into the rest of the dangerous shards.

My blade was still moving when I shifted my focus to the shockwave that was just now hitting me from the first explosion. I tried to anchor myself to the ground and found that my power bounced off of it. It was spelled ice.

The hard way, then. I sank my power into the air around me, it skittered in my grip. My sped up perception of time made it a little easier to push my power into it, but it was a balancing act on thousands of pieces of air. I could feel the compression of the air that was the shockwave travelling through it, a more solid part to grab hold of.

I couldn't change the air of the shockwave by pushing it through the air around it, but I could push it against itself. I pulled the shockwave in on itself, redirecting one half of it to slam into the other with a thunderclap, all sound but little force.

Then the wave of heated steam arrived, but that was much simpler to deal with, I just pulled the heat out of it, shoving it into the orb on top of my staff. With those distractions dealt with I shifted my focus to my sword, which was glowing with heat. Mal'Thorn had been saying something, and I used my translation program to play it back at my speed.

"The ice of the floor is blocking my Fores..." He said.

His Forest powers, or sense, I guessed. He was still talking, I'd just caught up to where he was up to.

I shifted my grip on my sword and stabbed it into the floor at my feet. I had to redirect the explosion again, and even after carving out a hole two meters wide through the ice that was a meter thick my sword was still glowing, though it was down to an orange glow. The only reason my sword was still together was because I was using my power to hold it that way.

I glanced around, there were no new projectiles coming at us, but I could see through the steam that there were walls of ice closing in from where the sides of the tent were. Rat was disappearing into the wall closest to him, sinking into the solid ice walking backwards. I leapt after him, stabbing my sword into the ice. It hissed, but there was no explosion of steam.

Rat had raised his palm to me as he continued to walk backwards, countering the heat I could push into my blade. I pulled it back before it could get stuck and returned to Mal'Thorn, coming back up to normal speed.

"The Rat is getting away." I said to him.

"I have him." Mal'Thorn said. "He is being expelled from the Forest."

"What?" I asked. "You're helping him to escape?"

"He is an Oathbreaker." Mal'Thorn said. "Oathbreakers are permanently exiled from Keeper lands."

"Exiled?" I said. "I would have killed him."

Mal'Thorn shook his head. "He has the power of his god behind him, he was holding his own even against you." He said. "He is almost a match for our power, and we are absolute within our domain. We do have a more pressing issue. I have a physical barrier ward active, but the remaining priests are forcing the walls in on us. It is draining my mana quite rapidly."

"Aren't the winter priests exiled?" I asked.

"No." Mal'Thorn said. "Only their head priest is an Oathbreaker. I may do no more than defend myself personally against them."

"And if they kill you?" I asked.

"Attacking a Forest Keeper isn't actually against our rules." Mal'Thorn said. "If I am killed my kin will avenge me. But they won't be allowed to use the power of the Forest to do so, either."

I reheated my blade and headed to the wall of ice that had replaced the entrance. At a lower temperature I was able to melt through the ice, turning it to water, rather than steam and have it explode.

As soon as we got into the ice wall Mal'Thorn's barrier dropped and the walls started moving in towards each other again. Somehow all four walls were moving inwards, despite them having to move through each other to do so. I was making slow progress through the wall. The priests must be creating more ice as the walls were moving inwards.

When the walls all hit each other in the center of where the tent used to be the wall behind us continued forwards down the hole I was making. I started carving downwards as well as forwards through the ice and quickly came to the ground below it. The ice was moving backwards along the ground, which had been keeping us in the same relative place. I dug down slightly into the ground and then pressed forward, heating my blade more.

We were making progress, but the pressure was rising. With a final stab I broke through the last of the ice and my ears popped from the depressurisation. Ahead of us was my pavilion, and a row of priests with ice shards prepared to fire.