The winter priests didn't attack immediately. The one in front of me, five meters away, was moving his lips as though he was saying something, but I couldn't hear him. I couldn't hear anything at all. I turned to look at the Forest Keepers behind me and noticed that their ears were bleeding. I raised my sword hand and wiped the back of it against my ear, it came away bloody. My ears did hurt, somewhat, but it hadn't registered compared to the pain I was used to.

I looked back to the speaking priest, who was now gesturing at me, perhaps to lower my weapons? I focused on his lips as he was talking. I knew the language, and I could work out the mouth positions that went with sounds. It would require some guesswork, but I should be able to read his lips.

"... down your weapons." The priest said. "We have been ordered to keep you here if you try to leave before the Head Priest allows you. Put down your weapons. We have-"

"I can't hear you." I said, interrupting him. "But I understand what you are saying. Your head priest has been exiled from the Forest, and has been name an Oathbreaker. You won't be receiving any orders from him any time soon."

The priest I was talking to nodded and walked back through the ranks of priests, heading for a priest that had gold trim on his robe. The guy in charge, I assumed. He was well to the side of where the battle would be if it came to that.

I was letting my opponents make the first move a lot, I noticed. A lot of my problems would have been simpler if I'd taken action first; setting up my Pocket Dimension portals and going to Chantelle as soon as I was able would have given her people the option of evacuating, or I could have fought with them against the priests when they arrived at the village.

It really did come down to having more options if I acted first. My instinct was to defend, fortify, prepare until forced to act. I would need to do better.

The winter priest spokesperson was heading back to his place in the front line. I turned to Mal'Thorn and tightened the grip on my sword. He dipped his head slightly. He was ready if I chose to attack. He had the physical barrier ward ready in the tent, so my assessment that he needed saving at the time was probably wrong. I would trust him to take care of himself and his people this time.

I needed to get back to my fortress and find out what happened.

"Our orders remain." The priest said with a look of regret.

He seemed like a decent guy, polite. I'd prefer not to kill him.

"I am going to my fortress." I said. "You and your army are not welcome on my lands. I give you the chance to depart, now. Before I go through you."

"I cannot." He said.

I nodded. Slowing my perception of time, I lunged forward, leading with my sword. My front foot came down halfway to the front rank of priests and started to slide on the ice there. I adjusted my balance and continued my thrust. The ice shards the priests had prepared fired at me. Ten of them, all on track to go through where I would be, from both sides. They were all aimed to take me at chest height, though, so I dropped to my knees to slide under them.

I was within range of the spokesperson priest. I swung my staff from behind me with my off hand to hit him in the temple. He tried to raise his palm to redirect it, but he wasn't fast enough. As the orb on my staff hit I reduced the force to just enough to knock him unconscious. I had to shove him to the side as I regained my feet, continuing my slide into the next rank of priests.

It looked like they had covered the entire floor of my pavilion in slippery ice. I couldn't get any traction on it, but there were plenty of priests to push off of. I sliced my sword around me, hitting each of the five priests around me cleanly through their hearts.

At the same time I used my staff to clear the way forward and push me through towards my stairs. Each of the priests attempted to redirect my blade as it came to them, but they were slower than I was and it was a simple thing to redirect my blade around their attempts.

I was beginning to judge opponents by how fast they could react and move their bodies to fight me. With enough skill and training there were opponents who could fight me to a standstill, or perhaps even beat me, even with my advantage of being able to make the perfect move. But the priests before me weren't anywhere close to that level. I was cutting through their ranks like a hot blade through ice. Using their falling corpses to push further through. Nearing the back rank I came across the first priest I didn't kill in one strike.

He had gold trim on his blue robe, which made him a higher rank priest. And he was able to redirect my swing just enough for it to not be immediately fatal. It still cut deeply into his chest, and took off his arm. Despite that, he stepped towards me and used his remaining hand to grab my sword arm, stopping my swing. I turned my blade back to finish him off.

The priests behind him and to his sides had their hands on each other's shoulders, and their mouths were open in a matching shout. My sword arrived at the priest's chest, and my sword arm froze. An intense cold travelled into it from where the priest held it and quickly travelled up to my shoulder. Fast enough that it got to my shoulder before I reacted. I flooded my arm and shoulder with heat to counteract it and my arm shattered.

There wasn't any pain, just a numbness that started at my chest where my arm began. And the cold had stopped there, before making it to anything critical. But I no longer had a sword, or sword arm, to fight with. I was almost through the priests, just one more after the one who had grabbed me.

I still had forward momentum, I just needed to clear the priest immediately in front of me. I swung my staff at him, aiming to bash him in the head. He redirected my swing upwards, and with no resistance to push off I was continuing to turn. He raised a palm to hit me in the chest. I swung my staff downwards, towards the priest to the left of him and started to jump upwards. As expected, the priest to the left redirected my swing, and I used that to push myself further up.

That stopped my turn and brought my knees to the priest's head height as I reached him. He ducked, hitting my legs with his palm. Cold hit them, through his palm, but much less than what the first priest did. I was able to counter it by pushing heat into the affected area, and turned to land on the stairs facing back the way I had come. The Forest Keepers were following the path of destruction I had left and would catch up to me in a few seconds. Blood was spurting from where my right arm had been, so I quickly cauterised the wound. I would look at it in more detail once we were safe.

The Forest Keepers made it to the last rank of priests and followed my lead of jumping off of and over them. They landed on the stairs above me and started up. I followed them, walking backwards to keep an eye on the priests, holding my staff horizontally. I changed my perception of time back to normal when they didn't follow us up the stairs.

We made it to the top with no more issues and I opened the top doors of the fortress, closing and barring them after we'd entered. I banged on the guard door to give the guards some warning, then opened it.

Brutus looked at me in what I took to be shock, it was a bit hard to tell on his ox face. His eyes widened, his nose went down, and his ears flattened down to the sides of his head. He turned and said something to Gaal, whose bear face I couldn't read at all. Gaal ran off down the hall to the fortress stairs. Brutus looked back at us, then motioned for us to sit. There weren't any chairs, but instead of sitting on the floor I made a bench along the wall opposite the doors.

I turned to sit down and saw Mal'Thorn and his two guards. Right, benches don't work well for Forest Keepers. I made them a branch of stone, going across the corner of the room, with enough room for all three of them to perch comfortably on.

That done, I closed my eyes to focus on my power. I soaked it into one of my ears, first. My arm hurt more, just on the edge of being unbearable, and I could feel my biological side trying to go into shock. But I needed to be able to hear. My ear was a mess, blood and damage everywhere. I shifted my focus to my other ear. Just as bad, but the damage was different.

I created a virtual model of an ear, combining the least damaged parts from both of my ears and then extrapolating how the missing pieces should work. I didn't end up with something that I thought would work. There was just too much damage.

Coming at the problem from the other direction, the engineering problem was to convert small changes in air pressure into electrical signals that my brain could read. And do it in the limited space that was assigned to it. The nerves that went out from my ears were intact, so I set about designing something to interface with them, throwing out the rest of the model.

I was part of the way through doing that when I felt something external touched my left ear. I reacted by instantly dropping my perception of time to its maximum. My senses blacked out and I considered my reaction.